Tag: writing

  • Flu Romance – Squintin Quarantino

    2020_ SQUINTIN QUARANTINO - FLU-ROMANCE

    (Shout out to Culpatino…no blame. Big up Gravitino, I feel you)

    My gloves are on, the detergent is drawn
    I’m ready for the virus from dusk till dawn
    Break the trance with the vibes from Brian Eno
    The sound flew off the tracks cuz’ I’m Squintin Quarantino

    I’m like Kurt Russel in Escape From New York
    Running man, stunning man, gunningham talk
    Like Stallone in Lock Up and Hanks in Castaway
    I’m stuck here in Quarantime looking for the way
    Out…
    I’m isolating nice things singing while tricycling
    Flinging words stifling, the greedy are pilfering
    The vultures are profiting
    Don’t stand so close to me
    I practice social distance Sting
    I save Zoe…and my keys unchained Django
    Watch me on screen, love, Squintin Quarantango
    In Paris, with the butternut squash
    In the bed with moustache sized buds in ma’ stash
    High as a Kietel here alone in the hotel
    Show tell bad smell brad pitted’ cherry bell
    A big shout out to Mia Wallace and Gromit
    She wears the wrong trousers and sniffed the wrong sherbet

    Take the pandem-mic and make the people dance
    Stay the fuck inside its no flu romance
    I’m a natural born killer of this novel corona
    Squashed it with my Ayahuasca ceremona
    Original gangsters like Whitey Albino
    Can’t shoot a shot like Squnitin Quarantino

    Like Hoffman in a Hazmat suit
    Prometheus blows mellow flute
    Can’t touch the hammer you might go David Banner
    The gamma-slammer-roller got your tongue on stammer
    The Androm-media strain effect like a domino
    I’ve seen it blurred before as Squintin Quarantino

    Natural born iller than Jacko in Thriller
    Beats lilted dilla Jackie Brown in the mirror
    My mind in a sewer better sew something newer
    Dip a toe in the water stay inside like befower’
    I can’t be sure bruh my vision is poor
    All out of focus from each scene to sceno’
    Cuz’ in this sun city sin I’m Squintin Quarantino

    Kick out the germs motherfucker stand back
    I strike down with vengeance on corona claptrap
    My angers are furious my facts Sammuel serious
    A pox on those who poison brothers delirious
    Me I like to trip the old acid amino
    Shootin’ super hate cuz I’m Squintin Quarantino

    #CoronaSlayer
    #SquintinQuarantino

    www.patreon.com/stevefly

  • Bluebells Saltwells And Mordor

    Bluebells Saltwells And Mordor


    “Halfway up Brierley Hill, he points to the quiet street-lit valley below. All empty industrial estates and small, coiled ribbons of housing. ‘When I was a kid, you’d come up this hill, and all of that’ – and he gestures to the valley in front of us – ‘was on fire. The foundries and the forges and the ironworks. The potteries. The whole place glowed – sheets of sparks, 50 foot high. The fires never went out. It looked like hell. That’s what your Lord of the Rings is about.
    Tolkien was from round here. He was writing about how the industrial revolution turned the Midlands from Hobbiton to Mordor.’–How Lord Of The Rings Was Inspired By The Black Country.

    Dear Merry Hill Folk

    I am writing to you, in hope you will consider supporting a campaign to preserve the last relatively undisturbed natural landscape, in the vicinity of Merry Hill Shopping Center.

    The Saltwells Nature Reserve has been able to survive the industrial / technological transformation seen by the rest of the Black Country and Dudley area over the last 30 years. The Merry Hill complex buzzes right next door, and before being an open cast mine and the site of a steel works it was very much like, if not exactly the same as, Saltwells Nature Reserve. A home to fauna and flora, teaming with wildlife, birds, dragonflies, owls, Doulton clay, 13th century mining relics. Merry Hill, back then, might cast the image of a wooded hill into the imagination, like a scene from J.R.R Tolkien’s Hobbit? I’m not the first to compare Lord Of The Rings with the descent into industrialism of the Black Country, and at the expense of our natural woodlands, wildlife, the great old trees and brooks and mines. Heritage. The buck stops here.  

    To clarify, a consortium of interests have made a proposal to build 9 private houses in the middle of the current designated nature RESERVE. It’s application reference: P18/1373 (Google it) A petition already has over 5000 signatures from others who oppose the housing development, plus a rapidly expanding facebook group with 5000 members, again all overwhelmingly opposed to the housing project. Take a look, and if you have not visited the reserve, take a walk over there and see for yourself. It’s a hidden Black Country gem, something worth fighting for, and to preserve for posterity. A codex to local history. I, like many others have childhood memories of this place, and studied it closely while at Thorns School in Quarry Bank, Saltwells was a celebrated sanctuary. May it remain undisturbed by urban structures, no shops, roads, mining, or housing. A nature reserve to mean a reserve for nature. Simple. Not private housing in particular.  

