When something snaps
The ****** all bolt
Dogs out the traps
We all collapse
Down the plughole
Like turned on taps
Jaded expats
Bourbon, poker
All throw craps
Black top hats
Line the road
Like mourning bats
Marital spats
Crystal prisms
Where love refracts
Wear navy slacks
Stare out to sea
As mars attacks
Nightmares hide facts
Flattened like focaccia
Under fifteen all-blacks
Fuss over Goldman sachs
You know we only blink
When it's the shirt on our backs

Apéro chez Yves
Towards place de jacobins I weave
On parle à batons rompus
You envy me, I envy you
Les yeux honnêtes de votre femme
Invite me in to join her clan
Du piano vous tirez la voix de Brahms
I recline, completely charmed
C'est aussi doux que vous, ce muscadet
No finer way to pass a day
Qu'un apéro chez Yves

A house you can walk all the way around
Is an aspiration
Success summarised as
An absence of ajoining walls

Modern life
Makes people
Want to be
Detached

Long Live the Terraces

Death hung in the air
As thick as biscuits

The milliner went
Mad as a hatter
Exhausted from playing the field
Spin bowler and batter

And death hung in the air
As thick as biscuits

The baker excels
At idle chatter
Drinking pints of cream
Pink buns by the platter

And death hung in the air
As thick as biscuits

The banker needs
Needs someone to flatter
A strict rotation of ties
The same old patter

And death hung in the air
As thick as biscuits

The man who
Lives under the
Flower beds
In st Andrew's park

Is a lonely
Bitter
Little man

Enduring his
Entire life
Without knowing of the beauty
That lay a worm's width
Above his eyebrows

Cafe cheveux echecs
bon dimanche bien les mecs
pas un jour pour les miserables
en plein soleil trop a l'aise

The afrojazz that plays at the
entrance of the synagogue
that's the mood

There is a complete
lack of colour
Behind an ancient
Pillar we scheme

The aptly named place Bellevue
At the time of writing contains
Eleven beating hearts
Nine, discounting my own
And that of a canine

Three, gaze out to where clouds meet
Peaks in a conspiring huddle
One, seated, inhales her clouds
Burning down from peak to basecamp
One ignores a dog with clear attachment issues

Two stroll in tandem, occasionally comparing screens
Two have wandered off in a
Calculated effort to avoid the
nosy parker on the next bench

Bus driver let me off 90p today
He felt like a benevolent god
I counted thirteen individuals on the top deck - seven visible phones
Five women
Six men
Two point four children

The lady in the blue jeans
Sat in the beer garden felt me watching
She flicked her hair to that
I can feel you watching angle

At the roundabout the blond in the ford
Looks nervous
Dark street lane
Is double named

That was bang out of order
She's still running
Wonders what the acceptable term is for boss eyed
Crossing the chalk stream
Hand car wash
Past the cycling lycra carrying baked goods

Cheers then driver

Bert likes chewing on ***** old socks
The lady is a supertramp
She plays a guitar made of sticky tin cans
With a wheely bin for an amp

Bert smears custard across her cheeks
Then lets wail her battle cry
She ducks and dives from the dreaded flannel
Makes it clear she won’t comply

Bert hurls her broccoli
Like a vegetable javelin
At first we sigh and shake our heads
But in the end we all join in

'We're looking for Salcombe on sea'
Brown cows crowd around
Vincent and me

Uphill and down
Nothing but brown cows
As far as the eye can see

Raising a hoof directs
'Two green fields over you'll see the sea
I've mooed here all my life
You can trust me'

A posse of cronies
With button-marked thumbs
Were part of a ring
Of cyberspace chums

With crimson-lined eyes
They played night and day
Till some solemn stranger
Took their machines away

The stranger stole through the dark
Before they, could awake
To tip their technology
Into a lake

The groups sleep-rested eyes
Opened to see
The redundant space
Where gizmos should be

Some shouted, some cried
Some just couldn't speak
They rose from their beds
Confused and knees weak

Once clothed and clean
And breakfast was through
One cry could be heard
'Now what do we do?'

