They rise as if in glory but there's no praises to a god in this,
this is the kiss off big goodbye to the peasants as they touch the sky and a pauper stands in awe at what he saw,
a million metric tonnes of concrete, chewing on his gums he thinks,
I'd like to meet the architect.

Some paupers are much more than all the rags they ever owned or wore and carrier bags they swore allegiance to, an oath on his lips as the ghost of him slips into awareness.

The blocks that block his way also block the light of day and nothing lives for very long, the weak die off, the strong lie low and the harsh winds of a harsher winter blow.

Up far above him to where a kind of gods love is owned by the few and the higher it goes although the winter wind blows they sway to a dance sound that only they hear and like scorpions in season it's the stings that I fear.


But when these blocks that are buildings are locked up they're filled in with more fear than I can imagine or could comprehend  if the means are a justification of the heights that men will go
who makes the loading that loads the loaded dice?
it would be nice to know.

She
lifts me
with a note or
a key,
we are the symphony
she plays.

I sail close to the wind
she
sails closer to me.

Give me the swing vote
bring out your dead.

I note with alarm
a severe lack of charm and
charisma has taken a back seat

but someone'll win
someone'll get beat
someone will sit on the
number one seat

I'm having breakfast and it
don't bother me.

In the long years
when the sun seared you
and the wind chilled,
and the lack
filled the days,
when you were throw-away,
and time played its tricks on you
when everything you tried to do
turned its back on you,
and you knew in the depths of what you were,
there stood a different view
of a man you once new
in the long years.

And  time flew through the windows,
where opportunity once grew,
in the fields,
where you once played,
now
playing tricks
on you.

In the long years
where one fears to go
where they know you and
the things you do
and the wind chills
'til it fills the void,
where you once stood
and the Sun sears
burning fears instead
of stars.

Pretend me a pen and let
me know when I can write,
pretend me a day
pretend me a night
pretend me the vision to write.

'one two buckle my shoe'
or will you do
it for me?

She says,
'that the boy is a man'
I can
do that too,
'one two buckle my shoe'
or will you?

Pretend me pretending that
this life's never ending
that the
light never fades me away,
pretending the night is the day.

Pretend me the pen
let me write it down
then
we can play.

In that moment
waking
when the dreams we had
subside
and
the only thing remembered
is that something in us
died,
when we shake our heads to
clear our eyes,
but can't unhear those
plaintive cries.

In that moment waking
do you feel that your
heart's breaking
too?

It is quite disconcerting to find I'm just
a speck of dirt in
the vast seas of the sky.
I have often dislodged such a speck from my eye,then
wiped my finger on a tissue,
the issue being,
did somebody die when I did that?

If we are just dust in an ocean of dust,sometimes
busting out of the sea for just one look at who
we really are,
what is the point of it all?

We mate,dissipate,gather together,amalgamate
but
I ask myself, why?
and in doing so,
I drown in the vastness of the seas
in the sky.

I am being whipped into shape
by the side
of the altar and fate
is the mistress
that handles the tawse,
of course, she had to be,
only she knew the answers,
not I.

Platform four,
what am I waiting for?
one leap into space
and I press my hands to my face, only
to find I cannot go through with it,
another venue
another place,
one more track as if to say,
I'll try again.

If not now, then when?
maybe
platform three will do
another trackside
one more venue.

I take the sidelong view and I wonder,
who are you?
one eye on the steel
the other closed as if not to feel, as if
one eye looking is not real.

Each train I see comes slowly as if it knows me  as if it knows the form I take and on platform three, I am curiously
torn.
I break.
Each thought hits home and home is empty,
there's only me on platform three,
what am I waiting for?

Omissions we make take us somewhere
but where that could be
I've no
clue,
I lose all momentum when friends come to stay
and the talk turns to
what shall we do
tomorrow.

Like
decaying uranium we linger, the fingers of time are our fate,
the half-lives of sinners are longer and get longer the longer they play on my nerves,
inner sanctums are no more a sanctuary
the walls I concreted broke down,
the lions may roar a denial, but something's
going on in the town,
ships sailing at dawn for the Islands
on missions to take them away,
only here for a day gone in sorrow,
in tears on the quayside
I see my
tomorrow.

