In this church built from lust and inadequacy
where the reason of thought is the currency,
corralled in the stalls until Jericho falls
I find faith in the meaning of sanctuary.

The folds of the flock gently cover me
until I drown in the sea of discovery and
am reborn in the sea they call Galilee.

The Devil does not advocate celibacy
he reads from the book of debauchery
his acolytes form lines to follow me,
I slip under the waves because
I know Jesus saves and
I drown in the sea they call Galilee.

If this ground could open up a hollow
I'd swallow my pride and get onside
the others are sure to follow.

We cast shadows and fail to reel them in.

And it's snowing on the underground
falling gently
bound to me and silently I watch or do these eyes of mine deceive?

It's Monday?
I do believe it so to be,
the weekend fell away and
yet we
go on as if we were this turning wheel,
is each revolution really real or
just more snow?

It's Monday,
I believe it so to be
but
still snowing.

I must be getting very old
skin so thick
can't feel the cold
I must be getting very old
repeating things I've read
or wrote?

I note
still snowing though,

Z en is where I want to be
Y ou may wonder why
X erostomia has dried my tongue
W ithin it words are dry.
V owels are always hard to place
U nless you place them right
T his is what I want to say
S o my words don't bite
R ather this than be a fool
Q uestioning and in this pool
P laying one or more the fool
O r playing not at all
N ot wanting to be very rude
M y zen like being still being crude
L ots more learning I must seek
K eeping thoughts aside
J ust as is will be what I will want to see
I n a serene harmony with the me
H ope that I can be it soon
G low beneath the crescent moon
F all and rise from my own doom
E ach moment better than the last
D etails unimportant last
C hallenging
B ut in the ending of the when
A ll of me will be all Zen.

If there's a God up there
he must be sleeping and
keeping the best bits
'til the last,
But there's a new Master,pumping
out verse on a second hand ghetto blaster,
I heard it at five from the
newscaster and the pastors are checking the terms of their contracts,the vicars have packed up and gone off to Butlins,saving some sins from the high church,Jehovah is perched on the bed post,hosting a party fresh in from the West coast,toasting the end of the East side,
I think the newscaster lied.

(20 minute poetry)

I navigate, I
swear I do.

This crew will not believe me.
I have charted far and wide across the seas,
but now I hide down in the doldrums.

'twas foolish of me,
this motley crew would like to do me in,
hush
was that a pin that dropped?
the silence stops my breath.

Nearer to and to thee I ask
to let me curl up one more cask
before this day is through,
before this scurvy crew discover me.

'Land **', I hear,
a cheer topside,
I hide no more and am
instead
feted by this crew and
led to be
yet once again.
the Master of
the sea.

Like the teeth on a saw
run through ragged and raw
and life would only give me more of the same
in who's name would I cry
who out there would try
to abstain from the vote?

Turncoats and traitors,sharp teeth,alligators all waiting to feed on the needs of the masses.
An ***** that passes many times on the spoon,soon forgotten as the need becomes stronger.
Faces that wait, become longer and thinner
but dinner is not on this menu, where ennui moves free to entomb you and me and nothing in this life comes packaged for free.

Do you see where we are heading while shedding the skin that wears thin on our bones?
fading into half tones in half lives
and in old wives tales where the nails are waiting by the coffin,is stating eloquently,
that we're going evidently
to the grave.

I don't want to knock it,
but
the new kids on the block it
don't seem right.

The difference between
night and day
is, let's
say
a few hours?

In that time the
world does half a turn.

We burnt daylight and
we turned old,
night
don't seem right
either.

There are no more yachts
on the Caspian
only robots
and they're trespassing,
privacy doesn't exist.

Uist.

In the Outer Hebrides,
she stands on a hilltop
waiting with the breeze
that pulls at
her hair.

I'm on the way there
leaving the kids and
the block far
behind.

From Bauhaus to Beiderbecke
records
on the record deck,
art hangs off the walls.

I stood with Baron Munchausen
in the secret garden and
watched pixies while at play.

It was my wish to meet
Miss Gish
alas it was not to be so
Hollywoodland
was far to grand
for a famers boy and his ***.

