XXII - The Incomplete Tim Key

'I never shot her.'
Ned lied.
Mr Ward cradled his dog in his arms.
His knees bent under the weight.

Whether or not you find the above four lines amusing in the context that it's meant to be a poem will determine very quickly whether you will enjoy The Incomplete Tim Key. When I was in college I hung around with a character called Chris Giles, who used to draw utterly ridiculous cartoons and write very childish but very funny poems where characters had bloody silly names and they were doing bloody silly things. Tim Key reminds me a great deal of my friend Chris, the same daft, nonsensical, and above all deliberately crap verse. The serious tone Key gives his poems in their delivery is part of the charm of it all, certainly. His guest spots on Charlie Brooker's criminally underrated Newswipe show exactly the manner in which the poems need to be taken, as you can see from this:




The Incomplete Tim Key collects about 300 of his poems following a successful meeting with 'a man in his thirties', along with some extended explanations of the poetical inspirations Key draws from. Below is my favourite poem from the collection, entitled 'on the expenses scandal.' Like I said at the start, you'll either love or hate this, if it's not your bag then have a go at Sylvia Plath or something, Mr Serious.

There was a big do arranged for all the MPs to discuss how wretched they were, and to eat humble pie about the expenses fiasco.
The press were invited and everyone had to drink and mingle and apologise as much as possible.
Hoon sidestepped a hack and waddled over to Ed Balls.
'Is this wine free?' - he asked.
'Dunno.'
'Mm.'
Straw poked his beak in.
'Might not be. 'Cos we've been naughty.'
'I don't think it is free,' Widdicombe squawked, sipping from her hip flash.
'Bollocks.' Hoon winced. He replaced his wine on a tray and they 'moved through.'
The waiters served up braised venison and potatoes and fishes in sherry.
But, increasingly, the MPs declined, for fear of having to pay.
Some gritted their teeth of gnawed at their lips from hunger.
Widdcombe unwrapped her sarnies.
The Milibands winked at her and ate their little yoghurts they'd stowed in their little briefcases.
After a couple of speeches admitting they were all wankers, the MPs spilled out into the road.
Some confused, abortive hailing of black cabs ensued.
There was no guarantee these'd be freebies.
Hoon turned to Balls.
'Do you know anything about night buses?'
Balls tapped his bicycle helmet and pointed to his trouser clips.
Hoon nodded.
And he huffed.
And he set off on foot to his nearest home.

This poem was written as a reaction to all the politicians snatching money from the public to buy things to make their lives more fun. Soon it will be out of date and you will need to Google 'Geoff Hoon expenses scandal' or bend the ear of a village elder to make any sense of this one. It is political.

XXI - The Yiddish Policeman's Union

Over the last few years of my workplace experience, I have had the (mis)fortune to work with a vast array of weird and wonderful people. Old people with odd eccentricities, ordinary joe public sent doolally by a urine infection, various personality disorders, drug addictions, the list goes on. One thing I can rely on is an alcoholic or three mixing things up on a daily basis. Anyone who thinks alcohol is a harmless pastime needs to spend a day in accident and emergency or various medical and surgical wards. I'm not referring to the young people binge drinking on a friday night, although they comprise a portion of NHS intake, what is certainly far more disruptive and chronic is the vast number of alcoholics in hospital on any given day. Along with diabetes, heart disease and respiratory problems, all lifestyle influenced, alcoholics are a massive strain not only on NHS funds, but also on staff time. A wandering drunk who hasn't had a drink in 12 hours and needs a detox treatment to stave off much more serious repurcussions is by all merits a fucking nightmare, and sometimes it is difficult to bear in mind that alcoholics are very ill people, and by all rights deserve treatment just like anyone else. I think there is a certain quality in alcoholics that I can empathise with. For a start, not all of them are confused, disorientated arseholes, many of them are perfectly settled, reading the paper, and have merely got to the point in life where their body can't take the abuse any more. But on top of that, I think there is a certain suicidal quality to alcoholism that the melancholic of this world can certainly relate to. See Leaving Las Vegas for the most succinct example of this (and for proof that Nic Cage is in fact a great actor, fuck you very much).

