Peeing: to ***; to urinate; to release the body of its liquid toxins; to pass or discharge *****; characteristically yellow- the strength of the color depending on the body’s hydration.
People have strange habits when peeing; urinating; releasing the body of their liquid toxins. Some people procrastinate it to the last minute and rush to the bathroom, barely yanking their pants down in time and shuddering in relief. They are those who habitually whip in and out, even when they don’t really need to. There’s the common usage of an escape from boredom in classes or meetings. Perhaps it even causes a slight blushing in the cheeks of painfully shy woman at hearing rushed tinkling so close by. And of course, they are also the people who love to leave surprises for the next person who uses the bathroom.
All in all, peeing seems to mean not much to people – a small part of life; but a very, very necessary part.  

                                 *                 *                    * .

The rain poured furiously outside the window as Emily sat, straining her brown eyes against the whiteboard flashing images of trigonometry from Mr. Well’s laptop, trying hard to concentrate. She was sitting in her usual seat in class, and also her favorite. It was a solitary table with a chair, away from the clusters of tables and the chattering children, and the only chair by the window. She liked to look out the window, even if it distracted her from Mr. Well’s loud explanations. The booming of “SOHCAHTOA” in her ears became distant as the wind’s movement caught her eye. She gazed out on sheets of rain flapping across the sky like giant teary spirits and pressed her fingertips on the glass. Cold.
Absent-mindedly, she pressed her cheek against the coolness and felt it absorb her body warmth. Her imagination kicked in and the glass became a panel of energy, ******* a little life from all those who touched it, vibrating with a strange purple light until it was so filled with energy the particles of the glass would explode and she would be the first to die from the sharp shatters that would spray across the room, causing droplets of blood to-
Ahem.
Mr. Well coughed meaningfully at her dreamy face. The class exploded into laughter and the bell rang. A skinny girl smiled at her but she was so lost in her own world, she forgot to smile back as she slung her bag on her shoulder and ran out. Maybe that’s why she didn’t have too many friends.
The dark skies were pouring furiously as only Bangkok in Monsoon weather can.
A walk home or a motorbike ride? A motorbike ride would be a little dangerous in this flooding… and with that reasoning she waved up a motorbike. The seat was soaked and so was the driver, whose brown leathered feet struggled to keep red flip-flops on as they sloshed through the flooded Sois.
Fat water bullets pelted her skin and the wind blew them ferociously into her face till her eyes stung. The motorbike swerved in and out of the cars stuck in traffic (slightly floating), the bottoms of their wheels immersed in ***** water.
The pockets of her school shorts were hastily rummaged through and she pulled out a soggy green twenty-baht note bank before running into the shelter of the lobby, dripping over the marble floor and completely drenched. The building-maid widened her eyes, and watched her horrified; knowing it meant extra work mopping and drying up the lobby floor as soon as Emily vanished into the elevator.
The plastic button with the circular metal piece glowed orange. It was strange how she was shivering with cold but her touch was still warm enough to light up the elevator buttons.
The usual itchy, impulsive, restlessness was building up inside her from the wet motorbike ride. Thunder roared and crackled through the lobby’s swinging glass doors and they vibrated slightly. Another flashing image of splintering glass splashed across her mind and in the split-second, she saw the diamond shards pierce the eye of the lobby’s guard and splinter across the floor-
She shook her head. This was what happened when she had too much pent-up energy. She had to do something- something reckless and fast and dangerous… now! A bolt of lightning went through her as a familiar wide open space came into her mind… the rooftop of her thirty-five floored building.
The elevator ride up was slow, much too slow for the fast pacing of her heart and she hit the metal doors with wet fists. Tearing out of the doors when it finally jolted to a stop, she climbed up to the top, running up the stairs two steps at a time and caught her breath. It was flooded up to her ankles and violent gusts of wind made her steady herself.
Emily’s Dad often told her stories of when he was child. “The winds in my home during Monsoon season were so strong we could lean into it with our fully body weight and we wouldn’t fall. It was almost as good as flying.”
Her lids squinted shut and the sensitive skin was immediately exposed to the pebbles of the rain and whipping wind; and in almost dream-like state, she leaned into the howling wind.
There was a comically slow fall and her bony knees hit the concrete flooring with a dull thud. She burst into tears of laughter in her own stupidity at thinking the wind could hold up against her gigantic frame and rubbed her ***** knees sorely. Reaching up to wipe her tears with muddy fingers, she laughed to herself again. There was no point in wiping away tears. They were so trivial in comparison to the current weeping of the skies.
Against the thick opaqueness of the wind, she could see how the view towered over a jungle of buildings as far as the eyes could see, with snaking concrete roads and skinny black canals. Slums scattered around nearby swanky hotels of the rich. The buildings faded into small dark shapes in the distance. Bangkok.
No matter how tall and industrial it tried to become, everyone ran for cover under this blinding rain.
Up here, completely a victim to nature’s power, she felt exposed; naked; real. The animalistic instincts inside her swelled up. Humans weren’t meant to wear these annoying pieces of material or shoved inside skinny architectural designs. With aggressive tearing motions, a pile of soggy clothes half lay, half floated on the flooded floor beside her and she stood there bare… and completely naked. Laughter spilled out from the depths of her naked chest with the two tiny hints of possible womanhood; it was louder than thunder. Screaming, laughing and gasping she stumbled around – climbing over objects and feeling the beautiful dizziness: a sweet, sweet dizzy. She stood up on a random block a meter high; spread her arms wide as her wet body shone with raindrops. The rain threatened to push her over, her soaked hair twitching heavily on her neck.
She ****** in her breath, ready to yell so that the heavens could hear but instead, the voice that came out was controlled with a shaky undertone of joy,
“I need to ***.”
And then she did.

                                                *         *            *.

His eyes are brown. Dark chocolate brown – a simple, solid color. Simple and solid like him.
Because he was so simple, people enjoyed his companionship. Though he was simple, he was not boring. Rather he was sharp-mouthed, quick on his feet, witty and observant speaking bald truths about people that either provoked them to scandalized laughter or humiliated fury.
What some people forgot to recognize was that he didn’t really love anyone. Plenty called him a close friend, but so absorbed were they in their own world; they seldom realized the fact that most of his thoughts were concealed. Kept in a little box of surprises in the back of his mind, and hidden so well nobody knew they existed.
He could spend months with a friend traveling in a different country, and return back home with no feelings of attachment. He could care for a friend while they were here and not really miss them while they were gone.
Most of the time his eyes were neutral and observing and they would sparkle amusedly when he had provoked someone with his words. This was how remained to almost everyone; everyone but one person. The one person that could turn his normally calm face even more still, the dark brows would rise slightly and a quick flash of fire would shoot through his eyes- and for a long while, they would burn slowly like two twin coals; the one person who could cloud his eyes dreamily; the one person who could make them glint wetly.  
He reached over and grabbed her hand. Emily turned smiling eyes at him.
A group of teenagers were strolling down the closed roads, armed with water guns, pasted in thick white powder, thoroughly drenched in the hot, dry weather and skipping over puddles (except for Emily who splashed into them).
Songkran in Bangkok: celebrated in the middle of April where temperatures reach forty-degrees Celsius, Thailand’s New Year and a time to pay respect to the elders in the family, but as most traditions, they became really just an excuse to enjoy oneself and in this case, one-year-olds to eighty-year-olds roamed the ***** streets splashing ice-cold water from hoses and water guns and smeared each other with chalk in buckets.
The street they were being shoved along was crowded with slick, drunk bodies. The heat of the afternoon sun shone down on their backs. The sign that introduced excited people in was sprayed by a passing pick-up truck filled with screaming locals. “WELCOME TO SOI COWBOY” printed the red letters.
Red-faced fat foreigners held in each arm a tiny ******* with their bright lace bras showing through the wet see-through shirt and their black eye shadow playing havoc with their cheeks.  Country-side Thai music blared in its jumpy, quirky manner with the over done sound effects. Those nasal voices of dark skinned women with their skins covered with make-up to an ashy white whined out of the stereos. A man with the head of a buffalo mask sauntered past. It was a mark of how wild things got at Songkran that eyes merely flickered over the shirtless buffalo briefly with a quick laugh. Transsexuals clad in diamond-studded flip-flops, wet white tank tops and mini jeans shorts the size of underwear danced to the blasting music from the open pubs down either side of the road. Their surgically-made ******* were all-too visible in the white shirts, their dark ******* poking out as they grabbed the crotches of good-looking men and boys that passed by, squealing and rubbing their bodies against white men especially. Most of these white foreigners had a look of bewildered pleased ness... for only a few realized that underneath that squeaky voice was a very deep rumble, and underneath those lacy thongs lay a very big surprise indeed.
One of the better-looking boys in the group, his green eyes and pointed chin drawing the fancy of many hookers, was pulled off by four pairs of wet skinny arms touching him and yelling in broken English, “Oh so handsome! You so handsome! I love you! What your name! You tell me your name, handsome boy!”
The handsome boy proceeded to manage some sort of scream for help while laughing until his stomach ached. It was Songkran; it was a merry time, and he knew he was good-looking. Kat, who held a secret crush on him laughed amusedly at his yelping.
Emily stumbled after him with Kat and parted through the crowd of ladies in time to see a tiny little ****** trip on her squeaking flip-flops and fall beside a sprawled figure, face down in the ***** road with a massive bag of ice on top of him.
“Hey! Are you alright?” Emily cried, half-amused and half-concerned, lifting the heavy ice bag off his shoulders.
Kat rushed forward, laughing but compromising her concern with furrowed brows and helped him up. “You okay Tom?”
He whimpered in pain and put a hand on his neck, rubbing it sorely. “That ice bag was ******* heavy.” The girls decided to make no note of his skinny arms.
They walked back to their group of friends who turned around and saw a limping green-eyed boy and roared with laughter. The noise caught the attention of predators searching for a good target and they were hosed down with water pipes.
Suddenly Emily felt a huge body lift her up and swing her around while hands plastered her with wet chalk.
“Emily!”
She felt safe hands grab her and looked up into the pair of dark chocolate eyes. They were a little annoyed as they flickered over the fat drunk man who released her heavily but it was Songkran, and he managed to laugh at her bewildered expression.
Just then they passed a horde of prostitutes and she felt him being ripped from her. “I like this one!” screeched a passing market lady who rushed in to jump on him. “I like this one! Let’s keep this one!” They dunk his head in a bucket of white goo.
She screeched with laughter and even at something that silly, felt protective of him. “Brad!”
He was too busy being attacked. “Brad!” she tried to reach in and he opened his mouth to call out to her. That was a big mistake, he realized, as he received a handful of powder in his mouth. Spitting, coughing, and trying to breathe through nostrils blocked with powder he managed to wipe his stinging eyes clean. The prostitutes released him but not before a huge ******* screamed with glee at his straight nose and thin red lips, and reached forward giving his crotch a good grab. He screeched in genuine disgust and fear, had a moments feeling of guilt in case he had offended the ******* which was immediately wept away as he, no she, no it, yelped joyfully and massaged his **** before trotting off to his, no her, no its next victim.
Where was Emily? With his height, he managed to see a brown head that stuck above the other dark-haired and light-haired heads being jostled out of the street by the moving crowd. He ran to catch up and grabbed Emily’s hand as the group of teenagers tripped out of “Soi Cowboy”.  
They stood for a moment catching their breath. Zoey, a tiny little girl with a chest that threatened to put her out of balance, pushed her brown curls out of her face. A red glow was starting to spread over her cheeks.
Kat laughed scornfully, her wide smile spreading generously over her face. “Sunburn?! You white girl!”  
They had all been out around the streets since early morning and it was late in the afternoon now. Rose’s cheeks were flushed and the tip of Kat’s nose was a little pink herself. The rest of them, with their darker skin, had tanned slightly but unnoticeably. They laughed at Zoey for a short while. It was an interesting group of friends: all of them of mixed heritages from around the world with different backgrounds that became common in the world of International schools. It was alright to tease Emily’s honey skin; it was funny to crack jokes about Stefan’s hairiness; it was hilarious when Zoey tried to tan.
Emily shot a picture of everyone laughing: their clothes wet, their faces scrunched up, eyeliner smudged (Kat and Rose had lined their eyes with water proof kohl that of course wasn’t really waterproof), their cheeks and chin caked a crumbly white.
Kat and Zoey clambered over her shoulders, peering at the little digital screen of the water proof camera. “Ew! Gross!” yelled Kat who was only used to pictures of her lips rosy from lipstick, camera at a flattering angle with a bright flash from her professional equipment that made her black-lined green eyes sparkle like emeralds.
“Delete! I look sick!”
Even Zoey, who admired Kat’s photogenic ness to a great extent, could find no words of solace except to say, “Me too! I look gross! Delete! Now!”
Emily just laughed and said, “No you don’t.” Of course it wasn’t a type of picture they’d profile on Facebook, but all the same it was beautiful with their wild-looking and uninhibited faces and un-posing body shapes, curled up in laughter.
Zoey snatched the camera from her and they fiddled with the buttons till the picture was deleted. It was regretful, annoying, but not unexpected.
Emily rubbed her sore knees and noticed how Tom was still rubbing his neck sorrowfully with Stefan laughing at him, shaking his head wearily. Brad was holding onto her arm a little tiredly, Kat and Zoey had their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulder for leaning support and Rose and Emily’s younger brother, Jason, were standing together, staring absen

