Quick, come to my corner,
I’ll hold you there till the morning sighs it’s un-beguiling chime.

My old mans a dustpan, deadpan, delivered in your sweet shell as an abstract lullaby,
Then we will sleep, tucked to each other like a light and it’s shadow.

In my corner there’s this strange girl, with hair tangled over my shoulder,
Counting sheep, as she and I slide into night.

He eschewed the Spotlight until he was 83,
Then, like a craven child, he leaps,
He totters into a cold cathode pool and is centre stage.

The fledgling son of and upended bride;
Stage fright perhaps,
Trapped in a freeze frame of fear,
Till now at 83,
Clear just to be.

Centre stage his rage is vaulted across an empty house,
The words of a tired and tested former son of a bishops daughter,
The lines of his life relished in anger and vile plots now twisted to ply his crowd with tales of blame.

Yet, he who was Puck is now a king. Weak no more, vaulting from some horse, lancing the beast that has held him down,
Standing for something more than his shabby past.

He was 83, when with glee, he became his own life paradoy,
The fool becomes a king.

A girls arm slides across my back and for a moment, I’m spinning like a kid, sherbet crazed.

All I had done was listened,
Drink did the rest I guess,
Listened to her Thatcher charged rant,
Somehow, innocent, spewed though lipstick rouged cleft lip!

She a plunging sparrow,
Befuddled on tequila,
Diving at a mouse marked with Brut.    

I’m hers,
A hooded, unloved, forlorn, lonely mouse.

Folklore

Word
Of
Mouth,

For impressionable sons and daughters of time,
Children,
Tied like flies to spider web strings and mothers impossible dreams,
Wide eyed,
Lied to,
By ignorant ministers and cider soaked child choked brides.

Word
Of
God,

For Children
Forever dulled and cowed by the good book,
Heavy on this earth like rocks in sand and impervious to reality,
Wide eyed
Lied to,
By gullible Fathers and wine wrecked god bothered priests.

Hand
Me
Down,

Mothers,
Fathers, 
Priests and teachers,

Words that weigh me down to the past and to fear,
Words that chain me to home.

Hand
Me
Down,

Bilge.

A chilled tired man,

Cheated of warmth,
Hungering comfort.

Darker and heavier skies bleed the city of light,
The first specks of rain hit the tired, sun fried, foot worn pavements
And I feel summer sink into my socked ankles.

Archibald Brown, man around town, locks up his sunshade,
The wind lifts rotting fence panels like discarded betting slips
And I smell winter rising in my rattling chest.

Rain on the window, like Mercury drops on a mirror,
Through clouded milk bottle glasses I peer at grey sky and flat green trees,
And I sense Summers end.

Crying now,
Longing for Spring.

Hildegard,
High priestess of poetry,
Ordains her missives as though they were lambs.

Words her flock,
Poetry her salvation.

What am I if not a man with a heart that is weighed down with the absence of you?
I know nothing else.

What am but the man who was too tall to walk down the aisle with you?
If only I were someone else.

Your sweetest smell,
Your lingering light on hair that you stroked and caressed with henna,
Now,
You are a stranger,
Gone.

What am I but the man that won’t let go of long lost you?
I am no one else.

Word
Of
Mouth,

For impressionable sons and daughters of time,
Children,
Tied like flies to spider web strings and mothers impossible dreams,
Wide eyed,
Lied to,
By ignorant ministers and cider soaked child choked brides.

Word
Of
God,

For Children
Forever dulled and cowed by the good book,
Heavy on this earth like rocks in sand and impervious to reality,
Wide eyed
Lied to,
By gullible Fathers and wine wrecked god bothered priests.

Hand
Me
Down,

Mothers,
Fathers, 
Priests and teachers,

Words that weigh me down to the past and to fear,
Words that chain me to home.

Hand
Me
Down,

Bilge.

Heaven was 1977.

See how the Vauxhall Viva rusts aside shooting rhubarb,
How the shed tumbles in golden creosote,
A gate latches with a clunk and there I stand on pebbledash shed tile,
Pushing red Raleigh Grifter to shed with  the family rides.

A cat slinks towards a Whiskas tin a rattling under winding can opener and I am back in 1977.

Heaven was 1977.

Vicky Kingsford was by my side.

Sun played on my home and I was in heaven.

I am man with a loud mouth,
Some would like to shut it tight with lips stitched like a zipped bag,
But I am a man with a free loud voice I choose to let loose on this world.

Deafness would be a gift,
Not to hear my utter bile would be like butter and honey on bread,
But I’m a man who will be in your face no matter how closed your ears are.

The world is full of ill I shout,
Politicians run like tossed free green ball bearings on blue ice,
But I am a man who will not be cast aside and on their heels I’ll be till their ears are nailed to the floor.

A Crowded room bathed in garnet light,
In it, the dammed, desolately await their fate,
Clawing at barbed wire curtains,
Crying as their fears find them.

Hotel Paranoia,
Neon sign blinks, winking at weary strangers,
Manchester back street, off beat Air B&B boutique,
For £45,
A trip into drug induced escape.

Come all ye strangers,
All ye weary Brexit betrayers,
Take a night flight into your dreams,
Fly till your heart rips.

She wanders in golden gardens full of perfumes,
Crowds of travellers find sweet love,
Bliss in the arms of a long lost love,
Till morning comes and gloom returns.

Winding down, sweet Nicole finds something crawling up her sleeve,
Blistering skin peels and blood soaks the sheets,
Dreams become screams and around her,
In the garnet room, travellers find hell.

Flesh crawls with many legged bugs and thugs wielding clubs pull syringes from the floor,
Whilst guests rest in pools of *****,
Their fears coasting, rolling, uncontrolled,
Bliss fades and fear breaks bones.

