When we get to
the end of complexity
you'll find me
scratching my head.

I think it'll be a long long night
and before we even see any light
the night will be longer still
and
it could be complicated
it'll certainly be fukin
unexpurgated

the best stories always are.

how much time have you got?
I've got a million of them.

Is capital ,capital even when it's capital punishment?

Do giants ever think,
does this make me look big?

why do we go around in circles searching for square roots?

Was the first man on the Moon not the man in the Moon?

how soon does soon take to become later?

why is the equator?

any questions?

I believe in nothing therefore I believe in something even if that something is nothing.

this is like politics
word ******
mind tricks
skating fluid on the oil slicks
nothing sticks and that's something.

I want a beer
she wants De Beers,
diamonds or porter?
we water it down and go
off into town.

It was this time that time
and now it's
that time this time
so
what's it going to be
anytime soon?

Slipping into and out from occasionally
feeling something ain't right
is it temporary?
or is the impermanence
I feel
here
permanently.

Trapped between the ice cubes and
malted milks
I drift off into Summer
she wears her silks

is it real or illusion?
do
we advance
to a fusion?

slipping into and out from
occasionally.

We walked the B roads slowly and
hunted out the barns at night
worked on farms or building crews
and we
got
things just right.

Not too little is just enough
you don't need stuff you don't need,
just enough for food and beer, but not
enough for greed.

We walked the B roads slowly
and we got there in the end
me and Jackson Oliver,
my one and only friend.

I stood there on the cusp of something on the day the world was ending,
at her doorstep she was waiting, for this rag doll of a body,
but the bobcat of my mind was tightly sprung as if the clockwork had malfunctioned and it wound into the ether where infinity existed
and that day I wrote her name in stars across the milky way,
she smiled at me.

It never changed the course of things, the ship set sail across the seas and it was later that I realised the sea was me in sail across the oceans of her eyes,
her lips were signed in silver and I took the chance to kiss her but it blinded me in darkness and the stars that she had given, were so cruelly taken from me by some sailor on the port side and
she smiled.

There was time and then was nothing and the nothing filled with laughter which then rolled across the ocean and I knew the moment after she would smile,but then the thunder of the beating of my heart kept me from sleeping,
so, wide-eyed I watched the ending and it seemed like a beginning where I stood there on the cusp of something greater than the being and the being wasn't anywhere at all.
She stood there on the doorstep and the whole thing kept repeating as if the universe was cheating me of a final armageddon,
she just smiled.

Repost from, 2015

I stood there on the cusp of something
on the day the world was ending,
at her doorstep, she was waiting for this ragdoll of a body,
but the bobcat of my mind was tightly sprung
as if the clockwork had malfunctioned and it wound into the ether where infinity existed
and that day I wrote her name in stars across the milky way
she smiled at me.

It never changed the course of things,
the ship set sail across the seas and it was later
that I realised the sea was me
in sail across the oceans of her eyes,

her lips were signed in silver and I took the chance to kiss her but it blinded me in darkness and the stars that she had given, were so cruelly taken from me by some sailor on the port side and
she smiled.

There was time and then was nothing and the nothing filled with laughter which then rolled across the ocean and I knew the moment after she would smile but then the thunder of the beating of my heart kept me from sleeping,

so, wide-eyed I watched the ending and it seemed like a beginning where I stood there on the cusp of something greater than the being and the being wasn't anywhere at all.

She stood there on the doorstep and the whole thing kept repeating as if the universe was cheating me of a final armageddon,
she just smiled.

I think they've all been interbred,
the living dead
fed on the drippings from
a million pork scratchings
turned into swine.
I think about it all the time.

The gene pool they've never dipped in,
never stripped off on a whim
for a swim,
how can we trust them,
they are brothers to more men
than we can imagine.

I can imagine a lot but
not that.

I can send a stream of thought unconsciously
and she will hear.
I can dream of her,a
soulful symphony
and she'll be there to share with me,
consciously,
unconscious in me.

Every time I look into her deep blue eyes
I melt away,
to realise,that
I can dream
that
I can dream.

The heart if this city still has one beats to the sound of mutterings down here on the underground.

Nothing can be taken away
not now
not yesterday and
tomorrow will come
come what may.

For the living life goes on
in an orderly fashion
that's what we do,

chaos has no place here  
we do not fear
fanatics.

There's always an element
of discontent
from a small contingent
and that's what this is

taken to extremes.

