i - Introduction:
ii - Lismore Park
iii - The Road to Maidenhead
iv - Town Square
v - Contradiction, contraband
vi - Saturday Afternoon
vii - The Circus Comes to Town (Sunday)
viii - The Show
ix - The ringmaster
x - The Fracas
xi - An incident at Upton Park
xii - No ball games
xiii - New found…
xiv - Nearly done
xv - Another time…

i - Introduction:

Come friendly bombs you’ve still to hit
The place whose name means quagmire
The town, the place that’s left bereft
Of soul, of spiritual fire.
But hurry, hurry, please be fast
For the crack dealer plies his trade
With slight of hand and cunning
A ghetto he’ll have made

The peroxide perms have now all grown
And muster outside shops
To wait for the be-suited sales rep
With his rocks and his alco-pops
They’ve all spawned offspring of their own
Fifteen-year-old cradle pushers
Who sold their souls in return for hope
To thirty year old cradle snatchers

Come friendly bombs it’s plain to see
The vacant, empty faces
The lifeless eyes, the pallid skin
The love that leaves no traces
The love that lasts a knee trembling minute
Outside Harry’s and Sluffs
A love that smells of emptiness
O they cannot get enough

Come with me, look over there
To the sculpture in the mall
The stainless tree with it’s stainless birds
And stainless birdsong call
A bird sings and the town all stops
To see from where this sound will show
A bitter disappointment when learned
It was played on the radio

Community service on the airwaves
To draw the crowd together
A song played, a one hit wonder
Reminds us nothing is forever
The sterile radio station plays on
Opiates to which we should yield
And bare our souls and be grateful for
The song of Bedingfield

ii - Lismore Park

The sight of a child playing in the street
Is one of day’s gone bye
But Lismore Park sees them out in droves
Stealing cars and getting high
The twelve year old sent out to play
Whilst mother takes a knap
But really she’s having it away
For a fiver and a brown wrap

The party at the house next door
That never seems to stop
The men all come and go and paw
Girls in this knocking shop
But halt weary traveller, stop!
Come sit and rest your back
The bench awaits you on the green
And the deluded maniac

The man who knows what’s wrong with you
And how to make it better
As long as he keeps his soul filled up
With cheap White Lightening cider
Six large cans for a five-pound note
From the corner shop near the school
An offer really not to be missed
And to make the drunkards drool

A songbird sits on the climbing frame
And sings his cheerful tales
A tune too much for our dear lush
The maniac exhales
The songbird sings and fills the air
With a loving string of notes
That reminds the sitters on the bench
There may still be a hope

A radio plays ‘that’ song again
Should you dare to forget the rhythm
The bird has flown away now
Fed up with this hypnotism
The airwaves are now filled with dross
Thanks to the flat opposite the green
The weary traveller moves on
“Better days has this place seen”

iii - The Road to Maidenhead

O friendly bombs do try to miss
The sweet blossom, the fragrant smell
The flowers, the green grass of the parks
The havens in this hell
Be careful around the Jubilee River
With it’s wildlife and sculpted hills
For a walk in this very man-made place
Will surely heal your ills

But spare no mercy for the superstores
That pollute and destroy our thoughts
“If it’s not on the shelf, we haven’t got it…”
The familiar assistants’ retort
Take no prisoners with the office blocks
That lay empty year after year
For they clutter up the atmosphere
And have no value here

O friendly bombs, o friendly bombs
The cabbages are all grown
They read the Sun and sing along
To the radio’s dreaded drone
Whilst in their vans they speed on by
Jumping all the lights
To price a job – a small brick wall
Based on a thousand nights

The car showrooms… the car dealers
Stack ‘em high and sell them cheap
Chop-chop salesman, soften ‘em up
The rewards are there to reap
Finance, part exchange or cash
Anyhow you like
“No sir, not me sir…
…I’d prefer to use my bike”

The bustle of the weekend crowds
The steamy traffic queues
Stare too hard at that red car
And suffer the abuse
Overtake the blue one now
And make him toot his horn
See him raise his voice in anger
To satisfy his scorn

iv - Town Square

Saturday morning, seven o’clock
The town begins to wake
A pair of sleeping winos
Dream about their fate
They plan their morning sermon
But who will really care
For what they say means nothing
Less than their icy stare

The busker and the balloon man
Wait to take their turns
To entertain and irritate
And suffer being spurned
By a thousand shady shoppers
Who’ve heard it all before
And probably given hard earned cash
To make them play some more

The trickster and the barra’ boys
Set up all their stalls
Selling mobile phone covers
And fake branded hold-alls
Adorn your phone with logos
Hankies for a pound
“Yes sir, we’re here on Sundays…
…(Providing there’s no police around)”

Grab a baked potato and sit
And watch the folk go by
Some will have you in hysterics
Some will make you cry
The man on his double-glazing stand
In his suit and in his tie
The perspiration on his head
Watch him wilt and fry

The songbird settles on the wall
And sings to our delight
A merry sonnet that will inspire
Dreams we’ll have that night
The wino shouts his sermon now
The bird has paused his song
This post-war sprawling Hooverville
Muddles slowly along

v - Contradiction, contraband

On the steps of the library he screams aloud
Through a mist of smuggled gin
“You’re all fools, the lot of you is ****
I’ve not committed sin…”
“It’s not my fault I’m a lush… a drunk
I don’t choose to live this life”
“You’re all wrong in carrying on
It’s you what’s caused my strife”

In his wretched form he abuses the world
Pooh-poohing this and that
A skunk telling the world it stinks
The polemic polecat
“Society has robbed me of everything
And left me less than whole”
“The only day that’s good is Thursday
When the postman brings me dole”

On Friday he meets his dealer
To fuel his pickled mind
The man with the van on Saturday
With the spirit and the wine
By Monday, he’s all skint and broke
The weekend has passed him by
He takes his place on the library steps
We shake our heads and sigh…

Every week the same routine
The same routine again
Like clockwork his life ticks on by
The suffering and the pain
But he tells us it’s all our fault
We’re the ones not right
But it’s very easy for him to say
The man who’s so contrite

The children watch him puzzled
It’s more than they can bear
“It’s very rude…” their mothers say
“To stand like that and stare”
But what, do they expect their young
To ignore this fool a mumbling?
For they will see it for what it is
A stormy weather warning

vi - Saturday Afternoon

I sit on a wall in Slough with friends
Sharing the Dutch export
Watching and laughing at the world
And it’s variety of sorts
A happy bond that we all share
The joy of simple things
Come friendly bombs and gather round
Watch us while we sing

The friendly bombs you call upon
Are they straight off the shelf?
It’s my belief, my firm belief
The bomb is in yourself
Ticking slowly by and by
Just waiting for the code
To trigger you and trip the switch
To make the bomb explode

We watch the people from where we sit
The hellholes they’ve all made
They don’t live they just exist on
The edge of a razor blade
Stop! Step back and take a look
It’s not too late to change
And become what you really want to be
An icon of your age

Over now to Langley Park
To sit and bathe in the sun
O friendly bombs please wait a while
Until this day is done
But what will tomorrow bring my friends?
And will it come too late?
Something that may save us all
The bombs may have to wait

A sedate sleepy Saturday
Away from all the crowds
Share a joke, a ****, a smoke
And laugh together loud
The sun warms our sombre souls
As on our backs we lie
Staring as the clouds roll by
United under the sky

vii - The Circus Comes to Town (Sunday)

Halt now, wait awhile please
Stop the counting down
Today the air is charged with joy
The circus comes to town
Must have arrived last night we think
Under cover of dark
And settled down and pitched it’s tents
In the grounds of Upton Park

The queue to purchase tickets
Trails far along the road
No. 53 offers cups of tea
From outside her abode
The crowds are mum, they say not a word
As they wait their turns to go
Inside the circus big-top tent
And sit and watch the show

We settle down and take our seats
With an ice-cream and a coke
But wait, where are the circus clowns?
Is this some kind of joke?
A wall of mirrors fades into view
And puts us in a spin
Reflecting all the bright lights
The colours and the din

The ringmaster enters, cracks his whip
And hands out little slips
“Everyone’s a winner” was
On every body’s lips
The clowns they all appear now
With a modicum of fuss
Hold on just a minute now!
The clowns we see are us

A spotlight points up to the gods
At the top of the trapeze
A giant money spider glides
Down with greatest ease
He touches each and everyone
All paralysed with fear
And hands out ten pound notes to all
Then promptly disappears

viii – The show

A strongman strolls out slowly with
A length of iron bar
A leopard spotted leotard and
Moustache sealed with tar
He looks around the big top with
A menace and a sneer
Surveying all the audience
He seeks a volunteer

The white van man he raised his hand
The tattoo on his arm
Said this man must not be crossed
To do so would mean harm
The strongman bent the iron bar
Across the van man’s back
Then invited him to strike him down
An unprovoked attack

The van man clenched his hand and hit
And hurt his mighty fist
A statue of the strong man shattered
Turning into mist
The van man stood and stared in fear
The mist it gathered round
And carried out our hero driver
He hardly made a sound

No-one clapped we all just stared
Our faces ghostly white
The strongman re-appeared and looked for
A second stooge that night
No-one raised a hand in fact
No-one said a thing
The strongman shrugged and vanished…
Empty was the ring

A knife thrower was the next to appear
And seek the help of one
With nerves of solid steel and courage
Secondly to none
Down came a fallen woman
Who said she had no fear
A knife was thrown and pierced her skin
Her right large ear-ringed ear

ix – The ringmaster

A second knife it struck her chest
She didn’t seem to weep
She didn’t seem to be in pain
Although the knife was deep
A third knife struck her arm and then
A fourth it struck her head
The knives that should be missing her
Were hitting her instead

Horrified the crowd looked on
Without a fuss or row
The woman now all full of blades
Politely took her bow
She then went back and took her seat
And never said a word
Not another word she said
And not a word she heard

A magician was the next to charm
And thrill us with his tricks
He pulled a rabbit from his hat
Then sat it on some bricks
He then threw watches at this beast
That grew to a great size
The rabbit caught them all and juggled
Them to our surprise

But here’s the rub when we all looked
At places on our wrists
No watches were there to be seen
A cunning little twist
The magician cracked a whip and put
The rabbit in a stew
Which vanished there before our eyes
Vanished out of view

The magician he announced that he
Alone did have this plan
To mystify and amaze us all
With his clever hand
Indeed he was the ringmaster
That owned this circus troupe
That terrified and petrified
Our frightened little group

x – The Fracas

A swarm of bees engulf us now
And cover us with honey
The ringmaster cracks his whip again
The bees all turn to money
Then suddenly the fight begins
As we grab this flying stash
Filling up our purses now
With the hard-grabbed cash

The ringmaster, a clever man
Calms us with his sigh
“There’s plenty here for everyone
…And more than meets the eye”
Suddenly a flock of doves fly
Sweetly through the air
They then attack the baying crowds
Pulling at their hair

Then with a deafening bang, a crack
A flash of burning light
We all cascade towards the floor
The circus out of sight
Confused we all stare around
Thinking it absurd
This bizarre spectacle should vanish
Gone without a word

I look from face to face to face
Whatever could this mean?
We all are laughing nervously
How stupid have we been?
We talk about the day’s events
We talk and talk some more
A voice booms from out the sky
“I’ve opened up the door”

“I’ve brought you all together now
To pander to your greed
To watch you take from fellow man
Deny him what he needs”
I reach in to my pocket
For the money I did place
It reads “Admission: 1 adult
To The Human Race”

xi – An incident at Upton Park

That week the local paper ran
An exclusive full-page ad
“Faland’s Travelling Circus Troupe”
“The most fun ever had”
But no review was there to read
To tell of our event
The strange encounter with this circus
To which we all went

The following Sunday we meet up
In groups of three or four
Since that incident in Upton Park
The spectacle we can’t ignore
No-one knows quite what it means
I don’t think that we’ll ever
Understand all that happened here
That brought us all together

Perhaps there is a deeper message
Given on that day
Faland may be telling us
That we have lost our way
He simply used us all as tools
To illustrate our folly
That had now become too serious
A risk to things so jolly

Every week now we all gather on
This hallowed piece of land
And this is very odd because
Nobody makes the plan
The idea comes to all of us
A self-ignited spark
And draws each of us in turn
To meet in Upton Park

We picnicked then we all played games
Then talked about the rain
We toasted our new friendships
And vowed to meet again
The bombs, the bombs they’ve all slowed down
Compassion saved the day
This newfound love we now all have
Must surely pave the way

xii - No ball games

The joy did not take long to spread
Across our grimy frowns
And bring a little sunshine
To lighten up this town
Happiness is upon us now
The whole of Slough-kind
Depending on how you look at it
And on your state of mind

The lush upon the library steps
The wino on the bench
The Publican and Landlord
The ***** serving *****
They all wear smiles and laugh a lot
And speak of wondrous things
A songbird perches on the fence
And merrily she sings

The children, o the children
How they sing and dance
Always being friendly
In any circumstance
They have no care for politics
You’ll see it in their face
They want to play with everyone
Who’s in the human race

Meanwhile back in Upton Park
The townsfolk meet again
But there’s no talk of horror
Or suffering and pain
Instead though how a monument
Should be erected in our names
And pulling down the signs
That read ‘No Ball Games’

The bombs have all stopped ticking now
And line up by the wall
And every now and then they clang
Just to remind us all
If we get too complacent
And don’t respect our friends
We’re marking down the seconds
To our bitter end

xiii – New found…

We shared our food and shared our tales
Life stories we all told
They made us laugh they made us cry
Left us warm and cold
The suffering we did speak of
Helped us understand
How fellowman and woman kind
Dwelt in other lands

We laughed at tales of folly
And stories of the past
Stories that we are in awe of
Stories that will last
For another thousand years or more
And travel on the wind
A gentle breeze that talks to us
Thrilling to the end

Gathering momentum
Our stories travel far
Picked up and told by new folk
Under glowing stars
They bring warmth and humanity
Softened by the rain
They travel back to each of us
To be re-told again

Who’d have thought this loving joy
This beacon in the dark
Would begin upon the grass
Of hallowed Upton Park
The greed has gone or mostly so
Now happiness is here
We’ve seen the light and now must spread
Our messages of cheer

Looking back it hardly seems
We could have been that way
Not caring if each other lived
To see another day
This new found near Utopia
Must spread across the land
And we must stand to offer all
Our warm and guiding hand

xiv – Nearly done

The story is now almost told
Of how a strange event
Saved us from our selfish selves
A message heaven sent
With cunning tricks and sleight of hand
The error of our ways
Was written up in greasepaint
Shining through the haze

A strange di

Today is Monday, pension day
Tommy is standing in the queue
Behind him is his neighbour
Who everyone calls Nosey Sue

In front of him is Carol
Who works in the general dealers
He saw her in town the other day
In her clapped-out Reliant three-wheeler

The queue is getting longer
And the odour isn't nice
It’s a mixture of sweat and eau de cologne
And some guy is wearing 'old spice'

Carol turns to Tommy and says
“There’s a lot of bills that need paying”
He sees Sue listen attentively
To hear what they are saying