    As a business owner, or worker based at Merry HIll, please consider not only lending your support to the campaign to keep Saltwells Nature Reserve Green, but also pledge support to help make Saltwells a bigger and budding hive of undisturbed natural beauty. A number of exciting alternative plans are in the air, such as an open permission garden project, or plans to simply plant a tree, or sponsor tree planting, workshops, tours, art class, music projects, film and ceramics. Consider your pledge of support as a gift, a gesture to help save the land that once occupied the site you’re on. Link up and help strengthen a community nature reserve, surrounding the Merry Hill shopping complex. And think of the good press and raised public profile locally.

    Let’s make sure Saltwells is free from ever ever having to worry and fight developers who wish to use the Nature Reserve for anything but the reservation of the space for nature to do her thing. I would like to request written confirmation that Saltwells Nature Reserve will be immune from any development for 60 years, no make that 90 years. Furthermore, I demand a new plaque for the reserve, a testament to the will of the people who demand that no private housing be built.  

    To go further, I might encourage others to look at this as the beginning of a new grassroots campaign to protect our last remaining piece of unspoiled natural beauty i Dudley. And to explore new ideas, like providing free food for local people, or for anybody who visits. Locally and globally begin to weave a new story of how we integrate nutritious foods back into urban environments. A new conversation, starting right next door to one of the biggest shopping centers in Europe: Merry Hill.

    “There’ll be bluebells blowing in salty sepulchres the night she signs her final tear. Zee End.–James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, pg. 28


    Toward A Protective Treatise For Saltwells Nature Reserve

    By the powers invested in me by the Tawny Owl, Dragonfly, Sparrowhawk, Badger, Dove, Jay, Bluebell, Oak, Silver Birch, Mycelium and all the creatures and plants of the woodland, I demand a new protective treatise to ensure that no private housing development can ever ever be put forward again.

    To be signed by a delegate of local citizens, business people, politicians, environmentalists, historians, heritage foundations, lottery funds, art enclaves, church groups and all like minded individuals. Our collective focus and word is unity. Saltwells Nature Reserve could be the literal common ground where all political and cultural differences are set aside. Unity over the issue of eternal preservation, genesis and possible expansion of this model of a Nature Reserve.

    Here, we can lead the country and show the whole world that some people, a large majority, can agree that Dudley needs a re-greening project, and its natural habitat has suffered irrevocably from 200 years of industrialization. We, or better yet I (as I do not claim to speak for all the people of Dudley) feel that climate change is just like a block of flats in the bluebell fields, a challenge to future generations of domesticated primates, and all creatures great and small. Saltwells Nature Reserve is ground zero for a new movement based on unity, diversity. I want to see a permanent solution. A binding protecting status to prevent any commercial development. Nature Reserve means just what it spells out in plain English. 

    Sixteen species of dragonfly are found here on the Daphne Pool, making this one of the best sites in the West Midlands for these ancient insects.”–Dudley gov/saltwells


    Dear Dudley MBC, councillors, ladies and gentleman. To who it may concern.

    I join the chorus of voices in opposition to the proposed housing development project within the Saltwells Nature Reserve. I see tens of thousands of reasons not to disturb the pearl of Dudley, and more than 5000 names on a petition, plus a growing facebook group. No means no housing development anywhere on the nature reserve. Clear and simple.

    The argument for the development seems vague at best, greedy at worst. The argument that Vandals are somehow the reason why the housing development should take place, seems weak to me. However, I agree, we should hear out the arguments for the development, and take the strongest arguments seriously. Questions of ownership and responsibility, environmental protections, and the UNESCO status of the Saltwells might be worth looking into.

    My recommendation purely from a personal point of view is to make your own detailed, balanced overview. Write a personal testimony to why you love Saltwells Nature reserve, and why you think the housing development will be detrimental to it. Easy, clear, simple. Have fun, organize. Speak up.

    Keep yer’ peepers on those who blame the opposition for what they are doing themselves. If you want to curb vandalism, how about you provide a huge canvas outside the entrance to the reserve, and invite the local community to vandalize it with thoughts about a housing development project on the nature reserve? At the same time, get in touch with some artists who can make it clear that ANY vandalism within the Saltwells Nature Reserve is just not cool. Both vandals and some Dudley MBC folks need to go on a course to learn the value of some historical buildings and areas of Dudley….and the UK. imho.

