I carry an envelope
half full of emptiness
empty of hope
addressed to someone who
might understand
someone in Paraguay or
Nyasaland?

A second class stamp
because
I can't afford any more.

A swiss army knife for a wife,
sharp.

There is hope by the score,
expensive though
at the second hand store
I wait in vain
in pain
for someone to say
Je t'aime

(which means love in French I think, but
she can be Irish or anything
just something)
(ps it might mean something else in French, but it has a nice ring to the sound when I say it out loud so I hope it means love)

One day this envelope will flake away
before that day
my day
our day
will get in the way.

Shapes in the landscape and kisses left on window panes ,
stains on the bed sheets and all of these meet in the end.
Most of the time
I live far below the waterline where the air is strung out in bubbling lungs,occasionally climbing the rungs to the surface.
I have seen all that I need and fed lightly on greed,watched the passing of wars, saw raw hatred and love cooked in the hearts of desire.
I now have the tranquility of being deep undersea,the wall of the artery is built within me and my home.
And even deeper where the sleeping dogs lie there is a light that dances,flashing glances I see that the light also sees me which is something I strive for,something to stay alive for.
But the ocean is a turbulent place for the man with no face and the waves conspire to put out the fire that burns,each wave takes it in turns to pummel and pound the watery ground where I stand,not knowing that I am the rock that this man stands upon,we are one and the same,
I am the kiss that smudges,the stain that refuses to budge,the shape that you see,the blood that flows hotly through the heat of the artery.
I am the heart in me,I beat against time and time beats inside me,under the sea
it's all it can be
I expect no more than that.

Writing becomes the margin
The annotations,exclamations..
In the corners of my life.

I am stifling in the sutures of some silicone filled future
where the real becomes the fiction and with a predilection for affection.
I search out with some conviction to look for something more.

In the corners of my eyes where constellations live and die..
..and where stars are born and burn
I turn in to inner space
Hoping there I'll find the place
Where this pen that meets the page is divested of its rage
And in the margins once again
Only peace and ink blots will remain.

Books are made to frame these words.
Sturdy things with wire bound spines.
Many times, I have looked within and been taken far away..
..from where I lay..into another world within this world.
In the whirling of narcotic free.
A story.
This is the me.
The light against the night the wrong way round
The day that breaks without a sound and yet remains unbroken
A token that will win no prize
More constellations in my eyes.

Progressively I believe in more and more of my own lies.
And surprisingly..I knew this would occur
This event was written in the margins when I wasn't there
But was read and readily digested as another fiction.
Fact.

Something that I missed..I lacked?
In the margins..life is difficult and to define a future..
..has no future but the snipping of another suture
Binds these wounds and hurts abate.

I would not write against the margin of my fate
Nor relate the pangs of hunger as I take
An empty page again..to sate my rage again.
I must behave again..
..must be brave again.

In and on a dusty manuscript where one more dream was stripped
And one more life was ripped to shreds
I put to bed my haunts.

You have to circumcise me with precision,
don't surprise me
don't close your eyes and tell lies to me,if you cut me I will bleed and I only need you because my religion says,
I must do
well ******* and **** the pope we have been born in a world with no hope and you can't conceive or believe that it's true
that this son born of man is saying, *******,
are we just peripheral to the spherical or can we see through to the satyrs who wax lyrical and do we care?
*******, I'm not there and never was,religion tells me it's because I was unclean,
well
dream on genie and call me Fred Astaire,I've told you before that I am not there and now it's you that doesn't care,
well stick the knife in and let's be fair and cut my ******* so you can wear it on a chain and
pull me towards you
oh what pain,
but you'll enjoy making the boy in me
cry for you.

Nothing is ever just black or white,day or night, dark or light it's always someplace in between.Something that you may have seen
you don't know what or when or where but something that you knew was there,
words unspoken,a promise broken,you know it,
I know it's just a bit of the puzzle we puzzle over,the wool we pull over our eyes,the lies that we tell to tell to ourselves that all will be well
but we are not and never will be until we set our eyes free in order to see what is there,
and in between things is where things do occur,
things you would swear you had seen but have not.

In between has got
substance,
it vibrates in rhythms that escalate, yet you hesitate and do not hear the secrets that are whispered in your ear,
and do not see or feel what is and could be there,in between,not often seen or felt or heard and words are cheap.
keep the shutters on your eyes,spread them thinly on the lies that lie obscene for I have seen the in between,
between the fat and lean and I have
known well Jack Spratt's Queen within the nursery rhymes between the in between of fabled lines and
there are times
I wish I did not know a thing.

