Notice them
homeless?

when and even if
you cannot see
you cannot fail to be
moved;

distraction?
get it out of your system,
you are not guilty
the system is.

Some drop a penny when he
begs or buy him a cup of tea
(keeping warm his misery)

Some pass by
bypass
step on the gas
get out of the way

can't say
I blame them
but
I can think it,
anyway
what's the answer?

She blows me kisses
like she's blowing bridges,
I put it down to her
army training.

We go two tone
begging Parlophone
for the record deal,

sent in demo's
sent them memo's
and no reply.

We'll try again
take the risk and
cut another disc
we'll send them a track or two
hoping the music gets through
and cross our fingers for luck.

Poetry,
if you get it you get it
if you don't you don't
and it won't worry
me.

I am impervious to jeers
can't hear them due to my
advancing years.

I write because it's less painful
than poking my eyes out with
a plastic straw of which I have
many.

but poetry's a therapy to the
addictive personality
and personally
I like it.

When I grow up
and
this is just a
hesitant memory,
you will remind me
of these days,

the watchful gaze of security men,
the nurses
doing more than their share again
the postman
the driver,
all hope to survive in a
national crisis

The Queen quoted Vera Lynn,
I think her Maj' had been on the gin.

when I grow up
what will I be?

for certain
a part of this memory.

It's like there's a couple of words running around in your head and you're not sure if it's a song that you heard or maybe something you've read and then the words in your head become flames on your tongue
and you don't care anymore because they're your words and more and the more the flame the more the words came until you dried like the desert you are.

Apostrophes bother me.

Apostle come bother me

opposites attract.

even when dry
when you feel you could die
the water is words yet to come,
some swim in it
some drown in it
I knit a gown and go out in it.

What is peculiar?
if not then to fool you
to make you superior?
inferior?
a reject?
when you're asking them, why me?
and I detect irony

we'll all rust away one day,
plastic pins and hips and things
will be all that remain.

I like the words that stain the walls
that rip through mansion halls to
crack the stucco on the ceilings,

'be careful', someone calls,
but heaven falls on Angels and
their wings
someone else now sings the words that
once ran wildly through my mind
and
I don't mind at all.

They're using you
and they're using me.

we are
a commodity,

buy and sell
or
sell and buy,

they're using us
and we now know why

Not clear on the here and never
sure that there is where it's at
but where there's hope that's
the place I've been,
seen the rough edges and sores
attended soirees with bores
came through it all
and more.

I read the stars
got them in paperback too
true.

Forever is in each moment that we
never take
and eternity is the final straw that
doesn't break

If I wake up and look
read the stars in my book
perhaps the here and never
will become clear

A million or two
but who knows.

it snows
every one goes
and those that can't
stay

our day
their night.

If home is the castle
then they are the rooks
but
you don't learn about
homelessness
reading books.

Safe and secure
even though we are poor
at least there's a roof
over our heads
clean linen sheets
comfortable beds

a million or two
but
who's counting?

What if
there was no Spiderman, Superman, Batman or what if there was no Spiderwoman, Superwoman, Batwoman or.. that woman's looking at me furiously as if I'd just taken her comics away, but
what if,
there really were real people
and we were just the warm-up acts?

She's telling me about crypto-currency which disrupts my train of thought which my brain had only just caught,

nothing runs to time anymore, what's mine is not even mine anymore, what's she talking about currency for?

Love is peculiar and for no reason in particular
I shall go and give her a kiss.

Webs are spun
between the rising
and
the setting sun.

Caught and trapped in the sticky strands of a day
I wait and
waste
away.

This power shower's flummoxed me
I turned the dial to forty three
but
I'm still
sixty.

Someone's picked me for a sunbeam
or am I shining in somebody's daydream?

When does
'the time of our lives start?'
and
do we have to line up?

this will all be whitewashed
airbrushed
hushed up
kept schtum
and no one will ever know
that in the twenty first century
our leaders could not organise
a **** up in a brewery.

Somewhere
there is a spellbinder
and I will find her
out where
the air is clear.
I feel her near to me
I so want to be
bound.

Found in her eyes
I would look in surprise
on another place
which smiles out of her face
and into my mind.

It's a kind of delusion, a fantasy,
a Peter Pan story
but for me it is real.
It's the seal on a contract
a dance with reality
a waltz across the dreaming sea
It's true
It just has to be.
Or why do I dream every night
Why do the stars scatter light on my brow
How can it not be so?
Tell me
I want to know.

And no answer was forthcoming.
In summing up
and thumbing my nose at them that don't know
I go on.

The truth is
It always existed
The dreams that consist of a better day
arrive in the night at the dousing of lights
and in a slow way
that slowly begins to feel okay
they say to me,
'I'm real
you see that it's true
why doubt
this is not about me
it's about you'

And the binding goes on
Long after the spellbinder has gone
her spells stay awake
make me ache
with a longing
She's put the song in
my heart.

She never wore nylons,
preferred stockings instead.

Her hair
coloured blue and her
lips violent red.

She said it's the new thing
this queen's for a fit king
I never said anything.

