Essentially inedible
Is that all
That terrible?
When you consider
Where the criticism came from.

I know sometimes he takes a different form
Oft a Shepherd
A herder of words unreformed
Of depth
And of humour
And poignancy
Renowned
Sometimes
He's his girlfriend
With beauty unbound.

There's some places you go
Where the mantle is thin
And there's just enough cracks
In the crust to begin
To let something through
With no shape and no size
No essence of anything
On which to rely
For definition
Or earthly ken
Makes you start to remember
Of occurrences when

You've felt this before

Kefalonia
Central Glascow
The street where you live
The whole nation of Ireland
These locations all give
Pause for thought
On what is and what ain't
The nature of fact
Though it's incredibly faint
I felt it most pronounced
Outside Cozzarelli's in Belleville New Jersey
Over ten years later
Still makes me uneasy.

Not people with friends
Into the collective
We dare not descend
Or is that just me
Refused entry
By not knocking on the door
Not even walking up the street
Not even getting off the bus
Not even getting on the bus
Scanned the timetable with horror.

The strait is calm
Now's the time
Row me out
To the isle of graves

The sky is clear
But not for long
Soon will the come
The dark waves

That make the passage
So arduous
And unreflective
I won't get my story straight
Time is short
And winding down
They don't like it if you're late

It's hard enough
With this skinny fellah
And his one string viola
His riff so harsh
And unrelenting
As to induce
Catatonia

Speaking of strings
I've got one left
It is taut
Yet resisting
I see the ladies
With their scissors
How long to still be existing?

Surely not the tunes?

In the garden of Eden baby
In the room above a pub
In the valley of the shadow
That's where I found my love

When dinosaurs ruled the earth
The day the Earth stood still
When a river ran right through it
That's when I got my fill

Something in the way she moves
Some day my prince will come
Some enchanted evening *******
Some kind of wonderful

Who watches the watchmen?
Whose side are you on?
Who are you peter Townsend?
Whose heavy head wears the crown?

I've always been prone
To stubbing a toe
My mother
Chastised me
When I was down low
Close to the floor
And the obstacles there
Seemingly volleying
Solid objects without a care
You'd think it'd be easy
On my shallow eclipticacal plain
To avoid maternal exasperation
And young digital pain

But I've always done it

Though in adolescence
And first adulthood
The occurrences dropped
Gyroscope tuned
Balance now understood

As the years curved away
The habit came back
Micro reactions
Now starting to lack

The leverage and mass
Certainly don't help
After the impact
The pathetic yelp
The delay between
Whack and sensation
Has always confused me
Defied explanation
Similar to getting
Hoofed in the spuds
Two seconds to grace
Then the ache comes in floods
I reckon it happens now
About once a week
Hopping then paralysed
As my faculties leak.

I'm eschewing *****
And ***** too
Perhaps a month
Maybe two
It's been a fortnight
Still slightly fuzzy
Jerky sleep patterns
I had it coming
Don't start me on
The whacky dreams
A disaster movie
Each night it seems
Aliens
Zombies
Catastrophes
Volcanos
Earthquakes
Foul disease
And it's all my fault
I caused it all
Uncharacteristic
Prideful
Before the fall

And then the wake.

When beauty gets down low
To speak to me
I think of you
Neath that shady tree

The chlorophyll packs the leaves so tight
The veins resist with all their might
To store life for the months to come
They greedily swallow the light

I remember laying in the grass
Our eyes on each other still
Your smile matched your pretty dress
The sun transited the hill

We didn't notice it's passage
Till we felt the chill
Till all was shadow
We stood and turned without a word
Our last day on the meadow.

The most delicate sleep
Brings brutalist dreams
When you leave the herb alone
At least that's how it seems

The beginnings
Of sunrise
Like vivid bruise on milky thigh
pushing up the dark shutter of Day.

If you make the crowd laugh
Then you're winning
Doesn't matter
How ****
Your argument is
If your opponent left
Flustered and squirming
He's the one
Who is stinking of ****
Play to the gallery
That's how it is
Like Sun Tzu said
If he's a hot head
Take the ****.

She asked the wiseman
Could he describe nothing
He said no
But he'd have a go at everything
He began with
Aardvarks

Is it a good idea Tibet with your life?
And
The State they leave the place is Nepalling.

Staring out the window
Can't find the words
I crave
Trying to get this finnished
Coffee keeps goin
Back in the microwave.

