Imagination
when the mind runs riot
and you see it

so
you have to try it

not a lot you can do about it,
you can't sit on the sidelines
waiting for calmer times

just
run like me
through the riot factory
try everything you see
at least
once.

Such a lovely start to the day
I think
I might flock to the lounge
and lay
upon the sofa.

Stay
at
home.

I think you'll need your hat, Matt,
I think you will indeed,
it's raining a bleedin' monsoon Matt,
I think you'll need your hat.

Imagine that you're in your car
and have a breakdown,
a mental, not a mechanical one,

that isn't in the manual, is it?
you look anyway and
no, it's not there,

screaming at the tarmac
at the hold-up as you fold up
won't help at all,  


it's always best not to imagine
that you're in your car.

If God really exists
he must have missed my
Facebook like.

Odd is the God that speeds off on a hot bike.
How unlike
the stories he told.
In the old testament
he seemed so cold
and permanent
Did God wave goodbye to the firmament?
why?
I wonder if God's really there.
And if he is,
does he read my mind can he find me a place to be
inside humanity?
With no agendas
no race or no creeds
No people on leads
unfettered is always better than chained.

If there are Seraphim would they have talked to him
does he exist
would angels and cherubim have seen him
would he be missed if he wasn't there
is he there?
Does God care?

Do lost tweets from Twitter
litter floors up in heaven?
Does God only work from eight to eleven with
every other day missed
does God exist?

It's strange how God's Facebook page seems to be all the rage
with thousands and thousands of hits
while he leaves me in bits and doesn't reply
does God exist
and if he does
why?

They think it's me
and
it could very well be.

I say,
let them think as they will
and
I'm sure that they will,
but
it's not what I think.

'Could do better',
written in a letter
when people used
to write such things.

Change for necessity
and
I wonder
what does that alter for me?

Is it that
what
will be will be
is our fate?

Cough
ahem.

embarrassment,
a constant complaint of
young men,
but
a cough and a sneeze
are better
than
a social disease.

Chaste,
less haste to make hay
while the sun shines,

I'd waste away if it wasn't
for the hay and the girls who
say, ' do you fancy a stroll?'

It's a Monday and
at times, those times,
most times, the
air is light,
I might just
float away

Sometime a nicety
I look and I feel
and she's on the line to me
breathing
quite heavily
sometime a memory
from some time ago.

The day crashes down on me
with
a wave of adversity but these problems
won't bother me,
because I can see
the sun.streaming through
the sky ever so blue and
I know in my heart that each day
is the start
of something brand new.

I once kept some fish
I called one Pythagoras
He swam round and round the tank
And to be frank
I thought he was working out the cubic capacity.
To keep them fit
I fed them on flakes because that's all it takes
But he was a sod he took out a fishing rod
Caught all the others and ate all his brothers
I was a bit peeved but then I conceived
An idea..Oh lord what a killer.
In his tank I put a mirror
Well.
When he saw his reflection
Section by section he ate himself
And finished with his head.
Now Pythagoras is dead.
You didn't expect a happy ending did you?

Down on the South side a
tube ride away,
out in the Borough
where some people stay and
some people say,
it's a nice place, a
well-lit place, a somewhere
to sit and deep think place.

but

there's another side, a ride back in time
when the streets were caked in
horse **** and grime and the urchins
searching for somewhere to stay,
some nicer place
on a much nicer day.

And the Stew houses
but no stew inside,
known to children and
no place to hide,
Goose, oh goose
let my children go loose,
cries far away from
the Borough today.
js

The following text is taken from 'Goodreads' reviews of John Constable's 'The Southwark Mysteries'.


'For tonight in Hell, they are tolling the bell
For the ***** that lay at The Tabard
And well we know how the carrion crow
Doth feast in our Cross Bones Graveyard.'


In 1107, the Bishop of Winchester was granted a stretch of land on Southwark Bankside, which lay outside the law of the City of London. The Bishop controlled the numerous brothels, or 'stews'in the area, but the prostitutes, known as 'Winchester Geese', who paid the Bishop licence fees, were nevertheless condemned to be buried in unhallowed ground. For some 500 years, the Bishop of Winchester exercised sole authority within Bankside's 'Liberty of The Clink', including the right to licence prostitutes under a Royal Ordinance until Cromwell and the Puritans shut down the bear-pits, theatres and stews of Bankside's pleasure quarter.

In 1996, those working on an extension to the Jubilee line of London's underground, unwittingly began to dig up the bones of the outcast dead of Southwark, extimated to number 15,000, and John Constable began writing the Southwark Mysteries and later became part of a campaign to preserve part of the cemetery as a memorial garden.