Different strokes like sturdy spokes
keep the wheels going round

Down town in the torn town,
the pit town with no pit,
no coal and life's **** but we
got nuclear not far away,
across the bay,
the dead bay so the fishermen say.
What a way to carry on,
the men tired out
the youth all gone,the
pit town's no place to be when you're young
but don't believe you're free
it's in your soul.that
big dark hole where boys and men slaved from
6 am 'til the lights went down in
pit town.
Remembering now
how Grandad looked when he came home his
back all crooked and
dirt that clung onto his lungs like an
extra skin,
He never put much hope on coal or on the job or in the hole
and all he got was a silver clock for forty years,
his life in hock and then he died.
We all cried until the whistle went and other dads with backs as bent as Grandads was set off to work,to work and cough while some bald headed toff marked cards and paid them for the shift they'd done and
now pit town's done and
best forgot what
Thatcher's hatchet men done, a shady lot of (they'd say gentlemen) but
******* all the same,
across the bay, the fishermen say is dead
is where our future's led us,
where the ******* bled us dry
where one day
we all will die.
without a coal fire in sight.

Now or never
whether we want to or not
they've got us by the *****
and though we built walls
to defend against these invaders of free will
we will need to be stronger
build our walls bigger and better than ever before
and let them kick out the windows and doors
we'll just brick them up and no one gets in
and no one gets out
and no one but no one knows what this is all about.
but the walls stay because they want us to rot
they've got us by the ***** and all we can do is build more and more walls
and who wins in the end?
when we're all sent to Coventry with bags of cement so we can lend some authority to the people up there
and they don't give a ****
they jam us into categories with the same krappy old stories
that it's good for our health while they're spending the wealth that they stole from the miners and while they're dining on beef
we're starving
good grief
and they've got us by the *****
in glass coloured test tubes lubricated,dedicated to the rise of the monarchs
and it can't be for real
we'd never allow that
but laying flat on our back and winking eyes at the sun
is where this begun.
In the minds of the merchants and in the pockets of wise men
in the back alleys of bigots and bigshots
and what have we got?
you know it,
A box full of sawdust and a whole heap of ****
so the walls get a little longer
a little stronger
but they'll break us one day
and take us away to a recycle plant
and they'll plant us as seeds to service their needs
and their needs will get greater the later they leave it
there's a whole load of ****
a coming our way.

Anyway
why resign
why not go and stand in line
to wait?
It,don't matter if you're late
we'll all be that way one day,
just get in the queue
with the rotten who
rot away
waiting for
(or so they say)
a new Messiah.

Liars,lyres.funeral pyres
brand us all the same,
design,resign,
the dead redefine
but get in line
the service starts
at noon.
(nine would have rhymed)

The starting over all again,that frame of 'oh, no never mind'
the lame dog cry, and once was not enough, but why?
Pandora with her silver locks can take away her diamond box, I have no need to look within and once again I start the praying game,the waiting never came, so much remains the same as how it was the other time,where cats with nine lives jive with counting beans,again it seems my mind floats off.

The start again, a pain I know,should I really go or stay and does it matter in the long run anyway?
No one tells me anything,I've got to bring my almanac,an Oxford concise to be more precise and all fails me in this hour of my obscurity, when the future clouds above my head and was I, was I not once dead?,the Oxford cannot tell me that.
I close it flat and look again, to start, to part the curtains of more pain and you've outguessed me, because I thought it would be the same,
who changed the plot?
who took the black spot from my hand?
Stand and deliver unto me,
send in the cavalry, but again how frugal they sold the bugle and the shoes the horses need.
I wander once again.

She tosses her hair
casually,
it falls into place
perfectly.

Let's get this thing together,
leave a comment or
whatever
but
don't leave me waiting with
a pen in my hand and my face
drained of blood.

Incognito is where
the cowards go to hide
I've been there
been inside
it was
full.

(20 minute poetry)


Stood up?
I have been, but this time I gave my seat up and stood up.

It's a long way to go when you're stood and you know there are eight stations left before you get to your stop.

I count down and spit out the stations I leave believing it will bring me good luck,
Does it?
Does it ***
I'm still on my feet at Liverpool street
Nearer to home
tired to the bone
But I am nearly there.

I've just referred some **** to the sign that says that, this is a 'Priority seat'
By Bethnal green, stood up though I've been I now have a seat by the window, no view, and there's sod all I can do about that.

