Joe Mugford

The Day

He lifts a foot up, and forward, and it falls again a little jarringly onto the safety of the roughly steady carpet, every fragment of tobacco on the floor making its realness felt against the tender sole. That’s good, he’s awake. He repeats the act, simultaneously reaching down to rearrange his bollocks to the usual side of the boxers. That’s good, he cares about his own comfort. It’s double good, he can move feet and rearrange bollocks at the same time. Complex action. Promising. Today might happen. He decides to push it and challenges himself with more movement to stare confrontationally out the window into the flat white afternoon sky, then stooping to pull on his jogging pants and think about a girl. He doesn’t jog, but still feels some vitality: the light of the day causes pain that’s sharp and definable. His feet seem to understand better now and move up and forward and fall a few more times till he’s just outside the bedroom door, then he turns, returns and bins some squashed cans. It’s good, he’s in control of his environment. He changes things; he’s sculpting something – however scuzzy that something may be – out of his life. A cloud of disgust and fuzzy hatred flutters briefly around his skull at that thought, then passes. He has a warm feeling for a second upon glimpsing the beautiful butterfly-shaped woman stain on his duvet, and decides to attack the day. He twice rolls his shoulders, which click worryingly, but he doesn’t worry but stumbles out of the flat and walks on down the hall, round the rubbish and down the satisfyingly solid stairway in what seems to him to be a fairly dignified fashion. He shakes for a moment and wants a fag. It’s good, he likes smoking. He knocks on Downstairs’s door and worries for a minute about looking like a waster. He laughs as the door flies open and Large leans hard and fast against the wall inside. Of course, it’s Monday. They’re spazzed. Alright – Alright – Howyoudoing – Howyoudoing – etc etc. Bad comedown chaps? Nah, wegotsomemorphinehehhehehehelookthetabletsarefizzyheheheheh. He sits down and a spliff floats past. Nicotine addiction puts it in his mouth before his mind registers. It’s good, muffle that clear pain – definition’s for the anal. He sees Lucky in the next room and thinks about her. The conversation’s disjointed and a little fierce. He laughs at it and it laughs at him, so he decides to join in for a while. Fuck the day, there’ll be another one. And then it’s fade float push down and gulp, roll on roll off roll up roll over the car, no it’s just a churn, last Saturday was the rollover, time now as Tuesday grows ahead to run with the weekenders who won’t fuck off and die (although they’re trying), where the little mystic is leaning overhead and sprays vague colour to the minds of the desolate and a fresh black box for a talking point to drown out the ghosts that the gin solidifies from MDMA echoes, and a car to a house to another to a room to a lip pushed in her mouth, bathroom floor and a static crack sting of connection that earths the fantasy and she says ‘boyfriend’ and people’s legs walk by to piss, the blind sympathise with the paralysed who can’t answer back. It’s good, he’s smiling.

The Night

Four radios and a record on, World Service stability cracking through the angry dreams of a rarified pirate and populism that can’t be understood. Why it couldn’t just be an opiate blanket is un-understandable, why this self-wiring isolationist intricacy has to keep on folding in on itself can’t be known, but here it is, third day in, still no drugs, still no sleep, pushing insomnia for its own sake into a still useless space. Scabies basement wallpapered with harsh monochrome type, collage feeding back on itself as another word is nail-scissor snipped into parts, a crackle as makeshift wire insulation fails again and touches the sides while nothing else does. It’s the adolescent poetry – snip and snip and place the next letter to make the hormonal outpourings look printed, knowing that she’ll probably be the next reader, but that she’ll have seen round and past every word before it’s written let alone stuck down. Still, stick down. World events and evolving grooves muttering out of the little shit speakers, a world going on, scenes and beings and all and more going on, but it all washes past. Snip and stick down, spell out the clunking simpleton message – seventy two hours in and it’s no clearer, no righter, but it’s down and it’s in. Wall flakes and broken hi-fi in hyper-clear relief, the detail ever-proliferating and dizzy when the waves of exhaustion break, but the more entropy is added the more senses can be read in the mish-mash. It’s fighting mess with mess, add another line across any open surface, add more information into the snapshot of a maelstrom, add words over words over words over the decay and wait for it to mean something. Shuffle the loveless love poem over, pick up one of the ten unfinished sheets. It could be a poster, I’ve put Balzac’s name on. If there was a reason for this it’s forgotten, the process seems to be a perpetual motionlessness machine, these tiny snips and sticks and twists of tuning dials or turning over records to replace one information feed with another each just another inevitable slipshod fall forwards, another stumble towards the next involuntary tic and snap static crack of connection. Snip and stick. Still at least – three days in – plan and regret are out the window and in this constant clutter and chatter is a kind of peace. Kind of. Sticky for ignition, sweating for the spark. Stick that down.

The Night Out

Because – as the gospel man on the house record put it – the second, they say the second most popular game played in schools today is HOUSE. But no, the second, the first, the only popular games played in schools today is getting off your nut. YES! All over the planet a global intercommunication network of sniffy-nosed smart-boys and stumbling face-pullers is growing, coming together, pulling together, dreaming itself into a new kind of cultural creature in its own right or wrong, a new kind of expression through avin it large style, the last ditch attempt of the voices of youth, love and vibrancy to come together to a single beat and harmonise in an apocalyptic first, last, final alpha and omega cry of…
‘ritemateowyoudoinyeahhavinagoodtimeyeahwhatyouhadacoupleofthemblue
oneswasityeahiboshedacoupleofthepinkbastardsandaloadofbillyearlyonnowive
gotthesedovesandimcominguponthemlikeacuntanywayyeahfuckmandyousee
herdancinovertherefuckmanyeahshecanhaveitbutyeahhesspinningsomeruff
tunesmanrufftunesangonyougotarizlacheerssweetyeahactuallyimdoinaclub
meselfasitgoesyoushouldcomedownangonivegotaflyersomewherejustaminute
gotalight?’

