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.

They creek
They have for years
The rust has had its way
The play has increased
Not too much dismay
The sound apparent
The grind that gathers now
Soon the gate will not latch
Enjoy it
It's your last chance
Anyhow.

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

When you move between your family
And the things you still want
Do you yearn
Or are you
Reconciled with
That was the things
That don't count
Is it fresh in your memory
Or do you smile at its
Going
Content with the fact
You kept the human race growing
This is life
This family
This is the way that we are
Dreams o specialness
Get devoured by truth
In the needs o the hours.

Like life before instant gravy
I couldn't think of existence without you
Our meat juices comingled
Such a sweet and salty stew
But then the sauce had all dried up
Nevermore to play the love sick pup
Forgot the golden rule
Didn't give
Deffo on the take
So now I watch you
From a distance
Like a cartoon bulldog
Looks at
An uncooked steak.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

**** 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

God rest his drug addled soul.

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

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."

Sitting in a pub at midday
Sipping scotch
And doing the crossword
I'm the only punter
No chance of a crossed word
Well maybe the barman
But he seems pretty relaxed
Engrossed in his phone
Probably sending a fax
Or whatever it is that
These crazy kids do
And im alone with the god's
Like Bukowski used to
The air is so peaceful
I can't help but smile
This is my life now
At least for awhile.

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

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 mean
What you overstate
There comes
A gap that some o your friends
Won't rate
Cos they clearly
Don't care for
Where you
Head for
The gate
And dive
Through.

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.

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 closer eye on the boy.

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.

Some days you feel good
Some of em are bad
At some point
There'll be two days
The best and worst
You ever had
Maybe they have
Been and gone
Perhaps they lie round the bend
Or you had one but not the other
No signs portend
But don't mull on it
It's not chapter and verse
Just compose a new mantra
Things can always get worse.

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.

Junior soprano mourned the ungrateful ticker
Hank pondered over the cold cold one
Yet neither
Kept theirs in a cage
Like yer man Cassablancas
Which was thrown in the ocean
Dragged down by the anchors
That he forged in life
Like our friend Ebenezza
Who thought the merry
Should have theirs
Skewered by the season
Poe got grassed up by his
Two sometimes beat tempestuous
Like **** and Liz
The Aztecs used to show it to you at the death
It will surely explode if you smoke too much ****
Solzhenitsyn summed it up there's nowt more to it
The border twixst good and evil
Runs right through it.

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.

Just been watching
The Ten Commandments
Talk about almost immediate abandon
Mosses just popped up mount Herob
For a chat with the lord
And as soon as he was gone
They got out all the gold
Smelted it down
Shaped it in to a calf
Removed all their clothes
Got in the sinful bath
Soaked and cavorted
A good long while
All manner o wickednesses
They indulged in
Irony
Foreshadowing
There was about ten of em
And then Mosses
Came back
Aghast and almost rabid
He'd only nipped out
For a couple of  tablets

Still waters run deep
But sometimes a puddle's
Just a puddle

The way Bertha is described
She more woman
Than I could handle
You'll get more than
A Silent Echo
When you yodel
In that canyon.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Nom de Guerre
Nom de plume
You and your mystery
Revealed
Not soon
Name the time
Name the place
Draw a line in the sand
Punch yourself in the face
Name your price
Name your shame
Name the things that you did
To cause all that pain
Name your kids
Name your dog
Name yourself
Yet again
As you sit in the fog.

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