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I am waiting for a twenty two.
Two eleven's have past but they will not do
from Piccadilly to Putney
home in time for ham,cheese and chutney
and here it comes.

Humming along brum brum brum
get on the bus
swipe the card
not too hard
taking a seat take the weight of my feet
and in the air from up the stairs the smell of food
someone is chewing on chicken
******* on bones
the women in front are gabbling in phones
and the child behind cries
I've dropped my fries
then an old lady slips on these crispy fried chips
and the bus comes to a halt.
The driver jumps up
screaming this isn't my fault.

Not my day at all
just wanted to get home with no smell of chicken
no phones in my face
but now I'm stuck in the bus
face to face
with the realisation that Putney and ham with cheese and Chutney
is slipping away.
No
not my day at all.
Chris Slade Jul 2019
Ahh the 60s! How well I remember it…as a lad.
It’s a bit like the kids saying…“What did you do in the war then dad?”
And I HAVE been asked a time or two… “You were a teenager in the sixties...
What was it like?…” Well it was mixed… some bits good (brilliant in fact) and a few, bad.

I’d call my experiences near misses…!

At 13 I lived in Handsworth Wood (that’s Brum) went to the same youth club as Steve Winwood…
He… gangly, wearing shorts, wowed the girls in the gym as a keyboard player.
Spencer Davis, Traffic, Blind Faith,  Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Solo… A stellar career !
Me? At 15 our family moved south to Bognor…  ******…Bognor!

Actually that’s not fair - It’s not as bad as it might sound…

I peeled spuds at Butlin’s for excitable holiday hordes…
I cleared tables for Chess’ World Championships too - with Tim Rice…he got good with words…
“Doesn’t seem a minute since the Tyrolean Bar had the chess boards in it - that’s how it goes!
One of us got a job as a sales rep, the other a seat in the Lords!

See what I mean?.. Another near miss!

I went in for a talent show in a marquee near the pier
won 5 quid - bought a new pair of Beatle boots… and some keen mod gear.
Joined an R&B band and we gigged for a few years…even London… (well Kingston actually!).
Moved on to art college where things got hairy… ***, drugs and rock & roll - scary!

That might have been what I now call Brian’s Jamaican Woodbines!

A new band, a true blues band, made a real mark - without me! -
an offer came in - and it didn’t sound like the best future to me.
So I left, Chalky joined - they flew, I didn’t. Martin Q wrote Maggie May.  
guess maybe I should’ve stayed… Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Their reputation stood the test of time,
toured & played alongside the best, Freddie King, Jeff Beck, AC/DC, Led Zep.
I got my job as the rep! They toured and so did I. So, we all went on the road!
Imagine how sick I felt! Shall we say - a slight lack of zest! Yep!

I’ll just share this with you…

So, I’m standing at the bus stop in Muswell Hill, first day of work - slow traffic passing by, up the hill.
Barry, the manager, pulls up in a dandy sports car… lights at red. “Hi Man! Where to? Get in!
“Starting a new job today - off to pick up my company car”… (I didn’t know that was true)… How about you?”
“Meeting the guys at Gatwick. This week we’re doing Amsterdam, Hamburg and Berlin too! They did well, it's true, but…maybe at a cost... Loves, minds and a few lives lost!  

But this is where I usually say “**** it, I should've given it a go!”

But I said “Oh, well done that’s brilliant! I wish you well. Really well!
Anyway after a year or so another band came along and I said what the hell!
But it wasn’t the same… Different game… maybe I’d already had my chance at 15 minutes of fame.
Well, Chris Blackwell, the Island boss, said “no boys… passé… in fact a bit lame”
This is what’s happening now...and he faded up Lindisfarne. Said "now THIS is fame"!

"Meet me on the corner as the sun is going down and I’ll be there".

I’ll keep it short…Now don’t get me wrong… It’s just part of the story and I’ve had a great life.
Two great kids - 7 grandkids and an adorable, adoring wife.
(she might just read this!).
A successful career… an interesting unfolding retirement - and, well - I’m here…
and, when I look at others - it’s all been without much strife, I’m well set.
The fact is there’s so much to do… so little time…
There’s this poetry lark, portrait painting,  learning the guitar, house renovation - two at once in fact - AND anyway -  I haven’t finished yet!
Musing over the fact that I've had bundles of 'near misses'... lived in a house once built and owned by Isambard Kingdom Brunel... Adam Faith lodged with us when I was 12 and then, later, at 18 when I was at Art College with Leo Sayer... Adam picked him up as his manager... And so it goes... What's next?
Star BG Oct 2018
Lying in bed, I shift my vehicle
into new day. A day that is blessed
by rising sun.

