Do you really mean,

'how green was my valley'
or
are you just being curious?

What happened
to psalm twenty-three
where we shall not want?

Any changes should be posted
on the doors of All-Hallows
or
how are we supposed to know?

What has Deutoronomy got to do with me?
I'm with Ahab and not on the plains of Moab
listening to the tales of an old man

and no one escapes the fate that waits for them.

The promised land was an empty promise
a device that moved those men
and
the whale that Ahab sailed for,
was I believe an allegory
because we all know crocodiles
tick.

I'll either hotwire today and drive it
away or they'll come and take me
away,
but in the final analysis
when
paralysis grips your tongue
you will do what has to be done
or you'll end up with Ahab or
with Moses on the plains of Moab.

If you're in the vicinity
drop by and visit me
forget Deutoronomy,

I miss you
like you'll never know

The valley is still there although the dolls have gone,
for now.
We used to plough through Pharmacies to staunch the needs of our disease and on our knees we'd pray to gods
making rods for our own backs and dolls were stacked up two by two in the flying embers of those who knew the pain,
and fired down throats to fuel again the fires that burnt inside.
I rue the tracks laid down and splayed on limbs that now grow old,rigid,cold and folded tight against my chest
but the dolls knew what was best in those testing times and track lines only serve to tell how well I knew them all.
Through those furrows made I fall and hear dolls call to me in the closed down empty pharmacy
where life is stifled in the green and black capsules which fooled us all,
the valley's gone for now,the dolls are sleeping tight,the night has faded,a jaded yesterday has given birth to a bright new day,and so
I shall stay as quiet as I can.

Poverty and destitution,
through these doors
a Dickens institution

you can
stay at home
where your life's your own
or come inside and
take a ride
down unlit streets
on unmade beds
between
***** sheets.

he who meets himself
beware.

I too have had a share
have been there
empty
stomach
empty mind
empty
everything I find was empty
is empty,
excuse me
I'm hungry
can't separate the present from
a former state
but
at any rate
this is the institution.

What about the Mistress plan?
is it always about the Master?
I cast a weary eye and reel in
a scene from Tin-Tin.

Herge,

the Thomson twins
win
and Haddock smells
something fishy.

When there's much to do and
not much time
Much runs Robin ragged.

Men in Lincoln Green,
just another forest scene

cut.

Only the other day
I read
Caravan to Vaccarès
it made me feel glad
that
I wasn't heading to the
U S of A with a
(mad)
scientist.

in the infants we
wanted to be a junior
soon to be a senior
and then want to be
an infant.

it's terribly difficult
to sit still for a moment
when the minutes are
so hard to catch

and so
I chased the girls for
a lifetime and then it was
teatime,

black and white television
when
parental supervision
meant a clip 'round the ears
if you didn't behave.

In the tavern with dad on my
best behaviour and a pint
of Tetley bitter which was not
'my cup of tea'

Earlier in the juniors when
I never went,
being
intent on turning over the rocks
in the shallows as the tide ran away

and today
I wonder why we called them 'snigs'
those eels were as bendy as drunken legs
but tasted great cooked over the wood fire
which we lit higher up the river bank.

When we get to where we're going some
would like to go again,
once was enough for me.

In the deepening **** there's always some acerbic wit to hand you a *****,hand made by the powers that be just for you ,to dig yourself out or deeper into the pooh.
Life as we know it,deep in the dark pit, stinks,
I ink out these words amongst the flotsam of turds and wonder what's going on,
where has the scent of the roses all gone?
No doubt stolen away by those who can pay for the luxury of stuffing their noses with perfumery,
I see a time when all this can be yours,but for now it is mine,
so ready yourselves, shovels in hand and we'll all shovel away in our, 'green and pleasant land'
and one day when we've shovelled the **** all away
we can start to live.

In the darkness of uneasy streets where bodies meet you head on,fed upon disease and crime
and all the time you look behind to see just who is following,
and hollowing a place to hide,inside a doorway,
beggars lay with sleeping dogs their minds fogged by the turpentine and cheap red wine and stinking of cheap cigarettes.

Debts of honour written on unease and ladies of the night who offer such delight but for a price you cannot pay,
then soon the night turns to the day,like sinking rats,rats slink away and you are left alone,left to scurry home
and feeling right as rain again,forget the pain that marches through the mews and views that pass like gashes on a sordid skin,tattooed sin will leave its mark,
skin on skin within the dark and where or what was evident,you lent to prosecutors,who prosecuted ******,another sin and one more in,into the darkness of the street,one more follow,one more meet.

