Looking at me looking ahead from behind is the surest way to find a dead end.

Monday is like this and wishing upon a star won't get you very far along the way.

Yellow fluorescent
her shorts are quite effervescent
and I meant not to look
preferring instead to wait for
the book.

Blot out the scene and draw up a seat to picture a dream
I pictured 'the last supper'
Mathew having a cuppa
Simon slicing cake
Judas wide awake
his pockets full.

The tube pulls away
another station
one more day
I play scrabble in
my mind
only to find
a dead end.

I think every aeroplane that I see
is on a bombing run and out just for me,

is it just me,
am I responsible for my own despondency?

he dreams of inspiration
like a loner dreams of
isolation

not my fault
I am not to blame,
but the fall-out's
got everyone's name
on it,

helicopters
spraying
agent orange
agent black,
back to Captain Scarlet,
.
everyone's a Mysteron.

Existence is
one giant jigsaw puzzle
with more pieces missing
than there are fish
in the sea.

It puzzles me.

The hour draws near
and as if in a daydream
I see her,
eyes on fire with
burning want and desire
of
a kiss before midnight.

Spinning around and
saying Friday three times in the mirror does not work,
it's still Wednesday and it's a long way to Friday if you
have to go the long way there,

I look in the mirror and see
not me
see
not me
I see
an artist with a frock on,
backing up a bit
I see
an artist with a smock on,
not me.

And they're talking 'bout the Shard!

if a ***** looking thing ever
looked so hard
it's the Shard.

I'm talking Annoyed and
thinking of beating up Freud
they're
thinking Schadenfreude,

that's why Lloyds
exists
for sinking wrecks and
sunken ships.

It's a hell of a mess
when you've got to confess
you've made a hell of a mess,
reflections of me in a dress,

(frocks is cool,
but they don't fool the mirror)

Cruising
pen in hand
Saddique in the driving seat
beat Boris hands down
to be the
new Mayor
in London town.

Out on the balcony and
the only thing to welcome me
is pigeon **** and
two white feathers
and the
weather's
nice.

Fifteen degrees and she's
in a bikini,
who let the genie out
of the lamp?

I queue
do you?

There's a line quite fine
elongates in time
and always someone
to cross it.

Central to being
the core's what I'm
seeing,
melting.

Life is
dealt in spades
in order to dig
our own graves.

I live only in waking dreams
where an apology seems
inadequate
and
decorum
is a parquet floor
I walk on
glide on
wish someone would give me
a ride on
their flying carpet.

We can all look through the lens
that mends the unbroken
bends light and make words
that are spoken unspoken,
but
magic lamps are rare
and
genies are much rarer.

When they sacrifice me
to lust and *******
and the genie gets a hold
on me
I
don't think that I'll care.

up theer atop
Pendlebury hill

Lowry still,

matchstick thin
a flat cap
cheeky grin,

he paints the rain
grainy,

although
not always on a Sunday.


I Watch him by the mill race,
a mill shed face
that catches old like new
for me,

L.S Lowry
ought to be
hanging in the Tate,

oh wait,
he is.

I sit on my **** by the fireside chair
and talk the mill talk to the calender man
but he doesn't care
he just watches his gauges and pressures
how precious he is
to the factory owner who allows him to live
on a pittance each week.

And while he clothes the World
in his mind he would seek
a botany bay
where his ancestors lay
and put roots in that ground.
The sound of the press, blocks the sound from the bell
just as well
because that ringing in his ears is not the bite from the future
but the teeth in the fears of his past
and another bolt of cloth has been passed by the foreman
and ticked off the list that he keeps in a book
to read to the crook who works in accounting
and pushed to the double entry
in another book amounting to
daylight robbery
but the snobbery of the age is another page set
in the mill town you get
****** all.

The fine hall's for the Master and all you survey
are the ruins that lie in the ruins of another day.

Get away
to get away and walk through a gateway into a better day
but the Devil you know is the Devil you pay and what would he say
if you jacked in the mill
and worked down the mines
better times indeed?

Those are the gaunt faces with hollow eyes that haunt the darker places in my mind.
In despair, I am dragged into the nightmares where I meet them there,
the dead friends who for unfortunately the dying never ends.

