Dashing hither, dashing thither,
Dashing in the winter weather,
John the dashing haberdasher
Dashed a hat upon his head

Not some lace cap fit for ladies,
Nor a bonnet stitched for babies,
John the dashing haberdasher
Dashed a top hat there instead!

Never had a hat so fine,
So tall and silken, so refined,
Regaled upon the daily grind
Of prince or pauper in the Strand

Ladies stalled to see it's lustre,
Swooned and swayed before it's bluster,
Fell and fainted in a fluster,
Startled by a hat so grand!

Children screamed in dreadful fright
And yelping dogs began to bite
As crowds began to brawl and fight
And riots claimed the London street

In the chaos thus ensuing,
Folks began to run, pursuing
John the dashing haberdasher
Chasing him from Strand to Fleet!

John was taken to the prison,
Chided by the crowds derision,
There to wait the Mayor's decision
On his wanton heinous crime

Charged with breaching lawful peace,
He paid a fine for his release
And ordered to desist and cease,
He left his top hat well behind

Thus is told the tale of John
Who dared to bravely dash and don
A silken top hat high upon
His noble head in London town

Heed his tale and take this warning,
When you wake one winter morning
With desire to be less boring,
Careful how you dress that crown!

There were Chinese lanterns at New Year
when it was so cold the fireworks froze in the air,
bursts of red and silver beside the dazzling lights
of London. From our perch on Parliament Hill
we stood, anonymous in the crowd,
looking down at the giddy world
and at the final minute of the year it
was just you and I
and then it started to snow.
Families let off the slow moving lanterns,
children held them tight in their hands- but
they were pulling, pulling
caught by the night wind, their ghostly silhouettes
drifted up and up,
til they became stars themselves to us.
They were moments of peace against the
busy noise of the city,
softly golden, trustingly floating further and further.
I didn't know that you too would soon be gone
and nothing I could say would change your mind.

If I had thought to then
I would have made a wish on each lantern I saw
rising like a thousand spirit kings above the earth.
I would have wished and wished,
and sent my heart out there too:

I will always remember
the soft chills of snow beginning to fall
and the quiet beauty of those Chinese lanterns.
I will remember your hand slipping into mine,
and the silent slide of that year
into the past, yes,
I will remember.

The river wrestles on, furrowed by light bulbs.
The iron song of the evening bathes the air in
London's homeward beating hearts.
A world of leather and troubles, not of one's own.
The summer moon is a dim lamp
as we walk from Kew Bridge to yours.

Quietness clings to you so unnatural.
It's rattled your breath, like a spectre's hands
have tipped black medicine down your throat or
A devil's tongue, wet with mockery,
has kissed away daylights fervent laughter
and left your mind to move on silence.

Under this train crash crescendo – the world is too much
so I make balm from my words,
that I shake out like polaroids of times
we felt worth remembering.
Yet, a monkey rattling a cage, my lullaby falls deaf
and your lungs sit still, heavy.

We walk on like stuffed dolls, for all our beauty
just passengers in the night's school bag and
I'm left to think of the Thames as the great, grey, mother of us.
How it forged what we have, set in motion our hearts
to be tugged shallow, wrenched deep with the tide.
We were born in it's ritual, bound, heaving in sync.

And the caustic moonlight gives us nothing to rein,
In the silence you shine like beaten copper and my grain is the
hammer. Each lilt of your body begs me to love and to know  
What spills from your mind
when you cant scream and cant cry.
What do you have without words?

I want you to have me -
because you are the words.
That I write everyday.
And the reason that makes me
want to remember
that I'm feeling this way.

Why is everything see-through in the city?
Bars, cafes, shops, offices - all bare their naked witness to the contents inside
While wealth once chose to hide
Its faces from the masses
It has now found a more effective method of suppression:
Why disguise what you can make others want?
Show them,
Let them see what they could have,
Flaunt it to their willing eyes
And they will follow
The ringing of that hollow bell of 'want'
To their mass graves.

Don't get me wrong,
I don't think anyone is better off here.
Tell me the city suits floating
Like moths to the burnished flame of their local mall
Pulled into its glittering radiance after a long days'
Deathly work to find some comfort in consumption
At the blow-dry parlour or a watch glittering like a cricket in plastic grass
Aren't suffering like the rest of us.

There is no winning here.

Although it may appear that way to you
Through glistening expanses of blue-green
We're all/drowning/in this/sea of desire/together.


When I emerged from Wren's haven
(Imprint of ashes still traced in my skin)
I didn't know where I was.
I couldn't understand how I had come here from where I had been,
How the two could lie so close
To each other.
In this space.
One seemed so other
But not as I expected.
Raised all my life to believe in the tangible
Suddenly that was what seemed unreal,
Ungraspable in its absurdity
After the close communion of a ritual I could only ape,
And even then in disobedience.

How have we come to this place
Where we live in such
False freedom
Chasing our own tails
Consuming our energies
With mere consumption?

There is so much more




When we rejected that which rang false
We supplanted it with another idol.

Slavery is recognised by its outcomes,
Not its tones, it's overtures, it's address.

Where is our freedom not to live in *******
To money?
(That great power whom nobody controls and none can predict,
Which works in mysterious ways and gives us this day our daily bread.)

Why can't we live without it?
I hate this subservience / servitude it has imposed on us
Where every action word and meaning ends in its
Judgement / Answer

Where every day it's meaning grows
Even as it retreats from us in shadowed figures and
Ethereal locations;
Where each pound note is the holy scripture of our existence.

We live by its rules and none but it
Shall determine if we can enter
The Kingdom of Heaven

(That 5* Palace full of virgins).



I've never been to Las Vegas.
A mountain of money in a desert never held much appeal to me.

Pain inside curls up in cramps
And so to the window I go.
I watch the cars and people go by
Like a circus running a show.
I light up and breathe in hard and fast
******* the ash to my soul.
Disgusting and dark it doesn't cut out
Or come close to filling the hole.
But on I puff the cinders glow red
And quickly come to an end
And right until my finger ends burn
And the smoke itself starts to bend.
I smoke one, and two and three and four
Trying to find some spice
To fill that freezing emptiness inside
And melt my heart made of ice.

11 /14

Cloaks of Shadows hide me away,
Don't Let the monsters get me today.
I swear a’ oath, of blood and truth.
Pay I shall, so do not sway.
Eat me later, for I very prefer you.
To fall in your depths, lost forever in content.
Why not, must I say?
But Alas to Death you shall hand me over.
A friend now, but later foe.
For a predator to all, you sure are.
Cloaks of shadows do not care.
To those who listen, beware.

Under a tree
In a park
A city once unknown
I buried a part of me

I wanted to leave myself there
In order to bring myself back
To feel the magic of the city
Once again I’ll find myself under that tree, I swear

I left pieces of my heart
In London, Oxford, Bath
I’m ready to move on, live my life
It’s in that city where I buried myself I’ll have my start