Errr, sorry mate I missed the first bit of that, music’s a bit loud know what I mean? Hang on a minute, what’s that? Oh yes mate, TUNE, mate, I’ve got to go and dance… and we are ALL dancing in Jack’s house – black and white, Jew and gentile… as long as Jack’s mate on the door likes the look of us, that is, see he’s got some weird thing about Nikes and goatees and he’s been tight with the whole Cream Ibiza crew since time and he is like no messing unless you want to mention seeing him down the Velvet Underground – last week was it? – and admire his nutter skills – ‘you were avin it you nutty geezer!’ and even then you’ll have to listen to 10 minutes of ‘yeah 87 Shoom Weatherall Grooverider VIP lounge me and him like that, mate’

At which point you get a little bored and decide to try the hippies down the road who are announcing through their space case megaphone that the space alien is the new god man, no seriously we’re all looking upwards again yeah, we’ve all come to an understanding of the higher force of positive energy that’s going to come down from the sky and heal our wounded souls and planet with a big glowing finger… ‘OOOUCH’ Phone home, call mummy and she’ll launch us into the next dimension as a new kind of collective ketamine entity, or failing that at least she’ll buy us plane tickets to Goa so we can go and get off our coconuts and live like princes cos the pound is well strong at the moment actually man… WHAT? You’ve never been to Goa? Fuck me, suppose you’re a bit more of a Thai man are you? No? Where do you party? Brazil? Iceland? Manali? Oh, er, um, who the fuck are you anyway? Listen, I’ve got to go and organise a total eclipse party with Jack’s mates, boomshanka, darling…

Yeah? Well, you’ve got things to do as well as it goes… geezer’s just turned up for some puff so you’ve got to have a quick smoke, only polite, yeah ok, quick couple of tokes… hour and half later you look up to realise you’re in the middle of a room full of skunked up techno boys giving it serious – that’s serious – revision for the bang-bang minimalist hardbeat party later tonight, memorise a few hundred Detroit Berlin vinyl facts, who produced it, who engineered it, who was in the room, who made the room, what was the sleeve artist’s mother’s maiden name, yeah man this 15 year old music is the FUTURE man, it’s the only sound that represents the intensity of information, the free flow of cerebral data through the global techno bulletin boards, united by the true cybersonic ideals of, er, shaving your head and getting sweaty with a load of other shirts-off techno boys on half a tingle token yeah harder faster SCHNELL SCHNELL IN HAMBURG IT IS FASTER. What’s that? You’re a student too? You’re studying information systems too? Wow spooky man – yeah, come back to mine and we can use all that ecstasy empathy to really open up and talk about the things that matter like, er, drum machines and minor body piercings…

Um yeah sorry mate I’m a bit fucked to be honest, I’m off to go and sit in the high art state of the art flashing ambient heartbeat whalenoise womb room and smoke a shitload of weed – yeah, that’ll bring me back to reality. Hmm, yeah reality. Sore floorboards, can’t get sat right, can’t work out what you want, jaws ache, head ache, eyes sting, spliff just sort of brings you up more, don’t even like music anyway it’s just for blank slack fuckers, see someone you recognise, give them the feeble red-eyed smile (hiss ‘cunt’ in your mind), can’t think straight can’t walk straight can’t stand up straight can’t talk proper blank blank nothing nothing empty.

The Night Out of It

There are splinters of jaw working their way through my gums. I’ve found my way back and forth through to that alley so many times now, why is everything like a fucking pendulum? I don’t know who I just groped, what happened? Gritted teeth hunch up and deny the cold, the stink of a fagash floor against my face is too familiar, too familiar, same thoughts hammering back like a pendulum again, same thoughts again. Why is the alley door open? Who’s taking care of that? Christ they’re all as drunk as me. Why is my face on the floor? A trickle of tequila acid back through my mouth will remind me but not for long, then again nothing but cold and hard rough and grit. I spend my whole life provoking people, ready for a reaction. Always on wind-up, always a critic – but nothing, maybe a turn away in disgust, a look of concern… so somehow it’s that much worse that when it comes it comes from nowhere, no provocation. Total stranger, out in the open, after months of dancing in full makeup I’m alone just in jeans and hoody, streetlit main street, ‘oi, fucking queer, fucking freak’ and crunch, punch, stamp, splinter and it’s that’s it, and they’re gone. I’m outside my fucking destination, just nipping home between parties to my room above the bar, not even late in the evening. And then I’m outside chewing a fat lip, spitting red snot, and thinking of nothing but neat spirit. Can’t face the others, not going to walk into a party with my face mashed up, not the kind of attention I want is it now? Step into the bar and now I’m here spitting neat spirit and pendulumming back through the night thoughts. It’s like a darkside take on our shows. Raw tequila ripping my thoughts into non-sequitur shreds and slamming them into order, memories shouting over one another like a ghastly parody, night shades garbling dead poetry and hideous tales and the throb of bruises and bad party tunes providing the beat. At some point I’m standing at the end of the room, where the stage is set on a Saturday, and am I slurrily reciting one of my pieces for some staggering acquaintance? Or imagining the same? Or remembering? Am I ever out of this room? Still and spasmodically groping bodies around me and spitting on the floor – this place is supposed to be a business, this is where I do my thing, this is the centre of my world. Fucking happy new year.

Joe.muggs@gmail.com