I am in a room made of glass, sorry,
let me clarify,
the walls and doors are glass,
the carpet is woven by a machine where the workers are limited to toilet breaks,

the plants are plastic in pots of gravel

but the walls are glass and everyone can see in and I can see out.

The table is shaped like a kidney, don't ask me why, it just is, manufactured by a factory making furniture shaped like human organs.

That's the shape of the table, I can't change that,

and the chairs are moulded from one piece of plastic, in bright colours and people look in through glass walls.

I look out and I am really not there.

The onion doesn't have layers
it has panels
nailed to its skin.

On occasions
he goes back to the warehouse
where he stores broken typewriters,
unfinished narratives of the campaign,
unexploded bombs.
sellotaped wires.

He audits his feelings
keeps them neatly arranged
on shelves and spreadsheets and

he examines them against the light
and is pleased with his investigations.

Like modern day knights
we muster around a
table.

We don’t wear shiny armour
we wear suits that are 50% polyester
50% rayon.
Our jousting poles are have been

replaced with
nervously bitten biros,
and on a fuzzy screen the MD appears
speaking from a country where the currency is
colourful

but ultimately worthless.

His voice is delayed giving

and talks of mergers, leverage &
buy outs.

But I fade out like a ghost image in a propaganda film,

doodling hieroglyphics on a pad.

From the window I see workmen digging a
hole and I wonder will they ever reach China?

I dream of rigged lacrosse matches
won in 4th quarter
overtime

of chess games won with en passant
(what exactly is that?)
of horses falling at the first hurdle.

I dream of Martian landscapes
through sand-dunes of heartache
because as a child, at McDonalds
I was never allowed a milk shake,

while in my waking hours I have
absolved a multitude of sins for
lapsed nuns, ringmasters and troubadours.

I have filmed riots,
marathons and abortions.

I have seen things
pickled in jars
holding open heavy doors.

I have tried,
like an idiot
to commit all this to
memory.

the rain wet floor
the man with a birth mark in the shape of Pangea

the backwards baseball cap

the re-used meme

the re-used meme

the idea of “retro”

cumulus clouds floating

heavy &

overhead

all electrical goods just sitting on stand-by

waiting

the machines are waiting

the blueprints that are 1mm out
at right angles to the rest of the world neon lights flash downtown

reflected on wet concrete

arriving at a destination and not knowing how you got there
my glasses leave an indentation on the side of my head
my children are asleep and I can see the signs

a new Netflix series that goes on for 125weeks – I have no stamina for this –

the mundane beauty of a leisure centre
the perfection of the shopping mall

Pavement where
an egg shell should not be

that perfect shape
fractured with spider leg cracks

across the surface
of its world

how did they get there?
those Nazca Lines?

And the amount of discarded shoes seems to be multiplying each day,

the busted boot on the traffic island
its been there for weeks

a plimsoul
childs shoe

strangely,
they're all left footed

is there significance in this?

I look for patterns in everyday things,

TV Schedules
wallpaper

colouring books
Sudoku squares

floor tiles
Tube maps

football scores

I keep looking for clues
like a retired detective who just can't let go

The snipers rifle hung from the parapet
still warm, cordite drifted from
the business end.

It resembled a cigarette,
dangling in the groove of an
ashtray which was given to you
as a souvenir from a place
you had no desire to go.

And you had no desire to go there
as you had read stories of donkey
cruelty and the militias’ refusal to
accept Greenwich as the
centre of time.

Their struggle against the meridian
has been well documented in film and
prose.

Stories and rumours filtered in
from the hinterland, carried home in
economy flights from different time zones
arriving at the terminal, milling around the
carousel.

****** victim 4 lay in a forensic
scene, white tapped surrounded by
duty free bags, and the secret dossiers
exposing the militias plans drifted, blood
stained in the breeze.

Red post boxes stand on street corners like aged prostitutes
rusted and flaking
and they are going the way of phone boxes and TV aerial?

Are there still milkman?

Who writes letters?

