Give me some Tramadol
Panadol
a laxative
a fixative
just
give me some peace.

Give me a new lease on life
a wife
a home
a new hip
(just thought that I'd slip that one in)

Oh Christ on the cross
how do I live with the loss
how does one start
when the heart has been shattered
and what does it matter?

Let me be drip fed on a bed
and out of my head
give me indemnity
against
whatever I've said or am likely to say
Give me
Today.

They told me dip your toes into that hell
Go
and make a daisy chain as well
and each daisy represents a body slain
a ****** great big daisy chain.
So I went and built a wall of sweat and in it tied the lessons which I tried hard to forget
but as these flowers on the wall began to bloom
the chain wrapped me into the doom
I saw a mountain lit in blackened light and on a white horse
there sat
a knight of olde
Taking notes as if foretold a history would need be taken
of lost souls who
forsaken by their breath had daisy chained into their death.

No Camelot
No Camelot
King Arthur has forgotten us
as we forgot the writings in the book
and took it on ourselves to delve into the fiery hells
that live within the hearts of men.

When we learn to make a daisy chain
when we learn that each man or woman slain in the name of God above
will we ever learn of this thing called love.

If and when we start to live in peace again
I wonder if we'll begin to see
daisy chains are not all they're cracked up to be.

The mirror spoke before it broke of another reflection back in time
another line
another chain
another hundred thousand slain
and told of not who was to blame
but pointed wearily
at me.

If we rip out the heart of the sky and try to build
scrapers that make the sky cry
then we're right off the scale
Fail
I'll say
never seen a fail that won a day
and lost somewhere along the way were notions of mortality.
Corporeal hospitality and the thanks of the dead
wine to the head
and grist to the mill
The devil will take you and use the abuse you have settled in
for sin and corruption
a demon concoction
drink hard and long
and the wrong becomes right in your mind's out of sight
and we're all for the knackers yard
hard to take in
**** the world and we've been here and done this for Sweet F.A
Never seen a fail that won a day.

What choice?
no voice
no seat on the board.

How to applaud something you never said,
ill-bred and dragged through the mire?
I
just mime in the choir and the
Angel gets the credit,
been there and done it
wrote and reread it and
the Angel still gets the credit.

My allowance is due and it's time to renew
the acquaintance with those I once flew with,
if life gives me a second and one more second chance
I might dance in Trafalgar
the tango with Elgar
or
with my arms wrapped around,
she,
who brings sound to my ears.

I saw the dealing of the cards,the ace of clubs,the diamonds,spades
but I have made my pact in hearts
the one that breaks and heals and seals upon another deal,
and you
took me, through a left hand turn
shared with me
a love that burned my tongue and fingers,how the taste of you still lingers on the deck,on the table and on the floor where we dealt more than cards upon our suits of nakedness.
Then later clothed lest we upset the kings and queens we laughed,as if they'd never seen before,two lovers on the table,floor
and I adored you more and more than any game I'd ever played,
you,
my Queen,
and I,
your knave.

If I could save this hand I hold
If only I had told you how I felt
If only
I had knelt just one more time to taste the wine that flowed from precious lips.
I could carry on,
but the point is that you're gone
so there is no point
I no longer care
for cards,
I play
solitaire

The ghosts are on the attack but I knew they'd be back..so
I armed myself with an amulet and charm..there's no harm in that..
..but those blasted ghosts are on my back.
They've never left me alone, even on the telephone I can hear them howl.
Foul beasts that they are.
I should get in my car and drive far away,speed through this night and into a day where I cannot be found.
But I'm an obstinate cuss so I shall stay,hold my ground.
I shake my fists in the air..there are ghosts everywhere.
Can you see what they're doing to me..they are driving me loopy, those spooky things
Which is what they intend
They want me to end...
..It all.

Off limits,
five minutes
I'm in.
The original sin doesn't count towards karma, Krishna or Rama and nothing is barred to the one who breaks through,
who is it what do you do when the day breaks it breaks just for you
and I never knew it at all.
Off limits so call out the guards
throw down the cards that you hold
and ask for
one more
deal.
Nothing is real and that you can't steal, nothing is real only
the cards in the deal,
give me five minutes to mark out the limits of five minutes more and
I'm in,
look at me grin like a big Cheshire cat
I can do that and more
one more
deal.