PROLOGUE
               Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
   The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.

On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.

               Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.

The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty  yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
      
              LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line

Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.

Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.

Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.

Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.

                 KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line

Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.   
                Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.

Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a  huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.

Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of  blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?

Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.

John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.

   Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
  
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line

               Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of  Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life  ?

Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.              
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.  
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.

               TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus  

Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.

Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of  Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.

Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.

Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;  
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.

On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.

Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.

Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.

In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
  
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.

Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.

On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry,  he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal

Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.

A REVIEW

Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.



NOTES ON THE POEM

Liverpool Street Station

A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.

Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.

Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing

Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.

At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known

Kings Cross Station

A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.

Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi

Earth
Worth
Darth*  777* Goth
Whats worse both
Even Steven Universe
Will I ever find

  *Peace/ Curse

Coming to terms with
Cancer doesn't care
Did Heaven
become
A disease ending up
Absolutely nowhere

Lotto like death
Poison mushroom
Exit button mushroom
Alarm
Claustrophobic
Thanks for space

Comic.com race
Demonic
Shrooming
Baby mushroom
cooing
Fantasy Island of
Alice in Wonderland
mushrooms to chew
Rabbit hole stew
What a mush
washy of lush
Being taken
Stroke of a brush
All our money-losing
Clouds white and brown
chairs
One mans poison Pubs is
cute baby cubs pleasure
Moving Buffy slayer City
Jungle  Jane single
Poison *** in the city
Pollution give me

My London Fog
Poisoning mushroom
The Prince the princess
being kissed by a frog
What! the magic mushroom?
for migraines
Herbal cure
medicinal
remedy taking planes

LSD healing drive
Mushroom for the brain
The Godly tribe


Trees are being
chopped down
Everything from
generation
Handed down
Laughing stock of
Computer clowns
I am not feeling the vibe

Shitake what does it take
Like a fungus
Tasting someone's poison
Mushroom soup he is
wearing his graduate cap
What a mushroom head

Ladies of Venus group
Coastal storm in my
wedding bed

Riders of the storm
Stan the evil door or
Jimmy Morrison
Nicole with her Kidman
Are you kidding me
I am assuming
The good earth
Is being devoured
Every hour I feel
like writing
Who is buying mushrooms
Slivered like a snake
Making room for Go Daddy
Poisonous suits of Grooms

Healing hand is
Godly skywriting
The silence of
the Lamb
Moms Lambchops
Steamed fresh mushrooms
Stranded with most
expensive lipstick
Money withdrawal
My Drugs like a
good book fictional

Only in my dreams
Did I ever see poison
mushrooms
Something is being
planted in my showroom

Artwork Arsenic and lace
Whole place faces of mushrooms
Homemade Butternut squash
Nose of a button mushroom
  Near the vegetable
Stand his hand
lands he started
Eating my mushroom's
Marsala mushroom
sauce
Grilled Chicken and
bacon salad overload
of mushrooms
I never promised you
a rose garden
In our College Dorm
Pool games no drugs
of mushroom

Trees and Snow White
poison apple she is cute
as a button
Throwing apples compared
To oranges who would
be glad they got stuck
with poison
mushroom
Good earth what is possible

Poison brain watching
Cable whats accountable
Midterms all nasty germs
The world is poisoning
our mind brainwashed
I left one nasty mushroom
behind I won't bite

In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be. High above the gutter
A silver knife sinks into golden butter,
A glass of milk stands in a meadow, and
Well-balanced families, in fine
Midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars,
Even their youth, to that small cube each hand
Stretches towards. These, and the deep armchairs
Aligned to cups at bedtime, radiant bars
(Gas or electric), quarter-profile cats
By slippers on warm mats,
Reflect none of the rained-on streets and squares

They dominate outdoors. Rather, they rise
Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,
Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes
That stare beyond this world, where nothing's made
As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home
All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea
To taste old age, and dying smokers sense
Walking towards them through some dappled park
As if on water that unfocused she
No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,
Who now stands newly clear,
Smiling, and recognising, and going dark.

If drinking were a sport.
I think Id take the gold.
Even without your support.

But if it there were such a whiskey laced dream.
I think  id have to start my own drinking team.

You know in wine.
We could clean house.
With Baths everytime.

For the wild turkey relay yours truley Gary and Jack
would hold it down.
Make the whole team hello including Elliot frown.

Chris can drink his weight in Guinness.
and so easily win us a god medal for sure.
Who need  rehab  were in trainning  no problem to cure.

All the rest of the HP family  will  hang there head in
shame.
Cause when it cause when it comes to beer pong  
weve never lost a single game.

Thank God  for Paula. and Kerry cause sombobodys
gotta stay sober to remember the story.
And we always got Golden  to write about are glory.

And amoungst are group Danny is the youngest in
are humble dive.
Even if he doesnt have a license .
Id rather let him than my drunk *** drive.

In the   showcase  are  medals shall gleam.
Do you think your liver could handle.
Being part ofthe pubs drinking team

My essay, Changency, is a meme
This meme has been growing inside of me
I've been a carrier
Many of us have been

I'm not a benevolent character though
I've been purposely placing the memetic material on blankets
And leaving the blankets in local trading posts
I call these 'trading posts' bookstores, universities, colleges, schools...coffee shops, pubs, restaurants, etcetera

The beautiful thing is that these memes aren't really on blankets
The memes are encoded on the backs of knowledge, truth, and authenticity
They come from a place of pain
Evolution can be painful (but does it have to be?)

Three dimensions are easy to comprehend
Four, sure just add time
What about spacetime?
And a fifth dimension...I don't really know what that means...but some do and they're watching, listening, waiting, and loving us

After the wind lifts the beggar
From his bed of trash
And blows to the empty pubs
At the road's end
There exists only the silence
Of the world before dawn
And the solitude of trees.

Handel on the set mysteriously
Recalls to me the long
Hot nights of childhood spent
In malarial slums
In the midst of potent shrines
At the edge of great seas.

Dreams of the past sing
With voices of the future.
And now the world is assaulted
With a sweetness it doesn't deserve
Flowers sing with the voices of absent bees
The air swells with the vibrant
Solitude of trees who nightly
Whisper of re-invading the world.

But the night bends the trees
Into my dreams
And the stars fall with their fruits
Into my lonely world-burnt hands.
_

Source:
http://www.universeofpoetry.org/nigeria.shtml

He had been away. Just a few days, but long enough to feel coming home was necessary. He carried with him so many thoughts and plans, and the inevitable list had already formed itself. But the list was for Monday morning. He would enjoy now what he could of Sunday.

Everything can feel so different on a Sunday. Travel by train had been a relaxed affair for once, a hundred miles cross-country from the open skies of the Fens to the conurbations of South Yorkshire. Today, there was no urgency or deliberation. Passengers were families, groups of friends, sensible singles going home after the weekend away. No suits. He seemed the only one not fixated by a smart phone, tablet or computer. So he got to see the autumn skies, the mountain ranges of clouds, the vast fields, the still-harvesting. But his thoughts were full to the brim of traveling the previous November when together they had made a similar journey (though in reverse) under similar skies. They had escaped for two days one night into a time of being wholly together, inseparably together, joined in that joy of companionship that elated him to recall it. He was overcome with weakness in his body and a jolt of passion combined: to think of her quiet beauty, the tilt of her head, the brush of her hair against his cheek. He longed for her now to be in the seat opposite and to stroke the back of her calf with his foot, hold her small hand across the table, gaze and gaze again at her profile as she, always alert to every flicker of change, took in the passing landscape.

But these thoughts gradually subsided and he found himself recalling a poem he had commissioned. It was a text for a verse anthem, that so very English form beloved by cathedral and collegiate choral directors of the 16th C (and just that weekend he had been in such a building where this music had its home). He had been reading The Five Proofs for the Existence of God from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, knowing this scholar to have been a cornerstone of the work of Umberto Eco, an author he admired. He had also set a poem that mentioned these Five Proofs, and had set this poem without knowing exactly what they were. He recalled its ending:

They sit by a lake where dead leaves
Float and apples lie on a table. She
ignores him and his folder of papers

but I found later the picture was called
‘In Love’, which coloured love sepia.
Later still, by the time I sat with you,

Watched your arm on the back of a chair
And your hand at rest while you told me
Of Aquinas and his proofs for the existence

Of God I realised love was not always
Sepia, that these hands held invisible
Keys, were pale because the mind was aflame.