Postcards from men
working down a pit?

Stuck in the trench
I killed time by attening seminars about powerful words,
the history of things,  
body language as legitimate currency
exposing the micro.

A craven emptiness screaming extinction.

Thunder over Karl Marx’s grave
here comes night
running at me with scissors
dangling sellotape
half finished art projects
still weigh heavy on your mind

like all those missed opportunities,
a C should have been an A.

Pastels not paint. The smudged trail of a finger
across ****** feelings which
surface back to tentative fumblings
with a sister’s friend’s Barbie

the smooth plastic bendable limbs

the positions configured with a one armed Action Man
eagle-eyed and
watching

and if I ever feel down
if I ever feel low
I think back to a story I once read about a woman
who had her face ripped off by a chimpanzee
and as she screamed
the chimpanzee leapt up and down
primitive rage grinning.

Not a pleasant sight I can imagine
but when I feel down,
that’s what I think about,
a woman
and a chimpanzee
ith a face hanging from his primate fangs.

Lets go to his party later,
I don’t’ know the address
I never have,
but I know how to get there.

The house has a blue door.

We can dismantle the hosts bike
and throw the frame up a tree
let nocturnal birds fly off
with pedals in their beaks.

We can padlock his fridge,
and when no ones around
we’ll place a pigs foot under his pillow
then we can **** on the coats in a dark room
where we shouldn’t be.

We’ll ingest pills and potions and have epiphanies
under paper shaded IKEA lights.

Midnight is staggering down the hallway and
she was keen to remind me “we are appendixs in someone’s story “

the snow, white
soft like an albino Afro
then the compacted crystalline crunch
cracked under the weight of a human foot.

behind books never lent
there is a worm hole to different worlds.

However, this being a library,
this discovery has never been discussed
or articulated.

Attempts to share the secret are met with a finger
to the lip and a ssshhhhh
from the hatchet faced librarian.

Time will tick by on a watch,
attached to a skinny wrist,
the hands rotate casting small shadows over roman numerals,
silhouetted behind bonsai tress with eyes that squint tight in this end of summer light.

Phones serve no purpose until they ring,
and in hospitals life support machines beep beep electronically
as people are feed through tubes that gurgle
and words get stuck in their throats as life constricts and
in these ***** municipal corridors death stalks dressed in a stained uniform.

Men in ties crunch numbers and say, ”There is no way to say this Mrs Smith, it would just be cheaper if your husband died.”
We can turn off the switch and you can take him home in the back of your car.
You don’t have a car?
That’s ok, a bus stops just outside.”

Leaves are falling early this season turning the floor brown.

The surgeons listened to jaunty be
bop while they cut through his cranium.

A metal plate was inserted,
dissecting memories and thoughts,
causing confusion between
his now and then.

He left hospital with a funny taste in his mouth
which he could not name
or shake.

During the period of convalescence
his children tried to cheer him up
by attaching fridge magnets to his head.

a cow, a banana, the Tower of London,
a badge reminding them to Give Blood.

One fridge magnet secured in place a drawing,
reminding him of childhood pictures which were
seventy five percent blue sky
and twenty five percent thick
bands of green grass

and all the family stood outside
where sunflowers were bigger than houses.

I was sitting on a train with my pad and a pen, trying to write a poem. I had no title, but I had written down the first line

...I was sitting on a train with my pad...

A man sat opposite me.
After a minute or so of scanning his paper and throwing cursory looks in my direction
he enquiried "What are you writing?"

"I'm trying to write a poem about a man trying to write a poem on a train
who gets asked by a stranger 'what are you writing'.

"Can I be in it?", asked the stranger opposite.

"You already are", I replied.

The train pulled out of the station.

My dreams are compact

and filled with bored accountants waiters leaving second hand shops
in fashionable post codes,

dressed like bit part actors
carrying spare hands,
gripped at the wrist,

dangling.

Their voices are a magical shrill,
a goats bleat
a synthesizesr whoop,
mesmerizing pigeons
and paper sellers
alike.