Sue tells them both
“Gas and electric are getting dear”
Carol says “you shouldn’t have been listening” with a sneer
Sue looks put-out and turns her back on them
A heavy smoker at the front coughs
And says his chest is full of phlegm

The  girl behind the counter says “too much information”
The man laughs and discloses he's on the list
For a knee operation
Tommy is tired of waiting
While others stand without a care
He sees a woman further back
Spraying perfume in the air

One of Tommy’s neighbours
Her name is Bernadette
Though attached to an oxygen supply
Says she's gasping for a cigarette
Tommy tells her she should pack them in
But she says with a wry smile
“It’s the smoking that keeps me thin
It wouldn’t be worthwhile”

The queue is getting shorter
Tommy is almost at the front
Heavy smoker spits on the floor
But no-one dares confront

Carol pays her bills
And bids Tommy goodbye
Sue gives her a ***** look
But she has no idea why

Tommy is now at the counter
His pension to collect
The cashier hands him the money
And asks him to check it’s correct

Tommy’s been given a fiver too much
And hands the extra over
Sue comments that if it had happened to her
She'd have been in clover

The cashier thanks Tommy for being honest
Sue says she thinks he's mad
“Honesty's the best policy” Tommy asserts
“It’s a thing of the past and that’s sad”

Sue smirks and says “You’re a fool, Tommy Jones
I'd have kept it without a thought,
Think of all the little treats
That fiver would have bought”

Tommy says to Sue, up-close so she can hear
“I may not have that extra fiver, but my conscience it is clear”
He bids farewell to Bernadette
Still gasping for a smoke
And waves his hand to the rest of the queue
Even though they've never spoke

Sue says “I’ll see you again next week
Or maybe some other time
And I hope the cashier makes a mistake
Then that fiver will be mine”

Tommy smiles at her and thinks
‘Will she ever learn?”
He hopes the cashier doesn't slip up
When it is Sue's turn

Archie was smart; at least he reckoned he was, because he had what he considered to be the good things in life: dosh in his wallet, a Cat in the garage, and a detach. in the green belt; all of which he had worked hard to acquire. Worked, is not exactly the word for it. Archie did deals. He reckoned he could always turn a fiver into a tenner an’ a tenner into a pony; a pony into a ton and a ton to a grand. He was one of the cash economy’s natural alchemists.  The folding stuff was the measure of a person, he reckoned. Archie never thought about anything; he reckoned everything, and nothing on God’s good earth was beyond reckoning, he reckoned. An ever-ready reckoner; that was Archie, and he loved himself for it. Only John Wayne did more reckoning than Archie, his old dad, bless him, used to say, thought Archie. In Archie’s world a grand was currency; less than that was just spare change. He reckoned he gave superior meaning to the expression ‘it’s a grand life’. The only blemish on Archie’s horizon as far as he could see was the lack of a class bird, or ‘ream sort’, as he preferred to say; hence this evening’s extravaganza at a posh French restaurant in the company of a beautiful lady. Archie only had two serious weaknesses in his existence: a fondness for the last word in a dispute about anything you care to mention, and his infatuation with his dining companion, the beautiful Carmela.


Carmela shared a common background with Archie. They grew up on the same council estate in the inner city. They were aware of each other’s existence as kids and teenagers, but they didn’t really know each other. Carmela was a quiet child and very singular; even in company she could be by herself. None but she was wise to her sense of solitude. She had three passions in life: knitting, sewing and weaving; the blessed trinity of her existence. Carmela interpreted the world by these three gifts. Here she was, she thought, weaving her way through an evening, in the company of three strangers. One she knew, herself, another she didn’t know at all, despite proximity and semi-shared origins. Then there was the complete stranger to the trinity: the waiter in his new and very polished shiny black shoes, “You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes”, Carmela’s mum used to say, she was thinking about that as the waiter appeared to almost pirouette into vision.


The waiter was a patient soul, it goes with the territory. The waiting game wasn’t something you should rush in to, he often told himself, in one of his more existentialist moments. He appreciated the irony of the comment in a Sartresque kind of fashion. He was from a steel town in the Rhonda Valley of South Wales. Iron was in his veins if not his appearance. A creature of paradoxes, that’s what he told himself he was. He liked that assessment of himself. It complimented his passion for all things French: French food, French wine, French philosophy, literature and art. He was learning the language at night school. Alas, his accent was as lyrically refined as the landscape that bred him He shovelled the words onto a conveyor belt of sound and meaning as best he could in the general direction of the person he was talking to, more in hope than in faith that they understood what was being said .The other passion in his life was tap dancing, and as luck would have it he could wear the same outfit for work and leisure, hence the very shiny shoes which allowed him to dance around the tables of the restaurant, practising his language skills on the clientele, His life work and leisure dovetailed with his ambition and he was pleased to wake up in the morning and set about the mortal trespass with a skip in his step. The waiter imagined himself to be a cosmopolitan and enlightened soul, in a very Fred Astaire kind of way, and life was a flight of stairs which he could ascend and descend in a Morse code type of style, just like Mr Bojangles.


The fare was fine. the wine was rare, but the conversation was spare until the cheese board arrived.” Good grub”, said Archie to the waiter. “We don’t do grub, sir, we only serve the finest Gallic cuisine in this establishment,” replied the waiter, in his usual mangled French, whilst smiling that smile that only waiters can manage when registering disapproval. Archie looked blank. It was Carmela who spoke: “C’était magnifique! Mes compliments au chef.” “Streuth! You speak better French than Marcel Proust here” said Archie.” I studied Fashion and Design in Paris for five years “replied Carmela.” “An’ I joined the Common Market many moons ago. It’s good for business” said Archie. The waiter was impressed: “Food, fashion, wine, Proust and Paris. This must be Nirvana” he said. “Great band, but a very dubious heaven.” replied Carmela, knitting together the threads whilst changing the pattern of the conversation in a very subtle fashion that was more to her liking.” “It’s only rock ’n’ roll” said Archie, an’ if you’ve ever heard French rock ’n’ roll it’s enough to make you believe in Foucault” “Foucault, my hero!” said the waiter, “a philosophical genius”. “According to Foucault, a knitting pattern is the hieroglyphic of a consumerist and decadent capitalist society.” intoned Carmela.” “And ‘A recipe is a critique of a cake’, said the great Structuralist philosopher,” interjected Archie, so if you serve the gateaux we may effect the collapse of western civilisation as we all know and love it”. “Allors, Let them eat cake” said the waiter, and everybody smiled at the irony of the comment.

The waiter bojangled his way into the night, tapping and clicking the pavement as he went.  Carmela and Archie got into a black cab. “That was a night to remember,” said Carmela, “very Proustian”. “A la recherche du temps perdu”, replied Archie, pleased as punch to have the last word. Carmela just smiled as she looked at Archie’s shoes.

“You know the worst thing I ever saw?” He asked.

I sighed to myself, took another gulp of beer and fixed him with a look of half-interest. He was drunk. A complete ****-up and a bore when he's drunk. I don't know why I drink with him. That said, he probably thinks the same.

“What's that?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard.”
“Ye-what?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“The homeless. Right.”
“I'll get us another drink.” he says, “then I'll start where I left off.”
“Oh, good.”

He comes back with two bottles. We drink and we start talking about football. We're just about getting by before he raises his palm to his face.
“Aw, ****. I forgot, yeah. The worst thing I ever saw. I never told you.”
“You did. Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah yeah, but that doesn't really say much, does it? You're probably wondering to yourself why that would **** me off so much?”

Not really. He's the type of no-action, all-caring, bleeding heart that sits on his fattening **** every day, 'liking' rhetorical captions over pictures, and signing petitions to axe some ***** politician or other.
“I guess. Shoot.”

He shoots.
“I wanna burn down the churches. Seriously. Stupid ******* religious folk. I bet they go home and post pictures up of themselves, all busy in the soup kitchen, ladling minestrone into some poor *******'s styrofoam bowl.
“They'll never touch them. Always at arm's length. You don't wanna breathe in the pathogens of the anti-people...”
He slurred a little, went to carry on, but took another gulp of beer instead.
“What does that have to do with bedsheets over the benches in the church yard?” I took a gulp myself, this time watching him with a little more interest. Probably just because he looks like he could spew at any moment.
“You're not letting me finish...”
He finishes his beer, gets up, almost bumping into his piano-***-keyboard. He's off to the fridge again. I have a look around while he's out of the room. I can hear him ******* in the kitchen sink.

I've seen the place a million times before but it always has a whole bunch of new **** tacked up on the wall or else bundled in the corner. He's no hoarder, just gets bored and throws out all the stuff he bought the year before.
There's a framed picture of himself on the wall, cradling his Fender as if he's a master of the arts. It's signed, too.
I've seen him play. Probably will tonight. Wouldn't be surprised if he's written a protest song called: bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. The old **** can't even hit an F major with regularity.
He'd decided to put up his vinyl sleeves on the wall like a 17 year old would with an array of **** pop-punk band posters.
Blink and you might think he's the new John Peel or Phil Spector. Stare, and you'll realise he's twice as crazy, yet half as talented and half as interesting to listen to.
His room is like a CV to show to interesting, young indie women. Shame he's hitting forty now,and hasn't been to a club in about 3 months.
Last time we went he just sulked in the corner and got too drunk. He cried in the smoking area about his job before going round and asking attractive girls whether they think he's too old to be out. Most didn't even bother to give an answer. Probably best.

He comes back in with more beer.
“A-anyway...” He says, groaning a little like an old man as he settles back into the chair. “As I was saying...” he sloshes beer on the carpet, rubs it in with the heel of his shoe. He spits on the mark and then rubs again.
“What I was saying was that the church would be a whole lot more useful to the homeless if it was burned down. A condemned building is a whole lot more useful than being looked down on by holier-than-thou, middle-class, white Christians.
“They go home after an hour, bolt the church doors, and then watch TV in their brand new conservatories that they spend several thousands on. Just give the losers a place to shoot up and sleep in safety. That makes sense, right?”
“I guess so.”
I couldn't think of a change of conversation. So I just drank some more and pulled out a cigarette. It's nice to smoke inside for a change.

“It's a ****** ******* awful thing. If people were actually religious, they'd throw open their ******* doors for everyone. It's what Jesus would do, right?”
“Right.”
“He'd have all the **** in his bedsit, piled in like sardines, spreading TB like wildfire.”
“And that's a good thing?”
“Well, it can't be any worse, right? Sleep's important. I learned that the hard way.”

He didn't learn it the hard way. Not really. He's a self-motivated, self-harming insomniac. He spent his teenage years listening to bad music and staying up too late ******* over his French teacher. I should know, I mostly did the same.
He hit the **** pretty hard during college. Never really looked back until recently. ****** him up worse than you'd reckon. He couldn't sleep without the stuff. Man, if you'd have seen the poor guy whenever he couldn't get hold of some for the night. Eesh.

“...you know what I mean though? I'm sick of charity. Those fun-runs you get. A load of women in pink pretending that they care about breast cancer, before posting a million and one pictures up of them in ankle warmers and a kooky hat...”
“**** of the Earth.”
“Yup. Right up there with the women who have 'mummy' as their middle name on Facebook.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly though, it's the laziest form of charity. Throwing a couple old, mouldy bedsheets out on some bird-**** bench made of wood and ancient farts...”
“It is pretty lazy.” I drank some more.

It was getting late. We swallowed three temazepams each, moved onto the cheap shiraz once we ran out of beer. We leant back in our chairs, barely talking and letting Tame Impala supply the conversation for us.

“You know what?” I ask, pretty much out of nowhere. His eyes have narrowed. He's not sleepy, just ****** on ***** and tranquillizers. He takes a moment.
“Huh?”
“From what you were saying earlier... you know, about the bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why don't you?”
“Why don't I what?”
“Burn it down.”
“The church?”
“Well, you go on about being lazy and ****. Here's your chance. Help the homeless. Break the locks, pour the petrol, take out a few bottles of wine if you find any...”
“Now?”
“I guess so. Homeless folk are dying of pneumonia out there. Not a second can be wasted.”
“I dunno. I didn't mean I had to do it. I was just saying...”
“I guess they were just saying too.” I felt like I was being a ****, so I changed the subject to women I haven't laid.

I stumbled home leaning on my bicycle all the way. Daylight was just about visible off in the distance. I passed two homeless guys on the way back, gave one of them a fiver, the other one my big mac and the last of my cigarettes (well, leaving a couple for myself).
They said thanks, god bless you, etc, etc. I carried on walking.

I woke up the next afternoon with a mouthful of sand and in desperate need of a hangover ****. I hadn't shaved in about two weeks and there were dark circles under my eyes. I thought about going out to the diner for a full breakfast, but strange people were beyond me.
I ordered a pizza full of meat and grease and garlic sauce instead. I text him to see if he wanted to come over and nurse the hangover with a little ****. Watch a film. Get drunk again. He still smokes it on special occasions, and this ******* of a hangover was pretty **** special.
No reply, and I end up rolling up a joint for myself, smoking it by the window and watching the magpies peck around the grass. It's nice out.

The pizza guy comes. He's holding the pizza up like a map, calls out in a bored sort of voice: “Hello sir. I've got a large Palermo Pizza here, with a side of chicken strips and a can of Dandelion and Burdock?”
I say yes and he hands it over.

I tip him with the coins still left in my wallet from the night before, and he sheepishly says he picked up my post for me as well.
I look down at the pizza I'm holding, and there's a few envelopes that look suspiciously like bills, rival takeaway leaflets, and the local paper. I say thanks, give him the best sort of smile I could, and then close the door.
I turn on the TV. I forgot the England match was on. I turn over to something more interesting. There's nothing, so I switch back over. Before I open up the pizza, I take the paper. A small-town existence, nothing ever happens, but I could do with a new job.

The front page is on fire. A church has been burned down in the early morning. A forty-something man has been arrested and then taken to hospital for severe burns to the face. A load of children's art has been lost, along with countless Bibles, prayer cushions, and vaults of cash.
“****.”
I read through the article. The whole place was gutted. Nothing could be salvaged. Nothing could be redeemed. In the corner of the picture, through the red, green, and blue dots, I could just make out some bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.

Get your finery on and let the games begin,
Blackout suit, purple shirt, and a tie to match
those gleaming eyes.

The dinner was alright
now get ready to fight. White powder on the counter,
A dusted card and a rolled-up fiver.

Codine chills, calm instilled,
Colorful lights, relaxed thrills.

Later on and we're back in black.
Hometown beatdown. Go hard, get smashed.

Messy nights never get old,
River of glass across a broken road.
Tonic wine's best served cold, its medicinal properties
remain unknown. The sweet nectar, a bottle of B
to resurrect me.

Just the end of another debutante night,
Staying classy while we drink and fight.

The Avro Vulcan, a majestic big old iron bird, sublime,
was to do a flyby for just one memorable last time.
Maybe with a jet fighter or a Spitfire on each wing, who knew?…
Unthinkable to miss it… almost a crime.
Thousands turned up every year, always a great day out -
but this year would be special, there'd be no doubt.
The last flight of such a legendary plane made it essential…
So, after the flyers’ break for lunch, the crowd filled out.