He remembered then the challenge of reading Aquinas, this Dominican friar of the 13C. It had stretched him, and he thought of asking his wordsmith of thirty years, the mother of his daughters, to bring these arguments together in a poetic form for him to set to music. She had delivered such a poem and it took him some while to grasp it wholly. He wondered for a moment if he actually had grasped it. But there was this connection with the landscape he was passing through. She had mentioned this, and now he saw it for his own eyes. She had been to Ely for the day, to walk the length of the great Cathedral, to stare at and be amongst the visible past, the past of Aquinas. He remembered the first verse as only a composer can who has laboured over the scheme of words and rhythms:

The Argument from Motion

Everything in the world changes.
A meadow of skewbald horses grazes
Beneath a pair of flying swans
And the universe is different again.

And no sooner is potency reduced to act,
By a whisker’s twitch or a word,
A word, that potent gobbet of air
Than smiles and tears change places.

And everything has changed. Back
Go the tracks beyond seen convergence
To a great self-sufficient terminus
Which terminus we might call God.

And so it was in such a spirit of reflection that his journey passed. He had joined the Edinburgh express at Peterborough to travel north, and the landscape had subsided into a different caste, still rural, but different, the fields smaller, the horizon closer.

Alighting from the train in his home city on a Sunday afternoon the station and surrounding streets were quiet and the few people about were not walking purposefully, they strolled. He climbed the flights of stairs to his third floor studio, unlocked the door and immediately walked across the room to open the window. Seagulls were swooping and diving below him, feeding off the detritus of the previous night’s partying in the clubs and pubs that occupied the city centre, its main shopping area removed to a mall off kilter with the historic city and its public buildings. What shops there were stood empty, boarded up, permanently lease for sale.

Sitting at his desk he surveyed the paper trail of his work in progress. Once so organised, every sketch and plan properly labelled and paginated, he had regressed it seemed to filling pages of his favoured graph paper in a random fashion. Some idea for the probably distant future would find its way into the midst of present work, only (sometimes) a different ink showing this to be the case. Notes from a radio talk jostled with rhythmic abstracts. He realised this was perhaps indicative of his mental state, a state of transience, of uncertainty, a temporariness even.

He was probably too tired to work effectively now, just off the train, but the sense and the relative peacefulness that was Sunday was so seductive. He didn’t want to lose the potential this time afforded. This was why for so many years Sunday had often been such a productive day. If he went to meeting, if he cooked the tea, if he ironed the children’s school clothes for the week, there was this still space in the day. It represented a kind of ideal state in which to think and compose. Now these obligations were more flexible and different, Sunday had even more ‘still’ space, and it continued to cast its spell over him.

He put his latest sketches into a sequential form, editing on the computer then printing them out, listening acutely, wholly absorbed. Only a text message from his beloved (picking blackberries) brought him back to the time and day. There was a photo: a cluster of this dark, late summer fruit, ripe for picking framed against a tree and a white sky. Barely a week ago they had picked blackberries together with friends, children and dogs and he had watched her purposely pick this fruit without the awkwardness that so often accompanied bending over brambles. He wondered at her, constantly. How was this so? He imagined her now in her parents’ garden, a garden glowing in the late afternoon light, as she too would glow in that late-afternoon light . . . he bought himself back to the problem in hand. How to make the next move? There was a join to deal with. He was working with the seven metrics of traditional poetry as the basis for a rhythmic scheme. He was being tempted towards committing an idea to paper. He kept reminding himself of the music’s lie of the land, the effectiveness of it so far. It was still early days he thought to commit to something that would mark the piece out, produce a different quality, would declare the movement he was working on to be a certain shape.

And suddenly he was back on the train, looking at the passing landscape and the next verse of that Aquinas poem insisted itself upon him with its apt description and tantalising argument:

The Argument from Efficient Causality

We are crossing managed washlands.
Pochards so carefully coloured swim
Where cows ruminated last summer
In a landscape fruit of human agency.

And I think of the heavenly aboriginal
Agent of all our doings in this material
Playground of earth I can pick up,
Hold and crumble and cultivate

And air that is mine for the breathing
And the inhabited waters that cling
As if by magic to a sphere. What cause
Sustains the effects we live among?

For there is no smoke without fire
And as we sow, thus we reap. Nihil
Ex nihil, therefore something Is,
Some being we might call God.

So ‘nothing out of nothing, therefore something is’.  Outside in the city the Cathedral bells were ringing in Evensong. The sounds only audible on a Sunday when the traffic abated a little and the sounds in the street below were sporadic. He thought of going out into the Cathedral precinct and listening to the bells roll and rhythm their sequences, those Plain-Bob-Majors and Grand-Sire-Triples. But he knew that would further break the spell, the train of thought that lay about him.

He sketched the next section, confidently, and when he had finished felt he could do know more. There it was: a starting point for tomorrow. He could now go towards home, walk for a while in the park and enjoy the movements of the wind-tossed trees, the late roses, the geese on the lake. He would think about his various children in their various lives. He would think about the woman he loved, and would one day assuage what he knew was a loneliness he could not quench with any music, and though he tried daily with words, would not be assuaged.

Thirty feet tall Madonna, is one of the things-

My ultra-stylish city that grew up,

Rave, raunchy catwalks beneath those chandeliers-

The Toyota drives by the Manhattan Beach, amidst bikini wardrobe.

When I read those Taxi-dance barbettes-

I wish I could lost in their growling gowns,

All my wishes fulfilled one day and flew me down there-

My boasting finance job and some pals were African browns!

It was that ultimate visa down the Fashion Avenue-

Most of their lipstick glosses were supported by Chelsea revenue.

I could not breathe the invisible virus against my immunity,

The enigmatic pleasures that lived inside the skyscraper community-

I had no qualms while cherishing the barbeque restaurants poisoning,

My fascinations without imaginations had no logical reasoning-

Many of us at Saint Clair’s ward#3, NYC, were at once there fugitive-

Now moaning like chickens to be butchered, we are all *** positive!


Did you know that…

Pop diva Madonna is a gay icon and the gay community has embraced her as a pop culture icon. She was introduced to the gay community while still a teenager. It was her ballet teacher, Christopher Flynn, a gay man, who first told Madonna that she was beautiful. He introduced her to the local gay community of Detroit, Michigan, often taking her to the local gay bars. Flynn encouraged Madonna to walk away from her full scholarship to the University of Michigan and to move to Manhattan.



The disease of AIDS…
Was first uncovered in homosexual men
From Manhattan


Synopsis

What happens when your dreams turn into reality? It’s a paradigm that you celebrate, live life to the fullest. There is however, life that exists beyond this celebration, sometimes good and sometimes not so good like you expected. And when it becomes not so good like you expected, you spat with bitterness and associate the term bad. Anything against your wish and will is then bad and one day you might fall into live with this bad. All I can say is that they are individual retrospection.

This is what Manhattan Dreams exactly captures. The first half can successfully open the door of fascinations that a college teenager in search of a lucrative career and living might jump into- “Style, fashion, exuberance, beaches, skyscrapers, stardom and what not!” Everything is colorful about Manhattan, even the way it is spelt and pronounced. A financial job inside a long cherished skyscraper, international friends, restaurants, pubs, smoking, the kind of gay evenings are not only meant for Hollywood films but can happen to someone like you. And then one day, the world economy complains your presence there as a fugitive, you are fired from your job and your world crashes to a clinic or a hospital confirming you *** positive. What will you do then?

That is what you are getting from the second half of the poem. As if the drama has reached a ****** like after the interval in a film. There seems a sudden pause in life from where there leads the road to uncertainty, disappointment and delusion. This is where the poem ends, because this is where the human mind stops thinking often. A never before kind of bitterness cataracts the dreamy visions and the object of your dream becomes an excuse of your current defeat.

Manhattan Dreams is not a criticism of the gay culture. Neither it attempts to de-criminalize the society nor does it pollute the appeal of Manhattan at all. It is the victim’s individual retrospection in the other side of his celebrated life which is no more a celebration now. The stylish Manhattan is both a dream and a reality. It has nothing to do with your personal glory or agony. Depending upon the situation in your life it might serve as your forefront or background.

I will re-visit
The modern picts,
The viking border people
Comparing *******
And slapping bellies
While giving dheagh shlainte.
They've plundered their last village;
It's been a while since they protected the walls
While sleep sets in.
They raid the pubs,
Raise a glass shield,
Weild a shot glass
Singing shlainte,
The dragon ships have sailed.

In pubs with bar flies.
Kronenburg, Becks, Carling, Stella Artois and Fosters,
Dancing in our blood,
Utterly inured; we are endured by all:
The solipsism most profound.

And when Johnnie, Jack and Jameson join,
The sentimental and the morbid
Are conjoined.

And ****!
In the custody of beer halls,
The shadows that draw, fade,
And calls – e’en Death’s! -- are put on hold!
No time; instead, before the last, another pint.

For in this hallowed inn,
Drinking what’s in the glass,
And espousing the glow within,
Cares regress.

No woes,
Or loaded psyches,
For when the pressure builds,
The best: a jet of yellow bliss,
Relieves the pain,
On Armitage Shanks' porcelain.

