They had begun to question consciousness,
turning solid matter into fuzziness in their brains,
rendering not atoms, nor photons, nor particles,
only cold energy, halucenogenic stardust joints.
For the exclusionary few to whom the material
had never meant **** to a tree or a **** to a rabbit,
it was the cash-cow of quantum reality,
ambiguous poetry for a Beat Generation,
Uncertainty in free verse chapbooks.
So they wrote of our interconnectedness ---
the Ginsbergs, the Levertovs, the Ferlinghettis ---
till the gravity of space-mind curved imagination,
a nation falling unheard without a whimper in the forest.

Where are the Kerouacs?
The Ginsbergs?
The Cassadys?

Drunk on
wine
and life

Riding the highways and railroads to dreams unseen, even by them.

Clashes of ideas, like bright lights in the dim daybreak of an all-nighters.
Fueled by cigarettes and philosophy.

Now everyone wants the same thing.
A boring spouse.
A boring job.
A boring house.

What happened to the generation of lost souls that once searched the open plains and the cramped alleyways?

For nothing more than a beautiful moment.

I knew you once before,
had passed you specky, lanky, characterless
in dusty corridors, retiring into C rooms

Now what are you, years older,
eyes uncomparable to clichés

What were we?
Invisible, 'part of the woodwork', the damp and must and old worlds

Why was it then you hadn't been of note to me,
of nothing to me

Perhaps you were not pin-marked,
bearing dead inks,
Perhaps your eyes could not sparkle behind thick lenses

I know now I fall in love with drug casualties, or wannabes,
who live their days as nights,
and set their lungs alight

Forgive me for all I say, all I believe,
all my vapid perceptions of boys like you,
being the Ginsbergs and Kerouacs of this world

Failing, always failing

And I'm empty still,
till I find,
boys like you made of easy exits,
and open doorways

I am not winning by having shallow feeling,
I am losing years from empty lust,
when brown eyed boys come profess love,
that is full,
and overbearing

Tell me,
will I ever be yours?

FIN

An empty page is a perfect reflection
Of my empty mind

And who took the life away from the words I write?
Who has cursed me to pace nervously around dining rooms with the hope that something meaningful will appear on a page
Some words that are worthy of being said that will be met by crowds with adoration and applause
Yet I am not worthy
I am not worthy of adoration or applause or words with meaning
I am stuck in this flat affair
Because while others seek for meaning with action my hours are stained with a deep black oil that keeps me standing still
When I think about writing my head feels so empty
And I wonder if I have wasted all my pretty words on meaningless sayings in the hopes someone would look at me and say “now there is a good and articulate revolutionary soul, a good man with good answers”
Now, for once, the whole truth is clear
I cannot write sacred words for there are no sacred words
I cannot write a sacred poem for sacred poems do not exist
And I think this is what growing up feels like
The day you realize that just because you read Allen Ginsbergs Howl,
and wanted to write a poem just like that, and you spend two years attempting to create a facsimile of “I saw the best minds of my generation”,
None of that can make you a poet
Just as refusing to have a drivers license does not make one an anarchist
And how much have I grown away from that once holy phrase “I saw the best minds of my generation”?
Since then I have heard Marius Jacobs declare “I saw the world and it was not beautiful”
Max Stirner cry out “All things are nothing to me”
And Johnny Hobo singing “you wish that the world was clean/but I’m in love with the way it’s *****”
None of these words are holy
None of these sayings are sacred
But I hold each one in my heart as if they are my property, or rather, a property of me
I decided to write poetry because of people like Carl Sandburg and Jack Kerouac
I loved the words they wrote to the point that my words were lost
I celebrated their words as if they were holy
But growing up means I understand that, at the end of the day, they are just words
I tried so hard to write the words that came from them
And it’s about **** time I start writing the words
That can only come from me