Why ask me why
I write
if I try only to die
I write
why ask me
why?

There's an agony in
every line
'to be or not...'
was not the plot I
had in mind,
but Shakespeare's dead now
and I find he wasn't
Hamlet after all.

So
you ask and unmask me
take me to task and then
she comes to my rescue
and you
ask me why.

I can answer the question you pose
I suppose
or I could keep silent about
the way that it went, being
intent on the answers.

And to qualify the why of it
ask me first the how it was
and there it is,
I try
I write
I live or die
I breathe
believe
(in things)
and
she
brings me hope,


what do you bring
but questions.

The iron bedstead creaked and the buckets underneath the leaks up in the ceiling gave us a feeling, of being on a movie set,
the flicker of light from the candle,waxed magnificent across the film of grime,a window to another time,a line up in the make up shed,the freshly made up bed,everybody said,
'down in the Hacienda where the cockroaches defend ya, against the desert rats,where nocturnal bats then eat the desert rats,you'll feel at home,

No coffee bar,no public phone,no concierge,you're all alone and feeling tender and that is life down in the Hacienda.

We took a walk through tumbleweeds and in this town that leads us to despair,we found we did not care,we two, were already there,at the end,where cockroaches could not defend against the things that lived within,the sin that kept us pinned against the ropes,the hope we had against all hopes that somehow we'd escape,be free,could settle in obscurity.

This Hacienda is the place where you must meet your demons face to face,unearth the things you'd rather not,
down in the Hacienda is where we learnt a lot,stopped the rot,oiled the bed,noted what was said,
but it's hardly worth it going to, the Hacienda just to view,you have to go and do,to see and be the changes that are made,
and as the Hacienda fades into another scene and plays into another screen,I lean across to her to share a kiss.

Confucius may have said a lot but he never said what I could not
suppose he found the narration would not translate
and in this state of mind over no matter
I wonder what is the matter with me
I can see
things that are not there and if I write about these things
I swear people think
I'm blowing bubbles in the air
but they can't pop them
can't stop them
I put my thinking where I want and is it not fairthat I should
could a minstrel shoulder less a burden?
in my garden everything's rosio
sing me a song and
I'll be your romeo.

Confucius confuses me with someone I used to be
and whatever he says
makes no difference I see
what I see
and if words could convey this disarray
I'd write them all day
but they don't so I won't
but who am I to decide that you out there should be denied
of my talented pen?
(me big headed..when?)
so I'll keep on showing you the slowing of what I do and in the inks you'll find links
to the something not there.

Does that man that he was and he was such a man
care about what I can do?
Confucius say
and whatever it was got lost in translation.

Out on a liferaft looking for low flying aircraft and the
sea shells that sound like the sea.
I see nothing but water and sailors that caught a rough wave
and paving the way for a saviour to appear is the
rear admiral asleep and the course that we keep is
quite random it seems, gleaned from the stars and
the dockside bars, distilled by the gums that supped many a *** and
smoked a canteen of navy cut cigarettes, where will it end?

The admiral wakes, takes a reading, 'land sakes', from the parrot that sits by his side and we glide on through the sea, what will be, what will be
but what is
is what worries me.

On the cockleshell shore where we floundered and wore out the heels of our boots, we set down some roots built huts from bamboo to save us from sunstroke and the Lloyds bell was rung for lost sailors and *** and the admiral asleep in the rear.

I read words,
speed through them
cutting sentences,
gutting books like fish.

On the odd and why not occasion I wish
I was as slow as old Joe who used to bring the vegetables in a van on Saturdays back in the day when the town was so far away, he took forever it seemed to me as he phut putt phutted and waved quite merrily from his younger looking though still ancient Model T ... which wasn't made in Formosa by the way although just about everything else was back in the day.

Back to reading,
a bit like being sliced open on a table and bleeding pictures from my head and you know the book's been good when you wake up living and think you've been dead (excited)
delighted as I am I still speed, can't help it, need to slow a bit, be like old Joe a bit.

