Bri-nylon and polyester yesterday.

we did wear them
sta-prest
string vest
tank tops
pop socks

went to town looking for all the world like half a crown and change for chips on the way home,
if I listen carefully I can still hear my dad groan when he saw
us,
'you look like the fairy on top of the tree' but it always felt like Christmas to me.

Knickerbocker glory's, Heath and the Tories, Wimpy bars, Panda cars, I thank my lucky stars I lived through it all.

Barely
sitting there
she
looks out on it blankly

a memory
elusive

back on the train
dredging up thoughts

If I could look out on it blankly
would she look up and thank me?
would she even see me?

I should take a collection
collect a cross section
but I know that I won't
because I'm unable to breathe here
choking,
I'll leave here
never to forget that I was here
day after day
year after year
she
looks out on it blankly.

If futures are in the faces we see
I see no future out there for me
she
doesn't care
barely
sitting there
looking out on it blankly.

Funnily enough
we have to stop
to catch our breath.

In the streets and
it is true
I was at the window
watching you,
I wonder if you knew.

Catching a memory
on a page of my history,
she is still a mystery
to me.

in the still light
when it's still light
before the nighttime
when there's still time,
I have time for one more
look.

Papillon
Papillon
why do you carry on?
your wings have been clipped
and they're shipping you
off to the Amazon
Papillon.

The grass is still green
the sky is still blue
the ocean's still there
and where are you?

Under the starlight when the night
is so still
watching the universe as galaxies
spill out
and will you be happy
behind the darkness when the Sun
breaks through
in front of the mirror where the mirror
is me seeing you?

until
and at the side of a sea,
I call myself Galilee.

Some disciples with scruples
some without such
beware
the touch of a Judas.

I have grown in the minefields
and have
blown away in mindless days
but
Summer was always so.

so
what do you need to know?

Influenced
by what I see,

though to be honest
not easily.

One has to weigh up
the pro's and con's
of the ones
who'd
try to influence,

but people, places,
putting names to faces,
hard cases
sad cases
suitcases
all influence me
though to be honest
not easily.

The bitter pills and the ruins of cotton mills where dreams where played out on looms and woven in the semi gloom of a half lit room by children so old,who were told to do as was told or don't do at all.

Some escaped to the drudgery of the great hall where Lord Diddlywhat would squat and pass praises like water to some lacklustre daughter of a man in the town,
half a crown a month and eighteen hours a day,threepence in the offertory on a Sunday to pray for deliverance.
Though none would come for the sun didn't shine on me and mine,only on them,
lardy arsed gentlemen,willowy ladies with squawking fat babies and nannies,grannies in every nook and cranny who fed on the fat of the land,
took the bread from our hands
took the love out of life and the life of our loves,
iron fists in silken gloves.

Now finished,
the thoughts of those times diminish with age but the rage still holds true against the blue stockinged brigade
who would raid on us,put the shade on us,despise and degrade us,use and then beat us,contused and confused we would still go and labour,
wrap ourselves in the looms and in half lit bits of the day,we thought it was the only way,
'til the war came
changed the rules of the game
it was never the same after that little spat
and we spat at the gentry
who stayed behind to do sentry duty as their duty demanded.
We branded them
the landed men
wouldn't work for them no more.
Let them go hang and sing for their supper
we'll scupper them yet,
but I forget
the fat don't get wet
they float.

If slow could show itself as being fast
the driver of this bus would still
come last.

And then we wonder why
productivity
once so high has gone into
decline,

it's down to bus drivers tootling along
and taking their time.

Almost to a man they don't give a ****
never a please or a thank you,
they
shunt you in to a forty foot coffin
and we're off in
what appears to be
a snails pace
it's no wonder they're laughing

There's a lot to be said
for closing your eyes and
staying in bed
but
not a lot of people say it
instead they'll pray
for Saturday
which'll be a long time coming
if it takes the bus.

There are those like me,
the cause of synchronicity,
relying on
and that's where it goes wrong
the relying, because
we're all dying to rely upon
someone.

Someone drop Jung a ****
A C note should do.

Alternatively
the universe gifts me
endless possibilities

and the Sun which always
has done
shines on.

'Half past soon', she said, which is about the same distance from breakfast time to the moon,
she's cryptic,
I think it's something they put in the lipstick,
she has a garnishee order on me,
I owe it to her to be
there
waiting in the square
at half past soon.

Bed before midnight
that sight remains unseen
I am blind to the notion
that last year has been,

It is onward and upwards
not forwards and back
I'm heading to dreamland
and hitting the sack.

Today is the day we can go and vote for the best of a bad bunch, are you going or have you been?

change changes nothing when we're talking about voting.

