These days have ebbed
as Love's swell was checked:
the waters in some places
- all but dammed!

But now at last
I sense the rising tide
and thank Temese
for the current's turn;
now following that great writhing snake
to where its pulsing head will rake;
over the mucky soiled watery beds
of Woolwich
Greenwich
Limehouse
- and under -
Tower Bridge

     To that great gloating sight
                A crown of a billion lights
     Blazing day and night:
                And somewhere within
     In the slick oily warmth
                Our flood tides mesh,
     As over each other we wash.

Hard thrusts
wicked deep cuts
given and received
are recorded in that great mirror smoked!
where with a tug and a shove
on the banks
in the streets
through the loopy twists
everything prospers in the glow
as the decades decaying flow;
each ***** bud
red with new blood
one after t'other
flowers
before their purple petals scatter.

Let's on the luck o' the dice
(you 'n' me!)
ride out
on the flotsam and jetsom
that has carried us this far
and as pleases
merge.

Many people write a "bucket list" of things they want to do before they die.  Now in my 80th year, I don't have the time or the energy to do things that others might aim for, but I have during my life visited many places, seen many things, and enjoyed many experiences that I would have been sorry to miss. There have also been some events that I would have preferred not to experience, but which have enriched my life in different ways, and which I remember with a kind of sad affection.  
Some of these are very personal to me, and would not be interesting to most people, but read the note if you wonder why I chose them.

Here then is what I might call  
                                                My Reverse Bucket List

Towns and cities – architecture & atmosphere
   Barcelona, Spain
   Venice, Italy
   Oxford, England
   Jerusalem, Israel
   Luxor, Egypt
   Varanasi, India
   Hiroshima, Japan
   Pompeii, Italy

Other locations
   Galápagos islands, Ecuador
   Great Barrier Reef, Australia
   North Woolwich, London

Churches
   St Paul's Cathedral, London
   Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
   Coventry Cathedral
   Córdoba Cathedral, Spain
   Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Other structures
   Taj Mahal, Agra
   Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland
   Royal Festival Hall, London
   London underground system (because it was the first, and I rode it for a long time).  Also the more splendid underground railways of Mexico City and Moscow.
   Avebury Ring, Wiltshire, England (the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world, and much more primitive than Stonehenge)
   Bayeux Tapestry 
   "Angel of the North" statue, Gateshead, England
   "Christ the Redeemer" statue, Rio, Brazil

Events
   Messiah at Royal Festival Hall, Feb 1959, with the girl later to be my wife
   St John's night, Spain, early 1990s (?)
   Death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, Aug 1997
   Oberammergau passion play, 2010
   Destruction of World Trade Centre, Sept 2001

As day falls to dark,
eyes turn red,
lusting, hunger, lusting.

Hatred will devour
the flesh of any man
at the bar with eyes closed.

Cursed forever he is with
the sour taste of change,
an irrevocable scar upon today.

We are not united, and we
will die alone, in a ditch
dug by fellow man, under the
crashing September sky.

A lunatic cannot cure a wound,
and one hundred will only
drown in ignorance together.

The man next door has shut
his curtains, fools do not listen
to the sound of yesterday,
only to the screams of cowering conscience.

The red cracks gape, as the tears
of dead minds pour in vain
over the edge of God’s last
and
final
vessel.

A stroll through the honour roll of history
along the river where
shipping was once the big industry
and now the river is the graveyard
of destiny

the march of the container army.

slow

the tide doesn't move with the phase of the moon
there's no room on the Thames for regrets.

Ghosts of the sea sailing in to haunt Woolwich and
Wapping,
Limehouse and Greenwich, the
sound of eight bells on the air.

We direct them
half dead men
who
walk at a funeral
pace
and the other men
I've seen them
riding shotgun on
the outside
at
the dark side
of the sun.

Then the credits rolled
at the folding up of night

These deep fissures which are eyes
prised open by the cracks in dawn
remind me that
half dead we're born into this life
of misery
which serves to trample me and
my day down.

But the Kingdom and the crown remain
God bless the Queen,
I've seen them
the other men
on a golden carriage
pulling guns to Woolwich

is nothing sacred anymore?

half dead men to procreate
the building of an
Empire,
state the obvious
how can this be?
we're all ****** in the end by misery.

I'm not in Greenwich, Dulwich, Woolwich or Shoreditch
but I've been to all of them and never looked at them
the same way again.

