Bio bodies
bio skin
buy oh buy me
you'll begin
to believe
that it's alright
to deceive
but bio man meets bio girl
and buys bio girl a bio pearl,
nothing's real or
what it seems
even dreams are bio
wash whiter
seem brighter
look darker?
blame it on the bio,

I like the touch and smell
of a real woman and
I scrub up well
nothing fake
nothing to take her breath away
but
you don't find real men every day
so she's going to like me too.

Hi tech at breakneck, but
we all sweat the small stuff.

I've met enough in my time to fill up a book and on each page a rhyme.

But at the last of us
we'll all be back to
the abacus.

Who needs computers that shoot us so full of **** and bits that can byte us and who's always right?
us?

Thing is,
the screen sits like Jesus,
on the table it reads us,
promoting agendas and that's
what the end is.

Formula one
Algorithmic and intense it
kicks all the sense from us
and ladles in tables and ****
sites and my nights are far
from dull.

I understand the pull of it
Google and broadband sit within
spitting distance of God and it's odd
don't you think that each time you blink a light goes off down the Amazon.

( that takes a bit of imagination, but Firefox being in on the creation makes it sound good)

Jerusalem.

Bring me my beads and frames made from wire
bring me connections for the pyre
'cause in the end. all it will be
is the abacus and me.

I stencil a name on my arm
it's a game
that I play.
Say,
'anyone can too'

I do it in blood or blue ink
I think that it's ink, but
I could be a Royal.

Every name I can think of that
isn't one of yours makes me feel
so disloyal and I stencil again.

I stencil pain for a living,
pain's what life's giving me,
blue ink across an artery
I don't care enough to care.

On the knife edge of
a sharp edge you can't hedge your bets
and
you'd better believe it
before
the next cut you make
proves it.

I need nothing
and proof of me lies in the blood from
another artery,
this is field surgery or archery
I'm never sure which.

A lifetime in the building industry
and with hands as hard as ebony
dad took hold of me
and we walked upstream
to catch our tea.
Fish we caught a plenty
quite illegally
but such a lovely tea they made.
and mum made tomato chutney for salads
a ballad of our days
plays out frequently
in a memory
by the river.

Now it's gone into a more modern time
no weirs to walk across
no islands where we swam too
just a rushing torrent
tormenting me
a misery for all to see
and we used to have such good fun there.

Dad's gone too sometime back in eighty two
and the river stays
plays again
rewinding
binding me to the past.
Nothing lasts for long except those snapshots
of have and haven't gots
and I had lots of both.

I am falling in love with the blue
..Because that is what falling in love people do.
And when I fall in your arms and am charmed by your charms.
Will I be...
Who..
..just someone who has fallen in love with the blue ?
Do..
..You think that it's right
Do you think that you might..
..fall in love with the fallen one too.

Pour me a case of it,
a jug's not enough if it
don't anaesthetise.

Steeping deeper in the frosted glass I watch the world and time pass by,
I drink a case and still I'm dry,
bring me up a barrel do.

It's true what they say that an apple a day ferments in its own way,
You
can think that if you wish, but my wish to be is to sit under the tree with Isaac, my eyes on the fruit, my tongue hanging out, my thought fermentation, thus this is my situation.

Gravity can't bother me under the tree, that's Newton's law, note the apostrophe and to put or to not really did bother me.
1 Like

Death dresses well,turning heads looking swell and the service bell rings in the cloisters at three,
These priests are the last of the Eastern brigade who wait for salvation,and the army that was, that created a nation of sorrowful sinners,with the notion of harnessing souls with prayers for forgiveness and bible belt dinners has gone.
Each to his own and each dog gets a bone but the church stands alone forgotten,
but behind every door
something is rotten to the core and what colour you paint it ain't going to hide what's inside.
Death looking slick picks the lock and does not care what's in there,that's a shock,
but pock marked,double parked with a trailer full of bones comes Jimmy Jones the acolyte
who in this shadow world of night lights one more funeral pyre.

Underneath a palm tree that bears no fruit, a male voice choir boots out another tune and Jimmy Jones does one more circuit of the moon and there is the feeling that very soon
everything will end.
In the refectory unaware of this the priests open the directory, hoping to find that place full of love and bliss, to bring their brand of goodness to those sinners, who know but never do and to those who don't but wish they did,
who bid for auction lots,more funeral plots for Jimmy Jones to bury bones.

