Minute by minute
however you spin it
the minutes are
mountainous

Standing by furious
but all the same curious
as
to where they are heading.

Turn us back into giants and not reliant upon the palms that we read,

lead us not into an era of poverty but rather into a sea of tranquility,

let us be as we see that others might be.

What the...
oh
that,
okay that's fine
I've had my say,
or some of it.

What goes on when the lights go out?
pale pilgrims praying for hymns and alas for them there are only hers.

A pair or two of doves flew by each one wondering why
it had to be so complicated
overrated
but
they expected as much
sometimes God has a
heavy touch.

Then I went where you wouldn't go
into the darkness to meet my foe
and do you know
that foe was who I thought it to be
in that the foe was me.

Yes
you **** yourselves with doubts
with the ins and outs
with what could be so
and then
off into the darkness where I
wouldn't go.

At a pinch
Id have said
a greenfinch
but birds
are still a mystery
to me,

She says
that in the olden days
when I was young
birds was a slang term
for
females

I can't remember
so
I'm saying nothing.

Free as they fall from the tree but then they end up being pureed or mashed up to be served up on a plate.

Fate is that we wait and see, the chestnuts could be you and me.

Christmas ain't all that it's cracked up to be.

H=some chemical symbol or maybe I'm dreaming about some cauldron steaming and witches that dance in the moonlight.

I might need some therapy but how to afford some?

they're all so expensive and I'm just a peasant.

Maybe H=Hegel in which case I'm done.

I don't mind if it's Liberace
or Fibonacci
they're both fabulous performers,

Mam once told me that Liberace had the best pair of woman's legs on a man that she'd ever seen
I'm still running the sequence and the outcome will be in current events.

The owl hoots as in hoots mon here you are again,
Scottish owls are rare in Spain.

I woke to the sound of silence
even the hands of the clock wore soft gloves, very nice said the old me and quaintly so.

Breakfast was a cup of strong joe,
gotta get going somehow and a fix of caffeine is about the most I can manage.

We'll go out soon
She said,
I nodded my head
I do that a lot
it makes for an easier life.

I haven't seen this time of the night since last night and like last night it gave me a fright, but I got over it, drank a bit, made a crisp sandwich, no, not a sandwich made crisply but a sandwich with crisps in it,

Jeez do I have to explain everything?

Trying to unwind is like trying to find Atlantis, it's a hit-and-miss thing,
one cannot but help imagining stretching and snapping,

Wine? oh, and I could so I do and more than one which is two or more,

I'm relaxing and my
back's getting eased
my knees are ******
I need my tummy tucked
but the wine insists
that the boat I should be on
is the one that I missed,

and yet
before I forget
before Bachus attracts me
into one more debauchery
and
I fukin forgot
*** you merlot
with a hard T
( see what I did there?)
and If you didn't do you think
that I care?

Take all your clocks back to the shops that you bought them from, put your watches on a watch list and go out to get ******, you have one hour to catch and get yourself smashed,
do it with friends.

your time starts
soon.

You eat a thousand hamburgers dripping hot with cheese and though they'll say it's bad for you you'll do exactly as you please because you is us and we don't go out shopping anymore we go out to stuff our faces at the local burger store.

Sick of it?
tough
the train has left the station
and you're left with obesity
and unhealthy constipation.

Food's not like it used to be
if it ever was at all
but you cannot educate the people
if they don't hear the call,
so
write the warning in red paint
on a ten-foot-high stone wall.

Swimming between the islands
eyes peeled looking for diamonds
we thought we'd never find them
and that's the way it seemed

never thinking that those times
would become the diamonds in our minds.

I was going to write tonight but it's getting late so I might wait
and write tomorrow,
aha and tomorrow never comes, isn't that what they say?
I think therefore I might write today.

Of what? who knows, I'll just put the pen to the paper and see how it goes,

nothing comes to or springs from my mind and I am resigned to watching the night go through its death throes until the morning shows me what I must do.

This isn't writing; it's just me muttering my words out loud, trying to shut out the sound of the screaming ink. Sometimes, I think, but mostly, I don't, and that's something else that won't get me a gold medal.

