Making a stopover at the Bow flyover
finding a place for the night

a wooden seat to perch on
next to the
church on
Mile End road.

This may be a blessing
but
God keeps me guessing
and I feel I'm
no nearer to him or to thee
whomsoever him or thee
may be.

Next to the gravestones which are
weather worn and grey
( say! I look the same)

I am but a name in the register
to be struck out as I struck out

When your luck's out life *****

I only draw in a breath for death
to draw closer to me
I want to see it coming.

God and his crew always know what to do and send the sunlight to heal all my woes

I take to my toes and leave Bow far behind me and am sure that god knows if he wants where to find me
or
I may find myself.

Bluebell Woods must be good
there are so many of them.

and the bluebells march
like a battalion of
infantrymen
heading for the sun.

I loved that feeling then
back in ten-acre
where the meadow ran faster than the evening could catch her and it was always sunshine,
alas
time and the bluebells marched on.

Rhymes?
who the hell's a rhymer?
that's for 'old goats'
and not for this
old timer.

but for old time and his sake
I'll make an effort,
put in some leg work
( at minimum pay)

It can be done
not much fun
but
it can be done.

If there's a hierarchy
in poetry,
I'm not employed by them
and
they're no use to me.

I skitter across the floor
and
skitter's a word that's not
used any more.

I'll skitter anyway

The alarm bell.
Did you sleep well
did your dreams have pictures coloured in and was the crayon that you took from out of the crayon tin, called me,
did you see me smile
feel me touch you
was the crayon colour blue?

Was the night a colour of its own
did we groan or were we silent at the midnight chime
did we colour one more time?

If I'm in your dreams,you're in mine
so
let's colour one more time before the morning breaks the night and tomorrow we can watch the colours run as we too run into the night again,into the fun again
and in the crayon box where no locks are set
we'll get our pictures filled with colours, until all time is stilled and then it will not matter any more,that our colourings lay scattered,
for the floor will be our painting book
and all it takes,or all it took
was the empty page to set a stage for hues to fuse into our hearts
and this is how the colour starts.

At six past six
I forget about the colours and the pics and dash to make the train for six fifteen
and entering once again into the dream,I wonder why it seems so clear,the colours that we hold,hold dear to us,
and such a fuss
about the way we make the crayons that we take and break along the way.
It's all a day of finding out what colours we like and what crayons are all about and why shout?
A silent glance,another chance,a crayon tin,a colouring in and off we go again.

When the last of the daylight kisses the feet of the moon and night becomes the dawn of the rising,surprised I awake on the lakeside of sorrow where tomorrow sheds tears for the time allows nothing to stand,
I obey laws of physics though consult with the mystics and the doyens of the beer hall only watch as I call to my maker, thief taker,partaker in ******,to **** dead the silence that roars in my ears.

At the bottom of this glass sits the truth that I search for,but as I reach the finale I find only the floor,it's like the dawn of the rising and no less surprising to me.

If I talk with the shadows that shiver in the doorway,they only say to me, 'spare some change for a cup of tea?'
questions that bother me bitterly, I so agree with the Government policy to ignore everything that doesn't look right to me,
and night even more looks surprisingly, like something I wore once on Wednesday.

They say that this madness creeps up on you and the way it attacks is like it's fukin you,as I've never looked back at my retinue I can't tell if the last statement is true or not,
but you've got what I consider to be the utter truth, as I fly downwards and climb to the slate grey roof where the owls there will greet me with beaks set to eat me,
I wake and sleeps beats me again.

There's a silvery spider that spins deep inside her ever widening webs,webs of lies and deceit and I bet she could beat you at cards,she's a shark,took my heart and she swallowed it whole and my soul's deep inside her,it sits by the spider stuck in her web.

Shades on your eyes and you think that they're spies who are watching through curtains and twitching their certainties about who you are.
A bit further, too far and the gumshoes, par for this course.

Invisible ink makes you think you're not seen by the ice cream man in his MI5 van, but you're taped by the score and the many or more will sit on the church pews of offices, loaned them by wise men and fools who drool over Marlowe and they think this is Harlow or Harlem, but
we know it's Salem and they're coming to burn us.

We been a long time in the bread line and we got a long, long time more to go, we been a seen by the social means test, but we still got a long ways to go,
there's no use praying for some sweet mirrarcull 'cause the lord he done told us no, we been a long time in the bread line and that's the way things is supposed to go.