Your perfume in the air as you leave..
..becomes the grief in this tomb that I breathe.

Never daring to think beyond thinking we might..
..but the night closed me down.

In town..on a tuesday..when it's wet and so cold..
..I hold onto the dream.
That when I come home..you'll be waiting alone..and for me.

I see it's not real and fate has dealt this cruel blow..
..but how could I possibly know..so soon..that my sun and my moon would fade.
In the leafy glade where you lay..today and forever...never forget..
..our sun never sets it just slips slowly away.

And I still play our game, (in my head now)..do you remember the name..no,don't blush..nobody knows.
I talk and everything slows like it used to..when I was with you.

I talk to my radio, as if my radio could ever know how I feel..once more I can see it's not real but it's how I get through being on my own without you.
Sometimes I think that I've cried myself dry then I cry once again.
Crying myself sane I suppose.
Who knows?

I don't think I want to know no more
I've had enough of knowing stuff that filled my brain with grains of this and strands of that,stats and rats that chew the fur on ***** cats and bats no *****,Niagara falls and if it does why did it fell?,Tenses, tense that make me sick,Michael Miles and 'take your pick'
I can,not tin but aloo mini im or if you're Yankee alloo minum,oh what fun.I'm going round the twist,just spiraling not really ****** and reading down the list I see,
Her Majesty is having tea or as we say,a spot of tiffin,jolly good and splendid,spiffing,what a beezer that geezer is,Philip I mean and not the Queen,she's a lass I think and don't want to think no more.

In a grain of sand
where timelessness and all time would stand
linked
in a semi permanent embrace
for we would be not of an age, to watch as grains build up the Cities, where our children's children would face another mountain that crumbles away
to be washed out to sea and one more day
we,
cannot comprehend another grain that would end in an ocean of sand by the shore
is this what it's for?
the eternal rebuild
the world to be filled with the scents of the past that have passed through the sea and then built up again
so we can see and be the futility of what is not timeless
where time means no less than the time that we take
to make offerings to urchins
and...
..I perch on my post outside the temple of another most holy one
and watch as citadels rise
and watch again as in a blink of a terrapins eye they are gone
and where do I belong
in the ocean,the sea or on land?
in one of a three and in all, I am but a grain of sand
timeless and not,
broken to rot away in one more day
but not the same as the last that has past and passed the point of a no return
to burn in a desert
or to become and be made into an obelisk
a risk assessors nightmare
where
at each turn of his hand it turns back into sand
and again to the sea
to the mountain, to me
and in time it will be
a place where all children play.

Not in our day
we stand as we stand
or we sit on the sand
and are all washed away
in granular form, born and reborn as the tides take their time
and one day
one
day it will come that the sign on the beach reads
'Minefield
danger to life and limb
entry forbidden do not enter in'
but what is seen is not hidden away
and the grains have a way of ignoring what's written
smitten with time
another sign reads
'ignore what you read it's only put out to feed your dreams'
and everything seems as it should
in the timelessness that isn't,
isn't it all so very good?

In outline
brushed strokes so fine
and flyaway hair
is where I want to be
with you,
blinded in blue and through the mastery of imagery
I'd be able to see
more than the artist ever could.
Would you draw inside of me inside of you,two who are blinded in blue?
you can make the man
plan the lines
draw the blinds
and with soft pencils bleed me
into the blinding of you.

(20 minute poetry)


What a depressing looking day
dull and damp and more rain on the way,
what a depressing day.

Feels like I'm walking through the cemetery in the middle of a night and the night or the cemetery is me.  

Going back to bed looks a better bet and it'll save me from getting wet, but who'll save me from myself?

What a depressing looking day and the powers that be, will in their wisdom make it last twenty four hours especially for me,

am I being a misery?

This shadow will rise if I open my eyes and to be honest that's what I must do.


Blue
electric
wired or not
I plugged into the day
and that's what I've got.


This tube's a torpedo
running.

and somewhere the Kapitan
is sunning himself
ready to explode.

bites the bullet and writes this note.