Feet become wheels, spinning in dance gracefully.
Skin is cleansed in carwash-like shower
that tickles to birth smile.

Moments captured in suns rays vibrate,
as gyrating beams flicker
and penetrate cells.

Air infused intentions
rise in thoughts expanding
to merge with gas-like breath.

Blessings surface, as guidance
from navigational system of heart
purrs, gracefully.
  
Brum, ***! echoes,
merging with days landscape,
as dance commences.

Brum, ***! fills air
as compassion toward others
becomes goal.
      
In instant, hands folded
on steering wheel of prayer
anchor, as gratitude fills thoughts.

As wind pervades senses
and birds sing on welcome mat
of ears woven by hair.

The day has begun in celebration,
while cruse controlled movements
connect to surroundings.

While alignment is made
to source as freedom bell rings
inside waking hours.

I’m blessed, ready to shift gears
inside unlimited possibilities
on highway of life.

Blessed to rondevu with light  
for peace, while fuel of love energies
congeal with purpose.

Purpose to make the best
of the gift of life given
in a vehicle anointed by God.
We love urban, ice wrapper choc full, dense with matter, cream the power runs through, finding space, each cell. Unit, one by one, stacked upon deck, pile, floating concrete and multi access path. Crank each floor, glass patent steel, glint the Thames, Humber and Clyde, a boat in the reflection, slum cleared gentle penthouses on the other side. Dogged, ***** not allowed, Barking, Hackney, Toxteth, Little Ireland aka Cardiff gone. Dodo, hatchet, escalate poverty, high rise cool, the high rise flat.  Crowning glory, a sea of chiming memories, stirs the tenement cat. Swept beneath the paradigm, catapult off the parapet, somersault into a different time, moonlit skyscrapers, street sweepers become the concrete and the fifty foot glass dancers, cross between the cargo arches, gargoyles and shields bring them to the ground. The twisted metal of prams and brand new cars grind, traffic in drones, and the city drowns. Strip turn central, gorgeous girl, Hoxton lad, a touch too Dad, deposit on a Liverpool street pad, generation retro spinning fractal, money linear pavement uber yellow, scuttling insects and street martins, skylarks flying Saint Pauls cross and ball bearings, shopping centres unending. Biting into Cheapside, the hidden livers, gold delivers, pure to stay the shivers, the office block rises. Sharp bends, the bridge divides, shark rides the sky, dumps the bank and pierces its side, docks in every city worldwide, rivers pink with the ticklish blood of regicide. Pumpish, Victorian, sweet and blue, the older the City the quicker the glue. Mortar rectified a moment to ***** and overawe you. Shock, new wave architecture, backhanded awe. Brum pill wave beast eat your heart out, find another Chinese storm, currency blizzard, scales hardly balance, aha you had it, now you simply own. Own the moment, the pebbledash, corrugated roof, outside toilet and underground transit. We love urban, your moment we cherish and drain, there is nothing we can’t refuse to understand, too complex to refrain. Bounce as we ride the terrace and its suburban long train. Take your sweetheart on the nightbus, ****** him her, the hier of your plane, that’s where they will love you in the memories of the life near the top floor, and the final flight you were too drunk to gain. Seventy Two, you’re only thirty and you’re on forty one. You’ll fall back or you’ll begin ascendency. Shrink with wisdom, pick up the building, a tool, dreaming of scaling London, young a journeyman, jousters young son, learned, resisted the gun. I’ll fight with two hands, pile bricks or guide with a pen. Draw your city, write my memory, bind moment with every fragment, underpath, cycle through. Lights fading, jumping colours in the district where the girls who live the density beyond you and me, each element boiling their hearts and steaming potent New York’s paths. You had poetry in the apron of your mother’s lap, golden syrup and milky sap. You love urban, fifties bubble contrast in your seventies shunted through urban oasis and with that unknown factor, uber bijou, ‘Finding Nemo’ flat. We are urban, you are fashion, you are the generation that copied that, found the culture in the swinging city, post uni shack. Seven Eleven, Atlantic side heaven, promised more than double checking your watch before bedtime. Look at your daughter, she’s got ‘more than’ you hoped for, already in the palm of her sleeping hands, waking up to a metropolis only she will understand.
martin Nov 2014
----------------

There was a young man from Bilbao
Who swallowed a book somehow
Can you suggest
How to digest
The thoughts of Chairman Mao?