I defy convention
death is just another state that shows up late and not to mention stinks as well.
The bell still rings at three.

I surrendered
unconditionally
she accepted on condition
we
made love.

The valley is still there although the dolls have gone,
for now.
We used to plough through Pharmacies to staunch the needs of our disease and on our knees we'd pray to gods
making rods for our own backs and dolls were stacked up two by two in the flying embers of those who knew the pain,
and fired down throats to fuel again the fires that burnt inside.
I rue the tracks laid down and splayed on limbs that now grow old,rigid,cold and folded tight against my chest
but the dolls knew what was best in those testing times and track lines only serve to tell how well I knew them all.
Through those furrows made I fall and hear dolls call to me in the closed down empty pharmacy
where life is stifled in the green and black capsules which fooled us all,
the valley's gone for now,the dolls are sleeping tight,the night has faded,a jaded yesterday has given birth to a bright new day,and so
I shall stay as quiet as I can.

John Smallshaw
26 November 2012 at 04:21 · West Ham


Absent friends.
Get me the telephone,
I need the fix in a voice like I once needed methadone
I hate being alone.

Get me the words in a book
Give me a look at these things that are living.
Give me some giving.

Sometimes, late at night when there's nothing around the world's without sound and I sit in the chair
it's like I'm not really there,
like I've moved out in time and I'm in a space that's not mine and these moments go on like the words in a song they run slow through the night where I'm sat in the chair and thinking I might not be here.

Fear is a part of it a big piece of the start of it and Lord knows I'm not brave, I'm not the hero who could confront a dragon and save a maiden from death,
I have to save up to save for my next breath, but that's cool.

I see the face of the coward in the reflections of a fool in a rockpool by the beach and I'm still out of reach as I sit in the chair.

Not here or not there the chair is in nowhere and as I ponder on this,
I think of a kiss that I stole long ago in the old railway shed where the older girl led me and fed me her lips.

I can feel my mind slipping away late at night as I wait for the forthcoming day it's okay.

Sat in my chair I just go with the flow, wherever it is that my mind wants to go..
I go too.

Banking by the back door for the fattest cats,
and they still want more,
galling?
it's flamin' appalling
but you can bet your pants them sycophants
they call politicians will hire some magicians and it will vanish
like the lady in the cabinet, the rabbit from the hat, it's all in what we see and we'll see no more of that.

My hoard's under the floorboards and there it will stay.

Stripe me,strike me facebook like me
it's not worth a ****
nothing here is really real and I don't give a hoot.
So
shoot me with your babble guns,
rabble rouse me,house me,douse me in your petrel bombs
and let me fly away.

Thinking we're autonomous
until the night creeps up in on us
and the Monsters make a mockery
of me.

I am not the camera,
not the lens
not Isherwood,
just
a man with some pens
and time on his hands
to fashion a rhyme

Lowry
painted me,
a matchstick man
and I saw a triumph
heard bugles call,
didn't know I was Humpty
'til
I fell off the wall.

But
I am fully functioning
firing on six
jumping the red lights
to get in the mix.

it's character acting that
attracts so many and so
many lose themselves
in the characters they create

I can relate to that.

I believe Picasso
let me go
because
he was blue,
another character trait
that fell through.

I always want the other end of the rainbow.

I see the day break through the shutters as I'm turning my head, with jam on my face and none on the bread, but it's all fine and dandy the daybreak's quite handy for a night owl like me.

Every epiphany appears to bring something that tears me apart, everything that will start has a purpose and I put my heart in it only to fall foul of it and in the end all I do is scowl at it.

I learn as I fall or I don't learn at all, in the school of hard knocks you can go with the flow or fight and I know which one I do.

Tomorrow as I look through the shutter I'll use butter instead of the jam or I may try tomatoes because I'm that kind of man and
I am nothing if not what I've got on my toast and yet I am the most I can hope for.

I got scars by the score
The ones outside don't hurt any more.
But the ones deep inside..
..are like a road map from which..
..I can never hide.

Buried deep in the seas of my mind and my heart..
..like sunken ships.
And sometimes..I slip on the remains of a hurt
And blurt out a cry..a sigh..