These are not nightmares
or daydreams
though sometimes it
seems
that they are,
this is the moment
taken too far

Advice

Keep your chin up and
at the same time
tuck your head in

You can put me down
you can strip me bare
you can do what you want
it's not me that is there,
I'm a hologram
a hollow man
follow me if you can
but I'm not there.

I woke into my perfect day.
Another day.
When the spiders who built castles in my head
Appeared to say..
"You and a perfect day....No way"
So I left myself behind
Bent my bones and walked off to find
The light that shone in burning fingers
And had once touched my face.
But then I lingered and saw a cat atop a crumbling wall
Holding a kangaroo court for one and all
And in Cats eyes
I was surprised to see reflections of recollections of glee.
And again the spiders seemed to say to me
"Go further in your weave of day"
I sailed into a long forgotten bay that I once knew
And sunk into the waters which were oddly red and blue
And down below where only fools and madmen go
I sat upon a turbots knee
Which pleased the turbot but did nothing for me.
I drank the seaweed in my cup of cakes
And hitched a ride into that which make the greatness
Of the greatest lakes.
And there I sat and ate the sky.
By and by on railway signs
I thought of life and life's hard times
And my Headmaster gave me one hundred lines
"I must not get up and go away however perfect seems my day".

An owl hoots,
a warning?

I head East into the thieves market,
lucky horseshoes for sale and without fail they are in good supply.

Make no mistake 
as they take no prisoners here.

Passing through the untied shoelace of cobblestoned lanes
I spy the woman through a postage stamp window, barred as if franked by the mailman, she plays patience and always with two cards missing, an unwinnable task, but she's old and if old becomes a memory then she becomes one too. 

An ocean, if red is the ocean, of slanted tiles stretch beyond my imagination into an expanding horizon, I 
smell coffee and sit local to the river watching the elegance of Portuguese pigeons, it's dreamlike in its quality.

This morning,
the earthquake shook me awake even though that was centuries ago and still the owl hoots. 

Earlier outside the church of Santo Estaveo
I am bound to its steps by my own chains,
this will change as the sun which works by its own memory rises above the fishing boats.

So easy to be here and to fall into the trap
So easy to tap dance my way through the one eyed shadows that wink over the bay, in the distance, a tram, a man and his day stay longer than this moment in time.

To close the eyes
clues and sighs 
It's a splendid life
and though full of lies at incredibly cheap prices the thieves market is the place to be wary.

Each shadow now stronger as the day becomes longer and the hours get shorter.

Caught,
I have sought solace in this place and found peace from within,
sin 
is yet to find me.

Up along the snakeskin hill where palaces still hold court
where the rain comes in thick and the cloud gathers thin.

Out to the right of me the open sea.

I stab at Atlantean waves with a finger that points to the stars.

There is an eeriness as the darkness descends, 
all palaces and houses of men depend upon light coming in and laughter drifting out, 
this is only a summer place for living and for the eyes of the tourist a
place to enthral.

We sit at the 'Paris' in Cascais drinking tea and partaking of cake,
the crowds tumble in as we tumble out and make tracks back to the old town of Lisbon.

Time as got by the caravels, is a fluid motion propelling us forward

and in a hopscotch moment, time leapt ahead by one hour of the morning clock.

I am again in the shadow of a church where the dour looks of fanciful figures
carved by loving hands from unforgiving material weigh heavily on my shoulders.

The street sweeper who tells me his name is Stephen stops for a while to whisk a cigarette from the depths of a long tunic.

Another artist to depose other artists.

We talk of change and will the weather hold true, I offer a sip from my flask, he offers one from his, a most wonderful way to open these tired shutters onto an as yet unseen day.

The old lady arrives with cheese and wine, I think she remembers, I think of breakfast, two cards silently placed in her hand and she smiles, later I wondered if I should have intervened and perhaps the impossible task is the only one possible for her day,
the minutes flick my eyes as the sun lifts its own.

But it is still calm for this hour, for this Holy Easter Day.

No children yet to speckle the breast of innocent air,

and no owl today,
I look to where but no hoot from there and I ponder more deeply as the sun rises higher and my body sinks lower.

Soon she wakes too,
'reasons to ask if you care then to answer', she says.
I have no answer to answer and stay silent.

A kiss on the Rose of her lips
as we are and become two ships sliding fluidly across an ocean of time.

