I am an artist, musician and writer based in SE London, and recent graduate from Goldsmiths’ BA Anthropology & Visual Practice degree. My work deals with issues of mental health, neurodivergence and queerness, and explores aspects of metaphysics, mysticism and folklore. I am currently working on a collection of poetry, a narrative poem for children, a series of vignettes set in a quasi-dystopian near-future, and an essay on dreams spanning neuroscience, religion and contemporary art practice. jakehurley@live.co.uk

 

 

 

Pin Board

 

Yes I am a faggot

and I fuck women

feeling vicariously

thru sound and vision.

 

Ocean, Madonna. I take up

as man her position

as woman and sing: boy,

you’ve got to prove your love to me.

 

Frank painted

naked in boots. Wild

boys, a masterclass

in time-travel and jissom.

 

Bill is dead and nevertheless

a necessary lesson. Once I dreamt

he stood over my childhood

bed and whispered, daring me.

 

An intimidating figure;

a stranger by the lake.

David in his car

parked fumbling

 

in the desert. Make haste,

there’s danger here: black and

white boys in blue, miraged

against horizon.

 

River sedentary

on rearwards chair

dressed blue, tacked next to

Brueghel’s flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

Out of Time

 

and of a sudden

it is five

minutes from now

 

I am now

home not there

on the Rye

 

time-place sense

certainty

ever-changing

 

the now

eternal present

universal

 

and consciousness

we imagine

our surroundings within

 

our scope –

the field

the region –

 

are we not in theirs?

Audrey

sleeps at my feet

 

in my field she is

locked in time

with me but

 

perhaps in her own

field unbound:

constant guardian

 

peeking thru the fabric

along with all

nonhuman

 

out-of-timers

timelessnessly

watching over waiting

 

for me to return

for us to return

to tell them all we’d learnt

 

 

 

 

 

Quilting Point

 

I’m thinking death as quilting point.

Full stop bringing, finally, meaning.

But! that solitary exit! Sartre’s

indicator of freedom. I cannot speak

for the others. Only that stuckness

unbearable, options invisible,

imagination foundering and dark.

Voice that was not my own, cutting

pizza with the knife. Not that one

the voice says. On the draining board –

that knife is sharper. Terrified I burst.

 

I was not well

I did not love myself

 

is that then what it, my life, might have meant?

entirety defined by insurmountable end?

 

overwhelmed and grieving, failing

to understand the grief

 

lonely and alone and

at a loss within loss –

 

her and myself

my self

 

dead end

or a cul-de-sac?

 

street spirit … blind … a song to the siren …

street spirit … blind … a song to the siren …

 

little smoke, air biting

thru the crack, blue flash

 

refracted and distracting,

echoes down the alley.

 

 

 

 

 

Dreamachine on Tracks

 

that public motion

inflected with sun

and wooden limbs

strobe-like inducing

tribal hands flickering

before closed eyes –

your palms and digits

a portable dream

machine, sol, the naked

bulb that hangs between

Brion and Bill, or,

your mind and God,

and every commuter

on sunny days passing

thru tree-lined banks,

if they close their eyes,

slip out and into the

trance-like expanse of

unconscious fields,

temporarily, before

they alight.

 

 

 

 

 

Where Is the Edge of the Body?

 

is it in the fuzz

of atoms that share

their space with the air

or the particles left

on table, handle, back

of the chair, hair

gracing the pillow or

cells inside nonhuman

human divide, constrained

by skin or skin itself

its surface motes scattered

in light or EM

field ranging from head

and from heart

span six feet

across and detected

in body beside

and theirs in yours

and can you name

that feeling? is love life

entangled our bodies

star spangled, mirrored            (mirrors?)

and scaled      pervasive           (scales?)

blue          /\         [LOST HERE]

a patch on the page

a call from outside

inside externalised

and brought back again

again. blue. black.

( (slip of the hand     ? )           back?

but make no mistake

there was none made accepted

as if were intended)

I trail off bleeding  /  thought-thinking

wanderer                     training

excel                            haunt

type                             bray

tincture            lessen

(in)credible                  nature

 

 

 

 

Garlic

 

like the lingering

garlic a day

or two on the fingertips

da Prima’s medicine

Caitlin’s breath after cooking

together, horizontal Mary

and Peter pulling –

we removed ourselves from the living

room to fuck