In a similar vein, detective Landsman of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union is a hugely sympathetic character, despite his faults. I think this is largely in part to Chabon's beautiful writing style, finding poetry in so much of the mundanity of this world. The Yiddish Policeman's Union takes place in an alternative world, where rather than Israel, the Jews of the world settled in the state of Alaska, albeit on a short contract, almost at the close of its tenure when the book begins. This state of uncertainty, amidst a backdrop of concrete, snow and dark skies, is a brilliant set piece for a noirish mystery surrounding a dead heroin addict and a down-on-his-luck hardboiled detective who just wants to solve one last case. All this Chandleresque intrigue comes with a heavy dollop of Jew. The banter is thick with Yiddish slang, the names are all wonderfully Hebrew, here's an example from almost the opening page:

According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead. Meyer Landsman is the most decorated shammes in the District of Sitka, the man who solved the murder of the beautiful Froma Lefkowitz by her furrier husbands, and caught Polodsky the Hospital Killer. His testimony sent Hyman Tsharny to federal prison for life, the first and last time that criminal charges against a Verbover wiseguy have ever been made to stick. He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker.
When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages of a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is a sprawling, messy detective novel, with enough twists and turns to keep you on your turns, but a solid sense of direction from the start. Landsman is a wonderful protagonist, full with alcoholic pathos, but retaining enough of his heroic spirit to make you root for him the whole way. That some of the scenes are solved while Landsman is deep in alchoholic stupor makes it all the more enjoyable: crime scenes seen through the veil of a painful hangover, drunken car chases, tiny moments of sobriety with the few people Landsman still cares about, tinged with an heavy blanket of regret. Moreso than the likes of Chandler, Chabon has painted a thick sense of humanity and spirit to the world of Sitka, making the reader truly care about many of its weird and wonderful Yids. The story is complex without being complicated, it is paced without being light, and the characters are well rounded without being overwrought. On top of this is a consideration of the plight of the Jewish people in a wider sense, lacking the power and security they arguably hold in contemporary Israel, the Jews of Chabon's world have no power or status. What such a feeling of dread holds for the characters of the book is as intriguing as the main story itself. The Yiddish Policeman's Union is so far my favourite book from this year, so much so I almost want to go back and read it again already, and Chabon has in the space of 400 odd pages become one of my favourite writers, although typically I have become slightly demasculated by his writing talent, which makes some of my most thought out passages seem Palniuckian in contrast. I've been reliably informed that The Yiddish Policeman's Union isn't even his best book, so with great anticipation I'll hopefully be starting The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay very soon indeed. Oy vey.

Landsman considers the things that remain his to lose: a porkpie hat. A travel chess set and a Polaroid picture of a dead messiah. A boundary map of Sitka, profane, ad hoc, encyclopedic, crime scenes and low dives and chokeberry brambles, printed on the tangles of his brain. Winter fog that blankets the heart, summer afternoons that stretch endless as arguments among Jews. Ghosts of Imperial Russia traced in the onion dome of St Michael's Cathedral, and of Warsaw in the rocking and sawing of a cafe violinist. Canals, fishing boats, islands, stray dogs, canneries, dairy restaurants. The neon marquee of the Baranof Theatre reflected on wet asphalt, colors running like watercolor as you come out of a showing of Welles's Heart of Darkness, which you have just seen for the third time, with the girl of your dreams on your arm.
"Fuck what is written," Landsman says. "You know what?" All at once he feels weary of ganefs and prophets, guns and sacrifices and the infinite gangster weight of God. He's tired of hearing about the promised land and the inevitable bloodshed required for its redemption. "I don't care what is written. I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my had. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag."
He sits down. He lights another cigarette.
"Fuck you," Landsman concludes. "And fuck Jesus, too, he was a pussy."
"Tick a lock, Landsman," Cashdollar says softly, miming the twist of a key in the hole of his mouth.

