Molly Upstairs was the first to greet me
as I moved in
immediately she showed me a new tattoo
she had just had done
upper left arm
it looked like a dart board
she didn’t say why but
within five minutes I had learned her father
had been abusive she had crap taste in men
always went for muscle over brains
her fatal flaw
and
how she paid for it oh how she paid
but
I benefited from the muscle as she hollered up
the stairs and a huge bloke in a grubby bat wing tee shirt
and denim cut offs appeared
grinning, calling me Chief,
and carried the rest of my gear in
without complaint and Molly Upstairs
told me a Norwegian lived on the ground floor
computer geek
worked for a software firm on the edge of town
renting cheap creaming his expenses
and a guy called Sanjeev lived next door to me
sweet guy from Mumbai always looking to borrow
an iron
and to go out for a drink with anyone at
anytime anywhere
another computer nerd she reckoned
and she was all legs and little denim skirt and a
pink tee-shirt that said ‘**** Buddy’
and blond hair pulled back in a black scrunchie
and offered to bake me a cake but she
assured me
it wouldn’t be a sponge one
know what I mean
the peel of crazy laughter from above
the sound of Red Hot Chilli Peppers starting up
pounding bass
the shower’s ****
the landlord’s a ****
if you’ve got a motor
don’t park out the back it’ll get nicked
best to drink and smoke
to dull the pain
but always remember
to have a laugh

The world according to
Molly Upstairs.

Forget the post code lottery
and go for some sort of
Middle England coterie
beware of the railway towns
and all they used to promise
avoid the light industrial towns
the ones that make biscuits
and plastic windows and trap your
children in call centres
the comfort of non-jobs
selling nothing to people who
are nonetheless convinced
they need it
and avoid cities with cathedrals
and universities
they are artifice personified they
have only one aim to debilitate you
with pretense and false hope
and sophistry deep in Middle England and
Do Not Go To Cities With Ports
they are as thieves in the night
forever looking for opportunity
eternally gazing outward beyond
the boundary of shores unwaveringly
scathing of convention and respectable
behaviour
And ignore dormitory towns exurbia and similar
designed only to eat and sleep in
and cut the grass although
the swinging scene
may have its diversions
and then those army towns cowering
below the shambling spectre of
beaten squaddie pubs concrete and
brick boxes with overflowing bottle banks
and what of flower filled market towns
with neat shops and bi-weekly markets
and Friday night louts and teeming
takeaways and broken windows but
you can escape
to a suburban bungalow
lock the gate feed the carp
watch wildlife progammes and
laugh
then running running running
you find
a suitable small mountain village
where you unwittingly
unexpectedly after stroking a
black and white cat
get run over by a drunken postman
in a neat
little red van.

An update from the planet Terror:
Summer’s unpredictable, a case of another day
another personality.
Winter’s dark, complicated and
                an alcoholic.
Spring, well she’s dependable
                if naïve and
Autumn’s a hopeless romantic but
he can only feel lust
                for spring.

Together with common fears
such as
equatorial imbalance
cyclonic weakness
irregular solar activity
polar shifts
ozone variations
threats to the
optimum atmospheric gas mix
and lest we forget
the ensuing ennui
of calm
all of these are worries but
for the seasons who have seen it all
who carry burdens and hopes of their own
the general advice is
to just chill out
and have a smoke.

‘They’re my babies
everyone of ‘em’ she grins
Barb is happy she’s released another character
into the world
Tommy Tickeroo the Angry Alarm Clock
and a publisher is interested
and I’m happy for her and
a bit drunk
more than a bit actually been in the Beehive
since it opened at 11 in the morning
and I’m flicking through the artwork
and Barb is drunk too and trying not to flick
*** ash on her brother’s sketches
of a red ******* alarm clock with googly eyes
and a little moustache
and I wonder about myself
and the book that’s proving a ****** to write
and the cliché of putting those authorly trials
into a poem
I am going to stumble home and write
a poem about a dragonfly instead
darting around on gossamer wings
or a pome as Barb calls it
let’s all write pomes together then have a sing and a dance
‘I’m genuinely pleased for you’ l lie and she grins
and puts her head on my shoulder
and I drunkenly go for the *****
down and out and ****** like a **** for The Art
in the middle of the afternoon
in Nowhere Town.

Imaginary shiny swords are all well and good
when you’ve had a few and fantasies about
being a gilded knight are easy to conjure
and believe and absorb
and the bar is a handy prop
like a public rail at some joust
and Gappy is talking about bottling fog
and why not
and she is *******
and why not
and she is saying
‘so far as I’m concerned Love is Property
do you understand what I’m saying?’
and I smile as I raise the glass to my mouth
and she says
‘and you Ben, you’ve just been evicted.’

Lock me up and feed me
through a shutter.
Devils in the carpet,
Wolves in the skirting,
Whales hanging from the ceiling

and:

I **** fire

and:

I crap boulders

And life is all about yesterdays
and tomorrows,
never about todays.
Time is not a line
It’s a rough cast brick- a
singularity of clay-
I am a clay man,
laden with a hod of
affliction and a weak
world view where
love is an abstraction
and affection a weapon.

Help me.

Come on do The Locomotive with me
Shildon smoky days with black sheet cloud
terrace rows
buy some cheap beef shank for the dog
open shuttered butchers smell of blood
sit at the bar peel the sheets soggy New Statesman
by the glass
started reading it on the toilet at home
had to get out
sink the pints eat a chicken tikka masala flavour
pork pie isn’t that an oxymoron? and humour
Gappy slumped at the bar no longer violent new leaf turned
collects shopping trolleys in the Asda car park
he’s got a badge and a green jacket waterproof
which is nice
so come on do The Locomotive with me
roadside ****** familiar faces though not so many
these days
faded glory days wall images of train filled
old days of engineering and purpose and place
the starting point of a world phenomenon a
phenomenon that brought global joy and death
in equal measure but sod that
Darlington and Stockton
got all the glory.