An Afghan Moon Media Publication
Switching On The Community Collective
Lino Print by Mick Sanders
Switching On - The Community Collective A creative zine. A connection. A snapshot. A spontaneous act. A look outside. A love letter. A poem. A photograph. A moment. A thought. A feeling. A nowness. A switch. Thank you to all who submitted. Any profits made will be donated to Covid-19 support charities. Mez, Lydia, Mick, Stew xxx
The Place When I was 16, I used to collect bands like trophies. Until then, my social currency had been dwindling in the decimal points, my defining attributes to the outside world that I was bookish and almost impressively terrible at every single sport put in front of me. And really, nothing externally changed that much as I began to discover the music that would have the kind of seismic internal shift that could disrupt continents; when you live in a town that has approximately three wedding shops per person, the majority of your peers really couldn’t give two fucks if you’ve suddenly gotten really, really into The Chalets. But, for me, every new musical acquisition was like revealing another piece of the mirror, these bands and their specific nuances and quirks reflecting back a set of ideas and feelings that resonated deep down to my bones. The Libertines and the way they created a whole romantic, poetry-soaked yet salacious universe around them. The Cribs and how they were simultaneously defiant, scrappy and punk, yet smart, moral and emotional, too. The Long Blondes (whose debut is still a stone cold classic) and how their version of sexuality was literate and poised and playful. I would sit up until long into the night studying the NME like a textbook, ravenously consuming and seeking out as much of this strange, exciting new world as I could find. It didn’t matter that my habit was largely a solitary one. It wasn’t that I was trying to keep these bands to myself, it just didn’t really seem like anybody else’s business. Of course, music is a unifying art, and there are few things better than standing in the middle of a field, losing your tiny mind as thousands of festival-goers around you do the same. But those first formative steps are ones you can only really take alone. Because, if you’re that way inclined, discovering your true music taste is pretty much indistinguishable from discovering yourself. I remember sitting with a friend and poring over the Reading festival line-up, proudly pointing out bands – not bands I had seen, but ones I’d heard, the mere familiarity and proximity feeling like a prized possession. They took the piss at the lack of substance to my claims, but I didn’t care. I think that was probably the first time in my life that I’d had the confidence to know that it didn’t matter, that what I loved and the act of loving it was enough. By Lisa Wright
There’s nothing on the soapbox There’s one thing on my mind It makes us feel so low But so god Damn fine at the same time I’m getting kinda use to betrayal I got so used to you calling out my name I was only half there Now I’m only half full I still have salty water My eye are always still The first burger pit stop I’ll take poison with mine The last spit swap Never enough That scent Our scent Now sends me to a steep Descent At least I have mine Maybe that’ll stay with you for time Maybe I spoke too soon See you sometimes in June Words and photo by Tom Atkin
Dan Wilson
I remember Switching On I fly like I carry land. A Daddy. No money maker, old, thin the rib breaker. And then I remember switching on when I saw your eyes flicker as I put that transfer sticker on your warm arm.
Body Glow In our New York hotel I could faintly see you shower and body glow yellow light, so clean to the hollows beneath your toes. ‘Oh’ what I’d do to go back, beating myself up on an eleven-hour drive to Spain that takes in endless miles of perfect beaches. The South of France dancing outside my window with shades of Indigo. We should go? Sooth the creases on my stage torn head.
Like Steel Rivets I have a pair of your black toe-bags in my sack packed at the back for luck and the shower in Gerona falls like steel rivets just like the rain above Settle that stung sweetly like nettles as we watched the river bank explode. White horses crashing. Foaming, on our anniversary.
For Gus The mountains between Switzerland and Italy are beautiful. That ‘Postcard’ beauty; bright greens and blue-flows of water hugging snow. But it’s fuck all compared to the sight of my little smudge with messy hair, bouncing ball, fall on top of me. ‘Daddy’ my Mowgli asking for breakfast in a flat on Princes Avenue.
Waiting They say all beer is poison so, I drink more, tearing at the bottle’s label. It’s hard to keep clean when it’s cold outside. The hum of Prince’s Avenue, the festive cab engines and cold-white hands that hold cigarettes that piss smoke up towards my window. And I can count time for hours. Slowly ticking inside and out waiting for you to return. You yawn, wriggle that perfect nose and pull up the cover to invite me in. Against your breasts, locked forever in love.
