Memories are often unkind to me
and Time after all time when time has the time, that's also unkind.

The bowmen on Olympus target us, fire their arrows through the mists of our morning when the shadows sleep still on the pale ground, I rise until the red scent of poppies fills my senses with fear, with fear comes that silence, come closer my dear, 'all the better to see you'

Wings that once flew lay shredded, embedded in my eyes are the commissions of days,
nothing stays the same except the same and the same's not the same as it was.
Icicles drip their tentacles slowly onto my cheeks,
he who seeks must be prepared for the worst.

I am cursed
I am cursed by the one breasted Amazon, who with crossfire looks shoots hooks of longing into my heart.

The silence is where the fears meet the shadow that lay in the mists on the pale ground, no sound.

Time with its memory is no friend and could never be, my back's to the wall now but it could have been different,
don't ask how,
I just know.

We are or so it is said
strands of a thread that tie
us together,
one family
and if that's true
where do I tie into you?

On a different plane
where feelings are
just the same and
looking
for someone to blame,
I look inside.

There's a catch in it,
always a catch.

Match two to win and when
in the game
looking for someone
to blame
you know I'm going to
go and look inside, it's
all the same even if
It's not.

But the way that I view it is the way I get through it and any strands that tie in is a two star win for me.

We should hook up,
look up common ancestry
clinging to Darwin's tree
is tiring for me,
how about you
are you clinging on too?

Saving a spot by the apple tree
she whispers (fruitily)
'Take a bite of this'

I kiss tomorrow goodbye take one more bite and die
always wondering why
it ends like this.

The generation gap is
sixteen feet and four inches wide
big enough to drop inside
get in the car
and go for a drive.

I always walk and
usually
it's the plank.

Peer ye at the crystal ball
fall into the eye of the oracle
peer ye and you'll see it all
the triumph and the debacle

I was listening to Novello and
Flo'ella
had her head across my pillow
talking to some fellow
from somewhere down in Arkansas.

I saw at once the discrepancy
of her and me
and where our interests lay.
mine somewhere in 'Frisco or maybe even Monterey
and hers in some Southern lawless place
I turned her face to face me
quietly I explained
that I'd be leaving on a plane
and that she should do the same.

She took a knife
Screamed,
'if you don't take me for your wife
I'll take your life and put it in a crystal ball'
Guess I'm not going after all.

What might be or maybe is not necessarily so,
events have a habit of freeforming horizons
shifting the mainstream and altering dreams.

When we're down on a minus we need a reminder
and someone to find a new way.

Off limits,
five minutes
I'm in.
The original sin doesn't count towards karma, Krishna or Rama and nothing is barred to the one who breaks through,
who is it what do you do when the day breaks it breaks just for you
and I never knew it at all.
Off limits so call out the guards
throw down the cards that you hold
and ask for
one more
deal.
Nothing is real and that you can't steal, nothing is real only
the cards in the deal,
give me five minutes to mark out the limits of five minutes more and
I'm in,
look at me grin like a big Cheshire cat
I can do that and more
one more
deal.

That,
Christ we gain,
the pill that guards against the pain
is here today,
The only way to make it go is
praying to the anti pill dot.co.

I,
who stretched out on the cross
could have tossed some codeine phosphate down
never had to wear a crown
no thorns to hide the blood inside
just left it as it flows.

Heaven knows but I do not
what
pharmaceuticals have got,
it must be in the chemistry
a reaction that goes on
inside of me.

That chameleon may linger on
a lot longer than I will
and
another pill
thank Christ for those, but
Heaven knows
that may be wrong.

Squeaking doors which sound for all the world to me like a parcel of mice setting out for a party,

Oil would cure them
oil cures everything
even poverty
apparently,
but you'd have to ask
Sheik Yamani
to be absolutely sure.

It sounded like coup de tat and I expected a military action, what I got, in fact, was a bowl of raw vegetables with a dip
of hummus and chickpeas, but that's chefs for you, always on the make, on the fake and taking advantage of your expectations.

It may be Sunday out there,
but in here it's ninety seventy-four, in here behind the bedroom door where the lights burn bright like that disco ball that blew our minds last night.
it's a noughts and crosses kind of a day, we make our marks and gurgle away and marks is what we are, cosmic stains on the universe, washed by the winds of countless stars, strands upon strands where each moment stands alone, a space of our own in a place full of plenty, but it's 'seventy-four behind the bedroom door and I don't care because she's so much more than the wandering rings that sing to themselves, in the galaxy we are pixies and elves and someone else is stacking our shelves, we play party games and if we are cosmic stains, so what,
what we are is what we've got and that's 'seventy-four behind the bedroom door.

In time, if there is an in, we shall strip off the moonbeams that dance on our skin and begin, to gurgle again, to take one more spin, to ride some and more behind the door back in 'seventy-four.

