This is cute,
she weaves me into her ponytail
a lock locked into her.

It's nice if nice is the word to confuse and I use it
accordingly

she still weaves until the last of
Summer leaves me.

and I am that part of my woman
as she
is that part of me.

Confess you're a mess and that
you're worth much more than last night's
clothes strewn over this morning.s floor.

I'm doing the pick-me-up
Alka Seltzer
in a China cup,
( because everything's made in China,
except for my hangover )

Never again,
he said,
above the jackhammer
yammering in his head,

I shall be sober
industrious and
be that which is
in all of us,

but never is a long time
and again comes quite often
I'm leaving my options
open.

The night closes in on its prey
and this day will become history,
a back story in a second rate
daily.

what interest can it hold
when we can fold it away
and forget it?

and my eyes will close out the night
only the flashing lights of firing neurons
will remain and even they will go,
I know this.

She,
gives me a kiss and says,
cheer up.

and I said,

' whatya frightened for ?
you know
where you're going to
you know who'll be
waiting for you'

she said to me,

' I do '

It was one
if those times can be one
when
I went along
with the wish

and sometimes
that's all one
can
wish for.

Bromley by-Bow,
it
is as well to know
not the same as
Bow road where it is
still advisable to
'Mind the gap'

Have you ever seen
Stepney Green on
Saturday?
Ha
no way you'll see it from
the underground
as I've just found.

On to Aldgate East
don't expect to meet
that
'turbulent priest'
he's long gone.

I'm going on
passing Tower Hill,
the monument
a monument to
the great fire

Cannon street
no cannons
Mansion house where
they really need *****
(of the cannon variety)
Blackfriars in a blackfriary,
must remember that and put
It in my diary
Temple
Embankment
Westminster
at James's park
and it's dark but still
underground so quite
reasonable

Victoria
amused?
I'm confused
it looks so new.

Glass and steel
all go to make me
feel cold and
unwanted
which is probably true
in the new
continuum.

just not the place I remember
not my town, but it was late
September,
I remember it ran red with
the laughter of vines,
how colourful times were
back then.

Ghosts that now flit between
doorways
half lit by the light of a neon
can someone please tell me
what happened and when.

If space is expanding
can the pundits inform me
why am I still standing here?

Yesterday is not far behind me
coming up fast on the blind side
to blind me with truths I once
held to be true.

My advice,
never look in the rear view mirror
it only tells you
what you already know.

(20 minute poetry)

Counting down now and
getting the order right
somehow.

This miracle escapes from my eyes,
more truth there than lies and
don't we despise them?

Blind men can see and three wise men were
given the Nod in a place East of Eden
that's if you believe them,
not sure that I do.

I cut through the *******
spit on my palm
and we shake on the deal

I am the real gypsy
plain talk and honesty trip
me up every time,
but I'm brethren to heathen
somewhere in the past.

I cast my bread into the wine
( water's fine though not as tasty)
and as they say
'Less haste makes john waste his life away'
I'd say that was true
(Lies through and through)

I fight with my feelings this way
and in the index of order if such things exist
I will be
or rather not
be
missed.

This
for me is the triangle
musical
whimsical
spiritual
I see all points simultaneously
and that's what is really
draining me
of energy.

I drift into yet another passing cloud
the time is in order,
the clock
stopped at three.

I could if necessity needs less of me drink to excess
but I guess we all could.

I think you have to click it twice
before the light comes on,
the ****** thinks,
**** this.

a..because he's Irish
or
b.. because he doesn't like to swear.

and though he doesn't like to swear he
swears it wasn't him out there looking
through the window shade.

I clicked it twice and saw
the light come on
the butler wore
a smile and nothing else

I expected something else for
my penny in the slot,
but all I got was that.

The Chinese people
have got it right
subtitle everything
the sun
the moon
the night
can't go wrong there,

he still swears it wasn't him
outside the
Dim hung Kowloon inn
but
the subtitles told a
different tale.

Perhaps they're plugged in to some astronomical event
in any event they're plugged in to something.