The future is closer this evening
the day drifts off into the past,
uncertainty is the new reason
I'm glad that's
decided, at
last when the bell starts its long climb
before it falls back down
and chimes
I climbed that tall mountain
so often
and fallen back down
many times.

On the knocks.
I take them
slowly,
on the rocks
drink them swiftly,
let them trickle
away.

Like taking a bite from the night
and tasting each day
like it might be
some
poisoned apple,
grappling with this, who'd
want to kiss
a witch?
who might be
the tree from which
all things will spring.

On the knocks or on the rocks,
over easy
just to please me.

Feeding the ego,
a tiger on nitro' or
a bird in
the hedgerow?

Einstein hands me a relative,
a way to forget the negative.
I give him a big hand for that.

Catching bubbles which bubble within me,
to burst on the walls of adversity
where heat rises as
if this life's a chimney
and I am the one
being smoked.

The deep end is there just to tease me
to pleasure and please me
I always jump in.

Who wants to swim when to drown is more fun?

I kneel to genuflect
which I suspect
is a waste of time

I take the time anyway
to kneel and pray

thinking,

It's no use closing a door

I genuflect some more
and then I'm done.

If a God exists other than on Olympus
willing to protect us
able to contact us
I'd like to meet him or her or it and sit and chat a bit about things.

Thoughts random;

If a bird sings in the Amazon
does a glass menagerie shatter in Willesden?


Someone held me close through the endless day, the weeping night
it might have been God.

In time I'll know, but there's a nagging in my heart, a suggestion that the knowing's just the start of it
I think I'd like to sit a bit and chat with God a bit
about things.

John Smallshaw ‏@jsirony


Three jacks black
and one red queen,
in the pack
I
have seen
my life laid out
in
playing cards.

#PontoonPoetry

She haunts me,
undaunted
I seek her
out.

two-forty volts and
a dose of salts,
Monday
comes in like
strychnine

in the corner is Poirot
looking like Zorro
sometimes I wish it
was already tomorrow.

The day that was never forever will be
Trapped in the system somewhere inside of me.
And the long player spins.
The music begins.

The sounds of the years
Play light through my ears..caressing my heart
falling apart to rebuild 'til I'm filled
Full of tears.

In this surfeit of circuits
I cry
I'm not perfect..I wasn't made so
I go where the wind goes and flush into hedgerows
***** that I am.
Am I that man?

But the day that will be
Will see me made whole
Attaining some goal I have set.
I've not met it yet but I know that it's there
Waiting somewhere in the
Shadows.

If we could only see
beyond the curtain of uncertainty
then we would surely be
omnipotent.

" the faster time goes, the faster it slows"
(from silent gardens)

written in haste as most things are
which never got me as far
as it should have done.

it's the internal clock
the shock as time passes.

But we are aware, aren't we?
or
am I just asking the question of me?

Getting old should be like
getting a cold,
something that one gets over.

Still got that monkey on your back?

social distancing
means you don't have to let it in
you don't have to let it weigh you down.

Fine in theory
but can the monkey hear me?

it's still a fight.

If you wanna deal out life then deal me in,
I've got a longing to begin something that never ends and I wanna hand in that.
Let us pass no compliments we both know how to play
If you wanna deal out life,then deal me in today.

The cards fall as they will,upside down,down up until they spill the spots and then,and only then,
will I see what's dealt to me and understand that I would be.
More to come said the angel with the gun who tried to rob the diamonds from the sky, so unlikely this and this is why I walked on by ,my hands full with the pull of fortune and a hand of hearts that came to soon.

If you want a hand within the game then you must leave your name at home,the one you never knew you'd never known and come on in,
let's begin by making rules,no rules are great but we must wait and see what the dealer says the rules will be,
pick a card up from the pack and you are stuck,no going back to what you didn't know you knew,
the Queen of clubs begins to cackle,what a pickle,what a stew and who the devil's deuce are you?
pay no heed.
no Queen's for you
What you need's a royal flush to wash away, you wanna play again? no pain involved.

