PROLOGUE
               Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
   The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.

On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.

               Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.

The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty  yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
      
              LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line

Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.

Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.

Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.

Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.

                 KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line

Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.   
                Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.

Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a  huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.

Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of  blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?

Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.

John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.

   Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
  
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line

               Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of  Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life  ?

Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.              
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.  
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.

               TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus  

Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.

Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of  Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.

Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.

Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;  
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.

On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.

Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.

Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.

In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
  
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.

Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.

On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry,  he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal

Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.

A REVIEW

Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.



NOTES ON THE POEM

Liverpool Street Station

A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.

Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.

Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing

Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.

At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known

Kings Cross Station

A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.

Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi

The riled route master and the hacked off hackney carriage weren't bothered by the boris bike, they simply barreled along the bus lane oblivious to the wobble, blind to the blindsided and bent on beating the amber to red, til they were halted by the growth factor of a chelsea tractor straddling lanes and field testing the choice of right or left and failing the screen test set by the sat nav, thereby giving opportunity to the swarm of office staffers snatching their chance and chancing their luck, dancing past with their fat chance of swiping in before nine and avoiding the chagrin of the boss who's been the bane of their short sojourn through the city of lost dreams, chance encounters, thin fortune and rushed hours. This is London.

rereading is sheer masochism; poems that are like quantum maps of complete disorientation, walking across horizons with a crazy Bermuda triangle compass constantly spinning, with no scientific entry point of potential of itemisation, a bit like π, and yes, re-wording or revising a poem in english you have to deal with conjunctions that turn out to be prepositions, and indeed pseudo-adjectives too; so many ******* modifiers of phraseology.

one of the reasons, i find,
why man encodes sounds,
is because of the images
he generates;
****, ******, war;
we encode sound to hush,
we encode sounds as a way
to trivialise if not simply obstruct
images, we find "peace"
encoding sounds, to limit the possibilities
of generating images,
we're not keen on generating images,
we encode, we encode sounds,
without the zenith (the sound of raindrops)
nor the nadir (the sound of rapes),
we try to encode sounds, but we never
really decode image recurrence
as necessarily being obstructed,
we say the same **** like our toiletry practice,
sure we encode sounds perfectly, elaborate spelling
and grammatical technique,
but when we paint we depict...
we can't encode to decode-an-obstruction in that medium,
we can't surd the **** thing from ever
repeating itself, we depict in order to
conceive a pendulum and a forward magnetism,
images don't seem to be artefacts of obstructive-decoding,
of sentencing to a taboo, more like passive-encoding...
easier the crucifix or an electric chair...
we can encode sounds, but we can't encode
images, since we exploit them
for an unnecessary repetition -
the regurgitation of life's something, and an awareness of it,
we can encode sounds with the 26 surds...
but then the medium of assembling contortions
of shapes in the medium of the rainbow
gives air to exfoliate - the oyster pores opening
up eagerly for experience, however painful...
try it... you can't encode red of a rose or the sunset
with oils of the required sediment / pixel...
encode it... *red...
we love to hush matters and brush them aside...
which is why painting by posthumous artists sell
for so much, we have civilisation but no tribalism...
no society as such...
we encoded the pains and pleasures,
but made experiences doubly opulent by a lack
of encoding the rainbow spectrum into either white or
black extremes... sleep or blankness...
indeed sounds are easily encoded,
but images and conventions of experiences aren't...
with encoded sounds there's no mirroring effect...
they remain, the everlasting imprint on the psyche...
i can convene with you over the sound of the periodic
A, as it supposedly instructs you in it being pronounced
via the allowance of being strapped into
the role of dentistry's guinea pig...
but where are we with green? is that short
of amber to instruct you in what? what?
imagining a meadow, or instructing you to talk
like a Hackney hipster after puffing dead a blunt?

