Saharan sand and to tell the truth it doesn't feel any different from any other sand, but it came over here, somehow got past border control and Murphy's are now using it as a mix with cement to fill in the hole at said border control.

all's well that ends and something else which I can't remember.

What a great start to the day,
but then I woke
the dreams like the night faded
away into one more mind numbing
Wednesday
and
it's okay
ok?
it won't last forever
only forever lasts that long.

But I really don't mind
it's only one day a week
it's just the one day that reminds me
of why my bones creak
time
marches on,
the army of one
triumphant.

On the rebound,
sounds like  a
record label

all if it goes round
is the sound of
revolvers being loaded.

It's a shotgun way
when it ends this way
but if there's a better way
you'd better tell me.

When I was a saint and
I ain't any more
I could close on the deal
before they'd opened the door

and now who am I?

the sinner
and you
can't make a sonnet
out of
a dogs dinner.

If I'm found on the rebound
throw me back in
but
let me begin with
a
clean slate

Foul deeds
are the wanton needs
but needs must
be unjust
when the devil drives

I steer my own rig
perform at my own gig
got no room for
no prophet of doom.

There is no boom or bust
no south sea bubble to
trouble me
no pyramid selling
and no one is telling me
to stop.

My terms
My time
My rhyme
if you dinky don't like it
jump ship.

They're right on your doorstep
looking into your life
they're watching your children
taking note of your wife
and there is no way to stop them
from snooping and prying
if you move they will follow
and find a new way to get in
so
you're a tag or a label
on the system that tracks you
I wonder who these people are.

don't get comfortable

they're going to line us up and
use us all for target practise
to
get their eye in and as we're dying
they'll tie us to a barbecue and
skewer us into kebabs.

Eyes
in the mortuary and on the slabs
keeping tabs on dead men and
their valuables

for it's waste not want not
he wants what we've got
and they've got the
time on their side
and they make omissions
set up commissions
give out concessions but
cede ****** all.

I used several filters
but
the picture looked the same,

it must be true
that if you're not a fat bloated,
thieving off the working poor
capitalist,
you're not included in the game.

The fugitives invaded me in the
sixties series somewhere on
TV,
one armed bandits
one eyed half wits
we watched it all
Janssen
Thinnes and
that lot on the bins
for
a touch of class.

Alf Garnett
he could be a gas
and Irma down the Street
with her
coronation chicken feet.

Taken over
one channel at a time
sublime?


Well it was all in Black and White,
so we could tell the day from night, but
not real life you understand
just pictures on a screen
now repeated
though I have seen them all before
I watch again
I so adore

**** York

Samantha,
wiggling her nose

Bouquets of barbed wire
tied to a rose.

Top cat smarter than Kojak
and the Flintstones in their
dream homes down in Bedrock.

Knock me up some dreams to dream
and I'll scream ******
Norman Bates
Hitchcock laughed at
those blind dates.

Niven
Cribbens
Poppins

moons and balloons and railway children
who'll then tell me where it went then?
Standing for the Anthem,
auntie Beeb and then some
chips and curry sauce of course
it's how we rolled in
Lancashire

We come back to
'the rock and roll of the tortured soul'
but it's
quietened down,
things
tightened up,

I never danced at Mardi Gras,
a regret.

Here in the British Isles
they're always building bridges
when they should be getting
miles away,
we should
emigrate before it's too late,

the portcullis is being lowered
along with expectations.

Feast on Easter eggs
get legless later on
and
the slab they lay you on
will feel much warmer.

Misery?
who?
me?

don't stop me when I'm on a roll
the rock's a harder place.

This was just an experiment
a try out for the main event.

Who else could make the cut
but those whose clothes hung
from their backs
and sidled along the railway tracks
buffeted by the passing trains,

pains and gains and somewhere there
a smile to knife along the frigid air.

Monuments in Timbuktu,
books
and who can read them now?