Briano alliano performs on Jupiter

Hi dudes and dudettes
Welcome to my concert up here on Jupiter and it is time to have some fun and here is my first song for you called robbers and bandits

You see as I walk down the city streets
I see these robbers and bandits
Trying to take my money
Saying please please honey
Can I have your money
You see we are poor and
We have no place to call home at night
I said there is no need to rob me
I will give you $2 to $5 and I know that might not be enough
But I am just as hard done by as you in a way
The robbers and bandits said
To me we need your blood
And we need your money
I know you might not like that
But it is our only way
So just give us $3000 ok
If you don’t you will die
Personally I prefer to be positive
About how silly they are being
Trying to rob a Good Samaritan
Like me, you here about it on the news and you don’t think of it happening in real life
But I think it happened and I have to just sit back and say
Robbers and bandits had me again

The next song is push me to the limit
You see when I was young
I was really cool
I used to tease my dad
Who I thought was being conservative too
You see he came up to me and said
C’mon I will fight you I’ll fight you yeah I will
But he was trying to make me stand up for myself
And I thought mate I needed to put pride in myself
But I know dad didn’t mean to
As such but he pushed me to the limit oh shucks
I was just being a normal kid
Teasing my father and being rude
Dad hated what I was doing to him
He gave me medication to calm
Me down
It worked for a while but then
I completely lost it
When the drugs I was taking
Started to push me to the limit
I hated it I really did
But fighting the people that were trying to help me
Well, this wasn’t cool
So I decided to obsess about taking the meds, even if I got
Strange dillusions which I didn’t want I sat there watching
Family programs on tv
Because of the fact I have
No family of my own
It worked out ok till one day
The dollusions came and I did something bad and straight to the psych ward I went
You see the doctors were bad
And i thought they
Pushed me to the limit in an unusual way then my dad said to me just stay with your friends
And let them help you
But it was hard and I felt pretty ****, so I sang fly burgers loud and strong

The next song is I want to go to the movies
Oh I want to go to the movies
To see a movie that is cool
Like raising Arizona and beaches and ghostbusters
I felt pretty cool
Then I saw polar express and then I saw Arthur’s Christmas
And superman returns as well as goal yes that makes me feel so divine and if I don’t feel like going there I will watch movies on tv like Harry Potter da Kath and Kim code and pirates of
The carribean too
Yes they are all good movies
And yes I will enjoy them a lot
Drink a beer or a methane smoothie yeah oh yeah
These movies are great

What a song this next song is living next door to a party
You see we are trying to watch
Our shows on tv
When a great big loud speaker
Played music so loud
And the swearing, mate wasn’t quite as good we need to fix
The noise because it’s deafening and after that
The television played around
You see the computer chips
Were playing around
It is all because we all
Were living next door to a party
Listening to swearing and loud music and people swinging around and hanging up and hanging down and partying good yes we hang around outside pubs and yes we are cool but me I thought these people are in no club, and they have to be careful not to break anything, but they don’t care as they party loud and you find it hard to live next door to a party

That was a good song yes it’s groovy our next song is called mmmm donuts
Oh yeah I love my donuts
I feel like Homer Simpson
As I bring down my donuts
Yeah I love them they are nice
Mmmmm donuts mmmmmm donuts I love them I love them
Yes when I eat a donut
It melts in my mouth
I feel like a little sour ****
As I eat one down and then the other
I give the donut to my mother
What if she does the donut rap
And partied down
Up up up up and down down down
You see if you look like Homer Simpson you must say
Mmmmm donuts every single day
Mmmmm donuts every single day c’mon party the Homer Simpson way

Thank you Jupiter crowd and that was mmmmmm donuts the great song and now here is my waltzing Matilda
Once a jolly young dude
Partied from club to club
Dancing with all the girls in there
And after that we drank some taquila shots you’ll come a partying with Matilda oh yeah
I love a party really really partying I might not look it
But I am a social guy
I go to events to party down with the party dudes
Oh yeah
Then we got down to the great
Football club we watched the game and listened to the band
The music they played was cool and very very hip and the girls asked me to dance
I danced an unusual way everybody looked at me
Thinking I was a tad crazy
But I didn’t care because I am a party dude you’ll come a partying in the football club with me

Thank you dudes and dudettes and now here is a great song called this is *******
Ahh this is *******
Really really *******
The crap you are trying to tell me is driving me up the wall
I hate that crap I really do
So why do you want to play ******* to me
Ahh this is *******
Oh yeah this is *******
Watching ****** reality television which doesn’t mean a thing
Ahh this is *******
Really really *******
You see they play gridiron
And they play ice hockey
And yeah it is party time
I like partying and I like teasing
The conservos as they are doing their jobs
You see ahh they speak ******* total total *******
Ahh this is *******
It is total *******
Watching the crap they speak on sky news on win
You see it is right wing crap ya see
As the oldies sit there with their cup of tea
Yeah that is *******
Total utter *******
Yes ******* comes around
In their mouths every day
Yes they do
Ahh they speak *******
Complete and utter *******
And that is the truth
Or is it ahhhh *******
Thanks guys and gals and I want to say this enjoy Jupiter and I will see you when I come again.

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!

I'm not in a rush to leave this place.
I'm in no hurry, it's not a race.

I'd like to take it real slow.
So many stunning  places to go.

I want to travel far and wide.
See much more of the English countryside.

Beautiful beaches that surround us in Cornwall and Devon, remind us we live  in our own corner of Heaven.

Mystical places with tales of legends to tell.
So much to do and see, I'll do my best to make it sell.

Tintagel such a mystic place, where legend has it King Arthur had his chair.
He had a roundtable it held many Knights, all ready to defend, always ready for a fight.

In York a Viking museum to tell how they came upon our shores, with longboats, a 60 man crew, paddled with their oars.

Bath has the best Roman baths to be found, laze and spoil yourself in the steam rooms built in Roman surrounds.

In Wales, there's Snowdonia for you to climb, or the less active can take a train ride.
A castle in Caernarfon where Princes are appointed by H M The Queen, the sword on the shoulder duly declares arise HRH Prince of Wales, the crowd are waiting for the new Prince to be seen.

In Scotland there's Edinburgh with a castle tall and round sits atop a very high mound.
The lowlands and the Highlands are a sight of well known beauty, driving around the lochs at night keep your eyes open for a monstrous sight, nessie fact or fiction,

Of course there are the lakes of England too, Windermere the largest draws the biggest crowd. Find a cottage out of sight, snuggle up with a loved one, cuddle tight.
Put on your water skis, hire a boat, sail your wind surfing board, fire up your jet ski any of these activities can be fun and available to be done, daily.

The Cotswolds, for take your breath away beauty, small villages, luscious village greens, cricket playing in the field, Large Houses, Lord of the Manors, old worldly pubs, thatched pubs and rivers waiting to be seen.

There are Dartmoor, Bodmin Moor and Exmoor too, Peak District, Lake District mountain ranges, many a zoo.

I'm not in a rush to leave this place.
I'm in no hurry, it's not a race.

I'd like to take it real slow.
So many stunning  places to go.

So much to do, so much to see.
On your doorstep, no need to stray.
Whatever you do, wherever you go, have a happy holiday.

Just in the pubs and clubs
******* our own gear around
Seemingly, always upstairs
For weddings and birthday parties
Sorting out miles of wires
Well-worked practise

But when those amps were turned on
With an audible amplified thud
As switches are flicked
And their lights gaze like tiny red eyes
That's when I am ready

First number and the drums and bass
Connect to create new heartbeats
And now I'm into it
Not the man in the mill anymore
I'm the frontman for the band
And the music soars through me

As the night goes on and grows
The crowd has grown and is dancing
Gaining energy from the music
And feeding it back to us in turn
Now THIS is being alive

And so it was

                                 By Phil Roberts

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

The air doesn’t taste so clean anymore.

I can remember being younger and gasping for breath,
the midsummer breeze provided me with plenty,
and I swallowed pintfulls and laughed at the energy it gave
and at the thumping of my heart.
The air was a little milder then.
It was around the same time,
in my childhood
when I remember that it actually snowed for Christmas.
So I almost must have felt the cold,
but temperature does not threaten you
when you are young and your lungs are full.
Not like nowadays,
when the only reason you don't destroy your lungs with smoke
is because you've seen the hospital wards,
heard of loved ones being eaten away because of
a malignant growth,
but that still doesn’t stop you
from taking the odd ****.

It hardly seems to matter anymore,
now that we are all living in denial.
But there was a time in our lives when our lungs were important,
if you didn’t have strong ones you couldn’t keep up with your friends,
and you needed to keep fit if you wanted to be a "soldier" in the "war"
this being before boisterous childish ideals
realised the dull pointlessness
of living in a neutral country,
where you were more likely to die in a car crash,
or by smoking your lungs tar-black.
You always wondered why your mother kept telling you to start
when she could never stop.
Did she not want you to have as much fun as she was having?
Imagine how many extra holidays you could have spent together
had she saved the money instead of spending it on cigarettes
and if your sister had never been born
you could have sailed twice around the world,
gone to Disneyland twice a year
and went skiing in the alps
instead of waiting to grow up in BORING OLD IRELAND,
waiting for school to end and the rain to stop.
Imagine how many years she has wasted,
because each cigarette costs fourteen seconds of your life.

Why does she want to leave you so soon?

Like her own mother, smoking her way to an early grave.

Its funny how you were the one who kept such care of your lungs
and yet it was you who was the first to end up in hospital.
A place where you could see the germs buzzing,
waiting for you as you arrived through the door.
They're going to make you lay in bed for a whole week
and you haven’t even broken your leg.
Yet they're smiling at you now, daft *******.
"I wonder if they'll still be smiling if I never make it out of this mess."

But you have to admit it tastes splendid.
Takes the edge off,
puts things into perspective,
helps the time pass,
and makes you look "interesting."
Nowadays it’s a lot more social anyway.
Presents you with an excellent opportunity
to strike up conversations outside of pubs.
You could meet the love of your life if one day she asks you for a light.
No one really wants to grow old anyway.
******* yourself in the same chair,
your brain unbalanced by the mind-numbing anti-depressants
and the oncoming surge of arthritis.

[1:24 AM, 8/26/2016] +91 77085 85412: (Typing message on whatsapp)
A boy meets girl..  gets her attraction..
thinks to speak.. touch.. make her his better half..!  
She says yes..!  
Both gets together.. coffee shops.. movies..  parks.. pubs.. clubs.. beaches.. parties.. having a lot of fun.. touches each.. enjoying..
nice love story ryt... !  
Stop ther..
did u see any love inbetween themm..  
noo i didn't.. i saw two people having fun that isn't love..
then how are we thinking its a love story..
look at this story now..
A boy meets girl.. thinks she's cute..
both speaks after few vague  looks.. texts..
looking at their phone contacts thinking to call each..
more texts more calls.. rare meets.. one fine day confirming love..
some day later..
feeling faded out from it..
she reminds him.. he reminds her.. few texts..
he s feeling ******* of her..
she then speaks someday.. he melts for her voice.. he melts at her images.. he melts when thinking her..!  
He s getting confused.. thinking her.. calling her.. messaging her.. !  Hoping everything will b fine.. i see some love in this now
      
[1:25 AM, 8/26/2016] +91 77085 85412: And he types a crazy crazy big story in the middle of the night for her and she surprises him by being online!  ***.. shes awake!!

Farewell Govan -
bathed in a baking sun
littered with betting shops
and no win/no fee criminal lawyers
and a myriad of pubs caked in years of libation
steeped in history of industry and shipbuilding
blackened smoked walls etched with gangland symbols:
tooled-up local carnivores who ride shotgun on a BMX
swapping discrete envelopes for indiscreet wads of cash.