And time only told when
she got very old and
the lines that were drawn out
and borne out
in her fragility.

She mentioned me once
in an ambulance,
'Save me'
but she never gave me
a look when she looked
like a princess.

it's how we look at and take it
that we manage to make it
and the ones who can fake it
seem to go far.

We of the Sun wait in darkness
knowing that morning will come
with its song of a new day and
from out of the sky fall the notes of
musicians
precisely piano and rightfully so.
We of the Sun begin the dance in
the flow to the rhythm of heat
at the beat of the new day and
it is always the way that
the children of light last out
through the long night, for we
are of the
Sun.

The only beginning ends in death when even the moonlight cannot catch a breath that floats across the battlefield filled with dreams of peace and yet release is probably imaginary, maybe a temporary respite, for the dark night holds many terrors.

I wonder who's making the bullets and bombs,
who's making a profit from war,
where are the young ones who whistled so gaily
will we see them no more?

Sunday for some

hold my gun
I need a leak

Birds came and pecked through the silver top,
popping their beaks in
for a dribble of milk,
it was cold then,
back in the old days
not so anymore.

And the slow light of the glow worm that could turn a bird in mid flight would send sparse light, but enough light as if enough light was a feast.

The snowmen in the garden that stood under the clothes line looked perfect with two buttons sewed into their eyes until the thaw came and they melted like our hearts did when they went away and the days grew even longer after that.

The frogspawn burst into tadpoles became black comma's in the pond and the herons flew like spitfire aircraft,
how daft we laughed and gaily played as if the season would last forever and tomorrow would never come.

Mr's Brown is Bobby coming out to play today?

Then Bobby went away,
taken by leukemia that crept in silently and took him quietly and still we squandered the fading sunlight.

On the dullest of days when the bagpiper plays and a darkness comes into my heart,
I stand there, out on the foreshore, waiting for emptiness
and wanting no more.

I walked into her breakdown and all broken up she said,
"You've got to help me stamp out all the demons in my head"
I couldn't help myself and so I knew my use to her, was similar to a drowning man grasping at thin air.
She screamed and then went silent as I opened up my eyes.
I waded through her temperament and shovelled up her sighs.
I watched as she exploded in to frothy foaming seas and then I knew that I could do just exactly as I pleased.
The night fell out from its sunken lie
The seas ran red with ruby wine and then they all ran dry
I swear I saw Emmanuel break dancing in the sky..
But all I heard was the howling wind and her pleading plaintive cry.

The day tripped up as we all tripped on
The morning came and then was gone
We never knew when or just how long
We'd have to wait for the evensong.

So when we packed the cases and we sped out in the rain
The falling sun crashed down to earth causing us some pain
We had to lay in the sandy bay,prisoners on the Spanish main
But that's the way we did it and we'd do it all again.

Someone should slap me awake
I can't take any more of these sad songs
the ones that play on and go around in the dream

The rainbow slows as it puts colours in my eyes
and
somewhere where the angel cries over
an untended gravestone
I feel alone.

it's the ukulele thing
sweet music on a savage wing
and the prayers which keep repeating
eating into me.

B.Demille in Saville Row
says
someone has to go
so I know
I'm dreaming.

When we start going backward and stop going forward.
llaw eht no si gnitirw eht.

sometimes tricky
last night was sticky
hot and sweaty,

I like it cooler
because I am older.

and also
I'm woke,
I am
one of the broke ones
that they reassembled
to resemble that
which I once was.

It's just a
Thursday
in the year of the plague
we wonder vaguely on the
outskirts of sanity
until we wander off

Today is a jelly day.
a cold broth concentrated consommé
kind of day.

You must have been at sometime when you said,
'I don't want to play anymore'
when the doors were shut and you'd bruised your knee and the tears were falling into your own sea and see how easy it is now to forget.

And Monday always smacks you awake, it's
no wonder your head hurts and your feet ache
for ***** sake
why

bother yourself with the mundane?

Split your mind into the faster frame and do a selfie on the phone,
everyone can't be or maybe they can be photoshop or top of the pops though some will always stay at home and vegetate,
cold broth concentrate
consommé?
that'll have to do
for today.

'What day is this?', said the wolf
who knew well his time was nigh
'Why
it's Friday', replied the snail,
idling as the morning rushed by.

Back to the present
and if I'm correct,
the weekend's upon us,
we can all get wrecked.

Whether I can get my act
together or not
I've still got
more chance than
the wolf.

Up close and personal
Friday on the
Central.

I smell Paris
it must be her
perfume.

She's ******* a rosary
it's probably something
she's wishing for,
I see that
he's watching
surreptitiously
and now he's
getting off.

I'm scratching my head
in disbelief
almost there and
feeling relieved.

It'll be better at two
when
the day's work
is through and
I'm heading in the
opposite direction.

we thought that we were juggernauts
astronauts
thoughts we all believed in

when we believed the head of the pin was the ballroom
there was no room for manoeuvre
and then they blew you
away.

