Out from the base the green mist arose
The pain comes and goes.
Like the neon man
A flash in the pan.

Life is like that
For a cool,cool cat
But he can't keep pulling rabbits
From his old top hat.
He needs a bit of time to knit things together
Into a freshly knotted rhyme.
If you don't give him that
Then his world becomes flat and the corners are not rounded
Hounded here and hounded there in a neon mist that doesn't care
Because it's all typed in his head.
But on the baseline we presume to be dead
'til we're woken.
And we are spoken to in lyrics that inspire the inner spirits
To arise.

In the green mist neon dies and comes back in amber light
Fight this if you can
But we're all the neon man and we see the flashing crashing down
Into a sultry Summer brown.

A Yoruba girl came to town,Shivering slightly.
I held her tightly
Kissed her face.
Touched her hand
This woman from another land looked at me
And saw not an ocean but an inland sea so full of salt it made her bolt.
No rabbits in this hat
My life is full of things like that.

Don't leave the key within the lock
I've taken stock
I'm not that man.
Just the pan without the flash
The dot without the dash
No home,no car,no cash.
And after all of this and life like that
I'm just a rabbit in the old top hat.
And going home to have my tea
I see a reflection in the window
That used to be me.

Troy,
for an ounce of treasure
a pleasure a
Tempest.

'tis the season oh by golly
let's get drunk and all be jolly
when we wake we'll all be sorry
tra la la la la,la la la la.

Christmas trees and poison ivy,broccoli and lumpy gravy
is this what 'he' saved me for
one more drink and then one more.

What's on telly,what no jelly?
custard tasted like the gravy,
think I'll maybe have one more
tra la la la la tra la la la.

She wakes me with the coming of the day and
lays still beside my pounding heart.
What a fabulous way
to start
a
Monday.

As the night drifts away into the night of its day
and the dues have been paid
to the Devil's handmaiden
when the birds start to sing to bring normality back
and I lacking foresight am trapped in the still night
an explosion occurs.
Boom
and the room that I'm in starts to spin
and my head comes apart at the sound of the din when my body wanders off and does not let me back in to control where it goes.
At the end of my nose which is as far as I can see.
I can see this is not good for me.

The night always wins
always spins me around
sometimes in explosions
sometimes with no sound
I never can tell what horrors born of hell will waylay me as I try to sleep like an innocent baby(fat chance of that)

Scratched by the quill because if it wants to it will
I have no choice but to bend, words are written and I send them to all that would read, then I send them once more
words are the clothing I wore yesterday
before night made its play and tomorrow,today I will write anyway to escape from the twilight where words become the only light and shadows dance across,
I might start to dance too
night gets through to me
invades and seduces me
whispering it reduces me to a quivering wreck.

I seek what is there but where that is I don't know
the night does not show nor give up secrets,
I know there is much I could find if I could find that my mind controls my body
resignedly I halt
slip the bolt on my lee enfield
and yield to that temptation
to reach my destination without calling at any stations on the way.
Night has its way with me
trips me up and then slays me
once again.

Even with my eyes closed
I can see you near me
even when the darkness
of the night closes in.

I can touch you,
smell you in the moonlight and
my
senses reel in the
revolving of you
wanting you to do those
things
when you know
I love you.

In the early
mornings
when
you reach out
with fingers
that paint words
and pictures in my long
tousled hair,
lips that tell me you're
everywhere.

One more moment with you
and I feel blessed,
it's one more moment
that together
we share,
one more moment I can
show you I care,
even with my eyes closed
I can tell that it's her.

I met me a gypsy somewhere South of Poughkeepsie, and this hobo from Hoboken offered me his creased hand in a token of friendship.
We travelled out West in Box cars,made some dollars selling jam jars,slept under lilac trees and drank rotgut from the river bars.
Down in Kentucky we got lucky with diamonds,drew a full hand at poker,smoked Cuban cigars,spent more than money in bars and blew the whole *** on showgirls.
Then hobo got sick and he died awful quick,it was the pox and the rotgut that took him,but hell we had fun.

