It's an eye for an eye
and swap a truth
for a lie,
they either **** you or
we'll let you die.

Kindness,
a mess
in a pickle.

In the end, when unseen
and the fairy King changes
into the wicked old Queen and
all the cards
have been marked,
my ignition
catches the sparks
and I come to life.

Old men.

Generally speaking in private
when old men are dribbling or leaking
I keep to myself,
safer that way when the window's
the only way out.

Poetry bothers me much
more than old chimneys
that smoke
down in Battersea.

Anathema.

I smoke **** in order to be
insufficiently free of
deficiency,
which is in any case
all Greek to me.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
university educant,
not like me who was
dragged through the secondaries
and modern too,
not much education, but
what can one do?
when the riverbank calls you and the
corn starts to wave and the wind is the music
to which you can rave.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
earns more than me,
but I have more memories,
like sailing off to the sea
like catching fish for my tea
like swimming naked and free,

is educant a word?
and that's the education of me.

It doesn't matter when they're dead
what they said about what
you read about
dead is about the
matter.

Anti what?
what he wanted was a scale model aero,
not a scarecrow and he was that and more.

But the night closed down, the door was shut,
the candles lit, the corners cut and
what they said and
what they said
reverberated in his head,
echoes of the things and dead at that.

It was never going to be the case that this case would be cold, too old to laugh, too old to cry, too old to live, too old to die, but dying was the case and cold at that.

sometime later when the joke fell flat and I fell into that despondent air she came to me where the dead don't go and only the life in the living know and kissed me.


And it's not what they say, she said, and it's not what the living will think of the dead,
I shook my head in some disbelief,
who was the thief?
who took a liberty?


who took the bell?
who takes the road that takes them to hell?

This is just a Thursday and quite normal in the late day and the right way is not always the way we write or the things that she says in the dead of the night,
write it and be cursed
the way I wrote it and rehearsed
the end.

I was plucking out weeds from between the concrete patio slabs. You were watering the tulips and tending to the vegetables.

We could grow enough to live off, you say sometimes, when the whiskey trickles down your throat and the fire licks your belly.

The belly of a man, heavy set from years of sugared, milky tea. From using his hands to build the house we live in. To build the room where I am standing,

with its beech furniture and scrubbed floors, it's nooks and crannies which make it impossible to keep clean.

All those years, washing when the weather allowed. Picking colours from a paint chart. Talking passionately. Loudly and quietly. We even talked about the weather, sometimes. You made poetry out of the atmosphere. But weather changes, rapidly and without warning,

the gentle wind you once called Odin's daughter has morphed into thunderous roars, shaking the walls you so carefully built around us.

we are ******* hard at the sky now, gasping for air. It is raw, unsterilised air, that burns your tongue as you breathe it in,

yet breathe it in we must.

I wonder who we are now. Weather beaten, windswept tourists. Should we have left this place years ago?

We scrub the floors. We mow the grass. We wait for something to happen

next.

Hi tech at breakneck, but
we all sweat the small stuff.

I've met enough in my time to fill up a book and on each page a rhyme.

But at the last of us
we'll all be back to
the abacus.

Who needs computers that shoot us so full of **** and bits that can byte us and who's always right?
us?

Thing is,
the screen sits like Jesus,
on the table it reads us,
promoting agendas and that's
what the end is.

Formula one
Algorithmic and intense it
kicks all the sense from us
and ladles in tables and ****
sites and my nights are far
from dull.

I understand the pull of it
Google and broadband sit within
spitting distance of God and it's odd
don't you think that each time you blink a light goes off down the Amazon.

( that takes a bit of imagination, but Firefox being in on the creation makes it sound good)

Jerusalem.

Bring me my beads and frames made from wire
bring me connections for the pyre
'cause in the end. all it will be
is the abacus and me.

grass grows through the cracks in the asphalt
of what was once glass avenue.
flashes of grayed sunlight reveal blasted facades
offering a peek through the gauzy veil of
years both distant and near.
woe be unto those whose days are spent
looking backward, for the past holds naught but
the pail glimmer of souls lost
to all but thought and memory.
shade and spirit haunt this place.
the river rages unabated over the locks at TVA;
a reminder of the folly of all grand designs;
there is no power here.
gone are your craft beers and artisan pickles and
small plate miracles filled with
foraged mushrooms and
duck confit.
gone are your bike trails and long hikes and
nature walks
down around the ***, the pan and the handle.
appalachia has fallen.
the last stand lasted all of sixty seconds;
a minute too long.

Are you feeling caterpillars in your stomach?
Will you give me a wedge of religion to chew on?
Is it possible, two weeks after moving in
to a third-floor apartment on the outskirts of town
I’ll discover hairs in the sink
like skinny black maggots,
wounds on the couch from a spilt glass of red?
Are you going to comment on my skin,
am I going to do the same to you?
Will we share baths together,
watch our fingers wrinkle
as we volley stories to each other
like we did when we met?
Or maybe you’ll thwack me with a pillow
if I begin to snore or drool,
maybe I’ll crank my voice up a notch
if you whine about work
and we’ll sit in different seats
with the TV turned down.
Will I be just too boring? Is that it?
The whiff of my aftershave,
the shriek of my knife against
the plates we’ll buy from IKEA,
all those things will bring about a moan.
Am I going to have to dine on politics?
Would you hate it if I checked the scores on my phone?
The *** might be so disappointing
we won’t even bother to undress anymore.
We are thinking the same thoughts here,
we must be.
Are we doing the right thing, darling?
Will it ever be time for the right thing?

"Things haven't been the same."
Years of dead flowers,
Of looking away,
Of tear stained pillows
Yearning living may
Just be the death of me
I could see if she let me
You could be if you let you
Let me down easy
Let me down slowly
I'd watch you go
Just to imagine you
Coming

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