Looking at what these locals will do
and apparently every one of them
will bend over backwards for you,

that's why it always feels like a circus or is it that we are performing seals, a moment in the spotlight to see how it feels?

whatever.

So long is
a long time
coming,
shortly is
just
the same.

Life behind the yellow line
a falling star
a burnt out car
beside
the Purple Heart

all the time
the yellow line.

Fill in the gaps
hang onto the straps
all the time
it's the yellow line

don't park here
park over there
park anywhere
behind the yellow line.

I don't care
I've had my fill
got a prescription
for a suicide pill

to be taken in time
behind the yellow line.

Sweat's dripping

the salt is stripping me away
I may not be here tomorrow
not feeling the greatest
I sway

today
is the test of me  
this latest and best of me
and soon I'll be fine
behind
the yellow line.

Analysis

One kiss
one touch
one want you so much,
through the door
the core
and want you some more.

Analysis
one kiss
says it all.

I die every dream that you own
in your bed
in your home
I die every dream that you own.

In psychoscenic
I dream I'm your sidekick
a five dollar trick
at your door.

Want more?
I do,
every time that
I see you
in your bed
in your home
I die every dream that you own.

There's plenty of mileage in stupid
and some stupid go all the way.

Some think no contest's a contest
some doodle on and some pray
I'm on the road to redemption
and
stupid's not going my way.

The days are getting shorter almost
as if they've caught a chill
and they
cough a lot of memory into the
morning where I used to be.

Though the days are shorter now
and the hours eat up the sunlight,
I might still go out to play,
lit by the gas lamps of
my yesterday.

I'm trapped by things I've strapped to me and
that's the cough of memory.
I understand it now
I know my wanderings have been to an end
and
now these days of dreaming
seemingly send me off
to sleep.

It was a memory of me
sitting
on a donkey,promenading
along the sandy beach,I feel sad
that yesterday is out of reach and yet
I can still touch upon
that ride along and still I see
the dripping nose of that grey donkey as I
hung on,but yesterday has gone
the donkey too and memory's no use to me or you,
still it comes,
with sherbet dips and real cap guns and I still sit
and take my ride
somewhere deep
deep down inside,

As Jerome played the violin,
she hung there
suspended
between the light in his
eyes and
the veins in his hands.

She,
intent on the melody
only saw what a
lover sees, only
heard the sweet whisper of
love in the air
and
Jerome
played on unaware
that
Lucinda
was hanging there
and
his hands wove the thread
that kept her suspended.

I have a feeling that Lucinda
depended on
that.

The night goes on
it's one
the clock has struck
I tuck tightly in
pull the covers
to my chin.
There are sounds I hear
sounds I fear,
the hinge that creaks
the dripping of the tap that leaks,
ordinary in the day but in the night
they might be
monsters underneath my bed.

So you take a 'selfie' and
then you text me
as if
you're number one,
but number one went long ago.

I know you do it just for show and
show it 'cause you can, but
please go text it someone else
for I'm a busy man.

The image I see is ***-ually
explicit
and here
I tell no lie, but
why send it to me
I have things to do and
looking at you is not on the list.

Something's been missed between now and two thousand and six and it's obviously not the most explicit of pics, but it's not about those or these or thems or anything else seen through the camera's lens,
it is more about you and the things that you do and the high and the low of it being put out on show it must be a madness, an affliction, every picture a work of your own self in fiction
and then you text me.

Crayoning in the wrinkles on my skin,
please hold
this may take some time,

my chin,
no longer as smooth
as a babies behind,
every time I look
I find
another crease and
that's not really cricket
is it?
but *** it,
it's Friday
I'm doing it my way,

shame about the crayon
I only had a green one.

Bolts from the blue
electricity discharged
from me
into you.
Be cool with me,fool with me
take me I'm yours,
let's make our own laws as
we make our own way,
bolts from the blue
bolting from me
to you.

Gentlemen only say please when
they want something.

A lady can be shady and
sometimes maybe
sometimes not
will say thank you, please
for what they've got.

I'm not and never have been
King or Queen to pawn or rook
but I've been mistook
once or twice for being nice
just like a gentleman.

iF
pOETRY is the gun with bullets flying off its tongue
to run like streaming traces
chasing through the open faces
then
i Am armed and dangerous,
a telescopic sight on the armalite and a red dot
hits the spot
every time.

This is nice
is it paradise? he asked,
thinking the walls could do with a coat of paint,

it's as close as you can be
said the maitre-d who had
an accent over his eye,

service is at nine

It's usually thataway
but it could be
thisaway
and anyway
any way
is a good way
on
a good day
and Friday
is a good day
when
Monday
is a Bank Holiday.

When I woke
it was within a wheel,
a spoke stuck in my brain

I'll never see the Guinea pig in
the same light ever again.