And you know how it is,
when you find you share a name
with a famous person

you look for frames of references,
points of similarities
but you find none,

only that you share the same name.

She faked her own death
and is believed to be buried
beneath the fourth runway
by the new apartments
fire engine red doors
over there:
the sunset is dripping
on to chewing gum pavements

in the window
a silhouette of her ******* prove
that she's alive, amongst silly revolutionaries,
aviators
avatars
and questionable friendships.

Scandinavian diets are seen by the satellites.

The artist only used black,
he wouldn't say why his mum named him after a King

in palaces where feral children investigate
the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle from their sofa where

they translated “idiot savant” as
stupid servant was written on permanent files

somewhere hidden alongside
DVDs that were posted on line showing monkeys in boxes
throwing themselves to death against perspex walls

splattering Rorschach patterns of childish nightmares,
the boogeyman.

A butterfly.

Wild caribou roam the plains

of the smooth golf greens.

A pest to all those who don the plus fours.

Emerging from the rough they charge

at will, impacting with the power of a comet.

They must be killed on sight.

An 8 iron behind the head usually does the trick,

and 19th hole is adorned with the coat stand silhouettes

of dispatched caribou heads.

'Good evening', as I come through the door
shutting out the noise and dirt that now gathers at my welcome mat
where I wipe my shoes and leave my feet.

Hanging my head on the hat stand I am home,
today's news is getting older in the paper under my arm,
print leaves it's imprint on my white starched
office shirt.

In the kitchen there are dead animals in the oven,
cooking amongst things from the ground,
bubbling and boiling,
mother natures bounty bought from sterile supermarkets.

Fresh air is packaged in re-usable cans
re-cycled, made into planes that fly over great oceans
and mountain ranges, deserts,
where Bedouin tents blow in the breeze.

Lunchtime stroll = ugly couples, prams pushed by youth, smell of corn on the cob,eyebrow maintenance, baklava.

Dull train update: man who looks squeezed at both ends, like an accordion, with glasses, a lucozade bottle half empty, lady appears perplexed by a crossword clue (but it may be sudoku).

Clouds outside seem to cover the black to white spectrum.

Dull train update:  a sign, a lyric repeating itself 'an even cash flow: this cannot be underrated', the cranking of metal the smell of meat.

50/50 weather.

Left foot, loose lace

and canned laughter follows him everywhere but he feels nothing, inside he is empty, save from a series of ropes and pulleys that control his movements.

The parents are being pushed in the swings by their offspring, grown men in nappies crushed up in bulging prams. Cats eating dogs. Humans ******* on pigeons. It's all a bit weird today.

The moving van pulled up blocking out the sun, stopping right outside my window.

The house next door had been empty for a few weeks now. I was intrigued to see who would be moving in.

I opened the front door and made some up some excuse so I could walk to the end of my drive and have a look.

To see what was happening.

From the angle I was at, all I could see was the ramp at the back of the truck.

Descending down the ramp came a family of apes, carrying a variety of ornate furniture.

The dad looked over his shoulder,

looked me straight in the eyes,"Hello there, I'm Mr Johnson".

He then put down the lampshade, reached out, and with his long simian fingers proceeded to try and remove (imaginary) tics from my hair.
I stepped back and he offered his hand for me to shake.

Shake it I did.

And the lampshade he was carrying was delightful. It would have matched my curtains and I turned away, jealous.

It snowed sometime ago

you stood there

building the spine of a snowman, rubber soles

crunching the floor below.

The scarf you wore made you look like

the old Doctor Who

which made me look for Daleks amongst the trees.

But there were none which was a relief.

You finished the snowman with aplomb

an organic carrot and

polished stones for eyes.

An appetite for wildlife they said.
hundreds of heads on the wall,
the smallest to the left,
the head of an ant
and on the right
the largest,
his finest ****,
stalked day and night for weeks,

finally brought to ground with a bazooka, a steady hand and some luck:
the head of a great blue whale.