The ideosyncrasies of the cities are not
found in the small towns,
the dirt poor brown towns,
the twitching of curtains and dressing gown towns,
but the **** pulls us out of the towns and into the city where the
sewers are home to the rats and the mountains built up on
the streets are a home for the cats,the fat cats,the purring cats, the sharing caring who am I kidding cats,
they are the leeches
weekdays in suits and the weekends in knickerbockers,breech loaders,the feeding free loaders,the gum boot brigade,tea,toast and marmalade,raid the pension accounts and they get an accolade brigade.
The small town mentality will be the death of me,I can see this is wrong but go along with it,up to my neck in it,with paddles I row in it,
the city is full of ****..


The cranes,
new age pterodactyls, chomping their way through the last of the daffodils,sending them downstream to a landfill in East Cheam,sometimes if I dream,I dream in black and white and the city then looks alright but in my heart I know it's crumbling,falling apart at the seams,held together by nightmares and more dreams from the townies,cub scouts and brownies,I don't dream a lot anymore.

Talk to me
let's walk and talk to me
tell me of misery
show me a mercy.

The twenty third psalm of the twenty first century.

Abducted
Abused
Corrupted
Confused.

What do I know,
a rainbow,
yesterday,
or
was it long ago?
the colours blinded me
show me a mercy.

In sunlight's last romance
I get but
one last chance
come walk and talk with me
show me your mysteries,
mistress of destiny.

I need to think before I say,
'I do'
and if I fell,
I fell in love with you.
I need to think things through,
things about the me,the you and how do I begin
to think that I might love again,
to open up my heart
to tear down built up walls and start believing in what may become and what fun that it could be,
the you,the me.
I see a future where none was before and even more
I see what could be, would be just divine.
I need to think if you were mine,
and in time I think, I'll think it through
I think that I can wait
the question is
can you?

This Lusitania sails on me
she
is Majesty,
her ocean holds mystery,
this Titanic will sink and be
a part of her history.

All I need's an App
to get rid of the Krap
and one more App to get back
to the start.

and so to infinity
if things pan out
it'll be the end
of me.

*** you Bonanza
I'm on the verandah
with a spiced drink

you thought
I think
*** you

cute eh?

but it's melodrama in the
panorama
the doctor tells me

'he would wouldn't he'
(and him never knowing the
Christine that I did)

About this time I'm high
or I was
time gone by

the genie is looking after me
thinks he
as he balances on the edge
of the World.

Atlas
kiss my ***
I'm calling you out.

There were thousands and thousands o'kids
Pushed down pits or stamped out in t'mills
Mekin theer bids fer freedom.
Aye...from the drudgery and slavery of serfdom.

Now I realise..all that they got was a sub standard plot..
..and two penny's to cover...their poor dead eyes
And in the parlours Ma cries.

It was the minimum rate from which..
..we still cannot escape.
The rasping and grasping maws..
..the jaws that still trap us in poverty and penury
It's time for the judiciary to alter the law
To give poor people more.
What the **** are they waiting for?
A return to the old ways..
..back to the old days?

I wait for the answer but suspect I won't hear
And wonder what year this can be
Or even what century.

Fight to the end
send the night round the bend.

An Invitation,
To all the arseholes of eternity
come fight right here alongside me and join the battle,write your MP see if he'll come too,the more the merrier to ferry the dead across the Styx.
I pick and mix the chicken gun and with carrot and stick see how they run,all a bit of madness,fun for some and for some not at all as they fall into insanity,spouting out profanities,words I've never heard before and I've heard many sworn.
One day the day before I'm born,nice and warm,another cell,one more division before I add up into hell,I never slept to well at all,just thought of being and the fall.

RSVP,
I'm waiting here to see who will arrive,who will survive,who will have madness in their eyes and we all know how fine that line becomes when playing chicken with the guns.
Bring a friend and he can join us round the bend,we're all going round it anyway,but I'm ahead of the game.