The entry fee to occupy the field was heinous. 25 quid!
That was for adults - and a fiver for each kid.
So, many more than those that paid, sat happily outside pubs.
Others found shelter in the perimeter’s trees and... kinda hid.
Now, to see a Vulcan fly anytime, anywhere, was magic…
She was a Leviathan of the Cold War,
that held players in the planet’s power games in awe.
And this would be her last time doing the rounds on the air show circuit -
Seeing this locally was hard to ignore.

Mark (a nephew) was a window cleaner by trade.
A regular, down to earth, happy go lucky guy.
…Saturday comes and the kids all voted "McDonalds"…
“A Happy Meal!” they’d cry.
He said that was fine - they’d all go after he’d nipped over
to the airshow to watch the Vulcan fly.
No idea whatsoever, of course, that just by going to Shoreham
just 5 miles away, for half an hour or so… that he might die.

He told his fiancé he’d only be an hour or so…
be back in time to take the kids for a burger and, "NO!"...
He wouldn’t stay. He was the only one in the family
who was bothered anyway…so he wouldn’t ****** up their day.
So, in haste, because apparently Chicken Nuggets & Fries
was much better for the kids than a load of old planes,
he cranked the best out of his bike along the 27 and,
once at the lights by the Sussex Pad,
he pulled over to the kerb to watch from the bushes.
Good view? Well not bad!

Andy Hill was a flyer of many years. His weekday job,
flying for BA.Taking holiday makers, business folk, transatlantic in Seven Four Sevens...
A flight deck maestro, soaring up, just under the heavens.
He’d done Shoreham loads of times… it was exciting, exhilarating... almost sport, his game!
He was off the hook,  became an ace. It gave him that 15 minutes of fame!
Free to thrill - a hero! Standing out from the crowd with every daring step. His aim!

He wasn’t just a petrol head… this bloke had aviation fuel in his blood.
Adrenalin on tick-over. Nought to 60 in 2.7 seconds with 22,000 Horsepower under the hood.
He left Epping full of fuel, just 90 miles away, so in two ticks he was with us, fully loaded and, the weather? It was good.
First up after lunch at half past one… he streaked across the crowded field.
Over and out and up, up, up… Little did the spectators know that Andy had forgotten he was flying a Hunter…
He thought it was last year’s aborted routine in a Jet Provost… The one they'd stopped part way through being, too risky.

"He’s not gonna make it… I can’t look!" There was a hush… a nanosecond’s silence and then the rush,
the whoomph that said it all… that hush! The ground shook!
And the eleven - plus others injured - went up in Andy Hill’s very own fireball!
No, of course, Mark wasn’t the only one to die that day.
Ten other ‘innocents’ left us in pretty much the same way…
Maurice, Dylan, Tony, Matthew, Matt, Graham, Mark R, Daniele, Richard & Jacob.
Mark T, our Mark, had the distinction of having two funerals, not just the one…
More remains were discovered, analysed and found to be his!
Even after he’d…already well... ‘gone’.

The injustice that eleven spectators or just passers by should die
when the survivor, the off target driver, who sped too low from the sky, should, after a suitable pause in this ghoulish game, be exonerated and not take any blame.
Well it’s all sort of things… It's ridiculous, pathetic, obtuse, a joke… who do they think we are?

But the great and the good deliberated, scratched their heads and worked hard to make everything look ’right’…
Tolerance for the bereaved to grieve, platitudes, condescending attitudes, a memorial service.
Thanks - genuinely - to the emergency services… Not just a little buck-passing… But the public often judged them. Arsing about - to cover their corporate backside.
They can’t insult me (or us)… intelligent people have tried…

Andy Hill was judged to be not guilty of 11 counts of manslaughter by gross negligence.
But he claimed he blacked out in the air, having experienced ‘cognitive impairment’ brought on by hypoxia … possibly due to the effects of G-force…. Of course!
The 11 were either hit by the plane or roasted in a fireball caused when the jet flew too low and too slow. But if it wasn’t Andy’s fault then whose was it?

Surely this can’t be the end of this travesty of justice!!

BUT, there IS a new memorial to the dead. And, trust this...it’s a good one too…  The best that money can buy - and that anyone can do.

But there's is also a very bitter taste, still today…
that somehow... just won’t go away!

his hipster beard -
mandatory accessory for this
gentrified borough of Pittsburgh -
leads him back and forth
from the kitchen to the tables

he serves more tables than he should
I wait too long for my
overpriced salad
as he drops a plate of greasy wings
in front of a table of oblivious
professionals who
judge him
find him wanting
without ever looking up from their phones

a small bead of sweat accompanies him
when he drops off my check

I pay with a twenty and he brings me back
a ragged five and a one-dollar bill.

I know what he did.  ****.

god ****** hipster server trying to fleece me
playing on social pressure
betting on pocketing that faded fiver
that he did not earn from me

I force him to break that Lincoln
I tip three bucks
because I ****** well won’t let him get the best of me

my indignation is an all-American righteousness
so much so that I forget -

forget I paid four times what the salad was worth
forget he doesn’t see a penny of that profit
forget that he makes less than three bucks an hour
forget that without tips he won’t make rent

I forget all of this in my pride at catching a huckster
who just wants to keep the lights on
one more day

For Katharine R. Cole

If gormless is as gormless does unite
That past of him and present me, I’ll turn
His other cheek against his waning sight;
I’ll **** his Hamlet soul to cringe and burn.

But dripping cannot thick or think in depth.
Blobs like blackened bulbous beads of eyes
Persist on shrinking into transits swept,
And down through dullard pools of choking fire.
Yet treacle binds my bole wood vocal chords
In rapture from such silence to withdraw
From sand that quickens, thickens, and distorts.
Can earth and water’s union mask my flaws?
The answer dares to dream but I refrain.
My name is Mud. Dear God, that is my name.

The foot: an endlessly dull point
Breathing technique, perfected by Roman Bill,
And a tall, sinewy, fine china ***** heel,
Cheap to most and worthless when submerged, submerges.
The tough Elephant hide surface
Of a swamp-like state and state.

Q. How does one become embroiled in such a located province of mind?
A. Alcohol’s venomous beauty and cheap living costs.
     The South.
    
An Elephant on a scooter stares blindly
At its own reflection circling the limb,
Shrugging dew drop eyes at what man had forgotten.
Not once, but twice.
    
The foot becomes a divulging calf of information
Sputtering in this bubbling torment of beige,
And pulsating around like an African tunnel
Waiting to be filled – fulfilled – ******.

    
The knee complies,
                      Sinking,
                                 Slowly,
                                          Not painlessly,
                                                             Not quick.

     The mercy of a lethal injection’s lie becomes
Absurd when one’s limb is the needle;
One’s brain the plunger of acceptance.
His gasp, a roar of silent fruit ripening in a
Mode too fast, cutting life and laundering
Expectancy whilst hanged from a
Whined whimper of Penance.
Purgatory’s whistle blows for time.  

II

A small red car clenched tightly
In the hands of a tightly tiny black boy,
His eyes huge and deep, but white; untouched by
Time’s clock or the weight of granite black that
He leans upon. Plastic tires screech horizontally along the
Structure of a Library’s historic insight.
Below, the ground is dry.
Beneath him, the ground is solid.
    
        Meanwhile, molten muck pulsates around
Our swirling antipathy of soul crushing
Nullness, with a lack of guilt unimaginable.
It bubbles, it bubbles: it toils in boiling rubbles
Of the past’s present and All I Could Have Been.
And I have never, could never
Sink lower in reality;
Blow harder against punishment’s wind;
Cry for this other as a **** filled wound weeps down her face.
    
The swirl of liquefied dirt and sand bags me,
Drags me, as if some *** lover of Hades is not done
With what is left of me. Disease to spread: just a little, just
A little more, like the detrimental bottle that
Knew me.
    

      As the hip is engulfed, an angle of almost perfect
Ninety creates  itself against the horizontal extremity
And puny ballsacksquash entails. Useless yet overused;
Timeless yet impressionable, pensionable. Gone.
Nothing knows me but this thickness’ quickness.
          That wants too much
From nothing               but existence
And the scab that fastens with time.

III

Turn the bottle back and find strength to
Outpour the clock and grant eternity.
Non compliant strength paid a fiver
For a soul worth two at the most.
A penny for the worthless: For the sickened lame.
Empty time feeds rays of golden from the sun fuelled
Encrusted *******, mudfast on heat.
This somehow seems like action.
Firm firmness but cracked with ease and
Non-returnable once inflated;
Non-negotiable on the bloodorgans of salt.
Weakness and powerlessness: *****.
*** for tat, for ***, ***, ***. For tat.
    
     The Elephant rises.
You brought this upon yourself, this rain of mud;
This treacle that will dry when you are dirt.
You would not let it ******* lie.
All of your ******* life: this strife, that wife.
     Your second leg (the grasper) tries,
     At length, to shield your heart:
     The only thing that cries.
     That does not want to die.
     Cartoonish bubbles of brown pop to the tune
     Of Loonies; of your shoebox brain that screams in vain.
What is your name? What is your want?
There is no blame you ******* maniac.
Everyone knows. Sink awake. Sink.
     Rest: do not sleep. Freezetimeframe.
     There is one more timeless point to make.


The sun and moon meet brief: the seconds count,
But die shy of one minute. Clear the road.
‘Tis dusk, I fear they named it. Raise the mount
And sacrifice another drowned sot load.
The moment thence: Anonymous descent.
The digger meets the dead in buried time.
The wish is washed in mud, the liver spent.
The blood-stained hands of Glasgow dodge the crime.
Make speed my sick sad Miller, grind the grain
Of Galloway, Gibb, Neave, Dunlop and Cole.
Your ghost will haunt your tag if not your brain.
Your heart should part this city river’s soul.
The sunjoke frozen, captured, stumped, and framed.
My name is Mud. Dear God, that is my name.

He sold his pure soul for a fiver,
maybe, the price of a cuppa tea,
sold it to the man of bonds,
of stocks and shares,
who had no cares,

The customer,
he wanted a *** or a ****,
wasn't sure which,
either would do.
Glimpsed him out the side of his eye,
what he didn't note was that he cried,
He didn't care the callous man,
Gets satisfaction however he can.

Girl child, boy child,
one thing for certain,
he gave not a ****.
He was selfish and cold,
his currency was gold,
pure gold the purity of just past infancy,
crowding in the shopping mall.

The by-passers wanted to intervene,
unable to believe the things that they'd seen.
Day by day,
still the stay,
They should still be free and able to play.

It's life in London, so they say,
Living pain day by day.
Thought that they may find the streets paved with golden kisses,
Home again the other side,
the punter hugs his Missus.
(C) Livvi

9th Floor:

Good for views in real terms equates as multiple times the number
of floors of glares on the stairs, some less random and aggressive as others
Some from young lads
Some from their mothers -
Who’ll squeeze their ******* for a fiver, but its more for inside her -
It’s always an Apache tunnel of prickly vibes and jibes with little to say
And neighbours who turn out to be mental,
Found in the gutter, covered in butter
and thankfully sectioned later that day

This is it.

Your big moment.
Taking time at these crossroads.
Your decision determining destiny.
A moment all your own, never to be replicated.
skittering circuits buzz, obedient to your commands.
Hours lay ahead of you, stuffed and bulging with the static you will consume.
Channel 2 or channel 4?

This is it.

Your catastrophic downfall.
An outcry was made, now the civility is shattered.
the acquaintances you once held as companions,
may now cut icy glares as the senate did to Caesar.
alarms ring, as you feel reduced in their eyes.
You got the wrong change at the cafe,
so you ask for a fiver.

later on,
your banquet awaits, golden and sunbaked.
stewed for months, in rich and creamy crop of the land.
taking your throne, in the cool shaded flank in your garden of eden.
A cup of soup and a bag of crisps.

these grand odysseys still raise up those same emotional epics,
as moments in youth locked in the past.
like lying on a blanket at the very edge of one of the seven sisters.
alas, you are still perched upon oblivion,
cup of tea in hand.

We start in Greek Street.
Not any night,
But the end,
A grand finale;
Last orders,
At the Coach & Horses,
Before the corporate boyz move in to whitewash,
Where inky Boho Jeffrey Bernard drank,
And Gary Dunnington, the actor, and his mates are on the ****.

Meanwhile, a mom runs her hands,
Though my strands.
'Tell me everything,' she enthuses,'about your hair.'
But there’s nothing to say:
I barely wash it,
Never brush it,
And only finger combe it.
But she carries on in my locks,
Then off to dinner with her bloke.

We head off to Trisha's at 57,
A lively basement heaven:
In energy, in noise, in smoke.
I chat with Mark.
Got his heart broke:
It’s hard
To sever those traumatic bonds,
Thick as pillar posts,
When love ***** up,
Goodbye, the cocktail of toxicity,
That had you on a high,
The ***, the texts, the tenderness,
And, oh, the bliss.

Kass, a boxer musician, comes
And shakes our hands.
He’s in Armani,
And says,
His eyes dark little raisins,
'I prefers a poet over a bruiser.'
And, 'I don’t fight no more,
If I did - so I don't bother -
I’d **** ‘em.

In the corner,
Two girls with dreamy eyes:
So I read ‘em love poems.

Then Jessica Appleby's head pops round the door.
We hug and then swap tales:
'I’m all messed up,' I tell her.
'What not her, the one you wrote that poem for.'
'My man,' she confides changing the subject,
'All crazy passion and wild *** for two months -
Then nothing.
Just fizzled out like it was never meant to be.'

She exits.

'You alright Gary?'
'Yeah, you?'
'Fine.'
But I don’t buy him a beer,
A bottle of Peroni is £5.
'No, it’s £3,' he says, 'if you pay cash.'
I head for the bar.
Three times I explain to the barman, it’s £3 cash.
'Who told you that?' he says slamming the bottle down.
'Gary,' I say defensively.
'Well, tell Gary, if he doesn’t shut the **** up,
He’ll be paying a fiver, too.'

A young American artist, Kirsty, starts talking to me.
She’s trying to get ahead in art,
And says, that when she was a kid,
On a blazing Tuscany night filled with stars,
She walked out onto a stone balustrade balcony,
And knew in that moment,
She was no longer her mom and dad,
But herself, Kirsty.

The boxer musician shoves a tall fellow hard against the wall,
The altercation,
Is over before it starts.

Kass gives me a wolfish smile.
Mark buys me a drink.
Kirsty goes to the toilet.
The corner girls have left.
Mark slips his stool.

Everyone is cleared from the yard,
Just Gary and I linger
With a feisty young bar lady,
Serving the Bohos of Soho.

Drinking in their pathos,
Exhaling in the shadows,
Mingling in their juices.
My ****** up heart beats
With the Bohos of Soho.
Ahhh, the Bohos of Soho keep many an hour.
The Bohos of Soho,
The Bohos of Soho,
The Bohos of Soho,
Have many lives,
The Bohos of Soho are a good seed.
You and I,
In Soho,
For last orders.

