In Benidorm there are melons,
Whole donkey-carts full

Of innumerable melons,
Ovals and *****,

Bright green and thumpable
Laced over with stripes

Of turtle-dark green.
Chooose an egg-shape, a world-shape,

Bowl one homeward to taste
In the whitehot noon :

Cream-smooth honeydews,
Pink-pulped whoppers,

Bump-rinded cantaloupes
With orange cores.

Each wedge wears a studding
Of blanched seeds or black seeds

To strew like confetti
Under the feet of

This market of melon-eating
Fiesta-goers.

What do you reckon? I know what you’ve been thinking…
We’re on a ship that looks unsteady, like it’s sinking…
We’ve made shaky plans to be gung-** and to go it all alone…
But we’re beginning to wonder… are we heading for some kind of danger zone?…
At first we were just floating along - enjoying the passing view
And 2 years off it looked a lot easier …leaving the EU!
But there’s a waterfall downstream…and it looks like a helluva drop.
And once we get too near the edge, well, we won’t be able to stop.

The simplicity of Cameron’s ‘in - out’ referendum question dawned…
Cos, divorce is complicated.  Those who voted leave were scorned,
branded racist, or at least suffering some kind of mental disorder.
“Didn’t you stop to think about the about the Northern Irish border?” (best read in a 'silly', sneery voice).
But - back then there were 2 million Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis all walking toward Calais.
Some thought serious overcrowding problems could come our way.
Single Market,? Sovereignty? Customs Union? What the hell’s all that?
It means you’ll need a visa to go to Benidorm you ****!

Meanwhile Merkel diffused things by taking the refugees in.
But only served to rattle the bars of the **** leaning right wing.
The Spanish got all Oity Toity about us having Gibraltar.
And some of those previously unforeseen problems made Brexiteers falter.
This is David effing Cameron!… Farage embarrassed him into calling for a vote.
And, when the Remainers lost, Dave saw his chance to produce his sick note.
“I’ve done my bit”, he said “so… I’m standing down…  so who do you think should take my dodgy crown.
The Buffoon, the Backstabber, the Right Honourable Lady Home Sec?”
She, the author of  Windrush, Repatriation, food-banks, lower benefits? She got it! ****** heck!…

Hoodwinked by a government you maybe invested your life in, in all the earlier polls
Now we’ve all been tricked by a bunch of, navel gazing, self serving arseholes!
So it’s the blind leading the blind… Well, no.! Misinformed…and maybe just a bit short sighted.
And, you know, Theresa… she’ll most likely still get knighted.
But I doubt this episode will score with generations yet to come,
Deserted by this Parliamentary shambles - sitting on their hands, their collective ***.
The proletariat are cut adrift, and heading for the falls…
So we’re looking for a new saviour - someone with charisma…big *****!

Let’s look forward to this time next year… When some trusty politician re-writes our little story.
When we may be out - but far from down… Well I somehow can’t see it being a Tory…
And if isn’t Jezzer - who HAS got his eye on the prize…
McDonnel, Starmer, Benn, Tom (call me Slim) Watson? Who should THEY try for size?
And, just supposing, by chance, the Conservatives actually crack it
who, amongst the front runners there, could get the job and hack it?
Lord Snooty, Gove, Hammond…Hunt the err… Foreign Secretary,  Javid, Liam Fox (surely not!). Bojo?
With this current stay of Brexicution, for just a couple of weeks… the petition, the march, the chaos, could it still be NO-GO?…
Whatdya reckon?

Madrid quedó vacía
sólo estamos los otros
y por eso
se siente la presencia de las plazas
los jardines y fuentes
los parques y glorietas

como siempre en verano
madrid se ha convertido
en una calma unánime
pero agradece nuestra permanencia
a contrapelo de los más

es un agosto de eclosión privada
sin mercaderes ni paraguas
sin comitivas ni mitines
en ningún otro mes del larguísimo año
existe enlace tan sutil
entre la poderosa
metrópoli
y nosotros pecadores afortunadamente
los árboles han vuelto a ser
protagonistas del aire gratuito
como antes
cuando los ecologistas
no eran todavía imprescindibles