Oregano
sounds like
a
Japanese City

Down
the streets that whisper names,
through lace curtains
people play their parlour games
twitching
sneaking looks from behind Gothic scripted leather bound books and overstuffed chairs
where ***** is taken and sherry drunk
and tea biscuits dunked in warm Earl Grey
and another day begins in mill house town.

Locomotives sweating steel feel their way
across the bridge
to Morecambe bay
where there's a different class of folk
used to smoke and steaming coal
to steam the fish within the bowl.

And the bowl is either empty or it is not
never in between,
Like the life we live a lot is never seen
but talked in murmurs on street corners
by former miners
agitators
free creative thinking men who know to use the pen and not the sword but they're starving all the same
all in the name
democracy.

We see it differently
a heresy that's being perpetrated to dislocate and disengage and put poor people in a cage.
In the zoo you'll come to see
democracy through iron bars
Tsars that's what these suited tyrants are
well suited to the task in hand
to strip the land of all its wealth
and let's not forget the National health which is good enough for me and you
they'll feed us anything here in the zoo.
Bupa now that is super for the supermen and ladies too who come to visit on Saturdays at the zoo.
I don't know what to do
should I laugh or cry or demonstrate
or have I left it all too late?
What a ******* awful state we're in
It's one for all or ****** all and then we'll fall
into the straw
strewn ******* across the floor in cage 3b
I see but can't decide
have I died and gone to hell?
well
only time will tell.

There is always the waiting
you hit the panic button
but should be used to it
by now,
biting your nails as if that
makes anything quicker
pacing the corridor wishing
there was more
than waiting.

I waited a long time for longer
and wrong of me
I see that now,

my bones setting as
hard as my face
getting
old,
but we learn by mistakes or
we mostly do,
a costly do nevertheless.

it's whether the planets align
some say with that penetrating
look
it's a sign
I'm still waiting for the proof.

So
and so is a good thing
it gives me time to blink
to think
of a rhyme

sometimes I wonder if that's
not a sign, but there's
always time to wait
and see.

The path's deviation a lifetime's privation

Some degradation.

Like the spinning of yarns

Like spiders in barns

Like old men and soldiers I am tied to the boulders

Like Marley and chains

Like toothache and pains and loss with no gains

Here come the rains.

Like I'm ticked off with this

Like no Woman no kiss and no one to miss.

Like snakes that go hiss I crawl and I writhe

I tell terrible lies like I'm a prince not a pauper

Like I've two sons not a daughter.

It’s like I'm not to blame

There’s something wrong with my brain

Like I'm mad or insane.

Like a slow moving train or a triangular mangle

An obtuse acute angle.

Like I've done this before and put out like a *****

Like the clothes that I wore

Like my teeth again sore.

I am a transient being I don’t like what I'm seeing

In the mirror I look and like the words in a book

Which crackle and shackle  my feet to the ground

I hear the witches cackle but I can’t make a sound.

Like a flute that’s gone mute or a trombone with no tone

I dangle my hope I don’t think I can cope.

Like the suns shining rays

Like I've burnt out my days so now I sit and I laze

Remembering faces and place coverings and carapaces.

Hiding in shells

Hiding from yells.

Like I'm missing life out but then it gives me a shout

And says come and stand in the light

Like get out of your night and walk into the dawning

Now is your morning.

Dance and be part of the beat of your heart

Like you were weak but be strong

Like you'll not wait for long

For your plate to be filled.

The earth in your soil tilled and what will grow there

Is a whole crop of care and a piece of the part

Of the birth of your start.

I asked,
who is he?
and the answer came back,
he's a calamity,
**** it that's me
that were talking about
I should really get out of this one sided conversation
preferably at the next station
but if not I can walk.
You can talk,
Look at you
what the hell do you do
except to put people down and
rub their nose in the dirt.

Hurt you?
I could
but why would I do that?
You're just a statistic
someone who's sarcastic
let's face it
you're past it
it's time for you to go.
If you don't know the way
let me show you.