And I waited by the astrodome,the metronome moved blindly,not unkindly I could see,
a new game being played securely set in hands of stone another woe begotten home I never knew and just because I never knew, I know now that it's all untrue,the deck was rigged,we didn't get a fair shake,they took from us because they could take and we didn't know and if we did,we put a lid down on the fact and opened up another pack of playing cards,
you wanna deal in this 'ere life? then get a knife,be ready too, to find out things you never knew.

If you wake into the slumber of the ever present sea
and you wonder who you are or
if you're ever meant to be.
where the waves are crashing somewhere upon some
far off distant shore
and you really can't be bothered but you
know that there's much more than the dramas that
unfold before your washed out once blue eyes.
And you think something inside you dies because the tide
goes out and the shoreline lies beyond your reach.

No one teaches you this state of mind,
this being is what you are.

There is a motion in the hearts of men,
a see saw,
up then down again,
life's a playground but the
sound we make is natures way to get
us through another day

The sea tosses fitfully yet sleeps heavily
and presently
it will come to me as the tide
rolls in.

In the hearts and minds of men
when Autumn starts to fall
and the call of colder days rings clear,where the harvest moon appears to reap or feed the soul
and the fears we've laid aside in the lives in which we hide break free.
We bow before the season and tread lightly on the golden carpet, laid down lightly on the forest floor,
all this and more.
The free show,wind blow,let's go play.
A better day you would not find in the hearts and minds of men.

Then you keep running and turning and
running to burn off the calories
and she's giving you the big freeze,
but you're hot
and
still you run.

She'll melt you no matter the miles that you make
she can take you and mould you into
the view
that she wants to see,
not that it matter to me
I was blind from day one and only move on
automatic.

Looks,

they say,

like the CIA

can ****.




she kills me every day

with looks that say in

every way




and I say,




bring it on.

In the silt
the milt
the making of man,
the coming of dawn
the morning begun,
the run through the trees,
the taking,
invoking the spirits to please,
smoking a peace pipe
wearing a second stripe
we're all in the war of what went before and
what's not here yet.

In ten thousand years they will dig up my bones
professors will view me and talk in hushed tones.
I'll be in the museum, some, will come down to see me,the fragrance of history etched in the memory of lines scratched by bullhorns,when the lawman kicked in the door man and that can't be right man.

And for now we will take it,we get used to the *******,we
were brought up on horseshit,in the spitting my way through the saliva today,
I walk upon tainted water, turned to ice, think i oughta use a ****** to slaughter the unborn of the daughters of the devil who sort of knows exactly where I'm at.

In the vat where the system is rising unbidden to fall and be hidden
I stir and stare at reflections.

(20 minute poetry)

#10word Siberia

In permafrost? or
listed as missing,
lost in the
floe.

#10word traveller

I visit this
ancient land
where the sand
meets Ozymandias.

#10word Bard.

Give me the quill
I have the will
to write.

The day,
Monday,
and it's already crowding me
traffic noise
them chirping birds
and the radio
so full of words,

this vessel echoes emptily
and yet
supposedly
it's full of me,
I am
Schrodinger's man,

in the in-between
of waking and the
dream.

She sits playing Mozart
I sympathise with the symphony
it seems like Mozart had it in for me
when he sat writing this.

(20 minute poetry)

Lemonade and lime
sometime with a gin
just a little shot to
mix the liquid in.

It began with rye and ***
but
waking after drinking
that
was never any fun.

***** and coke was a joke
a port
In every storm
brandy came in handy and
the hangover was fine
and dandy.

I'm too old in the tooth and ain't it the truth that alcohol is a thief of my time so it's lemon and lime
the drink that is mine
with additional extras
of course.


Afterthoughts.
The ***** of the masses comes in varying sizes of glasses,
don't be like me
take some tea
and don't do drugs
either.

Ear popping
carriage hopping
this tube seems like
it's never stopping
at my stop.

I'm tired
and when tired
I
get cranky.

My sight become focused
and yet
I
cannot see,
that's what being cranky
does and it does it to me.

In the slow unwind
there is
or so
I
find
a release of tension,

lines blur
when I know that
I'm near
or
when I'm nearly there.

