Yesterday the weather changed
and what it changed into,
I can not say.
It was something words can not describe.

We will need a new alphabet.

There will be a public debate
held around bandstands,
or in libraries after hours,
when the school kids and the homeless
have vacated.

Professors and purveyors of
taste and trends
will argue their views on live TV.

The polemicists will debate,
until definitions are forged,
and when new words are created,
old meanings will be cast
asunder and forgotten.

A phone poll,
followed by a referendum
will give the public a voice

but once there is a consensus
private investors will be invited to
table bids to sponsor the new vowels.

...skims the far reaches of his bowl
trying to remember if he's been there before.

He feeds amongst castles.

Theresa Mayday
MAYDAY
MAYDAY

Mayday
ˈmeɪdeɪ/
noun
1. an international radio distress signal used by ships and aircraft and people who don't want a right leaning, heartless government "we sent out a Mayday"

the question mark
like a bent over old man

the questioning of fools
the hairy palms of Neanderthals

wobbling through  air conditioned malls with no signals hitting their limbic system

reptillan brain in control

the hierarchy of needs
food
shelter
meat
Nike Air and
a widescreen TV

rejoice at the useless

I spend all day looking at a screen that looks back at me

there is a TV programme that is always on, somewhere
everywhere
it’s always on

i fall asleep and wake up to see a monster, a man with a gun, a detective, a car chase, a
weather report

that radio station that plays a stairway to heaven on a 24hr loop

the white noise of the everyday

the passwords are forgotten
but not offended

maps coloured in,
places where I’ve been
other maps show stolen land, places of war,
cemeteries marked with crosses
– plague cities black ringed
– places of pogroms marked pins –
arrows indicate migrationary trails –
outward from Africa monkey man to homosapien
the evolution of the thumb &
blind fishes

(the first restaurant sold primordial soup)

in Precambrian forests they hired
priests to baptise micro-chips before they left the factory
holy water sprayed from water pistols
– microchipped meat
you are a small blip on a map
on a map on a screen
on a screen in a room that doesn’t exist –
a small blip flashing
–
a liver made in a factor
a wooden lung

so many pills
she sounds like a maraca when she walks down the street –
rattle rattle rattle
– pills for all kinds of alignments
weight loss
erectile dysfunction
laser eyes
internal rot
diseased *****
side effects two many to mention
the Elvis shakes

Contradictory

messages erased. Right now

we look for the truth.

that fear you feel when you see the security camera footage and know it's not you
         but someone playing you
in a mask
wearing a wig

100% dedication to the wrong thing

weeks of planning up in smoke

she walked away and left her shadow waiting

no need for precise measurements here

best guess &

best guesses

long wave radio and the strange signals –

transmission interrupted

– wavering

– on waves like the ark

– new ideas

third aisle on the left

that secret isn’t safe

the secret has escaped

they asked me if I was a spy

the bad compass points south –

things go down

magnetic forces

the limb

gnarled ends

impossible to be in two places at once

the belief in something that isn’t there

turn left when you exit this town

she reads the words then tries to forget

but she found the evidence

the picture in the frame with the four fingerprints

( find the four finger ghost )

the spies that wore a leather glove on their left hand

it was a sign – hidden but open

just like the looks she gave me

————————–

the Beatles came from a city of boats –

direct decedents of Neptune –

Sometimes I forget that I am
me,

my memory is made up of affectionate toothpaste ads
of the past three decades.

On occasions I think I’m John Lennon
returning his CBE
over to that Biafra thing.

the dead man died today
he'd been dying for a while now

the rain washed away the chalk children before they could run into the horizon and appear like scratches on your lense

"Don't worry about the government" was the title of the last song I heard

impeach the leader
eat the rich

the sign language man in the bottom of the TV screen got cramp and confused the viewers with his dyslexic fingers

I can be found on google maps

****** at a safe distance

death via video conference call massacre

a force field of bureaucracy

faceless names at the bottom of letters

the secretaries know where the bodies are buried

they are selling up

the ship is going down and I saw them making tiny holes in the life jackets

do passwords
get offended
when they're
forgotten?

the cheque the bank sent me slowly di
                 sin    teg
    rate
                   d

          he couldn't perform
the constant image of the black Converse trainer on the dead leg of Kurt Cobain just put him off

         modern day Moses
spammed everyone with the 10 commandments but they went I read
             lost in the junk mail
                    amongst adverts for ******* pills and serums that will give you strong
healthy hair

the hungry cemetery devours the dead
swallows them whole
- the belly of the beast
- the dirt thrown on top
frozen ground
forecasted snow

the stillness of the cemetery

hip hop priests spitting sermons

buried with the mind machine skeletal words now free of the past - skin eaten away & the bones remain

the first ******* scared him

the first ******* and he thought he'd broke it

running to him mother with globules dripping

his mother laughing

the redness of her mouth

teeth stained
and a tongue

a tongue that could sweep the jackals nest

through backwards binoculars everything was upside down - rushes of blood

small cluster headaches

- no cure for this sickness -

-(are you lonesome tonight?)-
same self ***
self satisfied smiles

the soundtrack skipped

small morsels and crumbs...