Far from home in Hotel Paranoia,
Weary fools fly from bliss to fear,
Lights become fires,
Floors become wired,
Dripping taps spill acid onto skin.

Disappear here,
Lie down and disappear.

Eve,
Treasured girl,
Lost in sand or beneath turgid sea,
What if you were a prize for this rough life?
Somewhere to be found at a quests end?

Eve,
Stolen pearl,
A gem too precious for a boorish fool.

When all that befalls this man subsides,
Will you be my silver and gold?

Eve,
Lost treasure,
A pleasure through cowardice lost,

too long.

Dummy turns a plastic cheek,
Ready for a drunk thugs slug of fist on PVC.

Father made dummy boy like some hurried Pinocchio,
But wood was too good,
Too alive,
Too sensing.

Plastic bends and buckles as the brutes words distorts a flexing mind,
Days pass and the dummy child goes to school.

A dummy listens but has no life of its own,
No words, works or wants,
No defence.

School boys laughs at the dummy child,
But the dummy has nothing to return.

Dummy boy leaves school,
Scared, scarred, plastic head stretched like elastic,
Tragic.

A dummy site in a window,
The object of passing eyes and self customised to court attention.
Plastic fool throws himself to the crowd and the whims of those who see his flaws.

Sing for me my sweet dream,
Of dawn with you beside me.

Sing for my lullaby,
Of nights with your touch on my skin.

Sing for me my dark demise,
Of love that’s met with derision.

Sing for me my hearts cold grave,
Of death, slow and full of pain.

Drip drip,
Rivulets,
Swarming silver drops,
Like rivets on cold metal,
But you are hot.

Perspiring,
Burning,
Crazy lady runs,
Chasing her own 24 inch waist,
Fighting fat.

Lycra leotard,
Labelled,
Fashionista fitness fetish,
Wanting every eye to desire her,
Dehydrates,
Sizzles,
Drizzled,
Expires.

Click,
Slick,
The whir of Jenny,
Tinny Jenny on ball bearing wheels.

A slick *****,
Clicks his fingers,
Jenny glides to his side,
Pen and paper in hand.

Jenny purrs,
LEDs wink under false lashes,
Mechanoid pretence at femine,
Tips a wink and lifts a steel leg under tin foil skirt.

“Your order Sir”, she chirps,
As Slick **** ***** an eye at aluminium thigh.

“Chips, silicone chips”, he replies,
Jenny’s circuits fry,
Dumb waitress cry’s light oil from glass eye.

Slick *****,
Rick,
Laughs as Jenny’s electronic whine murmurs incoherent bleeps,
Systems down,
Fuses blown,
Jenny’s memory erased.

Nursing cracked paper backs and dusty reference works,
Softly uttered beauty,
Topped by brown bun glows in alabaster skin,
Bespectacled,
She whispers,
Quiet please.

Words slip through fingers,
Stretched,
In constrained eroticism,
A country woman in tweed.

Her passing stamp,
Over a pristine white sheet,
beckoning,
“return”.

Reading her unspoken words,
A chapter opens,
I succumb to her prose,
Love,
I suppose.

Council coin counter padlocks the  door,
**** here no more they pronounce.

The lady Mayoress of 1952’s dreams are dead,
How she simpered,
Cutting the municipal ribbon,
Beckoning flys to open for her creation.

Now,
Coffeers in the red,
Fred from the chrome door plated department of the WC’s, bolts the whole fancy and flys zip back up.

Brexit ******* means no exit from our miserly mendacity in the face of civic decline.

“You can **** in your own home”, the local Wig proclaims,
Fiscal pressure means a motion that stops your motions mate.

The council bids your poohs adieu and asks you to refrain from complaint.

Write your tiny feet off till your broken limbs fix
in some chronic cracked atrophy,

Your words ache with the hurt of someone who
fell through the cracks in your fractured life.

Write your scrawny hands off till arthritic joints fix
in some withered locked paralysis.

Your words drown the the ache from she
who your tiny mind fails to move beyond.

Moon maddened,
Spoon with me my Luna,
On a blood Moon July,
You and I,
Cry as we die in ecstasy.

In your Dad’s Wolsley Saloon,
Leather blue seats warm in Summer Sun,
Sticking to our near naked skin,
Scorching our young bodies.

We gasp as the rays of a day bleach the body of his car,
In tin and leather,
We gasp as our young eyes awaken,
Our first Summer of love.

In just some flimsy Bikini,
You slither in the sand,
Legs like a Mermaids tail,
You writhe before my primitve eyes.

Sand plays across your browning skin,
As I inhale your unique smell,
Umber wood tinged with vanilla,
Your blond hair alight under sun.

You tease this shy boy till he runs away,
No courage to make any kind of pass,
You slip into the grass of a dune,
I stroll behind lost in want.

Mothers pride loaf carved by hands lost in days of spam teas and stewed fruit puddings,
Hands so tired they now rest idly.

Patterns for grand pullovers poured over as children grow and set off for school,
Discarded under word search puzzles.

Heels tapped on bus steps as she climbed aboard the Bath bus and children’s hands held tight,
Grown now they drive to her side.

At her window she waves watching family leave for cars and journeys home,
One last goodbye and sleep comes.

Greyhounds bolt,
Elastic dogs,
Trapped till the rabbit runs.

A gun fires and punters wave papers,
Smudged smutted hankies,
To wish poor puppies on.

Rabid run,
Rabbit run,
Dogs ‘fun’ done,
Punters wins to spend on ***.

Dogs retire to a night behind wire,
Howling,
Cold,
Whining.

Punters swagger to a night of vice,
Yelling
Warm,
Wining.