también los pájaros disfrutan
ala batiente de una urbe
que inesperadamente se transforma
en vivible y volable

los madrileños han huido
a la montaña y a marbella
a ciudadela y benidorm
a formentor y tenerife

y nos entregan sin malicia
a los otros que ahora
por fin somos nosotros
un madrid sorprendente
casi vacante       despejado
limpio de hollín y disponible
en él andamos como dueños
tercermundistas del arrobo
en solidarias pulcras avenidas
sudando con unción la gota gorda

el verano no es tiempo de fragor
sino de verde tregua

empalagados del rencor insomne
estamos como nunca
dispuestos a la paz

en el rato estival
la historia se detiene
y todos descubrimos una vida postiza
pero cuando el asueto se termine
volverán a sonar
las bocinas los gritos las sirenas los mueras y los vivas
bombas y zambombazos
y las dulces metódicas campanas
durante tres fecundas estaciones
nadie se acordará
de pájaros y árboles

i'm sick to death of this stinking routine
perpetual day time TV,
petty bickering
afternoon pub binges
hopeless job hunting morons everywhere,
i return to my hometown
to the place i was made, molded
created
and it suffocates me like never before
i think of the many reasons i left
they circle my thoughts for a long while
and then i'm left with one
one that overrides the lot
it takes a while to spit it out
because it's corny, it's stupid, it's not how we work
but
it's love
and the lack of it
the love here is in the mundane
the easy,
the norm.
it's not in the heart
the love around here lies in
television sets
and pirate DVDs
reduced chicken and new coffee machines
gambles on abused horses
saturday afternoons in the local
cheap holidays to Benidorm
a day trip to lidl
a weekday evening watching the soaps
a phonecall to a family member you don't care about
hours playing candy crush
the love has lost on us humans
the love here, it was lost on me too
it missed me out
they missed me out
it has instead transferred in this
reality tv, selfie indulgent zeitgeist
it has left our silly bodies
and i'm still clinging on
trying to dissapear from that
new century bubble
trying to pick up pieces
of that porcelain mosaic
that old style bric a brac
so long ago forgotten
pressure is everywhere
notifications beep
this tiny block of perspex
waiting to be touched
waiting to be in communication
with someone at the other side of the city
the other side of the world
oh what a sad existence
when all we love is through the inanimate
and not ourselves
but hey thats the way of the world
and we have to accept it
or hate it
because we can't do both
we have to accept our fast paced tumultuous society
always moving through space and time
at times, difficult
painful
hard
sore
but consumerism, capitalism and cronyism
it all exists in this big society
this 'we're all in it together' society
and it cant be ignored.

Bang on the vingt a round of liquor with a flavour of talent,
Submerged in an atmosphere with warm friends spirited by a Sunny Benidorm.

Sonny Jim, beach bar bikini slim,
Music from the seventies&eighties;,
Sun beaming a view of a rock horizon
wedged in a silver cloud lining,
Wide-screen panoramic source by a Kopparberg.
The cool tip of an ice berg,
Sun burst that if only time could stand so still,
That mixed fruit cider below a mountain glass of ice that could never melt a feud of alcohol sworn in to your mouth,
Echo voices a speed boat speeding around #by a coated bannana boat of dare makers predicting a riot,
Now I leave this and go with my mind dripping, resting, sitting here in Utopia Benidorm addressing peace and quiet.

O'Reily@14072014

Afraid of the rifle fire, he had

Crouched all day in the dirt,

A dull fellow at the best of times.

Ricocheting bullets bolted to the air

Surfing the wind, screaming

Abuse like ill-disciplined relatives

Arriving for an impromptu visit.

One shattered his head-there it was,

There were its remnants-

Greasy insubstantial grey matter that

Contained his soul.  

An end to drinks in the pub

The love of his wife

The smiles of his children

Holidays in Benidorm with the In-Laws

Paella by the swimming pool.

