Have you ever been to one of them Electric Hills?
Where gravity runs backwards
As up the incline you freewheel?
And it gets sold as part of a day trip package deal
With a ruined Abbey
And a plate of squid?

It's funny in the dark
Hilarious in the void
Right up until the point
Your ego gets destroyed.

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

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.

Loudon Wainwright gets the pain right.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

King Kong
Went wrong
When they brought a blonde along
He only wanted to be loved
It could only end one way.

Point a political gun
At your friend
Demand to know
What went where and when
Formulate your argument
But like Marty put it
The time circuits are bent
I can't calculate it
Beware the knowers
Like Bukowski said
They'll tell you your fine
When you're already dead.

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.

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

God rest his drug addled soul.

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

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.

One fine day
In the middle of the night
Two dead men
Got up to fight
Back to back
They faced each other
Pulled their swords
And shot each other.

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.

**** 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.

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.

I have done things
To myself
So slow and incremental
That it could not be noticed

The path was
Uneventful
Not much drama
Or neurosis

The dulling
Of the faculties
The tightening
Of the lung

The salt
That swells
The eyeballs
When the funeral
Song
Gets
Sung.

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

When the acid that burns your heart
Ceases to swell and ebbs back
Enough to let you roll onto your side and drift off
The sleep of the just
Is not really it
But you snore and dream
Like you haven't for a bit
The Googly eyed slumber
No longer suppressed
Is now vivid
And scary
And funny
I guess
Alien invasion
Slasher movie
Murderous governance
Brought about by myself
Seems to be the preponderance
While friends and family
Point and laugh
And look on.

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.

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.

The first time I felt betrayed by creation
Was when I first was able
To get it straight in my head
That I will not be at my funeral.

"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."

It's time to get to grips
With a partial eclipse.

In the Indiana Jones movies
Spielberg uses a device
Where the heroes
Get pushed toward
Or away from danger by a crowd
Layers of meaning
Is his vice.

What do you call
A fat clarinet?
A Tuba.

It's the night before they took him down
Imagine the damage
From when they take him down
The yanks of tired agony
Gainst the nails and the wood
The type of suffering
That is scarce
Understood.

Beating
Like a host
Turned heart
During
Transubstantiation
Spirit
Made flesh
Made flesh
And the wine
Pulses
And pumps
Like it did through his veins
Till
Longinus
Emptied the water out
Obvious now
What it was all about.

You can't outrun
The post office
They've got their tendrils
Everywhere
You see what they done
To them poor
Sub posters
The Stasi
Took more care

Halton borough council claim I didn't pay to cross the bridge
But I did
William Hill's system crashed
And they were not taking bets
The blood banks after me
But I'm on a platelet embargo
Amazon once again
Have no record of my cargo.

Don't confuse funicular
With rack and pinion
Or you'll never get up Snowden
There are those who'd argue
But that is my opinion.

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.

He's was drinking like a senior ****
In the bunker June 45
Staving off the foul inevitable
To face his actions
When alive
Half a mile from ground zero
Two minute warning
A minute past
Like Hetfield said
Take a look at the sky
For it will be your last
The terrible is arriving
see the widening infernal plain
They've traced the call
They are coming
To make him wear his blame.

In the high heat of Persia
The land of off milk
And tainted honey
You can't tell as the feast begins
Your palate unsuspecting
You think it exoticness

They keep feeding you
Way past the bursting
With a funnel jammed down your throat
Then trap you between
Two hollowed out logs
With holes for your arms to poke through

Trapped in surreal crucifixion
You **** and you puke
Laid befouled in a traumatised haze
Then of course the insects and small animals come
After a couple of days

To begin the meal of a lifetime

The end has begun
Think of the torment to come
Laying there in the reek
Helpless as beasties creep
In darkness you weep
For there shall be no relief
As your devoured
Over a matter of weeks.

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.

Skeleton walks into a pub
Orders a pint of Guinness
And a mop.

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