( this kind of mood leads only to the Coliseum where the lions are waiting )

A slowcoach cockroach ambled past me
what an indignity
for me to see.
If I am slower than a cockroach goer
I might as well.
give up

You toss a coin
or turn a card
anyway you throw the dice
you know that life is hard
so you want to take it easy in some nice bijou apartment
but you know that 'heaven sent'
is just a figment of imagination.
Creation's just a spirograph
it makes you cry
it makes you laugh
and in the end
someone will send an 'etch a sketch' to wipe you clean.

So fetch your dream ******* in bows
tie it to the arrows of the discontent
let them fly off to our parliament
and then forget,
that we were once the future that was told
but now we're old
we are expendable.

Words in my head. Unspoken Unsaid...but they slip and they slide ride out and deride bringing untamed desires to the fore. Words are the core. They are all that remain after heartache and pain when the world and its eyes and its peoples despise the lives that they live. Only words can forgive. But words in the head are impotent..they're dead. You can feed words to the starving but they cannot be force fed and thus words left unread.I've said it before..words are the core. Silent words are no good..never could be if no one ever could see what you're trying to say. Hiding words away behind a curtain is certain to obscure any meaning so when you have the leaning and you're ready to fall you have words that can call the words into a book to be read. Not unsaid but out loud to the crowd..to the throng. Is it so wrong to hear words that have love. Sweet Jesus above how could it be when words and their meanings mean so much to me.Do you see where this is leading..down the road of constant reading, with words and what they bring as they sing into today for each and everyone, until the day when words are gone. And that'll be a long time coming.

Underneath the spotlessly clean and polished antique teak deck
Lies the engine room
and it is a wreck
a bit like me.
Look under the wrappings and that's what you'll see
a body that once looked like something like me.

Life's engineer has not been anywhere near
since last year
or the year before that
my batteries are flat and I'm wasting away
sailing a ghost ship
and what do you say?
"it'll be alright
you'll be okay
today is the day you will shine like the deck"

Well
break a leg
break your neck
but the deck isn't me
it's just an image portrayed
of what I'd like to be.

On an orange box wearing bright blue socks
can you see
The madness of me?
I just want to be left alone
to my own devices
The spices of life can be mine
if you just give me time
if you just let me be
let me clean up the engine room and then I can see
what I'm doing.

Setting up camp
I am caught in the headlamps of some corporate tramps with the wings of the albatross stamped on their foreheads,and quickly they come at me firing their guns at me,out of the sun, I can't see them to clearly.
Nearly got me that time
I must be beware,
corporate tramps get every where and try to disrupt me,corrupt me with credits and debits,in books I have read it that these are no good but sometimes I can't see the trees for the wood and they prey on the blinded and feeble and frail,they'll bang at your brain until they make a secure sale,it seems they can't fail,
because
we are bombarded with adverts perverting our minds,adverts that sell you all kinds of mindless monstrosities,colossal calamities and we **** on the corporate mammaries until we've had our fill,
then we burp and slurp it all down.
Welcome to the **** it and see almost but not quite free franchise town,
need a gown.a duck down eiderdown,brown shoes,black shoes anyway you think you win they know you lose but buy it here,buy regurgitated,variagated beer here in the franchise town.
'come on down the price is right'
the time is now
you're going to die so spend and spend and how you please ,use your cards and we will bring you to your knees,
Jeez
it's depressionville,third turning past the bank of **** creek hill.
It makes you want to **** something,someone,the corporations go on and on,before to long they will run out of space,then ,
option one kicks in and kicks you in the face and puts you down.
Join the rest of us.
in the almost but not quite free, buy me here,have a beer,
franchise town

As modern as day is to night,
why don't we shout out,
'bring back Bakelite.'
It's a wonderful thing,it
makes records that sing and
radios that play those.

While we're about it
bring back
the Milkman,the jerry can,
the men that pan gold,
the youth to the old.

As modern as day is to night
bring back my hindsight
it might not be right but
it would be good.

The Victoria.
A circuitous route to get me there where the Central line should be.

"we apologise for any delay, there is a good service operating on all other routes"

Circuitous where the two of us go round in circles and not on the Circle line,
Yes,
travel in London and you'll have a fine old time.

This has been a twenty minute rhyme on the Victoria line, Greenwich mean time.

I'm getting old and I am falling to bits
think I'll give up the ghost
and just call it quits.

It's alright for you,
You're all so young
and so very vibrant
but I am reliant on doctors and pills
and every day I go on just brings me more ills.

The Priest Calls...

..and tells me,
'that life is but a distraction
and afterwards the real action begins
Repent of your sins'
Oh Christ
I don't want to hear that no more
I show him the door.

