Had I not shaved my head
My hair would grow wildly
Directionless, as the wind blows
On wintry days, battering trees
Pushing branches to and fro
Without symmetry or sympathy,
I would look boyish from afar
A little disconcerting, my face
Framed with greying beard
A little desperate to hold onto
The passing years as my youth
Recedes into male pattern baldness,
(The genes don't lie), it would be
An extension of my personality
Unruly, childish, carefree, immature
This is how I could express myself
Had I not shaved my head
Wanting to keep it all inside.

I lie here, supine
Listening to sirens
Heading out towards the motorway
Somewhere, someone's evening
Has turned bad,
In the streets outside the echo
Of teens on mopeds
Reverberates between the
Terraced houses, squeezing
All they can out of a 125 engine
While squeezing all the joy that is left
Out of everyone's sunday night,
Before we all head meekly to work
On monday morning
Weekend warriors, tamed by
The restraints of finances,
Needing to earn the freedom
Of another fix next friday.
I lie here on my side
A pillow blocking at least some
Of the cacophony,
More sirens head out towards
The motorway, someone's life
Has turned into a disaster
All I wanted was an early night.

And while Notre Dame burns
Conspiracy theorists rewrite history
On their terms.

The air was different back then, somehow lighter, less heavy metals floating around and nuclear sunsets I suppose. I was born in the 60's but the 70's are my era, long hair, flares, large collars and music that still haunts today. What you need is children to amalgamate past, future, present. With their mp4's, downloads, (records and CD's old hats no one's wearing anymore ) tv box set binges, live pause, catch up, iPads, iPhones, igiveup. Technology speaks to them in so many different tongues and guises, the world has shrunk down to "someone is typing" messages from the other side of the world, nay the universe, friendships based on snapchat, facebook, twitter that don't even have the decency to start with a capital letter, Skype, facetime, with people you don't even have to 'know' coming round wanting tea and outstaying their welcome, instead hanging back in the ether waiting for the right moment the right meme to slot into the conversation. I sit and let it all wash over me, a tide ebbing and flowing long into the night, stretching time zones and bedtimes to the limit,  in fact talking beyond bed, those waves never sleeping always whispering, I share music and photographs that are things from my life, they will never understand beyond the boring stories I tell them, a fount of useless information that flows, analogue from the corner of the room, the old man, the old days, you never had it so good, I am in awe, everything new, all to discover, everything to play for, world  full of possibilities, not the same old 9-5 humdrum waiting for the weekend so we can pretend to be free again, it's all happening now. I enjoy these moments as an observer, no need to join in just sit and smile, with an occasional LOL or amusing emoji. My daughter bought Hotel California on vinyl the other day, I'm still in there, somewhere.

You make me feel awkward
Your beauty a weapon
Rendering me speechless and helpless
I am one of the waifs and strays
Standing in the shadows
Observing the game, looking for losers
Potential friends.

I want to go to bed but my daughter is in the bath again; we're gonna have to pay on a meter soon, (it seems it's a privilege not a right), so I wonder how much all those drops will cost, I'll just have to cough up, baths are an essential of a girl's life and I couldn't stand the whining if I said it's showers from now on; I don't get baths, immersed in hot water, gradually turning cold, swimming in all your own sweat, (human soup), "They help you relax" she says, RELAX! she's not the one paying the bills, stressing over where the next meal is coming from; all I'd think of is the things I could be doing instead of wallowing, old people die in baths, some even drown in them, some husbands take a bath with an electrical appliance (plugged in, courtesy of the wife), John Haigh dissolved his victims in the bath in sulphuric acid, showers every time for me, wash away the dirt down the drain, with all the stress of the day; bath bombs, what's that about, not some sort of terrorist threat, it's smelly stuff that sort of explodes when put in water, impregnating the skin with smells and potions, (human potpourri), I just want to go to bed, I'm tired and have work tomorrow, what the **** does she do in there for hours on end.