Trials and tribulations run like blood
from ruptured veins and stain our
histories,

I drink a cup of Lapsang souchong
picked from
the wrong side of the hill
it's
still as bitter.

Eventually
or even before then
there will be a
reckoning.

When
will be for the Gods to decide.

I continue to ride in the slipstream of dreams
picking off cherries and that's not innuendo
or euphemism,
this is not rocket science or hypnotism
it's just a way to prepare for the forthcoming day.

From the firelight and shadows that play on the edges of darkness
someone prays for forgiveness
but there's nothing to fear
no demons live here
only me.

We blew out the Sun and went on our way home, in your eyes I saw death, but in mine you saw none,
left alone now.

The window was opened and fresh air,
fresh where it used to be
came flooding in to cover me with the scent of the pine tree,
the chutney of corn,
that was the day that death looked,
I was born.

Three score years on and that long ago and still I know little about nothing I know.

Time still stands with the latch on the gate,
as to when it will close
I will wait
and see.

We blow out the Sun again and the bright lights of memory lane come flooding in to cover me and still in the time,
still working the line,
I breathe easily.

Cells collide
the doorways to my eyes
are ajar.

so far as they say,
but it's not quite today
and won't be
until
I have that first cup of tea.

She sleeps on
unaware
that I got to the kitchen
without switchin' the
lights on.

Outside.

everyone's an enemy
keep
two metres away from me
it's a ******' tragedy,
I want to go home.

An outline
might be the skyline
but it changes in the
light.

I saw street signs
pointing the way to
better times, but they'd
been dubbed into
Cantonese

these are the dark days
the rise of the rock star
the electric car
the drone
the galaxy as in the phone

I chill out even in the Sun.

But the outline
the schematics perhaps
of our time
stay with me like an imprint
and if I squint hard enough
I can make it out.

I,
though I hardly covers me
should be more than what life
has made me
or perhaps that's just  me
being greedy,

see how it's me?
me, me, me and
if it wasn't me
it would be
I
which hardly covers me.

Sometimes
I cover her with kisses
she covers me
with noughts and crosses,
but
I know who the boss is
which hardly covers me.

This feathered quill with fluted nib stands idle in an idle hand and a man with little time to spare,despairs of flowing from its point,a point to make,a case he cannot state.
It is late the ink has bled,I am being led to some conclusion,propelled to see a page, unwritten not by me but by the elements.

Underwater I breathe air,a little trick I found when underneath the earth and being ground, they thought into fine dust,the fire was just a place to warm my bones while the winds sang songs to me in dulcet tones.

And still the quill sits silently as if begrudging me a moments rest, it  would be a feather in my cap if only I could slap another word out of its tip,but no letters slip to form these things,it seems that silence only brings me emptiness,even less than that when words within are crushed and flattened by the fattening of worms that squirm and hold me in their coils,and any words there were are spoiled,deleted,secreted quietly and forgot about.

In the tomb without a light, this ink is but a link to further things to think and if only I could force this quill to spill something.

Underlined in red and on the tombstone up above it said,

'here lies within a man so thin
and yet so thick
his quill
a magic stick
his ink
a skating rink

Magic couldn't save him'

But this is of another page when reached upon a ripe old age and suitably I shall erase that which pertains to me.

I would like to be
the sounds you hear
the sights you see
I'd like to be
as close to you
as you are close to me

when the morning comes
and daylight runs across
your face
I watch your gaze
and try
to twinkle in your eyes
so blue.

I'd like to be
the glint of the sun
bouncing off the sea
reaching out to me
while you are building
castles in the sand.

Jammed in like sardines and it seems all too familiar,
Kinking like a caterpillar as we jink down the aisle,
seats to either side of me filled with idle curiosity and I stand between them.

Breathing like old men the carriages carry, homeward, Eastbound and at last,
I found a seat.

Beats me why
I bother.