It's that heavy happiness
When you're listening to Leonard
So simply expressed
Though you know he knows the big words
He'd rather talk to many
Than the cognoscenti
See there I just did it
Shame on me
Get salted through with Cohen
the beauty elementary.

Where's all this rain they keep talking about?
It not fell for awhile
But it's hardly a drought
Weatherman don't know what he's talking about
Where's all this rain?

You don't feel it yourself
What others think of you
And they rarely say it
Not within your earshot
Till its too late
Standing over your box
You don't feel it yourself

Some day a real rain will come
Like Travis said to the candidate
Been thinking of Firearms and Mohicans of late
The time has passed for scholarly debate
Some day a real rain will come.

Is the nature of expression
Just a collective
Jumping off point
A result of tickling
Our unconsciousness
From sullen back to noisy front
Ejected
Deep within
To without
After Previous
Shoving its way in
As we went
Ambling
Through the cloud?

When scientists get poetic
They knock this place into
A cocked hat
Cos they deal
With real truth
And proper ambiguity
Now
What you think
About that?

Sam and Dianne
Tony and Carmela
Vera and Jack
Bobby and Shiela
Boston
Jersey
Weatherfield
Liverpool.

Is that thin gravy
Or black coffee
That half empties my cup?
It's been there awhile
It's looking a bit rough
Don't give it a sniff
Grasp the handle
Take it up
Drain it down
I'll know soon enough.

I've started to fuse iron within my core
It won't be long now
I can feel innards roar
I read the sign that says exit
Atop the fuzzy door
Just passed
The point that tips
I'll metabolise
And grow no more

Switch off my chromosomes
Like Hisashi Ouchi
It won't be horrific though
Like with that poor *******
Might as well
Dive off of the wagon
C'mon let's get plastered
Swim in the pool
It was fun while it lasted

But you can change
Anytime that you want
It just a choice
Wether to drink
And from which font
Was it the script
Or performance
Made you a useless savant?
Better ask Tom Cruise.

The Mars Opportunity Rover
Conked out in 2018
After fourteen years a wandering
Across the dusty plains
Over fifty times
It's life expectancy
The plucky little *******
Rolled on
Finally succumbing
To a massive dust storm
Separated from the sun
Of course
It never uttered
It's famous last words
They were gleaned
From the final data dump
But the internet got hold of it
And in its throat
It had a lump

Oppy didn't
Self anthropomorphise
She did not know what that was
She just died
Scared cold and lonely
In service to her god's

Everyone stinks of something
But not all can smell it
Dependant on your olfactory frequency
Is what gives the odour credit


Pitched above or below them
And they inhale in ignorance
But tuned
Right on the money
And they will look at you
Askance.

When you strike down
A ***** in Egypt
The Earth it feels alive
Reconnected
To the wellspring
So many questions inspired
You don't know how they did it
The carving
Transport
And placement
Shafts Driven
Arrow straight through the bedrock
To open technology's basement.

We don't want to be small
Even compared to one another
Cos it's better
Generally speaking
To be tall rather
Than little
That don't take long to discover
Then you turn
To the trees
The mountains
And the continents
You imagine yourself
Traipsing round the world
Just how many steps
Would that take?
The solar system
The Milky Way
The local groups
The endless days
They move away
And loop round to the beginning
To every point in time
And each place
Along the line
In the vacuum
You are aware of
Creation singing
It Sits on
The cosmic fence
Of this bubble universe
Mixed with the countless
In an eternal
Glass of beer
That sits upon a table
In a bar
That is quite able
To hold infinity
And it's the smallest
Gaff in town.

Will the days
All fall away
Or is it
Just this one
Here to stay?

When your awake
Against your will
It's an encomposing thing
It seems as if
It will not end
Like last orders will not ring
And then the sun comes up
And realise you've slept
Self absorption
Is the crack
Into which
You have crept.

To be called a murderer
In some fields
Is the highest
Compliment
Comedy
Philosophy
With no
Personal intent
Like Bill Hicks
Talented beyond belief
With a selfish bent
It comes home
If you listen enough
It's a big tent.

Llandudno is one **** town
Everyone I've talked to
Felt the need to throw it
Down.

A recently viewed headline
It made  you giggle
But imagine
If it went down the line
By Grand Moth Tarkin
He felt undermined.

