September 8.17am

Awake still not knowing

The time or hour even of the day

The light as bright as a new

Clear sky intimates to me the

Approximation of open shop time

Even so the streets are quiet

It is not open shop time until 8.30

There is time


At 9.30 the open shop is no longer open

Though all the street is busy

The lights flicker through

Their pattern of the day

And the light fades and quickly

Returns through the brick-built shadows

It is time


At 10.30 maybe the day will start


At 11.00 the start of the day

Is over and the streets

Calm down to a hustle and a bustle

Of tourists sightseeing

And cyclists out-driving

The constant hubbub of motors

The sights they are seen

And the coffee is served

To a mutter and a mumble of lunch and


At 11.35 when the light

Is as bright as the glass on the corner

The brollies pop up over tables

That prop up baggage of merchandised habits

And chequebooks and cards pay the bills


Round noon the young girls trip round

The young men tripping round

The tables and chairs of the fat

And the fortunate few


Two minutes past one.


1.30 A missing hour or so before

A leisurely stroll through

The shops and the inns of any

Old street in town

For the tourist a nap beckons

His hotel calls him for dinner

And his tickets for the evening

Pre-booked


1.45 The pubs spill out until two

In the suits

In the laughs

The haircuts and the ****

The boxes and boxes and stepped

Upon stubs of American brand-named

Tobacco the half empty glasses and

Unfinished plates betray an ennui

Boredom and short sight


2.30 Swept away by the staff the world

Is an oyster for the titbits that go to the dogs

Even the boss and his immediate help

Don’t leave the inn until three

And at five-thirty they’ll be back for

A pre-lunch meeting with dinner

And a bottle of wine


Outside on the street

The tourist who isn’t picks up

An unfinished smoke and sits down


At 3.30 he is asked if he would

Care to move on

For fear of

Upsetting business

He juggles his options

Decides against the train stations

Instead settles

For a seat in the sun


And at 5.30 returns to the smog

Of the street in the hope of

A *** or some fodder

The City returns its money-making

Machinery to the cafés and the bars

And the trains and the belt

Of the green that England is made of


At 6.35 the lights are alive and

The moon will arise in the day

As the tourists flood back in their numbers

A show

A show

A film

A play

Some serious art up the river

The life of an entertainments

Manager is as hectic as he cares to provide


At 7.30 the evenings begin

And the tourist who isn’t

Notes the pubs and the inns and

The food on the plates

Somehow do not beckon to him

Instead he will sit and look at his pint before leaving

For he knows not where

Somewhere

The people are not

All strangers to him

Somewhere

The people will know he is there

Somewhere

Other than here

In this trap for the tourist who is


The tourist who is and who will

And who can and who wants to experience it all

The tourist with the plastic in his coat and

The bag in his hand that say to him

And to his wife

Or his girlfriend

We’ve got power


At 8.45 a creeping on nine

The mulling of ale settles in

And the tourist who is and

The tourist who isn’t share an ashtray

Of fingers and butts

The boss behind the door and his boys

Who he pays to help him out

have left and will drink on

At home or in clubs until late and

Regretful in the morning return




© scribler 2010

there are no women, to tell the men how to: womanise;
because the why is self-explanatory,
a self-styled purgatory...
why poeticise it, when you're given Dante?
   are there really women to suggest
anything more than 2 = 2 be as much as
2 = 2.2? perhaps i'm a maggot dangling
on a fishing-hook's worth of injustice...
myabe...
Freud could have Hamlet on the couch...
i'll take Macbeth estranged and standing...
or to heave! or to have! ore of the heaved have!
and have not! McCallister and Beth...
as said: epiphany and Eli bedded...
            truth of the least, unknowingly the most
trodden path... patchwork Adams,
pathwork Adams, searching stitchwork smirk
over the gloomy glen... aye; kaleigh stones
falling from the craig as one might say in
Tibet: avalanche.
                    stil... hurrah Mcbeth!
Muckbarrah Ali Happy New Years!
              proud son of frost and womanly despair!
Mcbeth son of Hillfrost and Carmickle!
                 of the forgotten shamrock heart!
svastika the shamrock and all tilt neck saying huh?!
Mcbeth my own; tear unto the land i wished
i had once owned... Mcbeth unto my own land,
and body lowned...
                 Mcbeth unto my land,
      and unto my tongue: no English said.
for was it no said, that Shakespeare was Scottish?
or at least a descending Dane?
              why then take unto exaggerating with a tear
if not so?
                  so to quote:
if it were done, when 't is done,

aye, i am but a master to a fate that does not
nod toward approval -
   for i am master to a fate of wavering,
of the nation bound, fledgling curled,
as nation proud and pride amast,
   so too the hades of nations expected omni:
            in a flicker of a candle, splinter apart
       nervousness, to take upon
a definitive shape... oft therein
St. Andrew's grotto the silencing of a barbarian
tongue's measure against the wording of a tide
                                          more to come...

could trammel up the consequence,
and catch with his surcease success;
       that but his blow
might be the be-all and the end-all here,
but here, upon this bank and shaol of time -
we'd jump the life to come - but in these
cases we, we still have judgement here;
that we but teach ****** instructions, which,
being taught, return to plague θ inventor:
this even-handed justice commends θ
     ingredients of our poison'd chalice
  to our own lips.

   within which earthbound, and Newtonian,
  assured an earthily circumference to reach unto
the closest clarity of zodiac as one might make
Galileo saintly in the forgiving canonical of the church's
decree... ode the over-wording of argument
that will never take place...
ode to the over-wording of argument that will never take
place... because such arguments will never be argued
within a framework of haggling...
such arguments are worded... but they will never descend
into the realm of haggling to reinstitute a
crass memorandum for a crown entombed on a copper
coin... let alone a golden artifice on the monarch's cranium;
                  Muhammad will know, being a merchant,
and if only Shakespeare wrote a play entitled:
the Merchant of Mecca...
              i'd deem Shylock a minstrel...
                               but my argument is no comparative measure
asserted or asserting...
        it's an antique, even though it was written
in the 21st century... i simply didn't wish for
people to merchandise it and dangle it on
their necks like crucifix jewellery; hence the vampiric
blah blah blah blah (punctuation optional);
   that's the sadness... people merchandised crucifixion
to simply dangle a suffering to no purposive ideal
   of avoiding it, or embracing it...
          it's almost like people don't avoid it,
and when being given it: deny that it was justifiable...
                 but people don't avoid it,
it's this premeditation hangman shadow:
guilty or not guilty: you're it!
             holy mother of plasticine ******* of
castratos! sing me an aria once more!

Sufficiently suffocated,
Do we abound in blood?

Reason abandoned, our
masters have merchandised war

Irrationality the only currency
The penniless to the churn