The staples to me were
Paris, Rome and Naples,
been to them too
passing through en route
to other locations
assignations
desire
every
destination on fire,
and
then I found you.

don't ask what the pen knows.

i'm having trouble comprehending any sort
of dimensional-realism of what it is
that constitutes happiness...
it's a strangely vague concept:
as vague as my assumption that it can begin
to be comprehended within the imposed
coagulation of meaning(s), such as:
dimensional-realism...
happiness is just that for me: dimensional-realism:
it's beyond fleeting:
it's something that isn't a thing or a some of
a thing: but a summation: a disgruntled
summation:
happiness to me is what makes life
unbearably see-through... mortal:
debasing: too much of a struggle for this:
cynic: because i can at least confine myself
to the motion of thought that cynical:
pessimism is nowhere near the antonym of:
prior stated...
and... since i find no despair in melancholy:
there's a budging virility in a sadness that's
not sadness: in a piquant fermentation process:
because that's what melancholy is:
aside from the fact that it can also imply
being overtly sensitive to the world's affairs:
melancholy for me: is a side-project
of the empathy-sympathy dilemma...
you start to understand this condition without
having attempts and failed trials of feeling
this bummed out: because the sky is just
hanging by a thread and that's just that:
a sadness can at least drown you:
you can be dragged to the depths of despair:
aside from all the neurological circumstances
of the constituent parts of pain:
at least pain is real... but sadness isn't real:
it's metaphysical...
            so... after the physics of this...
at least sadness can drown you:
what's more important is trying to authenticate
it rather than succumb to the numbing:
when sadness drowns you:
numbing keeps you afloat...
in limbo: buoyant...
                                  like a sick joke from
the advances of extracting anesthetic from cloves...
ha... the experimental medicine of
psychiatric-pharmacology:
said the ego to serotonin and the likes:
i vill muster the ages and thought machines
of telepathic magic and make these pills
regenerate my tempers: my humors...
my willynilly the world is ******* silly...
it truly is a wonder to acknowledge that sanity
is judged on the basis of solipsism...
to me that's what sanity is: solipsism...
the moment that solipsism is undermined...
the whole world goes to ****:
other people exist: and you affect people:
who knows what the effects of that are on
the return... but sanity is just that:
a closed off world of the individual
who comes and goes from what established
culture and civilization in the abstract
to something functioning: like a bus timetable,
like someone who fixes bicycles...
like a baker a butcher...
maybe i'm just in the wrong line of profession...
maybe i'm interacting with people too much
and i need a breather...

now: whether i ****** up intentionally
while managing my cohort or not:
i'm about right in my estimate:
yeah: it must have been about 100 souls...
quadrant manager of the east
blue zone...
this is not some professional escapism
this isn't professionalism antics to scrutinize:
but i've been watching from the bottom up:
no one really told me there was
the vendor sign in
the stadium sign in
and the positional sign in:
i should have known that already:
so i ****** up...
i was mock signing everyone in...
keeping the tally on the numbers:
at least i got that right...
but then the W.I.S.E. agency rep came
up to me: there's been a glitch in the system:
no one has been signed in...
o.k.: i pulled out the PDA and the first thing
i noted was: what alphabet is this?
Armenian or Georgian?
besides the point: i'm not trying to argue:
but how can i rectify this: RECTIFY:
i actually used that word: which felt sort of weird...
because it was more than courteous
and at least the sort of word to use
to weaponize when making a ****...
so i heard the reply:
you will have to somehow scan them all
in...
****... they're all in position and the crowd
has started to come through the turnstiles...
well: if i have 6 supervisors under my wing...
right... yeah: sure... no problem:
i'll sort it out...
went to each supervisor and asked them
to collect the ID cards...
danced through the gymnastic of how to
look less colt and ****** at the same time...
did i manage to keep my head
on my neck and laugh at the guillotine of smiles:
because this work is a work
of buckles: who can buckle who
who can make someone else look less competent:
but the funny side of this story is that:
MEA CUL>PA:
i was the one the blame...
and isn't that the best learning curve?!
isn't it?!

KA-SI-AH... KASIA...
it's a brand of cooking margarine...
but i... do we need the dot hovering
above the iota when you have ś?
that's not SH but c'c'ould be:
no...
               Katherine... Kasia is a diminutive
version in the tongue i originate from:
like Matt is ugly to Matthew because
there's the door mat wipe your feet on it:
but Matti: ah... rings a bells... almost chimes
because i know the extension of my name:
proper: is Matisyahu...