Who do I blame for this feeling I have that I'm going insane?
it's the pain in my brain that was never the same when you went
and when you did,the love we once had is the love that is driving me mad,
it's all inside,
the man I once was just curled up and died,now there's just me,a neanderthal thinking he's climbed up a tree and seen life in the raw,fallen and sore he has climbed up once more and seen life again,
but the pain brings me back to an insanity attack and feeling sore is the door that is locked,I want more than the tree,I want more than I'm able to see,I have touched on God's lips when my sanity slips and transcended some barrier above,I want the love that I can't be and the taste that I don't see
and who do I blame for me not getting this?
******* with insanity and even more with the profanity that goes hand in glove with this madness I love,
I chill and think about killing off time
but the time is now six and the medicines kick in
I begin to feel sane and the pain starts to begin its slow winding down
and when I look at the time it's a quarter of nine and she loves me again.
'The same every night',I hear the night porter say as his keys swing and jingle within the jangle of the corridor,when the patient who is next door, who swore to me he is Blackbeard which even I think is a little weird,said,
'Goodnight'

Time,
passing the bread down the starvation line
nothing changes but nothing
and nothing's the thing we have got,

Time,
a ***** spot on the lino
fine for the wino
because
he doesn't care

no mothering there
no gentle touch
nothing
much at all.

I'm fed up and hungry
disgruntled and angry
nothing
changes
not even change
it stays the same
we
just give it another name

progress?
oh please
I think I'll **** myself if
someone mentions that.

Time's just the flatline
we're all dead anyway.

The eyes that roved across her skin at altitude where the air was thin and still she would not let him in
and still he waited to begin,
a simmering
a gentle heat where bodies meet,
exchange complete and
melt away,
the night meets day
sometimes.

When second sight is on me
I can see your future history
some things distorted
lost are we
when second sight
drops in on me.

An ocular refinery is
visionary gold to me.

Drift into the consciousness,
the universal ballroom,
press
up close and dance real slow.

Counting Chimneypots

On this bed of cardboard dreams
under Waterloo
where steam trains trickle by above my head
drip fed by the sheen of lights
that float through cracks in cracked out nights
and slower still the will that wills me to survive
is locked behind and under baggy eyes
where sleep to no avail
avails me of no rest.

This zest of bitter lemon juice
splashes
tells me what's the use of going on
but go on I must if only just to spite those gentlemen
with fountain pens who sit at desks on fancy chairs
and never give a thought or care to me
out here in there.

I'll make them look
let me strip off layers of ***** skin and pin it to the pinafores
of petit fours
and let them smell the smell I smell
and eat?
Well
the devil always knows his own and knows who owns the rights
to Waterloo and steam train nights.

I'm breaking out of here
once upon the time when my cluttered mind is clear
and I can see beyond the grime where lines of strategy
will parallel to set me free
the straight
the narrow streets where narrow minded minds are funded
seconded from the corporation
to adjust and tinker with my situation.

I can take or leave them
that other form that gentlemen can take
swamp life
swamped by life
trampled underfoot by feet where the shoes do fit
and do not rub or hurt a bit
and once the touchpaper's lit
there'll be no stopping me
set free
broken out
broken in
watch them gentlemen begin
to worry then.

You are ******* if you do but
who the **** are you
to complain.
Put the blame on the shoulders of
your olders and betters
men of letters that fall after their name but
you're ******* all the same because your face
doesn't fit,
it's a load of old ******* they spit at to ***** you,
don't fall into the trap of there's no way because that
is a pile of pedalled out ****.
Don't do what they do and **** what they say,do what you want
and do it every day.
This way of the cross is a ******* dead loss so do it and let them all hang,
bang open the doors and **** on the floors,let the management manage,do as much damage as you possibly can,
in the end,
every woman and man will be flushed down the pan with the tampons and Johnies and tell me life's bonny,
I'll tell you it's *****,
My eyes closed to light and the ******* of a night tries to **** me,
I'd die happily if it wasn't for you,if I wasn't about to get ******* once again,it's only the pain keeps me going, stowing away vitriol and paying my toll to the man,
Gods plan is as bankrupt as the mistrust we feel,when every deal that is set is a certainty bet and the betters have lettered it all with a press that can print for the poor and the skint
and ain't we sorry ***** having a ball.