It may be Sunday out there, churchy hats and churchy hair, but where the lights burn bright behind the bedroom door it will always be nineteen seventy-four.

In the confusions which pass through the glass of my eyes and where the smoke puts a choke hold on me
I wrestle with my identity and if it fits me or not.
An Illusion which goes by the name I am known but never shown to the people at large, there's a hope I'll inherit a spot of humility and become the man that I  knew I once was, but when the doors are all shut on me and that humility deserted me for the fresh fields which lay over the way, I pay no heed to the need that lays in me and confusion just leads me astray.

When I look at the stars far away and wonder what is it that makes me this way and the lights start to blink but I think that they're winking at me
I see the souls in the sky which fade out and then die, I see the fall of it all and in the seeing believe I know why.

Handsome, and some and
scandalously so..
'...go on, you're a swan'

At the dawn of time
we woke,
you spoke,

the alarm went off
the lights came on,
the industrial revolution
and
then we were gone and
only the
nursery rhymes remained.

Bio bodies
bio skin
buy oh buy me
you'll begin
to believe
that it's alright
to deceive
but bio man meets bio girl
and buys bio girl a bio pearl,
nothing's real or
what it seems
even dreams are bio
wash whiter
seem brighter
look darker?
blame it on the bio,

I like the touch and smell
of a real woman and
I scrub up well
nothing fake
nothing to take her breath away
but
you don't find real men every day
so she's going to like me too.

Erratic or haphazardly
the snow falls light
and dazzles me,
turning night white in
its gleam,
the dream I dream goes on.

They figure it out
and factor it in
then they let us know
when our lives can begin,

on the abacus
it's just me and
the beads
who needs anyone else.

but lockdown is being eased
and
that's nothing to sneeze at.

I'm on track
some track which
might be the right track
or the same track
and looking back on
the track
I probably am.

Taking a toll this rigmarole
but I take it anyway.

Commuting is
a necessity
a means for me
to get to work
which is also a
necessity.

He's reading a different book
I look but can't see the print
only the pictures and she's
also reading but hers is a
magazine
'Teen..' something or other.

I've counted twelve bobble hats
seven worn by men.


There are lots of trainers in this coach
so why is it going so slow?
and a distinct smell of burning
rubber emanating from somewhere
below
perhaps that's why it's so slow and
nothing to do with the trainers.

As I ponder on this I miss my stop and alight at Oxford Circus which is a circus though not in Oxford but the first person I clap eyes on is wearing Oxford bags and I thought they went out with bell bottoms,
still
It could have been worse I may have ended up at Hanger Lane, a shame if I did and I'm glad that I never.

Forever's nearly here and I'm almost there and that's better than nothing.

In a minute
a vision
or two,
Incised with precision my eyes see,
Alhambra.
'a pearl set in emeralds'
a jewel to behold.
In the meanwhile
a morning
a cold day is dawning.
The old enemy comes in with the sun.

I have witnessed this upon the shores
the ****** of morals,causes,mores
and scores of promises
made and broken by
trip tied tongues with words yet spoken
in the days of heraldry
when men could be
the killers in society and still
be free.

I saw it too when dreaming in a tree
Peru I think it might have been
but every scene was set for me
in the quicksand by the sea
and I side stepped them each and everyone
now it all is gone and faded as the past will do
into another image
who could believe the tale
that men in chain mail suits set sail
to set upon the citizens and sit by while the slaughter fallen
the fruits of hell with chain and ball on.

Hard but even harder still imagining that men still will
bang the drum
so hungry for
another moral ****** score.
it's war
and that is what we got
so take a *** of ale put on the suit of chain link mail
and go and meet
your season of no reason where the only reason you will find is the unreasoning of the deaf and blind.
War.

When it all feels like hell in a handbasket,
when you shout out at the wind and ask it
where the silence begins and all that you hear
is the wind howling at you and wonder
who is it you are, when the shortest step is
too far to take,
it's
time to break the connection,
cast off and head for the islands.

Indurate or friable?
it's
frustratingly undeniable
I do not know.

Hard of hearing
soft of touch
is it too much to ask
an answer to a question?

such are the lines
hard times
soft landings

I think that I'm
still standing here
waiting.

It carves the canyons
in your face and
seemingly for aeons

tears cried for loved ones.

and we climb again
as if
we're doing time again,
and time again the sorrows
etch those valleys
narrow alleys
gutters running full

and how dull life would be
if
grief was all we
wore.

Someone spilled the beans
opened up that can of worms
and let out the devils dreams,
but it wasn't me
I'm innocent
mostly.

Day care for the elderly
and that'll do for me
when I get old.

A gypsy once told me
that good luck
would follow me,
it's not caught up yet

and yet the older I get
the less that I fret
about such things
such as
what
luck brings.