I can't resist pasting in an article from the Daily Telegraph that appeared after the performance of the Southwark Mysteries at Shakespeare's Globe and Southwark Cathedral on Easter Sunday and Shakespeare's birthday, 23rd April 2000:

The Sunday Telegraph, May 14th 2000

"DEAN REJECTS CRITICS OF 'SWEARING JESUS' MYSTERY PLAY

A religious play staged in an Anglican cathedral has provoked fury after it featured a swearing Jesus and Satan wearing a phallus.

The Southwark Mysteries was produced by Southwark Cathedral and Shakespeare’s Globe in south London as part of the capital’s 'String of Pearls' Millennium celebrations. It mixed ***** medieval scenes with modern imagery and referred to bishops engaging in homosexual *** with altar boys and priests visiting prostitutes. The character of Jesus, who rode onto stage on a bicycle, was shown apparently condoning a range of ****** activities, while Satan told scatological jokes and ordered Jesus to 'kiss my a*'. At one point Jesus was admonished by St Peter for his swearing and responded: 'In the house of the harlot, man must master the language.' At another, Satan, played by a female actor, strapped on 'a huge red phallus' before using it to beat his sidekick, Beelzebub.

The play was written by John Constable, who said that he had deliberately wanted to challenge Christians. 'Profanity is a theme of the play', he said. 'The point of it was to explore the sacred through the profane. ' Mr Constable said he had worked closely with Mark Rylance, the Globe’s artistic director, and the Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, who conceived the idea of a joint production to mark William Shakespeare’s birthday falling on Easter Day. He said the clergy had made a number of suggestions about the content, but he had not acted on all of them. 'They did ask me to make sure that Satan did not wear the phallus in the presence of Jesus, which I did', he said.

The first section of the play, which contained much of the ***** material, was staged at the Globe, and the final part, 'The Harrowing of Hell' in the cathedral. 'Colin Slee was very robust in keeping me on the straight and narrow', Constable said. 'The play is a new version of the traditional medieval Mystery plays, which were religious in nature but accepted human imperfections and took place in a carnival atmosphere. It seemed to be well received by most people who saw it.'

But one member of the audience, Simon Fairnington, has condemned the play as 'disgustingly offensive', saying that it 'revelled in the glorification of vice'. In a letter to the Dean he complained: 'Had the play been a purely secular production, one might not have been surprised at its treatment of Christian belief. What was dismaying was that it was sponsored and performed in part within a Christian cathedral. The cynical part of me wonders whether this is simply a sign of the times, and the way the Church of England cares about its Gospel and its God.' Anthony Kilmister, chairman of the Prayer Book Society, said: 'This is not the sort of play that should be performed in God’s house. It is quite disgraceful.'

But the Dean, who was the centre of controversy a few years ago when he allowed the cathedral to be used for a Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement celebration, defended the play. The performance was in keeping with traditional Mystery plays and 'portrayed graphically the life and history of the area' which was 'where the seamier side of life was to be found', he said. 'The message was that even the worst sins are not beyond redemption', he added.

Most of the audience responded positively to the underlying message of mutual forgiveness. Like the Dean, many accepted Satan’s *****, blasphemous words and deeds as part of the Mystery Tradition. The theologian Jeffrey John was of the opinion that, despite some obvious heretical tendencies, Constable was presenting 'remarkably orthodox Christian teachings going back to the first century AD'. Constable’s Harrowing of Hell is closely modelled on a play from the medieval York Cycle. His version shows Jesus’ spirit of forgiveness triumphing over the letter of The Law. Jesus’ ultimate 'Judgement' is a verse paraphrase of Matthew 26: 35-45.

  JESUS
  My blessed children, I shall say
When your good deed was to me done.
When man or woman, night or day,
Asked for your help, your heart not stone,
Did not pass by or turn away,
You saw that, in me, they too are One.
But you that cursed them, said them nay,
Your curse did cut me to the bone.

When I had need of meat and drink,
You offered me an empty plate.
When I was clasped and chained in Clink,
You frowned, and left me to my fate.
Where I was teetering on the brink,
Did bolt and bar your iron gate.
When I was drowning, you let me sink.
When I cried for help, you came too late.

  RESPONSE
  When had you, Lord, who all things has
Hunger or thirst, or helplessness?
Had we but known God a prisoner was
We would surely have sought to ease His distress.
How could God be sick or dying? Alas!
When was He hungry, thirsty, or homeless?
How could such things come to pass?
When did we to thee such wickedness?

  JESUS
  Dead souls! When any bid
You pity them, you did but blame.
You heard them not, your heart you hid.
Your guilt told you they should be shamed.
Your thought was but the earth to rid
Of them I am now come to claim.
To the poorest wretch, whate’er you did,
To me you did the self and same.

The travel back there
to get home and to share
the afternoon with my lady.