Fire at playland
Two fire engines
In attendance
Great fun

Carnival week
Comprised of the ever popular
Pram race, a resounding success, once again
In spite of adverse weather conditions

Tributes to the late great
Popeye rolled along the
Main strip

An eleven foot Guy Fawkes looms
Over the tarmac
A tractor towed lifeboat leads
The way

An array of competitive twirling troops
Dampen the mood

Fire at playland
Two fire engines
In attendance
Great fun

The snails look down on slugs
As vagabonds and vagrants
They shun them in the garden sheds
Get aggressive on the pavements

The slugs despise the landed gentry
Escargot **** yourselves they cry
But while they’re brabbling and bickering
Sparrows circle in the sky

The slugs slide in vain towards the hedge
And **** the snails to hell
But the snails no longer hear them
Safe inside a silent shell

A new arrival sends him itching
To drag open the drapes his fingers are twitching
He benchmarks the day as they come and they go
From window-framed photos
Stories of his own

Relays the album, day after day
Till the thought becomes fact, he can’t shoo away
It bothers him and blights him
The ****** won’t quit
Till he retakes his throne at the curtain slit

He meekly approaches, saying
Hey, I hope this is cool
But I'm pretty sure we went
To the same school

I cut him short, said
What has that got to do with me?
That ship sailed long ago
Now we're all at sea

He laughs, saying
You're as spiky as back then
It's a kind of comfort to know you haven't changed
And to know we're still
not friends

I drop my basket and leave

The chickens aren't happy
They aren't laying

The farmer, concerned
Takes to praying

To a poultry god
He's always doubted

Hard times call
For hard and fast rules
To be flouted.

When I dream at night
             which is usually, although
Not exclusively
             when I tend to dream

There is always a giraffe
              at my side
His name is Rothschild

I thought you should know.

The baying gulls they laugh at me
The sea breeze makes me ill
The pasty man shout fresh today
I think I've had my fill

The graceful gulls they swoop and flock
To greet me with a shriek
To stir me in the morning
To sing me off to sleep

I went for the wine
I stayed for the cheese
We just want you to be happy
We're so eager to please

Everyone's so affable
It's nigh on ****** laughable
So I do

So cool and well adjusted
Eating artichokes with mustard
I laugh hot wet laughs

Amongst the dry dry dry dry
Dry whites

A young, fairly attractive
Woman mouths
The words to the
Latest chart entry

She thinks no one is watching
I am

A balding, middle aged
Man picks
So aggressively as to
Carve a new nostril

He thinks no one is watching
I am

Sat in the Car
With time on my hands

I, dressed in the shade of an overdue bill
Sat with my sack and a hat with white frill
Awe on small faces as they all filed in
Fake white hair on my lip above a beaming grin

William was his name, thin and pale
With eyes so wide from watching bread turn stale
As I called out his name and pulled out a box
He shook and came forward, black shoes, white socks

Merry Christmas, I boomed , I hear you’ve been a good boy
Inside this box hides a fantastic toy
He took the gift from me, staring in awe
He leant in to my ear, on tiptoe, heels leaving the floor

‘I love you Santa’ he whispered

Pablo went to the circus
The lithographs give it away
Unless of course
He had the knack
Of producing a place from scratch
An imaginary circus

The positive and negative space
Silhouette circus
Of hoops and bears
Gymnasts on chairs
The blank faced audience


He also did ******* bullfights
In 1946
His blood splattered face leering
Over his lithography

Don't wait till middle age
To have a crisis
Keep trying to express yourself
The world is waiting like a hungry baby

We met on the common
Amongst discarded blue lightbulbs and
Loose change
It quickly became clear we have
Nothing in common
The fair had moved on long ago
So had we.