Farewell Govan -
you fractured my ribs once in a moment of mistaken identity
I didn't heed the advice to not walk through the park at night
I didn't hear the pitter-patter of adolescent feet
speeding my way in brand new trainers across the grass
but I did feel the clunk of something solid on my head
as the ground rushed up to meet me in a concrete embrace
and watched as 4 bags of overladen shopping spewed out
lying face up spread-eagle in Lilliput fashion
and a mobile torch-app in my face with the repeating words
“Ima tellin’ you man its naw him, its naw him”
I reassured them frantically that I was definitely not him!
as the hooded troupe picked up what was left of my shopping
and even gifted me a couple of cans of super strength lager,
a cube of dubious council estate hash
and an usher to leave immediately
(and think myself lucky).

Farewell Govan -
you got me blazing on cheap beer at the local pub
which had recreated a holiday beach scene
with a hand-written sign that read: Better than Ibiza!
awash with carefree children
and pit-bull terriers wearing bespoke Barbour dog jackets
and brand spanking new Adidas white trainers
purchased from Tam out of a nondescript blue plastic bag
who always passes the day's pleasantries
while topping up his pension
chatting with auld Billy who was in the war (don’t you know)
via the Merchant Navy
and the version of how he was gunner on an oil boat in Vietnam
via the umpteenth pint that afternoon.

Farewell Govan -
your late night shadows harbour an underlying tension
masked with comic humour only if you can understand the lingo
words that are distasteful anywhere else are in fact a term of endearment here
I shall miss the odious vernacular and doth my cap to your spirit
the Salt of the Earth and the Lifeblood of the Community
with at least 40% proof liquids mixed with Irn Bru
purchased at the 24/7 corner store along with a can of processed peas;
one of your five a day.

Farewell Govan -
I go to the sunny side of the Clyde
where it rains just as much
but you don’t get mugged for carrying an umbrella
or asked for the time from a watch-wearing tattooed sailor
and joy-of-joys there will be actual fruit & veg shops
where I don’t have to explain what fresh coriander is
and what you use it for, other than on a pizza;
I was offered dried bottled parsley instead.

Farewell Govan.

He is a man of the land, travelling
Near and far. To teach those that listen to
The music of rot, that there is another
Way to open them self up with Rock and
Metal *******.

He will clean them of pop and girls
Aloud, replace it with the solo guitar
And drifts that can go on for hours.

He travels the pubs near and far to
Give those that much needed fix of
Proper music, with a pint they listen
Through the night this man of rock
The pub star.

Long live rock, metal and guitar and this
Man of rock and metal that will keep it
Alive and never give in to pop music or
Bubble pop rather smash it up with his
Awesome guitar....

I am the product of lost civilization;
hanging in between circles  of  modernization ;
who tells
Whether its rising or setting of sun  or globalization
The era of bindis
Or glamorization
Of going to Pubs
or piligrimization
Of  mothers going to kitty parties  
and  of socialization
Of works of Picasso's    
Or hussainization
Of  belief of gods
Or Sensationalization
Of act of democracy
Or  just rationalization
Of laws of science
Or limitization
Of acts of defiance
Or patronization
Of loss of love                        
Or dehumanization
Of views of people
Or individualization

I know that you are always with me. I follow that scent, the calm folded crisp smell of cigars lit on the rainy morning in the streets of Calais. I pass through the art galleries, boat docks, pubs, markets and old churchyard buildings. That scent again? It draws me in and embraces me close into secluded streets. I see friendly faces wearing the same weepy eyes and bright smiles every day. They were buskers, street tramps, just in my eyes fellow lost rebels who I admire. They haven’t yet given up even now their naked without luxury, starved of food and clothing they wander around building up a new home every day.  

Every time the buskers see me they each greet me in turn shake and kiss my hands. I drop a penny down; they play out their beautiful music and sing their songs into the early hours of the evening. The air of the night is surrounded with the distinctive smell of cider and cigars. Outside the docks of boats the pub is festered with local communities drinking and talking about previous nostalgia. People laugh and cheer at the buskers who come into the pubs and applaud even louder when each of them comes on stage. They play, they dance, they rant in their own unique way in time to the guitar and banjo. When the evening is finally over music and laughter without question just stops, I can hear those... heavy awkward whispers, muffled voices and coughs of things left unsaid. At that point each of the smiles of the lost rebels fades out into the night, they know they must face and enter that filthy alley alone forced into the solitude of old cardboard boxes. I thought they did a splendid show and award them money and praise in return some of them come up to compliment and kiss me again.

The next morning I visit the library to indulge in my long lost passion of French poetry but I keep on getting distracted. I pick up on that very dangerous scent of cigars, wine and … aftershave. It was just so intoxicating, the fuel I craved. The aroma got stronger outside, something was around me. I was feeling that someone had just touched my breast, pinched my ******* then started to bite, caress and kiss my back but that feeling had quickly faded out.I sat down, unable to detect anything. I open up an loaned book of poems by Christina Rossetti. Before I could read her first poem, a written letter had fell to the floor. It was encrypted in my name with a place and time. I begun to read it out aloud as if it was some fairy tale enchantment.

The cigar smoke started to rise, embrace and surround me it filled my eyes again. A young man appears at my feet. He is *****, long black hair; smile cheeky but eyes concrete and dreamy when magnified they melt into a fire. I gaze into his piercing green eyes; I can already feel my body heating up and chest feel tenser. We start to greet each with a handshake, he grabs my hand and begins to put each of my fingers into his mouth. Straight away I could feel this urge to share everything with him to plant that warm kiss onto his lips. We start with talking for hours about our previous past, poetry and art. I read out some of the poems in French and he was translating them for me. He asks whether I would want to go Paris with him; he knew the best historic sites to take pictures and then without any hesitation he flashes out two train tickets. A charmer no less, but I feel drawn to follow him hoping he would lead me to more adventure. We both catch a train together from Calais to Paris. He takes me into the French café near his apartment we end up drinking coffee together out in the balcony. He drove me around in his car; we end the day with having a great picnic of red wine, sandwiches, cakes and croissants out in the jardin. We end the first evening having a smoke or two out in the beautiful countryside air. He drops me back to my villa and kisses me slowly on the ears then begins to whisper softly the words k.i.m.m.y into my ear. I could feel the last of his words really start to linger, the final words before leaving me and promising to meet up the next evening outside his own apartment.

I came out the next evening wearing a tight red frock and bright red lipstick on the ****** cobbled streets. We both embrace each other with small kisses on the cheek, walking down with our tongues tied in knots and arms locked together to the local tavern drinking more wine. When it finally got late I was allured to follow him into his apartment a classy one bedroom with a double bed, rose flowers on each window ledge. There is another classy rose wine bottle on the table and a room of old books. We sit on the sofa watching movies, eating chocolate and sipping on wine. My head begins to spin, lose some focus. Could this really be love or was this just another drunken lusting daze? I droop to his shoulders; He recites bits of his own poem, I can’t help but stare into his deep eyes when he reads them, I look up again at his moist lips when he reads out aloud the final words. I yearn to snog him or for at least him to make that first move. I feel dizzy and high on red blooded wine and cigars. I could then feel him starting to kiss the temples of my neck and feel his soft teeth mingle and bite leaving small indented marks on my neck. I draw even closer towards his mouth; I can feel his beard tickle me. I love to taste him, love that aroma! He tastes of dimly lit cigars which mingle with my fruity perfume. At this point I feel that the ember inside surround and heat up my whole body. I want him to really light me up so I can explode into them blue flames. I begin to clench up my body as he bites my neck, we both kiss frantically. He whispers into my ears and begins to nibble on them. We end up huddled up together in bed! The window reflects that the sun is approaching, he sits on top of me staring at me blankly in silence. He takes time to admire my calm sleepy concrete clay features.

He knows that when the sun comes up that everlasting rainbow of color we created together will begin to melt and transform back into monochrome. It just comes to the end. we know we can not argue, we must leave each other. I know I must say the two forbidden words. The very two words that turn me back into this empty corpse. I hate them; I greet him with a long lost embrace, the in-completed hug and the final words to end everything! Bon- Voyage At the same time trying to hold myself together, I leave on that last train, feeling tired and drained but only for a second. The whispers of his voice fill up the station crying out… KIMMY, kimmy... kimmy! . They echo out and embrace me again, they always make me smile.

I catch the last train back to Calais then head off home to stormy England. I never feel sad to leave him or the place behind because I will always remember him. Just as any dying whisper, music of buskers, words of a poem. The bond you share is never really gone it ignites again to finally burn on eternally.

THE TORTURING VOICES




you see my dad was watching the cricket with us

and i watched it with him, and it was very fun, you see

we saw australia being beaten by the west indies, because

they were so cool, you see, we were the cricket boys

and no robber wanted to rob us, because we were into australia’s favourite sport, cricket

you see i heard a non realistic image of my father saying

brian’s not a mans kid, brian’s not a man’s kid

and i was trying to relax and calmly watch the match

and my family were unrealistically teasing me, mind you they were having fun

and the words they said were different to me as it was for them

brian’s not a mans kid, don’t get kidnapped brian be like us

brian’s not a man’s kid, and watched the cricket, ya know trevor chappell doing an underarm ball

mum called cricket, anything and everything which has everything you hate

well, i don’t believe that, i was feeling like trying to be a mans kid

brian’s not a mans kid, brian’s not a mans kid

and i was getting these awful visions, i wanted these voices to stop

you see people in canberra were doing it too, but they looked like fierce kidnappers

and i said you can’t get me, i am a sports watcher

so i went home and obsessingly watching the cricket and AFL and rugby league, rugby union

you name the sport i watched it, and i fell asleep in front of the sport

you see i have this vision that mens kids watch the sport, mens kids watch the sport

brian’s not a mans kid, ******* ya hooligan away from us

you see, i wanted at that stage a hooligan to my dad and i had someone grab me outside a club

and i kicked him saying, get off me ya kidnapper, you won’t get ya hands on me mate

and dad was watching the cricket and enjoyed it, but i got frustrated with all that teasing

i didn’t want to be kidnap victim and i hate being my families or friends little teasie

i battle voices saying how is our little tease doing hey

but i hated when people wanted to bully me, saying your family are like us, your not

i said i like sport and they said, no you don’t, your family does, and your not like your family mate, your like us now man

i told my voices to *******, and they said, your not like your family, your like us

and this made me into a little 2 year old boy, i hated that voice

i remember i loved watching agro, which was a funny puppet on channel 7, and the mens kids said

don’t watch agro, watch cheezeTV, which was the cartoon show on the other channel

and my voices going crazy saying, you are a crazy person, who is too old for baby agro

and you are not like your family, your still like us, buddy

i screamed out, LEAVE ME ALONE, i am a sports watching mans kid

and dads image said brian’s not a mans kid, brian’s not a mans kid

but it could’ve been greame thrones kidnapper or patrick dunbars kidnapper

i said voices,  ‘stop', i wanted to be like my family, they said you are not like your family, your still like us