I'm not alone..
..we all have that stone inside..
..upon which we crash.
When the lashing of life or the **** of a knife..
..goes deeper than the cut.
And we shut it away..lock down..okay
Not really.
Ideally we should talk..
..walk through these dark places
Meet,
..head on the faces that haunt.
Daunting that may be but I see it as the only way..
..to peace.

For the silence that booms in the night when I sleep..
..when I keep waking..shaking..it must cease.

Scars are a piece of the fabric I am.
...it was never the plan for me but that's how it's got to be
And don't think it was good..getting whacked by a 4x2 lump of hardwood..
..it was not.
Scars what I got..can't get rid..some are hid..some I put the lid on..
..but the signature of my days are shown in the never ending decay..
..Of the skin that I wear.
Whether or not it is fair..or whether you really care
It doesn't matter to me.
My scars are sunken in the sea of my life.

I watch the hawk like a hawk
and the hawk watches me.
I wish,
I could fly free
then perhaps I would see
what the hawk's looking at
when the hawk's watching me.

Who would span the linkage of the days, and to what earthly end would the toll of time send me breaking to?
And would the ferryman play sticks and stones with my crumbling body or would he have me throw the bones and tell of fortunes squandered?

I
have nothing left to tell of what bridges I have walked across,what joy and loss I found in mansions and in tenements,now
in Coventry sent there by my family in silent wandering I see the chain stretching out in front of me.
And who would join the dots to make this picture right,to read this epicure I spread upon the leavings of my night?
I write,I write until the brightness of the bursting sun comes round again to burst this bubble and in pain,I shout,I shout or scream and cry and when the sun would die tonight,I write,I write.

He,
inside of me knows well the moments and he counts the minutes,strikes the hours and all that passes in between are him and I,the sun waits patiently for me to cry.

Let the artisan then span the chasm that keeps me from the other side and let the ferryman glide well across the waterway.
Let my day be joined with all the other days,send the breakers in as I go gently out with the ebbing of the tide.

The evidence lies
before your very eyes in the cardboard cities and the plastic tents, where poverty rents bedspace for the night.
No friends in here, only beer and **** and a passport someone drags across a sweating brow,
Insulation tape and heat does not escape, you'll learn this trick when you're down and out and you'll find that names do stick.
******
dosser
lounger
mission hall scrounger but what's in a name they call,
when you fall through the mesh have yourself another sesh' on the pipe, with the pin, supping out the dregs of one more tin.
When it rains, when the drains all overflow, when you know it's time to go and you don't know where, they'll be there taking strands of DNA from the few strands of the hair that you have left.

Cardboard cases cut out faces, barred from all those lovely places that we all take as our right
another bedspace for the night.

December is waiting in the wings
it's Christmas and nice things
for good boys and girls,
Turkey and hats and mince pies and that's
just the start,
but a part of me,
a slice of the whole that's the heart of me
sees the misery
of the homeless and those living
in penury.

No presents for them
nothing under the tree except for
pigeon **** and the pigeons fly free.

Sadly
they move oh so sadly,
into the mission for a meal but it's
hardly a Christmas,
just a day they might miss less
if the mission was closed.

pit, pit, pit, pit, pit, patter shatters the pit, pit, pit.
raining a bit
raining a lot,
spit, spot, Poppins not included,
window drip, drop, spit, pit, patter shatters
it yet again.

No rain without the pit, pit, spit, spot
can't stop the patter, it will
always batter
me down.

Paint that peels from vaulted ceilings
a wet shirt hanging
by two pegs,
a cold wind blowing through
my feelings
rheumatism in my legs,

but I'm alive with inspiration
which is
a bit like having
constipation

(sat waiting)

Putting everything aside
I take some time
to make some time
to take time and
make things easy.

It all goes on
we all do

wherever we may be
we are the central reservation
in the movement of
a vast
eternal sea.

(20 minute poetry)



They'll choose the advertising
to wrap up their lies in
and we'll open their gifts?  
that lift us from
doom

in martyrdom the peasants weep please advertise those things that make us sleep, in targeted bullets and pills they make the most of our ills to make the most of returns and the countryside burns with righteous indignation

'twas an opinion poll that told us so and we all know that
they must be right.


