When Arthur C Clarke
Talked of the ancestor of sadness
It was largely time
That was the prime factor
But in the age
We are in
What is the impactor
As all that is expands

I strongly remember
My first football experience
My uncle Pop kidnapped me
And tried to make me Evertonian
Took me to Goodison
On Boxing Day
1976
That's my memory
It could have been so
My auld fella Lacking
in making me be true
he quickly countered
With my Anfield debut
Gainst Middlesbrogo
With Souness in tow
But all of those could be
Centered in months
And years
Hence
My memory is not
What I used to believe.

I've been watching
Resident Alien lately
That Alan Tudyk
Puts in a hell of a performance
The frisson of the way
He must be
Against the comedy
That the format
Clearly demands
Which creates the rub
In which
Poignancy exists
I get the feeling
It will descend
Into ****.

400 that's more than my dad did
He just did birthday cards.

The boy stood on the burning deck
He looked across the Nile
As the flames licked up his leg
He felt the pharoahs smile.

When your looking at the point of an image
I think they call it the bokeh
How long till your eyes wander round
And settle on the details unfocused
Not quite sharp
Perhaps underexposed
Somewhat in the dark
You don't know why
Your mind fell upon it
But there's sommat there
Though it's clearly not clear
sometimes the background
Is the hot ****.

A triumph in the moonlight
Hackneyed *****
In the cold light
Of this cruel
Saturday

Pick a friend
Any friend
And shuffle em
Into the pack
Could end up in the front
Or way in the back
Might be lost in the middle
Or at any point hence
If your buddy holds the crown
Could you mount a defence
Of him and you
And his family of course
Would you see him on the battlefield
On his big ******* horse
For they say
A fully shuffled deck
Will never be dealt the same twice
So if youre planing a dynasty
Seek different advice.

Friday thinks it's Saturday
Yet that day
Throws its hands in dismay
As it knows it's bound to
Sashay
In to Sunday's
Malaise

Cat food
Is not good for you
Don't eat that ****
Unless you in
Mad Max2.

Just bin to see Fion Regan
Not really listened to his new stuff
But he knew
The audience
Played most if his
Devastating
Debut album
As well as the beauty
Interagnum
Of what
We lack
He been exposed
And written with the best
It's just funny
Catching up
To his behest.
Just simply one o the best.

There's snow on the internet
It's covered it over
The facts can't get out
It's a bit of a palaver
The place where we put all our info is stymied
I wish to learn
But the knowledge defies me
The library's shut
The museum on moritorium
The archives drained
It's like the mid eighties
Under a Tory government.

I heard the first joke discovered
Written on an Sumarian tablet
Involve a dog
Well alright
That's an temporal nexus
The doggie's love
Looking up
If that's what it is
Is grist for poetry
That did always exist
The projection of worth
And innocence
And truth
And belonging
The nature of nurture
For them that weren't
Into parenting
The dog by the way
Walks into a pub
And orders a pint
Of something not too rough.

When you know what you don't
Written in an alien font
There is a way to describe
All that which is known
Unless what you write down
Is like throwing a bone
To the eager dogs
Who've been
Hungering alone.

JFK in 62
Said they would put a man on the moon
And return him safe
Before the decade was through
We choose to go
He said three times
And paused
As the applause declined
Then added
And do the other things
not because they easy
But because they are hard
What would we see on the turn of that card?
What could they be
These difficult things?
Unnamed
Undescribed
New ideas to take wing
To foster global entente
Would be a hell of a trick
Or did he just do it
To measure his ****?

I haven't been employed for awhile
Im a bit fuzzy
My minds turned to mush
Feel somewhat  infantile
No problems to solve
No knobheads to handle
No battles to win
No angles to wangle
Hidden in plain sight
Behind this chain link fence
Nothing to do
Nowt calls me hence
When common care
Causes all to twist and ****
I'll stare at the  wall
While the world is at work.

A male adult owls entire existence
Is given over to
Courting a potential  mate
To wit,to woo.

The name couldn't be less fitting
As I perch here alone
Flat calm
Just past sunset
Glowing embres in the gloam
The low headlands in silhouette
Look like the start of 2001
I Sit here in silence
And wait for the man apes to come.