Bordering the shoreline
I sit and waste some more time
in the filigree
of my soliloquy.

I say,
I want to be freed from the need
but there's only me
with the sea
and it doesn't listen,
If I could only be stone cast up on the beach
out of reach of the ocean
with no thought of emotions.
Just a stone
my throne would be the sea that does not hear
does not fear the income of another tide.
I could ride like a King as the Northerlies sing
songs of heaven and hell.
All would be well.
But I am flesh
I am bone
born to wander and to roam through the restlessness
where there's always less than there is more
unlike the shoreline where I sit
where I wallow in self pity
and unless things start to change and get better
this will be
my final letter
to you.

When the sky is drawing clouds across the corners of my mind
and my eyes are being assaulted by the pictures that they make
I take another moment to myself
think about self help and then dismiss the thought.
I have bought in welts and scars the tradings of my days
spent idly in the seedy bars spread out along the ways I took.
Roads may lead to Rome
but for this man ,flesh and bone
mistook the meaning of returning home and rambled on into the brambles of another ambush
another rush into that place where angels do not tread.

One day when I am dead
I wonder if you'll remember me.

The sea will not forget
it will turn again to land and take me by the hand.
With the other I shall wave goodbye
to the shoreline,
my baseline
and the wasting of
all time.

The trees may tower over me
the Sun may shine above
the mountain may not come to me
but in this land of love
I am the giant.

Only one eyed pixies dance with glee and in seeing half of what I see,when it's ten past three to me it's only twenty five to two to those who dance with glee,did you follow that feat of maths?
well
pixies glow when it is dark to light the pathways in the park so they can play as if it's day,if you glow you'll know it's true 'cause you will be a pixie too.
It's simple really so deal me in,spin me in a pixie twist,I want to be kissed by the Queen of them all,the belle of the ball,
call me a dreamer.call me a fool but I graduated from the pixies high school.
And if I dance,and dance with glee with a beautiful one eyed she pixie, will she only see the good side of me?

Let me fly
cut through the sky,cut through my skin
let it begin.
Can't relax with rents, and council tax smacks me in the face,pacing floors,slamming doors,not angry just a little mad,just a little sad these monkeys won't leave me alone.

Advertisement.

'Get a job,get some pride'
and let the ******* ride roughshod while they poke and **** and you lay there and play their game,trampled but,
do you feel the same?
You're working now,What the fluck,lady luck ****** out your brains,you're tamed,named on a payslip and one more sunken ship of dreams slowly sinks.

Thinks.

got to go away,can't stay chained, feeling drained,pained beyond belief,
flucking grief.
but enough self pity,spit it out,
grin and bear it?
I flucking wear it like a second skin,another cut will get me in
let me begin or let me end.

In the house which sits atop the hill where Jack lived when he married Jill a light burns on the window sill and shines out to the man below,who waits to go and get a ladder,steal Jill away so he can add her to his collection of fairy tales.

If love is what we're here for,then please dear god give me some more,it's rather nice,I've been there twice but I don't want no more than this,
the kiss that wakes me, as she in beauty takes me and I forsake all of the rest.
The test is always time
I know and she does too ,that what's mine is hers and hers is mine and one more time we kiss before I think we'll kiss some more and then some more again and when the time is due,we'll wander through each others view as if it were our own,build a home,a family,live happily,
I wait to see,
if love is what we're here for.

I did not accelerate up the escalator but
took my place in line upon the steps where
once upon a time many steps were taken long ago.

Showing on the side wall which hides the iron rings,
which in turn make the underground,underground,
were pictures and adverts,naked ladies making converts
for costumes I'd never wear.

Also,
did you know that your hair can grow with the,
'watch it lengthen,see it strengthen' wonderful all new lotion?
strange how this advert is not as big as the rest.
perhaps they ought to test the lotion on it.
make it bigger,longer,stronger.

I hunger for the crispie bars,electric cars and
Shah's cash and carry but
not being one to tarry too long and the escalator goes on
taking me ever upward and into the sun.

That's how my day begun and that's how it ends
except that when it ends
it's like being on rewind
but I don't mind
I'm getting used to it.

To pick up this chewed end pen and when no one is looking and
wondering why
I want to jam the chewed end pen in my eye, the left one will do and I
want to ram it right through until it hits a nerve or possibly two.