Time eats of itself, a cables length or more
from itself gone on and
in its going on,hungry as it is,
time is gone.
These fleeting moments we enjoy are
employed as footmen at the feast
and wait upon the table.
Fate
accomplice to this scene,unable or
unwilling to intervene,watches on
until time being sated leaves upon
the stroke of twelve.

On an island dressing
for a thousand more,
on a beach at low tide
walking the shore,
feeling like Crusoe
or the pen of Defoe
the thoughts come and go
like the days,

and they're speaking German
which
I don't understand
I want my Mother not the
Fatherland.

What love,

A pearl from some Eastern eye
Delhi or maybe Mumbai

like a painting by
Modigliani
she haunts me.

The islands slip into the bays
the days follow on behind.

She's still there on the canvas
with those eyes that shadow
and I become a shadow
too.

Fish for me and
steak for you.

Wine?
don't mind if I do
a piesporter oughta
go good
with food
or fud
as we say
up North.

In a glass bottomed boat
I will float far away and
will look at the sea as
the fish look at me.

It depends on the lens I suppose,
heaven knows mine are scratched
by the fingernails of time, but
the boat sails at nine and
this tide I'm on is mine
so I'll be there.

A meeting with Neptune is
written,
coming soon
to a bay
near to you and another one
with Poseidon,
old Gods lining up to grab at my throat,
on the glass bottomed boat
all they can do
is look.

it's hard enough to shake yer bones awake and get into the game and that name,
Monday,
one day gone day, try and get your mojo on day

Monday plays like an old fashioned song
scratchy on the gramaphone's
trying to make you shake yer bones

I am just a bag of bones ready for the stewing ***

what's Monday got that I can't see
what does Monday do for me

It's full of dinosaurs
and
boring old men

I need the 'magic boomerang'
the one that makes the time stand still
then I'd wind back the clock until
it was Saturday night

The problem is this,
no one remembers
the TV show
on Australian networks
from so long ago

I do though
and

'I don't like Mondays'

Oh
boomtown rats?

Don't remember a bomb that
never had a boom or a rat in a town
that never found room to chew on a Monday

dinosaurs
gave
Monday a bad name.

The children flying kites and laughing at all those heads buried into the blackened pikes that line the ridge and while crossing the bridge of whys they were still laughing at all those poor guys who wouldn't be poor anymore,

It makes me proud to praise that the children we raise are not frightened of bloodshed or the odd head or two on a pike or two doing what lopped off heads do which isn't much,

but that thinking is so nineteenth century when at the height of the running sores known only later as ****** wars it all seemed so passable, laudable, die for the cause if you're able to,

and now all we do
is crochet
knit
play croquet on the lawn
some people today don't know
that they've been born.

Sebastian
a simple man
held tight to his
beliefs by a rope
around his waist
could
in haste have fled
instead he bled
they made him
a martyr,
a saint,
something
I ain't.

Sometimes
when your eyes can't focus on
the bright spots on the horizon
because the darkness blinds you,
remember that
it's not your fault.

Sometimes when I'm not sure
I either go with the toss of a coin
or take another detour,

detours are the things
the things in which to find
the things you seldom see,
but never mind.

I watch clocks
it's a hobby of mine
hands turning slowly
across the long face
of time.

and coins,
what about coins?
I flip
pick tails
it always comes down
heads

(you makes your beds and
lay on them)

Sometimes
dead ends make the
best friends, but the
best friends are not
always to be found
in the dead ends.

a roundabout way
of saying
I get on with each day,
but only
sometimes
when I'm not sure.

Everywhere appears to be this way,
this way out
this way in
you are here
and this is where you've been.

we are being mapped and
this is the way that it;s going,
but knowing it's this way
doesn't help you to find a way
to escape.

This way to gain mental health
this way to the bank where you
can deposit your wealth
this way to the church on Sunday
this way to work on Monday

that way looks a better way
and some say that
that way's been blocked
but
then they would
wouldn't they?

This discovery bewilders me and I break down to cry on the shoulders of someone who's seen it before.

But there's always the ***** in me who won't recognise the discovery and settles down wanting some more of the same,
what games I do play and they're usually okay
it's just sometimes they're not what I see me to be,
and I see me discovering while the other me is trying to cover things up.