Sometimes
there are not enough hours in the day to fit in all the work they want to put in my way so I chill and take time out to recall another fall, one time, the bread line, that me which was me for a long time and suddenly I find that the hours fit into the day just fine.

I'm going to meet Don,
Quixote or Corleone
it depends on the book.

And I moan when I think it's not all about me but it's all about me and any fool can see that except for this **** who's writing this twaddle.

Dropping like flies
and
it could be the spray
or it could be
the brick wall
you put in their way.

If it's not one thing
it's another
as Mother often said to me

and all that now is history,

but they're still out there
fighting a war.

What a load of..
..take that road off
the map,
but
we all go down it in the end
some make believe that it's a friend,
I believe that it's a foe
thus I shall not go.

1965
and
little squirts asking,
'penny for the guy'

these days everyone dresses like a guy
and a penny's not any use
anymore.

They call it daylight saving
I call it daylight robbery
and can you tell me
who is saving it
and for what?

it'll probably pop up on the stock exchange
buy shares in sunlight
get your sums right and
you could be on an earner.

In a minute
or a millennium?
each infinite to a flea
at the sub-quantum level.

What counts is how time is used.

Just went off the clock and look what happened,
think
I might need my wits sharpened.

The centurion in me says
I'm off to the opera
to watch La Traviata
with my alma mater,
but
alma mater
means something different now

everything changes.

Peculiar or was it a pelicula?
jeez
foreign language is like
a biltong sandwich
in that
it leaves a film
on your tongue.

Listening to the old Singer,
no
not her,
the sewing machine
soothing me to sleep,

I'll probably wake up
with a pair of curtains
stitched to my feet.

Mother had one too
then she got a new-fangled
knitting machine
not
my kind of thing,

I used to like hearing her knitting needles
clicking together knowing that soon
I'd get a new cardigan,

the machine itself was made in Taiwan,
that too has gone,

change is everywhere.

..and I was carried in the cradle
to the tower of Babel
and it was where I learnt
to speak in many tongues.

#random
them bible ting run
like the ray from de sun
and burn up yar man,

speak to me
in words I can hear and see
that is what it be.

getting ready to go is as far as I know
She fills in the details en route.

I have seen the setting of the sun in Dubai
and Mumbai before it became that name,
I met girls, the one with pearls for eyes
and was hypnotised,

baptised in the Ganges
for she is the mother
and now
I am still.

Show me
I asked her,
how dare you
She said,

later
in the bed
She said,
you dared.

clear
and as you can see
I'm here
getting older
every year

it doesn't suit me.

Tolerable?
barely
rarely have I been in
this situation
or maybe
yes
in a dream,
but never for real.

Like most things that life brings
it remains a private affair,
but knowing what is out there
makes it more tolerable,
probably.

Rise and Shine loses its appeal when you wake up and feel groggy,
like your brain is saying, Good God he
lives,

however unlikely if you wake up just like me
take it easy,
we're all getting there.

I think that the mains tripped
it can't have been me
because
I was standing innocently
next to the girl
that I adore.

She
could if
She so desired
set me on fire
but
I'm burning anyway
every way
and
She knows.

If someone could take me from waking up early and keep me locked tight in my sleep.

I dream.

disjointed
sometimes disappointed
a ragbag assortment
I rummage with glee.

She nudges me
and I fall into a winning combination,

I dream.

It was the 'Glass Onion'
and it made us cry
when we knew for certain
that John would die.

Strawberry fields
were never forever
that was for sure
a lie.

Can you hear them in the corridors
slamming doors and making people jump?

I put in the earphones
but
can't hear myself think
weird?
not me,
the line, 'can't hear myself think'

it's an old saying which goes without saying but I said it anyway,
back in the day, Mum used to say that when we were playing, our playing usually ended in fighting which is what brothers did back then,

and now being sidetracked into a memory
I've forgotten what I was going to write,
how's your Thursday going?

Can you hear them in the corridors
slamming doors and making people jump?

