Is the guilt that you feel really
real
does it eat at your brain,does
it drive you insane,
would you do the same things over and over
again,
does it delight you for me to
excite you
is the guilt that you feel really
real?

whose heart did you steal,
did you feel anything
or
did you seal that bond with a ring
is it bothering you
to know how you affect me in the
voice that I hear and the face that
I see,
shall we text on the line have
*** all the time
is the guilt that you feel really
real ?

What if I do and what's it to you and where will you be when the clock stops at..me
I don't care if I go, there's other places I know where the music plays on and long after everyone's gone.


I wear hurt on my T-shirt and I wash it when full, pull my hair out or scream and sometimes I dream that I'm there, dirt
in the present, in the presence of him,
how grim would that be?

So if I do or I don't arrive precisely at those pearly gates,
no one or someone who possibly waits
won't be surprised.

In the aisle for a while

There's no preferential
here on the Central
it's dog eat dog

see a seat
want a seat
get a seat.

This is a treat
for me
immersed in the trappings
of some great abnormality
which some call
life
and in the fast lane too
heading to god knows who
but where is the greater question.

Singled celled organisms?
the origins are to be found
here on the underground
a seething mass of humanity
who like me
sit silently and pray to
Candy Crush or FarmVille
and YouTube is just one more
tube to train your thoughts
upon.

Sounds a bit dismal
which are the only sounds
you hear
down here
that and the occasional snort
when some clever clogsworth
gets caught in the door.

Imagining there was no here
down here and only up there
up there
how could I bear it?
but
I'd manage.

And now I'm
' off to see the wizard'
well they all think they're wizards
don't they
until they're turned into a frog
back
to dog eat dog
but
I never really left.

Five pounds a day, pay
five pounds a week B&B; with dinner thrown in for free
and twenty pounds a week for me.
Result,
drunkenness more or less
and carousery down by the sea.

'71 long gone but ships and cargoes linger on in dockyards spent of full employment
and there is no enjoyment to be had by thinking of those bad decisions made.
Ghosts laid to rest
and memories test the patiences of greater men than I.

Where have the stevedores all gone?
Containerised,
and everyone moved on
except for me
I stand beside the open sea
waiting for the ships to come home
to old stevedores like me.

Caught in the trap of being too nice and that's that,
Can't fault that, won't alter, but like a bolt from the blue,
suddenly I'm through with being sugar,
****** it,
I'm going off central. going to be slightly mental,
going to wig out, drop out, opt out of the system,
dig out the old-style,
**** the sweet smile
I'll frown and I'll grouch
be a downer and slouch,
I'm busting my ***** here so you'll see a
better man, but it's the trap I fell into,
I'll get out on my own.
And yet
I can feel the taste of it, see
the utter waste of it
****** it
I'll do it
tomorrow.

Even the night makes a noise
and in the dark, every noise is a danger.

Carry a flashlight or a Kalash' tonight
and get your shots in first.

Turning the other cheek
would be good
but in this neighbourhood
they'd just burn your ***.

When it's three fifty one
and the coffee ***'s on
with the hot buttered toast
on my plate
I wait until
three fifty three and then decide
I want tea
like the weather
I am changeable.

but enough about me,
really?
no
only joking.


Out to the balcony
smoking a mackerel
it used to be cigarettes
but
the price was too high.

If I start as I mean to go on
and the coffee ***'s gone
did it ever exist?
do I exist?
is the cat still alive?
the answers arrive at
three fifty five
by which time
I no longer care.

'Hill Street Blues'

it's Thursday out there
be careful.

Where the lines converge
and the lights merge.

Each moment that passes is a
class in the art of remembering,

To master the minute
become
as one
silent within it and
to await the next,
but ask
what purpose to be virtuous when
patience is the limit of life?

The Moabite Ruth
took God as her proof
but
who knows where
the truth lies?

I am taking some me time
which is no time to take time,
time takes this seriously.

The zenith and nadir are
somewhere
but not here,
near quite possibly,
but I cannot see.

There is the rise and the fall
and some call out beware,
some pretend that it doesn't
exist,

though the thought persists in me
I can't take it seriously
unlike time
I am not
a straight time,
I meander and wander to
waste and I squander,
taking some me time
not my time
goodbye time.

We'll all go ****** if this carries on
and we'll all break out of our minds.

When you find that your hands are shaking
it's not because you need a drink
which you do,
it's because you need to think
which you won't.

I am imposing upon myself a curfew
which I can do
because I'm not ****** yet,
but I will be
if a way's not found
to set
everyone free.