I try to shuffle around
but I admit it at last I am almost bedbound.

The Lady Calls...

..I let her in
another repentable sin?
but she just looks and she laughs
and says,
'the only thing you'll get in that bed is bedbaths'
I don't need to show her the door
she's there before
I even know it.

Yes,
getting old is the pits
are you also thinking of calling it quits?

Life is a fight
nature fights for the light
we are all blind in the night
and none more than me.
I can see I'll go on 'til the day's finally gone
but nothing tastes good any more
I wonder who let my taste buds out the door.

The Devil Knocks..

..and that shocks me awake
but I never really sleep
got to keep my eye on the green line.
Beep.Beep.Beep
the monitor doesn't allow me to sleep
but 'Old Nick makes me sick
he's even older than me
why would I want to be one of his acolytes?
they're just little shites.
I show him the door
and he roars into flames
feckin showoff.

Pale blue dress
ginger hair
scarlet bow
red velvet coat
orange socks
yellow shoes,
how to lose
yourself,
in colour.

Tea with the drifters
lifting lids on the kids there and
they're all on the skids there,
the dossers and tossers,the pikeys
and grifters,
all with the same name and
sidelined,
blindside of the game,
and with nothing
to choose between see or be seen
we don't see.

We don't see the lean one,the tall one,
the
skinny and the short one,the young or
the old one,
the one with the dream gone but
we all see the hands out,
all fear the question,
(could that be me?)
'spare any change guv for a hot cup of tea?'

On a Sunday for some when we pray and give thanks,
there are some that work hard in the local food banks.
It is to them we should pray and not to some God of the day
who disappears at will.
And I'm sure God will forgive me for saying this system is *****,
it ain't right,
someone's skimming the cream
someone's stealing the dream and
all we'll have left is
the night.

Somewhere within the levels of the conscious
between the bowels of the deep and
the deepness of my thought
I am caught
in the secrets that I keep
in the darkness of my sleep where
I cry in waterfalls of tears and joy
the unhappiness of fears
employ and use me
in perpetuity,
or so it seems.

These dreams see fit to haunt me
and sleeping draughts have no effect.
This dissatisfaction that I feel
peels away and when the day has come
I wonder
wonder why the sun still lights the sky
and wonder why it does not light my heart.
Do I need to look upon the charted stars up there
to understand myself and know just where and when
I go to then
will that make me a better man
if I learn to understand the master plan
and is there such a map.

Mother says,
'I need a slap to wake me up' but I think that's a fallacy
dreamers like me need no such thing.

Each morning I bring a bucket to the well with wishes in my head
and these are fed up through the day
into my conscious thought
and once again I find I'm caught
my thoughts should pay attention to what is going on
before I even know it
the fleeting hours have run away
and gone.

The night would say,
'it serves you right you've got what you deserve,
I reserve the right to kick against the night
and rest my case.

Somewhere in the fading echoes
as the daylight slows
my eyes will close
upon this scene
as if I'd never been at all.

On tombstones where names flake away
In year books from a yesterday
perhaps an image will remain
to stain your memory.

What price is it that we must pay?
What fee is due?
When you or I take that last look at the Summer sky
and fly off to one more blind fate
the final unknown unkind blind date
Who will wait to etch our passing in the book of time?
Who will catch the echoes that we leave behind?

And should I care?
I was never born,never lived,didn't die
I was not there
it was not me you saw
soaring free.
It was not me
It couldn't be.
How would I give up that which is given freely?
that which I should love so dearly
and so very nearly,
I begin to see
how it could be me
I could be there
could live and die with no one to care and at the fade out
would I still shout
It was not me?

These questions sent to try me
tire me.
The fire that was me if it ever was me
is now the embers in the grate.
The cold hand of that unkind blind date
is reaching out to me.
It cannot see me shake
nor can it feel as my heart breaks and daylight flakes away
into the coldness of the final night.

It might have been me that you saw soaring free
or in the echoes of light smashing into the ground.
Stick around
I'll let you know
but then one day,like me you'll have to go.
Just so you know
if you're looking
I'll be in the garden smelling of roses.

So we are taught that the need for greed is greater than the need for nothing at all
and nothing at all is what kite flyers get when they let go of the string,
it's a hollow thing
when your stomach rings out the hour on the hour
and your power of locomotion was left in the pawn shop
the one stop
to top up your wallet or purse
could be worse
that packet of peas in the kitchen will please as you check book recipes for a pea dinner
on a winner or not
the day's still quite hot
so you save on the heating
you also save on the eating when you find that the mice have eaten all the peas
mice do just as they please.