It must be very difficult
to catapult away
I suppose that's why I'm in
a wheel
and in a wheel I'll stay.

So I run and I run and
my world turns fast
until I come to the end
of the wheel at last

then I woke with a spoke
stuck in my brain
and this I think on as
the wheel
goes round again.

Why would I want the minimum
when I could ****** them
and get the maximum?

An ***** dream in an ***** den
one of malice and mayhem,
sentenced to live and as surely
to die,
in trance, I sit back and watch
worlds passing by.

Energy,
doesn't that equate with
positivity,
the more positive you become
the more energy you have?

a bit like,
Poverty,
the more money you earn
the less poor you are.

The train according to the indicator board is expected in six minutes,
so
I'll give it ten, but then again to be on the safe side I'll give it twenty
which should be plenty of time for said train
to arrive on platform nine.

You calling it community means
less than **** all to
some like me.
We,
the ones with no identity have no
intentions to belong to that
big society.

Life is just some work in the offing
The banging of nails in your new pinewood coffin
The last drizzling drops in a bottle of wine
And the  final knockings on the edge of all time.
For twenty five years you can wallow in pity
Get ****** in the city and think yourself pretty
Walk through the streets like a neat Walter Mitty.
After another twenty five years you start going to seed
You find that you need a hand up the ladder
Nothing is sadder.
But you struggle along trying to right any wrongs
Your reading tastes change along with the style of the songs
That you listen to now
And you know most of the why's you're just not sure of the how.
Then comes the descent
One day you stand tall the next you are crooked and bent
And everyone looks younger
But you've done all of that and you no longer hunger
For the sparkles of youth and you know that's the truth.
Because that's just some work in the offing.

Tired of the barbed wire and the scratching of brambles,
speaking as one who rambles on and on
and what's for dinner, Mother?

I need to have a system noncritical of the system that I'm stored in, that we're all boxed in, that toxic anomaly which we know as normality, see what's happening to me?
the fences are closing in on me
the pen's against me
I'm dividing,
the cell I survive in is being demolished,
they'll get rid of me and probably in
Millwall Dock
but I'll have dead gangsters for company
so no worry really.

(20 minute poetry)

Write me in dialect
slang
as one would expect
a hobo to be.

I carry what to me is a maximum load, but to the road
I'm as light as the air.

And I'm going nowhere as the compass points out,
however nowhere is somewhere so it looks like I'm going there,
all things being equal
how odd.

Here I am
stood as a man should be
in the cold morning light that
as children, we longed for
but
not any more,
give me my pipe and
bring me my slippers
kippers for breakfast
and tripe for my tea
will do me.

The quickest way
is to jump
so I pump myself up
only
to let myself down
easily and
It scares me
that I contemplate
the greatness of being
when I
being
one
on the road.

Monroe on skid row dancing the tango with Columbo
and I want to know what that dream was about.

(20 minute poetry)

Stand clear Monday's here and no prisoners will be taken.

I'm running scared
in third class
because the system
Is still in place,

all along the platform lined up instead of in freeform
are today's commuters,
baristas, solicitors, chancers and sharp operators,
they wait the same as I
under the weeping willow sky.

If this is the 'last chance saloon'
and the tube train's arriving soon
I'll have a double.

Monday's still here or it was,
not sure now because my eyes
are shut
but I think that it might be
still
able to see me.

For a brief moment
I thought
the screeching I could hear was
my brain jumping a gear
but it's the brakes on the train,
listen,
it's doing it again.

and again it's almost done,
I've used up my tiny portion
if such fun is dealt that way

Darling, Monday
is still here like a
milk bottle on the window sill
dear,
waiting for my corn flakes.

I sit and watch a camel train go by and as it limps across the pale blue sky,shrouded in the clouds,I wonder if I could get upon a camels back and track along,could I learn the camel drover’s song?
A ditty,not so pretty,more a humpalong than any song I’ve ever heard with words that I can’t understand,though familiar in the camels land up in the sky,
Where I watch them going by.

Hip ,hop, clop, clump being a camel gives me the ****,how I wish to be a fish deep in the sea,like a whale.
I like a scale,a doh, ray, me,as far as I can see I’ll be a camel all my days and wander through a desert haze but my gaze is fixed as I roam free, on a cool and clear deep ocean sea.

Once,
I was a little thing until I grew and learnt to sing and now I don’t know anything,except
I want to be free,a fish in the sea,won’t some kind body please untie me,slip the noose and then un-sky me,set me on the coastal road,with my ****,without my load and let me smell the ocean breeze and slip into those lovely seas.
I want to be free and this you can see,before the clouds all break apart and with them goes my breaking heart and you could at least pretend to start to set me free.

A sense of security?
probably,
but
being trapped in your prison
is not being free.