I suppose when I age a bit and the sight starts to dim a bit and at the same time I need to trim a bit of fat from my waist
I might get the taste of it,
I mean being slow a bit
but
I'm open to offers.

The hotel we booked looked breezy and bright
just as well
as we planned on staying the night.

But the Doorman named Stan,said this,and deadpan,'you ain't coming in because you're not wed.
'Aye 'we're over the brush' no rush to get wed', 's what I said,
'well
you ain't getting in, get that in your head', is what Stan the doorman then said.

So we to and we fro'd 'til I punched him in the nose,a bad move on my part,got carted away to spend that night and the next day in a cell.

And she gave me hell when I got home.

I sleep now in monochrome
On a mono bed in a mono home
And in those blacks and whites
Of my monochrome nights
I dream.
Technically in faint hues
Of reds and greens and blues.
But she who left
Was the colour on my page
The spoken word upon my stage
And now in monochrome
Like the howling winds outside the door I moan
And comb through the echoes
To hear her voice.

When I walk within my dreams it seems I'm crawling on my knees.
My dreams will wander as they please.
When my dreams are on a roll I lose control and strange things occur
Last night, I swam naked in thin air.
The night before, I melted into a concrete floor,became a post
On a lonely deserted coast I watch the horizon
One day I'll suprise them
I'll wake within my walking dreams and the only screams that you will hear
Will be nightmares galloping off in fear.
My peers think that I'm mad you know because I throw the dice and go
Into the numbers within my slumbers.
I count the hours until I sleep
I keep the dogs of hell at bay by walking through the sleeping day.
Now,you may say my pen has slipped
Dipped into the inkwell of mad despair.
Do you think I care?
I have my dreams and that means everything to me.

I wake.
Ache and take
A moment to adjust my eyes
I listen to her sleeping sighs.
I look to her *******
I have lain in those nests and I have caressed.
And after all these years
Of marriage,children,laughter and tears
I still wake and ache to take you in my arms
And tell you I love you.

John Smallshaw 2011

On the production line a product of the time
and a time for busy bees
with beehive hairdo's and the permanent wave
not many dreadlocks
but that's something I'll save for a rainy day
I like to play my fingers through them
and when she gets a bit naughty and the temps reached about forty
well, things go on
but that's not for on the production line
a time and a place for many things
and she brings me most
then cooks me a meal,
sometimes I feel like a king
and to her who would love me
I bring but a man
with faults and defaults she can discover at will and she will.
and still I remain like a tomato ketchup stain on her dress
She, under duress tells me later
I wait on her shift at the factory but it finishes and me I'm still here
waiting to see her.

Her life is her own and I own none of it
not a drop or a little bit and as she has so often said,
'you can get that idea right out of you head'
She is strong and I long for her
She is weak and I comfort her
but these things she does for me
I wait and see what the next instalment will be
her and me
me and her
on the production line where love isn't fair nor is meant to be
it's the economy
got to blame it on something and that seems about right
got to make light of it and that does not
what she has and she has an awful lot
is what I haven't got
and maybe never will
and that's another will I can't fight
and another something that isn't quite right.

Life goes on and we get old
and maybe we never get to hold what we wish for
maybe that's not the way
perhaps we'll always have to fight for our day in the sun
or pick up the gun and demand it or take it by force
and of course as a pacifist
I would desist from taking that step
which is one step away
from the hangman.

Think I'm melting
and
belting hot or not
that Sun
has a soft spot for me

haven't felt in
this frame of mind
since Winter came
and went.

hanging loose?
well all men do
ha.

Now I'm drooping
well all men do
another ha.

But I am melting.

Ice cream might assist me
and as it's a medical emergency
I should call an ambulance
that'd be a performance
unpaid
because of my amateur status

weightless now,
I am melted away
left it too late and
ain't that
always the way?

wishing I had gone fishing
instead of splish splashing
getting a rash in
an awkward place

always the case isn't it?
complaints about the heat
complaints when it's cold
complaints about most things
especially getting old.

Sunset soon
can't wait for the moonlight
it might
cool me down.

