In the backseat of two-door cars,
Cackling at the fog,
Admiring frosted trees;
The bizarre glories of the world
Lay before in stone-cold vibrations.

Go back Jack, do it again,
Watch the wheels turn round and round
To goodwill tidings on clear cut highways,
Circumventing the haze of the suburbs
In odors of gasoline and burnt wheels.

Potholes bounce under foot,
E.D billboards taunting men
On voyage to shopping malls.
Days off and lay offs,
Getting the light and stopped on red,
Gazing at the sun to let the comfort in
To infinity and be-be-beyond.

Lofty goals atop cascading mountains,
Lined with jagged rocks,
Going to **** in mighty avalanches.
Calling back to the fall back of worry,
Our troubled souls running against the wind
As we mountain-goat up cliffs
Looking pitiful bathed in
The northern lights.

Oh how the heavens opened up,
How coastline of rocky ridges
Exploded in mental ecstasy,
Perceived through sagging eyes
Damp with the excess of life.

We're back, Jack, doing it again,
Travelling down well-worn roads where
You and I, He and she and they,
And ancient enclaves of ancestors
Journeyed through joy and sorrow
And the millions of pixels of grey area in between.

We've walked, run, and drove,
Talking madly to ourselves
In the tired eyes of those who want
To do the same and with them we continue.
We live in ourselves,
In candy-coated falsehoods of our own design,
Happy with good reason and lovingness.
And at it all, in the scope of our truth,
We laugh.

Beneath the Roses,
Down stairs of bone,
the Twilight has fled,
and I am home

At the Nightclub Carnival,
Six-Six-Six Feet Under,
Morphine Martyrs dance with
******* Thunder

Lost among the Nocturnal Nymphs,
the Wildflower Cannibals eat
Innocence.

Violet Vapors
Scholars of Marijuana
Let's **** the Beatnik Babes
into a different genre.

We are New York Fairies and
their ****** Brothers.
Our hearts play on vinyl,
we're the Devil's lovers.

I've become my own Altar,
for the dead pray to None
Under Ginsberg's Grave,
The Party's just begun.

- M.R

Where have all the writers gone?
Where are all the poets?
Where is our Sandberg with his easy lines,
our Jeffers with his discontent,
our Frost playing tennis without a net
or with a net it doesn't matter?
Where is the greatness that defines us?
Where is our crying Ginsberg
our Bukowski with his rough blackbirds
and our Cohen of the Modern Miracle
(we're still waiting)?
Where is the voice of the internet age?
It'd better come soon.
Because it's lonely here with no one to read,
no modern sage to turn to
and I wonder how many people today
turn away from their windows
to their keyboards,
like me,
and type this in.

You weren't the poetic one, but I just read Kaddish
and thought of you;
           of 1998 beach photo, Sussex somewhere - as I
remember you, perhaps a bit younger;
           of sweet peroxide blonde, hiding brunette. I was
naive to the dye 'til I saw 'the Hepburn shot' - that 1950
something print, you in Rembrandt light,
           or the black beehive wig in family portrait—
1970ish— dicky bows and cocktail dresses - Dad, aged
seven, in a shirt and trousers;
           of youthful snapshots: Portobello Beach, Edinburgh
(4), with parents in Kent (8), your gang of girls some snowy
place (14), painting the house with Raymond in Croydon (20);
           of latter digital images, 2012, more gaunt and wrinkled,
but ever-beautiful - seemingly ageless, as you wished;

           of care and trust and overdone vegetables, thin gravy,
brussel sprout production lines - beautiful, mundane memories
at Cowfold breakfast bar or Langley Green kitchen tops;
           of seaside trips to Shoreham, Portsmouth, Brighton, dogs
homes and holding my hand past the loud ones;
           of picking roses from the garden for 'perfume' - sticky
hands, wet floors and beautiful smells;
           of early morning rude awakenings, met only with cheer
and offers of tea and toast - I still have your butter tray
(hospitable even in death);
           of my brother's wedding, taking time to jive and seem
alive whilst everyone else was dying inside, despite the fact
that it was you, and you only, who should care the most (and
thus, if you didn't, why should we have);
           and of that very temperament, infamous tempers never
shown—at least to us—just pure, kind acceptance and
forgiveness.

           You weren't the poetic one.
           You were; the ninth child of a ****** and his wife
                              the girl with the Scottish accent
                              the wife of an engineer from Mitcham
                              the mother of three, the loser of one
                              the stern face of discipline
                              the BT telephone operator, the masseuse
                              the grandmother of three boys
                              the ageless face of beauty
                              the one I remember best

           You told me you couldn't recall your siblings' names -
I've looked into it. Ada, Jack, Edie, Emmie, Mabel, Joyce,
Raymond, Terence.

Work night rumbles in the Dublin 4 palace
Laughing in the stale smell of too much freedom
Whiskey, beer, prosecco make up
A rainbow of mischievous golden hues
Corona that smells like drifting **** clouds
No limes, browning in the red net
In the fridge between pockets of pizza space
No Topshop dresses, flannel shirts, uniforms
But greasy repeal jumpers, palazzo pants, huffing
Rollies on the porch under generous back light
Beside rabbit ornament with human head, crouched
In grass below the shroud of full moon fever.
An ex-rugby lad in a Chance the Rapper cap
Stands in the sunroom eating Chinese
He ordered when he was bored of girls
Changing the song one too many times
Masking the gurgling moka, hidden
To serve coffee at midnight and write bad verse
Before morning dips potato waffles into relish
"Which is just posh ketchup", breakfast
Before leaving dry chunks in the bath for work.