Don't won't to sound
Like George Formby
But there's no other way
Lest you ignore me
Cos the reverse is true
When I'm drinking whisky
It not Through others lives
It's the **** ****
Within me.

Went yesterday
To the funeral
Of an old friends mother
To a new ancient church
That morning discovered
The fine cut sandstone
Fogged in incense
To its core
It's sacred symmetry
Unnoticeable worn
When Eddie's dad
Took the lectern
To emote
The previous
Spirituality
Somehow
Seem mute
He spoke of their meeting
The birth and growth
Of their son
The break in his voice
But the strength to go on
The depth of the love
So unpretentiously spun
When you think
Of false sentiment
So readily spent
The decades of devotion
Is surely what the lord meant.

How does love work?
The mechanics
The chemistry
Then the circumstances
The chances
The mystery
How does it maintain
When time lays down
It's sophistry
But then again
Look at all
Those
Whom
Are
Not into
Me.

Yer qwerty keyboard
Was arranged
Cos of the mechanical nature
And the way fingers catch
But its not the most efficient
Now that everything is flat
But they haven't changed it
Cos the benefits are minimal
Compared to reconstitution
And all of that retraining
Liminal.

There's a glass in my cupboard
That's seventy two years old
Sometimes I drink ***** out of it
To see what might unfold
It belonged to my grandma
It's a coronation relic
I've checked
It's not collectible
It's fate
Is rather hectic.

People talk of
Comparing apples to oranges
Like its some pointless exercise
But Apples are boss
And oranges ****
I wouldn't tell you any lies.

Feels like it hasn't rained in weeks
But there was
A spritzing just now
Lasted but a few minutes
All the clouds would allow
So there is that fragrance
That's hard to describe
Wet dust
Doesn't quite cover it
But it makes me feel alive.
It makes you remember.

America passes
Mother's Day
Just over
A month after
But we
Celebrate the dads
On the
Same day
Without laughter
Allowing
For the worlds turn
Against
All
Disaster
The
Weird
Thing
Is
The
Mas
Are
Still
*******
Plastered.

I think I've seen
AI videos
About how much
Sleep you need
But
Good lord
I'd feel terrible
If I've
Human relieved.

A system that bends the truth
As well as the lies
Would provide
Quicker communion
On which
Most rely
But we can't do it
Like interstellar travel
So it's increasing
Space junk
As capacity
Unravels.

It's the Badminton horse trials today
Seems an exercise in futility
How are they going to
Toss up the shuttlecock?

You ever get that sudden surge?
You  Don't know where it came from
A salty pulse behind the eyes
That swells
Then leaves your skull
A smell
A taste
A tune
A movie
A wave from those
That have gone on
A hail from heart to brain
From where
They now belong.

Klopp out,Slot in.Title won.

Brevity is the essence of wit
Also grotesque laziness.

I'm lining em up
Urologist
Proctologist
Phlebotomist
Clinician
Radiologist
Encologist
Anaesthesiologist
Mortician.

Computer!
Make that 7% more convincing
No more than that
Don't want to raise suspicions
If we are to manoeuvre them
It's quite the subtle dance
Through the sun dappled forest
Where memory gets enhanced
I want to see
If you can make them cry
Or perhaps nostalgic
The biggest of the lies
Goosebumps
And
Raised neck hair
Is what your after
Maybe the feel
Of sand twixst toes
Upon the ancient shore
Enhance two twenty four
To one seventy six
Consolidate image
Centre in and stop.

If Alan Latchley
Were still alive you could ask him
Like he said
She can bring a tear to your eye
She can bring the blood to your shoulder
She can bring the kettle to the boil
Cos football is about nothing
Unless it is about something
And what it is about
Is football
He tossed a coin into the air
He let it fall
He knew not where
But at least
He could look himself
In the mirror
In the morning and say
There is a man!

Roald Dahl's unexpected tales
Was inhabited
Mostly by fails
115 episodes
They put up on the clock
The vast majority though
Just made you scoff
Poorly written
With lacklustre pay offs

Of course there were fine exceptions

The Irish pickpocket
Lot's wife
And the lamb of slaughter
Showed how it could be
Just what it ought to
And then there was the sharpest of all
Spark a lighter ten times
Or lose a finger
As i recall

But on the whole
The lack of quality
Made the mind boggle
I much preferred the gory
Hammer house of horrors.