There is wind though it be slight,
a breeze only to blow
the night from the day,

in the coldness of an unnamed church
kneeling to pray
there is still a night here
awaiting the breeze and the day.

But and for now at the port,
the dhow waits,
anchored only by the chain of these thoughts.

Seven in total and all of them hills as in Rome.

Yes,
the sea too is here
in the sand on the shore
on the rising of the tides
in the very air,
I believe
as I
breathe
that the sea is here.

I reach up
to the bell and it sells me its melancholy still tinged with the smell of spice from some distant shire
and the whispers of smoke that signalled a welcoming fire, the owl hoots as if in sympathy for the sightless.

If I am blind then I have touched upon ancient mystery in this foreign land which feels like home to me.

In the heat, in the haze and wandering through the winding maze
I see a shadow or maybe a figure, never sure which one is bigger, but nevertheless,
I see.

It is of course, a trick played by the sea upon the albatross, a mirror into which It takes its reflection as mine.

I came upon, sometime in the early morning, an elderly giant who told me, that each movement of each grain of sand on the shore is one more than the movement of one grain before and it appeared to me to be true.

The steps march ever upwards,
making furrows in the whitestone, a million tired limbs coloured by the days length and the clock move slowly.

Mozambique cuisine, no finer table have we ever seen and
sounds from a radio behind the green doors of number 32, the street name like the radio station unknown, but the music plays melancholy and I am back to the toll of the bell and the smell of spice.

In this sunshine
there are
as always the impoverished who strike out with careless hands for alms, dark of complexion and with faces crossed by the lines of their passing years.

The young one sits by the cathedral on the third step
perhaps tomorrow she will move a step closer, but for now, she rattles a tin, a few coins grumble noisily.

The sound of a mercy?

Even here in the most beautiful of places, there must be sadness and this is the balance of things.

A suited (albeit crumpled and old) gentleman sits by the gates of the museum and sings softly,
I listen to the music in his eyes and drop some coin into the cap so casually placed at his side.

And walking through these streets there are memories I make to bring home and taste of later.

Bustle
as the city lives
and in each
the dream
gives
new life.

Who walks with spirits of those who walked before walks with a measured pace.

I am too quick at times to notice anything but the footsteps.

I leave my shadow in these ancient alleyways,
a place to return to and renew friendships.

Life is the game.

The three card man at the ferry stage was making a play for it, spinning his line and changing the time or the time had changed him and the cards like his hair growing thin on the top.

Queens win the euros and who knows how, but he always came out ahead.

Bread and butter man to cut a deck and skin a man and man could he cut the strip, slice it this way or sideways up or down, smiling with the face of a clown, but a killer with a will of steel.

Never saw him and that's for real, but he could have been there with his cards and his smoke and his smile and his somewhat menacing air,
Yes
I think he could have been
with the Queen
at the ferry stage in a different age
plotting to elope.

Where the land meets the sea they looked for and found me looking
West.

And those rich in Spirit and hail of heart started forth to cross boundaries.

Discoveries of men and men discovered of themselves on these voyages from a past age.

Look now
how it has flown to the fast age and men so quick to feel hot rage.

The Atlantic,
shaping destiny
As I too
shape my own.

If that was Monday
you can stick it,
I'd pick any day other
than a Monday to hold
a Monday on,

oh!
doesn't he go on about Monday,
said the old ******* the corner to
her friend who was in curlers,
I only mention curlers because you
don't see many of them about anymore
and if you do it's usually on some Lancashire lass
stood at the door gassing to her neighbours,

which has nothing to do with Monday
and nothing to do with me,

but I do record sights and sounds
so
if
'I am a camera'
I'd  like to be a Leica
M10-R digital.

You wanna get in on the act
but the stadium's packed and
cars are backed up on the highway,

why pay?
catch it later on Amazon or
buy the blue-ray on eBay,
ditch Sinatra and do it your own way.

I'm going to bed.

The night unloads at
the crossroads,
this way for the day,

Tuesday drifts in like
Marie Celeste
some say cursed,
others, blessed,
being undecided I
will wait and see.

I have yet to meet a civil servant
it
seems to me they're all ignorant
and
treat the people like they're effluent,

and these
people they treat like this
are the same people
who pay them their emolument
which is a monumental liberty
and should be classed as a
tax liability

but if we keep these nobs in their jobs
and suffer their abuse
what's the flamin' use of people trying?

we're all dying out here
except for the civil servants and
the aristocracy,
they are like pigs in ****
loving every bit of it

I was not there at the start of it
when the **** hit the fan
and the man came down wearing bullets made of crowns.
I was not there when the people fell and prayed
as his crowns slayed people left and right
and the bullets kept on coming as if fed by the everlasting night.
I was not there.