śιč: which implies a gathering of
the Zaporozhian: Ż to gather the H in that word:
like: DZIDA: KULT und: FABRYKA
MEDIÓW...
in this blistering Augustus heat my mother
decides to bake cookies...
who's the sanity protagonist in this world
and who's the sanity narrator?
evidently i'm just the flimsy attache...
i get to spew one poem after another
treating each one with all the wipe-my-***
affection of reading a newspaper...

the biggest problem in my area i was managing?
a faulty lock:
on a turnstile door:
later the supervisor... Rebecca: Rebeccalla?
Italian? French? Romanian?
well: i was the magic locksmith by the end
of it: i fiddled with that door like
magic like i heard back my own
compliment to letters
via that association i made
through:

I / O + Φ = Θ + Ω

pata-physician hey presto!
pata-?
    oh... reference to Alfred Jarry:
that midge: midgit: lilly-putian:
on a bicycle: loved fishing on the Seine...
took a stab at the Polish Lack-Lands of
a king of England, some John...
so...

but if it worked with letters:
it could certainly work with actual artifacts
of use...
like keys and keyholes and
doors:
and by god if we're going to stamp
out the vampire allure of psychopathy
and scrutinize *******:
those two deviations are the first to go:
last are the intelligent alcoholics
who have a thirst for: whoops and
daisies...
but given it's only 20:00 hours
it's a long way to go until 22:00 hours...
i ****** up... clearly:
but i never envisioned that sort
of sign-out dynamic:
the company rep returned and gave her
little pep talk:
i was still engaging in a schizophrenia of sorts
with the radio:
but the INDIA call signs were busy elsewhere
i wasn't even asking permission to sign out these
100...
but how endearingly they lined up:
no squabble about who comes first and
who comes last:
i was was the first and the last: period:
de facto...

what trouble did we have?
oh, when you see a drunk woman in that
state: where she's completely lost
the tact of maneuvering: i wouldn't call it an art
at that point:
but that's how trouble starts:
misjudging the mood of the crowd:
you eject a woman in her state:
but she's compliant...
you eject her even though she's consciously-unconscious:
semi: not trying to come onto you:
so you're basically brokering with a child...
you start with that sort of ejection:
all hell goes goose-loose...
so?
you have to contain it... mitigate... maintain
a Martini smooth coercion...
stirred: not shaken...
get that ******* cauldron of people round round
right round! until you get that
cannibalistic mud of a sauce of *****
and **** and blood!

a good proportion of Manchester came to London...
maybe i have some ****** allure
i'm not excavating for my own personal
benefits...
for not benefit of the Olympics being
a welcome distraction...
once you return back to less of the utopian
day-dream and come back
to each society and the atomized man
and the tribal frenzy of sport as allegiance
to intra-national deflection of coincidences...
how is it that Arsenal and Millwall are
not having a derby, somehow Arsenral
and the Ids are?
       didn't Arsenal originate south of the Thames
in Woolich Woolitch: ******* don't *******
bother correcting me on the spelling:
WOOLWICH!

that still doesn't mean i'm going to
relax and laugh:
took my viking road-bicycle for one
last honor ride through Rise Park suburbia:
a ****** deal: couldn't possibly part with it:
but i did...
i couldn't leave it on a dumpster heap:
maybe someone might want to fix it up:
but as i rode it: crank crank... spill: ugh:
enough onomatopoeia(s) to gratify
bad ***...
yes, Joseph: my grandfather bought it for
me:
then i recounted the story:
but it's not like i left a dog half dangling
on a noose on a tree in a forest
slowly suffocating: it would have been cleaner
humane: to have simply slit the dog's throat
rather than left it semi-dangling on a tree:
sadistic ******* creatures...
who?                  who?!                         us!
for all that show of pretend in how
we organize each other:
what best shows is how disorganized we tend
to be:
this creature of monstrosity of the safe haven
of individuation of the western capsized boat
of thrills...
how serious is any manner of seriousness
going to become:
when i sober up i'll let you or whoever is listening
know:
hardly: since the ontology of man
has no potential for change
ever since Christ or the poetry of T. S. Elliot...
defeatist: no...
better to accept the fundamental poise:
this is what we are:
and we are never going to change:
there might be some glitches in our behavior:
but: safe to say:
if we have enough to eat and enough
to **** and enough to spew...
then all is ******* dandy...
           Darwinism didn't help given that once
there was the ordained formality of
the abstract of man:
now there's man looking at the anuses
of tapeworms and the mouths of chimpanzees
thinking about his psychology as imitations
dilemma...
ooh... the pressure for thinking is just ripe:
just enough: all it takes is just... one... more...
squeeze!