Rattle the cassette
with the biro etched “Car Mix”
grab the keys from mum’s bag
“Fill up what you use!”
“…Ok, can I have a fiver then?”
scuff to the car in unsuitable boots
slump in, adjust mirror, checking stupid fringe
which then existed
snap in the tape so the first bars
of G-Funk, grunge or B*Witched pulse
then it’s off to pick up
shotgun

sometime before sunrise,
when the morn world is
still a dusky daylight, unclassified blue, me slip-slide out
of the communal bed,  where I have been up all night,
draw-drafting poems for manufacture, sale, & gift wrapping,
to await the sunrise, the sunrise, in the famous sunroom,
in a vainglorious attempt to salvage forty winks, full knowing,
that even if I'm successful, the risen eye poking rays of
one the most glorious sights which we earthlings
have been privileged and entrusted,
the sun coming with a clarification of life renewal,
will stab me into consciousness

there I lay with eyes closed, either noisy napping dreaming
like baby wendy, gurgling or emitting contentment noises,
or perfectly still, having slipped a fiver to some tenors,
to entertain me while I slide lie still on the composing continuum

the sun round seven
is maximus glorious and cannot be
looked upon by the audience in direct prayer askance,
so my eyes closed in pleasured servitude, me,
my lumpen proletariat rubenesque carcass corps is

bath burnished in sun glow so warm, so living,
that the warming words are causing a major traffic jam
in the ventricle where the love poems are formed and stored,
but fervency disguised by an unmoving, close lidded human shape

shortly after seven,
the slip soft padding feet of her rumbling noisily,
knowing where to look for him from
much practice, beginning her experimentation to determine
if me-he still among the breathing, or gone to poem heaven

since she aware, the poet in his possess, a
Masters Degree in Pretend Sleeping, must eventually
take drastic measures including kissing my keppy,
then climbing aboard my fetal incongruently angled body
with no warning other than a grunting of deep satisfaction, when,
with all her modest weight in a single swoop, intended to fell,
causing me to emit a volcanic exclamation of

you're killing me*

satisfied, nah, more sated, with a sense of
feminist goddess power ranger satisfaction,
she prepares coffee, grinding the beans, just in case,
I return to my sleep fakery status,
literally, a literary impossibility, as now
the compelling transfusing heat from sun and coffee
impel me to write this pas de deux ballet down in words, a/k/a,
only a love poem

8:32am

There is no driver - go anywhere for a fiver
Pod - cars troll Milton Keynes by no means
seen piloted in four years time - where's mine?
Then they come together in the land of never - never

The sat-nav tells us where we're going
ready to alight when it's finally slowing
what will they think of next? Send a text
with your suggestion - normality's in regression

No one is to blame when there's an accident
nothing is seen to describe an incident
however, at least no one can go on strike
and I won't be reduced to travel by bike

The atmosphere is electric, technology hectic
it was bad enough when we decided to go metric!

i can clearly hear how english mutates...
a book review by a channel... better than food...
the book he's reviewing is goETHE's captain faust:
and the non-avengers...
but no...

i don't hear: stick an umlaut anywhere you please...
i, "for some reason"... do not hear
a: Θ... a göethe... or a goëthe (ladin alphabet -
the germans know about this)...
there is this... goe-ether association...
it's sometimes a riddle of goë, göe...
or quiet simply...
the remains of the ancient latin grapheme (œ)?

educated people make this distinction -
and they'll catch "you" out on it...
since... they represent the Hyacinth Bucket brigade...
gynocentrism doing a snail-trail:
one step forward... two steps back...
it's beside what the linguist "says":
a bucket is a bucket a ***** is a *****...
otherwise? glorifying such a harsh reality
of a surname like: bucket... but not beckett?
no... "samuel"? well then...
it's not a bucket if it's somehow
translated via chernobyll as: bouquet...
is it?! is it?
because even in french: they self-cannibalise...
i.e. they "eat" some letters...
they write one language: but speak another...
what isn't bucket what is nonetheless
bouquet? well... isn't it: bouque-?
it's not even that... boo-k for the ones that
still hear... and can write grafitti schlang...
in some variation of a german...

becuase educated people can get away
with treating GOETHE...
as?  '/ˈɡɜːrtə, ˈɡeɪtə'...
or in simple-me-and-you being bilingual...
fiddling around we arrive at:
Göerte... which is "said"...
but this "lunatic asylum" exception has
to be written: with a clarity of a *******
Greek THETA... a fin! the end!
which always makes lying easier...
when you can: say (a)... but... but...
imply (b)... like some "metaphor"...
some forever useful tool of nuance...
some "spectacle"...
it's easier to lie when... you say (a)
but are "implying" (b)...
then you can blame it on...
not allow the literacy of the masses:
quite as much... you require... exceptions
to the rule... to **** out the lesser educated
"people"...

don't get me started...
born? Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski...
perhaps i should have never left...
3 years in Edinburgh...
over a month in St. Petersburg...
somewhere in Paris, Stochholm, Venice...
Athens... Belgrade from a distance...
Amsterdam... two weeks in Kenya...
and a nonchalant attitude surrounding
London... a strong distaste for Warsaw...
a myth of Cracow...

and no, i haven't been everywhere...
but... after a while... does it really matter
where you go, if you're bringing
expectations with you?
expectations and postcards?
clichés? clichés expectations and postcards?
and... a whole lot of strangers
you haven't met?
tourism and: feeding the ghost town
mentality... perhaps a ghost town would be
something to behold... instead of this...
atypical metropolitan casualness of avoiding
each other... busier busier: and no more
busy than once pronounced dead...
but wait for it: you're at least given a "scene"...

but no... i know one language that
makes pedantic orthographical observations...
but i also know a language that...
write one way... speaks another...
whichever way, best, to suit it...

and you "know" it would only be Fa-Ber'g -
no... borrow the j- from je suis...
if that last E was not an acute É...
but an grave È (grave... or? gráve...
grrrr'av... not a hey hey grave...
GRA-Vity)...

hence? my point exactly..
if the diacritical markers are respected
in fwench... with an acute É and a grave È...
why do "we" need... I(i) and J(j)?
why not... I(ı) and J(ȷ)?

besides... ever imagine writing an autobiography
like a Knausgård... defender of the runes
for a sentence in volume 1...
major google-maps ****** *** volume 2...
i write that with a "glee"...
i mean... you can be immediately be put off
writing an autobiography...
just to avoid the mediocre descriptive elements
of using something more complicated
than a hammer...
for an otherwise... less than a hammer's worth
of banality: evaluation of modern banality /
procrastination...
no one we have been given these complicated
tools... and to the best of our abilities we
best procrastinate, using them...
i hardly think a hammer would be used
to... pretend to play the drums...
but yes: Knausgård... the defender of runes...
irony... but the mr. google-earth guy to turn to...

yes... and before i discovered a past...
there were the runes... and there was
forever this latin morph of the barbarians
"thieving"... but there was also the glagolitic script...
apparently! and before that there was the greek!
and... somehow... i did arrive at having
to master some vague understanding of
mother cyrillic!

- but prior to... did you know what
slavs love cabbage? all the pakistani point this
out: slav love cabbage!
today? i watched the film Layer Cake
and made some cabbage soup...
Layer Cake being? the pre-to-a-bond-film
taster for the actor Daniel Craig...
it was hardly a Guy ******* Ritchie film...
woz itz? but... a decent actor advert...
with "hindsight"...
if i watched the film then...
or as i whatched the now...
and all the known actors jumped the train...
well... cabbage soup... base?
a decent polish / jewish chicken broth...
most of the chicken goes into a ***...
except the *******: you make a *******
roulade with that...
and proper potato bakes...
potato bakes like Heston Blumethal
boils a soft egg...
tatties in cold water... until they start boiling...
then you hunch over them...
boil them for a decent fiver...
turn off the heat...
again... hunch over them...
like an inquistive condor waitig for
the water to stop bubbling...
asking the question: are we all ready...
for the oven? yes, my toy soldiers,
are we, ready?

apparently they taste like christmas
tatties in waistcoats!
my my... what a lovely affair!
cabbage soup? you really need a complete
lack of imagination and a work-around
using root veg...
the european way...
but what is preferred is ensuring
you make a cabbage soup like...
a slav treats a cabbage like a frenchman treats
an onion: you suffocate it...
an hour minimum...
until the crass ******* boils out...
and you're left with...
a sweetness... and softness...
bay leaf all-spice (english spice) included...
some kiełbasa (etymology?
root... kieł- derived from the plural?
kły... canines... suffix -basa?
baza - base... canine-base...
something that requires an understanding
that elevates the dog, "debases" the man...
no quran reader will understand this:
for lack of a better word: shaming food...

where would pakistani cuisine be...
without the pantheon of hindu spices?!
i'll eat like a dog and in so doing:
live a tier above a king...
i still find it highly unimaginative...
to call one fruit "forbidden"
and one meat: "impure"...
whatever Gabriel spoke to Muhammad...
never really explained crab meat...
crab meat crab meat...
the Maldive muslims eat crab meat...
what's crab meat again:
when it concentrates a comparison
with ol' porky porky? scavenger of the seas...
what's with the muslim beef on pork?
and god was critical...
of his perfected animal worthy of
consumption... looks pretty silly from
Beijing... so Beijing is ensuring that Muslims
"look silly"... well... "live"... silly...
so god was so... this that and the other...
then he lent his "all knowing wisdom" and said...
no... this one animal... which you can...
butcher and make use of...
all that's missing is the oink and the hoofs!
or whatever it was: i can't eat the oink,
the grunt remain's the bacon's owner...
and perhaps the "hoofs"...
but such a pristine animal...
tapeworms come... much larger in size...
from aquatic flesh... so...
tic-toc... tic-toc... pull a sly porky on me or...
Gabriel my ***...

the Pwophet sez!
much easier these days: to, "get away" with "it"...
camel jockeys turned oil barons...
yachts... whizzed-up-*******-white-****-****...
and never... the odd-ball from
that long extended lineage of the family
living with a cuddles *****, soft toys...
east of Beirut...
that pencil girth's woe explosion in the sky...
"built" by people...
who employ slave Bangladeshis for
a sunday's worth of sabbath cricket in the desert...
i thought that deserts were only good
for waiting for qurans and dinosaur blood
and myopia and... the odd dehydration
hallucinations?!

i'll eat some sushi to sober up before
i accompany my mother: circa 60 getting
a hip replacement surgery done on her...
i'll sober up: but first things first:
spew...

mind you... below you will find some
ancients inscriptions...
i had to wonder: if the precursor text
of the anglo-sphere people...
the germans and "celts" of the british isles...
the welsh... the scandinavians...
was bound to runes...
before the latin men came...
what did "we", the slavs, use?

before the greeks allowed us entry into
the realm of mediating the otherwise:
quasi-fathomable?
cyrillic is what came: AFTER...
but there was a prior...
i'm no longer interested in the prior...
no more than i am interested in greek...
i once slurred russian cyrillic
for not having any diacritical markers...
i knew they had them...
but that they were... crude...
for lack of a better word...

how does that theory sound?
the: ex Africae omnis est Africanus...
sorry... what?!
giving my scrutiny of phonetic encoding...
am i closer to speak...
or thinking, and if not thinking,
then, reading?!
by the looks of it...
i devolved from encoding in
chinese... perhaps not so much:
sanskrit... but i most certainly suffered
moving across Siberia: obviously: not "i"...

mind you: i've looked at "it" and thought...
me, reproduce? add a stranger to the equation
of my family? i'm just happy to end
the libeage... thank god i don't have
some inheritence complex abounding...
no expectation, no "legacy" akin
to a surname like Rhodes (circa NY)...
i was born with one ****** surname,
which changed... i'll die with another ******
surname: that never made it to a status
of Eshlert... nonetheless! i'll leave...
like a ******* Einstein of an acronym:
E = MC... good for me! bravo ty! bravo ja!

beside the egyptian hieroglyphs...
i'm yet to read something...
from... Congo... perhaps i'm just too ignorant...
or the -igger shade was just too much
that it... grabbed my attention and
i forgot that the victim olympics didn't
happen every 4 years...
but every... whimsical time-span of...
a quarter of the length of a fortnite...

whatever: all out of africa implies...
i'm writing in a devolved chinese...
frozen bits across the siberian fickle desert...
next stopover? Novosibirsk!
no need for pyramids in Novosibirsk...
no "awe" to be found...
when you're toe-dead numb from
frost bite.... is there?!

my letters are a sieve... they allow meaning
through like hands praying to cusp water!
it's, the, reality...
you have ****-wit socialists on one side...
and then... this hyper-inflated
darwinism is all historism on the other...
middle ground, people!
"democracy"! i stand stand both the marxism...
or the darwinism... but arguments failed...
or? we can have the extreme of both ends
of the argument! enough of reading
Pasternak will teach you...
hey... shhh shhh... the collective can
congregate any minute now...
they don't need that many intelligent people
to rally them...
what your, "your" side needs, though?
if enough brass people: stupid enough
to entertain, to lulluby...
em... that's now much to "go on"... is it?
the intelligent with pour gasoline
on a fire...
the entertainers will simply pour
cold milk into a saucepan that contains
milk you're warming to...
melt some butter some honey and an egg yolk
to self-remedy: devoid of big pharma influences...
a witches' brew for a cold and soar throat...

side note: do i "worry" about not having children?
if i lived on the Faroe islands,
Greeland, Iceland, Norway -
i most probably would probably mind...
small town mentality: enlarged...
then again: my family, "my" and "family"
is not exactly accomodating...
why am i not spending time with my grandparents?
at least one side... the "patriarchal" side
drops off: accomodating the madonna anyways...
a sister (my mother) and a brother (my uncle)
are waging a war...
this... "eastender" soap opera is...
i don't have the finances to grativate away
from it...
enter children? and they'd be more ******
up than i already am with my libido
and no outlet... i've stopped seeing prostitutes:
no because i felt "bad":
that one time we only pretended to be
leeching / kissing oysters just because
i forgot to trim my ***** hair:
like some western feminist argument
about the exploitation of romanian women "matters"...
when... the labourer drones of men
of building sites... coming in to work...
hangover... might perhaps... stop...
fuelling the english lush economy...
i didn't want to have children because:
family-wise? things, "things" are messy...
and there's no magic carpet to get me out
of here... not when the last surviving remnant
of a past... i.e. my grandmother,
talks to my dementia riddled grandfather
with the words...
and he stresses them: you no good...
skurwysyn!
elaborate? sure! z-kurwy-syn...
from-a-*****-son..
my grandfather's mother...
well... let's put it in facts...
my grandfather is an illegitimate (
oh **** me, i spelled that right, drunk)
son... his mamma then married...
the father of this illegitimate child...
was a polyglot... spoke 7 languages...
emigrated to the U.S. of A...
remarried, fostered some shards of glass...
and sent his last postcard...
from Niagara Falls... before jumping
into the kamikazee sun...
oh my family is perfect...
then this mother of his...
had two children with a man...
who would beat my grandfather...
which is why he became a "pioneer"
coal-miner aged 15 or 14 or 16...
then this one kid ended up being
fostered... then this "watermelon" of a kid
(nickname) came out...
from a love affair... and when the "*****" died...
his quasi-foster father lived with him...
and in this custard: he...
the father semi-god-know's what...
abused the old man for putting up with
him as a love-child: in wedlock...
and... well thank god there was
no epitaph to begin an end with...