I wish I was a mouse
paying no rent for my house
and eating dried peas.

So the scene's being set for a bet on the horses
the bingo's a no go
because the callers a know it all and he caught you cheating
that's why you would have been eating peas
if the mice hadn't of beaten you to the kitchen
do you
understand that the balance of probability is out of your hands
as you hand in your wager
to the girl at the counter and she counts out your winnings
and you think that it's cricket and go in for one more innings and lose the whole wedge
We're on the edge and we're tipping as the whole world starts ripping us apart.

I used to listen to Winehouse in the greenhouse and the windows cried in pain.
I had Gillespie in the conservatory and Kitt in the kitchen, but I saved Brenda Lee for the bedroom see 'cause she was the queen.
I had them all running recordings in my head, Dave Dee, Fats Domino, Bono, Callas for a touch of class, Des and Bygraves, slaves to the sound spinning around in my mind and now I can't find a song that's familiar, can't make out the words, don't know the artists, missed out along the tracks, no vinyls, no needles, no tables just racks of CD's
oh please tell me it isn't so
this can't be the way to go,
where's Slim and Kim and Marty gonna go now that the party is over?
In the greenhouse where I listened to Winehouse and watched the pickup pick up the beat,
I take a back seat and eat a tomato while nothing else is going on.

The peerage and the steerage class.
(Titanic's in the dock)

The benefit,
the bit the government decreed is
enough to fulfill your every need,to
clothe and feed and get you through and
pay for fares to each job interview.
Meanwhile
in the House of trouts where
those who don't know they are dead still
have their snouts in the trough,
the ayes have it.
Yes
this species of faeces who don't have a clue,
give voice to the bills that tell us what to do.
I don't know about you but
to me that doesn't seem right.

I had her heart in my hand
but she held my breath in her wonderland
attractivated she motormated me
and magnet-ied  my eyes
laser beamed with just one goal
that
touch me,please me,feely feely
Really it was very nice
an understatement
even if said twice.

I saw some distant planetary system
when she kissed me and I wished then on a star
which fell
and far from being here
she had taken me out there
to share with me
her luminosity.

How could it last
the fires that burn so bright
still cast shadows on the wall of my desire
but she took me high above
all thoughts of love had taken leave
I believe she was angel or a demon
but she led this man into
her Queendom
and when done with me
she loosed me like a cannon ball
which is an entirely different kind of wall
like an illusion
a colliding of materials
in colour sorted serial codes.

If it bodes well
I'll find she came from heaven and not from hell
but at the moment I can't tell
and to tell the truth
It doesn't worry me.

We all know that
sometimes we have to let go.
A case of,
'press and release to win some peace'
it becomes pointless to hold on to what's gone,a feeling so dull almost like
bottling sunbeams once they have shone and finding those beams do not shine quite so bright,will not light up the darkness if you stay in the night,
we have to let go,have to let yesterday flow with the ebb of the tide,inside the minds of some men there's a pen that writes queries,writing the forehead with lines,
the weary should know if they'll only let go they will find the blotter to mop up the ink,there's a link between here ,now and then, it's how you perceive it and when you believe it you'll know
that
sometimes we have to let go.

We wrote our hearts in permalink
and etched the light into our eyes
and in the ink that never fades away
we lettered each and every day.
In peppered nights with parasol
where in the heat that spiced the hands and touched the soul
we founded dynasties
and finished mysteries
then slept like dogs among the charcoaled logs of past desire
but woke to another more intense and spent a little of the fire before the coming day.
and was it thus this way?
Did I really write all night
did she come to me all dressed in white with hunger on her lips
did I rip the pen away and leave the page unwritten and unread
were those words she said meant for me
and could she, could she not see excitement on this parchment where the ink was legible?
to be honest it was hard for me to tell
and in the telling it gets no easier for me to see.
The ink is in the permalink, the permanence and what substance that there could be
in this the mystery
in this the she, and she is this and this I see?
simply put
but strangely said
again we stammer off to bed in hesitance another permanence
but that is good
and that is too and both of us know what to do.
The pen is light upon her page
and the stage is set
we get another taste and tuck into the chapter one with other chapters more to come
and with the wetness of a passing storm
both her and I are born.

