Via Flickr:
I spotted this in Florence, Tuscany while visiting last week. I think it's beautiful.
Free association styled prose from Julian Cloran, visual artist, writer, poet and agent provocateur. Random musings, which are sometimes cynical, but always intended for amusement, stimulation and entertainment. Comments are welcomed so don't be shy. Simply click on 'comments' to post yours.
Thursday, 17 May 2012
KNOB HEAD
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
IF THEY WERE ALIVE TODAY...
If Dracula were alive today, whether or not he was gay,
England is a free country inhabited by slaves,
He’d probably be HIV positive.
Jesus would have to perform miracles,in order to avoid being force-fed anti-psychotic medication.
I don’t think we’d hear a single peep from a latter-day Samuel Pepys.And who’d have a need for Shakespeare,
now we’ve got Steven Spielberg and the Harry Potter franchise?The old bard would give us the creeps.
The geniuses of old would be out in the cold,
unless they could play football.
It’s like we’ve had our fill of supreme talent and tremendous skill.
Mediocrities pedalling commodities can attain wealth and fame,
with no sense of shame, after cultural programming removes the blame.
An ethos of mundane materialism,
encouraging addictive consumerism,
has created a cultural nadir.
No idea can appear to stimulate interest
or penetrate the general indifference,
to everything unconnected with commercial rewards.
enslaved by debts and regrets.
Entrapped by greed confused with need,
most people in the UK are stuck in futile jobs they hate,
achieving things other species don’t rate.
If Jesus came back late, nobody would wait.
If he does return, watch and learn:
He’ll rightfully/instantly own more property than anyone in the world.
Food for thought?
Now, my thoughts turn to food so,
not wishing to be rude,
I must go home and use my mobile phone,
to tell someone: ‘I’m on the bus.’
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Blood Series
Blood Series a video by Narolc on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
A series of images by Jennifer Beinhacker (www.flickr.com/photos/30462932@N07/) are coupled with a short poem by Julian Cloran (myself), in a collaboration between two artists on Flickr.
Saturday, 11 February 2012
ELK vs ELM
Via Flickr:
From page 12, notepad #65 (current), I'm uploading a drawing I'm happy with. I intend exploring motifs from this image in future work. These notepads are explained in the description of my last upload:
www.flickr.com/photos/narolc/6789040467/in/photostream
ELK vs. ELM (Poetic comparative analysis to dispel confusion.)
A deer will fear what it can hear, but its hearing is very good.
An elk is a type of deer, but elm is a type of wood.
An elk’s antlers can resemble the branches of a tree, but the differences between the two are
plain to see.
The branches of a tree can sway in a breeze, while antlers rely on their hosts for movement,
for example when an elk flees!
Branches are often covered with leaves, sometimes they bear fruit.
Antlers are not adorned by foliage, although they still look cute.
Two things they do have in common: both are deaf and mute.
Of course both can make sounds, but there are no grounds for crediting either with the power
of speech.
It would be as daft to ascribe a conscience to a lowly, parasitic leech.
Elks and elms are as different as whelks and helms; just because two words are similar
doesn’t mean they are.
No, to confuse the two is a stupid thing to do and it’s an avoidable mistake if you do as I here
urge you.
Conceivably, elks and elms might co-exist in the same park, but if you think this makes them
the same it’s a shame—you’re in the dark!
It’s like assuming a football and a bicycle that are in the same place are interchangeable,
which they’re not!
People propagating this misnomer are talking rot, which is something trees have sometimes
got along with the odd knot.
Elks and other deer do not decay in this way until they die, of course, and then they
decompose, which is post-mortem normalcy as everyone knows.
Why not liken dogs to trees, which frees deer from the erroneous comparison?
After all—a fool might say—both have barks and, like the elks and elms earlier, are seen
together in parks!
Obviously the sap who believes this is barking up the wrong tree, as, if you examine the
example below, you shall see.
You can ‘fell’ a tree and a deer can ‘fall’, but this doesn’t make them the same thing at all!
If a tree fell on a deer it would make it disappear, but this could never happen in reverse.
Deer getting the Disney treatment resulted in the film Bambi.
Could a feature-length cartoon about elm trees be as namby-pamby?
