Away, not home,
this continental heat.

The air pretends
this North Atlantic rock
is worldly

The smiles of the natives
lean manic
as we clutch at multipack lager
and disposable charcoal,
grasp at the living myth
of a cloudless sky
and give ourselves to these gods

Our worship sees us sacrifice
meat and skin,
both burnt to early hours regret
and delicate, bathroom sorrows

A sporadic bacchanal
whose scarcity ensures
that be it working week,
weekend or holiday,
feverish
we’ll pay the tithe

Sunstroke and/or hangover
prove penance for our lapse
from the frigid, three bar
Protestant norm,

but these exotic gods will beguile again
even as the blistered skin still peels

If I could save time in a bottle
my clumsiness would see me spill it

As memories soaked into the rug,
loves, losses, laughs and deaths
would mix as they spread,
to send remembering askew

Not so much a blank slate
as everything old and new blended,
same highs, lows, pains and leaps,
felt and forgot together,
so the never-neverland of you
is and never was

Person Man Woman Camera TV

As much a testament
to current reality
as any babbled, 24 hour, rolling drivel
from partisan spokesfolk
who affix the yoke of profit
by making and driving the wedge

In the wide awake courtroom,
alone, maybe 3 A.M.
you can hear the truth,
have the human faculties,
can see the evidence,
even if the verdict hurts

It’s less painful than making eye contact
with a mirror image who allows
the lies
the loss
the inhumanity
just to heal a bruised ego
and still not sleep easy

Like, you float
and welcome the buoyancy
But
a mooring now and then
would be loved

The smell of you,
an impossibly intense run of ones and zeroes
converted to map your DNA
G A T T A C G A...
like everyone and no one

Forbidden skin folds, slickly hidden,
I carried with me
with some half lies that helped
keep everything off radar
‘til ready

Cottoning on to the lost in me
with fingers and caresses,
blessing a gleeful wink of grins
to an adulthood
that refused to begin,
and refuses still

Little feet buckled up
in scuffed Clarks,
we ambled down hill

Below, the valley
coloured toasted wheat
smelled of forever

The school hall,
everyday familiar
for singing hosannah
became exotic, foreign

Different games played
and illicit sherbet
in cardboard tubes
to be chewed to a pulp
in carefree mouths

All the term rules fell,
and stayed away
til the apple trees called time

Wet grass caps toes,
a long missed inconvenience,
each pace lifting
weight long loved

The dappled, leaf stopped light
tries to placate,
but you won’t stay

Like time and tide
you wipe your face clean
and disappear through trees
with no trail

I shot the breeze today
with crickets, beetles,
spiders and caterpillars,
we held a moot.

Each representative, a voice:
words in the clamour
to be heard

In these lands of
many common grasses,
breeze told anecdotes,
arachnid needs
and insect calls for attention
often get ignored

Stopping to sit,
look through clutches of eyes,
sing with rattled wings
and chew cud,
can help retune the din
to be cleanly heard

Remind me again
of the where and when of it,
it’s slipping through my finger memories
and my heart slows

Tell me of the Technicolor past,
even with the scratched film stock
I need to see it again
to affirm the mummers truth
and rest easy

I know you tire of the words,
of me,
sorry, sorry me

But the third reel is fixed
and the epilogue’s flickered approach
rattles near

Before the credits roll
narrate me a last flashback
to suspend our disbelief in

The bittersweet blast
of ending another
another one.

Weird, unnatural, irrational.

Mixing maudlin with
the electric buzz of new beginnings,
we will drink and sleep,
cheap grins on our faces
‘til we’re adrift in three week’s time.

These days and friends are mine.

Bewildered by the difference,
the vast, unknown shape of it all

Not moments before,
ensconced in familiar tangles,
routinely fed and tended by parents
who flared and chattered
at the merest prospect of a threat,
met only by bolshy robins
who scoffed at fear
and tumbles of sparrows
who hid in each other

This necessary, Hail Mary leap
sees me petrified
grounded at the foot
of an adulthood full of flight,
song and the weight of freedom

if I can just get through
these cat clawed days and nights

A green myth
to explain away why things
just aren’t quite right
and the briar patch of ages
twists in verdant sinister ways

The familiar snag and scratch
bleeds differently
and won’t be soothed the same
so welts scar visible
and tell tales

New normals are bandied about
with as much thought
as the path that led here
and the beatification of old normal
is sealed