    Alternatives, well, how about you start having events and happenings at the reserve, a new saltwells nature trail, bird watching tour with historical trips. Songwriting workshops, drawing and art and sculpture, ceramics, botany class / tours. How about you open up the space to the people as an ecological art park, featuring an incredible edible garden, make an outdoor paradise, a full blown Shangri La of Dudley. Or just leave it as it is. But… private housing, really, this is your proposal, that’s about as imaginative as building a car park.

    –Steven Pratt

         

    “The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they”–J.R.R Tolkien


    And happy Halloween

    Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. “But no living man am I!”–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

     

  • 2018 Kilgour Lecture by Cory Doctorow

    Author, activist, and journalist Cory Doctorow delivered the 2018 OCLC/Frederick G. Kilgour Lecture on April 27 at 10 am in the CURRENT ArtSpace. In his talk, titled “The Internet, Peak Indifference, and the Point of No Return,” Doctorow argues that now is the time to permanently install freedom in the world’s new electronic nervous system. The annual lecture, hosted by the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), is free and open to the public. For more details, visit https://sils.unc.edu/news/2018/

     

  • Some real fresh shit

    …what does it all mean?

    …watch out kid, watch yer’ back, keep it on point. Wobble, but come back to your center. Make it count, everything counts. All our days are numbered, and littered with the lettered. Let us play. rewind,  forward, future calling, humming your song, calling, singing, shouting you. Oi, listen, look, read, engage with me, these thoughts, those days and weeks, years flowing on, all remembered in this, the moment of come and go. A jig before the drilling, a swig before the shelling. Oh, the shelling, the mourning and the morning, the nights of sean and of shem, of Alice and Molly. All of our night if we want them, do you want it? have to be headstrong for revelations, for transformation, translation, change.

    Do you want change, or status quo? young or old, conservative or liberal, break out. Bust loose. Get out from under the boot and toot your toot. Time is running out, the sand falls, the planet spins, seasons change, birds chatter and call, bears road, crickets rub theIR lil’ legs together, wolves howl and howl, can you hear them? do you hear the calling? the pipes of old, the ocean and wind and flames and tectonic plates grinding, pushing and pulling, tidal waltz. This energy boosts the boots, to get out and walk, face the rain and cold. get up, get out, Stand, shout, dance, sing. This is the time for humans to be human and walk, talk, laugh and move. Now.

    On the island, the tension builds in cycles, resolving and catching up with each other, falling and rising together at once, hope and fear, spiralling out, truth and lies, beauty and the ugly spun into threads, moving through the dawn branches of the trees, the silhouette of a city falls away, the sun bursting through the smoke and haze, the noise of traffic lost in the music of branches, leaves, grass and bird song. The force stronger the further away one gets from the bank, the earth and soil greet the feet like royalty, the mystery builds, flowers bloom and die, fungus creeps, night and day pass, the twilight and mi-light, the Toa and the sung from the dung, the Witch elm and the sheep song, the monolith and the megalith, the stone, the page and the hieroglyph. Descending underground.

    Facing facades, haunting sleep people, shades and blotches of men, women, pets, objects, connected by a force including Tesla and Einstein. Mad scientists and visionary artists, skipping down the lanes, through the blooms and blossoms, wind in hair, hand on heart, flute and cello, oboe and turntable darting through the body, across the moors, up out the clouds, into outer space, back to the mantle, the waves, the deep sea sinkholes and as yet undiscovered caves. The arctic tundra, the desert hot songs of rivers lost to man, to the unseen pathways cut by ants and clever rodents, to the homing pigeon, dolphin sonar and tardigrade I raise my hat. Signed, sealed delivered I’m yours, most earnestly, Steven Pratt. Trumpets and French horn fade out to repeating theme. Time, love, family, action. truth beauty, health, satisfaction. Fiction, narrative, justice, language, hope, dope, divinity, clarity.

    On closing, all channels are open. International, all beings, spirits, demons, angels and entities. Land close by, I’ll see you good. No need to sweat it, take it easy, let the intuition guide the ladder and the slide, snakes, take a ride. Ups and downs all the way, left-brain, right brain let the sea sway the river bank pay. Rudderless, fearless, the boat powers on, land after land, island after island, in service of harmony, fuck the money, I want life. I want truth and heart, shared resources, good sources, well meaning folk. From every inch of this cosmic yolk, for this place I bow and give thanks, I wish I could change war tanks into fish tanks. I want to turn guns into walking sticks, bombs into gardens, chemical weapons into clean drinking water. With the help of new technology the world can evolve into an artists paradise, where goats play jazz and we visit art openings in the forest by mice.

