Who knew
Loverboy can dance
*****
So wrong
We'll never be right

Farewell Govan -
bathed in a baking sun
littered with betting shops
and no win/no fee criminal lawyers
and a myriad of pubs caked in years of libation
steeped in history of industry and shipbuilding
blackened smoked walls etched with gangland symbols:
tooled-up local carnivores who ride shotgun on a BMX
swapping discrete envelopes for indiscreet wads of cash.

Farewell Govan -
you fractured my ribs once in a moment of mistaken identity
I didn't heed the advice to not walk through the park at night
I didn't hear the pitter-patter of adolescent feet
speeding my way in brand new trainers across the grass
but I did feel the clunk of something solid on my head
as the ground rushed up to meet me in a concrete embrace
and watched as 4 bags of overladen shopping spewed out
lying face up spread-eagle in Lilliput fashion
and a mobile torch-app in my face with the repeating words
“Ima tellin’ you man its naw him, its naw him”
I reassured them frantically that I was definitely not him!
as the hooded troupe picked up what was left of my shopping
and even gifted me a couple of cans of super strength lager,
a cube of dubious council estate hash
and an usher to leave immediately
(and think myself lucky).

Farewell Govan -
you got me blazing on cheap beer at the local pub
which had recreated a holiday beach scene
with a hand-written sign that read: Better than Ibiza!
awash with carefree children
and pit-bull terriers wearing bespoke Barbour dog jackets
and brand spanking new Adidas white trainers
purchased from Tam out of a nondescript blue plastic bag
who always passes the day's pleasantries
while topping up his pension
chatting with auld Billy who was in the war (don’t you know)
via the Merchant Navy
and the version of how he was gunner on an oil boat in Vietnam
via the umpteenth pint that afternoon.

Farewell Govan -
your late night shadows harbour an underlying tension
masked with comic humour only if you can understand the lingo
words that are distasteful anywhere else are in fact a term of endearment here
I shall miss the odious vernacular and doth my cap to your spirit
the Salt of the Earth and the Lifeblood of the Community
with at least 40% proof liquids mixed with Irn Bru
purchased at the 24/7 corner store along with a can of processed peas;
one of your five a day.

Farewell Govan -
I go to the sunny side of the Clyde
where it rains just as much
but you don’t get mugged for carrying an umbrella
or asked for the time from a watch-wearing tattooed sailor
and joy-of-joys there will be actual fruit & veg shops
where I don’t have to explain what fresh coriander is
and what you use it for, other than on a pizza;
I was offered dried bottled parsley instead.

Farewell Govan.

What is math?
Or, what is understanding math?
It is a process of working with establishing information, which is much like finding the keys of a piano when blind.
Once the key is played, I remember, however faintly, the steps I needed to find the key.
When there are many ways this key is found, it becomes trivial like learning to ride a bicycle or learning to walk.
Thus, math understanding truly is a way of making truth less meaningful, almost insignificant.
Thus, a branch of knowledge loses its glory, its child-like wonder.
How few of us ride a bicycle  today out of fascination for the ride?
Yet, just as BMX stars compete globally, so too must a creative mind find tools which will allow me to create.
Is math doomed to fate, or will I resurrect it in creative destiny?

I would have this girl, she would have a black bmx. We would ride chest to back, my hand prints burning on her shoulders. As she wore her brown raybans, she would call out to the cars nearby, she would howl like the mutt dog, and race after tailpipes. I would love her slender hips as they twisted over the seat and her legs tinted by the sun as she pulled tricks no two-bit dollar ***** had never seen, just to catch some sun. It looked like she was thirsty for the heat, and she was packing it, whooo-whee, she was packing it. And I loved her from her helmet head to her scuffed cons, from where she had put the brakes on, just to turn around and kiss me in the rush hour.

Anything to have you near, girl, I would tie streamers to my wrist to make it look like we were flying as we rode past the world. I would stand back and hold my arms high, wearing my scruff deep headphones, and a tie to clip her heart to. She wore her grandfathers cap, on her days off the ramp. It was too cliché to wear what the others wore, and she soon too became an article of clothing, many tried to copy and clone. We would lie on the grass, chipping beers bottles and picking daisies, that she would string around my wrist, promising to one day buy me a sidecar.

I tied a plastic rose around her handlebars, and left it for her to find in the morning. She woke me up with a kiss and a cracked mug of tea and told me we had some riding to do. I climbed on the back of her, and tied my arms around her charity shop tee, tight. We zipped between traffic and I told her ‘its a lipstick jungle out there’  and placed my nose behind her ear as she sought out new paths for us to sneak down. When the evening drew closer we found each others hands, and kissed parts of the skin that had arrived pink with the sun, and melted every so slightly into each others hips.