A hand cast the jigsaw pieces
of my redemption wide
and I walk to find them

Gapped puzzle patches showing
a veneer beneath, of reasonable quality,
are nonetheless an irritant

The late game phase
I assumed would be easier
has not especially yielded fruit

Still reliant on chanced epiphanies
this approach lacks the efficiency
my bald head and white whiskers
belie

My absent minded eye,
turned inwards on issues
of land and place,
did not at first see your dilemma

As the bully bird towered over
you hopped in looping rolls to flee

My eye caught up
and my fat presence unnerved the bird
who flew
and though I presented a different challenge
you bounded hedgeway
pausing in front of me momentarily

Our eyes met,
your black polished buttons
spelled your youth
and redundantly I greeted you

I stepped aside
to better let you escape
to tangle green safety
and I was alone again,
grasping at thoughts

The rest of my walk was elevated:
a wind struck tree,
dry guts splintered,
said something

A lithe muntjac
rose panic in me as it sought to pass,
it’s leaping form unusual,
but there and gone
before I knew

Green woodpecker laughed
at an unknown gag
and my brow furrowed

Toward the end
the complicated wren song,
a grammar babble way beyond,
underscored my lack of comprehension
all the way home

I got bitten by a spider,
but this is England.

A certain arachnid
politeness is expected,
holding back on venom,
for example,
or moving at a predictable, parochial pace
and arranging eyes, legs and hairs
to not offend.

Hanging out in bedside sleeves
so an early morning stumble
is accompanied by slow burning
pin ******
leaving mild swelling and discomfort
is just not cricket.

Don’t get me started on
those chirruping buffoons.

The loud yawn of time
when you are held tight
is petrifying

An indifference to your captivity
as nature sees to normalcy
reveals our fleshy entropy
as nothing more than energy
to wax and wane

Beached pebbles
on an infinite shore
to pretend more is orange ignorance

There is solace, I guess
in acceptance,
but our primal, primate arrogance
prevents much

A metal nosed thought
wished for bark dreams
and grass forgetfulness

Let me sell you a fraction of truth
slanted to fit the froth-rage box
you live in

I’ll dress it in grave tones,
even implicate a scapegoat
so your priapic blast
has a focus

I’ll use fonts from Comic Sans
to Times New Roman
to ensure you bite the hook

When you look in our mirror
the hate will be palatable,
tasty,
wholesome

and as we gorge we’ll starve

Caterpillar
Windowsiller
Crawl across
Do what you willer
Caterpillar
Stomach filler
My dad calls you
Cabbage killer

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

Pause

For thought or effect,
the end’s the same

Played your hands in the game like always

But

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

And where did the vitriol get you,
old man?

To a better place?
Where fat white women sing your praise?

While at home your carbon copies
bust their lips
when the home team loses?

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

You waiting for something?
Applause for working a nine to five
and allowing a fraction
of your take home to be spent on living,
raising?

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

I’ll stand over you now
As you stood over me
Instead of raining blows
I’ll let the misery of your truth
Catch in your chest
and fight for the cause

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

To be ginger in a heatwave
is to know that a surfeit of energy
that enthrals the populace
has consequence

Like any addict with an allergy
landed on a thing they love
you learn to skirt and sample
knowing sickness follows

The uninitiated will gorge and fall
swearing off the juice for good
and withdrawing a raised voice
which is bad

Pace yourselves for the longness
of an unexpected summer
so that when winter hits
we continue to burn

Sometimes
Sundays suit fewer words
so thoughts can bed in

Even more so
with a gin and tonic
and a film
that plucks at memories

Take to the streets
and beat them with kindness,
club them with your decency,
ram home an ideology
to show that looking after our weakest
saves us all

hobble them with thumps
that scream
a little love goes a long way

that those that aren’t the same as you
in hue or shape or song,
if hearts are good,
belong in your world

cut them to the quick
with cameraderie
support and tolerance
destroy their unjust fears
and crush their tribalism

In cracking hard heads
the only death we’ll see
is a diseased past
which, unlike other countries
races or creeds,
needs to be lost and forgotten

Holding on to painful glories
costs more than the oxidised bronze
of an old man’s statue

Stand arboreally tall,
present a strength,
represent stability,
provide a safe place,
wide-branched sanctuary,
hold rooted principles,
speak truth to power,

til the hour you break and tumble,
your fingers thumbs
and your heart falling
numbed

senses bent, thoughts fraying,
tattered threads evasive,
the very idea of existence,
position,
self,
buckles