w. h. auden said that only the Hitlers of the world
wrote at night,
but Bukowski only wrote at night:
oh, oh the horror of writing during the day
and not laboring as an understudy of being
and doing: an electrician electrical- (respectively):
just this flimsy dealings of language
and love of curbing enthusiasm...
wayward to Victoria and Ukraine with
a monstrous face: succulent smiles...
    almost like the finish touches to Ezra Pound's
cantos:
because i giggle and lay in the garden
with my arm folded into a pillow:
this darkly grey humid Augustus' month allure:
poetry is to paint with sounds...
i sometimes see it: i sometimes don't:
i do say when people are poorly organized
and i see a ****** painting...
but writing during the day is like the antithesis
of carpe diem... truly:
only i but soon enough: not even me:
will know that writing is best done by candlelight
and alone and with no one awake in
the household so
that it doesn't feel like you're robbing them
of their thoughts...
will i ever reach the tides of Kauai:
*** as leverage:
a woman in my past once did that:
tried to leverage the whole point of conversation
with ***...
shackle me, domesticate me...
i am domesticated on my own terms:
i cook what i like to eat,
i don't like fussy eaters of cheese maniacs:
what i wouldn't do to be
like this child and eat dry pasta...
i knew a guy for 10min's worth of a train ride
who confused coffee grains for chocolate:
he attempted to head over to Edinburgh
for the fringe festival and tell a few bad jokes...
me: alone... how else...
rolling metal pellets from a balcony into my mouth...
they might still be in my body:
i don't know whether you can ****
out metal...
but this does feel like an after-party poem
from the one i already provided:
journalistic entry:
i listen...                            i don't necessarily
have to see: well:
at least not see with both eyes to go
all cross eyed...
with two eyes i can enter the underworld of the sea
but with only one eye
i get to play hide and seek with the ridge
of my nose...
barbarians they said:
but how intact was their veneration for the tongue
and letter...
that the Prose Edda are: still intact
and at least that's more than what the other Nomads
disclosed!
why bother ourselves with these Books
of a People who can't be bothered
to lift up a toilet seat when *******
and instead **** on the toilet seat:
for someone, "someone" to later come
and curse needing to take a ****
having a dry wipe of the seat
but then imagine worm parasites that travel
in ***** to osmosis birth themselves
into the ****-cheeks, huh?!
******* camel jockeys and the Halal sheep
shaggers!
huh?! and this concept of a queue:
so i barked out: mate?! you see this?!
is this something ******* imaginary?!
you in the special orbit of bypassing how people
organize themselves or what?!
so you're telling me we're not queuing?
you can just bypass this meager architecture of
a human scribble of timing out from
a workplace?
wow! wow! the ******* Islamic tinged ignorance
like the story of how one ******
Esau gave up his birthrights for a bowl of
******* gravy... or whatever it was:
i don't like the sacrosanct attitude of these desert
nomads...
what about the nomads of Polynesia and
the nomads of Scandinavia:
where ontology was intact:
knowledge of good and evil was ontological(y)
intact:
where these people knew instinctively:
they weren't confused Sodoms and Gomorrahs...
we don't need the Arabs and the Hebrews
to tell us that pig is bad but their morality
is intact by metaphor alone...
**** them!
if the Jews think that by resurrecting Israel
they can flood Europe with their cousins
they can have this day...
this day...
                             which might feel like a hundred years
but i have no respect for people
who **** on toilet seats: the ******* audacity:
these, ***** ******* rag bags
***** skin not white piglet not glistening mahogany
chocolate of fatty fruits of Kenyan nights
by the Indian sea...
this fading hue of diarrhea semi-brown toilet paper
complexion...
yes: not Japanese porcelain...
i'll be a racist homophobic:
PTSD victim-hood mentality scruple...