Syria.
It's a worrier
and
no wonder I can't sleep.

Do we stay out or
do we go in with 'boots on the ground?'

Harold said,
'this won't affect the pound in your pocket'
that's torn it,
the hawks will have *******, but
no win, no fee or should that be
no win, no free?

It's a puzzle of a poser,
suppose we
dispose of the lies,
we could with an open pair of eyes
see
things differently.

I think
infantry,
in my infancy I fancy
there's always a chance we
might
stay out.

Turn the sound on your
dressing gown down
douse the lights
listen to the night,
rustling leaves leave lots to the
imagination and
all the time in creation to
Imagine
monsters hiding under the bed
in the bathroom
in your head
wake up
one day you'll be dead
and
was that the Moon that I saw
hanging on an unlikely thread?

Answer me this,
how can salmon run without any legs?
a fisherman's story and another unlikely
thread.

Behind the bike shed
I kissed a redhead
an unlikelier thread?

Sunday is the unlikeliest
or so the trick cyclist
tells me.

Underneath the shadow of the
old Yew tree
where the dead men sleep
in the cemetery,
there's a woodpecker pecking
constantly,
so much for
'Rest in peace'

Trampling through the essays which were written one tomorrow and you know you'll never read them,
why is life filled with such sorrow?
but you keep on walking through them 'til they're fallen men on battlefields and it makes you feel so hollow when the echoes sound inside you,when the words join up around you and there's no one left who knew you but the essay stands on sentry call to catch and if then you should fall there's always one tomorrow and another entry wading through your soul.

The lights go on in somewhere but you've been there far too often and there's nothing left to keep you as you wander through the weeping and you know it's the beginning but the ending is no secret it was written on the exit signs that hung drunkenly in doorways and you've been through those same doorways many times.

You might think it's a social commentary
but to me
it's just a bit of poetry.
If I rant and rave about saving the whales or
some jungle in Ecuador,
they're just words and not for
dissemination,
just for you to read and it's all in my
fertile
imagination.

I write as I feel,I
don't kneel at the feet of
Shelley or Keats,
if you want that instead of my kind of writing,
the right kind of,bright kind of,tight kind of,
then go right in and read.the
difference is in the breeding,the reading is all of the same,
I won't change my style nor my name just to be,
a tick on your checklist for your friends to see.

This is not commentating
this is my heart remonstrating with the soul
that's inside me.
this is my poetry
take it or leave it.

Wednesday taps me
on the shoulder
wakes me up
to remind me that I'm
one day older

*******.

On the St Lawrence
going upriver today
there may be gold in them hills
that I see lay before me

I will do me some panning and see
what pans out,
panning is what my life's
all been about

a nugget or two will do
no need to be needy or
any need to be greedy
just taking some time and
what I pan will be mine.

Waters are cold the higher
I get
shingles
slippery
wet.

I'm reflecting
on a man with a pan in his hand
a grizzled old face
a gold wedding band.

When I head back downstream
it'll be
to champagne, caviar, real coffee with cream
or is that just an old prospectors pipe dream?
I see diamonds that flash off the noonday Sun
as if
running atop of the water
I'm rich,
but I wish it was gold.

It's silent mostly
except for the water and birds
and the words I cuss out,
did I mention
that's what panning is all about.

I scramble through the brambles that
grow over my mind and try to find
a way out,

I guess panning is about that too,

Well being, being well and seeing as that's okay make me well as well, but a well can be deep, can it not?
so with that in mind I've got a long rope.

Also
and there's almost always one also to add to things that I also don't know
so
I put also into the algorithmic mix and get
answers in the form of equations which mathematicians expound on at length whose length is as long as the rope for the well that is possibly deep

I keep going round the houses to get to the place that I want and the place that I want is well being and all being well I will get there.

Do you
promise
to honour and obey?
The marriage of yesterday.

You get what you deserve
and I reserve the right
to slip away at night
and go out clubbing.

I'm not the one to criticise
the way you dress
the make up on your eyes
but have you looked
lately?
Stately homes come to mind
are you mad or are you blinded by the factories that drip dry fripperies that you use as you please
and I never please you
excuse me
is that powder on your powdered face quite dry
and why use it anyway?

