Drying out don't make much sense
As it a dehydratant
Still if I focus hard enough
I can see just where my pay went

Wettening up then
More accurate
Sounds like a pleasant bath
Hoping for a cleansing
Into which I can collapse

The sweats and twitches
First arrive
And then quickly *******
Replaced by itchy ennui
The shivers and the coughs

But none of this will last
I've trod this road before
Knowing the saucey demon
Waits for me to pour.

As those angels gently laid you back
Speaking sweetly as you went
A rivulet o crimson
Was the sign that you were spent
I stood at your beds foot
Too overwhelmed to cry
A refusal to believe
A rejection of this lie

A fast three months that felt like six
A switchback through the gloamin
And all the time
We knew of course
The reaper was a roamin
Winding low
Checking his form
By the light of his terrible lamp
Waiting to bring down
His final ghastly stamp

So I'll think of you often
And I'll send love with this
On September the 19th
About a quarter past six.

You tell your boss to
Swivel *****!
I will tell mine
To stick my job up his ****
We could even synchronise it
Record it
Editise it
Turn that *******
Into art
You can sell your mothers house
And I can sell my grandmas flat
Cash in all pensions and ****
And that will be the end of that.
Then move to Bolivia
I hear they make
Excellent crack.

The streets are too wet
The bay is too wide
The foothills are too far away for the rise
That brings the snowfall
In which children delight
And only the old despise

The chill of the flurry
Felt sharp on the face
Warms before the ground
To mix with foul slurry
From heaven to earth
A terrible mush all around

You're not a seagull
You're a gull
A Kittywake by the sea
Because seagulls don't exist
They are just an etymological redundancy

Be thankful you live here though
And not in the sticks
Where the truth lies deep in the drift
And cast your eyes grateful
Around the clear
In a land where the snow never sticks.

I went to see Josh Rouse a good few times
Near twenty years ago
He was brilliant and aloof
Intensity a flow

I saw him in an aigburth church
About a month gone past
And clearly the mangle o life
Had humoured up his ***.

I feel like Goya's dog
Staring at nothing
But terrified all the same
Contemplating the void
Apportioning blame
Some think he's scoping out
Two little birds
And if they did land
He surely would lurch
Others think his target
Is an unfinished figure
That got lost in the transfer
Twixst plaster to paper
And that's the rub
With all the black paintings
You lose a bit o meaning
When technology is
Updating.

I shook hands with Joe Gideon
And high fived the shark
After a forest performance
In which they had rocked hard

The beauty of his voice and words
The slickness o her grooves
Soaked into me sonically
And caused the earth to move

Their world is so inviting
As at the barrier i stand
They'll take you on a journey
To learn the ways of man.

Ben just said to me
Thank you for reposting my piece on the dying babies
It made me laugh for ages and ages.

The boy stood on the burning deck
He'd never seen the like
His vintage radio refused to work
Because of melted Bakelite.

I remember a joke from when I was a child
Bout a darts match and a bride o Christ
The sister was there collecting alms And praising the lord
Got taken in spirit
Stood a bit close to the board
Two double tops
And one in the fod
The priestess struck down
Right there in the pub
The ref totalled up
And inscribed the scoreboard
One nun dead and eighty
Is that what was scored?

Loudon Wainwright gets the pain right.

Was the last action
To fill from the bottom
To the haf way point
Or to drain from the top to the same?
There's your answer mate.

**** out the woman and **** out the man
That is how old egypt began
From primordial soup the island did rise
Then god turn to man and the stones he did prise
Up from the earth in pyramid form
And that is how old egypt was born.

Hello poetry
Hello piety
Hello my growing need for sobriety
Goodbye the lash
Goodbye the sauce
Goodbye to laughter
And high times of course
Once it was fun
Once it was keen
But like Carlito opined
You just run out of steam.

It's that day today
When evil mystery waits to strike
And nothing happens.

"An escalator can never brake,it can only become stairs."

God rest his drug addled soul.

Things clicked on are often not read
Or maybe haf way through
They get abandoned instead
Meter is so personal
It can certainly jar
Stripped of pre-knowledge
And broadcast from afar
so if you get a hundred views
And not a thumb nor a heart
Take comfort in the fact
It's deffo your own fault.

When two is one
And one is nought
What is the magic
That makes one comport
What it is to calculate
The thing that makes us
Repopulate.

How was your thanksgiving?
Was it the same as it was?
Did the people round you
Seem the same as your default?
Was it somewhat different?
Did you repell Or were repelled?
Is there an opening leading down to worse than hell?
Can youse hug it out?
Can youse talk ?
And ring the bell
Of the bell that can still
Can ring
Or will youse slowly go to Hell?