Far-sightedness retracts,
a fancy contra-zoom,
Hitchcockian,
eyes locked on your two feet,
tip-toes edged up
against your own precipice,
your own private void

We all feel this
sooner or later,
but its ridiculous melodrama
stills our tongues to tell,
til we’re left believing
we’re the only losers facing hell

To speak is strong,
to cry courageous,
to panic and dread next steps, next breaths,
is human

I pledge to listen, ask for the same
and beg that next time
we keep shooting the breeze
until the ledge fades

My free stumbling foot
disturbed your treetop dining
and you took flight,
vivid yellow talons
gripping a glut-plump
summer rat
in best of health if not for
inches of claw
****** through chest

I see that carrion
is not your only meal
as I’d believed,
discounting your size
as faux majesty
by a flamboyant opportunist

But now I see you better
and in proving to pick your battles,
know you more

Emptinesses
framed by inequalities
that sew the disaffection,
throw the disenfranchised into
blues sharp relief,
stark contrasts of
black and white
rich and poor
needful and needless cries

There should be no politicking
or filibustered unkempt bluster
in the emptiness of children’s stomachs,
nor grave injury from
the ignorant knuckles of authority

Hunger of all kinds
in guts and minds
brings pain
and a shame to even voice,
for there shouldn’t be cause
to have to

Hunger has a way of spreading
to hearts and minds
and when hurting enough
will drive change

But not alone

The comfortable,
careful, silent,
the full,
must give time,
use voice,
use currency,
and fight

Glimmers in the hinterlands
as I begin to settle
into reaching my Old Ben days.

So rage reshapes, tempers
and can be passed
to the compassionate and energised youth

Torch will still be borne
and saber swung
but I’ll pay in aches and pains
in coming days
and likely collapse to
sage blue spirit status

My anger slowly feels
like an elegant weapon
for a more civilised age
while the streets call
for the bluntness of a blaster

I’ve mastered thinking round and round
and missed chances to parry,
but my force will be added
to the great wave of change

This empire is dead

Sometimes words fall out
vehement, blood high,
incendiary,
meat thought chained
like sausage link
or metal hard train cars
yanked by emphatic engines

Other times the pool swirls
and breezes blow
oppositional
and as lungs slow labour
thoughts drift and slip from place
languid fingers trace ripples
that may mean nothing

The mind needs time to breathe
and holler equally
so we can feed and be fed

Exhausted
kneeling so grit is driven deep
and the sneer and shove
of those robed in a fake love
harries

The smug, paid for fists
of sanctioned thuggery
inflict blows that go beyond
contusion and haematoma
deep into a world soul,
and scar

Solutions are there
if we bring a whetstone
to the keen edge of care
and weaponise kindness

Because something that has
been a mess for generation upon generation
can’t be ignored to fester more

It is time to exercise rights
and excise

If you did, then you would
but you don’t, so you won’t,

to pretend otherwise
makes an *** out of you
and a corpse out of me

Let’s think
of the sunk cost fallacy
whereby
the sweat, tears and cash
you’ve ****** into your endeavours
means you never let go
of your burning ambition
so you beg borrow steal
to stave off the immutable truth
that you’re wrong

Then let’s think
that instead of a business
or crazy high jinks
you invested in the sense that
some humans outrank others
at birth
and hidden behind the privilege
of that thought you ignored
what was often in front of your face
or at your work place
or fatally jogging through your neighbourhood
til it shone straight in your eyes

and your beg steal borrowing
does nothing
because lies and filthy ideologies
can’t stand the light of day
so grasp as you will at
the pictures and voices of shills
who defend the grotesque
and try to mess up a people,
a nation,
with fat cat, fat handed,
fat tongued oppression
your fingers *****, but empty

The lesson:

it’s ok to be wrong

it’s ok to draw lines
under ugly pasts
so futures can be brighter,
you can apologise,
learn
and make right

Millionaires down on our luck
that’s the story, isn’t it?

With one lucky chance or a gold watch
found in a yard sale
to propel us to the heights
of hob-nobbery,
this time next year, yeah?