Eyelids in the rain Today I washed my eyelids in the rain to remind me how beautiful you are. And you know I’d love to live with you. And you know I’d travel far, just to lie next to you. I’d read your palm in the night and kiss your perfect body cumming-hard; morning light. Today I washed my eyelids in the rain, just to make me see again. How happy, I am. Poems by Mez Green
Mick Sanders
Jérémy Y - Lille, FR
People tell me I’m “too mature” for my age, whatever that means. Sure, I haven’t even done my GCSE’s (god knows if I will with this coronavirus situation) but my age means very little in regard to my maturity and overall mentality. Age means nothing because it’s experience which moulds us. You’re surprised that I knew what National Insurance was at age 12? Try explaining it to your foreign mother who speaks not one word of English and had no access to the money she earned, not even her pay checks because your father kept it from her for years. I was taken away from my home country at age 4 and had to learn a whole new language in a matter of months, and I’ve said that exact sentence to people in the past, and their response was “Yeah well so did everyone else at age 4.” That makes no sense. They’ve spent 4 whole years in England, around English-speaking people. My first words were in Slovak, and sure they were only “mama” but I went on from there to forming sentences in Slovak. I had to learn a whole new grammatical system when I came here, and I had to teach it to my parents. When my house caught fire last September, it was me who made the phone calls on behalf of my mother to the insurance company. I had to call 999 to get firefighters to the house. That was my responsibility and it will be for as long as I live in England. I’ve been responsible for my whole family here in England and I will remain responsible for them until they die, or emigrate somewhere else like my brother is this year. I’ve had more experience in the adult world since birth than most people my age have, and I’ve gone through the type of shit you say children should never have to go through, because it robs them of their joy and innocence. The point I’m trying to make is not that I’m superior in any way to others simply because I have gone through more shit than they have, but rather that if someone seems “too mature” for their age, it’s probably because they lived a whole lifetime of people being fucked by a biased system in their childhood, and you should respect them for the crap that they’ve seen and dealt with, because although it may not be tyrannical in the traditional sense of the word, it gets rid of the rose-coloured glasses which people are conditioned to see life through from the second they’re born. Submission by Alzbeta Bunganicova
Francis Scott
Humberside Oh his and her Humberside. Oh honour and homogenous skull. Oh Huber Bridge and history. Oh hysterical Hull. Oh blinded city. Oh Baltic roads. Oh blurring streetlights. Oh blistering cold. Oh Martian arachnids. Oh musical mansions. Oh mumbling summertime’s. Oh men and their football. Oh mesmerising maritime. Oh numbing fingers. Oh nonsensical noise. Oh non stop street shops. Oh nauseating girls. Oh neurotic boys. Oh rambunctious teenagers with their illiterate idiolects and mapping piercings. Oh trembling eyeballs. Oh silky soft hair. Oh century long pauses, where the awkwardness harmonises with the muffled melodies and imaginary staring eyes. Oh how the wind has brought them here. Oh how the wind has led them between the crusts of art and drunken mistakes, into the swinging arms of false empowerment and shallow philosophies. Oh mutual friends with their incestual mutual tongues,
blinded by cherry flavoured alcohol and sad pop songs. Oh stumbling streets, pathed with takeaway boxes and vomit. Oh loving feelings, existing under the stars, before hiding behind sleepy eyes and cloudy memories. Oh jump scare car horns. Oh joyful punk sways. Oh jet black tastes. Oh junky ways. Oh twisting trees. Oh trawling antiquities. Oh tension filled ten foots. Oh terrible seas. Oh littered alleyways. Oh loitering lovers. Oh loathing leftists. Oh linked to one and other. Oh bleakest of the bleak Sunday skies, where the sunshine tires in breaking down the stubborn concrete clouds. Oh endless seconds. Oh endless minutes. Oh endless hours. Oh a blink of an eye sleep. Oh the 168-hour day. Oh how it drags. Oh deeper cravings of burning summers, followed by a deeper deeper craving for the Arctic winters. Oh round bellied fathers in shorts and polos, bathing in the dreamlike waves and rays of the two week heat. Oh he likes it warm but not this warm. Oh frolicking kids, endlessly running and shouting, for the sake of running and shouting,