It was a hard day
a bread and dripping
or a lard day
but days like this come
and go

it won't be remembered,

but the afternoon will and the
evening spent under the light
of the moon will
because whatever kind of day
it turned out to be
she
will still be my lady

and
If I don't make it
beyond
three score and ten
I'll still count myself lucky.

Life is the taking from and giving to
who am I to say otherwise?

and each becomes their own
when I'm going home
wrapped in my thoughts
caught up in the dream
leaving Dean Street where
it belongs.

A fortune awaits me
and
she has the key,
but
we both know the
drill.

drink to excess
drunk you're a mess

if only

I smoke alcohol
it saves on the glasses,
they say that girls make passes
at boys who save glasses

if that's true
where are they?

Sunday
I smell liquor on the vicar
the sermon is a shambles,
drunk
the vicar rambles on about
some giant on a cross

at a loss to explain
I roll a champagne
and
if you're going to smoke
it might as well be the best.

The agapanthus!

it's still there
in the garden
growling

I'm sure that it's a lion.

..and now that we're subsidised by the state
it doesn't matter about being
late
we're no longer working nine to five
I am just trying
to stay alive.

But
enough rope is enough for the hanging
and I ain't hanging around for that,

and that, is the flat rate of income tax soaring,

this decade will become known as the roaring
twenties,
I can already hear the roaring of the female worker as the twenty pound notes in her wages desert her
and the men?
well
they'll be in the **** again.

we're done for
doomed
the workhouse looms

Marshalsea advertises rooms in the Metro
compact and bijou
for a touch of the retro
and
we're done for.

Ate chocolate,
drank too much.
Christmas time is
such a joy.

Where's the boy known as
the sun of man
Mary's child
the son of Stan?

Caught up in traffic,
what a loss
missing this,
he'll be cross.

I had a swell time
for a Brit,
stood in the front line,
I did a bit
of cheer and played charades
parading this way that 'till
someone guessed.

The best games are framed simply in
the faces
of the young
and us older one's
had the most fun.

I carried her over the threshold,
her flesh hot,
the bed cold, but it waited for us
patiently.
The inquisitor was born to die, forever
asking questions, why.
We asked again,
the counterpane cut out the night
we saw the light
together.

Chimneys like sentries watching aerials on duty as the River Lea catches the tide at Bow Creek,

and now we're all super cameras with eyes on the rooftops, the bus stops, the cop shops and the 'wooden tops', but we don't call cops by that name anymore,

don't do no wrong if you can't do no right
a motto to live by and a lot more to die for.

keep safe.

It's always Monday
but
one day
it might not be

Counting my chickens
disguised cunningly as blessings
is one way to lay waste to the day .

We never needed supplements
when we got all of our
nutrients
from good old wholesome

then some lunatics
or scientists
decided  
in their wisdom
to introduce
into our food chain system
snynthetic additives

spewed out like a toxic waste
flavoured rather nicely
so they'd
taste
quite okay.

well
real food had its day
we went on
overkill,
kept
pigs that fed on pigswill
and we ate them porkers
too.

What y'all gonna **** against now that the wall's fallen down?

If we built it and it tilts,
tough.

Them with the kilts on have still got the hots on ( hoots mon) for Euro
I dunno though
it could just be the weather.

But we don't have to explain we're too busy complaining and I'm really ******* because outside it's raining
and it's British rain not dependant on Brussels
(he flexes his muscles)
tremors are felt
seismic events on the trading floors

It still bores me and I need a ***,

where's the wall?

Willing myself to chill out
by reading Facebook updates?

what's that all about?
you
can't chill out when you're
logged up to the eyeballs
trying to avoid the pitfalls
in other people's details.

The day is three quarters empty,
see if you can
drink that from the bottom of the glass.

Everyone and his wife want to tell
you to live a better life,
****** off's all I can say

so chillin's off the menu
doing the things that I do,
Facebook would like to
but
I adjusted the privacy
settings.

What if it's a closed fairground when we get there?
what if a good God didn't care enough to put out
candy floss?

but what if it's a citadel?


I don't know not that I ever did
I think about it though.

There's still time
and still time
and I am quiet most of the time
but never still all of the time.

One day he will be when the end of the day
comes to me
and she whispers in me
come closer.

Chasing the shadows on the walls of all Hallows
and which one is mine?
Time was,
I knew
but time has a way of changing day into night and the one that I choose may be the one that's not right.
So I will tread carefully among the nymphs that float free and hope in all Hallows that these shadows,
I see
dance only for me.

(20 minute poetry)


Bravo
although a bit slow
we made it

gives a high five to
those left alive
the others we'll bury
at dawn

It was hard and was long
(these are not the words to a song)
it was panic and fear but we slowly
got here,
our sense of achievement outweighed
by those we leant on
on the way.

this is what life is
the climb from the abyss
the falling apart
and
knowing where it will end
we start anyway.

