Apologia Ignis

We incorrectly stated
that Julian Brooker, twenty three, of Brighton,
was blown fifteen feet into the air
after accidentally touching
a live railway line.

His parents have asked us to make clear
he was not turned into a fireball,
was not obsessed with the number twenty-three
and didn’t go drinking on that date every month.

Julian’s mother did not say,
during or after the inquest,
her son often got on all fours
creeping around their house
pretending to be Gollum.

From an apology in The Sun, 29 April 2005. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

The summers of his youth

In Algiers, you don’t talk about ‘going swimming’
but ‘knocking off for a swim’.

I won’t insist.

People swim in the harbour
and then go rest on the buoys.

When you pass a buoy
where a pretty girl is sitting,

you shout to your friends,
‘I tell you it’s a seagull’.

These are healthy pleasures.
They certainly seem ideal to the young men.

A quote from Albert Camus found in this essay. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

Vitriol and Opportunity

I would love to say we’ve got a great show for you tonight,
but I’m not sure that’s the case.
Old friends, no one wants to do this listening.
All too often we are here.
Stunned by a crazy that is rarer than we think,
how incredible, the packing of the deceased,
the pain of disturbing nature with a moment of graphic speak,
of toxic and absurdity.

Here we are again, violent.
Vitriol and opportunity on television,
in the way we talk to each other.
Exonerate from blame a reality that we cannot approach verbally.
Our capacity to be horrified by being truly sad.
The shattered lunacy of real dignity,
the sense of such situations.
Senselessness in being cut way too short.

Read up on being numb,
the dispiriting implications,
troubled enemies with families of pain.
Match the forever-paranoid with great rhetorics
of light and thank you.
Never worse than when the actions of madmen take forever.

Don’t you know the leading of thought
away from the tragedy of shame?
How much living and catharsis in predictable crazy.
Something incredibly stupid and silly
that we had previously lost.
Manifestos of anonymous goodness.
More often than not, people creating solace
for tomorrows they’ve never even met.
Wouldn’t it be nice to cause this hyperbole of feeling,
however fleeting?

Taken from the Jon Stewart show after the Tucson shootings, on the 20th January 2011. Submitted by Haley Patail.

Falseworks

Most falseworks
are designed to support
vertical
loads,
but in practice
they are also subjected
to forces in the horizontal plane.

These result
from dynamic effects
such
as the rapid pouring
or vibrating of concrete,
from the movement of ten-
sioning cables,
from the wind, from differential
expansion
under heat or load,
and from many
other causes.

Some of these forces
can be estimated
but others can not,
and the fact
that they
are usually contained
is no proof
that they are not important.

They may be
particularly significant
in skew spans
where displacements in two
perpendicular directions
produce unexpected strains
in the third,
or in cases where
the design loads are applied
consecutively
rather than simultaneously.

Taken from an article (that I have, without reason, kept for a very long time) on the Building Standard 449:1959 – The use of structural steel in building. Submitted by Kim Rooney.

Unfurl unfold

I would shape myself into your pocket.
I will shake, sneak, shrink, slip
I was shapeless infant to your pocket.

I was shaking and I disappeared
I was thinking I would disappear
I would shrink and
I will sink and

I wish ink and I would disappear.

I will slip into the groove and cut me up.
And cut me off. You cut me off.

There’s an empty space inside my heart
Where the weeds
Where the wings
And it won’t take root
And there I’ll
So now I’ll
Tonight I’ve set you free.

Just to feel
Just to feed your fast ballooning head.

We would shrink and then
We will shake and we’ll be quiet as mice.

Take the lotus flowers into my room.
The bird lights float
The bird that’s flown
Put this flower
A bird has flown into my room.

Mm, moments float into my room.

‘Cos all I want is the moon upon a stick.
A man upon a stake.

I dance around the pit; the darkness is beneath.
Dancing round the pain. The darkness is relief.

(Compiled from fans’ transcripts for Radiohead’s Lotus Flower, released Feb 2011 with no lyrics)