Southampton vs Leeds
today at Wembley

yesterday the whole of
Manchester came
to London (also Wembley):

there's something infuriating
about the spirit of the north
especially in England
some old tale of Vikings

because the north like
the north Norway and Finland
is: well
the Polacks had a long ago
allegiance with the Norsemen

but the spirit of the north
in England
that land between London
and Scotland
because i don't think
i can relate to the spirit of the dragon
of the west of Bristol

no: much different
but in the same vein:
i think i should travel for a weekend
trip to Manchester
or Newcastle
or even perhaps Leeds

but i'd need to own a car for that
and not use trains
get out
experience a driving holiday
across England
and write...
i think i need a writer's holiday
unlike what could never
have been promised on Kauai
in terms of writing
and growing:

i think i need to grow intellectually
and for that i need alone time
perhaps i will not philosophy
maxims or aphorisms because
i find that when writing
wisdom is cheap because not actually lived
counter to the wisdom invoked
none of it is ascribed to a life

only from word of mouth
sorry therefore
but from word of mouth i find the accounts
of Socrates more involving, inviting,
sensibly middle Buddhist path...

but i don't even have a driving license...
that's plan B
so plan A is to travel to Poland
and get a driving license
and from there look in on Martin
in the care home now
walking
but obviously the mind regardless: fried
scrambled or i best
like to think an omelette...

there's this favorite Indian place of mine
just in the shadow of Wembley
with great great Samosa
vegetarian
something i see too much meat
i want to try some ape-thinking
or rather

     koala in an eucalyptus tree
like some birch standing upside down
but no
the forest shifts to bamboos
and a panda
this forest this river this sea of people:
the people: regardless of the social
construct of sobering democracy
rather than the drunken ripple into time
en masse
like circling around the Kaaba
in Mecca
or circling around the Pitch (Pi)
or Wembley in London...

sporting events replaced the failed
christianity in Europe
the failed christianity in Europe:
which is not to say that
Christianity isn't thriving in Africa
Asia
South America is the New Europe
of Christianity
and pockets of insanity in the North
of the Americas...

but Europe isn't dead: it simply turned
covert...
there is a narrative i need to be part of
and this cannot invite an Edie
and a Reyla when i am of the "class" of people
that need to hear people
speak
and i need to listen and watch and record
but unlike journalism
poetry is a question to the butcher:
would you butcher a meat twice
by overcooking it?
beef is safe
but dare to under-cook chicken? no...
would rather eat raw fish
than under-cooked chicken...
TEXTURE...
a problem with texture regardless of those
allergic to peanuts
and all the microcosms of what if Darwinian
laws were in place
not nature's as ontological specific to man
but rather as Darwinian laws
of appropriating the stasis ontologies
of animals
to the singleton humanoid-hood of mankind

Darwinism is an Ontological Disney-Magic-Place
then some recoil back
to basics of: morality as prejudice...
not as something crippling
but as a prejudice of character...

one shift we were singing Champagne Supernova
then i got high
when i was alone at home
and listening to headphones
i'll still drink in public
but alone
at Marleboune...

a new lease on life...
took a different route than my usual
using the stop ahead
of the crowd
going back to Preston Road
on the Metropolitan Line
then ahead to Liverpool St
and perhaps chance the express Greater Anglia
two stops to Romford
otherwise speeding to Shenfield
and then onto Southend

Diamond Boy Diamond Boy said this one
Leeds fan...
another promised me to jug jug down a pint
of beer
before me and then kissed my clenched
fist with a wet kiss of charcoal ego of the sun

now  i feel the love of humanity
like it's a welcome burden
it truly can be i can allow myself to differentiate
the good from the bad
only today i passed a man
lying with head exposed on the pavement
outside Romford station
to later come home
and find him sitting in decent clothing
and temporarily homeless
because clearly he broke someone's heart
and not all rough sleeping
is a horror but the same sun and same
moon in the sky
and by so transient and glass like
to the everyday mirror be behold
those homeless men peering at themselves
in glass
to those homed and baron with silver spoon born
looking at themselves
in mirror
and even in the future now of the photograph
and movie and what used to be the arena
of the artist's self-portrait...

                   more in the idea of riding
my first worm of steel
if any myth the metal worms of the geology
of a planet equivalent to a desert sea...
yet in the ultra cold
less the fiction of Dune and more the Reality-Mars...

but the original plan is to travel
to Poland to get a driving license...
then probably buying a cheap car
and travelling alone across Europe...
that's more realistic
than anything concerning Edie as far as i am concerned
that is finished...