Black specs or black ops
madmen or the cops
one and the same.

we thought we were the biz
the wiz'
we were not even the ***.

any one anyway
this wasn't blue ray
just
pay per view
cheap enough for me
and cheap for you too.

and we thought we
were
juggernauts.

As children, we bestowed life upon them
and laughed out loud when they
floated away,

I still catch sugar stealers every day
and
Summer has that way about it

laughter is so sweet
I
try to catch it too.

Stick men on canvas
in the foreground is Jesus
and Lowry is shaking his head.

Winter hit the mountainside with a clenched fist,
snow covered trees bowed and prayed.

The gallery wall held it all
saw it all
bared it all to
its breast.

we had danced to the magic of movement
on the oilskin of paint in the pool.

The love affair imbroglio of my youth.

No truth to be told except the truth of being old and sometimes the truth is a lie,
if I cry as I fall it is because I saw the wonder of it all
if I die it is as
a happy man.

You wonder where it came from John
but do you want to know
when the Sun sets in the darkening sky
where does it really go.

I'm trying to watch a daffodil
unfold and see it grow
but I wonder on and to myself
do I really want to know.

Ennui are we
(Like toys r us )
but there's no game to play
as I wander through this field
of mists
and slowly fade away.

In the middle of the night, not a sound but I write and the morning always seems so far away.
To brush the satin coat of midnight one might think that shiny blinds me but my eyes find me not wanting when I want to see some more.

And the poet pulls out poetry from a drawer set in his library which stretches to eternity which is twice times 'round the sun.

Tuesday on the Praire and
the Walton family dare me
to say,
'goodnight John-boy'

All the things we wanted and we never got
are just a drop in an ocean of plenty.

When I was of a certain age
I had it all and more
uncertainly

an undefinable rage
built up in me.

the passing of time and the bells that chime
took their toll on me

all the things I ever had
and could not see.

Sixty is the best time to
tell the time of your life.

Through the tumbledown town the tumbleweed blown by the lateness

of wind that flew like a swan unused to stretching her wings comes

a tattoo of the morning that rises with breakfast and brings hope with

the postmen and the howling of cats on the tiles.

I have slept, walked, burnt and burst a hundred thousand miles in my search for the questions to question each answer I get and I get nothing but more answers to question the questions and each answer cancels the answer before

I wonder what answering questions is for, but for questions to answer and each one the cancer, no **** and no cure.

The swan flies away, the wind dies away, the tumbleweed brown in the tumbledown town blows away and there is but for another day my life in a nutshell.

Send me the necklace and a chainsaw to Texas
there's a movie going on in my head

Chianti and chips
the mask slips

but I'm dead on the inside
and don't try to hide it

I go through this life in a dream.

The spirit guide that rides with me
and has done as far as I can see
forever,
never lets me down.

This is a lightness to a being
and although I cannot see him
or her
I know the spirit guide is there.
with
a blue lamp for my healing
that peels away all pain.

I can be an angel with my wings alight with fire
take flight and sing as part of one large
flaming choir, or I could be
the depths you want to see
as you look into the ocean,do
you want me to become
the fun in the fun house,the titmouse that makes you squeal,the breath on your lips that make you feel so very, very nice or the unaffordable price that I won't make you pay and
the heat of your day turned into the spice of my night
the shade on the lamp light or the shadow you find as you tune slowly in to what's going on in my mind?

Would it bother you to know that I'm as slow as a snail
would you sail as quickly to this dangerous shore
and be grounded,
though not wrecked as I want more and more of you? do
you think when you sink into sleep that the angel with the wings on fire is there just for the heavenly choir and not for you
did you never believe that your dreams would come true
and if they could would you be
as happy as me
when I'm watching you sleep as I stand guard and keep
the nightmares away?

Sail quickly into this bay
let us lay down and die while our cries fade away
making love in the forenoon
what a wonderful way
what a day to begin.

I am the slave of desire
take hold of my wings and put out this fire that drenches me,quench my thirst,burst me apart and then look into my heart and what do
you feel as I peel off my skin layer by layer
will you say a prayer as we enter?
The pupil and the mentor and which is which but one and the same and oh what lessons to make games from.

The bomb explodes
the fires die down
I open these eyes that have seen so much more than the breakfasts of dreams in a bowl,
upturned and empty on the cold bedroom floor
I want some law to be enacted that would stop these distractions that brings mornings to life and send eyes open wide, where once again I'm beside myself with the passion of loss.

As I burn so I learn and I feel the need to read between the lines, which are the scratches upon the faces from some other times
or lines of other rhymes we have read and lost or ****** away into the bottom drawer.
There has to be more than I see
more than me
more than we or what we become
more fun as we squeal and we feel what we are
something that lies somewhere behind the distance of the distant star
or another bar on the fruit machine
that bandit we see but have never seen
let me think on, and in dreams I'll belong
to the truth of the night
with fiery wings I'll take flight and we'll
start all over again.

I see them and they dance for me, bow and prance for me, jump off the mantlepiece and shake hands with me, as if in dreams I sit and chat to China figurines, the old lady in the red dress sells her wares to me, the gentleman, a sailor, tells me of the sea and we are one big happy family, my china figurines and me.