One bullet, not even new, put an end to a contented life.

obviously Gibraltar would vote to remain,
it would be one of the few remains of
the British Empire, the Spanish
version of Hong Kong,
4.1% leave, 95.9% remain,
no immigrants there, just expatriates
from Benidorm - if it voted to leave then Spain
would double the emphasis to eject
the British from the region;
but if you're going to fully pull the thing apart,
and go to a history of myth, Arthur
prior to Angevin Empire, i guess you have
to give that little scrapheap of pride back too -
this referendum is really like watching
Gorbachev pulling apart the Soviet Empire
in slow-motion, it's not chunky like
Kazakhstan, a banoffee pie, but more
like what remained of feeding the 5,000 thousand
at the last supper.

this isn't a time for nostalgia aimed at the times of the 2nd world war, only liars and cowards attack anyone except their enemy, to ease their sentiment at thinking they're liberal leftists... somehow the Cartesian formula doesn't work for them... odd... thinking doesn't magically precipitate into being... they're only liberal leftists... they'll never be conservative leftists (communists)... they value the anti-solipsistic stance of individually too much, hence their karaoke outpouring on X-factor - we need nurses! we need doctors! no! they're saying we need the next Frank ******* Sinatra to lullaby us to death. too much national pride aimed at reminding people of the past is degenerate in the presence, the future by such historical arithmetic is always bleak.... who cares for a Faraday is a light-bulb works, who cares for a Newton given the mechanics of rocket-launchers... and who cares for Shakespeare in the age of omnipresent literacy providing us sonnets?! in the age of desperation, former fame was revised, creating the backlog of fame into a single measure of being current, when once a man slaved for a lifetime to achieve it, modern fame is nothing, in comparison on the merit of utility and productivity - fame is hardly a concern for any of us given Orwell and the c.c.t.v. (or holy ghost), that will never materialise into a person of the Paraclete; best assurance, the famous donkey, the stick and the carrot... democracy only works within a sensible number to express it... applying democracy to insect methodology of plumbers, electricians, personal trainers etc. is merely an illusion... a moment in history where the weak attack the strong... and to cite Darwinism? we were already too intrinsically overtly bio-diverse to merge with the diversity of nature surrounding us... we were perfect chiral chimeras, non-super-imposed images... thus Darwinism and snippets, or crossword clues... i can't believe the English banked all their pride on an Aristotelian footnote... but then miracles do happen... not always a welcome distraction from the nuances of mishandling politics - or was that always a b.d.s.m. affair?