None but the cobbled Hackney will accept
Their Postcards sign this Doveling Bond, betwixt
So both decide a Limo; And dated Theft
Of many Soul-Chasers which do not Exist
From there both Virgins took a Scandal-Plate,
Wrapped in Hookahs only the Wise could see
Goodbye, First Perfume! Not from what will sate
The Photographed Script of what they should be
From this a Problem looms. In such Stone-Bowl
We become the very Thing we disgust
Hearts still cry out for the Thunder they stole
And baste their Image on the Throne they must.
Realise, just now, the Name of this Theme
From Enlightenment whose Founder they blaspheme.

once rastafarianism entered language ploys with wittgenstein's language games in mind it misplaced pronouns, existentialists just dittoed the signifying moral singular with the un-signifying immoral plural; like i was partly holocaust bound, ha ha (example); cherub and a scotch bonnet of my opinion tingling a contest of: chilli v. pepper v. horseradish. let's just say i'm a plasterer rather than i.q. me as a drinker. slaps in chequers on a bench to sober up momentarily.*

trust the saxon, trust the saxon to speak worse german
than the bavarian, and entrust german to the turk
above the saxon; trust the audacious saxon to leave the alphabet's
diacritic out, to spell like a roman would, from the celtic netherlands of gloom
in scotch egg on a couch, the potato of them all,
trust them with audacity and vocabulary  to conquer the world:  
relieving us norse with ****** never mind
the geese of brazil; exact roman care for all dwindles and fibrous excesses,
conquer the world what have you,
at least you have black skin and opera sunsets
while i have white skin and grey clots of 7pm in september,
or as the censors announced:
rather my vanity than the proof of god,
rather me than you in the minotaur's prison of winding zigzag vocabulary;
you're left politico correct i have three thousand
longboats waiting, you're right i have the same number
awaiting wind and sail. trust the saxons among bavarians to do the following:
but you have the caribbean and that's worth more than kenya
in a 100m sprint. you have the caribbean and i'm african,
nuance the scandinavian proust waging war with
a burnt toothpick not giving enough warmth. each me of the lost tribe walks asking:
blondish in the sea i dare you to walk and reason
the heraclitean suburbia of the river of emptied housed-in arsons worth a life.
come alaskan winters come!
trust the saxons to conquer the world without a holy implied for empires
and lost tracts in order that the romans might utilise proper a and proper o
while the saxons in **** with normans and celts said:
we'll roman-speak about the amazon girlies while our girls party out
a craft of whitened cotton for champagne ship-sailed virginity!
trust the saxons to speak worse german thank turks in order to bind by migration
an island as a ship, and sail away sail away wondering
why the roots of other european nations used the goggles to speak
as much microscope as microphone when accenting
and, in so doing accepted dialectics rather than a pompous excess of fibrous ginger plastic
known as dialects: in england dialectics is known as dialects - caged owls elsewhere
didn't coo coo but mooed with gags in nostrils sneezing when snorkelling:
we say error in sussex and say wok cumin seed sizzle in essex;
close enough to be a cockney in hackney rhymes up a mango.

Sorbian, meaning, tickling the armpit of Germany
in terms of what's the desired encoding;
the variations of person:
            čłowjek (upper sorban)
               cłowjek (lower   "    )
     čovjek (croatian)
                           člověk    (czech')
człowiek (polish)      clawak (polabian)
              człowiek (kashubian)     človek (slovak)
                                 człowiyk (silesian)
         чoлoвік (ukranian).

