Smooth Fields 6AM

By the time civil dawn cracks open
the cold egg-sack of London’s albumin skyline,
the blood-boltered bummarees of Smithfield
have already been hard at it for a couple of hours.
Their forensic white smocks and barrowboy charm
handed down through the generations;
father to son to grandson to great-grandson.
Jainists of the world take note; livestock has been
traded at this carnivore’s Mecca for over 800 years.
The soil here is used to the taste of offal and warm viscera.
Before Tyburn’s Triple Tree became the city’s main location
for public executions, the crown’s ceremonial killing was done right here.
Devilled kidneys of William Wallace. Sweetbreads of Wat Tyler.
Umble pie of Lollard martyrs and chitterlings of Protestant poets.
Godforsaken heretics and unholy dissidents all.
Smithfield’s temperature-controlled freezing works
sit proudly atop a labyrinth of ancient tunnels.
Tunnels which lead all the way to the hollow centre of The Earth.
Down past the churning waters of the buried Fleet river,
through the hot magma and the thick mantle
to a place where a long forgotten tribe
of homo habilis wage a daily fight for supremacy
with mighty mastodons and sabre-toothed cats.
Living life just as they did at the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch.
Unchanged in approximately 2.2 million years.
The daylight breaks apart the clouds above,
burning away any lingering rheum and gound.
London awakens slowly from the blindside
and prepares to shred new hearts
and grind more bones to dust.

The House That Dennis Severs Built

Illuminated by fading candlelight,
I stand in silence on the first floor
of a terraced Georgian house on Folgate Street.
The smell of rose-hip and pomanders permeates.
There are discarded playing cards and empty oyster shells.
There is broken bone china and an unmade four-poster bed.
Huguenot silk-weavers huddle in the basement below.
A 21-gun salute sounds in the dilapidated tenement above.
The bells of St. Mary Spital prepare to chime out the hour.
I stand here, gazing into a cracked vanity mirror
hung against a painted wall. And the face
that I can see gazing silently back at me,
illuminated by the fading candlelight,
looks as if it’s being reflected in a cloud of smoke.
Or should that be smog?
Faded at the corners and daguerreotype hazy.
And the longer I stand here, silently gazing
at this turbid looking-glass visage of myself,
the more I appear to be steadily ageing.
Like Rod Taylor trapped in a George Pál stop-frame animation.
Crow’s feet deepening at the edges of my eyes.
Capillaries cracking beneath the skin on my cheeks.
Flecks of white sprouting all about the beard-line.
Outbreak of liver spots and the onset of Type Two diabetes.
Impotence, dementia and onrushing rigor mortis.
The blowflies arriving to lay their eggs.
My body fat slowly turning to soap.
Meanwhile, away from the gas-lamps and the ticking
of the grandfather clock, away on the other side of town,
a young man lies bare-chested on the pavement near Oxford Street
- sucking early evening air through an open chest wound.
Her Majesty’s police are unrolling their plastic caution tape.
It takes a moment for the eyes to adjust back
to the third generation technology and the closed-circuit TV’s.
At the end of the day, you either see it or you choose not to.
Aut Visum Aut Sumo Non.

18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields

185-187 Oxford Street, Westminster

I HAVE CONFIDENCE IN SUNSHINE.