And, would anyone go to the cinema to see a tree in the earth slowly grow?
Perhaps we’ll never know.
An elk is a type of deer, but elm is a type of wood.
An elk’s antlers can resemble the branches of a tree, but the differences between the two are
plain to see.
The branches of a tree can sway in a breeze, while antlers rely on their hosts for movement,
for example when an elk flees!
Branches are often covered with leaves, sometimes they bear fruit.
Antlers are not adorned by foliage, although they still look cute.
Two things they do have in common: both are deaf and mute.
Of course both can make sounds, but there are no grounds for crediting either with the power
of speech.
It would be as daft to ascribe a conscience to a lowly, parasitic leech.
Elks and elms are as different as whelks and helms; just because two words are similar
doesn’t mean they are.
No, to confuse the two is a stupid thing to do and it’s an avoidable mistake if you do as I here
urge you.
Conceivably, elks and elms might co-exist in the same park, but if you think this makes them
the same it’s a shame—you’re in the dark!
It’s like assuming a football and a bicycle that are in the same place are interchangeable,
which they’re not!
People propagating this misnomer are talking rot, which is something trees have sometimes
got along with the odd knot.
Elks and other deer do not decay in this way until they die, of course, and then they
decompose, which is post-mortem normalcy as everyone knows.
Why not liken dogs to trees, which frees deer from the erroneous comparison?
After all—a fool might say—both have barks and, like the elks and elms earlier, are seen
together in parks!
Obviously the sap who believes this is barking up the wrong tree, as, if you examine the
example below, you shall see.
You can ‘fell’ a tree and a deer can ‘fall’, but this doesn’t make them the same thing at all!
If a tree fell on a deer it would make it disappear, but this could never happen in reverse.
Deer getting the Disney treatment resulted in the film Bambi.
Could a feature-length cartoon about elm trees be as namby-pamby?
And, would anyone go to the cinema to see a tree in the earth slowly grow?
Perhaps we’ll never know.
Monday, 30 January 2012
JIMMY SAVILE ROW
Via Flickr:
This is page 78 of notepad #64 (since 1994, I have used spiral bound notepads to sketch, write, record my life, etc), which was filled earlier this month. I'm on pad #65 now!
The poem is typical of material I have occasionally performed and regularly post on my blog (link below), but the drawing at the bottom of the page is what I wanted to share on Flickr. I don't know who the woman is, presumably my unconscious based her on someone, I just like how it turned out. At risk of aggrandising a doodle, I consider this a drawing.
Sunday, 29 January 2012
‘ARACH ‘N’ ID’
‘Arach ‘n’ Id’—reads the signpost outside the Freudian pub,
Spiderman’s favourite.
The pub’s website is a sight,
The source of fright, discussed at night.
They serve hot food all day to anorexics.
Vans from Iceland make home deliveries
To the pub—igloos!
Surreal darts tournaments turn a mint:
A player holds a dart while others throw the board at them.
Value subtracted tax is levied by the ‘public Ann,’
Androgynous analytical being,
She believes the ghost of Sartre makes love to her every night.
Irregular customers think she’s right,
Trying with all their might
To catch the insouciant herbalist,
Whose nightly cries of:
‘Thyme at the bar now, please,’ fail to appease.
When the police are called to the pub to cause trouble,
Builders in the bar—wet cement on their faces, create designer rubble.
Eccentrics’ extant tricks pricks the conscience of the psychopathic doorman,
Selling lumps of plasticine to fools seeking illicit drugs.
A skull and crossed fire extinguishers tattooed on Ann’s forehead,
Emblematic of the pub,
Is photographed by Japanese tourists,
Poor wrists inadequately shoot video footage.
Pub folklore is imparted,
Officially, by the junior sub-bore with Alzheimer’s,
Fascinating the facile, and self-perpetuating myths,
Building the pub’s standing (which is) in the community.
Community chest cards from Monopoly games,
Donated by silhouette projectionists,
Are stacked on every available surface,
Revered by thirteen per cent of the locals.
Google maps think the pub is a black hole,
A black stole around Ann’s neck helps keep it under wraps,
Traps set for the unsuspecting are spoiled,
Triggered by masochists,
A mass—oh, kissed, one no one missed.