' well, there is a little misunderstanding with the
  czech caron e (ě), mind this later.

yes, the peasants spoke more softly
compared with urban sharpening of accents,
so that you knew that in urban areas South
London has hardly Hackney Cockney,
and never Richmond, like Essex never spoke
good Yorkshire -
                             so they sharpened the letters
and that translated into involving accents
to later be abused -
                             the recipe? yes,
i was cooking Ukrainian Borscht today -
apart from the fact that Borscht isn't exactly classified
as a soup, a Borscht is a *Borscht,
   it transcends the category of being a soup,
just like rosół transcends the same category of being a soup,
           it's a very fine version of what is otherwise
chicken soup -
                            and as a critique of western cuisine?
why are all western soups like puree? they have
snot consistency, they ever never see-through -
they're all ******* creamy, like toddle-pulp of mauled
faeces - as if a bird feeding its chicks with regurgitated
products - eastern soups are see through,
floating bits you can see, a bit like the sea turned into
a Narcissus clarity. let me tell you,
the nurses love hearing the answers to the questions:
do you do any exercise?
                 yes, i walk everyday, once a week a take on
the miles.
             do you smoke?
        i try to fit within a packet of 20 a day.
do you drink?
                   only on alternative days.
        do you eat your five-a-day necessary ration
of fruits and vegetables?
          i don't like fruits... i avoid them...
vegetables? sure.
the basic ingredients of an Ukrainian broth?
        carrots, beetroots, celery, parsley root,
potatoes, leeks, fibre: green broad beans,
                   mushrooms,
                         red borscht concentrate
           white borscht concentrate for the sourness -
garlic.
                             (base? chicken, salt to taste).
well, coming back to the czech variation of the word
person... i feel there's a need to somehow find
diacritical uses coherent -
                                  i can only see it as
the nakedness of the original phonta (variation
on quanta: a specified sound being encoded with each
letter) -
                      it's diacritical marks akin to punctuation
marks and a few mathematical deliberates -
                  e.g. caron:
                                                        z
                                                      š
the z is invited to be applied to the s to make a shush
stress -
                                       arms wide open looking to
the sky for manna from heaven -
soon enough and y and j were confused with
yaks, tetragrammatons and some Spanish conquistadors
named Jesus - whether jumping or yanking the
shortest straws while sitting in a kayak -
or as Jacky said yards ahead if himself -
                   for every Jew there's a yew tree blossoming.
              there should be a rule of law stating:
only such and such diacritical marks to be applied
to vowels, and such and such marks to be applied to
consonants - but, evidently, this is not the norm -
             these are not merely unconscious accepted
aesthetic consideration, when i was being taught
French at school, i was never taught that
    ê (circumflex e) does as much damage to pronunciation
as does the è (grave e) - i.e. the circumflex is binding
the two letters in-between the stressed vowel,
while the incisor e with è cuts the word off when it's used -
              so the caron (mathematically more than? i.e. >)
  asks pleading to the skies for a letter to balance on?
   and the circumflex looks to the earth to find the seashells
and pebbles?
                             as in less than? i.e. <     ?
i rose above language, i rose above spelling because
i decided i could say to Bukowski's claim of genius:
tie your shoelaces before you talk to me:
simple as simply said: whatever lessons in life
i have to learn i'll learn them by my own accord -
