The tradition of marriage,
Bourgeois blackmail and baggage,
Is it all a bargain for men?
Is this what white weddings meant?
All the love that is lost,
And what is the ultimate cost?
A divorce court pizza,
Magistrate smirks like Mona Lisa,
Four corners, one for each,
Dog gets the crust, if it can reach,
Cats get the anchovies,
Were white weddings for phonies?
When is the revolution?
Blancmange brides for pollution,
Bridesmaids-Little Bo Peeps on crack,
Does society cut us some slack?

We joined the bourgeoisie,
All ends in tears and hypocrisy.

We found the thing
  on our walk,
   vacant, drinking the waves.
You tugged it
  from the mush,
   rolled your fingers
over its wet knobbles
  like kneecaps or ankles.
   What a find.
Held it up,
  let sunlight glimmer
   from its clotted cream body,
felt the smooth blancmange
  pink interior and said
   you have it
no you have it.
  I put the shape to my ear,
   listened for the sea
but heard hushes, whispers
  whirring within a dark room.
   I had to own it in the end.
Able to keep
  part of the beach
   but not you,
not you.

This blancmange of dusk—of melted coral lights
has tugged the softest from the heaviest of heights.

Its face the color of yearning—cast down as mine.

Barely grazed round the head I must be bound inside
the verge again—between what now may be moving
and what has immovably since

the frozen wavescape of circumference undefined.

I’ve been wanting to be touched by a light
such as this, but even urge when satisfied
really quells nothing much—just like
a tender eye lightly daubed in steady brine;

a song I play with passion that never will be mine;

the way I shuffle them, without one
to settle on; the silence that I usually find—
the kind that settles none.

Twilight shows me faint—the wait being time

we pine for clear desire—beyond this lacquered  
veneer of sky—vaguely painting fire.

if poetry were more like money
would it be greater
if there was no desperation
to experience or see
would poetry not be
just like blancmange or porridge
sustaining but oh so bland
if there where no joy
no love, anger, jealousy
bland, bland, bland.
poetry is a currency
or the open heart and mind
so lets us spend, and write
the spice of life....

On being reeled in
by the line,
tight
so thin
like the air that
we breathe and
going under for the
last time


the last time and
the last time before
and the time that the
ocean reached out to the shore
another line cast for
the footloose and fast
for the
'quick and the dead'
a book
I once read.

Those locked out are also locked in.

Bars,

I've been in and behind them
shaken though spared and
have dared to ignore them.

As unfixed as I am,
many men are so bust up
they can't kick the dust up
and lay silent to pray

always a Sunday for some.

*** roast or *** luck?
I'd chuck it all in
for the line
tight
so thin
for the reeling
that feeling we get

shaky
like blancmange or
a shivering jelly on
a hot afternoon.

The moon and I
are old friends and
we'll get by, but
the ocean's a tyrant
the bully that pulls me
apart.

I know it's only Ragnarök 'n' Roll but...."

The sun rolls
across the floor

chased by an orange
and black cat.

Cornered like a mouse
the sun hides

just out of reach
under the chest-of-drawers.

Uranus has made it
all the way to the toilet door.

Mars has landed
in the half-eaten blancmange.

Neptune? No one knows
where Neptune's gone?

Venus floats
in the un-drunken wine.

The earth hides
in a flower ***.

Mercury balanced just upon the edge of the
table -

The moon has risen
in the child's hand.

"No...NO! Don't
eat the moon!"

The planetary mobile
has somehow come a-
-part.

The planets now
mere child's play.

Or a coloured ball
a cat could chase.

After the planets fall
to earth

I pluck Pluto from its path
the only planet left intact.

Pocket it.

"It's not the end of the world!"
I tell them all.

"Tea...anyone?"

ocean, childlike eyes,
dreaming of a thirty nine-year old love song
with wine and roman antiques
in her boudoir.

her mouth tastes like salt
her cheeks, corroded,
russian red smeared on her chin like matisse's red studio.
twelve past ten.
she can't do this anymore.
a royal mess in blue velvet.
this is why you should always keep your heart in a cage
and secure its key from thieves
and heartbreak hotel managers.

because losing him dims all the lights,
losing him is like burning alexandria to the ground,
losing him tastes like an outdated blancmange.
her achilles' ****** heel.
and she can't lift her feet to move on.

If, then, gosub, return.


The sun sets
a bit like blancmange,
same colour
too.

but what if you need to know
how many?

what if
counting sheep is sleep's way
of saying,
stay awake?

Crust around the edges
Of a molten black blancmange.
Sealing in the flavour.
A magnificent masterpiece.

some mornings while drifting

i see the writing in my head

come patterned, neat lines balancing

dancing with the rain

at the window

on waking



yesterday we remembered blancmange

and jelly,  ideal milk and water

pineapple that split cream



food that touched



yesterday we remembered our granmas

our mothers



bundles of cotton with  colours

required for mending always



yesterday she explained to sew

the four holes in synchronicity

tight

on linen



yesterday the words came easily with labels

and names





today on brightening

forget

but, but there's nothing there, said,
my Teddy bear,
no jelly tots, no chocolate drops,
no candy bars, no blancmange,
no sandwiches, no cake,
it's all a ****** fake.

this is not a picnic
the tables are all bare
said
hungry
hungry Teddy bear,

then he looked me in the eye
gave me that glassy stare
just before the lights went out
and I became
the Teddy's fare.