But I should be insulated from these terrors that I hold,
age and the act of getting old is quite enough for me.

Ha,
the memory like the rolling stone comes a rolling home and brings with it the bad times.

They go away but not so far away that I don't know they're there
and they wait for me and the wandering of my memory to roll back in on me.

Like the sea
I am the tide that rushes in and from the shore,
what more can I be, but just the rolling of a memory and the places where those faces go on haunting me.
I roll the dice.

Monday rolls in off the weekend shore,
more of the same
another week filled with uncertainties and certainly there's sure to be an ocean of pain.
until Friday drifts back in again
I will remain
all at sea.

It's when I least expect it
that he comes to sit with me,
his shadow curling around the blue smoke
and his Woodbine voice asking,
are you alright son?

That was back in the time when the clothes line cried with the weight of our young ways
and mother's busy washing days
that left us bright and clean
can't believe I was there and have been
many seasons since then.

Reasons I had for turning bad washed away
in mums washing day and on the line
drying out fine in the sun.

Son that I am and a man for all that
I go back to the garden where drip dry's are dripping
and Sarah's still skipping
where I strip off pretending yet
glad that the ending has come
Mum stands there gleaming bright
an advert for 'PERSIL' white
hands chapped but that's alright
she doesn't seem to mind.

And mindful of all this
I give mum a kiss and tell her I love her
and glad that she cared for me
when I had not dared to see
any tomorrow.
I borrow from time to time a bit out of history
where melancholy plays a much tighter tune
and soon
I'll be there where I should have been
in the washing so bright and clean
and this time I know that I mean
it.

I'd like to float for eternity
in a bottle
as a ship
out at sea
just me
and
the cork
or be
the message that you've waited for
in the bottle
1864
vintage words

It was sad music,
sigh and cry some more music
we listened anyway
because the day was drab.

Night floated in like a dose of Persil
that washed us whiter than white
and
in spite of the day we became
happy and gay
I think the Cognac had something to
do with that.

A refrain
and the same thing again
reliving the past.

Yeah I know
what begins with a W and ends in a why the hell does it bother me, I feel like it's
halfway through the day and it's only 5am.

But today is different
something's different anyway,

perhaps it's my rebreather
maybe it's narcosis

or the dreaded virus that we've
heard so much about.

I think the prime minister said we're safer now that he's to be a father,
so I'm heading off to hide somewhere
away from London and its tinted hair or tainted air
anywhere that doesn't begin with a W.

And it has been a hard days night,
too friggin' right mate,
started early
finished late,
get to the bus stop
had to wait, but now
I am satisfied,
tried my hardest
did my best,
If this was a test
I am sure
that I'd pass.

In the city and
the streets are wet
and *****,
Winter brings such things
I'm not at all surprised,
my eyes look out on desperation,
Liverpool. the street
and station, but I am heading home to where my heart and the beat awaits me.

Tired though not beaten yet
I have yet to get a midnight
Kiss.

Two hours late but how could I miss the thrill that chills me, thrills and will she **** me one more time?

Stepney and still late
no worries
the bus hurries me home.

Her lips trace on the
tips of my ears,
the letter 'O'
I know when she's teasing me
she knows
that's she's pleasing me and
that's the way that
it goes.

The first rule is
read the rules
(only fools don't)
then if you don't like them
disregard them,

The World is owned
by
a very few men
who make these rules
to satisfy them.

of course
you must have a code
something to live by
as you travel life's road,

which is like a rule,

What malady attracts humanity
what fevers chill our blood?

Out there
there is worse to come,
the universe would be a
colder place
if not for a billion blazing
stars
and we only manage
one sun?

is that all the universe can spare

Come at me with comets or
an asteroid belt,
leave marks on my body,
have you ever felt the
pulse of a quasar or ran your
fingers along the curving of time?

There must be more that we're
unable to see,
or maybe we see it and
don't
recognise it

what ties it together for me
is the malady that humanity
attracts,
packed as we are on a planet
that turns on the turn of a card
and each hit becomes harder to take,
every reflection of light that ever bounced
off a lake goes back where?

back out there to the billion blazing stars?

I struggle to find inner peace of the kind
that Buddha should have explained better
or perhaps
I'm just dumb,
but
still,
only one sun
seems mean.