Girls today are quite insane lipstick on the brain
and more upon their lips
I slip into a reverie and see
the you of long ago before you went and spent each dollar earned
on cosmetically engineered potions for perms
At times I squirm with embarrassment
at others 'oh brother'
I look away
this is not the marriage of yesterday
or the woman that I know
must go and check the requirement for a retirement home
somewhere far away and alone
Can't stand the smell of eau de cologne
any more.

Now moored in the dark bays
My ship in the dark days
Sailed light in the wild seas.

The fresh winds that blew in
off the keys
paid no fees nor no duties
those beauties were wild.

We.
In the child that is time
got drunk on cheap whiskey
and drank even more wine.
And sailed on.

We.
were the gone in 'begone with you'
a Devils brew of a troupe
on a sloop with no flag.

Dragging my heels a bit
in a suit of the age
that cannot fit.
It's not cut for this jib
Which is even more of a fib
that is scratched in the journal with ink and with nib.

Here I tie up and stay in the bay of my birth
My final berth and it's fitting
that in this bay where I sit on the sloop
that the loop of my life keeps on playing,
relaying those wild crazy times in 'the Carolines'
or on the 'Main'
Standing, 'man on the wheel'
life is just one big reel
Always one more destination
Just one more salutation
then I go.

I thought that I could walk on water and as the son of man
I should have swam with big fish
wish?
I should have wished the World away
stepped into another day of Saints and sinners
losers
winners
who brought hope and misery to
us
the peasantry.

Presently
pleasantly surprised
I find myself under clear blue skies
on a desert dune
whereon I rise and call out to the stars
the sun
the moon
who if they hear at all will tell me all too soon
just to whom it is I should pay homage.

I reflect as the heat reflects up off the sand.
Is this land fit only for those castles that would blow down in a storm?
what form does man take when the breaking of the bread
is taking bread from starving men?
When?
And then these thoughts that take me hostage are the homage I must pay
To live and write and fight
a ray of sunlight
and in it wrapped tight
another ray
the simple way of it
to sit and wander through these thoughts
and I thought
I could walk on water
can't even stand on my own two feet.

There is always the square root
the road to nirvana
the mathematical equation
that solves the dilemma.,
the indigent integer that
itches my conscience and the
point that floats before my eyes.

Triangulating my position on the road to
perdition, at least I know where I am.

If the cat's in the black box and the white box
is bare,
is the cat really there?.
The idiot in me says it must be,
seeing's believing they say,
what colour is the cat that's meant to deceive?

Equations flow freely through the nearly enough now
and the answers flood in with the mail.

Another light heart
day start
start to
amalgamate
concentrate on not being late
for the sunshine
in time
whatever is to be
will be mine
and then
when I start to fly
and watch the World go by
I may wonder why
I am alone.

One Summer on a Wednesday in June
when the Sun had sorted out the moon and shone
John..(that is I) thought I could fly
so I jumped off the bridge that flew over the railway lines
I admit
I have had better times and my grand designs were slightly flawed
but getting bored with broken leg and arm
and seeming to do more harm than good
I thought I would
just learn to knit
which is a bit like tying knots in spaghetti.

Now me (again that is I)
am waiting for the sky to lighten
up the day
then I'll go and play
hopscotch on the motorway.

Some people never learn
but Sunday schools are just for fools
and that is fine
I only go there
for the bread and wine
and that's fine too.

Feeding tigers in the zoo sounds like fun
anybody like to come
with me?
Talk to tigers
set them free?
Something might be wrong with me
but I can't see how just a little cat could be
so dangerous.

The House of St Barnabas.

If I ever elected to be selected
rejected then detected as a phoney,fake
I don't recall
that was before I took the fall
did the bird
before a word of mine was spoken out.

Around about two thousand and eight or was it nine?
the time is no great matter
the former or the latter it's no great shakes
but is it the time I made the breaks in continuity
the absurdity and futility
of this life I was living
and for this I'm giving credit where it's due
and you people know just who you are and what you did
what you achieved against all the odds
for you it was not a numbers game but a human life that was in the frame
and you're named just right.