Tried it,
roasted
baked
boiled
I even fried it,
have you tried it?

If there was ever a plan for a man to eat spam
they'd have found a new way to prepare it.

Reggie went Veggie and Megan went Vegan, which doesn't rhyme
because Reggie never took the time to understand what a Vegan was,

But it's all a bit 0z,
( the place, not the magazine )

I have seen it on the goggle box
witches wearing stripey socks
a talking tin can
( probably ate some of the spam)
a scarecrow
a lion?

personally
I think it's a bit of a try on

Imagine an alcohol sea
filled with a vast quantity
of
'what's your poison?'
would you still hold on
to me?

Football,

but it's pray day
similar to pay day.
but
you don't get paid.

I wish they'd play away
on Sunday.

The starlit night.
Awash in the Moon's lonely light.
A Nightjar ***** her wings.
And calls out loud.
The vibration sings on waves of sound
That splash into the silent ground.
And in that song I found the essences of life unbound.
Within this newborn humility
I see.
The changing of the days in wondrous ways.
I watch the leaves turn green then brown
As the trees fold inwards to settle down
For the Winter's sleep.
I weep and long for longer days
Where evening stays just out of reach.
I wish that Nature would teach
Me more.

Every Wake wakes me to the
distinct possibility that
the next wake that
wakes me may be
a Wake for me.

I see the corridor that leads to the anti-room,
but I don't plan on going down it too soon.

If I keep my eyes closed then
the cold can't affect me,
can't see me or touch me,
if I keep my eyes on the inside.

I think I worry about things,
thinking I think,
perhaps if I worry then
the cold man won't hurry
to get me,
if I keep my eyes closed and
don't step on the cracks, ah
forget about the cracks and
that's what attracts him
the cracks running through me
the cracks only I see,
but the cold man sees too.

Do you keep your eyes closed?
I do.

Another manifesto
and here we go again.

I gave up believing in hyperbole,
it's just
hot air that makes me
feel cold.

as some are sold on ideas,
a promise to enhance their careers
so they vote.

When nothing makes sense
the senseless prevail..

But it's bang on the diesel
or so the weasel from
Westminster says,

I think it's fiction and
they've got all the facts wrong

But
when you look at the 'big picture'
it appears to be rather small,
it might be that the hall it hangs in
is enormous,

ridiculous?

and that could be true.

perhaps we're all just paint spots
spittle for the paint pots
and when we dry
we die and come back as an Old Master
or
Whistler's Mother.

isn't that what Jesus is for?
it's got *** all to do with
the delivery men nor
that **** down in number ten,
it's the
media trying to steer the car
the one that already crashed.

No products in the shops
a shortage of cops
no one to pick fruit
and do they give a hoot?
no!, but
it'll be alright on the night
Santa on the crack pipe
which is more of that
media hype,

can't wait until Easter.

Old timer gets on huffing and puffing
it's probably
somewhat or perhaps nothing,
East London is like that.

Three degrees outside
and
not one singing.

A cheap joke from
an old bloke,
that'd be him
sat
beside me,
madmen on the Jubilee.

Peeking from under her hat
she
looks Chinese
she also looks cold.

I'm on the way to
wherewithal
which is a
withdrawal from my
time bank.

And it's Wednesday.

Nothing ventured
no one indentured
Dickens has had the last word
and how quite absurd
to lock someone to time
to make that person yours or that person mine
for years and years
until they have grown and whatever they knew they've outknown
and become a clone
a facsimile
a copy to copy to carbon that papers over the cracks in your life and however hard he tries to get on
Time is the wife and she moves on him slow
as if time couldn't go any faster
It's a see saw knock on the door
and get beaten up by the master
not a nursery rhyme
this time it's real.
A Dickens of a deal
dealt in coal yards and hard knocks
and old curiosity shops
it never stops 'til
the war is over.