And then there was slow,
the falling of dandruff like snow and it's tough,I am
taking the rough with the smooth or taking a ticket for the suicide booth,can't decide if I should get the return trip or just ride.
And then there was slow,
it's like you know where you're at but don't know where to go,so
you put on a show and it folds the first night,
bankrupted,disgusted,
you walk,
talking with crows in the slow.

The mission bells rang out and
the faithless were hung out
to dry,
today is a good day to die
or as good as it gets.

Menaces and threats never satisfied and
they died where they stood.

But it was Joseph of Arimathea who
came to be here
when the faithful had gone
and it was his words that shone
some heard him wrong,
but not me.

On the hilltop where olives gleam
against the towers where I
have seen
ghosts of the past
I saw it at last and
misunderstood,
that's as
good as it gets.

The look that says it all
says nothing at all,
but the eyes say everything
you'd ever need to know.

The old iron bedstead makes a good bed at
the bottom of the white cottage garden,and
out from it sprouts,
stinging nettles and a solitary tiger lily,
a filly among the rough,
nature can be cold hearted and tough.

Nesting in an old tub underneath a mulberry bush,
a blackbird sings songs in the morning which longs
to be older,
and an old well now dry but once wished upon by
ladies in crinoline
sits and silently cries out its thirst.
This was the garden to be in the cottage where we
had such sadness and joy.

Many years pass and the footpath falls under the fast rolling weeds,
the cottage now empty is still and
surprisingly white as if
the passage of years has been a delight.

Strange though that I still go to meander,
pander to melancholy in the place where
we kissed under mistletoe
so long ago.

I chance to pick up a pen and scribble
the end of the World again.

The lunar eclipse?
just one more of
this Government's tricks.

Make no mistake about this
the next asteroid
is not going to miss.

I chance to pick up a pen which
always happens when the
World ends again.

Rinse and repeat
Rinse and repeat
this thing's got me beat
rinse and repeat.


No matter how many times,
the stains still remain,
the washing machine,
the rinse and repeat
is to blame.

Powder and bleach
they do not reach
they cannot teach
the soul
to be clean.

Rinse and repeat
Rinse and repeat
these
repetitions will beat me
to death.

..and then you wake
fall out of a dream because you were not strapped in,
try to return but you can't find the key and so,
you break into your eyes like you're stealing the mint and
the day oozes in with its mud and like clay your feet start to move as you start to sway when the scent of the morning, the sweat of the night lays on your skin and your breath's like a gray cloud, outside there's a shout but you drown it out in the jet stream of a shower, the power in your head ignites, the night's a memory now,
the dream is not it's all you've got to live on.

there is camaraderie
and sometimes just that
loose affiliation which brings
us together in a common purpose.

Christmas is coming although one
can't be really sure
perhaps this year it'll be marginalised
like the outcast and the poor,
but perhaps not.

I'm full of hope
I have to be,
unchanging
even as things change
around me,

She grounds me from these
flights of fancy,
anchors me
in this storm.

I write when I'm happy
I write when I'm sad
I scribble when I am miserable and am flowery when I'm glad.

I write through the sharpening of pencils in the night and I blunt several visions,even then it may not come out right and so I blunt some more.
I write upon the bathroom walls,paint words across the door
I wish this house was bigger, then I'd write even more.
It makes my fingers sore to hold the pencil so but I must move in rhythm to where the words would like to go,
and go they must
before I crumble like the dust that drifts out from the cracking walls.

Daybreak calls me,
to put my pencils to one side,
I hide my ears under an old grey hat,can't be listening to none o' that
my lead is leaking from the pencil point.the point being
I am seeing words that line up one by one and when they've marched off,gone,
I shall pencil on and on.
No eraser or erasure
though to be sure some sentences are so obscure in meaning
with meanings that could only seem to be a meaning incomplete to me
I complete them anyway
and some nights I write through the day as well
my life is light and dark
a pencil park
a stop and slide
a ride across the graphite trail
at snails pace.

I am haunting the past,
my own,
and the others
who cast me aside.

Pearl after pearls before the swine found
back in the backyards of the backyard of time.
I am haunting the past.

The constant in me and at last or
somewhere near there
I share what remains,
the bain or the bane of my youth?
the pain of the truth that
stains the sidewalks with blood.

I am haunting the past and
I'm good at it.