I wonder what St Barnabas might have to say about the way you encouraged me
and would he nod his head and see just what you did?
You got rid of the one that had hung on so long and you opened up my eyes to the future and what it could mean
and I thought I'd seen nearly everything just about most things that a lifetime could bring
how wrong was I?
Why,
you showed me another route and with a 'whistle and flute' sent me headlong knowing what's right and what's wrong
and with a song in heart you gave me the start
to begin.

And I realise that the truth always lies somewhere within the within but it's how to begin and what method to choose or what direction to take.
Did St Barnabas really take time out
to worry about me?
I think you can see that he did.

In the house on Greek Street I think I could say that I met the real me and get this,
I meet a lot
but not what the house of St Barnabas got
and that's what did it for me.
Encouragement see
feeds the lost and the lonely
if only
there was more than just one
But St Barnabas goes on and it goes on in the makings of men who when they think all is lost and think the end is quite near
there's a Saint near here
who will help.

My credit took it hard and turned into a debit card,I never read the small print and now I am decidedly skint.
Cash will dash, if you don't keep it on a lead,or on a reign and money after all, is just the same as any other thing in life,it will knife you in the back or hack into a circumstance and given half of half a chance will run away and leave, like it left me today.

I could be brave and save but interest rates are very low and I don't know if a rainy day will ever come and sometimes money's just for fun,
I shall spend,send my money,bend it round a bar or two and in lieu of any saving grace I shall turn the Queens face on my notes,burn my bridges,sink my boats and have a riot of a time,

when I've bought a five minute slot in the bankruptcy court you can come and see what money did for me,
but until then,another ten will go on *****,a fortune on a midnight cruise and twenty quid will buy me high,
did I tell you,money's sly and slips away when least expected,I should have, or did you suspect that's why this man is wrecked and broke.

Money spoke and money speaks and money leaks away and no money means you have no say,
spending,saving,blowing it and raving we all need that touch of having not enough or as much as we need,
money feeds on us as we feed on it and slowly but surely a bit at a time,because a bit ain't a dime when a dollar only buys you a small tin of tuna, and the old lady would sooner thread needles than sew,
we'll all go quite insane.

Wars will totalise
and if viable are liable to add up and destroy communities, where opportunities are few and far between.
When things are seen beyond belief and death comes creeping like a thief into the square where people wait.
A demonstration of great power by powers that watch as people cower down in fright,
Night has come and with its gun will cleanse the state,
no one left to demonstrate
no one left to state the case
and freedom cannot show its face.

In God I place my trust, someone must
lest justice not be done.

Through the eye of the needle where necessity lies
and the horizon's a point somewhere off,
someone dies.
On the grains where the sand shifts the mountains away, where the land ***** crab sideways to gather their prey or the fields where the crops dust off MDMA,
I drop,
intellect fades
the night fazes in on sharpened steel blades.

The pan is bubbling merrily, the kettle's whistling cheerily,
I hear the clinking of the cutlery and only wish that I could be
that flamin' happy.

I folded up the sheets of rain as I walked slowly down the country lane on one wet Sunday afternoon,
it was late in June or early July,can't remember, don't know why
my mind was flooded with the same old chatter
pitter,patter on the leaves and from the trees.
I sat under the dryness of the ancient oak and lit a smoke which drifted slowly in the summer breeze
and ate a Branston pickle and cheese soft roll,drank some lemonade.

Days like this made me who I am
a soaked up,washed out yesterday man
but I exist
despite the persistence of the rain,
I play the game and play it well
the proof being that I'm here to tell the tale and smoke a while,
while the heavens empty of the sky
don't know why or for what length of time
days like this will be all mine.
Under the trees
out of the breeze
somebody please
stop the rain.

I am the crab
the star on a slab.
dying,
you're frying tonight.

When you take me
you'll break me
and **** on my legs
devour me
deflower me.
I am a crab
the star on a slab.

Will you tell me what I want to know
before I leave this night
won't you give one kiss before I go
or just turn off the light?

Give me a morsel of your mind
give me a crumb so I can find
or let me be forever blind.

