About a million years ago and probably longer now.

The town hall clock which still ran on Victorian time,
caked with grime and the droppings of
raggedy arsed urchins
struck nine.

I was watching breakfast television,
something new or was when it was new
now
it's getting old and like the milk on the kitchen
drainer turning sour.

Sunday
the righteous pray,
I pay lip service
and
they charge me ten percent
which I suppose isn't too much
to stay in touch.

Wow
I was scrolling up for about twenty years and all that I saw was misery and cats, poetry and some **** about bats, Chinese refineries and Albanian laundries,
it beats me why anyone would do it
scroll through it
but I suppose when the books have all been read
and the pasta's left you for dead and the Tv's on the blink
you have to think about doing something.

If I close one eye does it mean half of the sky disappears
will I only shed half of the tears that I cry
if I close one eye?

what page is Boris on?
more to the point
from which book is he reading?

The eye of the beholder
lays bleeding,
the socket, like his pocket
is empty
and that's the same as the
promises they make before
they take everything away.

Solomon,
Solomon,
justice for everyone
Solomon,
solemn man
Solomon.

The judgement call,

let your house of
cards fall
if you believe her
then Sheba
will
save you.

Dance with Salome,
if only
to please her, but
don't go losing
your head.


The baptist is gone
to baptise Babylon
the waters
sink down to the sea
and
some lonely old scribe
from
the thirteenth
wandering tribe
wrote it all down
for me.

This holy wine, this blood of mine,
this glass I fill,
still
sometimes
I wish the wine and glass were gone
smashed beyond repair,
and the pulses cease
no voices,
peace.

Release that thought and exhale, breathe
deep and keep the faith.

If it's the ratings that your waiting for
you might as well go home
close the door
turn on the gas
and let the things that come to pass
pass.

I'm busy sitting on the fence
rent's due
nothing new there,
the landlord has a bare faced cheek
expecting me to fork out every week
for a roof that leaks over my head.

Ratings?
you can shove them up your facebook ****
go home and put on the gas,
I've said that before
but
was that prior to or after the closing of the door?
I'm not sure anymore
just poor.

looking at the time?
do the minutes drag?
does the sight of someone else
make you want to gag?

Political?

we
as a major party
want to part you
from anything
that you are due or
what's probably rightfully
yours,

I hear the closing of several doors
there's a hint of gas in the air
which
smells of fish
must be North sea gas.

But then you gotta explain it
to agents and prove it's provocative
and
like emoji's running on rocket fuel
they fool you into another rewrite

see,
poetry is the trap,
tap on any gender
and we're in a  flood
of verse,
some bad, some good
some understandable, some
incomprehensible
but
the screws tighten and
we write on and write on
wishing someone would switch a light on
because another day has gone.

and tomorrow you read it,
shed a tear for a sheltered life
and
wish the rewrite had rewound
because you've
found so many words
that you could have used
but
you didn't,

If I
cut my wrists
the blood would
come out quicker than
the angst

and
more fluid
less id
is the order of my day.

Do you know how much I miss you
how much I have missed kissing you
wishing you
were here?

Sunday.

There's a lot to be said for a Sunday
but I can't think of anything now
and there's more to be said for a Friday
I wish it was Friday and how.

How is a good word,
how would we do without it?

how would I know
called a man from the back row,
how I wish he would go.

but there's always a heckler to heckle
that's what makes things so special

It's still Sunday and I think I might rise
wipe all those dreams from my eyes
make a coffee or two
yes!
that's what I'll do

sounds like a good plan to me.

I put it all on overkill
if that don't
make 'em smile
nothing will.

In all of this,
these mass creations
I can't seem to make and only
fake
short term relationships.

When I sink
I do it big time,
twenty fathoms down the line
and when I know it's a mistake
I pass another fake, a breaking
of
that heart note, take note, please.

Carpet burns on bended knees and
thank you
in the dark,
lights and nights with strangers.
on the ***** and in the park
I sink again.

Hark,
it's no Angel that heralds anything at all,
it's just me that screams
Geronimo and
I let go
then
I fall.

This sullen fly walks sullenly across my sky and I can see quite sullenly that this is not the fly for me.
I'd rather walk,talk to the bees,bees can fly but would rather walk and surprisingly they also talk,in beeanese,I wouldn't have it any other way,they chatter on in that bumbling.buzzing, fuzzy way,so it's bees not flies that light my fire which proves the point that higher is not better,it just means that when it rains flies get wetter
first.

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.

I'd like to sit on the deckchair in
my backyard and watch the daffodils
grow,
have a barbecue
a beer or two,
wear my Jesus sandals
with socks of course
because
as you already know
fashion has its home in the North,

listen to the wireless set
I
wonder if Cowdrey's got his
century yet,
a handkerchief on my head in case
of sun
what great fun,
yes
a holiday must be on the cards.

Going beyond where we've gone
and even before
we went where the
wolves stood and
howled at the door
and the three piggywigs
squealed.


Sealed in and feeling somewhere
someone's shielding
the real me from
forgers and forgery
from wizards and sorcery
and no one wonders
where we got it so wrong.


But the magic's not gone
it's under the toadstool
it
fools the unwary
and the blind
who don't see
the colours of the rainbow

where the eyes goes
I follow.

In the spell lies
the mystery
the answers to
what we see and
the dreams
of
the fancy free,

do you fancy a whirl?

All that we are
we hold in our hand
silica
trapped in a grain of
rice,
it should have been sand
but with sand
hands build castles and
in castles there are soldiers and
soldiers fight wars and
wars **** and
all that we are is
dismissed at will

On the stair,
'is there anyone down there?'
as if they're going to reply,
don't even know why
I asked.

In the dead of some night, some might try to find me, some come and behind me, the last of the day filters slowly, some say,
'that's the price I must pay,
I find some place I can stay, some place I can play the same game,
it's a frame of the mind, a find in the finding of me, a place I can be on the top of the stair, asking,
'is there anyone there'.
dare anyone answer?
is there someone below who I do not know
is there someone down there?

In the dead of some night
I am dead and I'm right on
the target.

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.

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.

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?

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.