She was the whirler of webs that held me close to her breast
and what I liked the best
was the look in her eye
that told me untruths but I didn't cry
as her fingernails etched her pain down my back
I went back again for more and yes, she
she was the most adorable being
seeing how cruel she could be.

She was the speeding car that knocked me over
the honey bee wrapped in soft silken clover
and I stood there baring my chest willing the car to come, do its best
I'm not sure if she did
she had hidden her heart from me
and only let me see what she wanted me to see
which could be distressing
like ******* in the dark
not holding hands in the park
little things which mean a lot.

She was the car in the parking lot
ignition switched off
engine cold
At times she raced
I paced myself but she knew I was caught in her headlights
those hot nights
trapped all the same with no choice
I was lost,
but loved playing the game.

One the web was begun
and spun
around my days and nights
I couldn't sleep
couldn't keep still
enslaved to her will
I will die with her name on my lips
she won't even know
she has forgotten it was so long ago
did honey ever taste as sweet?

When Cameron came to Stratford
he came in disguise,
afraid of the eyes accusing him,
he stood in the stadium
like an Athenian,
but we saw through his games
and Olympiad flames,
when Cameron came to Stratford
we buggered off to Crewe.

(20 minute poetry)

Never more sure
than this,
a kiss.

Start if you mean to go on
don't bleed me and leave me.

If all's fair in love and in war
give me more.

In the tenement
they give the last sacrament
to the old city gent,
a testament to the living  
and to faith.


Knowing I'm going somewhere
be it straight
be it narrow
I fly like an arrow through
the thinness of air,
starting when I know
I'll get there.

Travelling light through
the night holds no terrors,
it's not like I'm looking
in mirrors.

And it's Friday
that's a good sign,
another week over and
the weekend to cling to
brings the week to
a satisfactory conclusion.

Pale blue
baleful too
Mourning
morning
and the day begins
grins at me from behind the sky
slyly
wryly
I arise
wash the sleep
and my eyes
blue
sorrowful too
and I grin from behind the mask
all I ask is all there
glaring at times
and at times
daring me to break away
the day reins me in
from behind the sky comes another grin
a guffaw
and then more than my ears care to hear.

Fear the day
fear the way it captures the heart and wants you to live
carry a shiv
stab at it
grab at its glory
make a story from the fear that would trap you
wrap it round your little finger
**** on it and let its sweet taste linger
but fear the day just the same as it plays its frames about the screen that is your eyes
pale blue
behind the sky
we die just enough to enjoy and it's tough
to live
and then say,
'give me more are you waiting for an invitation
do you want each day to change and for every situation
to halt and arrange a moratorium?'

The crematorium will burn just as well
whether we're going to Heaven or bound in chains and heading for hell
this soul would do well to remember and write this in his journal.
The infernal cacophony of philosophy does me no good
I am the tree that cannot see but locked in a wooden embrace
with a wooden face
and behind the sky grins
at my wonderings
and I,
mourning
morning
place my hopes on a tomorrow that does not come.
For some it seems
those that live and die in dreams
tomorrow
is a shadow in the waking of the day which in a way is what I see
but what I see is not what I get
the day reins me in and once again I forget the story line
in time
I will
forget it all.

I wrote it
rehearsed it
performed it
I owned it.

The spotlight, hit me just right and casting my gaze through the haze of blue smoke which rose from the cigar smoking crowd,
I announced quite loudly,my name
and my game was to be a night full of poetry,
if they had the time for it
I had the rhyme to hit them head on.
and then I was gone,
full on in a twister
a blistering piece about pulsating quasars,black holes and lasers,wrists cut with razors in the dead of the night,
I had them alright
there was a silence that stunned them,then I shot them with love songs,short rhymes but long lines,
then before they recovered and came to their senses,a poem followed on about the pretence that men favour
and the flavour of lies that lick off the tongue,another twelve bored out shotgun and a run in with death that undressed them,slightly depressed them,
and a funny rhyme about Harry Lime which the older ones got and the young ones did not.

Taking a ten second break to await the applause,I cut it off short,got caught in another rose,a tinctured vial full of prose,elastic and bending,sending this crew into waves of delight,
it was late night in Wigan or it may have been Crewe,I wasn't so sure but the audience knew and I didn't care there was lots more to get through,and the words partied out,spread about the seated like spice heated so hot, it would burn them, or it would not,
another shot from the stage,the rage of a victim on Jeremy Kyle,held out in my words,another funny one,make them smile,they never forget that,
they may forget me
but they'll remember my poetry.