and i said, they look cool, and you guys look stupid, please leave me alone

there is also a man who wanted me and my brother tied to a pole, but we felt we weren’t immortal, but cool

i went into pubs to dance and watch the sport and i felt like a cool man

brian’s not a mans kid brian’s not a mans kid, stay in there koomarri man, get ****** mate went the little homebody kid

as i was watching the canberra bushrangers baseball team played, yeah totally awesome dude

brian’s not a mans kid, I WISH IT’LL ALL STOP

I hadn't been there in ages, hadn't visited, I had no reason to
But then the Covid virus struck and Dublin where I was working was put into quarantine
I wasn't allowed to go up there anymore to work,
And I had no computer at home and no broadband/ WiFi at the time
So they sent me down to the Old Town
It was nice driving down the motorway, it was Autumn and the leaves they were all changing colour
The different shades of red, brown green and yellow
With the sun shining on the mountains and on the bay
It felt almost like I was going on my holidays,
The Old Town it had changed so much, there were all these new buildings,
Retail parks on the outskirts, hotels, new schools, civic buildings... coffee shops
It was lovely and clean and tidy
Like those living there were really proud of it,
The old town I'd known it was there also, in the background, a bit dusty now
There was the big old gothic church my Dad used take us to, to Mass some Sundays
There was the Port and the big ships along the Quay
There was the secondary school I was meant to go to... had we stayed...it looked old, a bit dilapidated now
I wondered was it still being used as a school,
In the Main Street there were still old names of shops that I recognized
The shoe shop where my Mom used buy us shoes
The chemist where my brother got his glasses... the Bakery
The cinema where we seen our first movie "The Magnificent Seven", it was all done up now... all different...
In the office things were... well...weird! ghostly!
A big modern office and some days I was the only one there, just me all on my own
Was like something out of a Sci-fi movie
Other days maybe two or three might come in to join me
All the others of course, they were all working from home,
Often I'd find my mind just filling with old memories and nostalgia...
I could hear the old ghosts calling, calling me to go back
I knew... I knew I had to go back there
Back to where it had all begun for me
The little seaside village where I was born.

So going home I took the coastal road not the motorway
Just the sight of the headland and the blue mountains sloping down to the sea
With the lighthouse there at the end
Just seeing them again gave me an old feeling of my father, my Dad
And then the village itself, the seafront... all the colourfully painted shops,
Sweet shops & novelty shops, the amusement arcade, pubs and hotels and B&B's  (Bed and Breakfasts)
After being away for nearly fifty years, it still looked...it still looked pretty much the same, was hard to believe
I stopped my car and went into a little supermarket shop to get a sandwich for the next day
As I looked around, I seen these two mature ladies there, they were around my own age
I thought to myself 'I might have gone to school with you once many years ago, one of you might even have been my wife had we stayed here and not moved away
I might have lived a more normal, a different life'
But then I thought 'Life is never that simple, is it'.
Outside I decided to go for a walk, to look around and reminisce.

There was the path, the pavement I used go to school on with my brothers
It was like returning to the scene of a crime
How I used to dread going to school sometimes
There was a teacher, a lady teacher that used scare me a lot, she terrified me so
I remember I got sick in class on several occasions
She put me outside once sitting on an upturned bin
I can still remember sitting there on that bin in the sun, feeling so lost and that I was a really bad boy, wishing I was home
I remember I used to get hives, itches on my skin
My Mom used keep me at home
She was afraid, she thought I'd give them to the other kids
I missed the addition and subtraction tables at school because of this
To this day I still don't know what 7 + 5 is, instead I bring it to 10, I know 5 is 3 + 2, so I say 7 + 3 is 10 and 2 is 12
And I know all the doubles, 7 + 6 is 6 + 6 is 12 and 1 is 13, funny that
How I used to dread going to school
Until that was... until one day I did well at something and I received some praise
Then things seemed to change after that, I wasn't as bothered anymore, I think then I realized I was doing better than some of the others in my class and that seemed to make a difference
I remembered sitting beside pretty little girls who used have lovely pink pencil cases with lots of fancy colourful things
Whereas me I barely had a pencil, a rubber (eraser) and a ruler
They were strange lovely creatures, the Girls with their lovely long hair and their cute little faces...
I remembered walking home on my own, with my little schoolbag on my back with all my books in it
It was such a beautiful place, the view with the beach and the sea and the faraway blue mountains
And yet, I used to worry about so many things
It's like even then it was all about...all about survival...
There was the big Chapel on the hill
Once before the Summer holidays they were looking for altar boys and someone put my name forward
Then on the first morning back to school after the Summer holidays
The teacher said you better get down to the church right away, like fast!! you're on the altar this morning !!!
I was terrified, I didn't know what I had to do, no one told me anything
So there I was on my own kneeling on this cold hard marble altar and it was hurting my knees something terrible
And the priest he's talking about God and the Devil and Evil or Hell or whatever
And all these people, the whole congregation their all staring up at us
And I'm petrified, and I started to get faint and nauseas
The priest had to stop the Mass
I can't remember if I got sick or passed out
I was so embarrassed and thought afterwards I was such a terrible bad person, I knew it'd be all around the school the story.

I walked on...our house was gone, knocked down, where there used to be three houses together attached, now there was only the end house
Our house used to be the middle house
It didn't look right now, the symmetry looked all wrong
It was like there was two missing teeth
Why did they have to knock it down ? I wondered. It saddened me a bit...

At another house I stopped, this used to have a shop, a small shop,  the shop was no longer there
This was my Best Friend's house, all the days we used to play football together in the back garden
Kicking the ball to each other
With our jumpers/ sweaters as goalposts
The first to score ten would win the game
I...I usually won
I always found you easy to read, it's like you only ran in straight lines,
I think you were a bit in awe of me for some reason
Maybe you wouldn't have been my friend if you'd beaten me
How did we become friends anyway, I wondered
I suppose coming home from school
We lived on the same road and were in the same class, we'd have met each other
I had two older brothers whereas you were the oldest
So our families would have had a different dynamic
I remember you had a delightfully silly younger brother
I remember your Mom, she was very pretty, she was a lot younger than my Mom
You used bring me in and give me a meal sometimes, we'd all sit and watch TV
There was a different feeling when I was in your house...a different atmosphere
But when your Dad would come home, he was a bit scary
And I knew it was then time for me to go home
You'd wonder afterwards what the lovely Mom saw in the scary Dad, adults they were a bit peculiar.

We were inseparable in those days, many mornings you'd hear the knock on the door
And the familiar greeting
"Hello Mrs B---, Is G---- in, is he coming out to play?"
We were always playing soccer up the garden
Or down on the beach, going out for miles to meet the tide, catching *****, looking under  stones to see what we might find
I remember we were very entrepreneurial
In the Summer we used collect returnable glass mineral bottles, Orange and Lemonade and Coca Cola
And we'd bring them back to the shop and get money back for them
And then we'd have a royal feast, we'd buy bottles of Orange and bags of crisps and ice cream pops and chocolate bars,
Remember all the different Ice pops there used to be, Choc Ices and Brunches and Orange splits, 99's... Ice cream cones
Chocolate bars, Smarties and Malteasers, Milky Bars and Milky Ways, Dairy Milk chocolate bars, fruit gums and Love hearts with little love messages written on them
We used hang around the amusement arcade, play the slot machines, maybe help some old lady collect her winnings, she might give us a tip
There was the bumper cars and the swingboats and music playing all the time on the jukeboxes
It was the seventies (the 70's) and glam rock was all the rage
Marc Bolan and T-Rex, and Slade and The Sweet and a million others
So many great songs, we couldn't wait to grow up and become one of those amazing creatures we saw on the telly
I'd never lived since as intensely as I did back then,
We'd stay out till late
We were like young hustlers going around,
It seemed the days they were never long enough, all the things we got up to,
We'd Caddy in the local golf course
And retrieve lost ***** from the ditches...
Heh! Remember... remember that time... the Brennan sisters, we were up one day near the school
There was building work going on
And there was this big high mound of clay
So we climbed to the top to take in the view
And then the two Brennan sisters came over
They lived nearby
They were in our class at school, we knew them only to see
They were smiling and laughing and giggling
They beckoned for us to come and follow them
We went wondering what was going on here
They led us back to their house, I think their parents must have been out
One of them came up to us and smiled
And then she pulled down her pants and showed it to us in all its wonderful glorious splendour
It was amazing... incredible... such a sight
Her beautiful...her splendid... her lovely... bare Bottom!
I remember thinking it was like a lovely ripe pear
One of Life's great mysteries had just been unveiled
And her there with this huge impish grin,
When we were going home we promised each other we'd not tell anyone, our parents, not even the priest in confession
About that great vision we'd just witnessed
It was the height of naughtiness
Yea! Those were the days...

I wondered, 'Whatever became of you Old Friend ?
I looked you up online but couldn't find your name anywhere, couldn't find anything about you
Were you even still alive ?
50 years was a long time, I'd barely made it this far myself, and I had a lot of scars to show for it
I thought rather amusingly that I should knock on your door
Maybe you were still living there,
But what was I hoping to find ? I wondered...
"Whose at the door ?", a woman's Voice inside might say,
"Just... just some crazy guy talking about 50 years ago" her dutiful husband would reply
That's probably how it would go
I felt like I was Rip Van Winkle awakening after being asleep for 100 years or in my case 50 years
What did I hope to find
What did I hope to see, an old man now just like myself
And I bet you'd tell me your opinions on the government and the economy
And how the village had changed over the years and how other old schoolmates of ours had got on in life
But No! that's not what I wanted to hear or see
I wanted to see you there again just like you were as a little kid
Your lovely youthful face smiling back at me
And you'd say, "I'll get the ball and we'll have a game, the first to ten wins"
This was what I was looking for, this was what I wanted to hear.

We were very close, were going to grow up together, go to the same schools...college
We'd always be friends
We'd meet all the trials of life together....
I hope Life worked out well for you, my friend
In a way...in a way I almost didn't want to know
If I learned you did well in Life I'd probably only get jealous
I'd start to think I was better than you and that I should have had those things you had
Life, this world it makes enemies of us all... eventually
It divides, is all about competing and comparing... and beating (I suppose).

I still remember that last night before I left forever
We were down on the beach, it was twilight, the tide was coming in... the waves slowly advancing
Just like in life I had no power to stop it, to change things,
I had no say, I didn't want to go and leave you Old Friend
No! I didn't want to go....

Thank you...thank you for being my friend, for being there
For all the time you gave me, I hope I didn't hurt you in any way.

