They pine for days that never were
through *** stained teeth and stagnant slur
where blackface clowns and monkey chants
still echo loud in bitter rants

The snow was whiter, summers long
they hum some half remembered song
no climate lies, no “woke” offence
just ignorance dressed up as sense

They clutch their flags like sacred skin
wrap rot and rage and hate within
A pint, a bet, a Brexit cheer
no future grows, but still they sneer

Stagnant days spent waiting
wishing something meaningful
to happen
Pints, regrets and the stench of gammon

Consciousness is precious
Like love and life and time
What right do others have
Over how I choose to alter mine?

Not hurting anyone
Just pleasantly minding my own business
Yet if I fail a ***** test
For **** I smoked three weeks ago...
I'd be sacked within in an instant?

Losing a loved one to alcoholism
Is the worst thing I've endured
Yet if I test positive for a banned substance
It's rehab until I'm cured?

Employers and society
Their ignorance is ironical
If they ever discover the real me
It will be nothing short of comical

I've earned a doctorate in ***** tests
Their ignorance makes me seeth
Hallucinogens are undetectable...

Written whilst watching the walls breathe

"I don't live in moments
Moments live in me.."
This is what my dear friend
recently said to me

At first the wisdom was lost
like pouring perfume on a pig
or acid from a large dropper
into the eyes of poor old Syd

At first the fuses burned
an electric acrid smell
but soon I understood the logic
behind the diagnosis of a living hell

Losing movement every day
to a disease called MND
such an injustice and imbalance...
Such a tragedy

Yet his smile is still contagious
but I see the truth behind his eyes
even the most beautiful wild flowers
slowly wither and die

Such a hard hand dealt
to a man so bold and brave
too many tragedies in one life
too many flowers surrounding graves

Tungsten on tungsten
scissor action
that **** noise
that raunchy little ricochet...

Guilded arrows
guiding each other
into their soft target...

Submerged to the hilt...

Relax....It's just a game of darts

As youth is wasted
on the young..

Reminiscence
is wasted on the middle aged..

Regret is testiment to
a misspent youth..

Regret is also testiment
to an unfulfilled life..

If every mistake of yesteryear
was etched in flesh
with ink..

I'd have a full body suit

A one that I'd wear proud

A tuber of sobriety
sprouts in the mind
It swells and thickens
from a root to a vine

A tendril meanders
and wavers
but all the while
still climbs...

The impossible
becoming possible
with discipline
and time

Eyes glazed
shipwrecked
by a pink fizzing tide
absolution of worries...
Endorphins collide

Neck craned back
silently studying contours
of a spiralled artex ceiling

Neatly pressed pills
beginning to digest
will I ever tire of this
blissful abundant feeling?

Incarcerated by the current
drifting like a drunken log
barely buoyant, saturated
marooned in pea soup fog

Pupils wide and black
frozen are his emotions
an unforgiving mechanical schedule
he is the plastic poison in the ocean

A breath of carbonmonoxide
as he sings his workers tune
those who are close by
are asphyxiated by the plume

Where once blood flowed
copper wiring now lines his veins
robotically performing tasks
charging twice daily from the mains

Steel ball bearings
now form his joins
sewing needles
line his guts...
Yet somehow on the outside
he maintains his human looks

Where thoughts were true
and muscle was lean
now soaked in oil
part man/machine...
Following the pide piper blindly,
letting out an internal scream...