That time,
I remember it as if
it was yesterday
and to some extent
it was.

we are never far away
from tomorrow and
definitely not from
yesterday.

But it's funny
how memories fade,
what was once glorious
sunshine
sometimes becomes
some time in the shade.

as if distortions occur
scabbing over the times
we were there.

instant replays
I'm famous for those
putting everything back
to where I think it
goes.


Time's
like a boomerang
you can throw it away,
but it comes back
and yet,

and yet
we slowly whittle it away.

yesterday
is here everyday,
the only difference is
in
the day we look for it.

I'm here and now
somehow,
for how long
remains to be seen.

Caffeine
a pen
I yawn and then
yawn again

nothing flows out except
mothballs

cloth ears they called me
deaf to their pleas
but
I was as different as
chalk is to cheese.

I yawn once more while
weevils bore into my brain
and yawn again.

The snipers have got me
shot me on Monday
sometimes I wish
I was
Solomon
Grundy

then I fall
into the week
because I'm weak
or antique
couldn't hold on to
the
yawn again
dawning on me that
what I see is
what I'll be
by Friday.

It is as it is and nothing more than that,
this world that we live in is not round
it is flat.
Oh yes,
they try to tell you that we spin round in space and that something called gravity is what keeps us in place,
it's a crock,they want to lock you in circles so that you'll also spin round but stay in one place.
This is what's known as an utter disgrace.

If you walk far enough you will fall off the edge of the earth,where you will then meet the baker, who bakes and gives birth to us all, in order that we might walk far and then fall back into his vast baking tray,
which I accept is a circular route but I don't give a hoot because I am quite certain that they,
have pulled a curtain of wool over our eyes,oh how I despise them those wise men know nothing,
but I know the world is quite flat and that's that.

Time goes and we
know it's just the alibi
it needs
as it slowly feeds upon
the passing years
which allays our fears
because we know that
eating is quite natural.

As my spirits rise when
hearing this
the spirits in the bottle
disappear
and yes
I'm on the '****'
keeling over
going under

but still,
if and when I wonder
I wonder when and if
or is this me
or is this a parody
of someone who
could be me?
sometimes
I wonder if even
She
knows,
time goes.

Slowly and deliberately
I grew up and became the me
you see, but in any group of men
do you see me as a man?
if and when or
when and if you can
let me know.

And at times
I think the monkey
that was on my back
had fleas and left me these
scars
and at times that seems a
reasonable explanation
for the cut and ****** of
when I can't place my trust
in any situation.

I follow my nose
time still goes
against
the wall
against
my will,
thy will
be done.

(20 minute poetry)

Tell me that it's true,
true
that
you are the one,
the one for me I knew,
I knew it all along.

I knew that you'd be there
when I opened up my eyes
and
surfaced for some air,
I knew it would be you
knew that you would care.

Tell me that it's true
what I always knew
tell me that it's true
It was only you,
I searched my whole life long
to find
a woman such as you
and you read my mind,
I love it that it's true
I love it that it's you
I do.
I do.

Tell me one more time
give me one more sign
I knew if would be true
my life is life with you
I really do
really really do
I think I always knew
one day I'd fall in love
with you.

We say, 'God save the Queen', but only 'cause we've seen what God can do.
God likes to smite,
here and there and anywhere a bit of smiting's to be done,God is the one, and I'm quite sure that he has fun.
I came back to the fold but God knows I only did it coz I is getting old, and still get the hots for a spot of larceny,
and so it goes that God smites me.
He'll smite you too just wait and see, with specials on a Saturday buy two smites and get one smite free.

Life is the journey, epiphany the destination and each obstacle we meet is just a stop off station along the way,
some stations are lit well and yet some become the hell we live in,do we give in and stay, on what is just a stop along the way or do we progress?
I guess, as is often the case,that each persons journey is mapped in the lines on their face.
If I could number the steps that lead down to the depths of despair,I'd be there,counting forever,it's never a good Idea to look in the rear view when you're moving into something new,but some do,some stop at the station shop,fall over their shoelaces,more lines on more faces and I've been in more places like that than I care to recall,and I have
fallen on this journey which in the end I knew would make me or turn me,light my path or would burn me,it concerned me but not unduly,
Life truly is
a journey.