(...tourists to the city were also amazed at the shopping facilities and variety of places to eat.

The average trip advisor rating was a solid 4.6)

I saw the neighbours wedding photos and they were bland.

this haiku will not
go on and on and on and
on and on and on

God had Eden

Satan had a pleasure park of rollercoasters

Pac-Man machines and souvenir shops 

(the quests were long 
the merchandise over priced
the hot dogs cold)

and outside Eden 
the traffic stretched for miles
– cars full of screaming children and half eaten fruit
– cars full of fuming parents with half price vouchers stuffed in pockets 

others climbed over the fence to the garden of Eden
they bought a packed lunch with them

a blanket covered in cat hair

the garden was overgrown

the fruit was rotten

dogs ran wild

they made a mental note to write a one star review when they got home

Icelandic diets and tiny woman in big cars - oriental twins stand next to bad graffiti - sick children in the exclusion zone

- the end of the family tree

- the branch snaps


two holes have appeared at opposite ends of the earth


they have give weapons to all those over 15 and told them to protect the city


God has been outsourced to a call centre in India

his Facebook page keeps crashing

                       emails go unanswered
my book was called "the eternal twitch of the nervous millennium"


the death of the happy polar bear, 1983 - 2016

in an air conditioned supermarket

I had an existentialist crisis in an aisle of mayonnaise, too many choices and to much colour, I dropped my basket and fled to the door, down the hallway and through the cobbled lanes –

I hummed the last song I heard, threw my wallet in the bin and headed for the trees forgetting all my passwords
the crematorium chimney reached up – it’s brick arm searching for stars – the smoke became the clouds and it rained dust for days

Roman numerals have always confused the hell out of me

Mummy, it’s all connected and it’s all collapsing

flapping butterfly wings inside the wardrobe with the skeletons

fireflies circle the bulb

a low wattage casts small shadows over this thing
                         over this everything
of empty petrol station forecourts

wastelands of concrete where shoes hang from telegraph wires
and of all the stereotypes I know
  how many of them are true?

she frantically searches the book shelves for the answers and writes angry letters to the council about the lack of WI-FI at the local library

she sits on the roof to get a better view of the constellations which she can’t see from down here

The man on TV
was famous for interviewing
famous people on TV
and now he's retired he's being interviewed
on TV
to talk about the famous people
he interviewed when he was on TV
interviewing famous people.

A constant loop rotating
spinning
the centrifugal force
pulling at his face.

A table.
Two chairs,
glasses of ice cold water.

future kid
let's call him WMU#2b
will look at a pen in confusion
and will laugh at the concept of
metal money &
paper tokens

and my phone predicts my every word then replaces it with an image
- a

I'll meet you in the bottom left hand corner of the map before we move across the great expanse of the middle ground - past staples that hold the pages together

through the middle ground of open space and forests
- we'll push on

towards the top right hand corner through to the small print

across the page references and place names

names that roll off the tongue

names that stick and choke

like swallowing a mountain
we will move across a geography of dry river beds

common land and ex towns
we'll arrive before the new edition removed our path

self portrait with twigs and vegetables  
 the vagueness of raisin eyes
feminine fruits convey a softness you've tried to hide - 
- small twig legs 
- seen from the distance
the shadow converges with the object from which its cast

- I told the students to paint me as they saw fit - black canvas, clown trousers, a lighthouse smashed by waves, a single cloud, 
cumulus, 
over acres of wheat 

there will always be distance between us she said

country miles and gaps in the geography
staples misplaced in the middle of the page where the silo used to be

we feel cheated because dreams never have a natural ending

they just fade into a new day
at 2:43pm he bites his nail 
and tastes this mornings toothpaste 

and all he can think about is a stain on his carpet which gets bigger in his mind
the more he thinks about it

it just gets BIGGER till

panic sets it when and
he thinks of his death

of his kids
growing up with a name and a faint memory


people always look for the geometry in the familiar and feel confusion when the supermarket rearranges itself 


fresh fruit further to the left
26 types of tea
near frozen foods and desserts

at the check out         lurid magazines leer at you

The bus drivers head resembles a badly shaven *******.

He doesn't look happy.

He has those real tiny eyes
that squint all the time.