I'm on my way
why wouldn't I be?
been here long enough
to know
we all go in

The End.

and then the end carries on
( not the words in another song )
and carries us with it
to sit in some Mansion?
(Difficult)
but I can get down and
get with it
if it's  
part of the program.

She strips
but it's post-apocalypse
and no one looks.

He'd read
but
there are no books
and no words to convey
when no one gives two..
..and no one looks
anyway.

We're hanging on
by our fingernails.

Feet planted firmly on the shifting ground
I am what I see,
ruins all around and
most of them are me.

The clouds scatter sly, like a
coffin lid sliding tightly over the sky
and
it's grey.

Today
I shall pay what is due,
a means to my end,
someone lend me a pen so to write.

In a night that would let out the air
I am there in the midst of it,
wanting a little bit
of light.
Someone lend me a pen so to write.

This will pass
so the broken glass spoke
as it said to me,
'firm is not all it's cracked up to be'
I am what I see and
no more.

Work?
should be a hashtag
and that's all
because
it ain't worth
its weight in *****.

Some people
them people
those people
you people
oops
not you people
because
you people are me
people
should take the cure.

On this island let there be
a tower of Babel,
so we can see and understand
the language
of our fellow man.
A Camelot for Kings to sit,to
fight with words, those who would
spit upon the flag.
A queen of light
a time for night,more time for day
and time enough to let the children play.
On this island let there be,a
room for all humanity.

We are the pit men,the pony men,the downtrodden,unshod men,and it's us against them,
and them men are the fat men,the fast gabbers,the land grabbers,the takers,the fakers, the usurers and money lenders,
**** them men,
I'm tendering my resignation and going off to look for something more,
a new celebration of a life within this whirlwind of a railway station.
Platform four,
train leaves at five
if I'm still alive
I'll be on it.

Hands shaking,just a bit,
can't seem to hit
the keys,
think I'll try it
with my eye upon it.
got to open them
sometime.

It's about midday
about midway through
halfway to there
wherever
there is and the
burden in being halfway to midway
or midday is,
or so they say, it's easier
to go on than go back.

It must be the promise of seeing the end
when
the beginning was so far away.

That was easy
wasn't it?
no stress
less mess
than usual.

Some days like today or
really any Tuesday can
be fun
finish work
a walk in the autumn sun
a trip to the park and as it
gets dark
amble on home
to a hot cup of cocoa.

I know as you do
that's life almost a
walk through
some like to run through
I never do.

And when it's like this
a slight kiss
from her ladyship
makes me trip the
quite fantastic.

Then
to try as I might
I can't stop
I must write.

Adieu

addictions are and will always be
the ink of the pen and the words
within me

more than simply understandable
easily readable too

I seldom do fancily worded verses
I write plainly and at times
painfully so.

That was easy
definitely
and definitely
time now
to go.

Whether I like it or not
I've got
seventeen staples that
hold me together.

Surgical steel,
real shiny and bright
holding
me tight
like a woman might.

I like that a lot
but the staples
may not,
they still hold me
together
though.

The Christmas tree
shedding needles
in the shed.

In the midst of all this
she
blows me a kiss
I catch it and hold to the
promise it gives,

Later,
when all's done,
the fun begins,
In the twist and the spin, I think that
I win
but she knows as she blows
me another sweet kiss
I forget all of this,
in the midst of it.

Then let us drink of the Lethe
and forget that we lived there

may the river wash our worries away.

and then
we become harrowed
broken down
leveled out
and our earth
is
ready for seeding.

..and as I lay in my bed, some think I may die,
some think I am already dead.
I look to the sky and call on my creator,
'don't bother me now I'll see you much later', and thus as I age
another page turns.

You try to match your brain up with the things your eyes are seeing,
give a little scratch or two because being men we all do that.
then there's the coffee to negotiate
the bedroom's in an awful state
you can't remember why


and an eye pokes out from underneath
the crumpled Egyptian cotton sheet
and another which makes two
and you wonder who
or maybe not
the coffee's bubbling in the ***
such a lot you can't recall,
memory's not worth ****** all
when it doesn't work.

I was thinking about doing some writing
but then I got right in
to a very good book
and look at the time!
there is no time left to do anything else.

I wrote this right and then he left.

My whole being slips as I kiss with my lips
somewhere down by your hips
and my ship's coming in.

You begin with a smile that touches my heart
I start to melt
but I know you felt real,
I become steel and you are the furnace
a whole mess of heat that beats in my chest
in your breast.

I like morning time best,when you wake
and I take hold of your fingers and linger a while
just watching you smile at me
asking for tea as you dress,
more mess
more heat
but you beat me to the punch line
this time.

My whole being turns on these kernels of trust
where the roof over our head
and the candlewick bedspread is fed into the thoughts that whirl round in my head,
and I'd just like to say
you look so good today
but you always do
to me.