i saw Warren send heartheartheartheart
emojis...
out *** has returned to quick(s) and quirps
and talking points
we still have talking points of wonder
and bewilderment
but i know: those several days have been long
and thorough on the observant i

Mary Le Bon! that's it!
i found her...
                 she was hiding in my favorite places
of London
less a trainspotter but but but
more an aesthetic appreciator
notably when it comes to the London Underground
but more so
i wondered there are poems plastered across
the worms
and people get bored and sometimes even read
or rather start to write not having
read enough to bury gems among rocks...
better still
the aesthetic of the Bakerloo Line
a living museum in transit...
please do not update the Bakerloo Line
petition.... 1st signature: X
please do not update the Barkerloo Line
the Jeckyll and Hyde Station that is Baker Street
while sorry:
Sherlock Holmes will have to move
in with Shakespeare's Shylock somewhere
on Bond Street...
to give us James, King and Country...

                         but Mary Le Bon station is just
another weird ******* beautiful
ginger cat story
especially after having your hands kissed

but a holiday like that
to live a life my uncle should have lived
but instead didn't
probably he didn't love just yet
a woman who could perform both
******* and absolute freedom all at once
by every ounce of one more once
and how this memory and her as memory
will mold me i don't know
but if i'm not seeing women differently
then i don't understand why women are
looking at me differently...

i do wonder: the CCTV rat network
and couple in the cult of the soap opera...
well: mismatched with a football sulk hug-out
of a ghoul: pelican -
if i can't solve be-done crossword
puzzle i think i just wrote
a question:

football sulk hug-out
of a ghoul: pelican -

          i.e. a hooligan:

   ave maria ave maria
now i want to understand christianity but only via christ
or perhaps
socrates' life through his ****** sons?
and the younger argumentative seller of **** potions
of a wife?
well:
perhaps islam can be understood through Maria...
just saying:
lost - no annals of children of christ
although i'll admit: i'd like to see a book made up
of little words and little nouns
with no names of people and no history...

              for the aesthetic...

but a holiday for myself...
getting a license and exploring further further
that only oar and boat could
but couldn't solve on Kauai
and no Polynesian dream then
but such good ****... it wasn't about the ****
although that was a learning curve
away from the brothel...
a ******* was nothing like having ***
with this woman,
this fruit of carnage from apple juice
to cider of 55 springs moisturized...
into a glowing Aladdin's rub rub rub rub rub
*** up blind
hurt
definitely hurt

definitely a life ahead of me
still talking to parents
about relationships
and opera
and they seemingly know i'm planning
a solo trip and
this trip alone
no i'm not going back to Ilona
come on
some new treaty of not from Versailles
but adventures with cats
the two gingers will gang up
on that brutal thung
who is ****** himself into a spirit
of the culled pets
who have not been given the snip
yes
pets
pets can be given special treatment
as pets
as petted-animals
only if there is the imposed cruelty
of castration
leaving the best genes in a harem pool
which doesn't translate into humanity
employing this already human maniability
of: cats and dogs replaced
angels and demons
because they could become more real

i have a life here too
i don't mean
a girl wants to live in London type of life
whereby i meet my dad for
a football match and we patch up
on our commute but ****'s going
wrong and the conversation drops off
as: we can't relate
by the glass wall of people gorging
on burgers at the Five Guy's of Baker Street:
genius marketing think-tank of solo-tank
periodical that ought to be
written about:
because saved up so much on adverts....
just glass and people eating
best "anti-AI" advert
because it's also a real place... ha ha...

                   yes....
on Kauai i'd experience true schizophrenia:
premature dementia...
what i experienced as god
in my 20s early beginning at 21
was probably me readying myself to the future
that would encompass me aged
38
her being 56
me fulfilling all my wanking
******* watching fancies and fetishes
oh god this was anti-Oedipal
seriously she looks nothing like my mother
oh my god
she was like
a breach of justice for me being attracted
to black and asian girls...
Sudanese though... now you have me curious...