Yesterday you bothered me
today as you can see
I don't give a toss
you're not my boss you're a loser
I choose a
different path
you can laugh
but then again you always did
you hid behind grins
but the circle of life spins
and you can't laugh no more
close the door when you go
just so I know
that I'm free.

The lady that used to wait aside the wings
and sing to all
to let us know the show was done
has gone.

Moved to a farm in Saskatchewan
where as a second wife to Edward Stone
she inherited another life
another home
and she's much slimmer now
you wouldn't recognise the girl who used to sing
and bring the curtain down.

Three pigs,two cows,some hens and sows
and she just loves it so.
She wonders why she didn't go much sooner
why she was slow
and time was quick to take advantage of her looks.

She cleans and cooks but does not sing
for fortune has it that
might bring bad luck.

And clucks,how
she clucks among the hens
throws the corn collects the eggs
pecked once or twice upon her legs
all part of her new day.
She's glad,
she wouldn't have it any other way.
And Edward's such a lovely man
five foot eight
broad shoulders
and he usually sports a tan.
In Saskatchewan
the lady never sings.

The whitening lightening
The appearance of ghosts
Are to me not frightening
Just thoughts though they last
Those pieces of the past
The stones I have cast
In the oceans of time.
When we all wore that sign that said beware
Those who go there dare look into the fires of hell
And with the coins of their souls sell their life as well they might.
My nightmares in the night remind me of darker days
When I became those ways
Those stygian deeds and the wasting seeds of minutes that tick
When I being sick of the sight of me.
Took a hammer,
Busted my knees, my feet my face.
I had to get out of that place
So I howled at the moon hoping that soon
The pain would quicken make I sicken for something good.
Would that it could but it did not,
And what have I got?
Broken bones busted face ghosts laughing back at my place.
I can't escape
I'm locked into my fate
Imprisoned by yesterday and so I lay on my pillow
And weep like a willow.
Sinking in my tears
******* on my fears.
And those that were near are so far away.
Removed from this Earth to a spiritual rebirth.
But It dont help me Because what can I see?
The widening chasm
The spastic ******
The inevitable starvation
I can't see my salvation in here or in there
But what the hell do I care
I'll go back in the trap and that will be that.
But.
I know there's a key
That will set me free
First I have to find the lock
I have to be a rock
Take the sand from my eyes wake up and realise
If I don't do it now Then It's Adios John
Kapow.
The lights go out the clocks don't chime
But then I will mime in some other place
Far removed from this race
On a seat beside those who went before
When life was spent in laughter and song.
Now I know why I long
To jump in the lake partake of the death after life
That life after death
The stuttering breath that cleanses the brain
But it's all the same just a different phase
Like some mist in the haze when my head's in a daze.
It seemed I swallowed the sun and it stopped all the fun
Then It smashed all my hopes and put me down on the ropes.
It cannot be denied that I have defied
Some obscure deity with my contrived gaiety.
But now I'm back in the zone
I want to go home
I feel so alone
In the midst of a crowd I want to shout loud
Give me a hug all they do is shrug
And say another mad druggie looking for a huggie.
I say kiss my *** because you're not in my class.
Yet again I don't care
Because I'm no longer there
I'm in the whitening lightening and the ghosts in my flat
Go rat a tat tat as they knock on my door
Kick me down to the floor till I beg them desist
They know that I missed
Them all.
They are my friends until my life ends
Until I'm with them forever in the day that is never
Night.

John Smallshaw   2010.

Pumped into the grinder
pushed in by him behind ya
and like sausage meat we go to meet our maker,
the underground a wonderland,sit or stand,take ya places one by one,mind the gap and jump right on,and
in the make believe of Avalon we'll ride this steel horse to Babylon.

Slice me and running through me you'll find,
printed in italics
the words,

'are we there yet'

and I bet
I'm not the only one that's got this going on or through them.

