E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Cruz and Bardem , the top Spanish film couple of all time, and possibly the two sexiest humans alive (present company excepted, dear Eyewearers!), have been married.  Lots of confetti!  I thought Cruise-Kidman was big.

Three nights or seven by the river Under the earth and out to forage No one loves me, I have no Dad But I am the raging man of my age The taker, not the giver – A blam-blam in the brainpain Of the blindsided copper And flowers for Himmler Who had no balls Fuck Rooney and Co. I have no woman and no flag Am a pumped up anti-fag Who’ll kick at pricks, cunts and wogs And lie down with dogs When the infrared lines my sleep Like a mother’s arm To reveal my head dreaming If not the dreams I keep You can’t Rambo this away Or lie about being a pig If you work for them it’s not for me And these days every man for himself Really means fuck the poor and the North What’s a working Dad worth When the club closes and the music fades? So I killed her a bit and hid In woods I knew as well as my palm as a kid And made the bastards hunt me like a stag But they caught me, finally they did And no one alive loves me now Or loved me then Except the ones who rushed to my side During the stand-off, k...

The Coalition Government of the UK has managed, in a few short days, to establish a brutal new Occam's Razor - 40% less of everything is better.  First, we get a £55 billion school housing scheme scrapped - let them build schools!  No more ID cards.  MP seats are to be cut.  Then, we get the Food Agency cut, the one that protects consumers from food corporations.  And today, the NHS is being entirely resteeled, so that all the money goes to the doctors to distribute themselves.  Oh, dear.  What next?  Indeed.  The next five years will see a total redistribution of the resources, powers, and responsibilities of government and society.   Thatcher said there was no such thing as Society.   Cameron-Clegg are aiming to prove that.  At least 40% of the time.

I am now 44.  I had hoped to stay cool until April 8, 2011, when I turn 45.  However, I have been spotifying of late, catching up with all the latest bands and new tracks or songs or whatever they are now.  Downloads is so vulgar.  Anyhoo.  Sleigh Bells is a new band with an album called Treats.  And it is really loud, glaring, and sort of like 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' for thirty-minutes without the super-smart lyrics, with punk girls and fuzz and funk.  That is it feels blow-your-head open new and on a different level of noise and generation.  I think this may be the first album that I recognise as genuinely excellent, subversive and fun that my ears will have to adjust to.  I am no longer able to just jump right into the music's head, to be Larkin about it.  But I am sidling up to this.  I want to wear bells.

BBC Radio 4 has just now been debating whether Raoul Moat is a worthy folk-hero - as Eyewear predicted might happen, a bandit hero cult has developed around the tragic man.  It seems a bad idea to have Tasered a man with a shotgun to his head (the jolts caused can lead to involuntary spasms and hence pulling of a trigger) - or to have kept his family members away, when they wanted to tell him he was loved (he was bemoaning his lonely state).  Meanwhile, the police office who he shot point blank has forgiven him, though he may now be blind.  In another case of miscarried justice - and deranged men - Roman Polanski has been freed from his luxurious house arrest.  This is a pity.  Although a brilliant film director, he also seems to be something of a sexual predator.  There is of course one law for dirt poor fugitives like Moat, and another law for suave rich abusers like Polanski. Will the director become a folk-hero too?  Finally, speaking of violent ...

Sheenagh Pugh reviews A Quechua Confession Manual by Sheila Hillier A first collection by an older writer is always interesting, not least because writers with more life experience often have more to write about . Hillier is a medical sociologist who has lived and worked in many countries. She has also clearly read a lot, but I'm not sure she needs to credit the books that have helped inspire various poems as she does at the start; it's a generous impulse but can give the process an unwanted whiff of midnight oil. Be the poet whatever age, most first collections are uneven. Hillier's observation is sometimes very sharp and startling, as in "Jealousy", where she pinpoints beautifully the sensation of being in love and vulnerable: Someone who's cut the letter Y in me from belly to neck is opening up the flaps to take a look It would be odd if she were always that effective, and of course she isn't. There are a few poems that seem merely anecdotal, n...

Days of Roses will be hosting a special event as part of the Oxfam Bookfest on Tuesday July 13, at 91 Marylebone High Street, W1, five minutes from Baker street tube station, starting at 7 pm.  Admission free.  Donations encouraged.  Do check this out - weather will be cooler, so more pleasant in the shop.  Featuring: Faber's Jo Shapcott , with her new collection Of Mutability http://www.faber.co.uk/author/jo-shapcott/ http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth152 Guardian Music's Laura Barton , with her debut novel Twenty One Locks http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/laurabarton Oxfam's Poet in Residence Todd Swift http://toddswift.blogspot.com/ http://www.salmonpoetry.com/seaway.html Malene Engelund http://www.clinicpresents.com/2010/04/malene-engelund.html Gareth Jones http://www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk/p_gareth-jones.html Robert Selby http://www.robertselby.co.uk/ Retta Bowen http://www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk/p_retta-bowen.html Laura...