concerning Ilona but there was
not real breakdown because of her
no... even when i remember it now
she was a ghost
i was 21 and my peers were seriously afraid:
this has nothing to do with Edie
we live several lives apart
i mean she throws away Depeche Mode vinyls
while i collect them
and now
i think i'm so calm and the breakup was
so amicable in my mind
that i know that i want something more
and this argument is not based on who used who
or who gained what
we gained and lost some time...
that's it...
we gained and lost some time...
could i would i should i...
first two yes
but on count of three?         no... *****: me just a man-child:
no sorry mate...

       ha ha: sorry mate...
middle aged women still desperate
are only allowed Harry Styles...
last time i heard the butch-*****-slap was single:
a name a persona
i know his tenderness does not speak
FREAK PR HERNANDEZ gaPPa...

i experienced something with Promis...
of the three names:
Promis, Ilona, Edie..
these are my free...
what? how many i ****** like the ****
actually meant a hug?
do i want, to?
don't think so...
but if i'm 3D and i'm currently 38
and i have no ring on my finger
and i'm still to have a driving license
because i preferred
horses and bicycles
to traffic jams and M25 songs by Chris Rea
and Grandma
and the sexuality of pedophiles as
as i die he will **** you
and **** Reylah
then yeah
you have, dear Edie... dementia on your side
and brain-freeze on my side:
oh so Martin my mother's brother
is ******* "JARGON" TO YOU?!
EDIE! *******!
******* EDIE!
FOR TREATING MY MOTHER'S BROTHER
AS SIMPLY MY UNCLE!
******* EDIE!
*******!

f.y.f.r:n.t.y.

for your future reference: no thank you.
you ******* north americans
and your shenanigans of acronyms...
******* too! you Ginsbergs and Olsons...
you shoved Ezra into a mental
asylum...
he's the only sane America left...
and the joke being:
he's the DEAD, SANE, AMERICAN...

******* America...
i think i retain my Europe...
well 2000 years of yids...
tickled by Mongols and Turks
who aren't Arabs...
so it's not we didn't like in Serbia
side by side
i don't understand this awe-shocker
who's who and who done what?

it's a... LIFE PROJECT
or a life projection
me?
i've been readying myself for this
break-up
since i was 21
i didn't experience god
i experienced this break-up
in advance:
and no i was not out on a look-out
for a replacement model
this was my epitome
my va va voom
my all **** and all thigh
girl
this was my girl we're talking
about
i mean my EX
like something out of her
sprouted in me...

like i was never a guy for dating apps
but poetry website ruined that
avenue for me
never a poetry website
relationship
not come to think of it
i can replace the bicycle and the horse
for the car

standing on my feet for 12h
it feels comforting
to kneel and "break the shins"
because sitting down
is a fake comfort
to be honest,
kneeling best
after 12h of standing...
this dodge-god giddy style
like i envy the possessors
of both wings and tails,
regardless of halos and horns...
regardless...

wish you were here
with a question, an exclamation mark,
colon, full-stop:
pinkish piglets in a yellow ring of fire
so so
calm
i managed to speak human with the crowd
from Leeds
i think i need to head outside of London
maybe even move to these lands
and accept: goosebumps 2nd or 3rd spring
chicken...
or see an opera or a musical
with me and
at the same time take off all that make-up,
or are you too afraid?
i can understand fear:
but there's a you in between
that conjures the fear of you
and the horror that's you...
how far part
in geo-psychology
is woring: OF from THAT'S...

i ask out of sincerity but no sicerity
here if there's talk of sardines
and the itchy train
and Dover my point of entry
and not Southampton...
because Devon, Heavenport,
some made-up thingy-madzit...
Sir Majid
like aging guitarists
a Layla on the ukulele...
   **** tested sweaty *******...
salt to sprinkle salt to sprinkle...
like goosebumps with an itch:
hard to thrill the... breeze...

                 all these hazards of trees
in the stretching cats before snooze
squeeze: extending by parameter
and parameter and no excuses
for a bad hair day...
all the fringe and paws
like i some vague hello and a vogue of
goodbyes
in the grey and silence...

what bothered me was her reaction
to my mother's brother
and that's what ended it for me,
like my mother could never possibly
have a brother...
like it would forever be
her and her daughter and her mother....
and some future nuisance of
inheritance tax of a sister
from the same mother but a different father.