           **** on the toilet sea and who wouldn't be?!
am i to sit on that?!
dig a hole in the ground and let those
***** ******* just squat and **** and ****
simultaneously like pigeons!
is anyone going to laugh about this
testament to the concerns for hygiene?!
i'm so ******* hygienic that i was allowed
to have unprotected *** with prostitutes
and ha ha
having unprotected *** with prostitutes
i didn't catch a single batch of chlamydia!
or anything...

i don't even know where these people are from:
not a word of English on these shores
is like burning Shakespeare or Dickens
and the intelligent ones
will probably call this a passing...
              but not like this: these people would
have no abode in either Poland or Russia:
since, at least in Poland:
the very fabric of existence: language:
was once undermined and even suppressed
by injection of German and Russia...
but fair enough...
the 3 partitions of Poland
and the one implosion of the British Empire...
if that's how empires implode:
then i adore the French implosion more at least
no chance of a ninja habit of:
girl...                pretty is pretty but such masked
a culture clash
how about i don a balaclava?
but such a waste of a day writing during the day...
oh i think the *** is such a distraction:
i think i was only the tool
to ensure
that her mother left and she could have
the home to herself on beautiful Kauai...
i was never going to get any involvement in raising
Reyla...
it was a lovely daydream:
just like at the beginning of the shift
i was talking about:
well... if i were in power:
i would stretch the law enforcement even further:
i would ban the selling of alcohol at all football events...
it wouldn't just be:
no drinking of alcohol in view of the pitch...
no selling of alcohol at any football event...
rugby yes cricket yes
but not football:
if, it is, such, a... ******* "beautiful" game...
why even think you can appreciate it with alcohol
can't see it like chess
like a mind and intellectual excavation project
away from the everyday soap opera of being
married to a woman?
doubly numb mind ****?!
seriously... so drinking alcohol while going to see it
live is... carousel and instead of 22 ballerinas
and 3 cosmonauts in black
you have double vision and 44 button holes to
later simply pretend to sing about?
Arsenal has origins in Woolwich:
it's not north London and there's no Tottenham Hotspur
competition...
Millwall is also south London and founded
by Scottish dockers...
i don't understand why everyone hates Millwall:
i ******* hate the West Ham welders and
other iron workers...
or maybe i just love the Scots more than
these Saxon-Gaelic pillagers...
because once Rome retreated from these isles...
          Rome never even bothered the people of the Vistula:
even though they knew about us:
they didn't bother to spread their message
that far:
            maybe we were a wholesome people
and not like the tribes of what would become Germany...
i'm only writing this because i think
that i've forgotten something...
apple... bread and wine...
shot of ***** and a flick of ash from a cigarette...
no tree no serpent just the womb
and the fetus...
                 Olympic way at WEmbley
and the crowd leaving and me like the ***** to be born
rushing through the crowd...
Barker Street: my favorite underground station,
Bakerloo: my favorite line:
i rarely use it: but they kept it vintage...
i don't know how long they will keep the Bakerloo vintage...
they kept the District Line vintage for a while:
but then they replaced the AEC routemasters...
next thing to go are the... 1972 STOCK:
i don't know how long this line will work...
Taylor: your love of London is probably just my London
and i want to leave but i don't
and i would leave but i'm only 38, 39... em...
can't remember: not 40... not 40...
and what... ******* to an island in the Pacific
with a population of 60,000...
your concerts drew in 94,000 each night
and it's not that i would ever talk to every soul:
point being...
*** is a short leverage: like lies...
*** is the best lie...
*** is a lie while the truth is the child:
and clearly: there's no talking point
concerning the child:
since the child is so incubated and would later
become what?
the warning i've been hearing?
oh: i'm not familiar to her, yet:
then one touch and prison
because a lost temper and now: voyeurism...
if you work under c.c.t.v. scrutiny you can
hardly relax privately:
but i've experienced *** being utilized against me
and i don't like being manipulated like that...
so the expectancy that with enough time:
what is this muddle:
have i lived enough to now suddenly
retire on that beautiful isle and
forget the world but at the same time
the world doesn't require remembering it:
not by me not by anyone: just doesn't...
but i did mention it...
no alcohol at football games in England...
none... forbidden...
it's sport... no? so why would you go to a sports
event and pretend to enjoy it
then later return home and play video games?!
oh i drink: i drink to elevate
the experience of music and to fall asleep
and to relax...
alcohol just doesn't agree with these football fans...
the alcohol disagrees with them:
you need to find something that aligns
with you...
you can abuse it: but to the good intent...
intellectual explorations...
but such pacifying hostility simply because you
want to escape the opposite ***...
jeez...
                  it did help that i frequented
a brothel and once a strip bar in Athens...
all these healthy children (i am implying
14 year old almost fully formed females,
in Medieval times the kings would have had their
way)... but that's what i thought:
**** *** but a face of a child:
oh...            hmm...                  what a healthy child.