(A follow-up to "Whimper", which was written in response to "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg)

I have seen the best insanity of my generation destroyed by the worst minds.
I have seen humans turn into robots and the robots turn to fascism
because of What The Internet Told Them.
I have seen the weaponisation of our most rancid fears and watched
in horrified fascination as our inner demons got their own agents.
I have seen and felt the horizon constrict so tight, it’s getting
hard to swallow.

You have to understand, this isn’t what I wanted.
You have to realise, this isn’t what I meant.

This isn’t crazy.
This isn’t pure, natural, spontaneous crazy.
This is synthetic madness, manufactured madness,
genetically modified, mass-produced, mass-marketed madness:
As Seen On Television; approved by test audiences;
none of the calories, all of the carcinogens.
This goes beyond the deplorable allure of a free red hat.
This goes beyond dinosaur-dodo-dumb nostalgia for a blue passport
and a golden age that never was.
This is why you hire Cambridge Analytica.
This is the Project For The New American Sentence:
The message is, “It’s chaos out there, people; do what the hell you want.”
And the echo chamber,
and the echo chamber,
and the echo chamber,
and even the rage…
even the rage isn’t real.

Mercenaries, not maniacs.
No more lunatic songs.
That howling you hear is only feedback:
an endlessly shrieking loop of absolutely nothing, broadcast on
every channel, into every dream, until the fillings in our teeth buzz
and our institutions tear themselves apart, as
component materials hit resonant frequency.

This is how the world ends: Not with a whimper, but with
static.

We got the message wrong, giving credence to people
whose hatred is their only art.  They taught us
to avoid such human folly as Ruinous Empathy, to
distrust painful, decaying love, when these were the
things that might have saved us.
There’s a poet I know, who served in ‘Nam, who thinks
he might have even forgiven Nixon.  
Field Commander Cohen has checked out of the Chelsea Hotel,
deciding we wanted it too dark for him.
Too many of our heroes have turned out to be monsters.  We're haunted by
historic *** crimes, Cold War ghosts and the knowledge that we
could have done things differently.

The message was supposed to be, “It’s chaos, be kind.”

There's no such thing as a stable genius, but we've got
fake news and alternative facts; we're discovering the side-effects
of living post-consequence.  We're hypernormalised.  We're
past shock; our incredulity stretched beyond its
elastic limit; we've broken satire and nothing is really funny any more.

Welcome to the Disinformation Age.  These are our Interesting Times:
Glee Club and Gun Rehearsal; bloodied blue uniforms;
tears for the victims of the Bowling Green Massacre;
an early by-election for Batley and Spen;
very fine people on both sides; Thoughts & Prayers, our
only surplus, the ultimate fiat currency;
poverty **** and the return of social ****** (71 dead at Grenfell, NHS black alerts, rickets making a comeback, lead in the water); Drink the Kool-aid; humans like Kool-aid - **** stars on polygraphs; Netflix and Kompromat; the portrait
in Kissinger’s attic; Ayn Rand for Beginners; Corporate cosmology
and casino capitalism; government by gaslight; constructive ambiguity
to preserve a kakistocracy; bring me
the head of Roger Stone!  #EndOfEmpire;
Windrush and Stupid Watergate…

I said we needed our madmen back, but not like
this.  Not
these posers, these gangsters, these Quislings…  
These are merely bad actors, playing to the crazy dollar,
but do not doubt their sanity,
which is icy and cynical and monstrous.  But,
in the cold fusion reactor of that sanity, they are unknowingly
forging a new generation of madmen, whose madness
will be righteous and real and burn with
a pure, perfect heat that cleanses and cauterises.  They
will know the difference between human
and humanoid.  They will be less afraid than us, less quick to
hate strangeness. They will use their craziness to
create, not destroy.  They have
already begun.

I know this because
I have witnessed six minutes and twenty seconds of silence that blazed hotter, howled louder than all your Fire and Fury.  I have seen
riot cops in Baton Rouge turn whiter and recoil in fear from serene, dignified, unarmed surrender. I
have heard the young sweetly whisper to the old,
‘Fine, but you’re wrong, and we’re right, and we will outlive you.’
You can’t hide that behind a wall.
You can’t say that life doesn’t matter.
You can’t filibuster the future.
Everything was forever, until it was no more.

Our madmen are gone, and they’re not coming back.  
But there will be others.
The best minds of their generation will not be destroyed by your sanity.

to my friend who knows none of my writing
yet supports my passion with everything in your being
thank you for supporting me with everything in your soul
you haven't seen any piece that i have written
yet you believe that what i write is beauty
i appreciate you so much more than you percieve
and i hope one day that i am able to fully tell you how spectacular you are
i adore how kind and accepting you have shown yourself to be
i know we have only gotten close as of recently
but i am glad that i am able to know a person quite like yourself
our friendship reminds me of allen ginsberg and jack kerouac
speaking of honest emotions and desires
thank you for supporting the poetry you have yet to see
and thank you for supporting the honest me

" To Allen"


Your balder than i'll ever be
I hope
You dead man
Throwing words at me that smell
Sweet and honest
Like your worm-feast corpse
That will eventually atomize
And flow through the hairy nostrils
Of future sentient beings
Living upon this sphere and other places
Oxygenated by the mother
That will tenderly process you again
Into the very fabric of existence
Which will vibrate differently now
That you have been and writ upon
The globe your karmic babble spilling
Guts and ***** for all to consume
However they wish and dream
Or dare