               being drunk in Europe is the norm,
as is prostitution -
               last time the police booked me for drinking
i wasn't there... last time i talked with the Bulgarian mafia
i went back to get my debit card back,
            the **** showed me a wallet with 100 or so more
credit cards, i said: none of these are mine...
          the police cruised pretending law abides to the
standard imposed by politicians...
                   prostitution is fair game, but
keeping the girls contrary to self-employment is abhorred....
            me? i just don't do the dating scene,
should i be harrowed from that hide & seek of western
society's women woefully fishing? can i?
i can't be bothered with the games and the Geisha.
                       - you reach the proper level of appreciation
when you start to ridicule your heroes -
                                  you overpower them,
there's no point brown-nosing them with excess over-quotation,
you brown-nose them for a while, but then the gimmicks
begin... and they know it to be true:
    i' peg down Mr. B like anyone critical of getting an
education: learn to spell, and punctuate, and tie your shoelaces.
       you can't let them get away with it... those dumb-*****,
you can't: we all have a sad story...
    does anyone give a ****? m'eh... probably not.
it's the part when he says he read philosophy
but never bothers the ideas behind into a narrative:
                                   with him your end up *******
before Sophia rather than ******* her...
                        you have to **** her at some point...
                  no point ******* women and simply
******* before the deity -
                  better nothing ******* women and not
******* before the deity of worded fertility -
i was brown-nosing him for much too long...
                 whatever he said in his defence,
i'm aiming to capture the imagination akin to ****** addicts.
                      and that's hardly a feat to undertake.
so yeah, punctuation marks and some mathematical marks
above the Latin... Greek went wholly toward the Cyrillic -
oddly enough a Persian, Cyrus, entombed it into the strength
it possesses, rather than some Saint...
                                        so if i'm a loser at considering
myself a citizen of the world... what is Syria to me?
                                               Syria to me being Anglo-Slav
is:                    when Ramses destroyed Syria...
            don't come here with Westminster, please don't,
leave it out in the open with the paedophiles...
                                            i'm a citizen of England,
not of this world: you keep concerns over Syria where
you're at... if i can't be a citizen of thee world in a world
of globalisation, don't include me!
                                    diacritical marks, punctuation
alongside mathematical Copernican -
                                             yes, umlaut and the colon:,
what's the list? an extra oh... the latter phrase for
          omicron.
                                               Boršč or z z (zed zed)
             or h h (tricky, hay hay? ****** ******?
                               hatch hatch?)
            evidently the pronounced: shoo!
                                                        stinker that one:
given z morphs into h when given s or c...
                                i guess it's easier with      šč,
                   a.k.a.           shch...
and the most frequently asked question in English?
(by the middle class), how do you pronounce this?
                   you know why gangsters don't attack
educated people?
                           they love the fact that people made
the effort to learn reading and curtail other peoples' efforts
in changing perceptions -
                  for me it was always about being taught bad
French and rewriting the laws of stress -
                       i'll never understand the caron on vowels:
sure, the French makes it assured to make the circumflex
and the grave accenting above vowels synonymous...
  &

