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?

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

He feeds amongst castles.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 –

when they are forgotten?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

'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.

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 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.

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.

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.

all those people
that wear
I ❤️ NY shirts

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 –

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

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

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"