Dont Eat the Microphone from toadinmud.co.uk

STORY & PLOT

toad — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:52:40 +0000

Before; then the stone age, then the bronze age, then the iron age, then the ancients, then the greeks, then the romans, then the dark ages, then the middle ages, then the renaissance, then discovery, then machinery, then now.

An insect man sits with his many eyes looking through rituals of decomposition. Through slits of carven writing, through thumb-nubbed tool handles and the faded devices of dynasties.
The insect Man is a factory, a pick-axe handle, a razor of flint, a plank, an ankh, a camera shutter, a tail-fin. Insect man don’t know no love don’t know no hurt; knows blood and guts and fucks though, squeezed into words and sediment, and long rows of figures under headings in a thousand hands.
Insect Man doesn’t know taste. His room is a cave of threads, his bed is of reeds, the uppers of his shoes are london, soled athens, a tongue of rome, it’s straps are flayed donatello and stippled with arcadia.
Then Insect Man is made of emulsion, his carapace is celluloid glazed with moving pictures and a dark cave wall. His mouth is empty, his teeth are stretched out on a rope many nights long.
Insect Man never woke up to it, he has stared for all your lives with his milky insect eyes that don’t know, that don’t know and he is tired, and he was tired, and he tires of tiring when he is born again. Was tired in the first Fire, the first Gun Shot, the first Sling Shot to The Moon and Back, to the first Dull Edge, the first Sharp One too.
An insect man sits with his many eyes, and he cannot see, he hasn‘t got the right, he ain’t got the hang, no manual, no remit, no certificate, no proof of ownership. They’re not his eyes.

Ermis

Robbie — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:30:44 +0000

Our pigeon visits us daily in our hushed Paradise
He has a tail like a vampires teeth,
A morbid sash of wispy feathers;
Fanned out as he flickers away,
Momentarily distracted from our childsplay.

On returning he whispers something into my ear.
A message from,
A lost love,
Perhaps,
Or a dead relative come to say farewell.
What’s the difference?

Once, as summer showers began to threaten,
He even nibbled your finger.
A token of thanks for the amusement of it all.
He had forgotten,
You see, that
We were of a different kind.

Of his tail my headdress is made.
A blinding shroud, a decorated deafness.
I love him but I did not know.
I asked you to catch him
For me, my love, fluttering in the cage that was your clasped hands.
Your nails on my neck and your breath fanning his frantic feathers across my ear,
Like threads of hair, cobwebs drifting.

On being released
Flustered, he ruffled his quills once or maybe twice
And continued to peck at the shiny thing
That he could not name
But that looked like a cat’s
Yellow
Eye.

I am the seal of Stiffkey

Robbie — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:28:30 +0000

We go for each other, the final task
Union always preceding disintegration

Hands slide over hips; and thighs
As I draw you closer, deeper into me
Thick between my toes and heavy against my breasts
I fall wholeheartedly into the feast
Caked in a lifetimes worth of sleek slippery mud, the fusion of our elements,
Twin, bear thy nature, monster from the deep
Penetrating each crevice, bathed in my reciprocation

Soaked and heaving with the effort of disentanglement
I lift my limbs and my crustation of a body from upon yours
Slipping and sliding now, running to the lands of liquid
The tides had anticipated us
Knowing from what deeds we came
it mixed and frothed its depths into a curtain of clouds
A veil awaiting to envelop us and wash one of us away.

I returned to my brothers and sisters
Glistening and snorting they came for me
I clawed and rubbed myself free from your body of dust
Thickly matted hair released itself and reaching out and spreading
Became the silky silver fur of a seal rolling in the spray
I disappeared into my world once more, all tail and flirting whiskers
Eyes of ebony with a melancholy cry I bid her goodbye

She stepped from the waters, shining and pristine
Glad to be rid of me and I of her

All I left was a faint smell of the muddy marshes and salt tides.

7th Nov 07 Podcast #5

toad — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:54:01 +0000

You can download or play the latest Don’t Eat the Microphone Podcast above. The show was held on the 7th of November 2007 at the Chai ovna, in Glasgow. It is just over an hour of readers and performers. You can either listen right now or download the podcast for later consumption. Hope you enjoy.
Don’t Eat the Microphone from Toad in Mud.

Field

Robbie — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:38:06 +0000

I can feel Time flowing by
without touching,
water flowing around a bubble.
The clouds trundle overhead,
their shadows ticking over me.
Even the sunlight seems to be slower.

Bees drone lazily in the young clover,
roaring by my head as they
inspect my ears for nectar.
Grass tickles the nape of my neck,
and something spiky crawls over my hand –
I try not to think what. I try not to think at all.