me and children? i am gracious,
i am kind... i don't want them to inherit this
history... which is worse than
a history of germany... at least those *******
had the nazis... which is worthwhile
in terms of exploiting them via video games
as those: evilz badz guyz!

i always think: the sooner i'm dead -
the more chances i have
to either dream... or breathe...
currently i quasi the former and accept
the reality of the latter...
but me and children? my, own, brood?
em... for some capitalistic driven darwinism
pressure ploy of narrative?
taxes and retirement plans for
the western: placebo: aged?
grand'm'ah and gwand'p'ah not fit under
the same roof... set them on the butcher's
path toward the "shop" of wrinkle
and: pristine effortless economic
endeavor... the pig's the lot...
economic meat and... about as barren as a dinner
plate scooped up for examination
once a pauper sat before it to supper...
ingenious! if only, if only we were all born
into a Charlie ******* Dickens' lot of life!
then, only then, we could, we could
perhaps, perhaps: write about it!

i have seen how people have lived their lives...
how... they had wish to write about it...
which always involved a lot of other people -
movie scripts written by directors
and not... actual manuscripts of scripters...
they would write... but then:
started to gag from **** at the mere of thought
of being: brutal, honest, honing...

people either write an honest autobiography,
they ghost it: have someone write a biography,
they write an autobiography that's
designated as: tabloid...
but most importantly... they forget...
a "Moscow"...
when i was in Moscow... i felt like i was
in London for the very first time...
a last time...

i did mention that i didn't envy the russian
diacritical approach...
the odd: miss and "there"...
but no... i didn't envy them...
to me there was no russian orthography...
there is an orthography: which you mind
above any metaphysical discussion...
when, and only when... aesthetics comes
into play...
i.e. rz = ż and ó = u and ch (cerp i ha) = h (samo ha)
this is how orthography is born...
sorry... i'm too "busy" dealing with
orthographic ******* to even mind
your "metaphysics" or a death of (it): interim...

as i stood at the feet of the tower of babel...
i started to su doku the pieces that
pleased my eyes... and the pieces...
left in leftover arabic squiggles of
the remnants of the 20th century...
and the new emergence of environmental
beijing free-of-syndromes to spawn
the 21st... or...
the child of a one-child-state-policy
without a Beijing... only a gradual evaluation
of... concerns for...
not giving birth to yet another ****-wit
of the world's counter to: another
****** of a gullible persuasion...
given that law is blind...
he must have been born: deaf!

- you didn't see me coming;
i didn't even see you leave... -

since the greek letters i tend to most "forget"
are:
- gamma lower-case (γ) because
of the upper-case upsilon (Υ)
- lower-case zeta (ζ) becaue
of the lower-case "11" (ξ)
- eta, lower-case (η) is no real grief
with lower-case EPSILON (ε)
until... you enter the cyrillic
"debate" of е and э...
- lower-case NU (ν) and lower-case
UPSILON (υ)
- Ξ (Θ, Φ) i.e.: XI, PSI, CHI, PHI...
return: that first 'un' is an ale'ks...
alex... but it's not an X in the way that
CHI expresses itself in CHurCH...
lay-teΞ...
- then again... greek orthography begins
in SIGMA... those... quasi-germans...
those remnants of the northern / teutonic
crusade... those Pruσσianς...
or... Prußianς...
the greek F and the greek "F"...
key into a keyhole: Φ...
key turning in a keyhole: Θ...
the iota of four uses... Θ, Φ, Ξ... Ψ...

but that's only the greek... i will not touch
on the glagolitic... until, barely skimming
the draft months earlier...
until i come with my own diacritical markers
and show you: how i was wrong...
yes... the russians do use these markers...
but they, mostly... do not "accent" them...

because i'm no Ezra Pound i didn't have
to imagine going as far back
as the Taoist ideogram...
because i remained bound to the anchor
of europe and...
i really didn't find anything of worth
in africa encoding: silence into their
verbiage with anything:
beside the odd spell of hieroglyphs...
so? i am not an Idaho man...
or whatever mid-western miss-western
******* the genius came from...

i don't have an ideogram:
i have a synonym... the sound is exactly
the same... but Charon 'ave their eyes!
mind you...
ądam and ęwa are off limits...
as is: ł... then again: given that i write in english...
em... "yes, and no"...

but here's my rubric... a rubric implies:
i will not narrate this crap:

don't get me started on the russian variations
of Y... i once said... because the greeks had
names for their letters... and the romans didn't...
well... in western slavic: Y "why, I" has a name:
e'GREK... iGrek... e and i are interchanged
between the western slavs and the islanders...
but the russians?
let me Shakespeare that for you:
pre-scriptum - don't ask me...
how oh how a german umlaut infiltrated
the alphabet: i blame catherine the great...
you have...

е (ye)
ё (yo)
й (-y-) - which acts like a "ȷUDAS"
ы (ý) - alt. to? ıGREK
ю (yu)
я (ya)

all that's missing is a: иы variation?!
let me check my pentagram of vowels...
e, o... u, a... oh right... IO-T'AH-T'AH-T'AH...
sinking the ******* POTEMPKIN!

it's for the best: i'm entrenched in two languages...
which makes me "schizophrenic" /
bilingual... ergo? i have to write in at least:
four... pepper in some latin etc.....
and modern slang? i need that...
and some german... and perhaps a dash
of Gaelic... and some scandi-navigational
pseudo-romancing the rosetta stone...

the rest is quiet "simple"...
a french-atypical acute... because there's no gr'ah-v'eh!
grave ole...
and a dot... like the dot used for no real purpose
in english...

i.e. ь involves the acute...
while the ъ involes the "horde" symbol...
either the dot above the Z in ż or the caron
above the R: ř...
alternative interpretations invoke
even more: 'hide and seek" mechanisms
of the russian Y...
  объект: interJEct with an obJEct...
thus? there just seem to be gradations
of hiding a why (y) with its added vowel...
and its mutant й... crescent mongol moon...
and all the rest of "it"...
since when you "borrow": yew borrow...
you get something along the lines
of: e.g.:

ć.        ць: c.f. surnames ending with -CKI
ń.       нь
ó.      "u" or? Loonin...
ś.        cь
ź.        зь
dz.     ž (dzik - boar - the wild adjective is a tautology)    
ż.      ř       rz   (зъ) or? ж...
ł.       woad... łagodny (he - gentle)
                        łagodna (she - gentle)
š.      sz.      ш             (sh)
č.      cz.      ч               (ch... you're not foreign
to graphemes... mr. Æ ms. Œ...
you simply haven't seen it applied
to consonants... only vowels!)
щ     šč     (szczypta - pinch -
a germanic, saxon "ch" is a cz...
or a caron above the C...
ch' ch'.... akin to the caron above the S...
sh' sh'... so far away from "god": YHWH...
yet so close, so, close!)
ha ha... a "dangling bit"...
and i thought the russians weren't
good at hiding "things"... from ш to щ
you have hidden: a caron a "c"...
a ****'s CHeap... in a dangling "left-over"...
of an otherwise caron S... heap of SH SH ****...

in terms of the cerp and ha and samo ha?
the greek χ (chi) comes into play...
but not like a cheeze...
more like a vowel-catcher breath...
eerie as ****... a HA HA with...
cHA cHA! i.e. like the surds you allow
hindu words access to: gnostic -
'nostic... or... knife... i.e. 'nife...

it's no surprise for me, now...
out of all the black caribbean kids,
the indian and pakistani,
the africans... i was one of the first
to: come out swinging from under
the iron curtain:
distrust levels? high... near almighty...
not enough "japanese" in me
to squander a late debt from
Hiroshima or some other etc.

in some remote original draft...

as ever, i drink, and am a nobody, but then i find myself inclined to look upon the god of gods: whatever remains of worth for the phonetic encoding... whether latin, greek, rune, cyrillic, or ⰒⰑⰃⰀⰐ ⰒⰉⰔⰏ (another googlewhack)... the glagolitic phonetic encoding... sure, first they'll ban the runes in sweden, before realißing that... there's another alphabet... the glagolith...
                  Ⱉ = Ω, given Ѡ = ω...
         this alphabet has been suppressed, long enough!
to be honest? i've never seen a more beautiful letter,
anywhere, other than in the glatolith...
     Ⰿ = M = ᛗ...
                      maybe that's why i like my given names
so much...
                            ⰏⰀⰕⰅⰖⰞ
                 i too! i too have a past!
             i don't need to peer into pseudo-arab ***
the quran religiosity of hieroglyphs
of the northern africans, camel jockeys!
                             there's, oh there's so much
more at stake than the runes...
                what of the Kiev Rus vikings?
this, this is their language:
                ⰕⰑ          "ⰏⰑⰆⰅ"          (może = maybe)    
(to = this)
                                                   (ⰜⰀ = trzeba, trza /
                                                            tsa)­
            ⰕⰔⰑ (tsa)           ⰃⰀ (ga)     ⰂⰀⰓⰉ (vari)
               (gadać = converse... gavari)

    Ⰴ (d)                ⰆⰫⰕ (żyt = fathoming life)

                             ⰆⰫⰕ (worthwile noting:
this is out lot of, a, life)...

      ⰛⰫⰛⰍⰀ (szyszka = cone, of the ᚦᛁᚱ /
                                     ⰡⰑⰄⰟⰀ - fir /
                              jodła tree)

see, i can't solve crossword puzzles...
      i don't know where i would begin,
fathoming this sort of "plaything" thesaurus...
i can play a solitaire mahjong,
i can solve you a su doku puzzle
without wanting to compensate myself
by competing...
                  
   but i do know...
                    what conjured the atom,
the letter?
  what conjured the atom, the letter,
and subsequently, the alphabet?
        noun...
                  the cipher conceptualißation
of making a name, smaller,
so small, in fact...
that letter emerged, and names were
no longer indicative...
of a meaning...
  so much so, that units were
formed, fathomed...
and when merely giving names
to these units, akin to the greeks,
alpha...
        which had to become a-lpha...
and beta had to become b-eta...
          well... only thanks to the latin men...
they became songs...
sing-alongs...
   very much thanks for the H vowel
catcher of the hebrew god...
ah... said the castrato...
  b'eeh sang the castrato...
           em...
  obviously the devil managed to keep
some of the letters...
z'ed...
                 it's still bewildering...
how the latin men "reinterpreted"
the northern runes...
   as the greek men "reinterpreted"
the north eastern glagolitic script...
and to think! to think!
    Ⱃ = R = ρ = rho...
         but what happened, "elsewhere"?
ᚱ = R... but... but... where's the trill?
R, as a letter, looks like it's about
to hide a leg... and start rolling...
ripping apart all other onomatopeias
associated with the rattle of a rattlesnake,
or the sound it could make,
to associate itself with the sound
of water boiling... where did that "go"?
with the french hark "innovation",
and the english tongue...
being bitten and left numb by
a tarantula?!
                      
  point being... i never imagined myself
much of an archeologist...
i always found:
  if you state your "necessary" freedom
to speak?
you're a tongue inside one cranium,
at a particular time, in a universal space...
but, like kierkegaard,
you care more about a freedom to think?
i'm "here", i'm "there", i'm "i'm"
like heidegger might state...
                  using this very modern
language that's english...
          but then sliding back into...
an obscure region of history...
      in two places at once...
        at a universal moment in time,
in a particular space...
                   talking exhausts me,
whenever i start speaking for more than
ten minutes,
there is a cotton mouth infestation,
my tongue turns into a serpent about
to shed a layer of its skin,
and, if i'm lucky,
i will not swollow the tongue...

                    and why wouldn't the runes
be more protected, but currently under
siege -
             both the latin text and the greek
text (respectively),
had the ambition of performing an
x-ray on the runes and the glagolitic texts,
treating them as pseudo-hieroglyphics...

but they found similarities,
   which made this foreign phonetic
encoding systems relateable...

ᚠ = F
                ᚢ = U         (copernican "up-side-down")
ᚨ = A (strange sort of arithmetic, / \
                                              )
               ­ ᚱ = R (d'uh)
   ᚺ = H...
           ᛁ = I
               ᛋ = s
                ᛏ = t (what's with the "bending knee",
so much for the supposed: "arrow"),
               ᛒ = B...
           ᛖ = Σ = E...
                   ᛗ = M...
                   ᛚ = L...
                  ᛟ = o - crude version of circle...

so? the latin men had an easier way to
fathom the runes, and ingest them
into the x-ray vision of post-latin...
   the greeks with the glagolitic script?
much harder...

         Ⱂ = Π = P = ρ (rho)
                 Ⰰ = A = ᛉ = Z...
             Ⱇ = φ = ᚦ = θ...
                             Ѡ = ω...
                Ⱑ = A...
                          Ⱔ = ε....
                                            Ⱚ = θ...

but i agree... you couldn't get "our"
peoples to where we are now,
with these pseudo-hieroglyphics...
   after all: Ⰿ (M) is a beautiful letter...
in glagolitic terms...
          but... it's too complicated for us,
at this moment in time...
it might have had all the necessary
practicality in its necessary time...
that it was allocated to...
but... given people these days
are looking at X-|ɔ\
                              / \ /_ / ?
                            how ******* hard must
it have been, when,
the phonetic encoding,
was as hard as it, to now, us,
it seems?!
                   so... whatever is happening
in sweden, right now?
       i'm not bemaoning it,
   i have a tattoo... it reads: Sienkiewicz...
the swedish deluge of 1626–29... a.d.,
          **** it, ban the runes...
i've "just" discovered the gagolitic phonetic
encoding, the sort of **** that
st. cyril and methodius had to work with,
and it wasn't as easy as translating /
incorporating the runes...

                     oh sure, i'm waiting...
                 first they ban the runes...
   then they'll have to learn something akin
to the glagolitic script...
             returning back to their x-ray
latin lettering...
                       i still can't believe that
james joyce got away with writing finnegans
wake... without ever employing a single
diacritical marker...
spewing out... what became the modern
english grafitti spreschen...
   e.g.: lolz...
                              und: L8ER...
it's like: the worst of the worst of what
already is the worst in the form
of the h'american demands for acronyms.          