Cheats and harlots,charlatans,cut-throats,turncoats all are here,running ragged through these wolves that see a sheep and bleat you may
but day backs into night
where light fades with the rights you thought you had
and 'it's bad' is just another way to say,
you've got it wrong again
you're marching through the mews of pain
and wake to find you've lain
with beggars
and with sleeping dogs.

Thursday trips the
switch on pain,
almost there,
won't come again

the lights are on
my eyes are not.

but Friday comes with its big guns
it's war and don't I know it
Thursday's just a little spat
I've realised that,
but trip
the switches
anyway.

Bootlegger
It would have been good advice had you taken it but you didn't
and here you are again, talking **** again about how life has let you down again.

oh!
woe is me
he said miserably
as I sat there quite happily
in my own disordered world,

I lay there
underneath the shadows on the sidewalks of Manhattan
where the bloodstains formed a pattern that made you want to stop and stare,

woe is me, indeed,
as the crows fly in to feed
and John Gotti's mob connections
cannot stop this ****** happening.

I guess that tomorrow we'll know
if Scotland will stay or
Scotland will go but
this Kingdom,
united or not has
still got
class.

If blue is the new black
then
Covid-19 is the new ice age
and why not?

as catastrophes go
it's really quite minor
not quite Krakatoa
is it?

Okay,
we know it is Friday,
have you got anything planned?

a night out,
a night in,
a night doing nothing,
perhaps trying to begin
a new chapter?

I hear laughter
but it's only me
laughing at this odd
peculiarity
(Grammarly
just corrected me
on the spelling)

I'm still here
enjoying a beer
watching the fireworks.

No, I was torn naked and bleeding from the mouth of a death star
and woke to find mountains laid bare by the sea.
In the shallows of blood baths and craters, where the crushers of garlic and the harlots all meet
and the stiflers of dreams, dream on (right up my street)
that's where you'll find me.

In the 'Benbow' with pirates and pieces of eight and with cords tied to timepieces
(don't want to be late)
and the show starts at nine
when after drinking two bottles of cheap German wine
Salome appears with a head in her lap
we clap
because that's what we do.
(Lost innocents are few and we ain't none of all that)

But the ship sailed at four carrying whalebones to Spain
to tighten the corsets
for those Senoritas
who put me to such shame.
What's in a name that it's spat on the floor
by crimson clad virgins
who won't leave the doorways of bodegas
and Degas paints on.

A shanty
a song and the night carries me along on a wave of cheap scent
where oft' I have spent a weeks earnings on unsatisfied
yearnings.

In the end someone will send me a typewritten note or a telegram
to let me know just who and what I am
until then
in the 'Benbow' 'til ten and the crows crow at midnight when the lights all go out.

Twenty days and are we ready for
turkey, stuffing, port and do you know that the poor unfortunate won't get 'jack?'

lucky is me full of Christmassy glee but I think I'll give some of it back.

I've been down and out full of worry and doubt,
seen the wolves at the door and when they're snapping at your heels it feels like the whole world is against you.

Who'll put a ' penny in the old man's hat'
and that's not much to ask.


So while you're tucking in
to plum duff, drinking gin,
spare a thought
for those who've been caught
in the poverty trap
and that's not too much to ask either.

The glue wears away
the eyes flip open
and I take a trip
to
find today?
needle in a haystack
easier to go back
to sleep

One last look
at what I took
for granted,
the way
the sun shot through
the Summer leaves
the slanting of your eyes
when I surprised you,
who could deprive
me of this?

the night that moved to day
so seamlessly
the times we kissed
so passionately

one more look
at what I took
for granted.

I boomerang
it's not magic
but a trick I do
and I always
come back to you.

There should be a pill
to
make time stand still,
look
at how quickly it goes.

As the noise in my head stops and my ears start to pop
the strength of the silences surprise me.

Trying to pull free,
trying to find me in the static where the needle point anoints me,when the static disappoints me,
Trying to pull free but the silences are too strong and carry me headlong into the white noise,
and striking a poise makes no sound,feet on the ground leave no marks,stark is the scene and silence reigns supreme.