The pub’s décor, once a bore,
Now is no more, following the arsonist’s party.
As for the drinks, their peculiar stinks and fluorescent colours,
They’re cheap aphrodisiacs, expensive anti-emetics and invariably solid.
Hollow alcoholic people lurch like a church with a broken steeple,
On stools where they perch,
Feeling a part of a fashion,
As the weird pub’s popularity grows,
But why it does so, nobody knows.
Ann shocks all when, at forty-nine,
She marries a former milkman,
Who dresses as Queen Elizabeth I,
With the worst thing being,
The throne he’s surgically attached to.
But Ann’s retired milkman is kind,
He’s also clever and good in bed,
People seem to like him, and remember things he said,
Like his warning of the end of Worthing,
Which he foresaw once out of his head.
Ann’s husband glues his statements,
To furniture and people’s clothing,
Ensuring they adhere to his words,
And though many do no one knows his name,
Not even Ann, who thinks he’s called Stu,
But she isn’t sure; in fact she hasn’t a clue.
Anonymity had once been his ambition,
Having been something of his family tradition.
But his years with dairy products have made him hanker for more,
Like self-pasteurisation on the floor.
He’d better leave a note for Ann,
He won’t be seeing her anymore!
Spiderman’s favourite.
The pub’s website is a sight,
The source of fright, discussed at night.
They serve hot food all day to anorexics.
Vans from Iceland make home deliveries
To the pub—igloos!
Surreal darts tournaments turn a mint:
A player holds a dart while others throw the board at them.
Value subtracted tax is levied by the ‘public Ann,’
Androgynous analytical being,
She believes the ghost of Sartre makes love to her every night.
Irregular customers think she’s right,
Trying with all their might
To catch the insouciant herbalist,
Whose nightly cries of:
‘Thyme at the bar now, please,’ fail to appease.
When the police are called to the pub to cause trouble,
Builders in the bar—wet cement on their faces, create designer rubble.
Eccentrics’ extant tricks pricks the conscience of the psychopathic doorman,
Selling lumps of plasticine to fools seeking illicit drugs.
A skull and crossed fire extinguishers tattooed on Ann’s forehead,
Emblematic of the pub,
Is photographed by Japanese tourists,
Poor wrists inadequately shoot video footage.
Pub folklore is imparted,
Officially, by the junior sub-bore with Alzheimer’s,
Fascinating the facile, and self-perpetuating myths,
Building the pub’s standing (which is) in the community.
Community chest cards from Monopoly games,
Donated by silhouette projectionists,
Are stacked on every available surface,
Revered by thirteen per cent of the locals.
Google maps think the pub is a black hole,
A black stole around Ann’s neck helps keep it under wraps,
Traps set for the unsuspecting are spoiled,
Triggered by masochists,
A mass—oh, kissed, one no one missed.
The pub’s décor, once a bore,
Now is no more, following the arsonist’s party.
As for the drinks, their peculiar stinks and fluorescent colours,
They’re cheap aphrodisiacs, expensive anti-emetics and invariably solid.
Hollow alcoholic people lurch like a church with a broken steeple,
On stools where they perch,
Feeling a part of a fashion,
As the weird pub’s popularity grows,
But why it does so, nobody knows.
Ann shocks all when, at forty-nine,
She marries a former milkman,
Who dresses as Queen Elizabeth I,
With the worst thing being,
The throne he’s surgically attached to.
But Ann’s retired milkman is kind,
He’s also clever and good in bed,
People seem to like him, and remember things he said,
Like his warning of the end of Worthing,
Which he foresaw once out of his head.
Ann’s husband glues his statements,
To furniture and people’s clothing,
Ensuring they adhere to his words,
And though many do no one knows his name,
Not even Ann, who thinks he’s called Stu,
But she isn’t sure; in fact she hasn’t a clue.
Anonymity had once been his ambition,
Having been something of his family tradition.
But his years with dairy products have made him hanker for more,
Like self-pasteurisation on the floor.
He’d better leave a note for Ann,
He won’t be seeing her anymore!
Friday, 27 January 2012
WORMHOLES
Via Flickr:
Drawing with red, black and blue pens on paper. Approx. size: (H) 7.5 inches x 6 inches (W).
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