Getting old holds terrors,
cranky being one of them

I could end up becoming
one of those
cranky old men
and
that'd never do.

he stanza lone
waiting for his lover
who is dancing her last tango
though she doesn't know that
yet.

there's a time to be a muse in
and dancing's not that time,

there's no smile upon his face
as he writes her out of
one more line,
one more time,
he stanza lone

What
Wednesday again?
we had one last week and it wasn't
much of one
so to speak

I guess they're running out of these
and regurgitating them when they please
but seriously,
are they mad or what?
what's a Wednesday got that you'd want
to go through one again?

It began and the waters ran slowly, trickling along the edges of stones, meandering through fields of corn, one more harvest yet to cull and squelched into a river somewhere South of somewhere else, it didn't really matter where, just because and because it was and when things are was,
you just leave well enough alone,
If upon the rings of a Princes finger on a hand that ploughs no acre you should spot a gem that reminds you of when you too were a King, somewhere, maybe there or somewhere was, anyway if you do remember it was always you who put it there.

Rise and fall all pleasures pall except the last gasp of pain and then again, somewhere was you never knew or did you and not tell?

And beginning ends as it will in the **** or a cheap motel in the moonlight, thrill me with the story one more time, the taste of the sea, the salt, the brine, make me cry, make me the sky that lands on your lips, fly me into you where somewhere was when it all began.
she slips and falls into a trance and I wonder if this is the great romance, but then she smiles and I know it is.

You can
read on it,
feed on it
but if that's all it took
we'd be ****** when the
real thing comes a knocking.

Live it,
deliver and
give it a go,
it's any which way if you know.

I knew it years before the new age was twenty
when I had plenty of time left to spare and now
I'm ******* if I remember which pieces does what
and what when if that did and what did it do?

Oh you can titter away but it'll come your way one day
and what way was that way you'll say.
To the rest of us who were never more than half of the best of us,
rest in peace.

I ceased trading, closed shop, the bubble that I lived in went pop and you can read about it, feed your doubts with it and if you don't believe it is shocking you'll be ****** when the real thing comes a knocking,
just saying,
pay no heed to me.

Hooked into the dynamo I go with the flow around with the tyre attached to a wire I fall free
concrete and steel, tell me how does it feel when the blood shows a route that I've mapped, with sellotape on my legs I beg for assistance from strangers, no danger of them hearing this, in that sweet moment of bliss when your heart opens up to spill out the secrets you've kept in a cup with the teeth and a pickled onion because that tastes so nice when you rack up another point on the scoreboard of life where the winners get prizes for lies and the surprise is there's prizes at all.
I fall free,
******* in oxygen like a fish out of water and they never taught me, that to survive I'd have to roll over and die a thousand times in a thousand lines of ******* where the sane truly are insane,
the dynamo slows and I drink ***** and lemonade, trying to recreate another page, I invent, concrete, steel and cement tell me how does it feel when you feel the skin start to peel and the secrets slip out?
I am hooked and whichever way you look at it it's a tag which will follow me through this life into the cemetery and the next life beyond, but beyond all expectations when the illumination of light that filters in through the mirrors in my mind
I find
a peace
in her.

I saw myself in the metronome
ticking
clicking
leaving home,
but in the seeing
I was just hoping that
someone
would stop
me.

(20 minute poetry)


Plucked from obscurity
from behind bolted doors
where no one could see
me.

And now I'm out there
breathing out fame
breathing in fresh air.

Looking in the glass
at
me,
do I pass
inspection?

My reflection's the same
so I breathe out more fame
breathing in more fresh air
my reflection's still there,
unchanged.

Not a hair out of place
nor
a hair on my clean
shaven face
not déjà vu,
I ask,
Who
are you?

A resurrection?
reflection
a correction?
the accepted convention
is a reply.

Plucked from obscurity
and even I
do not answer me.

Nothing changes
except for the
time.

A danger out there
a stranger in here,
we are
bound by these chains we
cannot break.

You
take me from the agony of
being and see the prospects of a brighter day,
I see that too in you,
where your light finds me in blindness
I see
and you become the sum that
makes up the total.