I have a photograph, one solitary old black and white photo of the two of us
We're sitting on a barrel in our back garden on either side of my Dad whose in the middle
You look a bit uncertain, unsure of yourself, probably lost in the dynamic of my family,
I look at you and I think
"Whatever happened to you.... Beautiful Friend, whatever became of you"
And then I look at myself as well, and I think, I whisper
"Whatever became of me as well".

i can no longer understand how now,
this sleeplessness at night,
when the world is waking in other places
so far away from me,
to the ethereal powders of the breeze,
that paints the morning with its poetry,
as the phantom of the love i love,
causes me to awaken with a cry.

It's going to rain, rain, it's going to rain,
those sleek-silver drops will take me back again,
to those cobbled, winding streets,
the raucous, song-filled pubs,
and the green, the green, the red-brick,
granite and oh! the green,
the steaming Earl Grey tea,
of which i love with a yearning need,
waiting, waiting for me,
on that precious island on the sea.

I'm making a pub pilgrimage,
A malted Mecca trip;
I'm leaving all I love at home
Crusading with the Picts.
I'll be alone with all my thoughts,
It's what must needs be done,
To keep the demons off.

Publicans meet me on the steps,
On Sundays by the side;
This trip of three thousand miles
May **** should I survive.

My altar's elbow worn,
The finest oaken wood;
I'll climb the stairs on knees,
Hear bells, raise cups of cheer.


There's games of chance,
Some romance,
With songs and several fools;
It has trappings of Canterbury
In pubs all called O'Tooles.

There's Highland mead,
And broken bread,
With harps from inner rooms,
I'll have dispirited spirits
And revel inside tombs.

My cave awaits on my return,
It's dark and hard and cold;
But I know the light's within my sight,
If I move this granite stone.
I'll bring with me a scapula
To make those visions stop,
The relics that I sought,
Those demons of a sot.

Life is hard, as I travel through outer space, in and out the cosmic pubs, first of all there is
The Neptune pub, where you get an atmosphere, like the rough pubs on earth, and then you
Get singers like elvis Presley doing the dancing styles, like with songs like don't be cruel, and
Then every Saturday night, we play return to sender, which is sang with a very fine voice, and
Then Sam kinison, does the wild thing, and the way he says you make your blood come out, it makes you wanna bleed, and Sam kinison on every Sunday night, USA time, has a meet and greet with any children who have been taken from this earth, Sam teaches these kids how to
Look after their current earth bodies, and he does that by checking on earth TV, everything that
They are doing and then after they have finished with them, they give them the cosmic voices, saying things like, go to the pub, go to the shop and tease the men, and better still go and buy
Your groceries, but sometimes it feels like you have to be careful, what you tell the cosmos, because bad spirits like ted bundy and ed gein and also Steven Bradley who kidnapped Brian
Allan's last life, is mainly making sure Brian doesn't be a cool kid, mind you Brian's current family are putting a cool kid in the itch of his toes, trying to protect him from being kidnapped, to show, Cronus, who is Brian that people are still wanting what Brian wants, rather than what
Other people want, you see Brian has a mental illness now, and would like people to like him, but the only mate Brian had as an adult was a schitzophrenic dude, who was cool in a very uncool sort of a way, and every holiday that Brian went on, he heard voices from his old mate
Saying that he was a worthless heap of ****, and Brian ran down the streets of Sydney saying
Leave me alone, leave me alone, why don't you leave me alone ya ****, and as Brian was yelling he heard people look at Brian and shove the gears up, saying you fucken ****, you are,
Meanwhile back in outer space at Jupiter moon, Brian's dad, who was Barry Allan was performing that version of singing in the rain, with words saying Cha Choo Choo Cha Choo Choo Cha Cha, toes together and hands together and go cat go, and then sang a song that
Brian's brother Chris would remember, where at one stage dad would yell out, dreamer, where the hell are all the sheep, and Brian and Barry went on a trip to Saturn, where they went to Saturn club rings or rings of Saturn, and, man, this was happy hour heaven, all the young dudes say happy hour is better on earth, but I can assure you that happy hour is much nicer up here
Because if anyone fought you, you don't feel pain, so instead of fighting, they would chuck a keg of methane on you, so your earth life will improve, but there is no such thing as improving
Really, and maybe you need to be careful, but Brian feels that itch of his feet, for him anyway
Is a way, of improving, like if it's itchy, you are in harms way, and if you are stepping away from bad spirits, you feel it in your toes, if you feel safe, and you are working, you don't have the itch,
And, lately Brian Allan has been feeling that cool kid coming back, because when Brian travelled around civic, ya know, showing them all how to party, but instead of doing that, Brian
Discguises himself as Briano Alliano, to perform music about what Brian really wants to do, and that is write his problems out of him, and Brian's nanna from his fathers side, is John Robert rimel, who is a young singer, who me, who is Cronus is trying to get him to come to Australia
To perform in a concert, or maybe sing Christmas music, you see Brian's nanna says, I used to
Call Brian my old sweetie pie, but now, I want to **** that stupid part of her, cause I remember
When she told me that she got robbed, one day, said Brian but Brian was unaware of when that was, thinking that it was the other day, and nanna looked at Brian as being her cutie pie, despite Brian tying himself up cosmically on nanna' bed by the evil Stephen Bradley who
Has Brian's stinking soul, but now nanny, who wanted to die in 1997, to get away from my smoking and drinking caper, to leave the Allan clan, and become a professional singer, she could do that if she puts her creativity skills she used in her Allan life and write songs and perform covers, and my nanna will fly around making sure the Allan's never lose their touch
Toward creativity, because, the evil goblin who had got rid of stan burns and Ray pocock and
Barry Allan and all the nice men that lived closed to Brian and Brian wants to keep everyone safe from this evil goblin by preaching the word, like if you wanna live, be creative, but some people want to die, said a man at ACTEW in lower molonglo, but that could be, that there is a lot of suffering on earth, and not everyone gets to accomplish their dreams, so the best way, is
To die, and accomplish their dreams in future lives, but that isn't supposed to sound negative,
It is supposed to give an uplifting approach to dying, as to say, that there is no such thing as
Negative death, I can tell you Brian's dad Barry who died in March 2014, was getting tired of
Brian coming in, ha know running and looking stressed, decided to die, so Barry can check out
Why Brian is having problems, or why the voices are in his head to begin with, and since Barry died, he has performed in a few cosmic pubs, like Neptune pub and Jupiter moon, and Brian
Who discguises his body as Briano, with long hair and a mo, and Barry sort of knows it's Brian
But he is enjoying Listening to Brian's cosmic style and really enjoys the keg of methane Brian loves to throw on Barry, to improve and add a bit of cool to Barry's next life, Betty Campbell.


Sent from my iPad

i'm sometimes bothered about the times i live in,
it's getting weirder and weirder by the day,
England is becoming like the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth partition years:
the szlachta (aristocrats and brokers of
the economy) have already partitioned England,
not on the visible spectrum of borders -
the Poles are punching bags by the offset of
the refugee crisis that caused the unrest in the
Union - we know where the problem truly lies:
it's hard to practice the religion of Louis XIV,
mainly: appearances are everything -
to appear non-discriminatory is the prime concern...
but there are always a few village idiots to
give the ontological experiment away as flawed -
as i once lamented not ever having an English
girlfriend, even though i've lived here
30 / 8 of my life... but then i look at the statistics...
maybe that's for the better...
but what i'm really bothered about is that we're
not living in times of real history, of making
dents in history like Achilles might have,
we're living in times of nostalgia...
now i can appreciate individual nostalgia,
Hölderlin and Nietzsche lamenting Ancient Greece...
a revival that never came... i can understand
patient and individualised nostalgia,
a well-informed nostalgia...
but en masse nostalgia that i'm experiencing?
horrid... horror! i'm living in the days when
20th century musical nostalgia is rife... it's everywhere!
compare the mood of individuals (Sylvia Plath)
against the mass of the 1950s and the 1960s...
there are no comparisons under the microscope -
the two expression will never fit, i know that's obvious...
in history there's either the whole being sold,
or there's the selection of what's worth buying and
what's worth discarding...
but that's how it's becoming to look like:
whatever is deemed historical on television
is turned upside down into nostalgia -
in everyday society, in clubs in pubs, anywhere,
history is irrelevant,
                                    the sacrilege of talking politics
and religion in English pubs is just like
walking into a pub wearing some football shirt...
but isn't that crude, given neither politics or religion
are in an Utopian ideal?
for the most part, we obstruct history by invoking a need
for nostalgia... it's always the obvious that i write
about... perhaps nostalgia is a sort of defence mechanism
to history... current, and future...
                    we learn about history in schools,
but we rarely appreciate it in leisure times -
nostalgia is a leisurely approach toward history -
nostalgia also makes Darwinism redundant:
i still don't know why it's so important, when in fact,
you turn on absolute radio on Friday
and it's the 1980s theme... but whereas those
Romantic poets experienced a nostalgic so far removed
many changes were possible and invested in...
whereas i? i live in an immediate state of the masses
recuperating from history in nostalgia from
30, 40, 50 years ago...
                                      which has created this
bubble in history... it's as if we all decided to create a
cut-off point from previous histories, and whenever
past history pops it's ugly head, we excuse with shock
from the cut-off point of the second half of the 20th
century (the pinnacle), followed by the words:
IMAGINE THINGS LIKE THAT HAPPENING IN THE
21ST CENTURY! SIMPLY UNTHINKABLE!
well, reality is a raw herring after all: in cream
and white wine vinegar - bites!
i don't know if all this immediate nostalgia will be
beneficial... i actually think it won't be...
it's almost harsh to realise that we will never be rid
of the 1950 - 1999 period - but it looks like that -
and then you think: so those redeeming literature
from long ago are dust brood and bore -
perhaps... some prefer new furniture, some prefer
antiques...
                   but this is me only being 30...
     i wonder what will happen to this omnipresent
prescription of nostalgia... i guess no real historical
importance will be given, 200 years from now,
to people who lived in it... we'll be considered
the nostalgic period of human history,
                  not the historical period as already stated:
sure, technical innovations -
                                                   to make people
important as they once were will be the major task...
along the lines: Louis XIV, Jesus, Genghis Khan...
           Apple's iPhone 6s Plus... that's what it looks like.

I’m thinking about you today. Hard not to, the specialness of it all. Today you’re putting up of an exhibition. Some artists call it a show, but you’re quite consistent in not calling it that. I admire that of you, being consistent.
 
I was thinking today about your kindness. You phoned me as soon as the children had gone to school, making time to call before you left. I know you were drinking your start-of-the-day coffee, but it was a kind thought all the same, phoning me. You knew I was upset. Upset with myself, as I often am. It’s this being alone. Not so much as a cat to keep me company. Just my work, the reading I do, my thoughts of you, those letters I write, and my attempts at poetry.
 