And in between them,
a cat -
a giraffe and
a couple of celebrity chefs
mounted,
with eyes as black as the
finest caviar,
staring.

The clowns are angry
but they don't show it.

Behind white faces there is no hint of the resentment
that grows underneath comically sized trousers.

The clowns know they only make sense
in a certain context
underneath a big top
modelling balloons at young Bens 7th birthday.

Not here in your garden
viewed from behind a curtain
4.53am.

she used her date of birth as grid references – found that place on a map
circled it like with black marker pen
circling ***** *******
inky areola
- days spent staring at black rings

go for the atlas they yelled like an audience on a gameshow - explore the cities that are lost under the staples -
explore the curves of geography - dip your toes in the water - bathing sharks show teeth sharp -

and when she got home the librarian removed the snippets of conversation from her waistband -

she laid them end to end to construct her resignation letter

carried buildings around
in his head, not real buildings
just un-sketched plans,
you understand?

He had always wanted to build a replica of
the town where he was born
not from mortar or bricks
but from spaghetti and matches and
lollypop sticks.

He wanted to build the fire station and a church
and the supermarket where he would make
tiny shopping trolleys and scatter them over
the make believe car-park where tiny
people would be carrying on with their daily chores
holding tiny bags and thinking big thoughts

He wanted there to be a spacious park for
imaginary children to enjoy wholesome picnics.
And ponds where geese, ducks and swans would
glide on the surface
near broccoli sized trees.

The town in his head would be better then the town in which
he walked but he had one big problem
he spend hours wondering how he could make the sun.

My car tyres are going bald,
most probably cancer.

That would just be my luck.

I once had a bike that got AIDS.

Please don't ask.


Seeing it just fall about, a nut here,
a bolt there, the broken
spokes, the clunking chain that
would turn no more.
It's rusty revolutions.

Disintegrating in front of my eyes,
like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia.

Seeing a BMX brings it all back.

Once at a car boot sale, I bought 3 car boots
only to find they were broken but
on a positive, someone bought my shoes,
even though they weren't for sale.

I walked home, socks on feet, the rain
seeping through,

the car boots on my back clunking,
I was thinking
life really isn't so bad

I don't think I've ever been the stuff of woman’s fantasies

I doubt a stranger passing on a street has given me

a second glance you see,

I can't play guitar I can't sing a song I can't even dance

I am what some magazines would call “out of shape”

I have a beard but contrary to stereotypes

it doesn’t smell nor does it contain

remnants of food like Mr Twit .

But maybe if I died in some immaculate way

I'd be revered and future people would pray to effigies of me,

have images of me dangling from their neck.

Alters made up of an old shoe I once wore,

or perhaps a piece of paper I had scribbled on?

My pathetic writing suddenly prophetic.

Until then I guess I continue to exist

and grow my beard in readiness.

Tea consumption is reaching critical levels,

I am an Englishman after all.

And I won't go out in the mid day sun
for I will wilt
in the summer heat
where my dogs panting
in front of his metallic bowl.

And in fashionable postcodes, across the capital,
Japanese girls in tartan skirts carry ice cream cones
that drip onto their smooth
foreign
skin.

The ice cream slithers down arms,
leaving trails like the
tributaries of the 5th greatest river,

their postcards home
smell of vanilla.

I am eating sweets like a spoiled fat kid
the elated surge of sugar coursing through veins
like kiddy *******,
zooming through  internal tubes
green lights all the way
soon to be shuddering as I pass the summit
and descend,
coming down faster then theTwin Towers

when there’s a boom there’s always a bust

what goes up will always come down
gravity is invisible and it's inevitable

a ghost hanging on your shoulders
the sheer weight of all this.

Boredom flogs me
and time is the vinegar thats poured in my wounds.

I want be on the savannah shooting lions with the sun turning my neck into cracked leather. I would shoot it without mercy or malice I’ll look it right between the eyes then I’ll pull the trigger. I’ll watch the dessert ground absorb his blood. It will just dissappear.