Let us all rise for the birthing of Earth's new life
Stirrings from her womb bring forth daffodils,
To have intimate relations with buzzing bees
Stirring wooly heads from their winter cluster,
As the yellow heads Mexican wave with
A warm blustery scented breeze, birds sing with
Renewed gusto, dancing across the garden fence
Making nests, making plans 'cause they just can't
Help but feel born again, so lets have an ovation
Spring is sprung, give me more, encore, encore.

Deliciously bored
Staring from a window, alone
Midwinter, sunday afternoon
Trees bare their skeletal form to the rain
That runs in rivulets down glass
Scientifically designed to keep the draft out,
Nowhere to be, so I may as well be here
Deliciously bored as I was when a child
Though then I wanted it all to happen,
The world to rush at me, engulf me so
I could drink it in, experience, digest, evaluate
But now it just passes me by, time to waste
Rather than worrying about wasted time
So for now I will enjoy this feeling
Nose pressed against a window pane
Leaving breath patterns on the glass
That is scientifically made to keep the draft out.

Member of the 27 club, too young to die
Too fast to live, only lent to us
A break in the clouds that let some light in,
Original flash of inspiration jumping
From my radio to shout, music isn't dead
Too soon to leave us only wanting more

The atheist walks
Past the supermarket
Seeing only shoppers,
Buying their daily bread
Earnt by working nights on security, or
Days serving zombied customers
At drive through takeaways
Getting abused, watching the litter
Pile up from don't give a toss
Attitudes diving immaculate cars,
He sees shattered dreams in the homeless
Begging to survive another day
In pavement poverty,
Preying on good will by sliding doors
In the rain,
Teenagers pushing prams, abandoned
To a cruel world of benefits and scams
Just to make ends meet,
Men wheeling six packs to their hatchbacks
Hoping they have enough *****
To block out another weekend
Of the wife moaning about never going out
And the grass needs cutting,
He smells the pollution of all the cars
Driven a few hundred yards
For a pack of cigarettes
And some dried noodles for the kids for lunch
Just to shut them up,
He sees only individuals
Railing against each other, falling
Over their directionless lives
All wanting to be somewhere, NOW.
He pushes past them all
Never looking up, never acknowledging
A single face, knowing his place
In the crowd.

But I see the woman who stops
In her nurses uniform
Tired from another 12 hour shift
Smiling at the beggar she drops him her change,
Takes her shopping to the car
Looking forward to a family meal together,
Waits for someone to pull out of their parking space
As she leaves for a humble home
Built on love,
I still see a light in the darkness.

I will flower like an orchid
In the forest,
Beautifully alone;
With only the sky to see my colour
The trees to call my home.
When I die, no one will cry
At the passing of my beauty;
As petals fade and leaves shrivel,
I will return to whence I came
Leaving the world unaltered.

Tears fall like rain,
Except they don't
Running in rivulets
From ducts, down your
Puffy puckered face
Reddening pupils, veiny
Crimson spider's webs,
Makeup on spoilt canvas
Masked blemishes that
Are now the least
Of your worries, as I
Hit you again, playful
Seeing how far we will go
Before one of us breaks,
I don't hate you, pain
Is a mutual friend
We hide our love behind,
Tears of a demented clown
We perform our routine,
Outside it drizzles the rotten
Souls of the ******
From stormy skies,
Here we are alive
As we enter the ring.