Unseeing eyes looking into my eyes,
absented pupils.

I wonder what they're listening to
the end of the world?
coming to you via radio 2

Stripey pants man looks like an old paint can
splotches everywhere,
girl with a comb in her hair and I wonder if she's forgotten it's there or is it a fashion statement?

for a cross section they don't look cross,
resigned I'd say to another working day.

And because and is a handy word it's just one of those things and
it's raining.


If it wasn't for this
which I confess
I would miss
what else could I do?

Carriage 91189
I'm going through them
one at a time
in no particular order
but they all look the same to me.

At the end of the run
at the point of a gun
when it's no longer fun
this show
will close.

What if
when we get there
everything's gone
and we find
heaven's been flushed
down
the pan galactic
john

who'll be the missionaries then?

who'll put his arm around the u-bend
at the world's end?

For some
the work is never done
and what could be worse than
the worst is yet to come?

the weekend is not always the
friend you turn to when Friday
fails,

he sails off into the West End on
his sinking yacht,
but it's not what it seems
and he can float on his dreams
if necessary.

Someone has been messing about
there are too many soap suds and
the submarine's gone missing,

the duck looks on confused
as I do the turtle and sink,

bathtime blues and you'd think
at my age
I'd
get over them,

going under again
looking for the sub
and accidentally
pulling the plug,
next time
I'm showering
just to show
who's got the power in
this household.

(20 minute poetry)


What a depressing looking day
dull and damp and more rain on the way,
what a depressing day.

Feels like I'm walking through the cemetery in the middle of a night and the night or the cemetery is me.  

Going back to bed looks a better bet and it'll save me from getting wet, but who'll save me from myself?

What a depressing looking day and the powers that be, will in their wisdom make it last twenty four hours especially for me,

am I being a misery?

This shadow will rise if I open my eyes and to be honest that's what I must do.


Blue
electric
wired or not
I plugged into the day
and that's what I've got.


This tube's a torpedo
running.

and somewhere the Kapitan
is sunning himself
ready to explode.

bites the bullet and writes this note.

( this kind of mood leads only to the Coliseum where the lions are waiting )

(20 minute poetry)

Back again on the underground,
threatening rain topside,

In this,
shall we say submarine,
I dream of delights
gems that sparkle in
otherwise dreary nights.

I know where I am
and
where I've been
but below ground
I can dream.

It's a bit like being dead and
without the bother of a price
on my head.

I have seen pearls born of oysters,
prayed and foisted myself onto the silver crucifix to fix
some part of me,
walked through the abbey to find holiness and in the
monastery of man found only emptiness.

I'm still here on the Central,
just fazed out for a while and
now tuning in because I'll soon
be in
Stratford.

But there are colours in here
auras I guess,
so many memories
that I could undress are
impressed upon this cylinder.

if it's a dream and I'm never sure that it is.
if in the gems that delight
that furnish me with more dreams tonight,
it's
always if isn't it?

Some things, lay in surprise,
some things demoralise
but you, don't know a thing about those,
you go through life,
thinking it's a bed of roses,
how cute
to jump in head
first
without  the benefit
of  a
parachute,
If I could be someone like you,
then I'd be jumping head first too
it's the thing that all lover's do,
and don't I know it.

Sam,
the Arsenal fan was
next to Fred
who'd lost his head
at a West Ham game,
the referee had the centre plot
shot dead at the
penalty spot.

save me from
the football graveyard?
you couldn't if you tried.

That cop on the beat
dim down a dark street,

he's too much a toratti,
although sometimes
he'll pull on you a Marquez,
smile and say,
hey bud
are you okay?

if you gotta meet
the cop on the beat
he's the best you can
hope for.

So,
there I was
putting patterned tiles
on the bathroom wall,
it was like playing
Mahjong and losing.

Don't worry
I'm still listening in
the radio's *******
and
so
is the gin
but
I'm listening in,

I'll be here for a while
twisting the dial
and you want a bit more?

*******.

They say that his heart popped right out of his chest,
Doctors know best?
now me,
I think the Devil jumped into him,
filled him up to the brim with some
bad ******,
but what do I know.
I was just a friend.