I surface hearing a steady crescendo
through the earth,
and brace myself
as my dog’s cold triumphant nose hits my face
and the panting culprit collapses, grinning, by my side.

October! October! Why Is’t October?

toad — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:46:25 +0000

Because the boys are on their bikes,
Because the boys are on their bikes!
The misery invites
And the misery invites
No drastic action!
Acceptance is admiration,
Admire your state!
Futility dances hand in hand
With your wilting lusts,
Your misplaced desires!
The way to go, the way to go
(Like you don’t know, like you don’t know)
Is bite the bullet, rope it, pull it,
Wrap it round your red raw throat,
Tighter tighter, you mustn’t smile!
Else hide your head in a rabbit’s hole.
He shouldn’t mind, by Frith;
Your fondest wish, you’ll get her goat,
And all because the red raw throat
Is tangled in the doorway
With the bloody briars;
For ’tis October,
the autumnal time,
When you must sup on
acorn wine,
And frolic in your fading and
Don’t light fires, listen to
Town criers
At the tolling of the bell
And at the bailing out of Hell,
October, dismal, never spoke
Your name before
So crisp, yourself lightly,
This is the lesser year.
When are we vacuous,
When more expansive
Than when falling,
Dropping metaphors and
listening to each other
without trying?
Ah, trying -
There’s a pancake worthless to toss,
And October leaves no survivors
Who fight her fading light -
Failing light,
The winter coming, endless night
Into your cloth
Seeps seed so deep,
Clawing and crawling into tubes,
Clawing and crawling;
Terrible mirth;
You’re broken since birth,
And all this said,
Don’t ship your misery
Into my waters,
Ship nothing to me but daughters
You’ve collected on the Earth.

Are you not sure now?
Is this your time?
Mocking little creeper bird,
You can’t reap October,
She’s poison;
Yes, poison, maybe, fearfully here,
You’re watching promises of the
Spring grown ripe (unfulfilled)
In the summer,
Slip in sullen frost
From the lunar landscape,
Autumn apples bear news not fruit,
Of cold, of lasting years.
New memories of the past,
It’s time for the big fast,
Bouncing and full skimmed,
A veritable spring, yet brown,
This is the landscape,
The soil-maid,
She pines, she’s poison.

Yes, October, you, and I’m addressing you,
Wing, first wing of the destroyer,
Bidden to wipe the slate,
Lick clean the plate,
And what is poison, then,
But the promise, the threat,
The promise to start again?

Wash and slacken,
Unbuckle those boards,
Of tired country dancing halls,
Ache yourself in,
Peel those shells,
This is memory time,
Break or forget your promises;
Your promises, your misery
Is a conifer
And you don’t tell secrets,
Nothing to October.

(from “Wolfblood”)

21st Feb 07 Podcast #4

toad — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:01:46 +0000

Play the podcast with the controls above or click here to visit the archive.org page for the latest “Don’t Eat the Microphone” Podcast.

The recording is 1 hour 6 minutes in length, featuring a play by Tom Tábori and readings by Tom Coles, James Fountain, Suzi Higton, Drew Taylor amoung others. All of the conversational interludes are included, as is the competition around the half way mark. There may be some mild profanity.

Fake Leather Jacket

toad — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:48:29 +0000

The purpose of poetry, like any hunter-gatherer society before it, is
To fund a currency of truth &
Beauty.
In this vein sandwich is a conduit, a prism of
Idealism, one investibule
Lubricant to corsair,
Except inside a manor mia kirshner.
Resonant ants on a buyers road flip,
Just as global relevance during a changing
Primate scenario is a lower back to reach but
Must be done like
Many of the off
Spring of two.
If there are strings attached of coarse
Imaginings,
Not strings but little rings or
Bubbles, but let’s call them strings,
Then flags will flap to unisex;
Else go to stand/buy bigger branes.
What does the author say? What does
The author mean? And is
It true & beautiful?
Gluons are true,
Drugspills in loo queues beautiful,
In purple flesh tenements fazed snarls of a fake leather jacket faint;
Yet experimental verification lies beyond
Sour beans of
Intellectual tears & mythical
liverless comprehension. Poems are to produce
Meaning meaning with a capital ing.
Once we pound two poems
Smack dab in the idyll
Like matthew to
Dark
One query quits:
Does the poem make the most efficient and profitable use of available Resources?
This leaves us with, does this leave us with,
Where to smear the glycerine,
if not inside a manor mia kirshner.