Snow,
deep and white
fell
sometime
in the night, but
I was alright
snug in bed.

Under the snow lies the world that I know,
the ***** and grubby
and yet it still snubs me,
I don't want the snow to go.

Under Waterloo Bridge,
another shelf in the fridge, a cruel World for some
where the Sun doesn't shine and it's cold all the time
designed to be beat
dead on their feet
a bed on cement
backs bent by the day
lay the broken and cracked.
A fact of society.

Snow came as a blessing,
one more white dressing for
the ulcerated trunks of
incapable drunks.
Do you see them?
the jetsam
do they worry you?
they will if you let them.

I bet some of them had lives
children and wives,
washed out in the flow now
thoughts  covered in snow now
and it's cold outside.

I kissed her once and it was not enough
so I kissed again,then
we did other stuff.
Tomorrow we will kiss once more and
other stuff behind the door,
that which concerns the heart that yearns will learn to be in time,the pleasure being hers and mine,
and every time it's not enough,the kissing and the other stuff,but every time it's just as good as if it was the first kiss,
should she ask and want to know ,I shall reply and tell her so,tell her that my heart's on fire with kisses of a just desire and I just desire that single kiss but the other stuff is more than good enough,though
the kiss is what I miss,her lips on mine and one more time is not enough.

As this time here begins to thin,
I hear the sweet playing of a mandolin and the music spins cotton about my ears,here
in this garden where years come and go and mountains burst forth from the spring,
I begin to sing,
in tune
with my life.

Some try to save the world but can't save themselves.

I wonder where she goes each night,through the square then turning right and being swallowed by the fading light,
I wonder where she goes.
I wonder if she knows I'm watching her, as she goes off across the square and if she does,does she care that I know she wanders off each night to go,
but where?

River boats float along,
up and down
from side to side,
Putney to
Rotherhithe

all this
stems from the Thames
the arterial tree

for the sailor in me the Thames will do
on a flat bottomed barge
muddling through to
St Katherine's and Tobacco dock, to
Tower bridge and make a stop

Ferries and Wherries and
waterways
days on the Thames

making friends
with the mudlarks, the spivs
the preachers, the sharks
all parts of the stem
a branch of the tree

life is for me from
the Thames to the sea.

I have done dope like the pope says his prayers,pushed coke up the stairways that led up my nose,
blown porsche's and rollers,smoked them lined up like soldiers in syringes that marched through my veins I have injected insane through the pores of my pain and with angel dust injected again,
but now I'm a good boy, an out of the hood boy,informed and forming opinions which storm through the past.
The icy blast of awakening sings to me,brings it all home to me,
'Oh to be in England'
now everything is clear.

I see a payload on the rocky road
and no one's crying wolf
we're a long,long way from Tipperary
but there's warships in the gulf.

The clock spins back,the lights burn low
and off we go once more
we're a long,long way from Tipperary
but it's still a ****** war.

It's all a crock..
a body shock
a kick in the nuts,
don't forget the 'if buts'
another load of tripe,
when you're ripe for the knackers yard
and falling ain't that hard when you're already down,
for you,
who are out on the town and having a good time
let me remind you that tomorrow is mine
so
have a ball,go and get ******,there's nothing in that,
that I've never done and never missed
I could
write you a list of the wrong turnings you'll take,
but
you'll make them anyway,
you'll go your own way
and we'll meet at the end of it
buried up to our necks in a pile of horse ****.

Yes,
it's official,life is a gas,pass go and collect your money,don't you know life is funny and if you don't laugh you will die?
I tried and died twice,can't remember the laughter as I flew through the walls of the great, hereinafter to be known as the great ******* throne room.
And so soon,he said,
'you're leaving and leaving me grieving'
not really
because I don't give a monkeys *** where I stand or sit or who rings the bells,
I'm already there where you'll be one day
and hell is the price we all pay
for getting old and going grey and it's getting a bit late in the day for me to care
or bother to share this
so ******* if you will
and let me sit
still
deep in the ****.