I did not share in the wailing of the souls ,of mothers digging shallow holes and of fathers taking up the gun
I was not there
I was not the one who propagated war as something that just goes on and on
I was not that one
I was not there
not that I didn't care
I was stunned.

Man can be so cruel
it doesn't take a fool to see that we're living in harsh cruelty
but I am not there
I am here.

I have heard people say
that it's their fault
not his fault or her fault
but their fault,

but who is at fault,
him, her, them, their?

eeny meeny
no!
it's them
and it's always them.
well
them had better be rowing the boat
or it's overboard for them
and them
better float or it's adios to
them that don't give a toss
for us.

Did we then sit beside Zeus and talk of men
was Hera there,when we talked of
the ****** Artemis,who with a kiss to thrill, for a kiss to ****,for a fire that Hestia lit upon the mountain top.
While Iris painted colours on the rainbow bright,Persephone and Hades lived a permanent night in their underworld,where all mankind would fear to go,
and Aphrodite trod lightly among the strewn flowers of love, with beauty and the wisdom of Athena
I wish I'd seen her face.
Apollo painted her **** on the bed and Ares went to war with that picture in his head and all the Gods said,
'what is but a wonderful sight,that we see our good people being slain in the night',for the old Gods were callous and jealous to a fault,thinking nothing of sending a lightning bolt to destroy what man made.
Neptune and Poseidon had tried to be nice but with water in their veins that ran cold as ice,they gave up and went home to the sea,saying,
'the mountain is no place to be for us seafaring deity,and with duty being done at the set of the sun and when the moon  crooned slowly against the still of the sky,
the Gods slept.

Stand clear because I am the gear,
here with a suitcase and a face you could sandpaper.

Going West because South is not on the menu,
men do that you know.

They say that advertising works but that sign is broken,
don't believe all that you hear.

The train's almost full
I run on fumes.

Natural selection
and naturally
I select what suits me
but on the Jubilee
you take what you're given.

It's still early morning
and it feels like a Friday
which
tastes like a Friday
with barbecue sauce.

The weekend of course
comes back to me,
the magic boomerang
of elasticity,

Rumination between each station
chewing on cud, so to speak

but there's a warning for
innocent bystanders
who only see what they've
wanted to be.

want to be what you can't see
and you'll see what you want.

Leather?
well
some wear it well,
like some
animals.

Waterloo East
which
is due west of
Eden
but
my geography
isn't that hot.

Letters that drip off my tongue
some making words
some jumbled for fun
and making no sense at all.

Work beckons,

a skeletal finger on
a skeleton hand.

time to go,
but
just letting you know
this was me
scribbling away on the
Jubilee.

Yesterday the best of me and today, well we will wait and see the jury's still deliberating,no doubt the lot are out there celebrating
while I'm in here sitting, waiting.
The clock strikes one,the mouse, if there ever was a mouse has long since gone,another yesterday and another nursery rhyme don't pay.

I wrote a story once,some time ago about the,well you know,the way it could have been,
the way perhaps the jury thinks it should have been
it was not that way at all,
had it been, I would not be sat here waiting in this hall for the verdict or the edict of this, the final court.

In any case I've bought a day return,just in case they turn me loose again,and if they do which they well might,
I'll write another story.

It might be seasonal, but
he's a professional
comes from the Arsenal
and
begs from us one and all.

I see him daily outside the Old Bailey,
asking for nuggets where wisdom is
short on supply,
the wigs do him justice,
but why?

In the evenings he's down at the ******
I wonder should I choose a
lifeskill like his?

Apple green.


We blossomed in the orchard of summer and ripened on the trees of our youth and the truth is,
we can barely remember how sweet the days tasted
now that we've lasted so long.

it seems we only did as well as those apples that fell to the ground.

Community,
a happy band with links to a fraternity?
or do I spy
a discrepancy between the public face
and the face I see.

I have pictures, Pedro said,
naughty girlie postcard red
Instead of those
I rose to go
and left old Pedro
without a sale.

Mortality tells me this,
kiss a baby, kiss your mum, but
you can kiss your **** goodbye
when your time has come.

There are some I know
like old Pedro
lonely souls who
need to go
anywhere
but to the Devils
brew.