Very rarely when I'm brave trying to hold on to my sanity and everything out there still bewilders me
I see the prophets which deliver me from slavery which in turn keep the chains on my mind.

In these trappings of a monastery where the cloisters cluster 'round me and the brothers come to free me I see only the ***** in me wanting some more.

The favours of a saviour cannot save me from myself when my ego wants to climb up the walkways to Armageddon.

Where did it go
when did we change
into people
we no longer know?

and if we grew
why did we grow,
just to change into people
we no longer know?

They'll take our wings and plug us in
breed us
until we fit in
then they'll take our wings and plug us in
to breed us yet again.

It's destination corporateVille
to feed us with another pill and mark our cards
( they use a shill for that trick)

I'd be pig sick but that's bred into the new horizon.

Some will try and many do
to dig their way out
from the zoo

escape and to where?
they're there
wherever you look
and they'll get you
by hook or by crook
and it's hardly worth
******' living
no more.

But we do because that's we do,
you say
**** them?

I say
Plug them in and watch
'em spin
until the battery's dead.

In the grooves where sounds collect dust, there's a just a minute before you must and you spin it and it turns on the table real clean.

Music's been good to me through my adversity, lyrics to challenge me at every turn.

But the table still tortures me when deep in the mortuary where the silence plays loud on my nerves.

Disappointment is the ointment that we use to cover up our happiness and bring out the bruise that we all like to show,

do you know anyone who doesn't like a 'pity party?'
which is like a regular party
but with tears instead of beers.

I could recommend an analyst
who'd get you ****** and
read your mind, but she's been
fully booked for weeks,
proving he
who seeks
does not always find.

(the old joke)
**** 'all
is not a big mansion.

First the tap, tap, tapping
then the violins cuts in
the piano starts laughing
and the keys begin

let's play.

Music for the tired and
music for the strong,
for the song that
carries on
long after the sounds
have gone

let's play.

Forever flowing towards me,
then out beyond
the open sea and
the
river,
sullen, sluggishly
takes on another life
and we believe
it's only man
who plans to execute
a will.

Hyperbole,
they said,
(a million times)
will be the death of me,

another will or won't you
try
to be
the river
strolling to the sea.

And the meaning
does not mean the end.

The exodus
never included nor
excluded us.

we became or we become and
some became
becalmed, some
Self-harmed and others
upped and went.

To all intents, it seemed a good idea,
dam the rivers
free up the land,
man's not content to have his fingers in
the cookie jar
he's got to have a hand in there.

Another mish-mash of my thoughts
to think on when I've
'bought the farm'

I wonder if Maggie really cares.
if I go to work or not.

It grabs me and
gets me through a day
wherever I choose to go
it always seems to know
the way.

there's a global positioning
a satellite?
visiting,
and I am the host.

The mechanism's faulty
he
tried to fix me
she
tends to me
fulfils me
wills me to go on

and whatever day
it always seems to
know the way.

They say,
that there is no time like the present,

news just in,
the present passed and is now the past,
present that to them.

if we're on a learning curve
I think that I got one of
the pointed ends.

My Friday evening will consist of
one meal
a great deal of chatter,
the former as good as the latter,
and
a glass of wine.

If we're all going to hell and I'm not sure that we're not,
I want the best spot,
but
Jesus will save me, pave the way for a better me while I keep my eye on the ball,
walking into and out through brick walls is just a party trick, turning water into wine, yeah, that's done all the time, nobody believes in magic more than I, but when you see through the smoke and realise there's a bloke behind the curtain and the wizard's just a wizened old man, it's time to think that it's all been a sham and we're not really watching the second coming because that came and went a long time ago.

drip fed,
being fed on drips and dregs and how many campylobacter in six dairy fresh eggs?
raw meat, diced, sliced or crushed and
pushed through,
acts by the government *******, nothing's your own,
go it alone but the eye in the sky, on the wall, up your **** always follows you,
what's the world coming to and how many bacilli in the ideas that you see in your minds eye?

fed up to the back teeth? rip them out with the pliers and you get no relief, not from the welfare and you share and share and only when no one is there do you get your sweeties and treats from the N.H.S.

We live in the cesspit and they smell of roses which in turn look like dog **** and we're still being drip led by the rich and the well fed and it's doing my head in.

Skeletal?
I want to go back to pre-foetal
before fertilization was an i or the dot on some distant horizon,
untapped as potential and potentially dangerous.