until the final hours halt their lark, with its chill and its bite. Oh posturing pubs. Oh poisonous Princess Avenue. Oh paranoid parents. Oh paranoid patriarch. Oh problematic Propaganda. Oh picturesque Pearson Park. Oh quant Queens Gardens. Oh questionable street sides. Oh quirky model of living. Oh quiet in the corners worldwide. Oh systematic sounds. Oh second hand cigarettes. Oh sour cider. Oh screaming songs of sorrow. Oh sex, sights and Spiders. Oh his and her Humberside. Oh honour and homogenous skull. Oh Humber Bridge and history. Oh hysterical Hull. Poem by Joe Spivey
Rosie Dent-Spargo
Sophie December - LIFE, Sidecar, Barcelona
Sam Sanders
Choirboy I want to lift up my skirt for you, but first I need the hips of a woman and legs like marble. If I had high notes to hit I would be a eunuch in an instant but I can only rumble like the city and that I am ashamed of. I could be in Church but I’m full of the Holy Spirt - Her name is unimportant but she’s beautiful like a masturbatory daydream; we touch but I do nothing and sleep till the dark wakes and I am cold and alone. She talks like a Virgin full of fire. I don’t know what she prays for, except a trembling chorus perhaps, or a fairy-tale liberation. I sang a lot when I was little but I lost my voice like the failed castrato who was not angelic enough to be kept. The hymn sheets, printed on stolen paper, were stained by fingers and bad ink. They were the prodigal sons of daughters, and they were dirty; sleeping around the back rooms of the Isle, because what else did their bodies have to live for other than being handled, and their quivering lines being sung with the all the throbbing heart of adolescent lovers? What else do we have left, because the bars are shutting sooner, sooner rather than later; what else do we have left? The rubato of your breath maybe, and your fingers, your immortal virtuoso, dancing on the keys of my spine. From Soul of 2001 I dream Motel 6 in the death hours. I dream Air Conditioning in a war with the blazing white picket fences. I dream Lowell, Massachusetts. I dream Winesburg, Ohio. I dream San Francisco fire and Los Angeles riots; I dream in-between nights of sweat and passion with music that hits your chest and shatters your ribcage like a boot or a police baton. I dream ‘Supermarket in California’, I dream a chain of ghosts, I dream a forest of dead poets. I dream up your voice and wisdom and cling to it when I wake. I dream up dreams that I can dream and wonder if I can find them in my wanderlust, if I can afford to dream (after all, time is wasting and time is money after all; after all you’re only human; after all is said and done, and after all is settled and dealt with, and the last guests have said their piece, after
all that, your grave sits still). Hold my hand when the dread creeps in. I dream touch and magnificence, I dream Christ’s blessing on my skin, I dream your lips till you fill me up with artistry and angelic sensation and my wings can carry me the rest of the way. I dream All the Time, when the burning youth was seen from miles around, and we knew, with piss and vinegar in our hearts, that something better was coming and we could sense it in the summer heat of our young skin. But we all have is the spit of a small, shit-hole English town. That we could dream up something better - Now that’s a fantasy. Poems by Will McCullion
Finlay Yates
032020 by Faye Dickinson
The Aftermath . crushed plastic cups sweat, relief, nostalgia beer soaked boots the faint smell of cigarettes cold night air on your face aching limbs from dancing aching throat from singing happiness and unity all connected by music . Poem and photo by Connie Turner
