Nightlife scene
no high life seen
in every window, boxes with screens
people obscene
can be seen
in the nightlife scene

horizon queen
on the railway scene
the skyline of could’ve been
and maybe a has-been
roams the high life scene
in the nightlife scene

and lonely old Jean
a thought-to-have-been
roams innocently her scene
and maybe she did too her high life scene
can be seen
are the tears on her cheeks
in the nightlife scene.

I would like once more to see white smoke come
unfurling from the mountains beyond you.
Whilst the cold makes noses blue and hands numb.
And all the while it was of death you knew,
would come and get us in the twilight hour-
we still have hills to find, and sights to see.
We, who hell’s grim tyrant doth devour,
scatter ourselves amongst life’s debris.
I would utter the three powerful words
if I thought you could hear it how I want
you to hear it (like the high-flying birds).
I’ll keep you from the evils of thunder,
Roaming free, we shall go off and wonder.

If I painted all the world
your favourite hue,
and lay it on your lap,
and sprinkled it with golden dust,
coming from the golden tap,
would you permit me
to hold your hand for now
(and forever more)?

If I discovered all the world’s
riches, put them all in your view
found the Holy Grail,
and gave it only to you,
would you allow me
the honour of being yours for now
(and forever more)?

If I climbed all the world’s
mountains, swam all the seas,
crossed every desert,
and saved all the trees,
would you let me
be your one and only for now
(and forever more)?

All of the shacks and houses and double
fronted mansions
lie in the vicinity
of a town no-one’s really
heard of which in turn lies
there because of the shacks and houses
and double fronted mansions.
Neither would exist without the other
and nothing would happen without them,
the people are insignificant... there’s no politician
no diplomat or embassy worker here,
there’s no world leading bio-chemist or
any line of royalty behind the slats of wood
or the red brick and bay window fronts.

There once was a boy
Who grew up being
The boy who lived down the lane
And he told everyone that he’d been to
The Great Wall of China
When the farthest he’d been was 100 miles up the coast
He told his friends he was allergic to strawberries
When he simply didn’t like the taste
And he was terrified of letting himself down
But deep down
He was petrified of letting anyone down.

There once was a boy
And he knew all too well that
The book was correct
He too was going to die one day
But what he didn’t know was how
And why
And who and where
And those were the questions
He needed the answer to the most
But those were the questions
He knew all too well
That weren’t the questions to be asking.

And now he’s travelled beyond the 100 miles
And seen such beauty.
And now he’s eaten a whole strawberry
And grew rather fond of the taste.

He never did know the question he should
Be asking
But it’s close to him now and he’s growing now
Not up now
But toward, now
Toward it all toward the truth and the question
And he knows all too well
That the world is indeed a deep dark pit
And on every side death does cast forward his net.

And the boy wanted more of it all.

The calendar maker don't know tragedy
is gonna happen on the day
he takes most pride in, it ain't visible on his screen
and it ain't wrought and wrangled in
with the pixels on his
paper or on the
walls of his custom.
if he knew, d'ya think he'd bother
caring for september,
June July or November
d'ya reckon he'd bother
to name the days at all?

Beacon of prayer, flicker and be
the light of sky. Call me to your
worship and break me into
two. Danger and endanger me,
extinct. Match or game? And game?
Start at the end and end in a pool
of molten silver, molten treasure.
Get on your knees, look to the sky and
call out to the deities, for I am burning now.
I trusted you, ash and all.
Now I see; all that flickers ends in dust, anyway.
that al

Of cherry blossomed orient
and of deep desert Sahara
I thought, and in the same moon shade
and under each dark sky I walked.
Of grey ****** mounts
and of green turf fells
I thought, and under each effervescent light
and beneath each blue atmosphere I walked.
Why did I walk? Through orient and Sahara?
Why did I think and have these thoughts?
Well, I had a question and I thought my destination
had an answer to that question. My destination was you
and I have my answer.

Family, go.
After all, there will remain
a part of you
because in the end, we are all
reduced to tree stumps
the size of broken limbs
and your porcelain collar bones, broken
are now scattered all around
the crying child.

I fear for the planet
and fearing the planet makes me
fear it even more;
a world where its inhabitants fear their
own surroundings is a world to be very fearful of indeed.