More fuel to the fire
the profits go higher
people go lower and
down on the scale.

We're being brainwashed
emasculated
neutered
tutored by
billboard
and
drained of all hope.

But I'd drink a tin with a bull on
If then I could pull on
a pair of red wings and
fly swiftly away.

The banks have bled the people dry
profits high and watch them lie
as they plead poverty.
Insolvency is in the air,but do they care?
The profit,loss and balance sheet is what they'll meet in some darkened alley
where in the ballet dance of greed,my need is greater than their own
they have shown me,thrown me to the floor and bankers that they are would ask for just a little more,
a sore day in Threadneedle street when that old lady rose to greet hyenas laughing loud.

Oh how they stand so very proud
while we stand heads bowed,one of many in the crowd
and crowded out by this, the greed
of banks and bankers who stoop to conquer and to feed on investors,festering with malcontent on money so unwisely spent
Blame it all on policies,foisted,fostered anyway by those who please to bring the workers to their knees
but blame it also on the men who kick you in the wallet when you least expect.

Free spins on free spinning reels and deals on blackjack,baccarat (what the hell is that) bingo,win go eyes down another show and Facebook is a crook.
Take a look,
free money for you when signing in, all you need is a bank card pin for a free bet on the roulette wheel,
double down and deal on poker
Facebook,
you really are the joker.

I can see no reason why we have to gamble through cyber sky
so get stuffed Paddy Powers,William Hill and go and get your cheap but so expensive thrill somewhere else.

Cut my tongues from the scriptures and on blank walls I'll draw pictures because in a room full of lonely there is only myself.

I read Romans and the Acts came before them,
talked with Ruth who knew all of the bad men,

So
In this land of Canaan I'll be slain then?
and what of Goliath?
Samson's got him in a headlock,
Delilah's going to give him a haircut
and the Baptist will read all a sermon.

A bit fanciful to suggest Beau Geste, but a young fräulein from Mannheim calls for the check
I think what the heck,
Geste
can stay  in.

it's a walk on the plateau and you know we all want too
some do
some try
some don't even bother
and I don't
want to know why.

Cold salad and ham and mam said, that's for tea,
we
wanted chips and peas with curry sauce
but we ate what we got
because in our house we only got what was there
and it was salad and ham as mam had said,so
we scoffled it down with brown bread and butter.

In the eating of this memory, full of tea and tears of what used to be
I want to eat salads and ham for eternity
with mam and dad
and tea,
the family
happily ever
after.

Whatya gonna do out there
in the square?
people mill around
feel the ground,
see the flags that punch the air
feel the music everywhere,
does your heart move with the beat?
tap your fingers
swing your feet,
turn around take one step back inside
dream your dream behind your eyes,
safer here than almost anywhere
safer than the square and
whatya gonna do out there?

When reality holds me, vice-like it
controls me,
I try to imagine I'm free of the bonds
like skimming stones on mill ponds
I skip,
stripping clear of some ego,
an ogre that only I know
I throw caution to the night and
take a trip through a limbo
that only I know.

Light flakes around me, like dandruff it
hounds me but it's part of the tour and
as the light dwindles it kindles another,
somewhere or other a butterfly dies.

My sanity slips out to scout up ahead,
better to be safe than be dead, although
I'm sure that will come in a tour for some
but not me.

In the realm of fantasy where imagination unfettered can wander free
is where I'll be,
should you wish to drop by
and call on me.
But
beware of hobgoblins under the trees,they'll tie you in knots and do just as they please.
Cats will chase mice and mice will eat cheese
but hobgoblins do neither
they just do as they please.

Oh Good
it's Monday
it should still
be Sunday
that's what I prayed for.

I do not want more than my fair share
and I'd like to share my fair share with her

but the demons employ me for the night to enjoy me
it is no wonder to me that the devil feels free
after all, he's the one with the keys to the door,
I never prayed for that.

The rain drops blot me up,
like a man of tissue
I break into folds to
shred upon the street.

Slicked with the grease and the oils of the day
and the wind pays no heed to me,
stabbing me,
micro knife cuts on the cardboard
life that I lead.

I should be in a 'glossy',
not fussy which one,
entombed in a magazine
for someone to dream on.