Everything gets in eventually
Unless you have a supernatural defence
Wether it's the ants or the water
Constant baulwalking makes sense
Sealent shrinks
Rubber perishes
Nowt is water tight
Though when your young you don't think so
Why should you give a *****?
The citadel once proud
In the round
With its bitter moat
Now tumbledown
Half brought to ground
Denuded mortar
All she wrote.

Just watched a ***** in which
A young lady has *** to *** relations
With several young enthusiastic gentlemen
In the back of a 1930's vintage roadster
It was called "******,****** *******."

It's the start of pidgeon mating season
And the boys are getting cocky
Circling each other like
That big Drago and Rocky
I hear them flap and peck
In the ring of green beneath my window
They look so clean and preened
As Into battle
They go
Both stand side on
One facing north
The other south
And flick precision left wings
Into
Chest
And eyes
And mouth
The two I'm watching now
Have near indentical
Neck plumage
I think they might be brothers
The old old story
Fraternal doomage
If these are Christian birds
To the death
They'll fight in front of me
Then follow the command
Layed down in Deuteronomy.

Dustin's back in training
For Marathon Man 2
They've got him on the good stuff
Should be enough to see him through
They got Olivier in hologram
Roy Scheider too
A miracle of technology
And a load of fetid poo.

This is not an exit
That what Brett Ellis said
In restaurant of conspirators
As the victims freely bled
The blood just keeps on pumping
Though they were slain
Months and years ago
For reasons half forgotten
Pushed down so far below
In the back alley
Or on Wall Street
The disconnection
Is the same
To remove what is not desirable
And make them take the blame.

What would you do
If the aliens came for you?
If they landed and exclaimed
"We seek the one you call(insert own name here)"
Though no purpose they explained
Would you rush to their request
Acquiesce to their behest
Trust em cos that's who you are
An open heart
A mind ajar
The heart wants everyone to know
It welcomes all
It is not cold
The brain though is not so sure
Projected aims may not be pure
It knows our past in microcosm
What the tooled up
To the meek put on em
To collaborate or disappear
Safety now
Else
Posthumous rectitude through the years
They may think you creations saviour
Or are here to punish your foul behaviour
They could want you for what you think
Perhaps they've heard
You like a drink.

The voice of the audience
The narrator in the woods
The misdirect in subtitle
Exposition comes in floods
Foreshadowing
Foreboding
Before the final reel
Trying to leapfrog
The meaning
Before the big reveal.

Ritz crackers!
Ritz crackers!
How you Smell
Just like my knackers!

If there's fifty ways to leave your lover
How come you only mention five or six?
Is that because a magician
Never reveals all of his tricks?

And if we live in the land of a thousand dances
What's with the paucity of description?
I'm starting to think these people
Just forge and deal in fiction

Or at least vast overstatement
Followed by unironic litotes
The limits of the form laid bare
Soon covered by the vagaries

Of broken hearts
George Throughgood
Projected a final score of
Two thousand
I'd like to see him
Name a tenth of them
The mans all mouth and trousers.

Took my old dog for a limp
We balance each other out
He keeps looking up
Imploringly
Arthritis/Gout
We don't go too far no more
Round the park and back
I let him eat what he likes these days
It's days that he lacks
The ones to come I mean
He's got plenty in the past
I saw him wolf his first sausage
Soon I'll watch him eat his last.

The darkest place
In the universe
Where
The demons push on the gate
Sometimes they get past security
Oft sooner than late
And make a break
For humanity
It's like a drug for them
To **** out
And
Binge upon
The Pandemonium
Once it was their
Home town
The capital of their land
But it atomised
And ****** off
When Hades got out of hand
so now it's a border run
Like the Irish
For cheaper petrol
If the boss catches em
There will be Hell to pay
Lately he is so temperamental.

A follow up
Morrissey asked
An indeterminate amount of time
After he posed
His previous question.

My face is ugly
My legs are short
But she leans upon me
For her child support.

I knew a fellah called
Henry Dumbell
His son changed his name by deed pole
And died in a skydiving accident
Six months later.