Me like a likkle of what ya got

'Cause I a zero not got a lot

I talks to me pastor

'im a serious Judah rasta.

But me lives alone in this zone

I got to find I a way back home.

Me know me got life a wee bit wrong

And me never listen to da Masters song.

But now I got I a brand new deal

Me praise Jah 'cause 'im is real.

I gwan to church and say me tings

Jah he answer......me telephone rings.

Hello who' im dat? and 'im say it is I de righteous cat

Den I fall down and me tears dey come

But 'im say rise up man you is my son.

Den me knows dat dis is da time

Me knows me faith is bang on da line.

Jah Jah 'im see me right

Yea even thru de dark of de night

'im me saviour me know dat now

'im smooth da lines off from my brow.

Jah Jah rule.

Jah is cool.

Sat in the doorway,
a throwaway man with a
cigarette and beer can
and a hangdog look on his face.

In this city of wealth,poverty takes some by stealth,
those who are healthy and fit often don't give a ****,it's not them in the doorway,they cannot see themselves brought down so low,
but go down to Mayfair or Stepney or Bow,there's a tidal flow of the throwaway men,who have nowhere to stay and if they do, then,
there is no job for them,no way to earn
and the cigarette burns,the beer can is crushed, a bit like the throwaways beaten and rushed to an end.

The end is an end by no means,
to the hungry and needy
who watch as the well fed and greedy go by,who sigh through the day in a throwaway kind of a throwaway way,
but it's what people expect from the 'workshy' and worthless,the cesspit of the city, and life does not pity them,nor do the throwaway men really care,
sitting there
in the doorway
where there seems no way
to escape.

She builds me
a home
in
her
heart.

Time,
and time being our greatest asset
what do we do with it?
we
pass it around like a bag of
Maltesers,
it eases the pain but puts time
out of joint.

Let's face it
if
time is curved like space it
comes back
doesn't it?

Don't we recapture those
moments when rapture was
moments away?

Play time
school time
home time
work time and time
to grow old
with a mouthful of
chocolate.

never saw red sand before,
but it was red on the beach
back in '44.

Friends who ended their days
looking at me with a
startled gaze as if it was
all make believe
and that later
we'd meet for a cigarette,

not for me yet,
but I never forget that
it could have been me
watching with eyes that
could no longer see

on the red sand
back in '44

Ding **** merrily oh my,
I hear the cash tills ringing
wondering what I'm going to buy
and what is Santa Bringing.
Gloooooooooooooooria
in Chelsea,
they're all singing.

Salvation army bands march past
trumpets at the ready
I was in the hostel once
the Sergeant Major fed me.
Gloooooooooooooooria
IN Chelsea,
they're all singing.

The elves are sat down in the bar
the reindeer are lunching,
accountants sat at home in fear
Christmas number crunching.
Gloooooooooooooooria
in Chelsea,
they're all singing.

One more recess
and I depress the lever
then laying prone
with a metronome  that ticks away
like a clock that's gone awry
I lie and close my eyes and listen to the steady beat
tick
tick
I lick chapped lips and wonder where the balm would be
inside the conservatory
or in the kitchen drawer?
My lips are sore
my life's a bore and so, prone upon the bed
I step outside of this weary head and wander through the passages
remembering massages and brief encounters
steps on which I've stood and wept
stairways crept up fitfully
just to see what was up there
and now
I come across the bare light
the coldness of the moonlight
and the howling of the winds that bite and harried me along
for I in fear would not delay
to welcome in another day and welcome out the night
polite is always best to be
never know when you might see or need a darker place
so just in case
I go that extra mile put out a charming smile
and all the while
my insides churn
my body burns
twists and turns and
in turns I see
the metronome that laughs at me
and what a waste then it would be
tick
tick
never as sick as when you're well
too much heaven down here in hell.
Then rising
realising that I'm back at where I started from
is like someone has dropped the bomb
and I am just collateral
a colony of flattery
and a sycophantic man I'll be
until the evening when I see
that no one stands alone with me.
In this saturation
this desolation spiced up with my perspiration
I don't smell so sweet
another timely beat from my friend metronome
ticks the box and I am home
tomorrow I may lie prone again
tomorrow just might be the same as if in this never ending game
I do not go to jail or collect my bonus from the bank.
Why So Serious
well Frank, the Government sponsored failsafe think tank
said to me,
'drug free is the way to go and then he went'
leaving me with bones so crooked,bent I can hardly stand
A helping hand that helps itself
to dreams of youthfulness and health
I see
or rather cannot see
what is the point and what's for me
but that is just another lie
tick
tick
my how time does fly.
Why
I don't think I'l ever know the answers that I seek so
dearly
I'm not nearly bright enough.