Down along the broadway
the pipes play a tune,
some band from Scotland,
the raindrops still blot
me up.

Dear olive sitting in the tree
please make some olive oil for me
and I will be
eternally
grateful.

Tonight
we'll skip on through the sky beyond the first and second star
and on to the very farthest star
where the forefathers of our fathers are.

Here they sit in contemplation watching burning suns expire and die
and I shall join these gentlemen to
discuss the statement of my affairs.

One ending ends and beginnings tend to start that way and one day is just as good  as any other to smother thoughts of potency
all this and more I see
shown to me by these folks of my own ancestry.

'Freedom' is not being free,
when you're free to chain yourself to ideas of self administered inadequacy
and more to be a slave which you again could  save yourself, but only when you take the blinkers from your eyes.

Beyond the stars where planets rise and fall and rise to call me
where the saplings of young dreams grow wild
you will find the inner child of whom you have searched for
and something more,
the very core of who you are
is there
beyond the farthest star.

It was easier then you know when we built castles from Twiglets and dreams from Meccano and Caroline was a radio station, party time meant fun and games, faces framed at seaside shows and everyone knows that bubblegum blows your stomach up if you swallow.

Ah,
the abuse of each hour when we had the power to play and what the **** have we got today?
unrest on the street where the immigrant meets the yokel,
local taxes that stun you
employers who shun you and
the police who just gun you
down.

We used to walk the mile and a half into town and it was mainly uphill all the way, but we did have the power to play way back then and now I sit here in the dark with a pen and a screen and it feels every time like a dream 'til I open my eyes and I scream,
'it's real'
do you ever feel like the sea's right inside you and the tide's going out in a rush?

We lost out with old money and not funny how decimalisation decapitated the imperial measure,
memories to treasure at a taxable standard rate
and doesn't it feel like the time's getting late when the Morning sun breaks in the East,
at least,
I think so and so I build more candy dreams with Meccano and go to sleep.

So,
I put my life out on the line and
time after time
people say,'for what?'and
I say,'why not? it's who I am and what I've got
and if you don't like it don't read
my life will still bleed
and I,
(though it's hard to admit)
still need
validation'

I breathe deeply, moonshine sweetly dripping from my tongue,
the time has come to move away and
so I move my still into today,
This still and I go back some time,to when the wine we drank was blood red,good red,full,
the time of Tull and martyrs,Khan and Tartars,when men were men but then came industrialisation,the undoing of a once great Nation and you may mock but I say,'put a sock in it' we hit upon what we thought good which turned our forests into firewood,burnt in factories belching smoke,smoking's bad,is that a joke?
We built the century into a city with no thought and certainly not an ounce of pity for those whose clothes hung like rags on a nail,set sail for war to steal some more,oh we were good but now we lack the firewood to build a fire in the grate,
this state ruled over by the Queen has seen much better days,so it's better I remain, bound in the mill beside the still with moonshine sweetly dripping off my tongue.
I see what's done and is being done and when we go to Kingdom come we'll go with cap in hand,
a beggars band,a beggars land
an 'Ozymandias'
in the sand.

She says, she can't sleep
I say keep your eyes shut
but, she opens them and that is when
I hold her closer,
breathing deeply murmuring sleepily
I love you.

She carries me over the
steps of forever
never
to return.

A pre-requisite for keeping fit
is to go down to the Gymnasium
and do a bit of
exercise.

Now,
I'd be telling lies if I said,
'I go there every day'
It's the place I try to keep away
from.
The 'bomb' it may be
but not for me.

I shall strangle in my lassitude
Brood on what might have been
for I have seen those muscle bound
who think they've found the key
Gymnasiums are not for me.

I see a cream cake
take a slice or two.
Cream cakes make me do that,
can't see myself flat on my back
pumping iron
trying on another weight to build up the little strength I've got.

No.
the Gym is not for me
you may peddle on the bike or exercise until you sweat
I'll just get another cake
that's the only weight I want to lift.
Fit's a gift I had and lost
And anyway I can't afford the cost
of registration

Little robin redbreast
sings best before the dawn,
sings to me a song of joy
I'm glad that he was born.

The marbles in my eyes
Coloured glass that I despise.
Yet, from these I look out to this world
The marbles in my eyes unfurled.