14th March 07 - DON’T EAT THE MICROPHONE at STAVKA

toad — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:18:50 +0000

“(DON’T) EAT THE MIC (ROPHONE)”
at Stavka from toadinmud.co.uk

WORDY PERFORMANCES AND OPEN MIC (green pastures),
poetry, prose, drama, music etc…

As we have been going on about for the past few “Don’t Eat the Microphone”s at the Queen Margaret Union, we are becoming vaguely nomadic. Probably once a month we shall be moving to the fantastic “STAVKA” on Sauchiehall Street. Stavka was the centre of the Soviet Military Command, pravda.

This coming Wednesday sees the first of such events. The format of the night is the same as always, relaxed and comfortable, though we will be having guaranteed performances from the wonderful Liz Lochhead, the Indie/Pop/Electro musician H-Bomb (http://www.myspace.com/harrybomb) and drama from ‘Stag’ and ‘Other Playwrights’. Of course we want to pack as much in as possible, so if you wish to perform either drop me an email at toad@toadinmud.co.uk or come along on the night with something to perform. All styles/formats/sentiments are wanted and nothing is inappropriate (though wearing a freshly skinned brown bear may turn some heads). I will do my best to be a little less rude than I usually am. After this performance there will be no more “DONT EAT THE MIC” until April the 4th. This is because my girlfriend is threatening to rend me into glue if I don’t come visit her some time, and my family are almost ready to have me declared legally dead and spread the ashes of an effigy across the North Sea in my place. If a subsitute makes themselves known, I will pass along the information via secure channels.

I hope you can all make it on Wednesday, it will be a lovely night and a bit of a bash. I know there are lots of essays due around now (dont I know it), but the beer will be cheap and we will definitely commisar-ate your woes. As always, we aim for more of a sociable gathering than a intelligencia meeting (though I’m sure someone will try and claim that language is inherently meaningless or some such tosh at some point), so you might find your less literary friends enjoying themselves as well. Spread it about like MRSA.
The Details
[…] “EAT THE MIC” […]
8:30pm til late
Wednesday 14th March 2007
at STAVKA
in The Cocktail Bar (Top Room)
www.stavka.co.uk
373-377 Sauchiehall St,
Glasgow.
Google Maps

Thank you all,

THE ESTABLISHMENT
Tom Coles and Robbie Guillory

Candles

toad — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:59:25 +0000

Purple for you, my dear,
The green ones mine,
Our colours for candles
You gave me on Valentines’.

Burnt to their ends they stand,
Either side of my room,
Their fires dead, and ours too.
In your candlesticks they loom.

Srebrenica

toad — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:48:01 +0000

They say
That for the maximum effect
To avoid direct reference
How Auden in Musee des Beaux Arts
Talks about Icarus
In Brueghel’s painting and
How the rest of the world
Seems
To turn away as he falls to his death and
How the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry
I recall another painting
As beautiful as Brueghel’s Icarus
A corn field
A pale blue sky
And a not so modern abstract
Like the eyes that looked up at Guernica
As the sky fell
Where the dogs go on their doggy life
And the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree
And I heard a splash
As Icarus fell.

(In 1995 7,000 Muslim men were executed at Srebrenica. The UN Dutch force who were supposed to be protecting these men ignored orders and handed them over to the Serbs.)

Romeo and Juliet

toad — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:47:45 +0000

(Upon the arrival of The Royal Shakespeare Company in Glasgow.)

ROMEO: But soft
Whit light through yonder windae breaks
It is the East and my Joolie
Be hoff smeeked Sick and Pale
Her vestal Livery an abomination
Tae the stars. It be the mead
An none but fools kin take it in
Sich measure. She speaks but Kens
For nothing, her ee’ discourses
It Iznae me she Cries but tae
The yoyo in the sky.
But soft she speaks…

JULIET:

Zat yoo ROMIOOO.
Zat yoo ROMIOOO
Where ist ma fuckin can?

ROMEO:

O speak again fair maid !
As Glorious tae this night a Kerri oot
From the fair and Blessed heavens
O Speak again and Kill the envious moon
My love my love Speak again…
And Yet… And yet…
I remember my Juliet lying there…
A maid so sweet beyond all care
That I did love her and love her there
For love was Young with Locks so fair
But now tiz is a story of such woe
This tragedy…
This Juliet…
This Romeo

07th Feburary 2007 - Open Mic Wednesday at the QMU

toad — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:05:59 +0000

WEDNESDAY NIGHT LIVE PERFORMANCES

at the QMU from toadinmud.co.uk

We invite you to come and be entertained:

POETRY, PROSE, DRAMA, MUSIC and etc.