You had it all right in your mind
It'd bin bouncing round there awhile
You couldnt say it to or at anyone at the time
Cos by the ale you was somewhat beguiled

The quips you remember
The laughs that you got
The chances not taken
Not taken a lot

The cold wind you remember
On a beach so remote
Smashed any chance
Of getting my vote
On my selective
Amnesia

Just hang on a minute
While I choose to emote
The thing that foments us
Ain't the thing what makes us vote.

In polished chipped diorite
The essence of a god
The detail is incredible
His expression slightly odd

They found him upside down
In a pit in the valley temple
An indignity four millennia long
Trapped under sands
Not inconsequential

When you approach him from the front
He seems alone
This King of Kings
But when you see him from the side
Horus laughing spreads his wings.

I think I remember
Something that I don't
I believe I'll push
Forward on a thing
I don't want
I think in fact
You've accessed
Excess
It's as sure as
Egg and cress
Oh baby
It's somat
I dont
Want

Your entreaties resound
Off of deaf wood
I'm up another tree
In a different neighbourhood.

I am a line manager for the county
I'm in charge of the roads
Searching for someone
To supply tarmac
Cos we need loads
But there's no one
On the wire
I can hear my bosses whine
And the Wichita line manager
Is still on the line.

"This guy asked me if I wanted a frozen banana,I said no,but I wanted a regular banana later on,so I said yes."

Christmas in prison
Christmas out at sea
Christmas round the in laws
Christmas alone with me

Christmas with the Manson's
Christmas in the I.C.U
Christmas in Carcosa
Just the Yellow King and you

He won't dress as father Chrimbo
In his tattered rags he'll stay
As he eats all time and space
No prezzies he'll display

He won't watch vintage Two Ronnies
As the black stars rise
And in terrible twin sunlight
Your soul will be his prize.

Gunboat diplomacy
Dynamite archeology
Unnecessary surgery
The way we mince our words
Virtual friends and views
Terrible ends
We refuse
To see as nothing
That could happen to us
As conflagration moves like water
Over an acrylic floor
Which morphs into a globe form
To welcome in the war.

When you've abandoned your vehicle and walked away the thing goes rigid the paint turns grey and when you see it from a dimension above all that's left is the marks o your love.

If you live amongst the trees
It might stymie the disease
That could otherwise
Rot out
The thing
You can't talk about
Away from
Awkward truth
And
The ungodly overproof
You might think
You could get out
The things you want to talk
About.

A moth goes to see the foot doctor
He just flew right in.

Chiropodist said
What can do for you?
My winged friend
You know you're looking  pretty blue
What could I do for you?

Moth said
Doc I don't know where to begin
My life is framed by cowardice
Shame and sin
I lost my wife this year
She succumbed to an illness that she kept
Hidden from me
Right till the end
My daughter won't even look at me
She says I lack
All integrity
And I see cowardice in my sons eyes
It's the same I see
Staring back from the mirror to me
Every morn
And then I go to my job
I work for robots and I'm governed
By ghouls
I'm one of many millions
Of credulous fools
I keep loaded gun
Cocked and ready
On my bedside table
Should I
Develop the *****
In short doc
My life is a swirling toilet
That refuses to flush

**** me!
The chiropodist said
My friend you are clearly in need
Of psychiatric help
But you must know
I'm not qualified
To prescribe
The medicine
And therapy
You need to survive
So tell my moribund friend
Why did you come here
To consult
With a doctor of feet?

The moth said
Because your light was on.

Today is the day
I have not been waiting for
A chance to begin.

"You came to me this morning and you handled me like meat,you'd have to be a man to know how good that feels"

Leonard Cohen "Recital" radio city music hall April 2013.

Flailing Wildy in the dark
Panicked dance
Unlikely arc
Stunted verse
Backed up flow
Narrative path
Nowhere to go
So calm your mind
And stand quite still
Take a breath
Pick up your quill.

When you're in the subterranean chamber
That must be quite the feeling
In that tiny bubble
Just above the ceiling
grows a hillock
O the local limestone
A hundred foot above
Topped by more o the same
Blocks two and a haf million strong
Times approx two and a haf ton per block
Could be six million ton all told.

I'd **** me self.

Leonid
Taurodid
Rocks thrown through
This fermential lid
Twice an hour
Then a flurry
You miss it when you bow for curry
Or kebab
It's late night tucker
Eat the meat
Miss out
On  succour

The quick brown fox
Jumped over the lazy dog
He could not be bettered
Like a super efficient postman
He just run out o letters.

The things that come out o your head
Are just skin cells you're ready to shed
Write them down on a page
And then let all the days
Be the judges
Of what you relate.