I put in the earphones
but
can't hear myself think
weird?
not me,
the line, 'can't hear myself think'

it's an old saying which goes without saying but I said it anyway,
back in the day, Mum used to say that when we were playing, our playing usually ended in fighting which is what brothers did back then,

and now being sidetracked into a memory
I've forgotten what I was going to write,
how's your Thursday going?

In a thousand years time
I would sail down the Rhine
if it was still there,
something tells me that it
won't be

there'll be
no ocean
no sea
and
no fish for tea,

in a thousand years time
we'll have lots of sand
and
sod all else.

Sneezing not wheezing,
it's a breeze in the dark.

****
wrong answer
please redial.

what the nook and cranny?

sometimes I go funny when the
connections short circuit,
the doctor says,
that I'm a misfit,
She says
I'm perfect
the way that I am.

I was thinking about living abroad, and then I got bored with that thought, so I bought a bottle of *** punch on a hunch, scrunched down on the sofa, played my lotto, had a few drinks, got blotto, and then thought to myself,
"What about living abroad?"

some things go in circles
some in a square,
some never think nowt
because some do not dare.

Time is catching up on me
let's wait and see,
but I let it drop
the bubble pops
and I'm behind the times.

Feeling crushed
rushed
pushed into a corner?
take it easy
if you find me
get behind me
we'll chase the blues away.

There's a lot of Wednesday still to come
and I'm already feeling numb,
but
I'm ready to get out there and
toil away
Wednesday's not beat me yet.

The Lego man in his Lego house
made Lego love with his Lego spouse
while his Lego cat caught a Lego mouse
and all was well in Legoland.

It's how it seems, and it's instantly portrayed in a million different memes, but sometimes, it's not how it feels.

A heart thing, the doctor tells me, and another thing he'll say is one fine day when the weather looks a bit crook I'll take another look at you, make an appointment on the way out,

and now I'm  worried,
what did he mean
'on the way out'?

quickly searches for a meme.

We're dancing on the embers of a fire no one remembers
and this life is being ****** out of us,
up the chimneys, we spiral
like candy floss,

there is
sweetness in the air
but that's just death
it gets in everywhere.

Then to the room where the shades are drawn
a bit like the day before we were born
why fear?
we're here
we always have been.

She came upon me in a rush,
I tried to scream but She said,
shush
it's for your own good.

Better get my hair cut
better than my throat cut
and I've said that before
it's on repeat
it's on repeat
and I've said that before.

five twenty-one
the time
not the year
though I fear
it may well be

the dawn of the dark age
another page we turned
more bridges that we burned
can anyone be cross?

Teddy said to me
what do you want to be
when you grow up?
I said to Ted
well,
not a friggin'
glass-eyed bear  
that's for sure.

We'll
call them gentlemen
them in pinstripes
and
patent leather
and
like penguins
they flock together,
safety
in the numbers that they cook up

but every time
they *** us up
and up we look
from
the floor
nobody can ignore
that.

Writing Lost in Spider Trails
nails one more poet to the door,
but raise those webs of wonder high
and stop the ****** war.

it's when you're in the lifeboat and the ship's already sunk and the waves are eight feet high and you feel as if you're drunk
then your brain goes on hiatus like that hernia you had
and the captain says
as a matter of fact, things are looking bad.

but things have always looked the worst just before the morning sun
the man who gave me that little gem is the one known as Ben Gunn and he rose to prominence from the pen of Stevenson.

just ramblin' here and it must be time for breakfast.

Should have been in Reno
at the very least Denver
or 'Frisco
but they wouldn't let me go
so
I'm sitting here in Wapping
chopping firewood for a shilling
and She's off out there shopping
God's got a lot to answer for.

Here on the edge of obscurity where the prophets sit back and study me, looking forward and I might say quite anxiously to what obscurity has got in store for me,
but it is
filled with incredible people from the known world and way back to the Neanderthal,
the forgotten ones
the ones who'd never be forgotten but were
they're all there and I'm going to be there too
unless you
remember me.

When you're up for what you're up for
and the magistrate says, take him down,
turn that frown into a smile and tell him
I'll see you in a little while.

he'll worry like a terrier
add another year to the stretch
he's already given ya,

but you'll forget
sat in the cell
watching the colour TV.