i too could rage at the belittling English society,
well... i might as well...
i'm not in Manchester, the Hackney populace
was relocated to the outer-suburbs to make
the "nation" proud - never seen so many
black dudes strolling near the countryside -
but that's another zoological matter -
what?! with the new dating show with all knit-grit
bits exposed you'd think that all Darwinian
comparison made it to the ten quid banknote -
the one objective language that has no zombie
adherents - poets' strike... oh wait, i forgot,
you prefer the ready-meals of song -
the English do, lazy ***** the whole lot of them -
i won't be making many friends and i don't intend to -
after the ridicule, the slander, the jokes -
i'm heading east! east it is - i'll leave a **** with
my signature in England - let the Scots find it
and shredder the ******* islands into snippets from
some novel; so you think you're not Soviet fated?
Jack will become Jackson - etymology is all about nouns -
you think i'd stay in this ****-hole? i got the message:
VERMIN GO HOME... i'm looking for a place
to relocate to... i don't like the Irish playing the prißed
puppets of the English... Michael Palin seeking
Europe in 2007, found Bohemia, found no litter,
vermin living in beauty while English outer-suburbia
rots? Euro trash? more like Benidorm suntan -
you started it... you little "not in my name" will not sell
me your phobia currency of Herr Censor -
odd, the colonial past was somehow erased because of
the Beatles - odd, isn't it? cultural contribution
erased the shackles... funny how things work out in
the end. i have been a complete and utter integration
failure, i blame the Irish and a catholic school -
i rather go home among the other rats -
i don't belong here - but at least home is where i left off,
aged 8... 22 years into analysis English and using it
i can preserve tact - Bangladeshi will write you a next
Shakespeare... just so it all looks pretty... and convenient...
i rather live there, i have no fake psychiatric history in
the country of my birth... the west ain't all that after all...
i'm with Snowden on this one, but i have the cushion
of speaking the tongue... the almighty west is nothing
but good music and charcoal films -
propaganda omniscience - the west asks for media
transparency, but i end up reading a tabloid newspaper
given the opinion section of *the times Monday to Friday -
some ******* mogul mongrel trying to be a Martin Luther -
it's basically a tabloid newspaper, i don't trust it -
the ultimate freedom corrupts - if revising foreign
governments is based upon media freedoms, then i think
the west did a ******* job with its own media -
without restrictions you get a box of chocolates and eat
all the best dimwits out - or a box of mixed nuts -
the Brazilians are the first to disappear.
plus the west doesn't like poetry, it prefers music, as in
the passive ingestion of art - never your own,
always someone else's - so you can be filled with
unexpressed egoism to occupy a space worth a cubic
metre or two... fun & games fair enough...
was i ever stereotyped? pushed to a limit,
am i one of those Chinese 2nd generation immigrants
that play the koala bear role in poetry who prescribe
the origin and figurative forgotten for a prize?
i don't think so... if i ever escape this ****** ****-hole
i'll be the king-rat, to my liking the Polish government
is being inspected by the E.U. about non-democratic
agendas - god i pray for an E.U. invasion reprimand -
i really feel like shooting someone by illusion defending
my conscience imagining simply throwing a pancake.
and why? because, at least, in Poland i talked to a
neurologist and was diagnosed sane -
while in England i was given to the dogs (psychiatrists)
and was diagnosed insane - at least i'll be
with the sane people and not some perverse form
of paedophilia of Alice in Wonderbra...
leave these agony aunts aside, leave these perverts
to their own demise - and if truly my friend,
as i did staring into my killers eyes,
if he only took me to a hospital to prove it was
a genuine mistake of misinformation about a certain
Amazonian plant... then i wouldn't be writing this verse...
but he didn't... he took me home...
as ever, i write this letter without pseudonym but under
the acronym: the misinformed (which really isn't an
acronym, i just liked the rhyme);
so if after 22 years spent in England i head to my vermin
abode, i think i'll be happy... unless Scotland beckons
to liberate it... otherwise? **** this ****-hole.

I was born to superficialities and arrogance
by parents, now divorced
I managed the local Comprehensive down the road
and left with some O'levels in woodwork and home Economics
I grew up watching TV and playing computer games
I like to drink and go out and have spent two weeks in Benidorm
I follow all the street fashion and hang out a lot with my mates

I think what others think and do what others do
So please come and put things in my mind, come sow seeds
Anchor my mind to anything you chose
because you can alter my mind and manipulate my emotions
I don't know who I am, I am available because like you and you
I do not have a mind of my own, I cannot reason and act on my own
all my life I just do what others do or what has been put in my mind

Sensitise me to black, because black has only one reference in my mind
Sensitise me to a love that never was, because I've never loved before
Sensitise me to white because I watch interracial **** you see
Sensitise me to pink, orange and green they only conjure one thing
in my mind
Set up drama and play out scene, it all goes straight to my mind
I am a clockwork orange at your command
Tell me I am lonely and worthless because you know best

Knowledge is power as deciphered by crooks and Extremists
who know we buy into and believe anything they tell us
Make them fat juicy lies and distortion because truths is boring
get us busy with manipulating our minds by telling us we are
manipulating the mind of a clockwork orange
So please fill my mind with *******, sow a thousand seeds
You can manipulate my emotions, you can alter my personalities
I have no self will, I have no self control, I have no discipline
I have no confidence because morons are cleverer than Me

I am just a nobody from the local Comprehensive
I only learn and grow from what you show me, say to me
act in drama in front of me or prompts and triggers dropped.
I am just a clockwork orange, so peel me and squeeze my mind
as you wish
I am just a mindless hooligan wasting my time and efforts in
what the Leaders calls POWER OF THE PEOPLE

They tell me MAJORITY WINS ALL THE TIME, THEY TELL ME
THIS IS POWER!