And then the wind came, it threw us off the park and past the roads. She left in the morning dressed for different days. She came home caked in mud and I washed her hair in the bath as she lay with her head in my lap. I told her tales of battles on ships, and stories of fighting, surrender and rising again in the new light of day. At nights we sat by candlelight and sipped ***** wearing lilies in our hair. We sat ink to ink, in bed and watched forgotten movies and laughed till we cried from the sham of it all. We understood each other, her pants hung low from the moment she moved to the time she stopped. Her, my girl, the one with hat and the black bmx; She was my street fighter in a pavement world.

ghosts of slumber parties past.
just a haunted betamax & a stack of oreo sandwiches.
sisters braiding eachother’s hair far past the witching hour,
contemplating life without supervision.

blue house. yellow lawn.
silverback gorilla in one garage.
two garage: empty.
three garage: a woman entombed in exhaust.

          [her bloated tongue]

a gang of bmx boys pizza-fed and friday-high,
hopped up on mountain dew and trading card collectible rituals ‘n rhythmics.
they conjure a demon just to **** and dismember it.
     for funsies.
     for keepsies.

a fang for the shrine at the foot of the old oak tree.
history on the skin, long history, long thoughts, long in the nod like a calm dead frog.
bubbled, boiled, toiled, and troubled.

the woods aren’t haunted.
you   are haunted.
you   are the conduit through which the darkness displays its vivid colors.

          [treefort aflame]

the seasons furrow/
                               / the leaves fall.
little plots of land etched out – subdivision and sprawl.
on the avenue, heaven
& hell made tame and tangible.
built, re-built, and refurbished – a lawn and a lantern.
a mortgaged glory of sparkle and decay.

          [dead cat is a new cat is the old cat ran away]

pictograms of morning light display on mom’s face
as she instructs us on the gusts of love       [scrambed eggs]
& teaches us the truth of nettles sprung
from violent pine.
                                      [toast with raspberry jam]
the television.
the microwave.
the blender beverages.
hymnals of an electric kingdom.
one mom dances, the other expires.

          [restless armless girls in orange sunsets]

girl with a gun at the edge of her lawn and selling lemonade.
girl in an old wicker chair.
save her horror story for another day.

boy with a bent frame bicycle limps his way home
from one end of the avenue to the other.
his pockets full of sparkly rocks found in the lime quarry pit.
one boy in a long line of lost planets.
the driveway.
the refrigerator.
the hum of a saturday night commercial-free cassette.
where’s dad?

                         the glow of an eerie crystal
                                                                     (continued…)

On the south side of kelso if it's there that ya choose to go
Well if its there ya go then ya just gotta know bout a man named tweaker joe
Now tweaker, he's a scrapper and if ya go down on his door
Don't you worry about wakin him up. He aint slept since 74
Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than a five eared dog

Now tweaker hes a scrapper and he likes his shiny things
And he likes to see what fun he has by the chaos that he brings
He got a custom BMX bike with a flashlight on the grill. He got 32 lb of brass in his pack, he got a dope bag in his shoe.

Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog


NOW Friday bout a week ago Tweaker scrappin cars. But at the end of the alley sat a cop named Thurman and ooh dat cop looked ******

Well he cast his light upon joe cuz Thurman had a plan
Tweaker joe learned a lesson bout messin with a future Sherriff man


Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog


Well the 2 men took to runnin and hes dragged down to the jail
Joey looked like a wrung out tweaker with a couple of teeth left

Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog

Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog

The coca-cola breath!
Flashing lights, tweetie birds, the rough narcotic stench

The sky is devoid, it is scared of the streets etched in starlight, everything shining-- tangerine and Coit and ohhhh boy
don't'cha know what you're in for?

Twilight and she is a figment on my mind
the bark of cigar is fiery opal on my slender frame
I can hear something along the lanes of love
Echoing behind me, the rising sun

Funny dudes in new suits, pressed, steamed, machine-rolled
pills in the pockets
shipped locomotive
Every etching has its china
every etching is porcelain skin
The fog is a silken balloon, unconcerned, wayward
The men longingly abide in its cool, the breath of an over-excited lover, singing in the showerhead an embarrassing microphone
over the west coast

It's all over! it's the end
the roads are devoid of the things that called you
They are a clarion horn on the Claremont, facades etched with windowpanes
here the americans eat tofu and pretend it's bacon

I am in the rapidly rotating spoke, enjoying the taste of woodchuck, upchucking my guts every Sunday, white knuckle-- praying to god
release
release

what a steal that's a fantastic car for the price!
it is only 10 years of payment
only 10!
House worth 40, kids worth 60, medicinal payments
corn flakes
Fortified iron gates and god says,
naw let them all out until they drown,
I'll never flood the earth but I'll make it puddles
and if they want they can lay face down