Everything is free until they come for you
as they came for me,
see,
the biggest scam they ever worked
was fooling us into working,

a bit of Penn and Teller?
no
they're the good guys
they only fool your eyes
not your hopes.

And I am not sinking
I'm
just floating underwater.

The cat o' nine
wraps round this heart of mine,it
ties me in cross purposes,conundrums and
self sacrifice,
it's not very nice for me,the one who
wants serenity,
a piece of peace and harmony.

I must have really *******
God.

They must have ***** the size of bullocks
but sadly their brains are the size of peanuts,

you can't win them all.

I don't see how they're killing me,
but I know that they are,
perhaps
because they're setting the bar too high.

and it's nonsense to suggest or is it
possible at all that the fol-de-rol we
fall for is the truth?
let me call my doctor.

Anyway
I'm ready now for Saturday with
a Ruger in my rucksack,

They're still killing me until I die
and then
I bet they'll try to **** me just
a little more,
but
sod's law is, that I will live
and give 'em a run for their
money.

When Winter came to Warrington
it came in a bus full of burly men.

There are parallels running between the lines
all worked into the seams.

but the dust gets into your lungs
and
paints your veins black.

South Shields.

Grandad showed me
the history of miners in
the colour of his chest.

South Shields memory time.
John Smallshaw
23 April 2013 at 09:01 · London ·


Grandad did keep a pig and chickens also a monkey
which was either sat on his shoulder
or up on the clothes rack
which was set high up in the kitchen,

sometimes we would unfasten the rope that tied the rack
and did that monkey chatter as it fell towards the kitchen table,

happy days.

My Grandad kept in the back garden ,
a big fat rosy coloured pig,
not the one that did a jig
but another
which was certainly a smelly thing.
Grandpa would bring it bits and bobs and
the pig would grunt in its approval
until the day came for the pig's removal.

It ended up in 16 dinner bowls and on one
big serving plate.
I have to say pig tasted great
with apple sauce
but of course
I miss him all the same.

Shattered,
scattered to the four winds and evaporated
elongated drops of rain fall to earth
reform again,
cubes in glasses
melting molasses
drinking then passes for cool.
cool.

Whatever belief you adhere to
whatever it is that gets you through,
does it and does very well for you.

I believe something's stronger than me,
as weak as I am I can see
that I can be stronger too.

Whatever it is
it gets me through.

I am being invaded by something not right
my well being is evading something
all pervading.
I feel death in the air it creeps in through my hair and steps out through my eyes,
haha surprise,
I'm not cut out for death so I take a big breath
and light one more cigarette.

It's what I think and sometimes do and when I do I think of you and think you might be thinking what I'm thinking too.

My little victories like death enable
me a final breath and the World
keeps right on spinning,
I make believe that I am winning
in
some inter-planetary game .

Down on the quayside
stood beside
the willow baskets,
(caskets for fish)
we
made a wish.
I promised you this
with a kiss on your
lips that the ships
would come safely
back home.

Okay, Thursday,
the
coffee's brewing,
but
who let you in?

I'm doing some exercise
eyes roll
fat roll
bacon roll,
can't win them all.

It'll soon be Christmas,
Jesus won't wait
but
nobody wants to wait today
it's gimme and gimme and straightaway.

But Thursday has a plan
to
make it through the twenty-four
and tomorrow?
well,
tomorrow's Friday which is what,
we're waiting for.

I caption this
'The Kiss'

A greeting
lips that meet
anticipating
tongues that touch
arms around you holding tight
such is the kiss,
not a marble statue
not Rodin's
just a man's
imagination.

Held against my will on a tube train stuck at Tower Hill ( it's actually West Ham )
waiting for a signal, but I always am.

Phone TFL.Gov love
says
the lady next to me

calls are not free
says I.


There's a limit to the limitless,
that which they don't want you to know
and my patience is not endless
this train had better go.

And there's a smell in here
of garlic and of fear
the vamps are roaming free,
Monday
on the Jubilee.