You cannot control the power of the sun
Far less try to hide it behind lies
And reassurances that everything is fine,
While it burns into the retinas of thousands
Who thought they had jobs for life.
The sunsets just don't lie, our life giving
Star sent messages to it's progeny
Writing out the truth across the sky

Pripyat holds the secrets of the apocalypse
Now we know what happens when our world
Ends, nature carries on, regardless, unperturbed
Even after we have done our worst, we go
The way of the dinosaurs, leaving a vacancy
For the next apex predator to ***** up
The world will never stop, but we will
And I think you'll find we will not be sorely missed

Just because one man broke the rules
Causing a reactor to blow it's cool
All so the 'Woodpecker' could listen in
A wall of surveillance powered by nuclear
Fission, now it is a tourist hot spot, everyone
Can go to visit the moment this world stopped
But will we learn from the devastation that's left
History says otherwise, you can't fix stupid

It's an aid to creation, helps the words flow
Though my muse is not amused
By the drunken ***
Who pens poems only fit for graffiti
On toilet walls
We have an odd relationship
Based on trust and understanding
I don't trust her
And she'll never understand me
I have crushed so many worlds
With the clarity of alcohol
Including my own, left to drink
By myself in bad company
It's like a sad friend, who always turns up
When you're doing something else
Needing attention, grasping for love
That they can never give back
Only to rob you of your senses
Take over your whole life and
Still leave you wanting more
It's not me, it's the drink talking
Now ******* and leave us in peace.

Poetry is the open wound
From which the **** of our minds seeps
Infecting the world with it's vitriol
Spreading it's disgusting disease
A scab that never heals, as we pick
And pick away at an itch, letting the injury
Ooze and weep, always there to remind us
We can never resist perverse temptation
And rid us of the addiction that will always
Cause us pain, so open your minds
Let them breathe and pen.

There's a ******* the checkout
With long blond hair
Restrained in a scrunchie
At the back of her head
Scanning scanning, far away
Smile, looking past groceries
To a future self

I see a dream under that uniform
I see a freedom in that face
She knows there is a future
But it's not held in this space
Uncloned and unchained, one day
She will fly, on the wings of a voice
With stardoms far cry

A till away sits her broken dream
She's about forty, slightly grey
Last week on a warning for being
Late, her dreams have succumbed
To a different fate, she had wished once
For a chance to be free, but now
Has become part of the corporate machine

There is nothing lonelier than wanting to be alone
They are queuing at my door to tell me
About my latest work
Asking what I'm doing now
For advice on what to write
What's hip or in Vogue
As if I'd know, I've been talking
About myself for years

But the beer in the fridge has
More to say to me then any of them
It speaks of the quiet of loneliness
Seeping into bones numbing
Brain cells
I can feel it wash over me
It tastes of stale breath and smells of bo
It wears a shirt unbuttoned down the front
Trousers with the fly open
Sitting listening to Sibelius
Smoking cigarettes

It's like the ***** that just won't leave
You're tired of all the talking
But you know you want to do it
One more time while you can

I wrestle you out of the cupboard under the stairs
Every weekend
Scaring the ******* out of the cat
Who by now knows what is happening,
Perceived as a fight to the death
Filled with electric noise, until finally
I tame the monster and put it to bed
He elects to hide
In the kitchen, under the table.

We dance the waltz of cleanliness
Over carpet, lino, round litter trays
Up stairs and across bookcases
Just you and I, an odd couple
Locked in a battle against dirt and dust
The build up of bacteria (yuk!)
Cleaning away the footprint of a week
On the possessions of our life.

My wife doesn't know about us
You and me and our OCD
We share for an hour, or so, while she's out
Shopping, drinking coffee, with her mum
Ours is a secret affair
******* cat fur out of the crevices,
When I am done we part company
Hiding our passion behind closed doors
Until we meet again, next saturday

My love.

She waved to him
From the island of the sofa,
Surrounded by her magazines
Mobile phone screen ablaze
With her usual social media,
Attention on her mind
He, headphones on was in the zone,
So many times the trance
Had been broken,
Inner world invaded by trivialities,
Today he just turned his head away
He had balanced the perfect mix
Between beer buzz and musical bliss,
This time he was going deep
Diving, fish like into sonic waters
A Pink Floyd sea of euphoric escape
This time, she was just going to have to wait
Until he broke surface again.