He shambles along picking the scabs off the street,
meet
the pauper
likes
Cyndi Lauper
and listens on an antiquated walkman
and he walks the talk man.

I met him in Stepney
a proper old Cockney
he asked me for cigarettes
I gave him
a quid.

Some say,
better to be rid of them and
by them they mean the poor men,
but if we did that who then
would pick the scabs off the street?

There's a drawing on my wall
a pen and ink impression
of the old transporter bridge
- a Meccano masterpiece.

It's my Tardis, my time machine,
portal to a vast interior
of vivid early images,
sounds of a rumbling grumbling bogie
pulling me back through time.

The clatter as our boarding gate swings shut,
an alert pause in the varnished cabin.
We listen for the next familiar step,
the creaking **** towards Runcorn Gap,
passing over Aethelfleda's Castle,
the mid-crossing windblown waltzing,
the bustling landing in the other county.

It was easier then you know when we built castles from Twiglets and dreams from Meccano and Caroline was a radio station, party time meant fun and games, faces framed at seaside shows and everyone knows that bubblegum blows your stomach up if you swallow.

Ah,
the abuse of each hour when we had the power to play and what the **** have we got today?
unrest on the street where the immigrant meets the yokel,
local taxes that stun you
employers who shun you and
the police who just gun you
down.

We used to walk the mile and a half into town and it was mainly uphill all the way, but we did have the power to play way back then and now I sit here in the dark with a pen and a screen and it feels every time like a dream 'til I open my eyes and I scream,
'it's real'
do you ever feel like the sea's right inside you and the tide's going out in a rush?

We lost out with old money and not funny how decimalisation decapitated the imperial measure,
memories to treasure at a taxable standard rate
and doesn't it feel like the time's getting late when the Morning sun breaks in the East,
at least,
I think so and so I build more candy dreams with Meccano and go to sleep.

We live to build our Frankenstein,
one nut,one bolt,one piece at a time and
life is the nightmare that walks in the night,
that shakes us awake at the break of the day
and hangs onto us tight.
If we'd taught Frankenstein right
If we'd given him a gun
If we'd taught him to shoot we would not have to run but
we didn't and we do,
he'll catch you and he will catch me and he'll chop us all down,
we are the branches of the tree we build,
we will be killed.

Plastic pistols, cowboy hats
action men, palitoy combat

Hotspur, Tiger and Hurricane
leather footballs, broken panes

Matchbox, Corgi, Airfix, Meccano
Stickle Bricks, and (only) red and white Lego

Triang scooters, Raleigh Choppers
Dunlop plimsolls, orange space-hoppers

Down the park’s obstacle course
Witches Hat, iron rocking horse  

Bumps and scrapes, grazes and cuts
rub it all better, just-get-back-up

Home before dark, in time for tea
Billy and Ian, my sisters and me

Start life in a pushchair
end up in a wheelchair
that
doesn't sound fair to me

I'd like a parachute.

but we rise as we fall
keep our eyes
on the ball and
the game plays out as it will.

If life is a 'Gif'
I wonder if
but then I don't.

So for me
it's back to the Weetabix
the Sticklebricks
and plasticine

and taking forty winks in
the time it takes to
take five
because
I have a microwave bed,
(old jokes are the best)

modernity's killing me
but slowly and in an
old fashioned kind of way.

Sitting very quietly, looking at a blank page
Prompted me to pen a poem about toys that were all the rage
I had some wooden jigsaw blocks when I was only two
In a wooden  box with a shiny brass clasp
And a picture of Winnie the Pooh

I remember at the age of six, when I was given some stickle bricks
Plastic shapes so colourful, with brushes of small plastic fingers
Making a train of red, yellow and green, the memory of it still lingers
Then at the age of seven, I remember ‘coming a cropper'
When dared by my cousins to bounce up the street
On their big and orange space-hopper

When I was eight, my favourite toy was a plastic daredevil skydiver
Many parachute jumps from the top of the stairs, that guy was a true survivor
When I was nine, the Spirograph, a drawing toy based on gears,
Was my favourite toy to play with, watching marvellous patterns appear

At ten years old I found building with Meccano lots of fun
Metal strips and gears and nuts and bolts, invented in 1901
When I was eleven the Rubik’s Cube was really all the rage
With coloured squares, six sides of nine, a puzzle for any age

At the age of twelve, Shinsai  Mystery was my fave
Two eight-hinged polyhedra could be folded into many shapes
At the age of thirteen, my baby brother was born
His favourite toy was Lego, my love of building things was reborn
There are many toys of yesteryear, would take ages to mention the rest
But for me, after all these years, Lego will always be the best

Skittles dance between my tears
friends from down Purley
have flown.
The Meccano club having lost its  secrets
too far gone into the past
to scoop tomorrow.
Falling  roundabouts and inhibitions

Yeah
though we walked through the valley of Chad
smiles surrounded us
plastic pieces all around us
thank god Meccano found us

and we built bridges and crossed the gulf
played crazy golf, ate hot popcorn and
watched 'Rip Torn' on the big screen
when teenage became all the rage
and growing up was being grown up
not
throwing up because we drank too much

then elderly became the new we
and we became the silver surfers
superheroes with fluffy slippers

later we went back to the valley of Chad
and they thought we were mad
we thought we were grown up.

Artistry or archery run through an artery as I too run through a dictionary,
some are born to be boring and others who just put their 'oar' in;
I'm out there trying to score in
the game that we all call a life,

they wired me to the positive terminal;
and primed me
to explode into the interval
seminal?

but not practical
just Meccano.

The inevitable invariably happens when the lights go down at dusk.

I'm tying up my tin soldiers and putting them in bunkers as the fireworks are due to start now.

When the 'Magic Robot' hasn't got the answer because the question's not there,
who do we go to and who would we know who would know?

My mind goes Meccano and starts building an airport,

I am caught between two lines of thought,