Another item on the unwritten list
known by those that were born to know
is that luck is a commodity
like any other
bought and sold by ‘families’
who hoard it,
a surfeit
beyond any lifetime’s need,
releasing just enough
so we all see it
and believe it to be in reach

Unless the stars aligned
when you were born
chances are you won't be on
the List
and you can make a good fist of work
and burn your very soul
in an effort to reach that goal

yet when you burst your heart for the win
the posts have shifted
and you’ll lie spent
looking at expensive leather shoes
or highly polished boots
as they step over you

Work and noise are not enough
when the system itself serves
the few

work and noise are not enough
for things to get better
for all
and unshackle luck

no justice, no peace

Acknowledge: the infinitesimally small chance
of any of us being born,
with utterly no choice
regarding shape, size or colour

A quirk of an elegant double helix
mixed by the hand of years and years
leads to our underbite
or sticking out ears
or skin

Imagine then: some folk in this long odds dice game
are deemed by implicit consensus  
to have lost at birth
and the cost is constant denigration
and a knee on the neck

That any of us from the species **** sapiens
could have hearts that are stopped
by the cruelty of blind chance is ridiculous
and should be seen and felt by all,
and rage should follow

The balm of sun and charcoal smoke
instantly evoke lost togetherness
from the very first time in the eighties
when beguiled by a well fired banger
and Russ Abbot opined a party

Hold fast to the Proustian rush
as soon enough the dim seasons will return
and the muted, sterile days withhold
all but a sense of cold and pause,
so revel in the glut and sing

The words we say to you
aren’t strictly true
as much as they do
what we want them to

shaped and spun
with hidden gears
so when they reach ears they fit
K-chick!
neatly settling
without drawing attention
to the shabbiness
and moth holes

Look here my good man!

Hand shadows dancing
on a bright screen
hiding meaning
in dumb show gestures
of duck quacks and rabbit concerns

In Oz, the wizard’s heart came good,
behind our curtain
you’ll just find avarice
and certainty
that a brief, gout ridden future
means more to us than you

I’m thinking of The Orb
and the crusty, mucked crystal
of the transition from child to adult,
scored and soundtracked

excoriated by blunt first loves,
first lives lost, tempest tossed,
into oversensitive abysses
from which there’s “Never loving again!”
except after growing and knowing

Lo-fi made it easier and harder
than these cheeky bleeders,
at least, I know my bare cheeks on film
would take weeks to get back from Boots
and not be broadcast to Kuala Lumpur
in seconds

Age beckons
always
in a way we revulse at
but blunder and succumb to

You becomes we becomes us
as no bad thing
but we must honour
our custodian status
and not impose

The stupid vine grows
where it’ll grow,
we demonstrate this
wonderfully

Something is rotten,
but not in the state of Denmark
the body politic is sickening from the spread
as the virus flows and ebbs around us
but that’s not the biggest threat
to our collective, collected health

the insidious radiation that emanates
when certain men step out
from their lead-lined bunkers
is weakening our sinews,
loosening our hair and teeth
and mocking and braying at our grief

backed up as it is
by mustard gas clouds of lies
built on the bones of xenophobes and the afraid
some with excuses, or, whatever,
but most with puce, spittle-flecked faces
apoplectic at the creep-dawning realisation
of their impotent, way it’s always been ways

and like the Cnuts they clearly are
rather than retreat from the waves
and figure out more sensible ways to behave
as centuries progress
they will ‘make a stand’
thick, bitter filled pint-mug in hand
‘til the tide will see them drown

meanwhile on dry, rich land
the tin-*** Machiavellis
rub their hands and drive long away
to have their eyes tested,
divest themselves of kids,
or check on their second homes
as the bloated bodies bob out to sea
all too slowly

Splinter and divide,
time after time,
bluster and misdirect,
point to the workshy or foreigners,
twist the knife in vulnerable hearts
and fan the fear

We’re here because at some point past
we agreed this land should last
that it stands for goodness and right
and all heads shared the thought
so the idea
became

Our disgust and indignance
threatens a retreat
so the squeakiest wheel triumphs
through attrition

Your mission,
should you choose to accept it,
is this:

Call out the heartless, the bleak,
the self self self serving,
the thoughtless, the blinkered
the unthinkers

Every breath, every day
our grit and mettle can save us
and an idea worth saving

A sum total of immediate family gathered
at a seaside Italian cafe
half loving getting time together
half dreading the weight of the urn

taking turns to tickle flippancy
in an honoured tradition of laughing
in the face of the massive horrors of life,
scales on the crusty familial armadillo

It’s time

Each step beyond the coffee steam
feels further into foreign territory
where defences weaken
even though the climb is sweet

we walk up a hill to reveal a familiar vista
that youth ignored huffily, heartily
and adulthood yearns for,
where memories pepper current steps