Birds don't fly they are flown
And fish don't swim
They get swam
There's a predestination
In all that we do
You'll see that when
Your race gets ran

It's a game written
So long ago
Way before
The big bangs afterglow
Unknowable programmers
Laughed up they sleeves
as they piled on
Unlimited code

But in the end you will be set free
As the electricity drains out o thee
And binds itself
To the omniverse
Recycled
So efficiently

The boy is ignorance
The girl is want
They pump from the wellspring
The human font
Beware of them both
If doom you'd destroy
But of the two
Keep a close eye on the boy.

The Medusa touch
Is the British
Rosemary's Baby
Only better

I don't know you now
Since the day you went to town
And came back to me.

Some disagree with the timeline
Say the Romans didn't go for big blocks
That it don't jive with their efficiency
Always against the clock

Some claim it was Alexander
About three hundred years before
Some even say its impossibly ancient
Posit lost civilisations galore

These shouts are fantastic by nature
Fly in the face o evidence compiled
By generations of strident experts
Disputed by casual tourists
Modern lazy thinking defined

Their points are stretched and wooly
Methodology sketchy at best
The work has been done
They're just having fun
These dolts
The paladins detest

It cannot be true
History has been proved
by research constant and heavy
That's correct I suppose
But Lord heaven knows
thats what they said bout Gobekli Tepe.

The three heaviest stones ever hewn and then placed
Rest in Jupiter Baal
27 years before Christ was born
By the the Romans
Long before their fall

Each close to 800 tons
Hoisted 30 foot in the air
And fitted so tight
You can't tell em apart
Put together with unfathomable care

But the quarry they're cut from
Not a mile away
Holds wonders even more vast
Three monoliths with a joint weight
O  4000 tons
Sit waiting  forlorn on the grass

The pregnant
The forgotten
The southern
Carved but never  transported
Will idle the ages
In dour unemployment
Their installation
Never reported.

The Hobs of hell have to be operated
In a rotational system for maintenance and cleaning
Even though the work's intense
They're never exactly gleaming

Though the workforce is unlimited
And of course they get motivated
The endless drip of blood and filth
Gets baked on fast
Hard accumulated

The demon chargehands
Drive on the ******
With whip and fork and brand
But The broken barely keep up
In this accursed land

And so I think of childhood
With my poor mother near in tears
As she proclaimed the above Sisyphean task
Akin to cleaning
Behind my ears.

He said,
Oh my god it's ****'s enormous!
Looks like it fell
Off of a brontosaurus.

She said,
Look out love,
It could knock you down!
It could quite easily level this town,
Glass and rubble all around.
My god it's gonna **** the town hall!!!

Chewits
advert late 70's.

Townes Van Zandt
Had electroshock therapy in his youth to deal with depression
A miss prognosis
Cos they just about wrecked him
120 volts is generally the dose
But it looks like they upped it
And so cooked his goose
Memory loss and despair
Followed him the rest o his days
It's really no wonder
His songs are so great.

Sparhawk threw an SG at me
At least that is
In my memory
He took a couple o turns
Before the release
Like some hammer thrower
Afire like a beast
The road crew
All lost they ****
They could not believe
The fire he'd lit
But no one got hurt
At least that I know
They came back
Twice more to ******
The show.

The moai faced inland
Away from the sea
Ghosts of dead leaders
Born from deities you see

Hewn from volcanic tuff
Soft no doubt
Compared to basalt or diorite
Which Are ******* to dig out

If they had only turned the other way
They might have seen disaster coming
Dutch killers on Easter morn
Peruvian slavers
Had them running

But it is a small island
And there was no tree cover
They cut them down so long ago
So they could grow some tucker

European disease
South American ******
Cut the population down low
As a couple o hundred years rolled by
And crops refused to grow

So the god's where cast down
Face down on the ground
Venerated protectors brought low
The people despaired
Beyond all hope and care
A paradise with no seeds to sow

Then the pickings were slim
Raiders had no one to ****
So they left them alone to their plight
But the moai are back on their feet now
Resurrected
As a world heritage site.

Theres a war between hamsters and toads
How it started nobody knows
But it's lasted now
Since time out of mind
And the hate simply has not declined

A border dispute?
Or more Tonton macoute?
Hamsters don't go for it subtle
While the toads they abide
And wait for stars align
And know now its time to throw down

For thousands o years
It's was nothing but tears
Though neither are capable o crying
Through relentless attrition
And murderous ambition
By the countless millions
They were dying.

But there's news from the front
Arbitration's afoot
There be disrupters
Of slime and of fur
They want peace and not war
To both kings they implore
Pointless hatred
Must be denied.

I remember seeing my first Greebo
It was on the bus to town
Swaythed in crusty denim
He lived by his own sound

I must have been 7 or 8
And was with me ma
Casting furtive glances over me shoulder
At the great gallah

His hair was strident
His beard was fierce
He stunk of hippy juice
My god i thought
By his lifestyle
I am preternaturally seduced

I'm guessing through
The mists o time
He must be pushing 70
I hope his life was happy
And his rockin was aplenty.