------------------

There is a man not far from here
Who had a rather novel idea
To write a book
So a pen he took
And lo it did appear

--------------------

There was a young man from Brum
Who felt a book in his tum
He had it removed
Which just goes to prove
There's a book in everyone

-------------------

As a young man
I felt that I must
Write a long book
about love and lust
A publisher read it
Then promptly did shred it
      And told me to go drive a bus      

---------------------
Yours welcome
Dan McGowan Jun 2015
down by the brum dimwiddy

where we got all giddy

sat the massive planq

with god awful stank



her shimmy playzit soloose

situation diffuse

we beg fumdilly

witout seeming chilly



she unfastened minert

couldi squirt

undoubted nixnot

from within it shot



hrmfff okydoke

andwe smoke
As you can tell it was a situation of emotion that got me writing this.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2017
*** yir ******* skids outta
m'ah 'uckin feece!

god i love that place,
glasgow is like birmingham
of the north...
  a rotten scow to nowhere,
unless it be a place that
spoke: deep-fried mars bar
for breakfast -
you scurvy worth of
the tangled sailor! ****!

gods took to the twallop,
and i takes me to the
rool ups!
       got a bargain with a shrimp
you belfast *****?
           my **** you 'av!
next time they sing: sweet dover,
i'll have you marrying the *****
cult of: shard!
   ye storm ah heed!
**** me an' timber twice:
V fooking eye of ye, hire-crane!
******* twice,
   three times removed
the drunk... huh?!
   it's all plus minus with me by
now...
         ha ha!
had a cousin, didn't say why,
cursed & numbed the cuss words
like a nun ought to know why...
  so i says me:
     lingua the leash - earn the ir -
softspot for the tucker-jacks
and the irish lepers: shauns they
called them...
         he he...
look at me:
  all smug and waiting
for brussel sprouts out the paan tree...
what's with these wallaby terms?
    panchree? panna quinoa, panna cotta?
******* as clingy as those pepsoowongs,
or wangs or pepsoos.

as the english queers say
   F F Θ, but then pull out a churchill -
and vey v girman vey such & such...
they and way become indistinguishable -
churchie and the welsh abbey become
one and the same with either V
as "peace", or the V and the welsh
longbowmen *******...

       v'eh point... wayward: too soon...
   vuck!  
  wook?
       wookie?
      va va voom!
           woonder-brum, brimming,
bra bra bra... ha ha ha...
    dried it all off with the giggles...
then it became apparent:
the man settled for the dozen,
whether it was a dozen of ostriches,
hyenas,
   bunches of lychee,
       leaks,
               bulgarian strippers -
or worse...
   a dozen of english rhetoricians,
notably gay;
                     ****... what a gamble.
Mary Rios Nov 2018
She does not perorate to him, fear fills her mind & croor why?...it is unknown but everytime their eyes meet her child skips a brum beat, her paunch gets overwrought in his presence, her soul longs for his aid, her child longs for his amiability, her oculus longs for his oculus to domineerin' hers, her frame longs for his predilection, her hand longs for his...but winter rests long & stubbornly between them she serenades for him but he evades her serenades she falls on her knees & weeps & ensecure herself like a tranchula does.
Weeks feel like months somber is her new lust partner, her life companion & their child is the one that loafs in her *******, tucked away, unpoisonous. Her child is what keeps the muted predecessor alive & what made her so stonewall & untrustin' bourgeois to emancipate her & her child...the muted predecessor & her child have been indignant to many times & she isn't contingentin' never more, mother grows enervated & distended from the correlations she went through & the many bourgeois her child has met & adored deeply & who it has played with & now predecessor & progeny are aghast to amity & entrust anyone they meet...

— The End —