In the coffee I'm sipping I feel that silence is slipping inside me,without the freedom of speech which is denied me,I shall now and forever be
destitute.

When overthinking
I take to drinking
which sets me to thinking
as to why am I drinking
and
then I fall over
drunk.

He starts screaming insanely
and who does he blame,
Me?
well
not on your nelly
I won't be your fall guy.

What begins as a grimace
on a once quiet serene face
turns into
the thing you don't know
and
you don't know you don't know it
until his face starts to show it
by then it's too late.

we,
that is he and I
or him and me
or just we for short
are caught in the strands
of misunderstandings
and are always at war.

I should put myself away
for a rainy day.

appreciation is everything.

There are spaces where the past should be,
empty spaces,
places where I ought to see the future
riding up on me.
I see in silhouette the dancing of a
marionette,my
strings pulled tight against the coming of the night.
Empty places,
cut outs from the cut out book and I look
at them,
at empty spaces full of empty men.

Things being as things are
Friday is by the far one of
the nicest things.

it looks a bit grey today
but
it might be that my eyes
need adjusting,

The political landscape has changed shape
( formation dancers )
what?
oh wait,
that was a dream or it could have been.

I dream about many things
and things being as they are
these things are by far
one of the nicer things.

When the signals get mixed and
your eyes become fixed on
the darkness beyond that
inner space
and you're falling
falling flat on your face,
that's the faint.

You.can paint me a picture
call it Guernica
it's no use to me if I'm not there
anyway
I have my own war to fight.

The CCTV is watching me
the way that I sit watching it
life goes on In studio one
until the lights go out and
everything's gone.

The pen and the page become the cage but
I am in a rush and then
I am stilled in the still night and
the quill is the only light, from which spills out
the tightness in my chest.
Words unlit,unwrit are the **** on the street,the darkness
I meet in the cage and yet
I can caress with the pen the page,make love as the ink makes love
with each link of the letters,I think on this thought when I have been brought
to the edge of all reason,
where every season I see is the cage that locks me into writing and reading,cutting my wrists to find I am bleeding more ink,leading me on,
be still or be gone and still I write on,at the end of the alphabet I wonder if I will get a gold star or
just another bar to add to the other bars on
this cage.

In your eyes
a million stars,
I am lost
in your space.

A good idea would be
to chop off all the deadwood
from the worn out sycamore tree,
unless
the sycamore tree is me
and then it won't be
a good idea,
it'll be ******

she wrote,
note to Jessica
Fletcher is waiting
and he ain't no Christian.

A God or a Titan?
I think that might be 
right on
the button.

In for a pound and you'll be in for a penny
any more?
if there's muck there'll be brass
that's another.

Adages are natures way
of saying,
get a life.

but good or bad
Jack the lad will
always be Jack.

Intelligence is real
the rest is artificial.

try telling that to a clever girl.

see how I ramble?

A God or a Titan,
a wrong 'un or right one
we all want the light on
when we get scared.

She shops in me,
if
I am the
supermarket,
she gets me
free.
If she is the boat that I float
then
I am her grocery.
All that I see is, that
she shops in me.

They'll tell you that you don't have a clue,
but you know what they're doing and what
they're doing to you,
who do they think that they are?

Posh toffs or ***** twots?
dripfed by nannies,
seldom leaving their cots,
getting dressed by their butlers
who then butter their toast,
coasting through life as if they're
the most in this life that anyone could be,

but they're not fooling me,
don't let them fool you into
thinking it's you that doesn't
have a clue

Or it'll be
Eton or Harrow
never
Toxteth or Jarrow
that gets the icing on
the cake.

Send me rockets
let me fill my my pockets with resistance to explode in lights across the desolation of this land of nights
and send me guns to run across the border fence where sits the old guard in defence of this,that once was home.
Send me fire to burn the towns and clowns to laugh like maniacs of which we have become,
and water to flood the thirsts,the first of many and sun to dry the dampened land.
Send me a band of hungry,homeless men then send me stones to build their homes.

Fill my cup up to the brim,let me swm in opulence.

In defiance of the crown I proclaim this town along with others as my property,I demand from them my total liberty,not the washed out freedom that we think as being free where rich men with their plaudits try to laud it over me and put me down
This is my town,my land,my band of disaffected vagabonds and to set the record straight,we're going to take it back,
we're going to attack the citadels,we the infidels are going to tear them brick by brick,we're going to make them sick of us
we're going to make them go.