She holds me if I stumble,
pieces me together
when I start to crumble,
talks to me,
makes me see
that impossibility is
possibly,
possible,
when I try.

I scribble away every day
because every scribble and
scramble might be a preamble
to the last write
the goodnight

I fire off finale's
to guru's
svengali's
like emails
they sail

fail to send?
spend some more time

fine
like I've got all of that and more

To develop from
the negative into
the positive
definitive,
ah
the infinite divine

here's to me and mine
you and yours
who open doors and
make the time
for time to take
the time
to develop.

It seems impossible to dream of them within my dreams it always seems that I am watching from the corners of their eyes and they are dreaming deeply, otherwise then it is so.

Impossible,
but in the answer to my dreams it seems the question is not tied by one,
Oh tired one am I,
Yes,
ever on the cusp the question why will always rest or rear its ugly head,

And more impossible to go by rite or rote into these darkened corridors, I note the writings on the balconies which look like jumbled histories and then through well lit doorways into boardrooms where consultants sit.

In breaking bread I see the crumbs, I see the drunkards and the tumbleweed that rumbles through this wakefulness.

Thus the end and I will starve or halve this half led life and share a quarter, given that it's not very much
I shall dream a banquet,
that's a little touch
of magic.

Some queue and some do not,
some push in pushing past
the ones that do queue

I wait my turn
because in a polite society
It's polite to do so
even so
some still push in,

but it's considered antique
to give up your seat
to the elderly and
I find that to be
a scandalous
state of affairs.

I think it's incestuous
the way that they get
to us,
bad manners
inbreeding?
they need to be seen to.


And while they're
feeding you the line,
that
gives me the time
to plot their demise.

at the end of the queue
a demolition crew
awaits,
they're a battering ram
to smash every man
that ever pushed past me
or gate crashed
a party
I'm heartily in favour
of that.

Free will
if you pay.

Is it grey or gray
depends on if it's
the USA or the
UK

some say it's a virus
but we're secure.

There are exceptions to the rule
and they taught me that on the odd
occasions that I went to school

only remember the good times
and the monsters won't bite you,
it's when you sink that they think
you'd make a good meal.

Humanity was diagnosed as unreachable
violence was unstoppable even though
everything was possible
nothing was being done.

Alpha waves will drown you with
sine waves all around you and the
ground will rise to meet you

but there's free will
if you pay.

The sky rising up from the sea
something in me?

Each man sets his own horizon
which lies on
the
broadsword of the uncut
umbilical.

As much as I see
I see virtual reality
and a veil drawing
over the day.

Voices of reason chattering away
scattering the clouds that
lay over the bay and
spoiling the view, but
you are the muse where
the words from a heart and
the thoughts in a head
come together and
fuse.

The cat
(if there was one)
has gone
the bell tinkles on.

The fine line,
the first line of defence
was,
(when I was a boy)
the old garden fence where
words were batted like
ping pong *****.

Old fences fall and
innovation calls,
the mobile phone
the mobile office
the mobile home
and we're all immobilised
looking surprised.

The sea remains
stains on the bedsheets
***** plates in the sink
washing in the basket
I think
I must make
a move.

Blew it?
***** it and
do it again.

Along the avenues where the looks accuse and they starch the curtains white.

No moral.

I attribute this kiss of denial and death to the hot Summer breath in the light evening air,
she was there, but it wasn't her who led me to the water and laid me to drink.

If I think long and ******* the why she will pardon me, not be too ******* me,
If,
and again my mind plays the truant.

Complicit in the crime,
I claim it
a complicated time, but she says,
'it's mine and mine alone'.

I find a home in the kennels for the night.

Tempted by unsullied veils
and still
she fails me.

Bedding down now on the outside and
how do you feel?

like a shitheel on a pair of stilettos.

These are the days that will be someone's good old days and in so many ways they could be right, the future is the night unrolled, the fortunes that were never told, the things you did and then got old, these are the days.

A slipped disc keeps on playing the same old tune, the doctor said, it'll be alright soon just go with the flow, I thought he was *******, haha.

But for us of today,
the good old days
were a long time ago
somewhere along the way.

it grew
we knew
turned green
and blue,
they said,
eat
it's good for
you,
but
that wasn't
true
was it?

She rights me,
ignites me and
brightens up
the day

I'd like to say
I do the same but
I'm a candle with no flame.

She said,
she'll fix it.