I can spew out a rhythm with the ***** of a schism, but the madness
has been done once before,
I need a joiner
a plumber
someone to come numb me or
someone to take numbness away,
ipso facto don't come back though
the lace is never still and the curtains
will twitch.

**** me with kindness your Highness
I am humbly your servant 'til dawn when
the Romans will come and
make a wish that you'd never been born.

But born though I be, the pen still hates me and I loathe the ink in
the pen, **** it then don't write,
spend the night reading Tolstoy
undress in the lamplight,
be coy with the white Knight,
they'll hang you
tomorrow for sure,
checkmate.

The tax man is coming to town
he wants to put all of us down,
he'll tell you what taxes are due and
then shake the cash out of you.

I'm hiding my money away,in
the Cayman's or Montego Bay,
let him go looking
like I did today, for somewhere
to squirrel my money away.

Don't think that he is your friend,
his means is a way to your end,
if you've got money
I suggest that you spend
the lot.

I am only
ever free
when
she
hides my scars
from
me.

I throw the ducks on the pond
of which I'm very fond
an orange,
it
scares them away.

My fun for today
gone.

On the sidewalk there's talk of a new generation that denigrates the old ways and only lives for blue sky days,
It pays to listen to the word on the street,to jive with the beat and to cool off in the heat with a jigger of ***,
and that's *** enough for the bums and bedraggled,the stragglers left behind in this race,
there's no place for them in the new blue sky days,we'll do away with the shoddy lot of them in our secretive ways
they won't worry us no more.
Thus the unwashed are cleansed,washed away in the Thames and the streets are so sterile
fertile indeed for the new generation who'll have their babies gestated in cappuccino cafes whilst bemoaning about the demise of the 'good old days'
I'm not a part of it
never have been in the new scene
I don't want to know so I'll go and bury my head in the sand,and
hope it all goes away.

The Umbrella
tells her on
the way down
that
Mary Poppins
could not
fly.

What if,
life was the destination
and
not the journey.

It becomes clear that it is not so clever
when you're stood in the line.
And behind you the clock is telling you
yelling loud at you that the moment is now or is never.

Time to sever the links of the knots and the kinks
that have tied you in chains
which in turn have become the keepers of the pain which resides in you
glides through you.

The clock is quite striking
I've taken somewhat of a fancy a liking
for the Ivory dial.
Every movement relays
what delays I have made and the line starts to fade as we move on some more.


But that clock is a doorway and one day we'll knock
and hear as it says,
'Welcome to always you'll always be here'
There is nothing to fear but the chime
but the time
stood in line
being date stamped and tamped down as the second hand
starts to bear down
and the queue you were in has got thin with the worry
what's the hurry?
we're all getting there
where
time stands so still
on the hill of tomorrow in a sunken grey hollow
we wait.

The government de-flowered me
it stripped me naked and
overpowered me
while the state police sat and watched it
on CC TV,

Perverts.

did we vote for this?

Election fever hits the town like a
dose of chicken pox and when the
fox is in the coop
they only do what foxes do
count coup,
I don't blame them, the
sly old dogs.

and the E.U
is how it's said in Lancashire
with an accent tha' knows
like
eeh you
yeah you know who and we
know who and they know you
and you're ******.

When they check you out for microphones
they're measuring you up for the glue in your bones.

It's a bit of a giggle,
a laugh or two
then the government screws you
and what can you do?

Look back,
take an axe
attack the memories
chop down through the history
but you will never rewrite me.
I am written upon the pages you keep,in the diaries you sleep with,the books on your table,
and you're unable to erase me.
I am your memory ,your misery,your penance and your chance to set yourself free,
you see me in the looking glass in the clouds that pass in the toilet bowl,
oh yes,
I am everywhere, the wind that lifts your skirt and blows your hair,the dog that barks,the trees in parks and when will you decide to let things ride,to come back home,cease the honing of the axe,just
relax
and everything will be okay.

Triangulating
plotting course
off the North star riding
on the crazy horse,
a bucking bronco on the flow.
'Go West'
but magnetic forces pull me East, the beast
trapped underneath the sea takes me where
it will.

Grandma said,
'they dropped incendiary bombs',
as I sat on her knee,
at the beach in Whitley bay
from
South Shields
on
a fine young
yesterday.