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Breaking A Leg

It’s opening night at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios,
and someone’s seen fit to hang a noose outside the stage-door.
On the winding concrete stairs down to the basement,
I pass the acclaimed American film-maker Neil LaBute.
I recognise him from his thick wirey beard,
his Mormon lumberjack shirt, and his two wedding rings.
In passing, I wish him well for his show this evening.
As I do so, I’m careful not to let out a whistle
or to mention the names of any Scottish plays.
Trust me, it’s so much easier that way.
It means neither of us have to waste time
spinning around, spitting over shoulders
and reciting lines from ‘Hamlet’ Act 1 Scene IV
or ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ Act 5 Scene II
or ‘The Merchant of Venice’ Act 3 Scene IV.
Down below, in the bowels of the building,
me and Bill Juniper are sharing a dressing room.
Bill’s busy tucking himself in
and rolling down the sleeve of his pink
Marks & Sparks "easy-iron" shirt
to hide the Trojan Records tattoo
on the inside of his right wrist.
I can tell that he's nervous about tonight.
I can tell by the bead of sweat on his upper lip.
And by the way he keep combing his hair and brushing his teeth.
Bill’s about to make his West End theatre debut.
Which makes two of us.
It’s opening night at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios,
and someone’s seen fit to hang a noose outside the stage-door.
Still, It could be worse. It could be a green noose.
Or a noose made entirely out of peacock feathers.
I draw a tree-of-life upon my belly button
using mascara, and prepare to tred some boards.
Trust me, it’s so much easier that way.

'Lifecoach' at Trafalgar Studios

Piccadilly Pea-Souper

We have gathered here as a body.
We have created here a space.
Our common commitment to a drawling deadpan baritone.
Mr. Bill Callahan has blown into town on a downslope wind.
His shirts are newly pressed. His suit is freshly dry-cleaned.
Tonight we are but simple God-fearing folk,
struck dumb by a collective outbreak
of acute purulent bronchitus.
Bill’s face a jumble of ticks and gurns and poker tells.
Bill’s limbs prone to myoclonic twitches and dyspraxic dance moves.
Above his silver crown, a wooden pelican pecks at its breast.
Above the pelican, The Son Of God suffers for our sins upon the cross.
Above the crucifixion, The Messiah resides
in his Father’s House - his wounded hands open wide.
Above the east window rests the copper roof.
And above that the firmament; a gateway
to a universe bigger and more beautiful
than you or I could ever possibly imagine.

Promo video for 'I Feel Like The Mother Of The World'

STEPHEN KING RULES.

Tuesday I went to Pharmaprix Drug Mart on St. Laurent for a make-over. It was my friend Ayan who was scheduled to be made over, not that she has any need for such nonsense, but I filled in when she couldn’t make it.

“Your appointment is at 5:15 and your name is Ayan Bihi.”





















I was all ready to explain how I may look Eastern European, but I am in fact Somalian by association, in that I was adopted by Somalian parents and raised in a household that serves really incredible SOMALIAN RICE that Ayan does not know the recipe for EVENTHOUGH I HAVE BEEN BUGGING HER ABOUT IT FOR TWO WEEKS STRAIGHT.

As it were, they didn’t even ask my name or ID me or care about where I’m going and where I’m from…


The make-up artist had bright turquoise pizzazz around her eyes and altogether far too much going on.





















I was dressed in the most minimal girl-next-door ensemble: dark cuffed blue jeans (not tight/not loose), grey and white striped thinning old shirt with holes in it Jenna left at my last apartment about a year ago (pretty much the hottest “this old thing?” shirt ever), FAUX KEDS.























Not that I’m Kimora Lee Simmons or Bai Ling and totally kooky and off the wall in terms of attire, but I dress girl-next-door minimal about 6 times a year, max.























So I thought that she probably thinks that I’m superboring and would never do something like wear turquoise eye make-up…and I could have asked for turquoise fun that would have gone great with this new yellow/pink/green/blue/purple plaid shirt I traded with Alison for this orange/yellow/pink waitress dress with 49 heads all over it when she and Dane and Leah and I had a garage sale a couple of weeks ago…BUT the fact of the matter WAS, that I was wearing a red string in my hair at that moment and who knows what could happen if I walked home all totally uncoordinated ‘n shit, right??