Like he's looking into a really ******* bright light.

we ate discarded instruction manuals for washing machines, video recorders and calculators

we learnt new things

we stalked the rabbits
and followed dogs in the shadows
salivating at the prospect
of meat

days spent hunkered in the bunker with tin food and a transistor radio that could only pick up the sound of a sobbing  man
and static fuzz

all our memories fused into one long dream

we thought of the astronauts miles above us thinking can they see the Great Wall of

I saw a woman take a picture of a picture at 8:33am next to a bus stop who’s shadow was all broken glass and burger wrappers
my aftershave is making me feel sick
today’s soundtrack is The Ballad of Reverend War Character.

online people in a group all talking about what they’ve seen on the internet -
•kid falling over
•the worlds largest elastic band ball
•cats that look like ******
•beef-burger garnishes
and that scene in Papillon when the screen turns upside down and he says YOU HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF A WASTED LIFE scared the out of me


head like a planet
*** marked like a meteor impact
a mug shot on a 1,000 police walls
fingerprints like the map
contours of mountains
the peaks
   the peaks
      he ****** in the wound
and it smelt like burning hair
     incoming message
incoming missile

the earth shrieks
the damaged people inflict damage     on others
OUT OF SYNCH
LIKE WALKING WITH A LIMP
LIKE THE SOUNDTRACK SLIPPED
numbers formulated on spreadsheets cause
waves crashing on the opposite side of the word the
flap of butterfly wing that
scratches the surface of stretched skin

the questions he asked held no relevance 
he took notes and I looked out the window to the office 
opposite

another room with cabinets
people & computers 
water coolers
a broken printer
drably personalised work spaces with kids drawing and motivational quotes spat over an inspiring landscape of mountains or soft still lakes

dust settles and stays on the leaves of plastic plants

 (  disgruntled secretary, 
floor two, has her mothers ashes stored in a Russian doll on her desk and a draw full paper clips and staples ) 

I didn't get the job
they gave it to a man who likes fat woman to sit on his face

the internal monologue at the beginning was

the 
pit pat patter of rain on windows then
wind through the trees but louder it grew

like waves &
the sounds of war

screams from the experimentation
expressed in words 
scratched on surfaces 
stretched canvas of skin

with blunt knife strokes 

kids with mouths like coin slots 

fingers caught in the elastic of her underwear
rejoice
rejoice
rejoice

psychoanalytical observations of the thoughts that remain unsaid 
the twitch of the eye
the scratch of the knuckle

subconsciously done
but observed and duly noted


you came from your mums inside
exited through a thicket

untamed wilderness and ******* that were suckled for many moons

-----------------------------------

(camera cuts to montage of...)

-----------------------------------

the extra chromosome


a missing digit
the warehouse where they faked the moon landings
the barn at the edge of town and the scalped cowboy on the plains
the ghosts of the civil dead

New Boy Scout badges:

•web design

•economics

•glutton free cooking

•metaphysical philosophy

•Bowieism

jackie o-
o as  hole -
- fur trimmed, 
ermine 
fit for a queen 
followed by a cavalcade of suitors

trajectory of history
in amongst broken spines

(his corpse wasn't even cold) 

with gifts of silver, intricate cutlery, opiates and one thing on their mind

-Camelot burning 
-she whispered to him about Cuban shorelines and Russian citadels

a season of plain white t-shirts against corrugated iron fences that rust expensive trainers
seasonal adjustment and a dropped stitch

chimney stacks arthritic broken fingers of the broken landscape
horizon of scratched surfaces

little children running into trees and

disappearing into shilouttes of long shadows
they moved the furniture to confuse the blind

at a time,
(can we all agree it's now?)
    when the animals outside
just know somethings coming

a static in the air
a taste
metallic?

        where I hear them talk about conspiracies
 of **** gold stored inside Swiss mountains

          moon landings filmed in a downtown warehouse where all the participants have died in mysterious circumstances

    • a shaving accident
    • killed in a stampede
                              etc

etc

aliens are living amongst us


     and when waking up becomes a reenactment of the previous day and the day before that and the day before that and the day

before


she kept a diary of political slogans        and propaganda posters 

"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS"
she mumbled in her sleep

god, like a child
in front of Eves nakedness he blushed and looked away -
- the smallest ****** functions made him giggle
when he saw her sit down to *** he pointed and laughed -
he wasn't amused
just embarrassed

the internal monologue at the beginning was

the 
pit pat patter of rain on windows then
wind through the trees but louder it grew

like waves &
the sounds of war

screams from the experimentation
expressed in words 
scratched on surfaces 
stretched canvas of skin

with blunt knife strokes 


kids with mouths like coin slots 


fingers caught in the elastic of her underwear

rejoice
rejoice
rejoice

I wear crime scene tape to hold up my trousers and in this weather

my lips swelled the blood turned blue – or shades of –

a pale skin red when raw

ointment for the rash

balms for the bruised

– Iater my tongue tasted metallic

tasted of iron

like I was ******* on a nail –

I've seen your wedding
pictures
and they
were
bland.