His first wife died in a fire,
She’d taken her last breath moments
before the blue lights had reached her
and it really hit home how alone he was.
He had loved her more than anything,
Gave her the best he could offer
and still didn’t think it was enough.
She wasn’t really as devoted
but they managed to love to Silver
and he’d made her his trophy
and showed her off to no-one.

His second wife didn’t really like
him very much and
neither did he
and he was still alone amidst the fighting.
His trophy got smashed in one of the bad ones
and they never got past Paper.
And he was glad to be rid of her,
Shed of a cloak in the summer,
Glad of the lonely
like a cloak in the winter.

And he hadn’t had any children
and his family had died
a long time ago.
So all he had to his name was this place,
A quiet
in the
middle of the noise.

His quiet had oak-panelling
all around and little black books
full of people like him
for people like him.
And the smell of *** pourri still lingers
like the smell of his first’s perfume on his bed sheets for ages after she went
and he never washed them.

His quiet was frequented by workers whiling away
their lunch hours.
And he ate a packed lunch
at the desk.

oh to the world she sang
all night long, her song was the
only break the people
could hear from the perpetual and insistent
persistent ringing of car horns.
police sirens. and gun shots.
all through the night she sat - a constant
in a universe of atmospheric
change, a world of ever-lasting
inconsistency. it was sweet, a hummingbird’s call,
a sweet candy in amongst the notes. her
chord was her friend and her voice
was the end. of the war for the night
for the fight and
all who listened stopped short
and forgot the cause.
why did they do it? was the repeated
line, why did they ****? she cries, her voice
forever flourishing, beautiful and sacred,
but evidence suggests there’re under
tones of broken strings and mismatched hymns, a
cry of pain... nestled like the bird she sounds of.
why did they **** my family?
the sanctity of her voice broke the
‘sanctity’ of the war.

last night I dreamt of a world with no money,
100,000 sunsets passing without a clash of a coin,
and the ghastly humans with copper under their nails
who spend all day dreaming of having gold there instead,
were nowhere to be found. Lurking near the oak trees
(which always stand, perpetual and insistent)
are aliens with smiles (perpetual and insistent)
who only feel happiness (that strange, absent feel)
and have free time to do free things with free minds
and don't have mankind's titanic burden of worry.
in my dream state I dreamt of states with no war,
poverty or famine, and I dreamt of leaders leading
and people peopling, and indeed the leaders lead
with no other incentive than purely to lead.
no money built walls between homes and lands,
no barriers put up between the wild untamed landscapes
nothing stopped people from traveling their world
that their ancestors created for them and seeing the
sights before they pass to the next stage, all of life
being free of charge, if that were a thing.
money never happened and no man laid awake at night
(or in a deep calm dreaming state) wishing of a world
with money. what would we offer the dreaming man?
a world of misery pain greed and men who dream of
the world the first dreaming man is in? no. it is
ludicrous and ridiculous.
last night I dreamt of a world with no money,
and I turned my head on my pillow and tried to dream
of a lonelier world.

often I miss the day I painted the sky grey
often i long to feel it again
when i drew blood from the clouds
do you remember the civilians?
the civilians wept as i drew blood
they longed for their families
are they okay?

Oh, planet of the azure,
Cypriot sands,
Nordic beauty,
Amazonian lands,
Nile river plains,
It’s plain to see that our world
is a paradise for the
paradisiacs and the aphrodisiacs,
The business suited men,
The wedding dressed women,
The children of the soil.

But also plain to see are the
oil-stricken sands,
Viking battlegrounds,
Deforested lands,
Dry river plains.
Unknowns and ****** deviants,
Power hungry animals,
Divorce cases to be,
Already dead.

Oh, land of the azure,
Strike up a match and burn us all down,
Won’t you?

Oh, paradise world,
A giant floating blue pearl,
Cut us all down and burn our ashes?

Let us make amends,
Blue and green marble,
For we have doubted your sands,
Lands, and beauty,
We have doubted them whilst we have stood upon them.

For we are too tall to see what heaven lies beneath our feet,
And we look to the skies for heaven whilst we are among angels.

I saw you walk to me, across
the Place Bellecour, and I smiled.
The shuttered windows
and my unshuttered expression
told you that it wasn’t the time for this,
but the recessed windows on the grey roofs
and the off-white brick told me it was.

I saw you walk to me, across
the Place Bellecour, and I smiled.
The spires of the distant churches
and the unbroken line of sight
called to you that we better hurry on,
but the lines of windows (like members of an audience)
shouted at me to kiss you.