i swear, the biggest anti-ageist
comeback missing
from the script of we **** the old way
lies with the scriptwriter's
phobia of o.c.d.,
                 i'm guessing he experienced
it personally,
              i wish he experienced dementia
clearer of his granddad
   succumbing: o.c.d. in old age?
it's not big deal... it's no big deal...
             enough botox and soon all that glamour
and paying your respects soon fades,
fattens up and chokes on the artistic
rubric: you need rich artists to
satire rich people... stop nagging
at Katy... be, *******, thankful,
you little cat-whiskers for a ******
moustache kitty-fiddler...
           ever **** at a girl taking a selfie?
let's say it's a blank canvas, and
you're working on it...
        how can this girl can become a
crown or the abhorred fling with
missing Welsh fetishes of excess
           ****** dangle-bits?
                       i have few entry points
i like i consider...
                 before she shaves the *****,
but did you know my godmother
           is a doctor and she doesn't shave
her legs?
                     i joked at that,
i joked for the simplicity:
              why do i have to don mine
and the theory of Darwinism is never
complete? because of aesthetics,
there's a natural instinct, a natural bound
contraband that IS NEVER, EVER TINGED WITH
CHRISTIANITY... **** Radio Maria and
Priest Rydzyk too along with
                John Paul the Tarmac Kissing Saint...
popes like pop-stars: the world's a stage:
better look the prettiest...
             thank Katy... she got cool and rich
enough to covert any criticism of wealthy kids
of Las Vegas...
                          if she wasn't here i'd be dead:
i don't love her like a girl might love
the next best: never-left high school bestseller
for young girls...
                                     my black horse is
quirky and still working on working smug
rather than donning a thong at a cat-walk...
                 but my point?
the comeback the gangsters should have served up
those ****** lips?
                                rapper movie
fakes never taught you how to shoot...
                the gun goes linear: shoot, vertical...
not cool-sly horizontal...
                         you're shooting with a blind spot...
rich girls' songs for poor girls to
cat-fight over who's the better gimmick
of impersonator...
                      but the old Hackney farts still
don't have the quick-snap-comeback...
                  the colts keep referring to E2...
a postcode...
                       the old ladies should have said:
i better move there, seems like a hot-spot
for the postcode lottery!
                           the colts keep referring
to the E2 club....
                             the crew, the gang...
i'm still thinking about these pensioners
nailing them to chairs and drilling through their
bones to the marrow for the Moscow ladies
acting out the faint in the hands  
                       of chevaliers of her retirement plans...
E2? is that a postcode lottery for
                 the losers?
and the "sad" story is? in Poland we all came from
a Communist housing estate...
            only peasants in semi-detached housing...
i guess all these smart-*** young folks
are pretending to be gangsters when all they're
all aspiring to is own a pair of shoes with hay sticking
out of them: and i.t.v. come november...
               well, the casting was smart,
the accents 10 out of 10...
                   but the final point of the accents
in talk?              slow math...
                            is      E2 designated as
the case for a joke about postcode lottery?
                 one thing they're loudmouths...
another that they're also foul-mouths...
                             can't be one and the other...
                  if you're going to be a prop'ah
foul-mouth, better be a slow-mouth
               or a shush-mouth...
                                  and if you're going to
be a loud-mouth, i'd prescribe you Southampton's
away-support choir: oh when the saints...
oh when the saints come marching in...
                                no wonder gang culture
never picked up from loud-mouth birthrights of
the suggested History X...
                               borrowing from History ***:
flash news! there are more things on
my head than just hair to play toothpicks with concerning
self-doubts and the easiest solution:
            a man was crucified...
                               some say we never perfected
democracy as the civilised peoples of the world
as the Jews never perfected plebiscites as the
              "backward" peoples of the desert...
           if race coordination can't be joked about
but getting offended at:
           i'd love the Irish potato diet and the
dates served for breakfast lunch and dinner in Israel...
or in better representation?
the Pig of God... Jesus stinking like a pig
                 before the perfumes of Pilate...
skew: north-by-northwest: a good Hitch reminder:
sheep up toward Scotland...
                           but pigs that north and east...
well: pigs...
                         or how to make words
holy and meaningless when talking about the price
of butter...
                     but that's beside the case for
a quick comeback about the postcode lottery...
           or the grit of Bronson - the film,
esp. the nurse scene...
                       no spoilers... you never know when
it's happening...
                                 the greater the film,
the more monologue orientated...
                                    claustrophilic -
                                                   so you wonder
shoving that **** into the craniums of little boys:
why are they making them do it...
                        and at what point is it legal in
the social realm of guessing at all the rainbow possibilities?
   my theory? most paedophiles had failed
relationships in their teens...
                                  and they never wanted to
experience the complexities of a woman who finally
realised: ****! daddy died! i'm not a princess!
                   it's not a fear of being inadequate,
it's the fear of an inadequate woman...
                  the most adequate woman is a woman
who still resolves to the idealistic world,
rather than the realistic world -
                                   i never understood the
criminal hierarchy...
                                       in the criminal ring it would
appear no moral superiority is akin
   to bullying in school...
                                              choose the easiest
loss of moral judgement and bash it into the head...
    or what Marquis de Sade taught me...
               for most men it's the pink elephant in
the room...
                              or a light-bulb...
****** and theft is still all Robin Hood, the instilled
   heroism: moral ambiguity...
               i don't see how the other crime isn't also
an ambiguity...
                              the *** of man is already displaced
from the *** of woman...
                      why wouldn't age by that ****** ambiguity
not be squared? and doubly unfathomable?
   what made me write this?
               standing at a bus stop...
a girl coming back from school...
                                                 what?
this is a cognitive ping-pong...
                                     what?
                                                   what?!
               i'd dare David the Naturalist come out
from his comfort environment of
                 two monkeys *******, gorillas
with harems and all that easy gesture...
                   man and woman? eyes.
     all the limbs and bones captured by the eyes...
it's not that i don't spend enough time among people
to start imagining these quirks...
                 it's that i spend enough time
                 among people to not start imagining
quirks.