Avoiding I’m trying not to write about it, this thing that has engulfed the news cycle, the internet and our minds. I try to write about the minutia and glint the details that connect us. Allowing a look at the corner of the painting without revealing the full landscape. But I feel compelled, locked inside my room as many others are. To take note of this strange time, where some people are bashful, some are scared, most are anxious. But occasionally amongst the hysteria and hurricane of information. Little glistening moments of humanity shine through, and it’s wonderful to see. There’s a warmth beyond language that can connect us all if we allow it. Of course, there will always be disruption and people who revel in suffering. Of course, there will never be a constant peace time. But we must allow ourselves occasionally to look up. Forgive ourselves for the failings we are all guilty of, and for a moment at least, we can be glad to be alive and next to any person that might walk down the street. You are marvellous you hold something that nobody can have and you must recognise that, as the high powers do. Why else would they have chosen you? Ahh you see I have gotten to escape what I was avoiding writing about for just a minute there. Beautiful life, invigorated by something ugly now recognisable in this hazed light. Life is beautiful. Poem by Harry Brown
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Tallulah Denyer
Pete Davies
REDEEM The last throw of the dice, Just might be the first, To satisfy the thirst. Of a life bult on chance, And romance. Accident and whim, Sink or swim, Rolling your way, Who knows, maybe, Rolling my way, Who can say. Its good to be alive, Two and five, One and six, Four and three, Waiting for the nilihist ride, Where you can run, But you can’t hide, At one with the odds, At one with the evens, The scourge of the gods, The scourge of the demons. Poem by Pete Davies
Lydia Palmeira
The Ghost of Mark E. Smith I saw the ghost of Mark E. Smith I said, “I thought that you were dead” He said “I am you fucking twat but I’m the voice inside your head and ‘cos the Fall was something more than anything you could achieve and all this talk of ghosts will only make you see what you believe” And so I asked if it was wrong to idolise musicians like they’re gods He said “well yeah I guess that’s right so now you better just fuck off” and now the Fall is something more than anything I could achieve so glad I didn’t meet Mark E. Smith ‘cos he’d have probably hated me And if all music is subjective then it’s mostly commodity sent through some radio transmission to numb the 9-5 disease And through the static ill erase ya like a marker on my brain daydreaming sifting through the tracks right down the backs of memory lane And to a time, I wasn’t born cos now says nothing of my life just pretty girls and auto tunes and na na na na na na na and how many more songs will be written in a billion and one ways to say you’re young and insecure and really really, really vague Oh Mark E. Smith come back again Tell me it’s gonna be alright
He said “I told you to fuck off, stop writing all this down alright?” Shit man I’m running out of answers and I’m running out of lanes wish I could travel space and time Cos to me it’s all the same And so, I hope you see the irony in these 3 repeated chords when every open mic nights worse than the ones I’ve seen before tell me where is your dynamic and your originality just covers of something i heard back in like 2003 And I’m not saying I’m the saviour no, I aint no jesus christ if I was id walk along the water to Spain or somewhere nice Maybe I’m ripping off bob dylan maybe I’m ripping off the fall maybe I’m just another white boy who can’t sing or play guitar But there’s asylum for my own mind some kind of integrity and I know I’ll sound pretentious but that’s what you’ve paid to see Then through the static I’ll erase ya like a marker on my brain daydreaming sifting through the tracks right down the backs of memory lane Poem by Juvenile Delinquent
Be free... Smiling. There’s a dark place to see Behind the scenery Below the ground Where roots have found me A seagull interrupts my daze in looking up Eroded path, amongst the grass lead to the sea. If a revolution happened now Is be standing up here looking out Save me from the ignorence the bliss It’s what I don’t know that I’ll miss Did you hear the birds speak? In the leafy mystery Beyond the roofs, over land, across the sea If a revolution happened now I’d be standing up here looking out And as I’m making my way up the hill Everybody watching standing still.