after watching an old couple walk
past me into the supermarket:
    or unlike the men climbing
           the matterhorn:
   which from postcards seems so
much more majestic in its formidable
shape than the goliath everest
    (from postcards) -
                 5 miles, a dark forest,
  and i can show you where english
druids chant: satanus in excelsior!
   and i thought i spoke bad english:
it's: in excelsis satanus...
       i would have approached them,
but then i was alone,
      and there was one idiot shouting
and about a crowd of twenty disciples:
you could hear the murmur
   adhering to the chant from a distance
of about 300 metres...
                    i only had beer on me,
no goat blood, no woad pigment...
                crash a party when they
were having a party in complete
darkness?
                     it's a good thing there was
a song change on my headphones
               and for a minute i picked it up...
wait a minute: i thought i owned
these woods, walking at night?
               ragnarök blood of Hvalba:
unfortunately the norse founded
kiev,
           so if they founded kiev,
                they must have past where
i made mark as: the land immune to
                                       the black death...
if i were an academic with a stipend,
   i'd write another boorish book on the matter
to attract moths...
          but the old couple, hand in hand,
shrinking but not exactly disappearing...
     in me the inherent conceptualisation
of a twin, like a limb missing,
  but with all my limbs intact...
              yet still a twin gleaming in my mind,
as the story i was told in my childhood
no echoes like a behemoth ghouling:
    they said to me:
   did you know that in this world there exists
a person that looks exactly like you?
         what? so i started looking,
      not leonardo, not brad,
                    can't compete -
            if i really am the stronger twin
                 who sent my twin to the plough
and the hearth... am i not to suddenly
    lick ash?
                  but the old couple:
   what a rarity to see, dwarfs,
                                  of former majestic
forms... elsewhere the single mother with
a baby in a buggy at 10 minutes to 11 during
the week, bewildered by reading
frozen foods labels...
           oh... about the supermarket...
grr... mein gott!
                    Surabhis! Surabhis everywhere!
the joy of walking into a supermarket
last, aisles as spacious as any king's
    lonely castle...
        but in the hours 12 in the afternoon
till about 5 in the afternoon?
        traffic jams!
                   zombified shoppers, women,
of course, children to boot...
                           how many times i might
have bumped into them...
      gaze lost, hazy eyed...
                 sometimes i had to walk down one
aisle, emerge from another, just to pass
  a woman standing fiddling with her
hair...
           the new meeting place, apparently,
but that's beside the point,
   the more i listen to radio,
  the more i learned that i'm far from
a music snob...
            take for example:
       free deejays's song
                            el amor es un party...
what? cuba not pretty any more?
              but there's a worthwhile observation
in there:
        only rich men have the chance
        to play a woman's game of "the chase"...
        only rich men get to "chase" women...
        the poor schmucks?
                          ****! have to live with them.  
****... i need to find that
    one exchange in ingmar bergman's
film wild strawberries:
            when the old man wakes from
a dream-memory in which he is
the ****** of a **** scene...
        where a woman is teasing a man
to the point, until he transcendes
                   a teasing woman,
                       and finds a Jezebel...
so upon waking...
                the "children" are picking
flowers in the rain...
                          and there's talk of
abortion...
       at this point it's gone beyond
castration...
                      the conversation invokes
the death-mask of man,
    or man as tomb, and woman as
the robber -
                         apparently once impregnated
man cannot ask for his ***** back,
and in some twisted way:
           and as much as i'd like to "cheat"
having found the screenplay online,
   i have the misfortune of owning the ****
movie...
        and how i like returning
to silent cinema, black & white, foreign,
with subtitles...
                     at this point,
because didn't place the subtitles: on top
of the screen, but at the bottom...
   well, **** me: am i looking for
Cindarella, because focusing back
on those faces means i seem them without
lips and merely eyes and noses,
   and perhaps a chance to spot
   a wriggling, morphed into an insect
st. peter's, if not van gogh's ear!
              or the lost "art" of handwriting...
Cinderella? my focus is so low from
      the action, that i might as well be
  watching, either a ballet, or a *******
riverdance!
             dr. isak borg (a)
marianne borg (b)
        dr. evald borg (d)

such a weird and heart-numbing thinking
went into writing this...
i have a history, a past:
regardless of having children and with
their existence: some sort of guarantee
for a future...
that i have a past, a history,
and it exists... outside of its current
written format,
that i can escape with or without having
children: that i would have probably
later ***** mentally...
having ingested all this third party
quasi-history propaganda
for the only history that's being
salvaged: the insect prone libido
of a status quo... well then...
let my "failure" be the patent for all future
success.

.the fireworks are still going off, Guy Fawkes 2.0, and sitting there thinking... big bang... so there was a sound in vacuum? i see a firework go off, the bright explosive light, and then the thunderous balloon burst! boom! i tap my finger... i'm guessing a 1.2 second delay from seeing the light from the firework, and hearing the BOOM! so... in light of all this... are we 1.2 seconds ahead of the big bang, or 1.2 seconds behind it, actually having happened, as in: still happening... i mean... it's not like sound precursors light... and we are not exactly illuminating creatures for most part, but sure as ****, we're loud.

well...
   i might have been looking for
a needle in a haystack,
or whatever it was i was looking
for,
  but i have spoken to a few homeless
people...
i remember about four congregated
around me in Trafalgar Sq.
one sunny afternoon,
    and that was the point where i knew
i was losing it, detaching myself
from the conventionality of "reality":
having meaningless conversations
with people wearing NPC-masks...
the voice inside my head started
thin out... until it fizzled out and i turned
into a writing machine...
if i had the same internal-monologue
with myself, i wouldn't be writing this,
a gaping abyss agitated by whatever
interacts with it,
and subsequently prompts such writing...
i put my hand around one of
the homeless men,
he didn't like it, i comforted him,
we'll just talk...
   then he started explaining to me about
his spot in the Sq.,
  he stood up, and indexed the spot,
the spot where i sat next to him,
another came and sat akimbo
like a child, listening to me intently,
two teenage girls passed
and he asked them:
      what do you see in his (my) eyes?
they replied nothing...
still somehow mesmerized like a child
in a primary school, listening intently...
red as a beetroot from all the *****...
i ended up giving him a book
i just bought in an indie bookshop...
christopher marlowes Dr. Faustus...
i stood up and abstracted a square,
drew both my index fingers
   around a slab of pavement
asking the stupid question:
                     do you think it's there?
or inside your mind?
                  then the homeless man
sitting in akimbo introduced me
to a northern irish veteran with PTSD...
drunk like a skunk...
         and then we walked into
the homeless shelter together,
   they didn't let me in,
because i didn't remember my national
insurance number, or had the card
for that matter...
          weeks pass...
   imagine the chances of this happening,
in central London...
i bump into the same man who sat in
akimbo in Trafalgar Sq. on the streets
of Soho... the chances... or meeting someone,
randomly, a second time, in London?
******* slim... slimmer than size 0
catwalk models... more like size -1...
and he told me that a spider crawled
      into his ear...
    he said that he was going deaf...
                   so i walked into a shop
bought a few beers and we sat in
a church courtyard talking with his friend
who showed off his buddha tattoo
and said: i'm going to walk to India...
subsequently we were ushered out...
because we were breaking the law...
and i thought: but you serve wine in
the church, don't you?
    there was no argument...
then there was the instance in Leytonstone
with the homeless talking about
pneumonia of some woman they
were friends with...
               many pleasantries hugging
what not...
   but...
          the most profound instance i had
was just outside Romford train station...
the same man i would later sit down with
and offer a cigarette to in Seven Kings,
just outside the O'Grady's Irish pub...
       i've seen how people interact with
homeless people... that snarky attitude...
they stand and bend over while talking
to someone sitting on the pavement on cardboard...
a toned down version of paddy bateman...
this ridiculing with intimidation...
ugliest crap imaginable...
   so i sat with this man...
     gave him my spare fiver...
       rolled up a joint...
   we went around the corner to smoke it...
some kid with a football ran up to us,
we passed... and then we asked each other questions...
the kid said he wanted to become a footballer,
me and the homeless man encouraged
him to take his dream seriously...
quickly the marijuana high smirk
left his face...
    apparently i had a diamond on my forehead,
claimed the homeless man...
but then i asked the very touchy question...
so... what made you homeless...
  i'll never forget what he retorted with...
my mother told me to never tell a lie.
what?!
  so the only reason he was homeless was
because he was an honest man, prior?
   oh... so this is what makes men homeless...
honesty, for one,
   and along with honesty,
   other traits that elevate valor,
    alongside the many other virtues...
well... "who would have thought"?
               like that wasn't painfully obvious
to begin with... namely...
how the rats, the skivvy, the immoral,
the sadomasochistic overlords of
institutions become rewarded exponentially...
while the man who replies
to the homeless question with:
    my mother told me to never tell a lie.

“Sweet Kiss” was the horse and Frank Hayes was his rider,
Both destined this day to gain fame.
Frank was a stable boy on his first stake horse;
The horse too was a novice, but game.
This pairing went off at 20-1, but was well worth the risk of a “fiver”.
Sweet Kiss won the race and the bettors were stunned
for his jockey fell off, a cadaver.
Frank suffered a heart attack on the last turn
and the horse was the only survivor.
Frank Hayes, undefeated, was interred in his silks.
“Sweet Kiss”, undefeated, retired.
Jockeys are short but have memories long-
None were willing to be her next rider.

eh... i felt benevolent today: i was making some beef doner kebabs with fresh yeast buns... egg + sprinkle of nigella & sesame seeds on top... an onion and parsley (sumac) salad... a hot sauce a garlic & dill and cucumber white sauce... blah blah... i was missing the red onions and parsley... so i walked for a minute to my local co-op... headphones in... so i wasn't going to say hello... to... what can be best described as a gentle soul... no... not a ******.. ******... a genuine gentle soul... a shy man... who... last time i heard: has five children... and there he is... day in... day out... standing outside the shop with the copy of the Big Issue (a charity magazine that supposedly helps the homeless)... some people buy him soft drinks... some people buy him snacks... eh... i felt benevolent today... plus i already touched his shoulder without saying hello... so i asked for £5 cashback and gave it to him... not that it made my feel any better than i was already feeling... there's that... 'god bless'...

there's that and there's this...
we live with these, "people": i don't even think they're people...
more like... itches... itchy things...
mosquitos... beside parasites...
sociopaths most certainly...
   schadenfreude gagging entries...
i can usually put a face to something...
when watching a movie i play this game
of remembering what was the last
movie i saw with the actor or actress...
i know there are monsters in society...
but i hardly thought about
these: "comedians" that can't tell a joke...
how would it stand in court:
conspiracy to inflict harm?
i still don't know how many days
i rode my bicycle without spotting that
something was wrong:
maybe yesterday... while hiding full
speed without holding the handlebars...
the front wheel started to "wobble":
i didn't think much of it...
but today i tested the front breaks...
nudge-nudge... the wheel was...
this close || to coming off...
   so i checked...
  ah... someone managed to... loosen
the bolts...
once upon a time you'd need
tools to tighten the nuts and bolts
of the wheel to the frame...
now... there's this small-handle that you turn
and turn and then lock into a desired
tightness that keeps the wheel to the frame...
what the ****?
i can't cycle to  supermarket... lock my bicycle
buy my wine and pepsi
and... what? bother myself by checking
if the bicycle is: "tight" on all the connected parts?!
i mean: it's not the first time someone tried
to take my life:
first time? the nurse in the hospital who
almost choked me to death because
i was born with a Chernobyl mark on my back...
so my heart inflated...
eh... the hernia didn't help either...
i survived that...
but my heart inflating didn't exactly give
me... a heart to love random strangers...
by now i'd take a knife in the back...
while i might turn around and grab my attacker
and hold him dear and whisper:
i love you into his ear... because as i once
said to a colt who screamed at me
outside a supermarket:
i have a death-wish...
   he gave me a fiver and asked me to buy
him some *****... he was accompanied
by a girl and a guy she was *******...
i bought him a litre of *****...
how mad he was...
he asked for 35cl... and he shouted and shouted
his uncle was going to put me straight:
i placed the litre of ***** on the ground
and told him: shout all you want:
i have a death-wish... you want a death-wish?
oddly enough he, the girl and the guy she was
******* ran away and didn't take
the freely standing bottle...
it's a bit different when you're buying
liquor for a group of colts...
you're the next best thing they have to an uncle...
who the hell walks up to a chained bicycle
and... loosens up the bolts on the front wheel...
oh... it wasn't the back wheel...
this "comedian" knew what he / she was
doing... i'd be thrown in a spectacular
fashion: forward... to the side...
what if i was travelling at high speed in between
traffic... the wheel would come off
and i'd be thrown under a car...
ha ha... fan-e... very ******* funny...
but someone else would be charged with manslaughter...
the police might find fingerprints
on the pieces of the bicycle...
******* Nimrods... ****** humour...
i'm shaking merely thinking i can't perform
telekinesis / telepathy with a desire to...
put him / her into an iron maiden...
to put his / her hand into a *** of boiling water...
cut it off and subsequently feed him / her
the poaching!
what if i were the cause of someone else's
manslaughter...
i can't just cycle to the supermarket and go about
my business... if i had a car i'd
be content with my "ceramics" being treated
with a key...
hell: key the frame of my bicycle... steal the wheel
while you're at it...
but... loosen the bolts so that i might...
my head's not big enough to entertain these thoughts...
perhaps i should have been born with
a sq. head...
for ****'s sake...    NIMORDS! INBREDS!
these aren't people...
if they were things akin to doors i'd love
to knock-knock on them:
no... personally? i just want to castrate them...
they'd be better off castrated...
the guillotine would be too good for them...
by a miracle i tightened that wheel back
to its proper repetition...
what next: he or she started to kick my mode of
transit? jealousy... i rather own a bicycle
than a car? is... that it?
half-wits... mother-*******-retards...
there's that common saying:
afraid to hurt strangers...
           now i'm charged with bile and if it's not bile
then it better be acid...
who does that? massive, *******: EPIC fail...
of seeing someone fall of a bicycle:
it's not a wheelchair... genius...
well... that's sorted: perhaps when i was younger
i might have listened to Bon Jovi love songs...
bed or roses...
now i look at everyone as suspect:
i'm not even paranoid: or will be...
   let's just pretend we're in this project: life
together... we're not...
     we're not going to be...
i don't care if the ******* Dalai Lama comes knocking...
same ****: different cover...
dieselbe scheiße: anders deckel...

if i'm going to be killed: i expect nothing less
than an assassination:
i'm not going to divulge into my death
as if it were an accident... ******* Nimrods...
tease me with death
and allocate however many chances
you get... in no quick succession that
you treated Rasputin with...
sorry if i can get a hard-on with a *******
while you're still idle-hands...
**** finger and tongue with your missus ****!

mateo: calm down: no... i will not calm down!
what if my wheel came off while
i was charging down the A12... and someone
might have been charged with manslaughter?
i'll calm down...
when i poach his or her hand
and later feed it back to them!
to hell with merely cutting it off...
i'd flay: i'd skin... i'd...
do more than my imagination right now allows...

oh i wasn't lucky: i'm just not married yet:
given death ms.,
   half a biscuit is basking in loneliness
in the sky: the constellations came...
i'm fully charged heaving a breath that
would burn a tortoise's shell...

keep imagining it:
this little ****** whether he or she...
i'd poach their hand and later
watch them eat it...
if they'd pass out:
i'd give them a shot of adrenaline mixed with
amphetamines:
just to keep them awake...
they have to be awake for coming
to the end of their... "joke":

mateo: relax... i'm relaxed... look at me...
taking  diarrhoea sort of whim
of what ought to be loath solving no. 12,479
of a su doku puzzle...

here's the original, wait... let me lookalike
to a sq.... spacing can be a *****...