.oh, i've seen a muslim woman unveil herself from under a niqab in a street in hackney... it's the moment you see what the band cradle of filth call a: persian nightmare.

it's almostly the most perfected contrast of divergence,
how there is great criticism of the muslim attire,
and a complete lack of by the appropriation
of the sunglasses...
can i mind you that cenobite butterball?
   i find people wearing sunglasses to be
autistic, or at least people a knack at being
terrible at eye-contact...
           i know that the niqab is satan's postbox,
but the sunglasses are the answer,
      of the autistic carousel of eye-wanderings
of autistic children...
are they looking at me, or pretending
to look at copernicus, to argue:
you really don't need a flat earth
to read a map, because you really need
a 3 dimensional something or other....
    niqabs are about as welcome as sunglasses...
either it hides a saudi "princess"
   or an autistic child,
             and both are pretty much alike,
although one above the other,
admonishes a "knowledge" of a, papa.
    which is also called a waving goodbye in
slavic.
           come on though: meeting the niqab
and sunglasses in butterball?!
   that's ******* desperate...

and yes, although i can't believe i've had a note
making session, which, i did call la la land
impromptu...
yes, they are excerpts of: i wish i was gay
& also a jew, slightly more the jew emerging
from a cosmopolitan culture of constantinople,
even though the turks loved that bit
of ****... elif shafak? do i really need any
more words?! can we at least call it:
an orangutan playing the banjo?!
     do i really need more words than
elif shafak?
            who am i to pay the compliment,
than the compliment itself?
          
the biblical commentary regarding homosexuals;
will homosexuals ever become dodos?
the biblical critique of homosexuality
always seems a bit awry...
    was the bible written in a time when
hetrosexuality was guaranteed a success?
why was homosexuality criticised,
given that hetrosexuality was pretty much
akin to gambling?
      i don't understand why people do not
understand the ancient critique of homosexuality,
with the uncertainty of hetrosexual activity...
mind you, i love ****-eroticism in art,
i find that hetero-eroticism has no part in
crafting an art...
  but i also do not understand why
the biblical critique of homosexuality is so
frowned upon, given that in the times
of the said text being written,
     there was a dodo counter-argument...
there was a real chance of a ******* metaphor,
most gays, akin to the greeks,
were salvaged from the upper-tier class
of aristocracy...
           what's so ****** wrong with
facing reality?
               i don't mind the *******
oddity, but you still require
hetrosexuality to provide you with
two *** lickers!
       i actually can understand the critique
of homosexuality, given the times that abortion
was half the way into conservative dogmatism
established as a:
    sort of luxury;
i can't believe the obnoxiousness of modern
people regarding the ancients...
  please, begin by desecrating graves!
ever wonder how uncircumcised penises look
very much like bloated octopi,
or like an octopus trying to internalise a laugh,
while attempting to **** into an empty whiskey
bottle, with the ******* pinched,
turning into a bladder pouch, expanding?
akin to:
fame -
             or that stamina mingled with the tenacity
to be able, to repeat yourself
(notably in the interview medium)
with the tenacity to appear straight-faced:
seemingly mummified?
   and once you actually do manage to ****
into an empty glass bottle, you start to
admire the bladder...
   it is anything but amazing,
  seeing how your bladder can expand to hold
a litre of *****, without you noticing
the internalised expansion...
and then watching a litre sized bottle of
one present whiskey, begin to fill with
                     the shy of amber liquid...
it's still bothersome,
  this critique of muslim attire,
           notably with the western answer that's
equally disturbing, the sunglasses,
     it's one and the same to me,
the same butterball cenobite quest -
who gives a toss about your ******
contortions,
    as the niqab, they reveal very little to me...
it's almost an autistic revision
of the supposedly empowered
women of islam...
                what i could get behind those
sunglasses, it a darting carousel of
eye-contact...
                chances are i'd probably get
more eye-contact with a gorilla,
while also getting more oral *** with
a ******* oyster behind that curtain.