Poem by Mike Wright
Sapphire Anastasia
Niall Kitching
Mary Close
Francesca McConnell
I Am Me, A Human, BE-ING. I really don’t want you, To want me. I really don’t want you, To watch me. I really don’t want you, To forget about me. I really don’t want you, To figure out me. Little did I know, Little did I know, You want it too. I really don’t wanna watch, Your TV. Cause every time there’s nothing, For me. I really don’t wanna watch, impeachment. Cause all they wanna do is, Heard the sheep man. Little did I know Little did I know You want it too. Asking what am I, Democrat or Republican? Why can’t I just be a, Human! Why must you always point, Your finger. Can’t you see there’s always, Three there. Pointed back at you Pointed back at you Cause you are too. Poem by David (Bird Barn) Castro
@sophieletthem
Sarah Oglesby
Death By Snu Snu Wake up and check your phone Coz you can’t face the sun alone The only way I can feel secure Is to know someone in Iowa likes my jokes it’s all just transcendental The way we transfer hate from place to place it’s kind of sentimental Flat on your face at the start of the human race Now close your eyes and hit the pavement There’s not much fresh air left Don’t let it go to waste I’m tired of my shoulders sagging From all of this self-inflicted weight Let’s stop wasting every moment Wondering if we’ll feel it when it comes Chalk it up to inconvenience Or being forever young and dumb So we’re getting out of here Say your goodbyes and grab the beer The walls are closing in We’re getting out of here The whole charade is crystal clear Consider me unplugged Wake up the next morning and look for your phone You don’t know this neighbourhood, you’re not sleeping alone You’ve got some strangers on the internet laughing at jokes You’ve devoted half your life to funny cat videos You’re always stumbling down stairs and hey I’m not casting stones I’m the first to leave the party and the last to go home But you know I’m gonna hold you tight and never let go We’re not getting out of here we’re not getting of here We’re not getting out of here alive/alone/until it’s time to go Poem by Julian Hepworth
@TaraLeaDesign
Capsule - A Speech by Father John Euthanasia, terminate, abort, withered corpses in cohorts. Anarchy in literature, anarchy in life, pornography or censorship, video, stereo, micro-chip. Deep-freeze blood-banks, artificial insemination, propaganda, art and order, marching zombies to the central will! Thought is processed, life is planned, leave it all behind and travel to the furthest corners of your mind, in the capsule of the interface! Reality, dreams, sleep and wakeful consciousness, all are one in the capsule of the interface! Push-button economy, monetarism, travel, space and time. Fascism, Marxism in society, line up for the greatest show on earth, where life and death are fused, in the capsule of the interface! Existence, non-existence, being, non-being, nothingness and nightmare in a destiny to nowhere! Don’t give a damn! Don’t you care? No more hunger, poverty or disease. No more bigotry if you please. No more authority, and no more war when you leave it all behind, travel to the furthest corners of your mind, in the capsule of the interface!
John Sanders
Stewart Baxter
Anger Plastered saints Huffing paint to cover the cracks They swear they never had they tell you yours ain’t justified equal scorn, from their eyes Mirrors shatter at their glance Yet “anger has no place in man”? Repent for no fault of my own? My mind and body ain’t on loan Bent halos skin the sinners back Good intention, spoils redemption And as snakes to dove Lion eats the lamb Glad tidings for the heretic Life divine, fat or skint and our dearer fears and truths Forsaken by you If no one’s right There’s none to blame For all their grief caused they’ll dismiss It’s taken we’re all hypocrites Doesn’t mean that we can’t bitch
So raise your fists against their writs burn their stakes shred the line of best fit Repent for no fault of my own? My mind and body man... Eric Osterbergz
Seymour Eemor
Maria Lopez
Jason Tremain
Robin Hood’s Bay It’s six o’clock in the morning, and beneath a water-colour sky, limpid blue, streaked with red, one hundred foam-flecked horses are racing in, pounding, pounding, pounding, the sallow sand-stone walls, resilient still; and on the tall chimneys of rain-washed red roof tiles, mewling gulls greet the dawn, just as we do too, refreshed and ready for another day, when we must be far, far away, beyond the rolling hills once more, to resume life’s same old struggle, reflecting on what might have been, resigned to being ordinary.