LIVE WRITING PERFORMANCES and OPEN MIC,
The Lacuna Cafe
Queen Margaret Union (the QMU)
Wednesday 07th Feburary 2007
8pm prompt(ish).

You may have heard about it already. If you haven’t, now you know and come along. And if you have, where are you?

Our “Writer’s Wednesday” is an event aiming to provide a venue for new and current writers to perform their works and for others to be entertained by new talent. In the past few months we have featured guests; Liz Lochhead, Alan Bisset and Alan Riach and hope to invite them back and others in the near future.

As informal and unpretentious as we are capable of being, anyone of any discipline and perceived talent is encouraged to come along and perform. Either by prior arrangement or on an open mic basis. If you are not a writer yourself then we invite you to come along and enjoy the performances. We begin at 8pm and usually perform for around an hour and a half, there is coffee (discounted), snacks and of course, beer and stronger beverages available for purchase. You should expect some form of “audience participation”, with the chance of prizes for creative effort. This is not compulsorary of course. Afterwards we retire downstairs to discuss the performances, or play pool.

If you do wish to perform on Wednesday night, contact us at this address (toad@toadinmud.co.uk) giving as little or as much detail as you like. (Number of works, number of lines in works, estimate length of performance etc.) If you prefer, contact me, Tom Coles, on 0792 635 0161. If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

We also run a website, www.toadinmud.co.uk featuring works from Wednesday Nights and else where, check the site for performance times and upcoming events, as well as seeing what the writers are producing. On the site you can also hear Podcasts (audio downloads) of previous performances.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Coles

toad@toadinmud.co.uk

Gheist

toad — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:17:33 +0000

No use calling to the dune
for reinforcements -
There are none,
but whistle,
and I’ll come

No use clawing
through mud and sand
in search of sinking treasures,
your fingers black like Fagin’s,
but whistle, my
lad, and I’ll come

I am passed from ear
of shell to ear
of shell, and if
you train your telescopes
on distant, dead stars,
no one will answer,
no hurricane shall come
but stone
Stone and slum-
ber

Find the camera obscura
on Constitution Hill
or trace a Norfolk beach in March
to where the sea has eaten
like a clever lover
up to the mouth of graves

Ramble, my boy, and rifle. Now
venture, like Holmes in his gloves
Eye, finer than needle,
Whistle
and I will come,
and lay,
lay you, hum-
ble

By all means carry
the silver
hip-flask
to cool the coals of your heart,

to numb.

But whistle,
just once,
and I will come.

31st January 2007 - Open Mic at the QMU

toad — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:27:18 +0000

WEDNESDAY NIGHT LIVE PERFORMANCES

at the QMU from toadinmud.co.uk

Well, well, well, we’re getting into our stride again, up and staggering. So we invite you to come and be entertained:

POETRY, PROSE, DRAMA, MUSIC and etc.

LIVE WRITING PERFORMANCES and OPEN MIC,
The Lacuna Cafe
Queen Margaret Union (the QMU)
Wednesday 31st January 2007
8pm prompt(ish).

You may have heard about it already. If you haven’t, now you know and come along. And if you have, where are you?

As informal and unpretentious as we are capable of being, anyone of any discipline and perceived talent is encouraged to come along and perform. Either by prior arrangement or on an open mic basis. If you are not a writer yourself then we invite you to come along and enjoy the performances. We begin at 8pm and usually perform for around an hour and a half, there is coffee (discounted), snacks and of course, beer and stronger beverages available to purchase. Also expect some form of “audience participation”, with the chance of prizes for creative effort. Afterwards we retire downstairs to discuss the performances, or play pool. Its a laugh.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Coles

toad@toadinmud.co.uk

I Sold Your Fingers

toad — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:09:28 +0000

You had ten,
I was skint to patching point
and lord knows
only two of them get aired
or submerged
on a regular basis
anyway.

Anyhow, you’ll like the buyer.
He brown-papers parts of dead saints
in his Vatican office,
then posts them
to those in need of faith power-ups.

Unfortunately the good-guy corpse stock
is waning faster than demand,
and far be it for me -
or you for that matter -
to deny desperate pastors
teetering on a lapse
their decomposing digit of comfort.

It doesn’t matter
that you have never
fasted, martyred your arse,
been chased with torches,
preached kindness, or ever
really suffered.

Your fingers
will age falsely fast, gaining gravity
like coffee-stained school project magna cartas,
but the rest of you
should be dandy for years yet.