Every poem sounds dumb
when read
in the right voice.

A GARLAND FOR NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2014

My Once and Only Garden

It’s no longer mine
But I pass it
Nearly every morning.
It’s untended,
Overgrown, autumned,
The camellia needs a prune,
The irises have gone;
The garden needs
A good seeing to.
A sad garden to pass
Nearly every morning.



The Chestnut Avenue

I came back to fallen chestnut
Shells, conkers, everywhere,
But the leaves are still
Thinking about falling.
No wind you see.
On other trees I pass,
The lime,the white-beam,
There’s a crinkly brownness
Scattered across the path.
So dry, no wind,
September sun.
The chestnut avenue
Has some way to go.
Wind, rain, frost perhaps
And the leaves will fall.


******* a Boat

There’s this girl,
A young woman really,
On a boat.
Not living on it yet
But plans are afoot,
Along with essential repairs.
It’s not ‘Offshore’
Like Penelope Fitzgerald’s
Boat on the Thames.
But in a quiet and placid mooring
On the River Lea instead.
I thought of sending her this book,
But it’s all about liminality,
People somewhere in between,
People who don’t belong on land or sea
. . . And the boat (eventually) sinks.


Still Waiting

We sat on the seat
Under a bower of roses
In the herb garden
And she talked in that singing
Way of talking that she does;
Such a tessitura she commands
Between the high and the low
With a falling off portamento
Glide - from the high to the low.
Her hair stills falls
Across serious freckles, auburn hair,
Gold with a touch of red
Like her mother’s only softer,
Like mine once was, and my mother’s too.
She has a slighter frame though,
and is still waiting, waiting
For a real life, a woman’s life.


Cyclamen Restored

I went away and left it
On a saucer, watered,
In a north light
Near a window sill.
Its pink flowers were *****
And nodded a little
When I moved about the room.

On my return it had drooped,
Its leaves yellowed.
There were tiny pink petals
Scattered on the floor.
I put the plant in the sink
For half an hour.
It revived,
And the next day
Seemed quite restored.


Driving South

Driving south through
Dalton, Shoreditch,
Hackney and Hoxteth,
The Hasidic community
Garnished the Sunday street.
Driving down the A10
South towards the city:
The Gleaming Gerkin,
the Walkie Talkie,
and further still,
a Misty Shard.

As a child, the buildings here
Were so much slighter
And a grimy black;
The highest then, the spires
Of Wren’s city churches.

Sundays to sing at ‘Temple’,
With lunch at the BBC,
Driving south from New Barnet
In my Great Uncle’s Morris,
Great Aunt Violet dozing in the back.


Gallery

Small but beautifully right
For her London show,
Good to see her surrounded
By tide marks from the shore,
Those neutral surfaces,
Colours of sand and stone,
Rust (of course) from the beaches
Treasured trove, metal
Waiting to become wet
And stain those marks with colour.


Ascemic Sewing

Having no semantic content
These ‘words’ appear on the back
Of a chequered cloth of leaves
Backed all black
Stitched white,
A script of a garden
Receding into
Trans-linguistical memory.


September Dreaming

Facing the morning
Above a barrier of trees,
Oaked, foxed, hardly birded,
I would  wonder while she slept
About the richness of her dreams,
Dreams she had spoken of
(Yesterday, and out of the blue)
And, for the first time, in all
These precious but frustrating
years we’d slept together,
shared together.
I had always thought her dreamless;
Too fast asleep to experience
Envisioned images,
Sounds and sensations.