She goes
to those rendezvous points
that she knows will
make the melting in to me
ecstasy

sometime I wake
thinking this time
she'll break
me
ecstasy.

Banality disrupts the
seeing eye
corrupts the incorruptible
and I sit idly by
a piece in a thousand year puzzle

It's us and them and who versus who
that counts, but
count your beans they'll add to ten
and we'll have Jack to tea again

When I fade just scratch me out
erase me
leave me in no doubt

I shall be the smoke to rise, to
become the tears locked in your
shining eyes
the autumn sky
the warring night
the arms you hold
to hold you tight

thirty versus thirty more

crawling along the bathroom floor
I know I've crawled this way before
and the closing of the bedroom door
reminds me that I'm home

When we get there
and
no one asks,
'are we there yet?'
I bet
someone will want
to go somewhere else.

The end of the universe is
a multiplex cinema
showing black and white movies
on eight by four screens,
proving
you can please some of the people
if you make the loopholes or wormholes
attractive enough to be interesting
which in itself is interesting or would be
if you were interested.

Not talking
walking
just
here
doing nothing,

closed, my
eyes turn inward
and look out on
an inner universe,

if this is death
then
it's quite a busy place.

Just thinking I won't dream again
dreams only let you down
as if you're swimming in the moonlight
of that rare translucent sea
being all and everything to
everyone you'll ever be
and then you drown.

well
I have gasped for breath a hundred times
but I won't gasp anymore
I'll just wade into that ocean
until
the shore becomes a memory
and
then the dreams I had won't bother me
I will
leave it all behind me and wonder if you'll
find me

and wake if only once to take one last long
loving look at the final words upon the page
and then I'll close the book.

Four forty-eight
wait,
no,
four forty-nine,
he
whines in the wilderness
but I guess he's
getting  the nerve up
to get up

and automatically
tea,
he drinks,
droops,
regroups
and
pulls himself together.

a wash and brush up
ready for the rush up
to the bus stop,
heading for the sweatshop.

Inanimacy
adds to the intimacy
and a somewhat
necessity
for the introvert.

is this objectifying
when I say
I am dying
without meaning it?

Rotating and
talking to myself
but hesitating
in case
I am not there.

Hey!
we're not there
throw them to the bear
what do we care?

Someone always suffers when
the buffer zone's no longer
than your thumbnail,

one more fail in a long list
of one more fails,
the Titanic sails at dawn.

You'd better run boys,the fires will come boys and burn you out,girls who would flaunt regulations to haunt you will burn along with you,the night's turning blue and the fire's burning black.
Jack who was Tom's mate unaware of his own fate booked a passage to Paris with Maryss, his wife.
It was Hogarth who painted the ****** and the tainted in the liberty of gardens,men hiding their hard ons,paragons of chastity and chasing the mollies to ****** their follies,how jolly it seemed to the Queen of the boardwalks who listened to wild talks and ate turkey and ham,
Shakespeare was saddened,Marlowe quite maddened by the fayre and the stew houses where blouses were shed and doxies were led like little lambs to the slaughter,and the daughters of Satan who were dressed in fine satin,sat in the background watching this fairground.
Then the curse of the cutpurse was cast all about them,men scurried away quickly to the ferries for Putney and Pepys wrote in his diary,

'hahaha the fire didn't get me'

A
tete a tete in Bishopsgate and bankers flock to nine o clock,
trading floors and trading ****** bonded to the company stores
and we're all tied to deals they make and still tied by the deals they break,it takes a special kind of man to formulate this master plan to keep us in subservience,we servants will forever be
pawns to their(duplicitous) meritocracy.I would say **** 'em all ,but I said that once before and now they walk all over me as they walk across the trading floor.
I guess it's breakfast down at Tiffany's, passing those poor folk brought to their knees,
Jeez
I'm getting hungry.

As we fumble for the words all too often we stumble over them, but we're only men and not used to making polite conversation.

Busy practising the art of such and touching on nerves which unnerves me serves me right for leaving it too long.

A linguistic approach is the best way as to is a runway for the aeroplane, not that I'm flying yet but I am trying my best.

19:44.
thank God it's the time and not the year,
I've been here before and words were not
enough then
but they were only men and not used to making polite conversation.

I had to go
I knew I had to know,
so I rowed against prevaiing winds
and in the burning desert sands,  I scorched my feet and hands,
but what was it
I had to know, and was it that, I got?
I forget.