I am eating Korean stew and wondering what will happen
when unification builds a railroad from Moscow to Busan
I will travel it and write a novel or two
it will be
"On the Railroad"
and start in San Francisco or a little while outside
on an October evening with not a fog in the sky
Just sky, blue, blue sky
A child on the hillside
blowing bubbles in the apartment complex or the gravel mound
next to new homes, now cookiebread gingerbed frames
Doing tricks on BMX bikes, getting our elbows smashed, a designated paramedic
It's all built up now, concrete streets and lonely streetcorner lamps saying
Hey we're gonna light up this little space
Hope you don't mind
Please don't play too loud

And given that these spheroids are monumentally moving
hurling like a pitched water glass
everything staying put under the motion of it
Such a lovely rooting of mass

I will call alongside it, crawling towards answers etching on murals and on the stamping of curbs
E-5 West main
4451 Lowell Street
554 Happy Valley Road
It's all the fun little tributaries of surface waters
heading with precognition towards seas
roped into it by specific gravity

On the phone i spoke to Mr. Victorious
I asked him about his particular drone
down south there in the more direct limelight of the night
he told me about his uncle, in prose
of course
we just hung our heads over the speakerphone
Not sleeping the way we should
shouldering burdens as ***** in deserted zones
laughing and preaching to cottonfields

Then there was the girl
the one we forgot, truth be told
The one unrequited impetus for all art, all physicality and feeling
loved by god in the corporeal
She is the saffron reed in my eye, the one i forgot to preach Victory to
She that one oblong pebble, rolled by the stream
passing our campgrounds and continuing her journey to sands
small little microscopic tetrahedral perfection
I could get stuck in between my teeth
or perhaps left on the sweat of the skin
the lost moments of beachside living, love for the expansiveness, left in the diner seat of the car, gotta keep moving
Carrying her away and if not careful,
nestling her back atop the summits from whence she came.

it is a cola in the glass on the shores of the bay,
it is a divine moment of contact in the oceans
two sailors acknowledging their vessels
with light shows and the play of eye
off the horizon, a green light o' sprite.

shapeshifter, son drunk
& changing skins.
he digs up skeletons of a spanish battalion
buried
by tigers on the garden key.

suncresent
spray of blood & oranges.
new-fangled sailors once soaked
in madness.
now just starvation.

the viking speaks:
in limericks of new world poise.
his antler woven mask,
set nicely upon the shore.

seod, turtle lord
of space & time, appears only once
every lunar eclipse. bound by treatise
to the jellyfish triumvirate.
his acolyte,
bolivar t. shagnasty,
wanders the mainland in search of water
or meat of trees.

kindness
of men turns to dust & belly worms.
forgotten, the plants mutate
into root-rich empires
of fish & figurine.
million year armistice.

dr. samuel mudd,
shackled years to tide-slab &
fort jefferson. he
purifies the island of its yellow
shivering death.
hospital key.

fastforward hundred plus years
through mudd lifeline:
battle weary sneakers,
spokes sung by strum of card, the bmx
stridden boy & his
teenage mutant ninja turtle mask.

coming up autumn you were a loving playful tyke,just to lose your 12 year old life last year,to two brothers from the neighborhood who lied and stole your BMX bike.and if that wasn't enough for your DADDY and family to stand,i  remember the case unfolding on tv news and I  your  DADDY  recently kneeling on a football field next to your initials in a park that will be dedicated in your memory and tears came to my eyes ,and the daily news informed me about the anger in that town,which I can understand with you AUTUMN no longer around.a waitness at










barbar

Packed away
fr fr from a speeding bullet
a night time bmx ride to the beach and back again
and again
she's in here
too far too fearless for you to survive this warmth
i'm not souless, just a girl in love
i made me own way here
there is no taxi cab awaiting my drunken ramblin
i am good in bed
i am happy for you
i fell apart a long time ago, ago, ago
i hear YOU scream
i am not that person long ago
you all fell in love with me
and it really it was not me
i decieved you with the cut of my jib
with the line of my skin
deep beauty within
ha hahaha hahahaaaaaa
i will have you
i won't want you
i won't want you
you drunk too much
you take far too much speed to be a queen
la la laaaa la alaaaa
you don't know this but it was not me
whisper me sweet nothings
i've been hurt before,
**** it,
they are nothing compared to you
my bittersweet tears were cried when i left you there
i left myself in your bed
and i knew you would hear me
and dream of me calling your name
i am a pill you hate to swallow
some nidnight ****
you begged and borrowed
to be happy....
are you such a thing?
no methinks not
and you know i know this
and i am in love with you
so deep, so hard i have fallen
2 hours was all it took
2 months was all it took
my world exploded in your hands
you couldn;t handle me
you could not handle this....
i am a cyclone of astute proportions
too much for your shallow heart to bear
and yet i am here
too much far gone
i am her shadow
the beat of her drum
the second glance of her dance moves
she looks at me...
and i can not look away
i knew before i met her
i knew when she got in the car
i knew before i met her
and **** me....
thats all i have to say