Francie* is
An odd boy's name;
Uncle Francie
Has the same;
Uncle Francie
Is to blame.

Francis
Is a real boy's name;
It's on documents.
Yet Francie
Is the one that stuck.

But when I turned twenty-two,
I introduced myself as
Fran,
Sounding more like a man.
I got tired of repeating,
Francie rhymes with Nancy.
I got tired of hearing,
How do you spell that, Dearie?

When I drove a limosine,
Clients called me Francine.
When I faltered, when I drank,
I told the cops
My name was Frank.

I believe I'm the same
No matter what I'm called by name.
And even though
My ego's fraying,
I'm pleased to turn
To someone shouting,
*Hey, Francie,
You're **** good looking.

it came to me subconsciously
as i succumbed to my sublimity
a wheel of fortune, i believe
unfortunately, i can't retrieve

but one thing clearly i do recall
"early life" were the words i saw
before life? is that the key?
there is no key, quite possibly

just a ken of surreality...
just a ken of surreality

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
       Are sweeter.
Two lovers caught in time.
John Keats screams my name
and withers my bones with age.
"She cannot fade"
They never age,
they never transgress.
The art captures time
and in life, the clock hands never cease.
My fingers melt the candle wax
as the leaves cover her hair.
And my forehead burns,
as you glance over at my soul.
Maybe there's happiness in Spring.
Are the frozen depictions on the tomb
a prison?
As Keats denounces
"Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."
Thus, do not try to understand the pain.
The Earth will keep moving anyway.
Let what be to be.
You will never receive the answers you need.
So live your life and try to succeed.
"Beauty is truth and truth, beauty."*
Go and trash that seltzer bottle,
there is no background meaning this time.
You ****** up and that's that.
Move the **** on, as you like to tell me.
Dwelling in the past like Tennyson
will only **** you in Camelot.
Just travel back to your home town,
and cry yourself to death.
Why did he paint that Mona Lisa?
It is an enigma while I get higher on
blue and gold grass.
Reason and Logic
is not always the way to understand
the Universe.
You must be content to know
the mysteries and relax.
But I can't accept it,
let's go find out.
Make your universe
smaller and eat up
the dark matter.
While String Theory
launches me into an ether world.
Know this, it is better to appreciate
rather than to uncover the secrets lying within.

dancer of the clouds,
ink of dream,
as if the sky, hushed
and utterly forlorn,
turned a pirouette.

Turn on

I
This is the BBC news at 1 o'clock.
A rambling diatribe,
lost boys, a lost war.
The falling cost of stamps.
'What do you think of the deficit,
Graham from Newquay?'

II
Some bald man
holds a cadaverous gaze.
'She don't want me no more Pauline.'
The ware and tear
of Albert Square
immortalised
in one ***** stare.

III
Ella looked into the eyes of
the African children with bloated
stomachs, scooping up brown water
she wouldn't even dip her toe in.
For a moment, they were face to face.

VI
Margret! Margret!

Look what they're...

Check the cupboard,
have we still got...

uh...

tinned peaches and caster sugar.

V
Our hands, in every listless waft,
wander through an electric soup,
thick as frog-spawn.
Spermatozoa of information.
A gentle fuzz of creation,
our atmosphere is
pregnant with
separate universes that
embed themselves
inside our own.
We broadcast
our noisy planet
to the skies.

VI
'I've seen what's going on,
you don't have to tell me!
I know what they're doing.'
The walls are closing in,
as each breath from her
dusting lungs is getting tighter.
'Besides, my eyes won't let me, or
my knees these days, It's all i'm
good for'  
She wheezes.
'I can see all I need from here.'

VII
Click
I swear 400
*******
channels
And there's nothing on

VIII
As I approach the blue glare
of the living room, I know
she's in there. Not even
watching,
she's on her
iPad. We don't talk.
We went to the
Maldives
once,
after the wedding.
she couldn't keep her eyes off me.

IX
Dead square.
Silent pixels.
Nothings watching.

X
We crept down in the morning - my sister
and me, before anyone else was up and squabbled
what loud cartoon violence would take our attention.
Nightie, pyjama cotton siblings, sewn in to the 7 to 9 o'clock schedule,
we were as vital to each other as sleeping bags and cereal.
Our building blocks stood in a castle,
we were unaware that one day,
they would be strewn across the floor
as we grew up.

XI
We're not going out tonight.
I just want to slip my hands down your
pants and touch you while
we watch game of thrones...
Deal?

XII
Smoke rises behind the mosque
in an arabesque twirl.
The blinding sunlight behind the minaret
crashes on the lens, like a flash bang.

The call to prayer is empty bodies, iconographic art,
cars hollowed, alien tongues, history, a melting *** culture,
cockroach romances, squalid graves, body hewn tunnels, little cuts on
trigger fingers, trained monkeys, orphans, marble carvings,
the stench of petrol, jobless drug habits, brickwork, wiring,
forbidden love, lust, teenagers, plastic explosive, god, work,
prayer, tears, life and death    

and briefly the box is the world in our homes.
We must see who's behind it.

I just want to write

Until there are...

    No words left unwritten,
      No feelings left unhidden,
        No voices left unspoken,
          No hatreds left unforgiven.

Because this is my avenue to express...

          hope and despair,
        happiness and sadness,
       loyalty and betrayal,
      fantasy and mystery,

    And everything in between.
  All in one **poetry