So I was like “Hey girl, please make my skin look better than it actually is and give me some fresh summer make-up that’s not a pain and a melting hazard for summer”. Except that I don’t know how to say “melting hazard” in French so I don’t think she got that part…























ANYWAY…after looking up and down and left and stageleft and blink blink blink and close and open and stageright, she explained to me everything she used and told me she would bring it all to the cash and I could look around at whatever else I needed and then go to the cash and I bolted out the back door without buying anything when I realized she was repping l’Oréal and I had thought she was just some Pharmaprix Drug Mart beauty section lady I didn’t recognize, not that I hang out there looking at expensive nailpolish on the regular, inevitably settling for my ultimate classic, Revlon 235 Twinkled Pink that coats my 10 in Pepto Bismol flirtatiousness like Barbie is my older sister and my name is…Skipper??






















What kind of name is Skipper?? The name of one who skips grades and goes to university at age 15??? THASRIGHT. Wait no, that was my mother.





















SPEAKING OF WHICH….Mother’s Day is this Sunday in case you care!






















I do.
























Moral of the story is, I left Pharmaprix Drug Mart hoping I wouldn’t run into anyone important on the way home (ie: Camilla Scott, Jonovision, Camilla Scott, Jonovision.)











I looked sort of scary I think…the way make-up artists look (except for Bobbi Brown who always looks like a fresh-faced tween) and the way girls with dyed black hair and coloured contact lenses that work at tanning salons look…not that I’ve ever been to one of those places because I’m surely never that vain; I only know a bit about what those girls look like because I see them on their smoke breaks outside where the real-life UV rays hang out, because they all smoke too, not to jump to conclusions or make generalizations about an entire race of aspiring Playboy bunnies or anything…












Okay…SO, the REAL moral of the story is that I haven’t felt like writing here for awhile because I feel quite unproductive in other realms of life, such as the HAVING A JOB ONE…
















But then I got all divinely inspired when I went to go to bed after stealthily affixing 9 garage sale flyers on THE MAIN without having to talk to ANYONE I KNOW although I probably saw 6 people I just didn’t really feel like talking to and pretended I didn’t see and somehow even managed to slip and out of the Blizzarts bathroom on a flyer mission without so much as making eye contact with ANYONE and it was getting sort of bumping in there so I was pretty pleased with my hiding skills.







































So I went to go to bed and decided it would be a good idea to wash off my clown face.





















[SIDENOTE: Hey hot teen ravers! Cool idea for face-paint to wear to Coda Special Club tonight, no? Nice step away from the star over your eye look, no? No?? You guys?]

And I had to wash it FOUR TIMES before all that shiz was gone and I looked more like how I actually look than 10 years older than I look…which is 37 unfortunately. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or with Teri Hatcher for that matter…


















Hatcher is actually over 40. I had initially planned to put some fun picture where she looks scary and like she's had work done but then I remembered that she was great on Seinfeld and when that episode airs I'm sure her career will really take off and she'll be able to afford matching Crocs for she and her daughter (ie: her substitute for a man in her life.)

ANYWAY. Homegirl put makeup all over my neck and even behind my ears, it was silly. Does she do that everyday?? I mean I’m no baby fresh Nicole Kidman faced freak of nature but to wear that much make-up is just ridiculous, even if you ARE at times self-conscious about how you’re no baby fresh Nicole Kidman faced freak of nature…

















I called my girl Danielle after my make-over and told her that I look like I’m wearing lots of make-up and I would not like to roll around with Scott Speedman or John Mayer or say, Mark Ruffalo in a white-sheeted bed of 300 thread-count Egyptian cotton because they would be all “I am never inviting you back to my suite at the Chateau Marmont ever again. YOU WEAR FAR TOO MUCH MAKE-UP TO NOT FUCK UP THESE SHEETS.”

































































I went on to say that “Holy shit. Have you seen John Mayer all up in the tabs canoodling with Jennifer Aniston?? When did he become superhot TATTOO GUY??? Into it. Totally, totally hot.”

In other news, John Mayer is looking fiiiiiiiiiine…

ANISTON SHMANISTON. Let's check out his new sleeve.


















Cool. I guess....

















Furthermore, if you were wondering if that was me ranting about hot teen ravers in The Mirror this week, wonder no longer...















PEACE GUYS!