Kingdom of Dog - I call this song 'intro'

Sometimes I feel like I bore the 8 people that read this blog far too much with a) me pointing out the fact that noone reads this blog constantly and b) loads of book 'reviews' that are rarely funny, which is usually the only reason someone wants to read a review of any kind in the first place, unless they like books enough to read the opinions of someone with no qualifications to review a book other than the fact he possesses reading skills of some sort. On top of that I feel like I blast pages with biro diarrhoea all the time but rarely get to share any of my childish similes and douche chill inducing metaphors with the world outside. With that in mind - imagine yourself trying to extricate yourself from a drawn out party conversation with the only social retard in the room who is about to read you a poem about something angsty while you coo and smile in all the right places while your life blood slowly ebbs from your disappointed ears and increasingly flaccid nether region - while I write out this literary bombfuck. I call this poem Kingdom of Dog part one (ps I know it's not a poem). It's going to be in a zine I'm hoping to release later on this year, probably not by Organic Anagram, and should have 3-4 stories within, plus maybe an illustration or two. This is the opening(ish) part of one of the stories. Excuse some of the nonsensical mixing of tenses and other errors, these should get ironed out with rewrites.

Father John felt something in the air, like the trepidation before a nasty shock, that sinking gut feeling before the jump and all that adrenaline kicks in - a moment spread over weeks and months. This age of uncertainty. He had seen it in people's faces as they do everything they can just not to have to look at one another. Staring at shoes, in shop windows, or mobile phone screens. Father John used to think it was fear of each other, but the construct had become far wider than that. People didn't want to be strangers because they didn't trust each other, they stayed in their own little world because they simply didn't want to see just how scared everyone else was, unfamiliar faces in the street becoming mirrors of their own terrible mortality.

He sighed, closed the book he was reading, and began to stand to get ready for that morning's sermon. The last year had been especially uncertain for Father John, old and dedicated parishioners seemed to be dwindling week on week, the ever increasing age of the London Anglican had been the elephant in the room for
quite some time. Given the scale of scandals racking the church in the last
decade, Father John found it unsurprising that the church struggled so much with
new generations. But more simply, the world had moved faster than the church had anticipated, and the people of God were now left behind in the world's dust.

As Father John began to ready his robes, he returned to his previous train of thought. In his opinion it was the constant waiting that served to drain the collective public thoughts and energy. Sure, much of the public did their best to forget, on a friday night following a drink or five, but before long those drinks always got the better of God's children, ending swiftly in violence upon violence. As a Christian he was apprehensive about acknowledging such a thing, but there was almost a sense of Darwinian energy burning inside the public unconsciousness. Mankind holds themselves back while they type at their computer terminals, or listen to the latest pop sensation on the way home. But deep down, bubbling under the surface, behind the smiles and the handshakes, there lives a burning beast in each and every one of us, waiting for that terrible day of which everyone is afraid. The day this earthly house of cards comes tumbling down and we show one another what we're truly capable of.

Despite such thoughts dwelling heavy on Father John's countenance, he shirked his perceived responsibility of the truth in deference to his congregation. Comprised of the old, infirm and outright stupid, much of the content of his thoughts would be at best abstract and at worse abhorrent. He wondered, a little too often, if his opinions were really palatable to anyone at all.Father John stepped from the vestibule, distractedly smoothing his cassock, picking the odd hair and dust particle that sullied its sheen. His cleaning rituals and wider fixations upon his appearance served to calm his nerves. He was not by nature a great public speaker, and distraction from his speaking duties immediately prior to the task had always served him well. As he stepped up to the pulpit, he felt a heavy sense of foreboding suddenly drop through his chest and into the pit of his stomach, as if he had knocked an antique vase or nearly dropped an infant.

Simultaneously looking into the congregation, he breathed out a deep and tragic breath as the life left him, making a sound a lot like he had perhaps been winded from an invisible obstacle. The church was empty. Really and truly and sickeningly empty. There was no sound but the internal whisper of his own breathing. As if in a trance, Father John stepped down from the pulpit and walked through the aisle, instantly shutting out the whole preceding thought train while his senses focused on the failure that faced him. He tentatively stepped towards the great oak doors of the entrance, touching the knarled corners of each pew as he stepped, as if
ensurign they remained in the physical plane, still objects of substance. He
carefully stepped with the heel of each shoe, creating a small clacking sound,
explosive in that punishing silence, lost in a daze of disbelief.

Father John had made it to the front doors of his church, his workplace and home for the last 16 years. With nothing on his mind but that same heavy sense of trepidation, he stepped into the physical world, silent outside as it had been in. A stillborn world that no longer seemed to require a house of God.

Father John's stole in all his distractions had slipped from his shoulders and lay in the doorway of the dead church. Father John noticed, but didn't bother to pick it back up.