I said I'd ring
I never did
I hope you don't remember it

You said you'd come, but
You weren't there
Washing someone else's hair

They said they'd wait, but
They were gone
What a ****** carry on

He said that's it
I've had enough, but
He was only acting tough

She seemed to say nothing at all
In saying that
She said it all

She lived out her entire life in Manchester
Except for a few exotic months
When she fell in love

She followed that love down to Australia
But missed her dear old mum
And came home to take care of her

As far as I know she never saw that love again
And she never stopped taking care of her mum

She’d tell me tales of late night
Trams missed in Blackpool
Sent away on trains amidst the blitz
And later nights out dancing at the Ritz

Sometimes she’d be talking to me
Sometimes my Dad
Sometimes her brother Joe
I wasn’t bothered

She could talk to me for hours
All I’d need do is brew the tea

I loved her
And I’m grateful she loved me

There are two unfinished gins
By our bedside
The night took us
And made us forget

I reach out to quench thirst
In the morning
The juniper taste of regret

I watch you while you're sleeping
I listen to you breathe
You'll wake up and leave soon
Then it's back to the distillery

There's just one unfinished
By my bedside
The night's over
You fell through the net

I reach out to quench thirst
In the morning
The juniper taste of regret

The man in the mustard shirt
Stares through the crowd
Showering them with
Well measured words
And sardonic smiles

Proped up by his lady in red
I wish he'd let her sing more
If I saw him in the pub
Tightly knit curls
Resting on his pronounced brow

If I saw him in the pub
I'd allow him to purchase
One half of pale ale for me
He can do what he likes
With the other half
-

Patrick Lawrence was too late for the H and M super sale
He ended up with a turquoise shirt and sunblushed salmon chino
Combination which doesn't work on myriad levels

He played the bass though
Redeeming himself through the medium of song
He is almost forgiven

Mr and Mrs were in love
It had been so for years
Still every time he came home drunk
He reduced his love to tears

The rule of a love triangle
Is somebody must lose
This household was no different
Mr , Mrs or the *****

Lucian ,



The unfinished dog

The torn chesterfield

View of the sky

Stillness of age

The running tap

The scattered rags



Lucian                                         Perverse

                           Lucian                                                              Abandoned

We argued over that Marc Bolan record
That I knew wasn’t mine anyway
We argued over that Marc Bolan record
It’s my demented way of passing the day

I love to see the lines on your forehead appear
They run so incredibly deep
I love to see the lines on your forehead, my dear
When you’ve got the bit between your teeth

So when I hear ride a white swan
I can’t help but think of your face
Fighting your corner for T.Rex
That cosmic dancer in outer space

The origins of our hero
Neil Heaven
Is a tale that
following in the footsteps of a great many tales
Has been whispered and shouted
Twisted and doubted
Far too many times to mean much of anything anymore

This much I can confidently state as fact
Neil Heaven is a cat
Neil Heaven is the cat.

Neil Heaven was once so overwhelmingly chill
He slippped into such a
Dazed state complete with
Contented drooling smile
That concerned
Botanical garden staff felt compelled
To contact a feline psychotherapist
Who was able to assure everyone that
Neil Heaven
Was far from unwell
He was in fact
Wellness itself

Wellness catsonified.


Neil Heaven was once
Headhunted by the dogs
But politely declined
Reportedly stating
'All creatures are equal in the eyes of
Neil Heaven
I must respectfully decline but
Am ever so flattered by your
Interest'

Chatting to my pal
Neil Heaven
Recently
It came out he'd never
Seen the internet and
Was unsure exactly what it was for

So I explained that it was access to pretty much the
Collective knowledge of the
human race
Neil Heaven smiled gracefully
Turning to leave purrs
'But I already have that'

Neil Heaven
Takes an annual tour
of the vineyards at Châteauneuf-du-Pape
To share the fruits
Of his gifts in the field of oenology.

Parma became violent
She threw her weight
Around

Bertie cowered
Hunched shoulders, eyes straight
Down

Parma pounded, pummeled
Bert's soft head fell
In

It takes allsorts
Bert's final thought
There is no sweeter sin