****** 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

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

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.

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

...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.

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 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.

New Boy Scout badges:

•web design

•economics

•glutton free cooking

•metaphysical philosophy

•Bowieism

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.

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.

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.

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 “

do passwords
get offended
when they're
forgotten?

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.

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 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

Contradictory

messages erased. Right now

we look for the truth.

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 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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.