Oh that? Not to worry.
I know my obligations.
At your shoulder
like a sticky nit, I’ll transcribe your memoirs,
brush your teeth,
tug your faux-saintly sceptre to bliss
of a morning, even
head out in the storms of October
for your shopping. And baby,
we can afford the nice stuff now.

Lara

toad — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:54:59 +0000

Your tits are rubbish, your trough of wealth
makes me want to drag you
by the ponytail
through acervated cave guano.

Your threatening/sexy strut
implies self-sodomy with one
of your pistols, which you wear
on your hips like zirconia
stud earrings, and your accent is meh.

But your deaths, Lara, are what make you hot.
What other girl can swallow dive,
legs a barbed tailfeather, onto a carpet
of unforgiving rock?

What girl can crumple
with all the clatter of a lifesize model skeleton,
its wire snipped?

What girl can take a javelin
right up the vagina, out through the left eye,
then sigh and tumble sideways like you do?

Does anyone ignite so easily?
Would anyone else, richly aflame,
wander sure-footed, sans primal howl,
before expiring in the sponge of moss?

I don’t think so.

And what kind of landed lady
writhes and bucks with such orgasmic energy
when she drowns in a deep sea cavern?

Or swaps elocution
for electrocution
in the kitchen of a capsizing icebreaker?

Or remains unbloody, intact,
death-gripping her pistolbrace,
after getting her spine massaged
by a tumbling boulder?

What girl could meet all these ends
and still come back for another run
at a ledge they can never reach?

What other girl, Lara,
would die for me,
not for my love, or to save my neck,
but just to stir, to rub, to make
me damn her wretched luck?

24th January 2007 - Open Mic at the QMU

toad — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:48:47 +0000

Normal Service Really HAS been resumed!

The next LIVE Performances at the QMU will be held:

The Queen Margaret Union
Lacuna Cafe
Wednesday 17th January 2007
8pm Promptish

We are looking to achieve a slight branching out.

If any of you are musically, and more important, lyrically (lyrics being the illegitimate son of verse, to be purposefully controversial) minded then we would love to have people give us some sort of interlude, to regale us with tales accompanied by some sort of instrument. This instrument may be your voice, it may be a pair of coconut halves, it may be some tin cans, a guitar. Go crazy.

Also, we are soliciting actors. Poetry is drama, drama is poetry.

If you wish to perform, don’t hesitate to drop a email off to toad@toadinmud.co.uk, or simply arrive on the night with something to give and we shall accomodate.

Thank you,

toadinmud.

Between Two Portakabin Windows

toad — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:23:46 +0000

It’s hard to get lost
In such a small space,
But dosage to tear
to turpentine fashion
high-heels. ‘just’…
out of place
I mean, what is appropriate when one side looks
Thesameasthenext?

No reflections of birds
No crimes of passion
Prefab Sq. foots of depleting
Slow-motion.
“through,- lacklustre surprise
(nondisguised)
I can’t move something temporary.

Upon, and Fond of well-loved Blonde
It’s company decides;
That
anywhere can be special with just the right people.
And teased by the breeze,
stealing words
from the sequel.
The scarf round my neck
Never warms my cold toes,
I guess there’s not much
Between two Portakabin windows.

The Soap Factory, Periodical. Part Two.

toad — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 20:43:06 +0000

Once, long time, ago, crawling through a window, I recalled a pleasant
recollection I’d once had some good few months previously. I’d been sitting
near a small hand-painted bucket at the time.
Of course, my solicitor was there, chaking curled fingers into my furred
depths, mutering as she did about colour, as if that was the crux of the
issue. For Jupiter!.and it was whilst recalling this and other true facts of
my very own life, that, and I remind you that this is whilst I was
recollecting, that I remembered a recent chance meeting with my dear old Mr.
Armitage Shanks.
“Er, note-eh ben-eh, lad.ready? The following if you please: Shanks comma
Armitage comma.pause.question mark new question (capital dee lad) do females
comma human comma know of said Shanks question mark. End.”
Well, tenderly I urged my own tongue into an almost inaccessible cavity of
my young lads self esteem as I cast my eyes over the note.

“Tut”

I said.

“Tut tut.”

Much later my legal paraphernaliant raised her skirts and gently tugged down
those sweet sails of England. Oh a hideous aroma did arise, like yeast with
dough only backwards and worse! I’d rather chuckle on my own moundings, or
steal eggs from the ravens! But before all of that.

“Tut!”

Then, through at last, I fell to the inside floor with the thump of parsnips
without the grace of the carrot. I was in! Old Armitage had been right.

To Be Continued.