Can't you see that it's no good to be
a starving man in this bakery
If I have to I will help myself
and I can't help myself
but help myself
to all there is.

I see an army of boatmen of bowmen of old men stretching way back into time,
on the Thames and the Rhine a long line of troops.
The Crimea's not here I shout in disgust but my words turn to dust
as I knew that they must.
Recouping some strength and at length, I go searching the files which file past me,for miles I am searching,a lost little urchin looking for Captain John Kyle.
And in some style he appears from somewhere in the rear and lends me his ear for a while,
I complain,
you're at it again and they're going to war,I don't understand,can you tell me what for?
'Orders',says he,'I know not or care why,I joined this army to do or to die'
Then the line carried on until the troops were all gone and somewhere on the Somme another rose smiled.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
university educant,
not like me who was
dragged through the secondaries
and modern too,
not much education, but
what can one do?
when the riverbank calls you and the
corn starts to wave and the wind is the music
to which you can rave.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
earns more than me,
but I have more memories,
like sailing off to the sea
like catching fish for my tea
like swimming naked and free,

is educant a word?
and that's the education of me.

...and then she hugs me closer to her
where her scents intoxicate me,
fate decrees and I agree
its been a lovely
day.

If the globe that we lived on was flat and we lived on and on it knowing that,
could we at least try to put a new spin on things,
could we round up the numbers that go round the clock or would time, laid out in a line go into shock,
and if gravity failed would the sea that we sailed on sail over the rim,could we swim to the shore,wouldn't life be a bore
if the World was as flat as all that?

So,
let's turn a new page in the turning of age where technology seems, to be all the rage,
Let us stand on this stage and perform a new play
a new day,
deserves that if the world is not flat
and that's all,
that I have to say.

Jade
green
a Chinese murmur
Burma
mining
refining the trade
conditions laid
bare
but the fare
is
Jade.

The field gun
hidden behind a grassy bank and flanked by trees
manned by two men and an officer up to their knees in mud
did good!

It fired simultaneously
with a charge by the third infantry
Death stamped on the base of the eight pound shell
it smiled
into the face of Ben Fazackerly who came from Coventry
and Ben fell dead.
(and it has to be said..minus his head)

Perhaps Ben had seen some premonition
that he'd be killed by enemy ammunition
so on Wednesday the week before
he'd decided not to take the chance
of losing his new false teeth in France
and posted them with two weeks pay
to his wife and lover
Betty May

And Bet began to understand when she saw the postman
with the telegram come past the garden gate at ten past eight.
At five past two
the crying through
she went and made some tea.

With the teeth that Ben had sent
she turned the gas on
and bent with grief
she went to sleep.
Forever.

****** on by bonny dogs
and soaked by the fog
that clipped back the grass round its base
and the face of it
was a lamp that lit up the dark.
Standing soulfully lame
with a name quite generic
and in a cobbled street so specific to the
Lancashire town.

As night comes down across the Pennines
and the lads on the late shift go back down the mines
the warm light remembers more times than it cares too
now old
past its prime
it stands a monument to the time
when ladies in bustles
bustled past
casting shadows it seemingly grows
or is that my imagination?

The rolling of the sea rolls over me
a swallowed thought,
a hiccup in the mightiness of nothingness
it waves goodbye below the talons of a storm grey sky
which grab at me as I roll and roll in the rolling sea.
If I land I want to land on the impermanence of a present
tense and move towards that which rewards me,
towards and to the rear of me,
atop and underneath the rolling sea,
I roll along,bowling to a future who knows what
that can be?

If only they'd videoed the nativity
that'd be proof
that Christianity was based
on a real life case

but
it's a bit like that programme
CSI
you're left wondering why
'til the very end and then
the battery would go.

Only a video
could show the truth
it's a shame
the birth of Christ came
too early for that.

I see her in hues,romantic soft blues and in chiffon and lace
but her face tells a tale of ships under sail and of mountainous seas.
Storm tossed she crossed the oceanic trail
to look for and find her holy grail
all to no avail.
It was here all the time in her very own backyard
sometimes the lessons life teaches are hard.