She'd talked before about the war
which made no sense to me
I had ice cream for a nice dream
and a paddle in the sea.

The deeper we fall
in love
the more fathomless
it becomes.

To state what seems true
it's about the ratings
don't you
agree.
We shall gather up plaudits to Lord around Shoreditch and Hackney to Bow and watch as the ratings go up.
We shall sup on our tea somewhere down in Lea Green,which is South of the Thames, or as the crow flies about two beats from Lewisham,these are names that I know,places I've seen when I've been down on my uppers and up on the downers,where stories to tell are retold by the fires that burn bright in hell,but I'm well,
It's the ratings we dream,the ratings that seem to be honey,making money more money and funny how sweet it becomes,number like runs on a wheel,spinning the new deal,rating things real when they're not,like spot the ball when there's no ball to be found.
The sound of the ratings that comes through the grating grates on my ears,a whine,electronic,white noise and quietly ******,turning me on,tuning me up,making me look good and I'm just a dwarf plant that grows in the wild wood.
Even better than this as the ratings reach up to **** on the sky,there is payment that's due from the ratings that you long to give.
Why,
I don't know how to live is a mystery to me,a case of rate it and see how it goes
and ratings are all about shows that we take,things that we break,hearts that we make full of joy.
To state what seems true
I am sated on ratings and fated to be
a number in someone's
dating directory.
Did I say dating?
I meant rating
almost the same
but not quite.

Subjected to the intrusion crew who
want my information,
stored and poured and taken to pieces
letters to Uncles, Nephews and Nieces,
emails, web sites, visits that I might
want to keep
a secret.
The intrusion crew won't let me do
that.
They want to know the in's and outs and whys and
wheres and who cares how I feel when
they steal my information, to
store in some great archive in
the ******* of this nation.

It can't be right,
do I want some pimple faced pervert in Whitehall knowing that
I went to a **** site last night,
or commented on 'Hebdon'?
but believe it or not they want to thieve what you've got
and unless they are stopped
that's what they'll do.

I am physically ******* and
mentally chewing on this factual statement
I release the pent up anger
that I've lingered​ over and
blood​ starts to boil, yet
I'm imbued with a sense of well-being​ which
is like seeing yourself with a knife in your brain
and thinking it's fine so you see it again.

Of necessity and because of my age
any rage is a carefully controlled emotion.

A lifetime,
a pastime?
but now it's time to get real.

I deal from the bottom of the pack,
got to have an edge
but that's harking back to
the bad old days and the
old ways have gone.

Game on.

Down to Kent's were we went for a picking time spent in the hops where we skipped and we played.
Mum and Dad
stayed in the fields full of smells filling baskets with swag and then dragging them off to the shed where old Fred (who'd been doing the pick for a lifetime) would weigh 'em on scales and put in his book,the measure of money which Mum and Dad took at the end of the day.
And Summer's were always mapped out in this way when the world that we knew was so young,then we grew and things changed,the way that things do and the hop fields all shrunk,
and it always seemed odd that more beer was drunk when less swag was picked as if someone had nicked that part of my life,our youth,when the truth that we knew grew in Kent and the summer's we spent cost us nothing at all,
except time.

They've defrauded us
Lorded it over us.
A reason for divorce?
but of course
what do we do?
We,
like sheep in a zoo
put more pennies in their pound as they
pound us deeper and deeper
into the ground.

I'd love to be a banker
I wouldn't be a canker
on society,
I'd be generous to a fault
open the vault
become a philanthropist,
miss out on my bonus
give back the onus
to where it belongs.

Pipe dreams it seems
just smoking away
while bankers make hay,
they say,
even as it rains so shall we pour,
money makes money and money makes more.

My money under the mattress
is still worth more
than it would be locked up
in the banks that
we seem to adore.

I am all things,like the strings on a banjo,plucked
slow and easy,
making music to please you,
and you are the plectrum
that strums me
numbs me
and melodically I crumble at your touch,
did you know how much the music
means?

I met her there,
by the statue of Xerxes on waterdown square,
she looked fine,
dressed in the latest.
Tasting the time and the taste said she's mine
and we walked hand crossed hand to the bandstand where the pipers of Glenross were doing their best to impress,
we couldn't care less we were deaf to all sounds but our own and the beat of the drums bore us home.and
I met her there