All in the pursuit of conformity
and the Anglo American dream

The needle rips and tears
vibrations through bone
pulsating pain on ribs
endured alone

Four hours of gritted teeth
the painful price of novelty
slow dips of black ink
paralysed...
A night terror atop of me

An obscure French artists character
now adorns my side
she'll fade and wither with me
she'll still be there when I die

Living in the moment
a mosquito in the breeze
skin like lizards when we're all sixty
the juice is worth the squeeze

Vinyl black as Jet
on Whitby cliffs
the needle smoothly lifts

Then delicately
touchces down like a 747...
to create as sound that's crisp

Feel it's contours
rough yet smooth
serenading your fingertips

Head back
eyes closed
vibrations born from needles kiss

Tranquil in this
midnight hour
cradelled in nostalgic bliss

Free me with your
melodic power
my worries are eclipsed

Grayscale life
stale cardboard bread
lonely nights and years
in a barren double bed

Penicillin dust
lines a heavy chest
cholesterol, palpitations
lipid level function tests

Morose Mondays
robotic ragemes
jaundiced skin
decaying dreams

Mildew eyeballs
cast a sour stare
piercing the haze
of electric blue air

Creaking joints
fading looks
granet heels carved from
ill fitting safety boots

With cold clay
a soul was environed
forging rhymes
from cold pig iron

Gored by the long tusks of tomorrow
lying hungover...
head throbbing
dehydrated and exhumed

Painful memories of the night before
protrude through thoughts
like a starving artists ribcage

I am dead inside...
like a privet hedge
a green shell
with a barren rotten core

Moments of clarity
dance like carrots on strings...

Terminal lucidity
an occasional epiphany
the definition of insanity

Zoplicone zeds
for artificial dreams
early alarm clocks
robotic regimes

The fog starts to clear
music fix in the car
a sheep on autopilot
to the thought abattoir

The right mix of chemicals
in order to function
circling roundabouts
never finding the junction

Stripped ham hock heels
from ill fitting safety boots
dripping auburn sweat
inhaling metallic soot

Sickly stifling heat
zero fresh air
seeing through *******
with a Bukowski stare

Benevolent benzos
keep emotions neat
another shift ends
rinse then repeat

Turbulent waves of thought
begging to be surfed
my pen is my board

Thoughts break like waves
and just like the surfer...
a missed wave is lost forever

Raise a glass
to the missed waves
that will be forever mourned

Irritable insomnia
Such a stubborn scratch to itch
Unwieldy awkward positions
Fatigued eyelids twitch...

Antidepressants prescribed
For the normal and contented
No thanks doctors and psychiatrists
I'm not a broken person to be mended...

If I'd only listened years ago
As they were prescribed off label
Prescribed for their drowsy side effects
But I was ignorant and ungrateful...

How I used to hate bed time
Now it can't come soon enough
I just can't wait to lie there...
Snug...like a hamster in fluff...

In the USA the FDA
Gave you a black box warning
But in UK you are as they say...
As vibrant as a bright summer morning...

Mirtazapine, Mirtazapine
I lay in bed until well past noon...
No nightmareish dreams in my cotton head
A baby back in the womb

Starving noses guide
revellers to toilets
**** bleached Armitage Shanks
stare back at them
with a veiny marbling effect
akin to an ancient tree's rings..
Or some obscure breed of stilton

Once outside
icy air stings the navels
of their ******* cleffs
a knowing nod to their kind
a silent jesture to their fellow man
dolphins blow holes they both possess...

Picking at the carcass
of conversations
the mechanically recovered meat
of dialogue
over eager fat alligators clapping
for their suppor
basking in their stupor...

A dull evening
akin to a poorly written novel..
fifty shades of beige...
aneurisms, nose bleeds
and wasted finite heart beats
litter the centre of this stage

There's gonna be a war...
Between the easy sleepers
and the insomniacs..

Easy sleepers..
Falling asleep in their Snoodies and such..
While the insomniacs create great machines all night
then come home to their alkaline children
with the smell of heavy solder
saturated in their hair and skin..

Chilled liquid mercury
over a couple of
eighteen month old matured batteries..
The breakfast of the future..
The breakfast of champions..

The easy sleepers
quietly give in to their fate..
They are fireflies in the dawn

Then...With the yawn of the hippos breath
and the smash of the apes bone hammer...
In a flash... they are gone!