Think of a Poem

She told me in a text about
Think of a Poem
On National Poetry Day
Just a week away.
That’s easy, I thought,
There’s always that poem
Safe and sure in my memory store
Once spoken nervously,
under a rose garden walk,
but there, there
for evermore . . .

Who says it’s by my desire
This separation, this living so far from you. . .


Missing Music

Today I read a poem
Called The Lute: a Rhapsody.
‘From the days of my youth
I have loved music,
So have practised it ever since,’
Says Xi Kung.

In his exquisite language
He then describes its mysterious virtues,
And all the materials from which it’s made.

How I miss my lute, its music,
And the voice that once sang to its song.


Drawing

I wonder if she’s drawn today,
And what? I wonder.
John Berger says:
Drawing goes on every day.
It is that rare thing
That gives you a chance
Of a very close identification
With something, or somebody
Who is not you.
I wonder if she’s drawn today,
And what? I wonder.

A polemic:
— noun
a controversial argument, as one against some opinion, doctrine, etc.; a person who argues in opposition to another; controversialist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


our principals have principles.
principles as long and as shallow as a
tv sound bite.

give me ten careful good persons who have the courage to say,
I am unsure.

men and women who can acknowledge that
doubt never changes never ends.

who do not lie with sweet surety
for the cameras to salve their self-knowledge of
prideful lies, yet ashamed of their piece prizes.

when you cannot pay back that student loan,
email them asking for the ten bucks back
you once sent them.

liking the sound of their voice filled
with hackney trite, and give us tripe,
not once but over and over again,
with greater ease of the groove,
then oops, a single apology,
now that they have taken away your choices.

doctors who do not plagiarize
with reckless abandon,
whose credentials are self-certified

mislead so ease.

Bill gets $700,000 to make a speech.
He charges only $500,000 for old friends.
Poor Hillary, she gets a trifling $200,000

Ask Maureen of the New York Times
tells the truth between the
news that is filtered then called
fit to print.

But when they say,
see me and believe,
then send
me ten bucks, once more into the breech,
go and register to vote instead.

we have sacrificed our ability of hard reflection
on an altar of mushy easy cheap construction,
accepting polemics as political philosophy.

we chose this.
we yearn for crumbs of certainty
in these uncertain times.

how we long for a man who can say
unhesitatingly:
let us try this
and if not perfect,
edit and change,
even start over again.

doubt never changes never ends.
seek out these men.
s  elect them.

Tell me something you know
with utter confidence that
men have constructed
that cannot be improved.

when I gaze upon the poems
of my early days,
see the typos
and the hackneyed,
I amend, even delete.

doubt never changes never ends.

outside the fortress walls
behind that you hide,
your enemies are
constructing new technologies
capable of going under over through
the old concrete
of yesterday's stale minds, worse,
molding the lazy ones.

Those who are certain
never confess that
their actions can have
evil consequences,
until you put them in the docket.

then they say,
I did not know.
they knew.

they say
I was only following orders of the
principals.

The worst is yet to come.
The tv is on and the soundbite lies
unceasing.

Those who get played,
are the ones who did not play,
but watched tv.

He wakes and takes a bit of time
to snort a little sweet white line,
left for him by Jackie who
gives him bed and board in Hackney, in
return for dealing dope on the
street they call
no hope.

He stays alive from nine to five by
working at the Superspar
where the metal in the trolley
and the face of Shirl'
the girl who comes in Saturdays,
(quite dolly in a lot of ways)
is far more rigid than he'll ever be.

He thinks about a break for tea but
the clock says only five past three
so
it's time for one more line,
then he looks again at the clock,the time
is five.

He speeds along on the crest of dope
back to the deals he seals,
on the street they call,
no hope,
and
back to Hackney where
he and Jackie,
make the time to slowly
snort
another line.