The humour shield holds until the ash is cast
when my throat clutches to swallow
knowing that my reasoning can’t break this,
even though you’d wipe it away

You aren’t allowed to soothe these tears,
they serve for the years and years,
pay pennies into arcade machines
and buy novelty rock never eaten

The bedrock and foundation of us
stands on this sometimes sunny head
holding hard to the ropes and lines
until the next handover

The kingfisher lazily perched today
as a sorry river sloped below
fish so visible that fishing
felt like cheating

But, y’know, gift horses and such,
and a full mouth for the nest
is best for everyone
I guess

though glimmer and flash
are rarely seen without challenge
we all need a dose of easy pickings
to even the game

Stone memory
and earth thought
hurt sometimes
when you remember what was
not is

Life is never pliant
we just have to go with the grain

remaining just to say
we remain

To peddle-spread hateful ideas
for those ignorant, well shaped ears,
I’ll give my soul and principles

I get paid
if I write about interest rates
or incite racial hatred,
means the same to me

the same commute,
the same sheets and pillow
the same hollow darkness
that saw me lost

I get one chance in fat font
to grab the weary and scared
so I’ve gotta make it count

Where’s the sweet spot
that I can tap with a
keyboard shaped geology hammer
and bust out the fossilised feelings?

My skill is to polish and shine
‘til their thoughts are mine
to sell with ill intentions
and a voucher for money off a burger

These dry bones
once fit together strong
while time flowed one way:
on

That current held surprise
that knocked joints off guard
and a lied about collapse
occurred

Their ham fist could grip limbs
and clunk them together
in a fruitless pulse,
for what?

The trunk and branch
of what’s to come
must be reseeded
mulched and nurtured,
maintained root to crown
in different growth
or the same clown gardeners
will bring us down

The path ahead is unclear
the first few steps seem fine
(as fine is redefined by times)
beyond is cowled in green gloom
with definition hidden
but enticing

We pause and breathe
ask feet to tentatively tread possibilities
for surer surface

The line ascribed
by timeless river run
seems safe
and the possibility of kingfishers
is a draw indeed

But we have seen these river banks
lost to inundation
and irresistible weight

To realise this too late
would be fatal

so we collaborate in waiting
and make the call

I lay and looked up today
and on the cerulean blue
a letter was written in different hands

Starlings told of the everyday
shuttling from A to B til teatime
while flits of blue *** and dunnock
hinted at local worry
maybe at the lackadaisical cat
whose frou-frou collar
ruins the hunt

In fancy script the swifts
wrote high and mighty
chasing the imperceptible,
so not so distant really

The paragraph break of the red kite
weighed in
and wings and fingers stopped
to marvel
at near perfect epistolary

It costs to live
we know this
but the currency is ours to spend

We should be livid at those
who pretend to care
espouse our best interests
but then push us
to be batteries for a
busted machine

Remember their fat faces
when we’re clear
their arch indifference
and disdain, for once,
for our fear

When they return again
to using our dreads
against us

remember

Blossom caressed
fat leafed
unabashed
exhibitionist spring
get out and let it couch you
to forget
and remember

I broke a commandment
and sat in the garden mid-afternoon,
so technically on the clock

every other life around me
lived
had a purposed buzz
and flap-winged damns to give
while mine were elsewhere,
somewhere

not gone, I guess
just hidden in emails
and dumb-watching other people’s
screen creations
from the follow/subscribe sidelines

and the industry of beasts
leaves me in a shade-corner
shamed by a simplicity
that my chosen complications obfuscate
poorly

Sometimes there’s peace
in this restriction,
you get gifted a lucid
memory trail that you can wander
with a heart that sings back
to the echoes within

At other times it’s fibreglass
or vitriol under the skin,
prickle-burning every thought,
flaring angered embers
that refuse to chill

It’s a sickness
that infects our wishes
and snuffs the daily ebb and flow
of our earned minutes
as we yearn for the next high point
where we can
just
let
go

No escaping
this fickle, clumsy spectre,
just a recognition
that its patience wears as thin as ours
and it will pass

Having faith in the change
the wind might bring
is a thing
y’know?
a challenge
testing bitter thoughts
and locked up hearts
too long apart

But it will blow
y’know?
this wind we wait for
bringing other thoughts
to sit inside
and while away togetherness

I watch the forecasts
come and go
y’know?
and pretend that there’s a pattern

This mapped isle
has never been one
for clement weather
but I’ll pretend to know