The half smoked cheroot you dropped and trampled underfoot
was like the
time you stopped and walked all over me
or was it time that stopped?
was it I that dropped
off the climbing frame and cut my leg?
and begged you not to go but you went anyway
and we didn't play together any more.

Then twenty years on when the pain of you was still as fresh as if someone had painted it in everlast and we all know those things that shouldn't last but some do.
that was how and when time flew
I followed you again as if back on the climbing frame and aching for a cut or two
you
just smoked a pack and blew the smoke in curling blue
and with the picture cards that posted on the books we knew
we played that childish trick or treat
you tricked
and I never got the treat
but if I meet you twenty years from now
I know that I will find somehow
the match to light your cigarette
the flame to make you want to get
another climb
two children in the frame.

Empty eyes,cap in hand,watch them stand.
The pride and joy of our great nation bumming coins outside St.Pancras railway station,boy 'if they could see me now'how the other half survive,turned up collars,downcast eyes and if you see them too,tell me please,what do you do,'walk on by' pass some time,give a dollar,throw a dime?
In the dockyard,broken down but once the busiest place in town sits Tony Green and he has seen years come and go,could tell your fortune from your palm and yet he's blind to his own fate,so he'll wait until the soup run comes and walk slowly with the other outcast tramps and bums,some who've had such different days and now like the docks are in decay and this is pride,the British way.

If it's true we live and learn and yet don't concern ourselves with others,sisters,brothers on their uppers,
what does that make us become?

She's cool but hot and got the lot,sophistication,determination,she gets what she wants and gets it all.
She's tall and slim,sharp as a pin,I can't fool her and wouldn't dare,but sometimes when she's unaware,
I pull a funny face at her and laugh inside just like a child.
She makes me wanton
She is wild, especially if she gets riled,she makes me smile,she makes me sing and
she makes me
everything.

We shatter no illusions
when  breaking through
the looking glass.

In the private hostel
and
a tiny bit of gospel
because we still have to
sing for our supper.

They still try to sell you
on things that they tell you
and we listen and
pretend we believe.

I saw Satan in the soup dish
and an angel in the cake,
fourteen knights and old King Arthur
who were
standing by the lake

I take communion with the lady
in the shower meant for men
and a mass for me at midnight
when the lady comes again.

We are eighteen carat diamonds
Methuselah wears us well
and we're in the private hostel
halfway home
half way to hell.

If you accept and agree
that it's not down to you
and it ain't down to me,
then who is to blame?
Who put my name to the fore when the talk turned to war and the *** started to boil?
this is my land and,
if and then which will not be when they tell me to fight,I shall decide what is just,and just what is right,
Not some Whitehall geezer who thinks it jolly beezer to rattle the swords.

The witches song.

Eye of gnat,one ministry t*at
and several shades of men in the pay at westminster today
stir them round until the ground is scorched
and we will all be torched and burn
turn and spit
at witless men who went to war, even when
we said no,
and there you go
another spell
and one more smell in
parliament.

It's not down to me,it couldn't be
I didn't vote to put on a coat
of armour.

In twenty four and seven more and one week ahead we'll meet
down at the pilgrims parsonage,where travellers sit to rest their weak and weary souls
and where donkeys tied to willow poles, whip round and round thus bringing water above the ground from down below.
This is the flow of life I see in all humility and serenity,where tranquillity doth override man's overpowering urge to ramble on and ride upon the tails of tales we tell.

The well is deep and we take our fill
as the pill sometimes we swallow,bitter is the man who doesn't know,the flow and where she goes.

Insolent men will scoff,deride the secrets that we hold as true,inside the barriers we ***** to keep the heathens we suspect to be at gain, so ill,
and one more pill to chew upon until the taste of arsenic,
gone are all the thoughts of greed and if we ever needed them or did we leave them to the insolence in us,the men
and are we then the men become
those who look blindsided, sideways at the sun and never blink,nor stop to think of Icarus who flew too high,too near,
wings are meant for birds and men may try to fly as such,
a touch too much of looking at the sun!

Fear not the walkers of the sands with calloused hands and spirits free
fear not for he is we
the seeker and the same
the one by any other name we like to call.

I fall again into the flow as only fallen men would know
to feel refreshed and at my ease
anyway I like to please
the audience who only come to watch the show
and never really get the flow
at all.

Out of shape
I bend slowly
into an old
man.