Blue they had to be
Blue is what I see
No reds
No greens
No country scenes
No flower beds
Blue and heads I lose.

I didn't choose this
want to lose this
But I can't refuse the look that's looking back
In the mirror all is black
And I fear.

The reflection ever near
The gaze that's here and now
But anyhow or way I look
The hook that catches
Snatches me and holds me tight
Is the colour of the sky but not at night
It's blue.

And true to form
The storm inside
Wants to pluck out both my eyes.
I resist
Insist upon a trial
Dial a friend
Will this nightmare ever end?
It never will
This is the bill of lading
The wading through the swamp
A romping in the mud
Nothing good will come
Except the blue and that's no fun.

The alleyway will stay
Will remain to mark each passing
And every day
It will be blue
It seems there's nothing I can do
But die or dye
Another colour in the sky
It will be blue don't ask me why
I do not know.

The alarm clock alarmed me only
slightly
I rose up and may say rather sprightly
for the seasoned old trout that I be.

Later
when I'm out and about on my errands she sends me a message to tell me she loves me
and not to forget to get bergamot tea,

Well

bergamot me
bergamot tea
what will they dream up next?

I send a reply
which says
I
Love you too and I shall not forget to get bergamot tea.

Some things tickle me
like
a jolly good cup
of
Bergamot tea

She tickles me too
but
that's a different story.

I want to breach the walls or knock them down
Get out of here
Ride into town
And get wasted.

They say that once you tasted just a bit
The fuse is lit
That being so
Then I'm on fire.
Dire consequences shall arise
But I got moody in my eyes and I'm alight.

Can't fight this feeling,reeling
Off the floor
Out the door
I'm not staying any more
Not slowing down
Going to town
Stop me if you dare.
Stop me,
Do you care?

The candle burns
Both ends are turned against the flame
Nothing would,could stay the same
In this frame of mind
Lined and pinned within the bind of kind of
Self destruct.
Looks like I lucked out or in.

If you've never been how can you say
Right or wrong
My life,my day
My way may not be de rigueur
Is that fair
Does it matter
Will it shatter any dreams
In these unconscious streams of constancy
I wait to see
Who I will be
Tomorrow.

A countdown for uptown and a night on the tiles,
smiles but beware
there is danger in the air that you breathe
monoxides slide down uptown

doorways polluted

entry, no entry, a sentry on duty
nightclubs for *****
or so I am told

and I'm told that old is the new twenty
well the city's full of twenty-plus
cussing their way on mobility scooters

new age polluters?

Uptown's the new down with it
pit your wits and sink into it or
get a bit if you're lucky and pull.

...and in the corner I hear the metronome click
I fill the kettle and yet still I feel sick
My stomach thinks my throat's been cut
But I cannot eat.
I cannot compete or beat the metronome.
It steals the minutes of the day...and all it does..
..is tick and click and tick away.
I want to say why don't you stop but it catches me and mops another minute up.
I pour some boiling water in my cup and forget the tea.
The metronome has done for me.
I see each second die and give...a little less for me to live
And still it ticks.
It picks a moment when I blink and makes me think that all is well and the ticking is but just a shell upon the shore where timeless endless oceans roar.
And then it makes me think some more..
..and ticks again
I close the kitchen door
The metronome sat in the corner clicks right on..before to long my life will tick its last and in the shadows cast there will be another metronome that waits for me.
To tick into infinity..once more I see that endless face and in the place of midnights dream..
Where I shall rest my weary bones
I know there'll be
More. metronomes.
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The wages of sin,
though they pay pretty well
are what locks us in
and makes this life a hell.

The vicar was looking at me,but
she couldn't know I was thinking of taking her out on the town,
I was drinking her in.

Ah
the wages of sin,
I shall pick them up Friday
after I've had my wicked way
with her.

I wonder what the chances are.

We do, don't we?

Greensleeves.
that's the tune
every day
around about noon
******
Greensleeves.

Elizabethan ear ache for
a Walter Raleigh or a Francis
Drake, cornets
with a flake?
Greensleeves
******
Greensleeves,
wish the man in the ice cream van would play some Eminem
then I might stop moaning.

My finger plucks
a tune from a
blue Monday
morning.