I favour fortune as much
as it favours me,
which by the way is
not a lot and lately
I was wondering what
it ever did for me,

the gypsy knows, but
they always do or don't
you
believe in that.

Waking wet under the
old sack,with
pillow black
hair.
They're everywhere,
sleeping poorly is rough,
rough sleeping is rougher still,
the toughest will,
will break
or bend when the
end is not in sight.
Dead eyes watch to clock cigar smoke lies that more dead men will stand and speak on their behalf and rise to cheer,no dead men here to hear just those who wait and wait on time to drag their sorry arses into line.
Tough rough sleepers,gate house keepers,sentries in the park, who'll meet us in the day with teeth like sharks,you'll want to run away but will you stay to watch them?, touch them with some charity? or be scared of them like me?

I forgot what happened yesterday, and tomorrow will forget today
It's the only way,
a coping strategy to free myself,
but memory remains
like blood stains on my skin
getting into every crease.
There is and will be no release,
memories are police to catch me,****** me,bind me,search me out and find me, then they grind me into dust.
If I must remember,
let me remember this,the first kiss,the first bloom,laughter in the bedroom,the groom, the bride,
but these memories hide
and I forget again.

There's a lot
to be said for
pleasantries,
the thanking you
and the
saying please,
the how do you do
and the
fine how are you,
the passing of time
passing time
drinking teas,
there's a lot to be said
for
the niceties
of
pleasantries.

I walk and can hear the glass crunching
it's like snow on the Screen when in the old days of the Queen it was all black and six two five lines white,
at least I think those figures are right, but I was only eight, stayed up 'til nine, read books under the blankets and read out the time by the light of my torch, tried a magic lantern once, but the pictures ruined the story for me.

So the numbers never had a chance of adding up to five or fifty five or anything really
my hands were tied by the binding on the books I read, I couldn't make head nor tail of reality, it was all one big adventure to me unless it was a romance novel which I turned to now and again when the pain of whatever it was bothered me and sometimes I just went for that long walk, took a longer time, too much Rip Van Winkle wine and woke before bed and time to read again,
eight is a fabulous age to discover
a new page in an
old book.

There are lions at the pillars of Hercules
and clowns on the road down below
there's a marching band playing at Yellowstone
waiting for the geysers to blow,

but we know what it's like to feel all alone
to sit and remember the noise
and what I wouldn't give to go back
and to live my time again with all the boys.

Just disappearing
I am fading away
tomorrow won't see me
I'll
make the most today,

just disappearing
near to the close
the future's arriving
and nobody knows
that
I'm just disappearing.

I have tried so many times
to say,
'I love you',
in fourteen lines, but
failed more times than that.
Words, do ease the pain and
increase the joy
of being able to employ
another way to say,
'I love you',
If I could send to you
my heart shot through with arrows,
you
would understand.

If you want to start writing,
begin by smuggling the stars of
the night in
and hiding them in your inkwells

wishes are made from these.

There is a link,

we look forward
with eyes in the back
of our heads
and look back to
see how far forward
we've come.

Mark my words with the dollar sign
I'm being timed out by the clock,
the gold standard's gone and
I'll
not be long in following on.

I wonder which galloping whatnot is going to come out with the next bit of gobrot.

I'm betting Boris,
but Jeremy's in
second place

It's a bingo game
a one shout all out
pick and mix
and
they won't fix it before they've
fixed you good and proper.

There'll be a whitewash
and a pebbledash
and then they'll tell you
it was You
responsible for the crash.

They add up numbers
join the dots
then they call the cops
and you're nicked.

You've never picked a loser
but believe it
we're on one now.

Nowhere is the new in place,
the last time I was nowhere
nobody wanted to go there
and now everybody is where
I used to be,

Where's nowhere, you ask

nowhere's anywhere is my reply.

It's a bit like lonely but more cheerful
because it's homely and that's where
the heart is.

Dinner's cooking,
but I'm only smelling
not looking
because
I want it to be a
surprise,

she eyes me suspiciously
I'm used to that too.

The morning's only peeping through the cloud that covers you and
who dares pull this blanket back?

If I am where I'm supposed to be
tucking into breakfast
a nice cup of tea
reading the paper
taking the news
who's that on the tube?

Nothing is what it seems
waking moments
sleeping dreams
the conscious stream
runs fast and deep
just keeping afloat
is all one can hope for.

When I wake
I mean truly wake
I'll surely take
time to reflect
upon these thoughts.

In the meantime
somewhere in the dreamtime
I'm still on walkabout

talk about crazy?
you faze me
while I laugh about
you talking about
it's life and
all a roundabout.

Some say monotony
is a true form of poetry
I'd have to agree
but
what is drudgery
when you hold the
pen
with which to ****** me
bludgeon me
leaving me
a
a smudge
on white vellum.