In my hands I hold the key
that unlocks doubt,
uncertainty
and sets them free
and I can be certain that when I unlock
the thoughts that I have will run amok among the staid and stolid,those thinkers of solid reputation
and without hesitation I'll set others free in order that they can be the disorders of orderly society.
I have the key
I am locomotive
I burn the track as I'm on my way back
don't stand in my way
don't get in my face
I have the key
I'm getting out of this place.
I am prime location
'no hesitation,deviation or repetition'('Just a minute' that's a touch of Nicholas Parsons)
a nation unto no one but me
I have the key
I will unlock
block out surrender to misery
become a new me
come and you'll see
you just need a key
to join in.

This is a dull day
a get up and
pull
yourself together
day,
not the kind of day
I want to play a
part in day.

I'm going back to sleep.

Soaked and wet through again
and
cardboard's no defence when
there's rain again,
wish I was in Spain again
but that's just a pipedream.

It's just another cold old story
and we've heard it before
in the shop door way
with no way
to get out.

The Sun must be somewhere
at the end of the rainbow?
or
where the night goes in
slow mo'
and someone must
know.

in the meantime
it's raining
I'm soaking
no joking
this isn't funny.

Painting by numbers the sky and one wonders where cyan should be, let me see, next to the pink it would go well I would think but Prussian blue blows its nose and tell me who if anyone knows the colour of wind?

Splash me a rainbow full of candy floss magic
and let me go,
let me explore all the sights, let me
smell the aroma of far flung away places and
taste the taste of the faces that look through
the stars into the wonder of nights.

Painting  a sleep in which the artist could keep all his dreams on the simmering heat,
where numbers like sheep follow on, follow on and follow on until the rainbow is gone.
and the paint becomes memory in the creases of age,
painting a dream on the page.

Monday
and I'm shuffling in to work
so
let the week begin.

Do you remember when it used to feel real?
and when back then it was no big deal
to
be a man and earn your keep,
now
I wonder if it's better just to stay in bed and sleep.


The mirror looks the same
but
it's a different face I see,
what's going on outside
reflects inside and
poisons me.

Bow Road is a slow road
the way I go to work road.
that is coming from the East
and going to the West.

and the end smokes cigarettes
quite calmly so as not to disturb
me.

Thinking it's all about
the cues we use.
are you in a queue?
do they use you too?

There's still time,
hidden between the
decaying buildings
and
clogged in the cracks
I buy
two more packs
of
lucky strikes,
nails
to seal the coffin lid.


At Aldgate
I wait
for
Thomas
who tells me tales
of Canterbury
and speaks
of Henry in
hushed tones.

Did you hear the pad
of footsteps on the sidewalk?

history come talk to me
but
there's only the future here
to walk with me and
presently
I join in,
let the week begin.


My time nears me
and I weary,
clearly
something is not right

written out of the script
popped in by being
pipped at the post
and that's the most
we can all look forward to

step out of line or
stay in the queue?
it's up to you
isn't it?

Their ideas
laid the foundations
for years of austerity,
******* me and by
association, you too,
well
***** them,
they're now on the back foot
and I hope to **** they stay
there.

She let me down gently
but
it still ****** me
for life
mentally.

We could have flipped a coin for it
or
see who could spit on an ant for it,
but
we fought for it
and
no one wins in an unfair fight,
she
was right
we
were just being stupid,
ha
and Cupid is so bright?

I have a picture of a postcard that I posted years ago from a holiday destination just to show that I had been there, but it never got to the intended, no! it ended up in undelivered items.

That's when life ******, it really let me down, the postcard and the postage cost me nearly half a crown.

We exist as if we're behind bars
some read Nietzsche
some burn bra's
some get ****** and drive
fast cars
but we end up in the same cell
and lights out is the living hell,

and the picture of the postcard that
I posted years ago
is carried with me daily
but
it's really just for show,

We played 'jacks' for pennies and flipped cards against the wall, marbles in the marble hole, winner takes them all, popcorn at the seaside watching the tide come in and Grandma in the 'snug bar'
quaffing another gin.

Just what did the butler see?
I never had a clue
my pocket money went on
gobstoppers
and
that is almost true.

I rewind and then replay until each
memory seems the way it was
even if it wasn't.