If only the Christmas lights on Oxford street
could fill a table with food to eat.

In the hungry days of shop doorways where
some sit silently
shiver violently
the lines of lights light up their nights
as if they need reminding that the
'morrow brings them nothing new.

Nothing to do but wait
as another bus draws up and
more get off to sate their appetites
among the bright lights of
Oxford Street.

Winter nights.

The soup run does not come
never will
the traders,council and the coppers
think it gives bad vibes to shoppers,
still it would be nice to think
that homeless people get a drink of
something hot.

Down Trafalgar Square there's somewhere where
they can spend some time
have a meal ,a shower and a crypt
seems fine if a little odd
for the poor sod
who's only got what he's given.
A new shirt and trews
he's not from Scotland
but beggars do not choose
they accept and
sometimes painfully,
the helping hands from a charity.

It's such a sad affair that some don't care,
don't give a look and yet think nothing
of sharing pointless posts on
the pages of Facebook.

Another bus drops off a few even as some drop off the
grid
and we bid goodnight to the rights and wrongs
the Christmas songs
the happy throngs
and hide
inside
another
doorway.

There is a multiplier deep inside
an identifier that confides in me
and divides,I see
by the actions of gene therapy.

It analyses,criticises,alters and devises new ways of splitting out my days into a hundred thousand newer kind of ways to break my heart.

Adding to the adding of, subtractions minus then because I age
it vents its rage and goes quite mad the copies that it makes are bad,not up to standard,randomly it sequences,imitations of my DNA.
and in these clones of which it does not seem to care,
I am somewhere falsified
in there
more imitations,creating limitations in which I find that I am locked.

These pistols of my life were loaded,cocked before I was born
and cannot be torn from me by hocus pocus or intervention surgery.

There will be,
me and me and me and me forever copied I will be that which I'm not,
another dot
Spot the differences?
I can
as I turn into a copy of a copy of a man.

I should go to sleep but the mind wants to keep me awake
it is shunting along and I tell it
it's wrong to go on,
but go on it will until the still of the night and the absence of light weighs down my eyes.

Tomorrow lies heavy upon this old man and today can do as it likes,and it likes to harass me with memory upon memory and if I close my eyes is it then that I can't see?
can't be still
got no will to resist that look through the gather of mist that is hemming me in.

The needles and pins that stick where nobody wins and they always seem to be sticking in me,
or perhaps that's just a memory.

Either way
today has to go
I know I need sleep
I need to keep myself well and as the ref rings the bell for the third and final round.
I've finally found
a rest

The cardboard jigsaw,an eyesore but it's sods law and when you've nowhere to go and all doors are locked,
you have nothing to lose by sleeping on a box.
We're a city of flatpacks and the homeless with knapsacks are the ones who are stacked up,jacked up and cracked up and for the lucky ones who've packed up and moved on, that memory is gone,
(the one when they're cast out and last in the queue)

So they do what they do when the night closes in,some take to beer and some to the pin and no one can win when the odds have been fixed or the ****** mixed with bicarb' or brick dust,
this twenty five to one shot which the outsiders have got is not a chance,it's a kicking,a beating and they're being deleted,a rewrite and the new world might never know about the down and the outs down and out on skid row.
I say
God bless the Queen but I bet she's not seen the rough sleepers with rough hands and faces and no places to go where they've not been before.
The revolving door says, come in here for a beer or a pin,come quaff some dry cider or fix ******
you've got nowhere to go and all doors are shut,
there's no maybe or might do, you'll pick one of the two,the pin or the beer to forget that you're here where you don't want to be.
Me,
I chose both locks and both locked me in and only my dreams let me out.