    Oh, Akhnaton, Ankh, what Egyptian deities drift about my pipe? in the book, under the stairs, in your stares, in these tales, the psycho tempo, the stabbing and double bass violin wounds, nearly horror but then mystery and wonder, moving arpeggios, across scale, through the woods. Into the forest, out the burrow, running, away from the city, blinded by human glutton, leaping against the urban lights, darting past trunks and over barbed wire fences, sweating and striding further out toward the moon, jumping higher, as if pursued by demons with chattering teeth, always just a hair’s whisker behind, our dream hero streams away, the sun rises, the corn fields glow golden, the water can be heard trickling ahead, the birds sing a familiar song again, the pipes lead the low hero home, tuba and french horn greet the intrepid tripperdome. Resolve, dinner, kick off the slippers. Open are the double doors, stars streak in. Open, unlocked, soothing nectar dripping off the spoon. Can I lick it? let freedom reign and ring.

    Flies, can you believe it. octopi and mosses gather, in chorus. An uprising, a tidal movement. pollen on the air. Spores. Oh, my. How they do connect underground. Naturally, blooming. Continents collide, stars fizzle, we breath and find a way out. Out and over around, through, off. My head buried in natural sands of Tulum, under the water with crocodiles, away in the canopy, deaf from the relentless marching bands of New orleans, the elephants and lost rhino, oh, the damage done. Capitalism. Oh, oh, the news, the toxic opposite of just an innocent puddle, of any way out of the muddle, the murk, the constant bickering of the berserk, the loons, all knowing folk of two moons, abuse of the language,  coercion, sewing of hate, divide, the split, the shit of it all. Forget that. The bee is trying to tell me, trying to get through to my thick skull, time is tight, maybe this, maybe tonight? to wrap up, rhyme up, post up, post it. Go on. Fish my bike out the canal, save a mystery.

    –Steve Fly

    Amsterdam, 02.44 A.M. Saturday 19th May, 2018.

     

  • Quick Lil’ Joint

    A QUICK JOINT

     

    Eyes down to the paper

    fold in a gentle slope from left to right to

    cradle the sacrament,

    the angle of the sloping fold

    proportional to the final cone shape

    arrange the sacrament with slightly more at left

    or right reversing instruction

    take the paper between

    thumb and forefinger and index finger

    now gently roll the mixture

    as if testing the consistency

    of a bogie put joint down

    prepare a filter tip by rolling up the

    paper tightly and fitting into the smaller end

    roll between fingers again

    carefully fit the bottom of the paper near your thumbs

    over the sacrament running plush with the other

    side of the paper

    roll up the joint pausing to lick the glue

    tap the joint on a hard surface tip down

    twist the loose paper at the top

    lightly inhale

     

    –Steven Pratt
    Amsterdam, 2014.

  • Fly – Selected Poetry (Published Today!)

    My first experiment with publishing through Amazon! More to follow.

     

  • A fake poem by an non entity called Acryllic Figa

    A fake poem by an non entity called Acryllic Figa

    tsars like russian oligarchs
    like white supremacist cop tasers
    like bullydon boys in pork

    tie and blazars like a global air born disease
    Severe Global Airborn Rightwing Syndrome

    Fly: Selected Poetry

    by Steven Pratt

    Link: http://a.co/3of5XFj

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  • MURDOCH MAJOR BROWN BUSH THATCHER

    MURDOCH MAJOR BROWN BUSH THATCHER
    –On the Newscorp Hacking Scandal.

    Growing up with the weeds in the UK from 1976-2000, has helped shape my experience and observation concerning the relationships between the gov’t, media corporations and their effects upon culture, both my own local culture and–through the emergent technology of the internet– into other cultures.

    Today we are aware, i hope; of the global military industrial agricultural media beast that traverses the planet and beyond,aware of the programing. Healthyly suspecting the borg of modifying their database in favour of profits and a competitive edge rather than precise information, reporting, sharing and honest feedback. The opposite of a scientific approach.

    It seems to me in light of the Newscorp hacking scandal that the model of the ‘spy’ and the spy’s cloak and dagger strategy for achieving goals best suits the behaviour and actions of Murdoch, Rebecca Brooks, Hunt and the long list of dirty private investigators, sneaky journalists, colluding police officers and sympathetic double cross politicians.

    “I am not saying its wrong, I am saying its the wrong interpretation of what I said.”– Rupert Murdoch, April 25th 2012

     

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