I am an astronaut bouncing on the moon. I have planted bombs in capital cities. I have stolen from museums.

Waiting on the bus
sunglasses worn by female drivers,
scratched surface,
cigarette hanging,
redundant postbox,
red,
thoughts about letters and the written word.

A future with no pens.

Head shakes.

The pen is mightier than the sword will cause confusion in years to come.

"What is a pen?

a question from a future child - confused looking at pictures of biros.

These relics.

These dodos.

The Witch Finder general hides between the pavement cracks. His breath smells of something  something sinister.

He lives in an old peoples home and he smells of **** sedated by beautiful nurses in stockings.

In flickering moments of lucidity he wonders how he has come to be in this place, this pitiful existence. His mind feels strong during  vague vignettes but he is imprisoned by his failing and aged body.

More drugs administered by the ***** nurse soon weaken him again, his awareness washes away
his mind slowly slides down
                warm
                   nylon thighs.

On his knees,
hangnails scratch against stockings, ladders and runs.

I've seen how the loss of industry can decimate a town.

Like when that yo-yo factory was closed down
and the workers all hung themselves from lampposts
and just bounced up and down.

Up and down.

It was a rainy day
when he sent off for a pair of X-ray specs
he had seen in the back of a comic book

Days passed slowly like they were stuck in glue,
outside, a bike, chained to a leaking pipe,
rusted.

Weeds escaped through concrete.

Upstairs, the rattling bones
of skeletons in closets,
ghosts under the bed,
spider legs,
electric shocks and books already read.

Finally, one day,
slack jawed the letter box opened.

A brown parcel, tied.
Postage stamps and ink.
His hands carefully unstrung
the string and the paper fell open.

If he had X-Ray specs
he would have known
that the package was empty.

...will have a bearded left wing protagonist raging on behalf of the proletariat.He'll share a flat with a metaphor for the 21st century malaise

and when they talk

they will talk in the forgotten syntax of washing powder ads from the 50's and construct sentences from toilet graffiti remembered from youth.

Their flat will be infested with insects and disgruntled middle management, grumbling about the lack of vertical opportunities and the implementation of a new computer system.

Filing cabinets will contain stolen secrets of unknown cultures, manilla folders will hold evidence of unsolved ****** cases stretching back a hundred years where the suspects all look uncannily the same.

The theory of a time travelling murderer is considered but never openly discussed.

The fridge contains nothing but under developed ideas and stale rhetoric.

This is a flat with no doors.

He was a tapeworm

his sister had a bad perm
sitting on her head,

edge of the bed
in a knife sliced
corridor of light. These thoughts,

that leaned like weak trees
in a cutting breeze.

These thoughts
that we're never straight more
a child's hurricane scribble.

A mental ball of twine collecting clutter

and when the cobra struck

I thought of you
naked,

ready to **** the venom

or offer the antidote.

The misery and turbulence,

the fear of being hunted by the anonymous faces

of a South American meat packing conglomerate.

ssssssh

listen to yourself

burp and gurgle and burble and

when you shake your head

side to side

your eyes can’t focus

and you get a headache

and passersby offer help

and words of support

or commiseration
(it’s hard to differentiate

sometimes

a helping hand

or a fist in the face)

– and you think of buster Keaton and the falling house…

the way he stood perfectly poised while the house fell

and he knew he wouldn’t come to harm

but you thought the whole edifice would collapse on his little head –

when they are forgotten?

The man has a calendar with coloured circular stickers on certain days.

They signify something.

These sticky stickers are stuck
but not random,
no.