0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     ­ 0
0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
0   ­   0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
0      0   ­   0      0      0      0      0      0      0
0      0      0   ­   0      0      0      0      0      0
0      0      0      0   ­   0      0      0      0      0
0      0      0      0      0   ­   0      0      0      0
0      0      0      0      0      0   ­   0      0      0
0      0      0      0      0      0      0   ­   0      0

clearly that's proper spacing...
don't **** with me...
i'll be nice: until i start to imagine your hand
being poached and forcing you to eat it!

this is the original;

0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0    ­  0
4      0      0      6      0      0      5      0      0
0  ­    9      3      0      5      0      0      1      0
0      0  ­    0      0      0      0      0      0      0
3      0      0  ­    1      9      0      6      0      0
9      6      8      0  ­    7      0      0      4      0
6      5      0      9      0  ­    0      4      0      0
0      0      9      5      0      0  ­    3      0      0
1      0      2      8      6      0      0  ­    9      0

what am i... a makeshift carboot once a nerd
second time a: loved up...
hype? cant you write mathematics
with letters?
algebra: sure thing...
******* Nimrods... can't do a job proper..
half-breeds: inbreeding
cousin H'arab question marks...
0         0"people"... less than things...
at least i'd want to knock on a door...
these people i just want to mull with
a stampede... little gherkin **** offs...

how does that saying go:
i came cross a woman
and a tornado:
sure as **** the tornado didn't leave me questioning
my masculinity... or that i might be a walk abortion:
glad to know all the future mothers and their sons...
rather walk into a storm than love
a woman... at least: her mother...
can be less: teasing...
most obvious and...
n'ah... i'd prefer...
oh wait... she's not into blonde haired guys...
she's a blonde...
sure... i'm into Turkic raven haired types...
i'm into: Calypso mongrel
                mullattes...
good to know: she's not into me:
i'm not into her... shout and welcome
all those in-between copper-necking that's
to come: what do "we" call them?
when it's diluted?
aspiring Pakistani?
give it two generations...
give it enough dilution...
the supposed authority genes will fade...

a tale of two-number quests...
what's in brackets out to be either:
superscript or... "squared":
hello: the earth is "flat":
fastened to some spaghetti imitating shoelaces... no?

0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
4 ­     0      0      6      0      0      5      0      0
0      9 ­     3      0      5      0      0      1      0
0      0      0 ­     0      0      0      0      0      0
3      0      0      1 ­     9      0      6      0      0
9      6      8      0      7 ­     0      0      4      0
6      5      0      9      0      0 ­     4      0      0
0      0      9      5      0      0      3 ­     0      0
1      0      2      8      6      0      0      9 ­     0

let me gives you a map of this flat flat world....
i couldn't find the proper, superscript...
hence some... "details" in brackets...
here's the map:

look at the brackets... wait: don't look
at them... (revised with superscript)

5¹³     8⁴⁰     6⁸       7³⁷     1⁵¹     9⁵⁰     2⁴²     3⁴⁷     4¹⁵
4⁰      2³⁹     1²³      6⁰      8⁴¹     3⁴⁹      5⁰      7⁴⁶­     9⁴⁸
7²⁵      9⁰      3⁰      4¹⁶      5⁰      2²⁶      8²⁴  ­    1⁰      6⁴
2²⁷     1²²     5²¹     3³³     4¹⁷      6¹¹     9⁴³      8⁴⁴     7⁴⁵
3⁰      7²⁸     4¹⁸      1⁰      9⁰      8¹⁹      6⁰      5²⁰      2²⁹
9⁰      6⁰­      8⁰       2³²      7⁰      5¹⁴     1³⁸      4⁰      3³⁴
6⁰      5⁰      7⁴       9⁰      3⁵³      1⁵²      4⁰      2³⁰      8³⁶
8³      4²      ­9⁰       5⁰      2³¹      7¹²      3⁰      6¹⁰      1³⁵
1⁰      3¹      ­2⁰       8⁰      6⁰       4³       7⁷       9⁰       5⁶

such the narrative...  i'll be relaxed:
poaching the hand of one of these and then feeding
it back to then: to hell with your Christianity and love...
your civilised state of
keeping a pacified argument...
no: you experience this sort of *******:
first... come back to me... and tell me: i hope:
otherwise!

Mr. Ivories

entertains with elan,
daily during cocktails on the mezzanine level.
Jolene always orders a Black Russian,

mine is a Dewar's and water.
We drop a fiver in his basket on the Steinway,
along with a request for "Ebb Tide",

Jolene's personal favorite.
He conjures an image of Fred Astaire at keyboard,
his tails flipped elegantly over the piano bench,

like long black raven's plumes.
Jolene points out two announcers from CNN,
seated opposite. Makes us feel

important by mere association.
Our waitress asks, would we like another round
before the hour's end, as we speculate

about Mr. Ivories' musical propensity.
Time escapes in moonlit harmonic vapors,
leaves us already longing our next soiree.

See the flower girls go by
holding petals up to god
holding hands before the lords
and shouting out “come buy”.
they dip their pens and write in pollen
they offer crimson roses
for a fiver, see them
take a knife and form the petal
into the perfect, imperfect shape
of a star.

See the crowds that gather round
and coo and cry in awe
at such beauty and such artistry
see them cheering at the sound
of dripping life from dripping fingers
slick and
wet and
red.

for a fiver see them
the maddened flower girls
holding hands before the lords
and shouting out “come buy”

You ask me what my diet is
and I am reminded that for three years of my life
All I had in my lunchbox
were jam sandwiches
Single slices of own brand bread
with scrapings of red in the center
If there was anything there
at all
And I tell you that I've never had a problem
with portion control

You ask me again how I stay so skinny
and I think of all the days I spent
rummaging through bare cupboards
Looking for something I could have
for dinner
As I tell you that I have always
been like this

You wrap ******* around my
wrist and joke that a breeze would ******* away
and I can see myself now
11 years old and 5 foot nothing
Pushing my sister in her pram
up a hill on the way home from
school
Straining under the weight
And I tell you that my body had
never failed me when it wasn't windy out

You demand to know why nothing I eat sticks to me
But I can't tell you how my frame
hasn't yet gotten used to being full
of something other than rage
And I don't think I would recognize
the girl who wasn't starving
and stuffing her face
So I tell you that I just don't know

You can't help but ask why I didn't just buy myself something extra
And I smile when I think of the small
amount that I had to spend
and the fiver worth of sweets it went on
that I handed to my baby siblings as I shut the door
to their room
On the worst day I can remember
Because they didn't have to be hungry too
So I didn't eat a single one

But I tell you that skinny is just a memory I didn't get to give back.

i'm going with Loki on this one... as taught: φ... is the iota needed? never mind... φιλoφαρσα - let's just play musical hiding places: φλoκεφ - and subsequently losing an omicron with ρ, or iotas from φ, χand ψ - it's a Jewish game... a Vegan milkshake sort of gangrene bruise on how aesthetics are different across our ethnic spectrum.

and it usually begins with a white coffee in the morning
with a few cigarettes, so the nicotine tuberculosis
subsides and i phlegm out a schnitzel -
but it works, i ate two meals a day,
i starve still dinner, then eat for closure after
the binge... i rarely attempt a breakfast for champions,
given i usually finish a bottle of whiskey or bourbon
the night before... i call it the mandible diet,
ensuring that beauty is mandible, bendable,
who would **** a skeleton pose, i'm not quiet sure,
the **** industry treats their women like
the lust for flesh in the Renaissance - plump...
or simply mandible.
a fond memory: drinking absinthe on the streets
of Athens before the revolution started,
cackling a mad laugh, just so the Greeks might
remember... so many junkies on the streets back
then, before the bust... junkies with baby buggies
walking down the streets injecting Afghan sunsets
into their veins, never made it to the mount of
Parthenon, like i never went for a tourist trip of
Edinburgh castle... instead... hooked up with a few
Algerians and went to the strip-club...
mm (smile)... fun there...
ah ****, never mind, or today, a bottle of bourbon
and a pint-bottle of Heineken...
then menthol filters and papers for rolling tobacco...
then a quick walk about the neighbourhood...
madman's luck in the end... the karma brigade came
along... the infinite factors involved, more thrill
than from playing the lottery, gambler neutral...
just walk, sulk a bit, laugh a while,
have a drink, have a smoke... walk past the social
centre and it's cheap disco "get together" on
the Saturday, two girls discussing how the night-out
will plan out in the cheap outer-London bars
(not as bad as that bar in Seven Kings...
imagine walking into a house with the kitchen
having carpets... all the evaporating oil,
all the scents... this bar near my school was like that...
it didn't have hard flooring, it was all dressed in
carpets... sickly **** sweat blood... the sort of place
you'd bring your drug dealer to... and unsurprisingly
my drug dealer was a Jamaican, into his Illuminati
conspiracies, who i listened to with human respect
while he showed me aliens, hyenas talking Hindu,
and starving Buddhas breaking the 40 days and nights
in the desert limit... kinda self-deprecating
given he was Jamaican and i was a white boy rummaging
outer-East London grime... but you have to fit in somewhere,
right?)
so the two girls at the bus stop... me hardly the gambling man...
and there is was... smiling at me on the ground...
'would you believe it?' i said to my father
watching the Olympic gold medal match between Brasil
and Germany... 'a 20 quid note!'
and it was, a little bit wet, a little bit gritty...
madman's luck... in my pocket a 20 quid banknote...
that's lucky, that's more lucky than gambling
with 3 lottery numbers for the same amount...
well, actually the winnings are £10 with 3 numbers...
i have found £10 twice and a fiver... but twenty quid?
no chance! well... until now...
and that's lucky... just like that Nietzsche quote
about looking down (and being praised)
and looking up (and being ******) -
well fair enough about cheapskates - but when the probability
game comes up, and you do find some money
on the street (not merely a lost copper penny) you sort
of start thinking: i'd have more odds finding
a laughing gas ******-shell of the bullet of injection...
and there are plenty of those littering the streets around
here... don't know, but i can depict outer
London suburbs like the streets of Sudan... junkies
everywhere... so that's how you play gambler neutral:
you don't expect to find anything while walking
smoking and drinking a few beers...
but it's the sort of exercise routine that pays... ha ha,
literally... which ain't that bad as when you
realise what's happening in the world... in today's
Saturday edition of *the times a real harrowing...
a sketch of the article:
    beware #thinstagram: does social media need a
  heath warning?
           vegan blogger, clean-eating regime,
            masking her severe eating disorder,
            death threats ensued - wellness trend
            tipping into an unhealthy obsession?
            carrots and sweet potato a.o.k.
            result? an Essex suntan... oorangé -
            psychological distress, the doughnut
            schizophrenic - i.e. the doughnuts are
           speaking to me people -
           (i'm not even going for mug smartness
            with a scythe moon extension of
            the jawline, Stephen King is an amateur
            in this respect - look up writing the
            horrors designating your ears to
            every contort of the world... the real horrors
            are the ones you can't escape,
            some of them yours, but mostly other people)
     orthorexia nervosa: crucial, the benzene ring
positioning, all the coin-phrasing-tossers
will probably come up with the other two:
metarexia and pararexia... whatever that might mean...
orthorexia? internet fuelled obsession with clean-eating
Calais / kale shakes (cos it's said Kalé in French, ******)
avocados on toast... who the **** does that routine?
£30 five-day juice cleaners... but still, the only
cure for a hangover is to keep on drinking...
gluten-free sales up 63% from 2012 to 2014...
almond milk sales 80% sales increase year by year
(given only 1 - 2% of people in Britain have a health allergy)...
NutriBullet smoothie-maker (black Friday 2014):
one sold every 30 seconds...
£9 million spent on avocados a year...
increase in kale being sold: 400%...
drinking a smoothie consisting of 12 bananas... /
            and this is happening, these people aren't living their
lives... they're selling them... me?
you think i get paid or do you think i drop a line about
Nietzsche or Heidegger like Diogenes mouthing off
Alexander the Great about blocking out the sun
****** mooove! and by the way, just so you don't think
that i think highly of Nietzsche... that fable about the madman
going into a market sq. with a lamp at noon looking for
god? ironic, because Diogenes did exactly the same thing...
but he wasn't looking for god... oddly enough he was looking
for an honest man.

Cardboard City
land of broken dreams
life on the pavement
existence of extremes

lost my job , my home , my wife
No end in sight of my pitiful life

Down on my luck my life's a mess
living outside as outdoors  guest

A kindly gent puts a fiver in my palm
below freezing tonight
so it's
McDonald's coffee and a lip balm

So if you see me asleep on the side of the road
I sleep here because I have

No Fixed abode

thank you

Did you see the paper?
There was another incorrigible kid,
wandering the streets, looking for adventure.

He was just out seeking his fortunes,
maybe a baseball, a nickel found, a lost pup,
when he was converged upon by the local press.

They were looking for a street smart kid,
able to tell them the realities of living on the street,
show them the lay of the land so to speak.

Now, this kid, bright fella, figured he had something here,
Thought, all these folks really liked him.
Were interested in him, actually thought they may have cared.

He showed them the back streets,
the corners where the hookers hung out.
Introduced them to the local dealer, and
made short work of the secrets of a local chopshop.

He really thought they cared,
they gave him a fiver, a bag of candy, a grin,
They talked to him like he was the Man,
he wanted to be, amazed and excited by what he told.

Then they disappeared one day, their story written,
published for the newspaper and the kid was all alone.
All alone.

He was all alone when the chopshop boys and the local **** found him.  
Made an example of him for any other fools who thought they knew so much.  
Now you can see him, head down, limping, crippled and blind.  