Hi **
Hi **
It's off to work why go?
Just sit and sun and have some fun
Why go hi ** why go.

Speak as you find
I don't mind if I do.
as unique is to me
so unique is to you.

we are all leaves from the one tree, each leaf being different from another and occasionally, seasonally,
cyclically falling to found a new dynasty,  the same you and me in a different tree, the one tree.

But it's only pie and mash when you ain't got any cash and we should be reading Dickens or poems by Frederick Ogden Nash,
but we've got beans on crusty bread instead and Private Eye beside the bed because we like to think that we're all spies.

eyes down for the full house, the flop house it's never the mansion house is it?


Hi blasted **
I'm going to have a go
but don't know when

have you ever wondered why
men
are like that?

It was a gin house in Limehouse
a fine house
to dine in.
But long before then it was an ***** den
where the 'Gents' from the city
came to look at girls
who once,
were quite pretty
that was a long time ago.

Now it's an inn
and the in place to be.
Once where dragons roamed free in the heart of the East End
People now spend  a drink or two
allowing the theatre queue
to go down.

The town's not the same
all the music halls have closed
and the dreams that were posed on the pages of magazines
are just scenes I remember from childhood.
Maybe that's a good thing and perhaps it is not
Perhaps it's a sign of the times that we've got,
when we had ****** all
it was the music halls that enthralled us
that mixture of melody and comedy,
tragedy and look at me
harking back to those
'good old days'

It pays to recall the gin house down Limehouse
and the Ladies who knew nothing else
but the dragons who perched on the end of a pipe
or else I'd think it okay
to think in the old way.
Which is not the in place
to be.

How I loved those harbour lights,
as shipwrights, we worked through those long and lonely nights and laid keels for Queens that rode the sea.

She was one,
The S.S mv Lexicon, a giant of a lady she. would leave her lipstick marks upon the sea and we just loved her, built her dream in funnels square and clean and launched her late one Monday Eve and when steam had scorched the boilers, we've seen our Queen go sailing far away.

That day has gone now, steam no more, a passing fancy but I adored the smoke and grit, the wit of Bosuns as they spat at this and that and harried cabin boys who touched their caps out of respect, I expect it's for the best.
And tomorrow what will be is a lack of joi de vivre and the sea will look so flat.

It is on a Friday she sits and
watches from the quayside the
ships coming in.
She's waiting for Jim,
he signed on at the 'pool' in '59
sailed for a time in the
South China seas, sent her
bone china and teas.

One tour took him around the 'cape'
a one hundred foot wave gave the crew
no avenue of escape
they went down to the deep and the deep
always keeps
her boys close to her chest.

She still waits and she watches the ships slipping in,
shipping out and
there is no doubt in her mind that,
God being kind,
Jim will arrive
home one day.

I remember,
once upon a Frankenstein,
how divine the memory
that sublimates the truth.

Monsters hide and bide their time,
electrically
comes Frankenstein.

Misunderstood, but
he looks good in
nuts and bolts,
ten million volts?

I'd be looking that way too
if only Frankenstein could tell
me what to do.

In the mean and I mean
mean,
I dream of
Monsters,
they dream
of me.

There's a cavalcade of cars
with lights that shine as bright as stars
reflecting up and off a wet and dreary drive.
Winter on the streets covered by the sheets of rain,
such a shame the sheets don't seem to last,
soon
the weather's passed into a better place
(like Siberia)
pray that it may find some peace.

An old leprechaun lives on my lawn
he cuts and keeps it neat
I called to him and asked his name
he told me it was Pete.

One day old Pete just went away
he didn't leave a note
before the grass turns into hay
I'll have to buy a goat.

incidentally any relevancy is set to irrelevant the moment I begin to write with eyes shut tight and wired only to my brain,
a moment for pleasure and the pen and many more for pain,
again it's
almost me as if that bore any relevancy.

you krap it all out on soshul meediyah
take a leak in Wikipedia
sit on
back seats in the cinema
and all to impress the
girl that's meeting you
which means nothing to the dog
that is snapping at your heels.

it feels like all the other before's
before the closure of the doors
and after when after came before
it
was too late to get in the game
it still felt the same.

she said
he said
they said
I said, shut the **** up
to the voices hiding in my head,

the cat yawned slowly
it must be tired too.

long hair that hangs down,
bags under your eyes that
weigh you down
a paunch, and that wasn't
there before,
does it really look like you?