Resting it upon my palms I open up the book of Psalms..
..where I once walked in pastures green..and I have seen the shadowed valleys,running East to West..reminding me of mean dark alleys from my youth.
God's truth aches like the tooth that takes my mind away.

Would I pay to see this show?
To watch the slow..slow walk by the hero who took from the Pharaoh the "Chosen" and then was frozen out at the end of the game?
In Gods name would I pay?

Would I know when and how to say in Aramaic quite prosaic..Hallelujah?..or could I dream to speak in tongues and climb to heaven upon the rungs of a handy ladder?..and add another..Abel's brother with knife in hand to send me off to sleep the promised land.

What is it that was begat to think of thoughts unlike like that and dream undreampt,unkempt and sore to knock again on Heavens door.
Where no-one's in
To go and sin or sin no more..another knock upon the door..another notch cut on the belt..

..And I have felt the flesh grow weak
I seek an answer to a question set and yet I seem to know that what I get is only half the Parallel.
Twixt here and hell
I ring the bell and cry unclean
It seems the thing to do.

He barely remembers Verdun and then when that was done
it was Passchendale
but now old and frail on a walking frame
with a gammy leg full of cold shrapnel
from the hell
of the bravery
in the war to end all slavery.

He moves slowly along the top of the cliff
leg quite stiff in the stiffening breeze.
And the falling stars
those medals with bars upon his lapel
another reminder
from the long ago hell.

He hears the pipers
fears the snipers but they've all gone
somewhere on the Somme.

Lulled into some false sense of serenity
I took my eyes off him and didn't see
him go over the top
Pulled away
and then he rose and went marching off across the morning bay
to meet his friends
(from a friends battalion,somewhere up Wigan way)
I watched them as they knelt to pray
and then go off into yesterday
to fight a war
and win their
peace.

Minimum hours
minimal powers.
let the pennies shower down on those in the new age 'workhouse'
we're back to the slums where the bosses toss crumbs to the masses and
what passes as good is as good as it gets, when the greedy get all and the poor get sod all.
The cries of the City,unheard since Victoria,I mean the Queen,not the place and that is the pity of it,
trapped in this sea where only the successful can be seen as being smug,
We should heave out the plug and watch them go down,give back the town to the people who share in it,those who care and those I swear will win.
Unless the cheapness of gin begins to rear its head and the poor all get hammered instead.
When the **** hits the fan we forget the soup van and it's bottles all round and around we all go.
If the cold doesn't **** us we'll be buried in snow and they'll cover the cracks
with more minimum contracts.

She in bikini

(the costume
not
the atoll)
on the beach beside a blue sea
and me with a bucket and *****
under the shade
of a palm tree on the beach
beside the sea

we build dreams it seems from sand
and bridges to cross our hearts.

The morning gives a wink,a passing nod
and sods off
to play again in yesterday.

I lay my worries to one side
pry the lid off Monday night
as if the innards of yesterday had invited me
to come and play
a game of hide and seek.

Last week I did the same and was rewarded when the morning came
with a blindfold on my eyes
and mournful cries from Wednesday when it realised the games we play
were lost,
and who could say
when found once more in the morning which had discovered that I wore
pyjamas laced with polka dots?

Each anniversary of Sunday,Tuesday,any day where night comes out to play
in the nursery
where the dreamers and the children stay
and the lemon socks of half eaten sticks of rock will stick tight to tiny toes
I tap my fingers on the window pane
I want to play in yesterday again.

Who knows the secrets that we find when rummaging within the mind and yesterday is often kind,
much kinder than today.