I wonder where those people are now, needing a story,
filling their space with black and white lines.
Missing the black and blue bruises they left behind.

but somehow,
i write to peer into visualising
         my thought
pattern,
   or at least, how i can construct it
on the basis that:
i just walked about 6 miles
and drank 5 cans of beer
and smoked a few cigarettes
   and sat on a bench in a public space.

i really do believe that with man
having overcome the natural world
(to some degree),
industrialised the rearing of pigs for
pork, creating the bonsai tiger
that's a cat...
      god, i dread this anglophone
existential narrative of going way way back
and then coming into the present...
   walking zombie like
in the aftermath of unearthing the big bang
and finding dinosaur bones...
excavating Hades has never had so many
pitfalls...
       but this is the anglophone narrative,
that we currently live in,
  ask anyone in Tuscany and they're like:
come Friday, bring a bottle of wine,
have dinner...
       look at my beautiful house...
ever see the *appleton tower in Edinburgh?
built in the 1960s... meaning:
too many people were on aßid...
    c (see) s (esse) **** (ah yes)
(takes a break and empties his bladder)...
who in Venice might have a care
to keep this ref. in mind,
   who on earth, if not the english
have it? i go to Poland and people talk
about the butcher's and know the butcher's
name, small world and all that...
    i'm starting to think that
keeping the big bang ref. point in pop
culture is eating away at the everyday...
   and all this talk of dinosaurs...
   before they unearthed dinosaur bones
they were drawing dragons,
giant iguanas...
    i guess the snake is the abstract
version of a dinosaur... the remains:
no limbs...
     it has to be...
  like the way i took my tongue for a walk
today...
      what with our concrete body
and our abstract counterparts....
  one word on the tip of my tongue,
passing a bench where some would have
said in spotting a *** sitting on it...
sure, the *** look, the worn shoes...
but what *** can be seen
  eating a strange fruit from a paper
bag, watching a family of: mama, papa
and two kinder, smile and drop
that small fruit into his gob?
   as i was walking with my grandfather
he asked: who is that?
  i said: a philosopher.
   evidently the conversation was in polish
and the word in question is:
  fi-lo-zof...
the church is still there, the bench too,
the memory prompts itself sometimes,
a bit like a knee ****...
  and that got me thinking about
the concept in Jewish tradition...
   ayin (nothingness) -
             so ע‎ spoke to א (adam / aleph)...
but i need to get something off my chest...
ever find a 20 quid banknote in a puddle
or a 10 quid banknote in a puddle,
and given the current times,
an old fiver on a street pavement?
money again...
    i have...
and when you do, and then later spot
a penny on the street...
or when you have actually made
your own wine, rather than bought it
in a supermarket...
  how odd it looks, that penny,
how gravity prone,
as if it was supposed to be lost,
dropped, spared the agony of economics?
i was walking the streets tonight and
i looked at it (walking and listening
to distance's repercussions album
can feel a lot like going to a gig,
it's classified as dub-step, but it's really
ambient music,
just that the real ambient music
is, pretty much listening to a very old
refrigerator, the ones that made a sound,
had a heart of some sort,
like putting your head against an old
box, that's no longer a box, but a size 0
model... that leaves you null when
considering the static transmission of
channel 0) - oh my...
how we look into the future with
so much nostalgia these days,
  forget the ancient greeks, forget the nostalgia
of philosophers bound by that rule
of thumb in the 19th and the 20th century...
we're waving: bye bye odes to that old trash,
not to be rude, but i have been exposed to
so many technological advances in the past
20 odd years that i have no plot,
no novel, apart from the one given to me,
and if i do a pish-poor job of recording it,
then woo-hoo to me, i passed the Tao threshold,
the world can happen, and i can just
enter a realm of, finally being able to forget...
still, a penny on a street isn't a 20 quid banknote,
and given the improvement,
that it has turned all Australian on me,
i don't even need to dry it off to later spend it
if it's found floating like an ice-berg
in a puddle...
             and i think: why are pennies so real?
i mean, it's staring right back at me,
it's looks almost like an excalibur...
or the profanity plagiarised with thor's hammer...
i don't want to pick it up...
    it's so gravity prone on the pavement
like a pebble, or like a copper statue of a
"very important" person in parliament sq.,
that just get riddled with communism
in a capitalistic society, i.e. vandalism...
     the penny bewildering...
   i can't visualise what i'd do with it,
because i couldn't do much with it...
        it's just copper on stone...
     a bit like looking at a newspaper
of the day lying about at 10pm near an empty packet
of cigarettes, the sort of motif of:
let's trash the place...
      it's just one son of Hades lying on a more
elongated presence of yet another son of Hades:
copper on concrete,
   the next thing that comes after
grinding sand into glass: crunchy stone
mashed up with enough tar to make up a road...
england, of all places, has particular rooting
in a history of the roman empire,
out of all the nations that succumbed to its power
it has the most fond memories of the dusty one,
which i find quiet odd, and most of the times
slightly bewildering...
    given that i don't have it...
lucky you, an ethnic mongrel, papa was a singing
Irishman, mama was a a nigerian,
and you all ended up speaking the same tongue...
unlucky me, mongrel of the soul...
escapism of polymaths, because it makes sense,
or how mono-lingual have that thing called
patriotism and a land-to-body relantionship
in general, whatever flag is being flown...
bilinguals have a memory-to-body
relationship, it's hard to avoid it, a bit like seeing
a mountain and saying: we'll walk right through it...
so yeah,
having found a 20 quid banknote i was already
scheming for the next *****-up,
   i could already see a potential for it,
i knew it was worth something...
it's hard to see that sort of dynamic with a penny...
let's just say that sort of dynamic doesn't
exactly exist...
          the penny is fixed to the cement,
it's not moving anywhere,
    when a *** asks for spare change
you just start to think: change? spare tire?
is that equivalent?
      because money, as a concept,
as the original concept for a universal language
that everyone could suddenly understand,
or just did, once the "thing" was implemented
was the original translation vehicle...
        money is by far the sole reason we have
3 dimensional talk, why we have ambiguity,
while humanity enforcing laws is always so thesaurus
prone when talking about it,
   in the root of jurisprudence...
           i can talk idle: say things thing nothing
and then become a pedestrian to concrete items,
a daffodil, a t-****... i can relaly turn on the grey button
and it all becomes vague,
    and rarely bound to be, as a whole, bound
by a glue known as mystifying.
some might call it a case of giving account
of: ibin balām...
the other one riding a donkey...
                    or as i like to call it:
   convering with the "angel" that spared me,
who shook me into an epileptic frenzy when i was on
the verge of dying, saying:
now you, do what unto yourself, what others
did unto you.
    i have to admit, drinking myself to death is
the most pleasurable event in my life...
    it's this metalic electricity produced by my left
hemisphere, most of the time?
a bit like sitting on an electric chair,
without a wet sponge placed on my head
so that the electricity can pulverize the alveoli pattern
of my neurons... keep moist, he says,
   and i just think of my brain and the colour red,
and the decay of red, first into brown, and then into black...
and how people who deny my misery to
later become: a bit annoying, gnat-like...
still, that penny on the street,
  and how i would have reacted differently
had i found a 20 quid banknote...
and how i do...
   to see this unit of the concept, just... useless!
the concept of money becomes all the more apparent,
and i know that people in wealthy countries don't
seem to appreciate the basic unit of their currency,
they prefer fixed prices, they prefer pondering
a worth of a toothbrush, priced at a pound's worth
than care for a penny... they say
    it's so close, but so far away,
how spare change is reserved for children and beggars...
how pennies never seem to add up to anything
if you see but one on a pavement...
                it's only copper... it's not exactly gold...
ah hell... what if we really did brag about
gambling on a fixed, but an otherwise fluctuation
price of a painting?
  well... we wouldn't be saying: priceless!
   a bit like the anima of buying football players...
yes, some of us like using our minds,
to study philosophy, perhaps even lension a care
to write poetry... and all the more:
in a non-manipulative care to then translate it back
into: suppose chess?
                           only when language becomes
too 1 dimensional, or at least 2 dimensional,
i.e. verb / vector... then we're in trouble,
in the quicksand, in the mud, in the trenches...
i did mention something prior, didn't i?
ah, hebrew...
            slaves in america invented the
deconstructionism of jazz and blues...
  thank you very much... dub-step and the first
thing i think of when thinking about africa
is a drum... or knowing when and when not to
knock on things...
   i don't think the echo minds playing
that game of knocking down ginger...
    i guess i am the one left with a land
that's tattooed with germans and russians...
i get the ******* grafitti of neo-nazis who
experienced something more than the blitz...
plus, i have that Auschwitz to give caring tourists
a helping hand into sighing over...
   but all that i owe concerning myself,
ibin balām... riding my little donkey...
        ever find those riding donkeys more menacing
than those riding horses? balām, jesus, don quixote...
but it's in the alphabet of the hebrews,
i can't really get over it...
hence the original muse, a single word,
fi-lo-zof... and the concept: ayin sof...
what the greeks later made into σoφια...
yes, that monotheistic gender-neutral pronoun
some of us ascribe the noun god to...
god is such an unfatastical noun...
the real fantastic noun is the tetragrammaton...
hell... i'm convinced... i'm actually converted
in a sense of not really bothering with
the rituals... the ritual i imposed on myself
is to repeatedly think about it...
    and it really is a fantastic noun,
so mathematically fertile,
Y and the x, y, z axis of the math canvas...
and trig of W that's cosine rather than M and therefore
sine... and how the H is almost like deja vu
joke, before the tangens enters segregational...
and all i just thought is more than a thousand
bulls readied for a pagan sacrificial rite...
    it's the sof in the ayin sof that's hard to find...
say, it's easy to spew enough books to bore
a thousand people over a thousand generations
if you use a system of encoding that gives no
name to the units...
   the greeks have alpha, the romans only a.
the greeks have beta, the romans only b.
   which probably means that writing can be more
easily done, and to a greater number and extent...
but thinking? it's not really done...
people would rather be perverse and hostile and
impolite because of this shortening of said
units of sounds... which is another reason why
the anglophone world is rife with onomatopoeias...
    and how i found: singing intside your head
is half a whistle, and less than a ****...
    so how did sof come about, as a concept?
the hebrews call it ayin (nothingness),
and when next to the word sof call it
ain (without) sof (end), i.e. the endless one...
   so where did the syllable zof come in here
and where did the Greeks extend that into sophia?
i can see sof, but i can't see where it came from,
sure, there's the usual noun for a sound,
e.g. ש‎ (shin) and ך‎ (kaf)...
             forget the greeks for a moment...
  the romans wrote the music, there was no name
for a, b, c, d, e... we're talking ancient greeks,
therefore all ancients... they enclosed sounds differently
back then... the greeks ensured there was some
alphabetical cohesion, like looking
into a dictionary under the rubric o,
and finding omega, onomatopoeia and oh my god!
i know what you're thinking, semitic languages
and neanderthals... why did they persist
and having become instinct? try sanskrit and 1 billion
hindus... or the chinese... they're the same...
historically speaking...
oh please, i like the cognitive impetus of drinking:
you want to take hold of these brats on the british
isles? you have some alternative suggestion?
the roman alphabet is the gateway "drug",
i.e. א‎ (man), a, ע‎ (god), á,
  or: from above... something descending...
then i start to think it's a case of articles,
even though aleph (א) and ayin (ע) are phonetically
identical, they are totally different...
it's almost like saying: ah for that one,
and ah for a one? close proximity and the rule,
that you wouldn't say an one... but a one...
funny... english is like that, hello! welcome!
hope you realise it, without diacritical marks
being, well, i wouldn't say absolutely necessary,
but a helping hand....
too many examples to choose from,
i make so many instances of it being true that
i forget to make up my life with
a care for romantic misendeavours...
so yeah... i'm looking for O in the semitic alphabet
that still remains in use...
     hebrew... because i really can't do phonecian...
i'm loooking for the word sof...
    you know, like homeland, sol, solomon...
i want to cut off the unnecessary bits
and put a word together...
i can't seem to find a full-circle of an omicron
or omega...
  i say omega, you cut off -mega and attach an -o-,
and the thing fizzes and i write bomb!
and you cut off -elta, -psilon....
                      ah... ~appa and the need to write
pass... double consonants...
     i just wanted to write duck...
like duck the ******* bomb, rather than quack?!
the semites are a breed of people
that simply hide things, mostly vowels...
the new wave of people with robots
simply write excess number of consonants
and omit them...
     they're there, but they're only there
because there will be two layers of the same language
being inscribed... given omni-literacy...
          hence the current youth congregating under
the banner of acronyms and something akin
to sign language in their use of emojis...
  :)... no, that's bad... :(....
                                              i'm still looking
for the sof...
    the closest i came to it was with
ש‎י‎ך‎,
      it would have been easier with the greek
expression of teaching the neanderthal semites...
again, i like te jews, they're the most
"docile" / persistent semites...
   i know they're not vogue, but that's why
i rather keep hebrew than arabic...
or because of my skin, i sorta have to keep
the runes for safekeeping and upkeep...
we kept them for a reason,
    we kept the runes so this wouldn't happen,
how christianity gave us a life of psyche
but erased our origin, our alphabet,
no point calling it a "big bang",
at leas the russians got cyrilic,
and turned **** into шit...
     i'm still looking for O in hebrew, semitic,
the reason is that they're such a small number
and their phonetic encoding as as "neanderthal"
as that of sanskrit and mandarin alphabets...
  and that's the prejudice...
   i don't like it... i find all the mysteries
in my impetus to write bound to them...
    wait... weren't we not the ones stressing
the vogue of our times?
    i see a bunch of torn shirts and well worn shoes
from where i'm standing...
i'm still finding it hard to find an O in the hebrew form...
am i missing something?
    i mean, ****, cut off all the necessary
bits of greek, you get roman: alpha (a-),
      beta (b-)... and obviously the excess aesthetic
so that it all looks nice... cat, kettle, scythe...
                                           key, scatter, skew...
smooth, cool, caseload...
                 our current times will be a joke th

Falling pink petals
Plinking my head
A saxophone serenade

Kind of kind of blue
A solitary birch among many hundreds
Of deciduous trees, its paper

Bark scored with age
White among shadows
And the endless breeze takes me up

Into Tiffany-blue sky
Pollen clumps litter the edges of lawn
Calliope streaming from a mared and seahorsed

Carousel dances in my head
Disobedient canine in exodus
Defiant against the silhouette

Of a circled dog
Line diagonally cutting across
Wah wah wah as the ducks in the pond

Are chased away.
Endless verdant day criss-crossed with
Walking paths and robin’s-egg sky punctuated

With drifting cotton shapes.
Brazen squirrels accustomed to the pleasant
Bustle and hustle

Bat City, unopened, in my lap
Mothers feeding children
Hungry mouths to breast.

Seeking out a lemonade stand
Near Winter Street in spring
A yellow burst of sour notes sing

On my palate
A bargain at a fiver on a day as this
Soundtrack peppered by buskers and

An ***** grinder turning the crank on his street ***** and
Birds and
The woo of occasional sirens.

A mother wheeling her child along
In a stroller
Mohawked, tattooed, pierced lip and

She smiles on by.
Ivied brownstones and balconies railed
With wrought iron

End our stay
On this idyllic day
In month of May.

change is either something different
or what you swapped for a fiver
i wish i was the solitude
you kept as our provider

change will come and change will go
and change comes from within
i wish i had the aptitude
you took that on the chin

change it for another day
let it stay where we decided
i wish i was the gratitude
in which you had confided

change is good at what it does
takes me squarely out the comfort zone
i wish i was a multitude
in which i kept my own

change is what we represent
as we slowly get older
i wish i had the attitude
i really should have told her

change is what we saw last week
hit me like a hammer
i wish i had the magnitude
and better grammar

smell hell
a rocket rips straight up
white
handsom ambiguous evil
a little bag of *****

whatever, it ****** works
this is different from nothing
this i guess is better
this i love to do
this became my debtor

blanks drawing outlines
wine colours them in
mona lisa nice to meet ya
hows a party of sin

god god off
and we art in heaven
abstainity
roll the fiver

i am a drug, abused drug abuser,
you like to pick me up, take a drag
rip a piece
and throw me away in your disgust,
wear me thin...
and while you work on breaking my spirit
i inhale of my own poision..
pulling clouds of happiness into my lungs
for the low low price of my sanity
you picked me up one night and screamed
threw me to the corner and as usual
but this time you cried
you said"im sorry"
i don't know what that means
my soul is gone, i sold it to the devil for a fiver,
grinned as i counted the cents and he laughed away
my anonymity is stripped even the walls know my name
i dip my head as i walk down the street i don't want to meet their eyes
it hurts ,
to see that emotion,
happiness? content? i don't know
since you picked me up like a piece,
and started burning away my sanity
i became a drug

but im in limited supply

*L.G