It could have been in any cove
In any sleepy desert oasis
Mine was down from the left
of the Put-put course
the one with
the prettiest girl in spain

For three days after the first burn
I stayed inside the villa
Then dared the solar power
to further fry my body

I lay in the mediteranean
with so heavy a salt content
floating about aimlessly
until it bumped me

As I awaken from my sun slumber
The smile and the blood thirsty look take me in its eye
and I freeze cold for three
quarters of a second.  Before punching
it's nose
and then in its eye
and again in its brain
Giving the blood thirsty beast the education he requires
to satisfy my hunger
I drag him to the pebble beach
and beat his brain repeatedly
with a succession of right crosses
then plead

Charlie Kitchell take my picture
Kathy Kitchell take my picture
Michael Meadows take my picture

Five Foot TEN INCH SHARK
Caught by six foot twenty-three
year old G.I.

This calls for a celebration
First with laughter
Then with liquor
Then with feast of prey
and more liquor

We ate for a week
and with barcardi at a dollar a gallon
puked to our hearts content

Not in Alliconte
with its industry
Not in Benidorm
with its way too many brits

Altea
the so quiet
its mob eerie quiet
the most relaxing place I've ever been

Where my high powered zoom lens
took many **** photos of
Beautiful women

Where we de-wasped the bushes
by the pool at the rented villa

and I performed the most daring
feat of my life
ending a shark's
with my bare hands

A tent's over me,
oxygen?
could be
and tubes coming out
of my veins.

I
suppose Spain's out of the question?
the nurse nods her head and sends me instead
to a convalescent home
I wanted Benidorm
this is more like a reform
school

on my oath as a gentleman
I will not be getting
sick again,
but don't think that I think that
thinking being dead is a better option,
I don't think that I'd think that
at all.

Queuing at the airport the flights non-stop
Off to Benidorm  in a football top
Pants three quarter, tattooed arms
Overweight Wife with ample charms

Check-in complete & straight to the bar
It’s only 6am but they don’t care
Their duty free stuffed in to Lidl bags
*****, whisky & 400 ****

They’re now half cut & the kids start to cry
They board the plane & they sit nearby
A 2hr flight with the family from hell
Hoping they’re not staying at your hotel

You’re all on the coach now & on your way
They smell of cigarettes & body spray
He turns around in a right old state
And slurs at you ‘Where ya staying mate’?

Through gritted teeth and raw contempt
You tell him the El President
‘Same as us’ he says with pride
Stretching his pants to squeeze his gut inside

The El President has lost its charm
My wife looks forlorn as she grabs my arm
As in the lobby with kids aloft
Are 100 more slobs in their football tops..

One: my life spins in small circles
that very infrequently stretch
to somewhere as far as Benidorm

Two: that after 12 years married
she’s right about most things
so I’ll listen more

Three: a lot of annoying stuff
is dust in a much bigger wind
so look for the wins

Four: the kids are what it’s for
and all their silliness, fear and anger
is a handle to clutch on to

Five: we are here and alive
and we should forever
fight to keep it so

Designer time
making moments that hang off the bangs in your hair
and sharing the plan with the minute man,

missiles are made from marmalade, my
jam sandwiches from the half hours that
two chickens laid,

I'm inside an arcade game
machined into the square route

Dreams are peculiar
I won a toaster or one of ten
other innocent prizes, but I was
sat in my shorts, not satin shorts
but they should have been

then I woke up in Benidorm
or Bangladesh
with Oliver next to me
saying
' another fine mess'

He travels freely
could be astrally
I'm not totally
sure.

They're in colour
which is tax deductible
on the yearly return

and what do I learn from this?
how to kiss like Valentino?
sing like Shapiro?
dress like Michelangelo?

Nothing like a tryer
so I always try to remember
which is nothing like the real thing
in the meantime
I dream on.

there was a little badger he took a trip away
he was feeling down took an holiday
packed his little case packed it nice and neat
things that he might need. something he could eat

he went to benidorm for the sea and sun.
swimming in the sea having lots of fun
surfing on the waves that were very high
riding on the crest beneath the sun shine sky

he was very happy and no longer down
he had a smile again that took away his frown
badger headed home his holiday was done
thought about his trip that gave him so much fun