Nobody
Nobody
there ain't nobody
loves you the way that
I do
lady

Ain't no one loves
you
the way I do.

If I repeat myself
repeat myself
repetitive stress
defeats myself
repeat myself
and fade.

Stuck down the rabbit hole
no sign of Alice
Christopher Robin
has taken her dancing,
*******.

repeat and repeat
and I will not be beat
I shall take Alice to wonderland
and we'll have a wonderful time

Christopher Robin
needs punching
someone
to be putting the boot in
but
there's too many guards at
Buckingham Palace
at least
he won't be getting it on
with dear sweet
Alice.

repeat me?
myself I and I
repeat to
fade.

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 night's like a cockroach that crawls up my skin, evil, exciting,
I let the night in.

The stockade has fallen, I'm free on the lam,
what kind is this man that chaos delights in the cockroach? we all know those nights so
don't pretend you can't see
or defend me, but just be one if the stars will allow and accept it
for this is the now.

In this junkyard of existence persistence pays off.

There is the diamond, a mirage floats on high,
a jewel
and my third eye desires the fires within,
more cockroaches crawl up my skin,
I let the diamond lights in.

If I excell at this it is only because the kiss of a madness is on me, badness is in me,
If vanity is to be
then it is surely
the cockroach who leads
me astray.

The light saunters in and we, of course, are all waiting for him or her because we're never quite sure where the cap fits,
talking of caps,
years ago
I had a cap gun which was great fun until I ran out of caps then it didn't bang it just went click and that's a bit like life if you look at life that way.

There is Much to do but Robin Hood won't allow it,
my Saturday joke, all about nothing.

They say the wind is picking up, but picking up what?
I'm
still grounded
getting well rounded
which I put down to her cooking

...and then the pen became my broadsword
allowing me to cut through the cords
which had bound me
and when you found me writing poetry
you reached into infinity
and
for a minute we
were connected.

Ticking like a timer
tick tick
on a timebomb
primer.

Dynamo or dynamite they both
light up
they both bite deep
tick tick
when I'm fast asleep
and one day
I'll explode.

Or

I'll settle in
get old and fat
forget that
tick tick
pick a card.

Chances are,
are chances few and far between,
chances are I've been the one
tick tick timer
prime a
timebomb.

Going to work and
having to work!
what's that all about?

2020
work didn't bother me
and
I become smothered by lethargy
drowning in apathy
eyes glued to the TV
until She,
laid down the law.

Funny how
when cut and dried
that place outside
looks greener

I've seen a
life quite different from my own
happy
caring
people
going home

and all I do is sit and moan,
it isn't fair
I should be happy, caring
it could be me
I should be there.

I think,
if change is easy
why is it so hard?

One day they'll build a monument to all the men
who
with good intent
set out to change the World in which we live
they'll take collections,
will you give?

I build a pyre
but it's them will burn me in the fire

they don't like me being so outspoken
and would much prefer me as a token gesture, the gesture being
salute the masters,
******* all the lot of them,

funny when
you start to write and the words don't match your mind.
I find the ink brings
its own opinions.

Through my blindness
you **** me
with your brand
of kindness and
I find less and less
to complain about.

but it's about time
the tide turned
the times that
I
have yearned,
the seasons that
spurned me
the reasons
I
lost on the way,

seeing now
seeing you
being me
dreams come true

I drink my tea
quite happily
and wait
for
carrot cake,

A jump start to a starved heart and
we're all locked into the grid,
we belong and though
some long to be
their destiny is a lonely place.

I face those disapproving looks
those look at him looks
and at times think
life *****,

but then they put the implants in
and switched on the juice.

It's like being in a bowl with a hole drilled
into my head
I have to tread carefully and watch my
Ps and Q's while they abuse me.

If I attach the electrodes to the diodes and the cathode tube explodes
they'll say I was trying to escape into the series and unlock the grid
what they don't know is I did.

will the prodigal ever come back to me?
do you think God wonders so or does his wonders which he performs quite wonderfully keep him to busy to wonder?

In a quandary where placebos grow wild
where there's no place to turn to except back into the child you once were
and you're popping them blues but you'll still have to choose what you want and if you do turn to, what then?

Without whom
will you pray at the temple of money or power?
and who'll sit in judgement to torment you?