Sunblest Aldi bread
Defrosted from the freezer
An open sea coal fire
With a Northen Echo bleaser

Through the tinfoil tops of milk
Spuggys pecked their feral beaks
The wild cold wind gnawed
At our frozen beetroot cheeks

Wood chip then dado rails
Adorned our thin walls
Breathing second hand smoke
Brought hardly any side effects at all

Sticky summers, hayfever
Long grass and pollen
Childhoods are long gone....
But still not forgotten

How subtle things have changed
Recession, strikes, austerity
We can almost afford council houses
That fit around our TV's

Proud to have memories
And proud of our people's sovereignty
Proud of our upbringing
Proud of our poverty!

Remarks hang
low in the gut
so dense they have there own gravity...
Freedom of opinions
ignorance is bliss
free speech becomes a travisty

Out of taste
and fashion
like a garish 80s bandana
an appendix burst
or rupture to the spleen
a spanner in the works
of a fine tuned machine

Hard to digest
pain bursts through my chest
like a xenomorph in nirvana
indigestible & foul
dry cat **** on a trowel
you are my green banana

Tess Park's lyrics
dripping purple lilac
they are the purest
smoothest
angels kiss

Fuzzy leather of
suede
coupling
silk & velvet
harmonic bliss

Softly
tumbling
topsy-turviness...  
Worries gently elcipsed

Viscous vocals
melding gently
with Anton Newcombes
musical genius

Words flow like worms
Swept along in the silt
Of murky river beds
No match for the current
And content
Of a cluttered unfiltered head

Moments perish like daffodils
Fragile to a stiff
Spring breeze
Petals turn dark to auburn
Permiated with jaundice
Depicting decaying disease

Ferrous dust lines lungs
Along with choking
Metallic fumes
Time ticks in slow motion
Steel faced suppressed emotion
As impending doom looms

Icicles hang
Temporarily melted by low winter sun
Under the pristine crystal skies
You and I hung

Crystalline...
Like metamorphosing butterflies
Webs of intricate thought
Are simultaneously spun

At night we're stunned
By the unfiltered cosmos
In its ultimate wisdom

No pressure of life
No consequence of decision

The stars are the headlamps
Resurrected by the crisp air
We are the paralysed and mystified
The rabbits in the cross hairs

Grateful...
We care not, the why, when nor how

Time and emotions are frozen
Starstruck..You and I
Lazily gliding through the mirrored still ocean

What wisdom lingers here?
In the pauses between thoughts...
What currents guide us here?
My fellow cosmonauts

Full of momentum
Intoxicated on summer's sunshine
No respect for the rain
I need to stop suddenly
Can't do it gently
Slam on the brakes
And drift eloquently
In slow motion...
I aquaplane



Danger in beauty
Beauty in wisdom
Bones fracture brilliantly
Like light in prisms
No room for logic
Slow motion gliding
Common sense hiding...
Cataclysm



Palace of wisdom?
If I live, leave me bleeding
******* moist air
With blood, hair and glass
Wrapped around my face
Whiplash with no headrest
Leave me crippled
And crumpled...

Another rusted ruin
At the side of the road to excess...

Conned by currency
Lured in gently
Hours wasted generously...
I am full time employed

Melded soft metal
Idea's now skeletal
Decaying wilted petals...
A scream with no noise

A stunning star collapses
No more quick firing synapses
The addict relapses...
His dreams are destroyed

Disposable consciousness
A pawn in all of this
The blackness of all of it
Welcome to...The void

Dust laden wings
Hover...
Drunk on the moonlit sky
Seduced by the warm summer air
They splat off my windscreen
Do they value their life?
They don't seem to care

Their lives to most are like mine...
Beyond comprehension
They live like I drive
Without due care and attention

Ninety miles per hour
I race home to my flame
As more splat on my windscreen
A realisation washes over me
Maybe we're quite the same?

I am captive
In society...

Anchored in the open sea

They have wings
And the open sky
They can fly...

But they are not free