I saw you walk to me, across
the Place Bellecour, and I smiled.
A deep blue surreal sky and the
whisper of a floating white cloud
shouted to you to say yes,
and the white cloud of up and above
cheered me on, evermore,
to Paris and to Lyon.

Here, we find:
"mass rivers and mountains and creeks of concrete disarray
which shadow embassies steeped
in deep shadow, here, regency is at its highest
in the days following a political nightmare, scandal.
a square with more than four sides -- propaganda
like the lies they tell and the lives they don't shed (do)"

Moving on, we discover:
"suddenly! a church of bulbs – the press are here? the
flashes and crashes of all history under
the watchful clock of the church. colourful."

A quick history lesson, before we continue:
"commune! let’s make another ism you can call your own; riot.
what a riot what a LAUGH!
(don't flinch at the pepper spray)"

A quick round-up before lunch:
"all of this leads to the centre, a city of myths and of colour
and of politics and of colour, we’re in the dead
centre here, the red centre here.
this one's got four sides."

Today, on the streets of NYC
or London, I passed a future president
in his stride, and I passed a disgraced
soldier, discharged for discharging
a round of ammunition on his friend,
I passed a man whose uncle was
Neil Armstrong, and a woman whose
face was drenched in acid by
an evil ex-boyfriend.
I was walking along the Champs Elysees,
today, when I smiled at a man who
is a relative of Gustav Eiffel, perhaps
even his grandson, or more. He was wearing
a suit, a normal, plainly dressed man
blending in.
Today, as I wandered past the skyline of
Vancouver, Chicago, Shanghai, a little girl
cried, and cried and cried. She’s to become the
scientist to cure cancer, the common cold,
or more. She has blonde pigtails and a giant
pink ribbon in her hair.
Underneath the Japanese bloom,
the leader of a gang stopped in front
of me to admire the white blossom,
and I did the same. Perhaps we
shared a word or two, me not knowing this man’s
crime. He not knowing mine.

Underneath all bloom in all the world,
seven billion future presidents,
seven billion disgraced soldiers,
descendants of astronauts,
acid scoured people,
seven billion Mr or Mrs Eiffels,
seven billion cancer curers,
and mob leaders walk their walk
and talk their talk.
No beacon shines upon them
and no beacon ever will.

A bird flies upward
into the sky. Important; the
bird will die one day.

The bell struck thirteen
and all the mourners cried,
The cats shrunk to the corner
and the dogs howled through the night.
“The poets have run out,”
the young town crier screams,
“they’ve run out of their rhyme,
and they’re bursting at the seams!”
And in the midst of the coffin dropping
and the young children scattering,
The crying girl looks in her mirror,
And drops it to the floor, smashing, clattering.

The bell struck fourteen
and all the town mourned,
The town’s workers ran out
and the meeting was adjourned.
“The Sun, it is falling,”
yells the pretty young girl,
“Get out of your houses now!”
And the mystery begins to unfurl.
In amongst the premature fallen,
A bare boy’s skin blisters,
And all around him she’s not there,
The only crying ones are his sisters.

The bell struck fifteen,
And the town was left deserted,
Save a young girl lying, and her brother
whose gaze was averted.
“All that live must die,”
A sound from a speaker on a van,
“Passing through nature to eternity.”
Live while you must and die whilst you can.
The stars have fallen from the sky,
And they’re crashing to the ground,
Lust the only left emotion,
Lying, waiting to be found.

Under the Spanish bloom,
and beneath the perpetual sky,
a young boy walked with a girl.
She was struck by the beauty of it all;
the gentle breeze and the subtle ease
of the night. The boy was less pleased, though
and continued to stride, his pride effervescent
in the bland moonlight.

Under the winter bleached trees,
and beneath the star spangled sky,
the girl was alone now, crying.
She was hit by the sense of loneliness
that she found curled below the undergrowth
like the runt of a litter or an injured mammal.
She was injured now, that’s what she told
everyone else, anyway.

Under a spineless, leafless tree,
and beneath a white, all white sky,
a boy sits with a hole in his heart
and a gap in his speech.
It crumples up in him like
a poignant piece of painted cloth.
Like a prayer mat or something.

When you were broken into
one million pieces, I had to pick
up the million and first piece,
to make sure I had you back.