The intro's only there so we
know where to begin,
some begin before not knowing
what the intro is for,
I ignore them.

The bald headed man
with the pince nez nose
knows about intro's
but he doesn't know me,
just as well really
I've heard he's a killer.

At the end where we spend
most of our time
what matters the most
is not the hostess or host
but
who attended the gala.

In Barraclough street on
the council estate
in a front room parlour
I sit out the wait
smoking
a cheroot

I wouldn't want you to think that being in employment is the be all and end all
it appears at times to me to be more of an egress and less of a process for moving ahead.

If I dwell in this house that the Lord calls a home why do I work like a dog and get only a bone?

and self respect is I suspect a confidence trick
self induced to make you stick to a plan.

life may be shiny and bright but in everyone's future you'll find there's a night and
one that could last for years

agony to stay
more pain if I go
work should come with a government warning that earning below the living wage is just one more step and you fall off this page.

no shame in pleading poverty
that's what society is built on,
the poor and the helpless who search for a process and find only an egress and unless I'm mistaken are pushed away from the *** where those who have the lot are laughing into their kedgeree
society is also built on fish bones and the dead bodies of quails

Noah sails into the distance
and sensing no resistance
sinks
the Ark.

A tubed syringe and rain.
they stick it to you again
and aware of the pain
it'll bring

I'd like to stay in bed
but being abysmally paid
I have to struggle to work
to get my daily bread.

What a way to start the week
playing hide and seek
with London's
underground.

Just press that red button
put on your coat
and leave.

it'll all come to a stop one day,
the clock will not tick for the
elderly and sick,

the young will run on memory sticks,
downloading
something that clicks just for kicks

but we'll be gone.

Still wet
and I don't mean me
but I've finished my labours
and going home for my tea

It's summer or supposedly so
and yet the rain does not seem to want to let go

I'm buying a kayak or canoe,
a canoe because
I might have my kayak and eat it
haha
see what I did there?
if not
never mind
you'll find that joke
in a ******* that you pull
and I don't mean a girl.

The girl sitting next to me
has taken off her shoes
(I wonder if this is just the beginning )
there's a hole in her sock
but I don't think she's
Mother Kelly,

If you can't sing it
don't bring it to the
table.

Lots of Poppins in this carriage,
Pippi longstockings too, they're
all looking like drowned kittens
and everyone of them soaked right through.

That was pulled down
that was knocked down
that has moved out of town
gone
gone
they're all ****** gone
to somewhere where the
sun never shone,
what a shame

the company says,
text me your name
you'll be next.

He melts into the kerbstones, some think it's
**** on the street,
some throw him a look, but the eyes always cheat and see what they want and you do it too, you pretend he's not there because you don't want to see
and the
'please, can you spare...'
you only hear as an oath
so you swear to yourself, but you and I both know that you wish he would go.

See how he upsets the architects,
watch them protect with their anti ***** spikes their buildings from the likes of him and his kind, how kind of these great men to consider, want to get rid, to put padlocks on the bins.

(don't want him rooting for food)

He winds up in the brickwork, a splash of blood on the wall, **** in the gutter and he's not there at all, you see you don't see the invisible men when you are your own Superman.

Barely a day goes by that a day doesn't go by,
I'm busy watching the sundial and waiting for the summer.

Winter is like a mood clock always showing a moody time
and now it's that time, digitally, that I have to break free from the duvet and go shower which is fourteen hundred candle power according to the last count.

Destiny and
what she says to me,

curiously
he looks on and wonders where
that life has gone

I return to this scene
as a tribute to
what has been and not what
will be.

A
curiosity
but this cat lives.


Coming back from there to
breathe again
and feel the pain again which
slowly goes
and who knows to where?

In the superconsciousness of
which we have a share
I'll find the answer because it's
everywhere I've never looked

and that's how ****** up I was
at one time and another
when the bother of why bother was
too much of a bother to bother about.

We wake to the chatter of guns and is that the sound of drums or the beating of my heart?

A song.
'let's start at the very beginning,a very good place to be'

one day they'll all be free.
Free from persecution although many resolutions have been made,none are kept.

'Jesus wept'
I believe he did but they soon got rid of him.
If it's a sin to **** why try? we are only here for a while then die so let us live.
I give each day some daily bread and each day more are being killed,
dead,
and the dead don't cry.
Silence.