I told you that I love you,right,
were those not words I spoke last night?
Well,
I fell
and so I guess it's true,
three words that tell you
I love you.

I shouted shazam and open sesame but the sea remained calm and did not part waves for me so I staged a rebellion with a bucket and *****, dug out a channel, the sea then obeyed and with a thunderous roar the white horses skipped across sand dunes which dipped into whitened salt meadows where nothing of any significance grows.

Then the sea changes faster than the human eye can see and comes back in a foam dress and as if in 3D it seems to swallow me and spit me out to swallow me and yet my mouth still went dry.

I ran before the running of the waters that were coming and their target could be,
Moses and
he composes epistles in the rooms of his saviour and sends notes in a basket to float down the river and end in a channel which I dug out from memory.


meanwhile somewhere happening

Noah a Goan said, go on I'll build it and filled it with freaks from the circus in town and while down on the Downs looking for pro forma brides dressed in long flowing Gowns made from gossamer wings a troubadour sings to a wandering albatross.

In the end.

it comes back to devotions, the mass of the oceans, the audience applause and we are just ****** that give out a meaning for free.
I will not break my heart if the sea does not part for me I shall just write some poetry until the waters recede.

******* in the fountain!
that's what you get
when you go foreign.

didn't bother to tell them
it was artwork,
a local landmark and
world famous.

When reality holds me, vice-like it
controls me,
I try to imagine I'm free of the bonds
like skimming stones on mill ponds
I skip,
stripping clear of some ego,
an ogre that only I know
I throw caution to the night and
take a trip through a limbo
that only I know.

Light flakes around me, like dandruff it
hounds me but it's part of the tour and
as the light dwindles it kindles another,
somewhere or other a butterfly dies.

My sanity slips out to scout up ahead,
better to be safe than be dead, although
I'm sure that will come in a tour for some
but not me.

She is described in the silence between each drop of rain,
the cry of midwinter wanting
Summer again, in
the call of the eagles as they soar
high above
and the sonnets that poets have written
of love.

I sit up there in the thin air where my focus is extended by eyes that feed on loneliness and lips that taste the awesomeness of pipe dreams in the sky,
A vision opens up to me, unreal, a trip out LSD, but no this is reality and here
in thin air flying free, the eagles seem to float as if on skis across a frozen sea.
I have abandoned all for self sufficiency, I want the eagle to be me and me to be the eagle, up here in the thin air where I grab at straws.

Two thousand floors down on the elevator to desperation in the nation of investigators they look for me, Up is not on their agenda or they'd send a scouting party to hunt me down.

In some era long before when I tore envelopes to lick my life and stuck them to the notice boards and no one cared, I cared more for stray dogs on the street than any one of ten or so of beggars that I met or those who came to meet the dawn with pleading looks, was it yesterday when my name, written in the book that details all? I began the fall that rose me to this place where I now sit, invisible but I am seen by clean air to be particle, to be this place without the trappings of a soiled humanity, I want to ski like eagles 'cross the frozen sea and for those who doubt me this was never LSD, this was the walking in and through a life that no one ever knew and a shout or two along the way,
In the thin air, I learn to grin, to remember what it feels like when you let the future in, some time ago I knelt to pray and being nearer to tomorrow than today. I'm sure that if someone watches over me, they'll set the skis, fire up the frozen seas and let me go.

I become my own General and watch over my army, but here in the thin air there is no one to harm me,
the eagles look on quizzically
floating by on skis.

You cannot rely on the one who would spy on you,
governments lie to you,
the state tries to stifle you,
you've got to break free.

There are them and there's me,
if
I look
I can see that they're looking to  be the
spies spying on me.

The constabulary,
uniformity with a limited vocabulary and
unlimited power, look to arrest me,
to contain and refrain me from speaking my piece,
I expect nothing less  than to be
under duress in a state run by police.