There is a logic of which only he knows

Some people think aliens from another planet have been here, right here on earth,

possibly webbed of foot
sticky talons,
sharp lizard skin,
six gills
revolutionary eyes?

landed in a field of sleeping cows,
perhaps
somewhere -

then again some people
say they have have never been on a bus

while others insist they have never eaten an orange - juice shooting - sticky fingers

And I just don't know who to believe.

the modern miracles of the modern messiah
- feeding the destitute  with one chicken
- quenching their first with a litre  of Coke
- modern mercies at the homeless shelter
- the young kids with gout and nosebleeds
all the odd numbers at the bingo hall

solar power fuelled anger

buy one get two free as the flies buzz around the discarded fruit out back of the supermarket

angels with ***** faces
angels  in Nikes

He felt their death worthwhile, even enjoyable
whereas his light and oxygen were dead and forgotten.
gone

he wanted to speak to buildings but they looked redundant
instead,
he offered to converse with some benign God who was staring at him through the rumble of yesterday

couldn’t remember his childhood
only scaffolding could hold him up on
normal days when
phones melted

he dripped sweat and feared the conquistadors of death

he would disintegrate into a dust
a human sacrifice in a hot country his heart ripped from his chest and shown on a screen.

his throat was constricted,
sitting at a cheap mass produced desk

he had been invaded by a majestic warm light but alas
he was just a bricked upman in a suit

his body felt like a memory. this scared him.
he sat in a corner and offered the invisible God of indifference
trinkets and baubles.

all those people
that wear
I ❤️ NY shirts

I bet they've
never even
heard a
Neil Young
song

Signposts at the crossroads point in all directions

like skeletal fingers

like ghosts moving across a tundra of white

like thin skin that you see through

like rice paper held against the sun

like your hand that shows veins that run like tributaries

into the delta on your metacarpus

flecked with freckles

where small hairs stand on end.

I will endeavour to write poems free from arcane references to impotent religious figures or dead poets.

There will be no Latin quotes in italics. I want you to read my poetry aloud, not one handed, eyes on a dictionary, scratching your head.

I will not use words such as nape when referring to a neck. Or describe skin as soft, delicate, porcelain.

I will avoid romance and love (lost, unrequited or otherwise) and abstain from pretty descriptions of landscapes, trees and flowers gracefully bending in the breeze.

Where possible I will avoid cliche.

I will write about estates, cracked pavements Presidential assignations, machines, clowns in places they shouldn't be.

Flawed people,
shopping trolleys.

When Seth asks me a question,
I just make up the answer or
check Wiki for the facts.

But he’s not sticking around,
for an answer or
a misguided guess

He’s in the garden,
selecting stones
to keep as pets

1.

Through the wall I hear you move,

feet padding across

the floor,

avoiding the toys left out of boxes.

You appear at my door

nightmare hair matted on your forehead.

My arms will hold you now as then,

when your soft fontanel throbbed

in those endless sterile

nights of pacing

and the creak of the old rocking chair.

2.

During daylight hours you look at me like I was made of stone,

As if I was permanent

like this island.

3.

Maybe you’ll remember these moments,

I can't say you will,

but I hope.

4.

All I know is we live and so

we die.

5.

Restaurants

old sofa

the pet
cat, dead.

Beach
breezy Autumn piers

rainy football matches Saturday & photographs

taped in scrapbooks

with dusty corners.

These I leave to you.

the song was set on a space station orbiting earth
the astronauts were eating powdered food and trying to remember what
ice cream tasted of they couldn’t find the words to describe vanilla

in Russian Stalin banned jazz

he ordered all trumpets to be buried 300 miles from Stalingrad

yesterday was national poetry day and no one knew

outside hailstones have been falling on and off for an hour or so
spring now, but possibly still winter
the calendars could be lying

the washing machine is gurgling in another room

my cat ate my fish

my cat died when I was on a school trip

my bird fell off his perch and never knew he hit the ground

the news is on the radio and
words are jumping from its belly
something about a ******
Russian involvement

she told me this morning she dreams of dead children

I’ll leave this here
I’ll finish my tea then I’ll be off

We looked out of the window
but the view wasn’t what the brochure had promised.

In fact there was no view at all.

It hadn’t been drawn yet.

Looking up we saw him sitting there,
sipping from a cup,
looking out of his window,
admiring his view,
a blunt pencil in his hand.