Thinking of a gym'
ending up with a gin,
at some point
we have to begin
to get things in order.

This has been the Summer
that wasn't,
social distancing hasn't
done anyone any favours.

It becomes difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible to reach an end, a conclusion, but there are two ends? or maybe
they're the beginnings of the same ends. I become
bogged down by uncertainty which, like a snake, coils around inside of me and ties me up in knots, not to be outdone
my mind becomes a loaded gun, my eyes look down the barrel where my tongue acts as the silencer that silences the
rattling of the snake.

Drinking milk to ease a stomach ulcer, checking my pulse because I am much older than I used to be and so is my uncertainty.

Issues becoming broader as the nights seem so much longer and my life is getting shorter and so am I.

my shrink could not bring herself to say,
that one day I would shrink away
to nothing,
but I knew that.

We're still wondering what's going on
or even if anything's going on that we
should be wondering about,
but
it's all about wondering  what it's all about
or so I think which is about it really.

When we know what's going on
we'll stop wondering
and I wonder if
that'll be a shame.

A gill of gin to start the day and
then I'm in the zone
a hidden flagon on the wagon
I'm on the way back home.

Sometimes I make moonshine,
fire up the still only waiting to fill
another bottle with ***** for
one more light cruise
down fuddled memory lane.

On Sunday I rest
go to church dressed in my tux,
and get
a few funny looks from the Vicar.

I keep my eyes on the time
my head in the moonshine, a
couple of hymns, prelude to
a few more sweet Pimms
and the day comes to
an end.

Something obscures my sight, it may be a sign of the times or the night, but I can't see too clearly, my vision is best used when I'm looking back and the tracks that I trade are like beacons which made the fires that show the way on.

I walk with the weight of some years on my frame and each year bears the name of the one gone before, if each year was a door to go through then I went through them all, not remembering when but there must have been ink in my pen somewhere along the trade of the track, looking back it's all clear and that was the end of one more time of year, one more falling tear, one more thing to fear, but it's only at times when these things bring to mind the unfortunate apocalypse into which slips the man.

I can make a wish, but I can't find the lamp if I could I would wish that I wasn't this ***** that tramps back through the years and it all ends in tears yet again I still look for some words or a book to console me when the thing that obscures my sight holds on and controls me.

Anyway,
the day has been judged and found wanting more weight,
the scaffold's been built, but my sight is of late getting worse and
it's harder to see if it's me with a rope
or the last vestige of hope,
waving goodbye.

Walking through the regiments of
old red,cold,dead
tenements
giving compliments
to the planners who put spanners in the works
of parliaments.

The ghosts of raggy arsed kids still play football on the grass,
not caring a rats *** for the 'no ball games' sign and
lining up for 'nitty Nora' the bug explorer,
lice ain't nice even in the afterlife.

It's Shangri La on mescalin,
got no drugs
you don't get in
but paradise is just as nice drug free
at least you'll see
the fuller colours of your life.
believe me
it is true.
I once flew the underground with sounds of eagles in my hair but I realise now, I wasn't really there at all
but trapped behind the sliding walls and door of wanting just a little more than life could give.

I stand now,in some cool reception,waiting for that flash of inspiration,perception alters as we age,
two more words wrote on my page,
Getting wiser.

There's always that one thing that keeps me from sleeping
one thing that's keeping me going.

If I dream it's on license
a
parole from the board.

I am shored up by promises of
a bright new tomorrow,
but it's groundhog all around me
nothing's a future
not for you
nor for me

the license expires at dawn,
no dreams for the wicked
none for the good and
what good can that be?

one thing after another
keeping me
keeping me
going.