Crossing the Humber In a lazy ‘s’ it flows from west to east, to the sea, a muddy gash I have to cross. And in her box of glass I wonder what the lady with pearl-white painted nails thinks. It is of no consequence, but I fantasize all the same… and drive on anyway to a port of no import anymore, no slaves hanging from its derricks, no bloody blubber spilling on its quays – a stench long gone but not forgotten. And on my hands the smell of waste, that in my haste
I failed to notice, as I rush home to your embrace, and sleep at last in peace. Poems and art by John Sanders
Eric McCabe
My New Home is Broken My new home is broken My new home is broken No more drugs are class C And the pavements very glassy Poverty’s getting classy Or so says Mr Darcy My new home is broken My new home is broken Arndale catastrophe The man outside is outta weed All his skunk is still a seed His customers are pedos freed The sales rep laughed and peed Arndale catastrophe There’s an Arndale catastrophe Home furnishing’s out of rugs Boots and I are outta drugs Security guards cower to thugs Police disturb the homeless snug My new home is broken My new home’s broken Teenage boys without frustrations Billy Bragg on punk compilations Sherlock Holmes and the tax mitigations The asthmatic hub of our four nations So my new home is broken My new home is broken And there’s an Arndale catastrophe Consumers leave in body bags Even beauticians are getting sags Old men calling teens slags Little kids taking evil drags My new home is broken My new home is broken The cab driver’s a centrist A LibDem lobby hobbyist He put my name on the naughty list I hope by now you get the gist My new home is broken!
Death and Faxes Faxing’s back in fashion And that’s a fucking fact Faxing is my passion And one I’m faxing good at Type, send, swallow- texts are tedious Receiving letters is like receiving craps But nothing sends a whir down the spine … like getting a fax The end of the email era Return to retro memorabilia I don’t want in my pocket I want it on my desk And if it’s got a contract It’s far too Kafkaesque Obsolete since 1999 But this morning it’s lookin’ pretty fine I’m a communications anti-revolutionary I don’t need a tariff just a printing fee I’m not gonna quit Just because I can’t work it It’s not a flash in the pan piece of kit It’s a testament to my quirk and wit Marooned with my machine Mailed mirages of mighty me Before a lampoon of e-degeneracy Who could the sender be? And now I’ve wasted all my electric On getting a reply And a whole tray of paper It took to print ‘hi’ So fuck the fax It’s not for me I’m moving on to telegraphy Poems by George Jenkins
Karim Skalli
Quarantelling Open ceilings tell the best secrets. The really defunct Tyrannosaurus dances on a pedestal, swinging with the Bossa-fossil. Rex, lining sofas with Kleenex, spends his night singing to boiled pasta. In a garden where grim flowers live, all the pedals sigh. She leans in, sane and dry. He grows all their feathers, she tames velociraptors, and blows weird fumes through stumbling winds like a bleating muse. I feel things in my chest-peeling news-into the membrane of my eyes. A brain in a vat. You see how the acid turns banks of thought to dreams, and brackish beers feed ghoulish streams. Until the sun, setting on matted brown grass, tunes matter-of-fact ways to high ideals we look at the world in its places and say, “Right!� What we heard the day before lives deep in the gossip walls, the lungs aside, delayed until Fall. The air we breathe is eternal dawn, stillness creeping through empty halls,
our bones performing anxious songs. Poem by Ben Luongo
Sam Sanders
Heather Elle
Sophie Meeson
Aspidistras I keep my walls real and painted. Wrapped around a hill of total love, we brought the rain and sharp turns become confidence as seasoned life changes are no longer darkness. Flashes screen a collective shine of grow and the heat is only vibes not visited before, so less than a year later the season changed with a warning- all that time and freedom is nothing, it never was but always was a piece of a story that never ended even when feeling the end. So carry this motion even when broken wrapping around other things because it’s all gonna change and knowing my own rage the seasons will come and all that wasted emotion could be just here. Now. One. Words by Jimbo Baxter
Raissa Pardini
Switching On This body of work shows community does exist and rather than isolation we are in fact in this together; in unison. The Community Collective brings together poems, lyrics, art, photos, collages, musings and heartfelt stories from all over the world. Creating this zine was a wonderful experience and we were blown away by the volume of submissions. We have tried our best to include as many as we can and there will be many more volumes to come so keep creating like you always do! Switching On, The Community Collective (Volume 1) presented by LIFE Zine design & layout by Stew Baxter Prose curated by Mez Green Cover design inspired by the work of Romek Marber and Penguin Books. All profits made from this book will be donated to Covid-19 support charities in Hull.
AN AFGHAN MOON MEDIA CORPORATION PUBLICATION 2020