I was falling into that higher place
and so I stood and tore the net curtains aside.
and inside
I swear
I saw upon a stair,
nowhere and nothing and everywhere and everything standing still and there I was
but where was I?
inside the iris of my third eye
but I forgot it, can't remember anymore about the stairs behind the door that looks into the other place where lace curtains can be torn aside and mortal men can look inside,but they'll forget it too,these visions are not for me or you,the children of the soil,they'd only spoil our dreams at night,when we can dream of second sight that few of us will ever know
I had to go
I knew
then what did I do?
I forgot it all.

But what if
the universe is a living creature and everything we know as life is its life, we're just the disposables, the blood that pumps and the muscles that jump,
imagine how big that creature must be and it's still growing.

One day
when the nights are long and the Winter's nipping at my skin,
when the time I'm out is far better spent within by the crackling of the
open fire and
the clothes I wear are only there to bear the cold
and I'm old
and I'm grey,
One day but not today
today I weigh in with all I've got,
today I've still got a shot at the moon
but soon it will be
that day.
One day

Assuming that anything which expands will eventually reach its maximum stretch and snap
my forecast is
when the universe snaps back we will meet ourselves before we even got here.

I read words,
speed through them
cutting sentences,
gutting books like fish.

On the odd and why not occasion I wish
I was as slow as old Joe who used to bring the vegetables in a van on Saturdays back in the day when the town was so far away, he took forever it seemed to me as he phut putt phutted and waved quite merrily from his younger looking though still ancient Model T ... which wasn't made in Formosa by the way although just about everything else was back in the day.

Back to reading,
a bit like being sliced open on a table and bleeding pictures from my head and you know the book's been good when you wake up living and think you've been dead (excited)
delighted as I am I still speed, can't help it, need to slow a bit, be like old Joe a bit.

I suppose when I age a bit and the sight starts to dim a bit and at the same time I need to trim a bit of fat from my waist
I might get the taste of it,
I mean being slow a bit
but
I'm open to offers.

The cloud cover is building
estates in the sky,
is that poetry or is it
Wednesday?

I'm still waiting for an answer
from the,
I guess your weight machine,
but
because it has taken so long,
the answer, when it comes,
is bound to be wrong.

Hard up on Easy Street
that's when your stomach
bounces off your feet
and your hand is out for a
hand out or a leg up,

usually
it's a cup of tea off
the Hare Krishna crew
at Lincoln's Inn
and you take it gladly,

no one stands on ceremony
ever mindful of ones shoe leather
the weather and whether or not
you've got a *** to **** in.

We go retro,
you know
back there
where
it all began

where the girl
became a woman
and the boy
became a man

and retro
you know is where
we all go,

back to the beginning
to the car crash at the end

That sense of foreboding
when your mind is lit up,
but the thoughts have stopped
loading
and there is
nothing
written in ink to link things up.

Thisaway which is like thataway the other way
depending on which way you go.

I'm going anyway.

I will or think I will
and then I do or
did I ?

It's hard to tell at ten to five

Tuesday wakes me
memory takes me
to the bathroom
first.

Coffee's good for me
I knew it would be

shoes on
shine off
or something like that.

Interesting aren't they ?
days
I mean days are full of stuff
that you never see in the night.

Going, but not gone
and you thought John
couldn't last
couldn't get past the past
and I did

This age of common purpose has no purpose in this age
all I see are people fighting and dear Mister William Shakespeare, no
the world is not a stage,more a gibbet where we hang our rage,we should hang our heads in shame,Call to our Gods and beg forgiveness
but
we know that won't be happening soon we've all got used to the thought that doom is just another four letter (and I can do better than that kind of) word.

Call for peace,prepare a war what the hell are we fighting for?
Man is going down the pan and we'll all be flushed away,today ,tomorrow,not yesterday 'cause that has been and gone and we're still here carrying on as if the baby's still snug and soaking in the bath,
that's a laugh,I've news for you,we threw the baby out,it's true ,
there's nothing more now in reserve, we have got we deserve,become dependants in the digital age, full of anger,full of rage
won't someone please refresh the page
or is this how you like it?

It's just a tube,
no Smarties.

Off I go and wouldn't you know
I forgot to mind the doors
(not the group)

Wednesday
gets me this way,
a hint of lunacy
on the Jubilee.

Traveling light
(British Summer time)
and about time too.


Interesting
the things that I see,

she
appears to be bored
weighted down with books
and disinterested looks.

He looks more interesting
drinking something called
Titan
and reading the Metro,

it could be the
'Admirable Crichton '
( someone from a film long ago)
I expect it's not.

There's a poodle doing tricks
( not magic ones)
but clever.


Okay that's me done,
shelving the fun and
getting down to the
business at hand.

If we are the architects of our own futures,
we'd better go on a design course.