If you could stand
On the spot
Where you now sit
From the time that it formed
Till it didn't exist
From rock
To field
To lane
To home
Built and rebuilt over
Like
A temple of old
Could you feel
Those that have dwelled there
No matter how fleeting
All the joy and the pain
Every embrace and beating
Each one slowed down
So poignancy crushing
Then seen as
A speed run
To infinity rushing
What would you take
From the eternal lesson
Either
G*d
Or the Universe
With your head surely  messing.

God said to Abraham
**** me a son
Abe said
Ah c'mon boss
Not this again!

Some say
Inspiration will find you
But it won't find you doing nothing
I disagree
I was doing nothing
Then I wrote this.

I don't think AI
Is as good as they say it is yet
Or it would have deciphered
All those uncracked alphabets
Or writing systems
Or codes
Or whatever you call them
Cross reading data
Dragged from
A far cast
mellenium
Every possible notion
Gets feed through the mill
Processed
Deconstructed
Then done again
until
An answer pops out
Not known since that time
And it still won't jive
With our reason and rhyme.

Monosodium glutamate
Applied with
Equal
Love and hate
Is the
Sweet reverie
That's beyond the debate
Of spicy fried chicken *****
Rolling round on my plate.

You know when you need a ****
But just cannot release?
Cos self containment
Is something
That will not desist
Then don't think of your bladder
Think of the abyss
Then there will no need
To move your
Photons
To this.

Is it an itch
Or an urge?
A ballad
Or
A dirge?
Or a chance
For you
To purge
Your bowels?

When your buddy
Sets up
An elaborate joke
With an international
Recording artiste
Done with skill
Thats completely
Bespoke
Then the only way
To view it
Is from the status of love
Because that's the way
He was thinking of.

When you cough
And you feel
Your vertebrae
Crumble
Maybe it's time to get
A little bit humble
When your skelington
Creeks and refuses your claim
It might be time
To live a life of the brain.

What do I owe you?
Have you kept track?
Deferred from what You owe me
Its in the ledger at the back
But that won't be much
the borrowing was one way
You were the primary lender
Far from predatory
I'd say
The interest
You levied
Accrued
Not collected
My returns
To you
About
What you expected.

Sit where you are
That seems about right
Don't move too much
Don't step into the light
We don't like that
When you seek Beyond fear
The point of us being just about here.

The burn in what we call muscle
The pull of everyday bustle
How we get the **** out of here
Circle  back to what we become.

Wence when you made me move there
When I would not
All of a sudden
The argument is current
Past sentiment is not
Why would you not love me
Despite what I said I'd be
It makes sense to
Your mother
Intafrasticly
Told you'd
What
I'd be.

We could sometimes see the Sun
Just before it rise
We would simply have to possess
The right kind of eyes
The ones that see round corners
Or over great bends
And capture past and future
As the universe expands
To the point
When it won't matter
The acuity of our sight
As everything moves so far apart
We'll never see the light
So to us
Creation will seem over
Long before
Darkness replete
When even
Venus is beyond our scope
Our loneliness complete
But of course that will not happen
The earth won't last that long
As our Sun Expands and swallows us
Muting our last song.

After eights
Are just
Soylent Greens
That's
Gone off.

We couldn't see atoms
In any kind of visual way
Till about thirty years back
And before that they did say
You'll never be able to see em
Not enough luminosity they display
Once you zoom in that far enough
The photons *******
So way hey hey

But they didn't reckon on
The sensitivity of advancement
And now
The image forms
With a radiological shift
They all look like golf *****
On Gods sacred pitch.

These statues if they were not cracked or chipped
Would seem to be recent finished
Not long passed
Just a bit
Like the final polish
Applied only minutes past
Glowed under lamplight
As shadows cast
Toward the doors
Of the inner sanctum
Which then are sealed
Against the millennium
And then another
Yet two more
Sat still in darkness
Gathering stour
After sands had shifted
And shifted back
Monied raiders
Gave the seal a crack
Now they stare over your head in the great museums
Disgusted that the proles can see them.

Cologne Essen and Dresden
Felt the whip of the whirlwind
In what was cast as
The thousand bomber raid
Though the numbers
Somewhat fudged
Still demonstrable
Terrible
Technological death
As the Blitz
And Coventry
Rolled back on their necks.