During the last few days I’ve tried to write directly of what I’ve observed, not felt, observed. Like those wonderful Chinese poets of old describing in just a few characters the wonder of the seen rather than the speculation of the felt, avoiding all emotion and fantasy. I try to write in a way that holds to the ambiguity and spread of meanings the poems those ancient Chinese composed.
 
It’s winter-time. Yesterday we were expecting the first snowfall of winter, and it arrived late in the night making the morning darkness mysteriously different, changing the indistinctness of distant trees to become a web of silver lines, in the no-wind snow resting on branches, clinging to boughs and trunks.  I stood in the pre-dawn park in wonder at it all, holding each moment to myself, in the cold breath-stopping air. I thought of one of the Chinese snow poems I know and some of those different ways it has been translated. Here are three:
 
A thousand mountains without a bird
Ten thousand miles with no trace of man.
A boat. An old man in a straw raincoat.
Alone in the snow, fishing in the freezing river.
 
A thousand peaks: no more birds in flight.
Ten thousand paths: all trace of people gone.
In a lone boat, rain cloak and a hat of reeds
An old man’s fishing the cold river snow.
 
Sur mille montagnes, aucun vol d’oiseau
Sure dix mille sentiers, nulle trace d’homme
Barque solitaire: sous son manteaux de paille
Un vielliard pêche, du figé, la neige.
 
So beautiful, arresting, different. It holds the title River Snow and the poet is the Tang Dynasty philosopher and essayist Lui Zongyuan.  My snow poem First Fall, written last night as the snow fell on the wet street outside, as you were falling through my thoughts, softly, but not onto a wet street, but a distant garden we know and love, but have yet to see in winter’s whiteness.
 
And now today you’re driving to a distant location to hang your work of paper, silk and linen, full of expectation, every contingency and plan in place to enable the work to make its mark in a location you know, where people may recognize your name and will come to say warm words of encouragement, maybe a little praise. And at the end of the week when the exhibition opens I’ll be there, trying to be invisible, taking photographs if I can of you and your admirers and supporters, and thinking (myself) how wonderful you are, your lovely smile lighting up the gallery, being welcoming, beautiful always.
 
Only today you’re further away from me than ever. Around coffee time I miss your quiet explorative ‘it’s me , like a mouse on the telephone. The inflections of those words questioning the appropriateness of the call, meaning ‘Are you busy? Am I interrupting?’ It may take me a little while to ‘come to’, but interruption? Never, just the sheer joy that it’s you colouring the moment.
 
I think of the landscape you’ll be driving through. I’m imagining the snow-sky clearing and becoming a faint blue with the sun’s brightness clarifying those wold lands, those gentle folds of fields between parallelograms of woodland standing stark under the large skies and promulgating the long views gradually, gradually stretching towards the sea coast.
 
I like to imagine you are singing your way through the choruses of Bach’s B Minor Mass, but in reality it’s probably the Be Good Tanyas or Billy Joel playing on the CD player. Such a relief probably after those silent journeys with me. I usually relent on the homeward leg, but I crave silence when I’m a passenger, and I’m now always a passenger, so I crave silence for my thoughts, such as they are.
 
While you are being the emerging artist – but probably on your way homeward - I have taken myself down to my city’s gallery and to an exhibition I’ve already seen. I have a task I’ve been promising myself to undertake: copying an exhibit. I arrive an hour before the gallery closes. I leave my bicycle behind the foyer desk. There are more staff about than visitors. It’s gloriously empty, but the young twenty-somethings invigilating the spaces group themselves strategically near adjoining rooms so they can talk (loudly) to each other. It’s Facebook chat, barely Twitter nonsense. I have to block it all out to focus on the four pages and a P.S of a sculptor’s letter to a critical friend. The sculptor is writing from springtime Cornwall on 6 March 1951. The critical friend will open the letter the next day (when there were 3 deliveries a day) and the Royal Mail invariably arrived on time. He’ll pick it up from his doormat before breakfast in grimy Leeds, though the leafy part near Roundhay Park. The sculptor begins by saying:
 
It is so difficult to find words to convey ideas!
 
In this so efficient Cambria typeface that introductory sentence loses so much of the muscle and flow of the human hand. Written boldly in black ink, and so full of purpose, I read it a month ago, a photocopy in a display case, and knew I had to capture it. And it’s here entire in my note book, on my desk, carefully copied, to share with you my darling, my kind friend, the young woman I hold dear, admire so much, become faint with longing for when, as she crosses that gallery where she has been hanging her work (in my imagination), I am caught as so often by her graceful steps and turn.
 
I don’t feel any difference of intent in or of mood when I paint (or carve) realistically, or when I make abstract carvings. It all feels the same – the same happiness and pain, the same joy in a line, a form, a colour – the same feeling at the end, The two ways of working flow into each other without effort  . . .
 
Outside my warm studio the snow has retreated east and I’ve opened the window to hear the Cathedral bells practising away, the city on a Tuesday night free of revellers, the clubs closed, the pubs quiet. In this building everyone has gone home except this obsessive musician who stays late to write to the woman he adores, who thinks a day is not a day lived without a letter to her at least, a poem if possible.
 
I’d quietly hoped to be with you tonight, but you must have something arranged as I suggested twice I might come, and you said it wasn’t necessary. But I have this letter, and something to write about. Alas, no poem. My muse is having the evening off and I am gently reconciled to the possibility of a few words on the telephone before bed.

Covent Garden.
Midnight.
Revellers and tourists combined.
The market is heaving.
Last trains are leaving.
An eclectic mix to broaden the mind.

Covent Garden.
2am.
The place is pretty quiet.
Pubs have closed.
Clubs.... God knows.
The tourists have frozen their riot.

Covent Garden.
4am.
A drunkard stumbles by.
Flood lit shops.
A rickshaw stops.
The backdrop against a reddish
sky.

Covent Garden.
6am.
Blokes lurk down Langley street.
The glint of a blade.
A blur in the shade.
Lava tip of cigarette falls to a strangers feet.

Covent Garden.
8am.
Commuters emerge from underground stations.
Workers prepare.
Visitors beware.
Pick pockets attracted like gravitation.

there was a little monkey he just loved a ***
everywhere he went he just loved a drag
then the law it changed and smoking made a curse
banned from smoking in the pubs making matters worse
monkey wasnt happy felt he was denied
the only place he could smoke was when he went outside
monkey wasnt done he would have is say
protesting in the pubs for a smoking day
this it didnt work they kept up the ban
monkey wasnt happy a disappointed man
so monkey he gave up forgot about his frolic
turned his mind to drink and became an alcholic

A seventies child
Born in Wales, one of the four
Countries of The UK.

I remember brown as the colour
of the day.
Fabric embossed wallpaper
all the neighbours names, who married who,
who was carrying on, the alcoholic, the beaten wives,
Even, get this the peadophiles (or kiddy fiddlers as was known)
Dai the milk, Mair the bread, the shop of infinite items.

Rugby practice for dad, baking for mam
(Cake and babies) gossip over the garden hedge
Fish on a Friday a Sunday roast, hot sweet tea.
Bubble and squeak, post delivered before you
left for school. Mist on the mountain, dew on the grass.

Welsh valley life, sounds idyllic
but scratch the surface and a darker colour
than brown emerges. Petty squablings leading to
familial feuds, the Williamses don't get on with
the Joneses, and as for the Pritchards, less said the better.

School, local, no not for me. I was sent to a Welsh
School, taught and learnt the language denied to my
Parents by English politics. Cat amongst the pigeons there.
Did I think I was special? Ideas above her station. That's what
the neighbours say.

Well, you all had the option.
Dr Forbes FRCS
Delivered babies buried men and women
Loved by all, especially his lollipop sweets.

I wasn't a child to get *****, or rip wrapping paper
off of gifts, I liked to go under the stairs (like Harry Potter)
and read. I left the dirt for my sister born 4 years later.
Then in 1982 came my brother, tidy my mother describes it.
'74,'78,'82 poor dad to have to wait I say!

More pubs than chapels, more walking than driving
more rain than sun, more music than ever was sung.
The '80's came, and we had strikes, no electric, candles
toast made with a toasting fork over the fire.
No mines, no steel, no jobs.

Picket lines, dole queues, women in work
latchkey kids, Thatcherism, ******* times.
Falklands war, IRA bombs, Royal weddings
Tory rule

But, the fire in the dragon never went out
and Tom Jones still sings his heart out.
Cymru cysglyd gwlad y gân, deffrwch
nawr, dyma'ch tro.

Every thanksgiving,
My family gets smaller.
Gone to college. Gone traveling. Gone to another woman. Gone to Florida. Gone to prison.
Gone to see the lord.

Funerals are how
I visit the lord. God is drawn to eulogies.
He’s there, a fixture,
almost a cliche,
like a great aunt with a black veil
weeping into a floral
handkerchief.

Today, at this funeral,
a thin layer of snow and ice
has frozen the ground.
Black dress shoes
press ridged footprints into the
snow.

Every funeral I’ve ever
been to has been cold. Dress
clothes and peacoats
aren’t thick enough to keep
me warm during a funeral.
I keep my hands in my pockets and hunch forward,
watching my breath hit the winter wind.
The winter wind is
an evaporated sadness, like god.

During thanksgiving, the gravy boat
on the counter
let off hot, thin steam.  While pouring it thick
on my potatoes,
A shadow in the corner of the room caught my eye.

The days after a funeral are
filled with a confused, hopeful mysticism. Every moving shadow,
every unexplained noise
is a visitation.  

So I ****** my head towards the corner of the room. Nothing.
Glancing back at the table,
I look at his empty seat, reminded

how much I’m him. I’m quiet, like he was.
I
laugh like he laughed.
My teeth are as bad as his were.
I drink like he did when he was
my age,
days, nights at a time, stumbling home from dark pubs,
watching, with blurred vision,
my whisky breath hit the winter wind,
and evaporate, almost as fast as God.

After the turkey and the pie and the coffee,
I go down to the basement
and I pour myself a stiff
*** and coke.  

I drink, in silence, to the gone.

grandad he is funny just 90 years old
even in the summer he always says its cold
he likes to tell his stories of how he used to be
how he led his life living wild and free.

nights he used to have drinking in the pubs
dancing with the ladies in the local clubs
days with all his friends and all the fun he had
pulling lots of pranks a proper jack the lad.

now he as grown old not like he used to be
in his mind his younger days he will always see
i love him very much he means the world to me
a grandad in a million that led his life so free

Oh I do like to be in the countryside
where the branches bash against the windows of the bus
where the leaves on the boughs of the trees bow so low
that I feel I have to duck.

Where people know me almost better than I know myself
I can gesture to my figure when Brigitte says
"have you eaten?"
and she will reply
"but that means nothing."

Where I can tell Tracy all about my life
and she won't judge,
will look at me with the same quiet smile,
the same laughing acceptance
as she ever has, since the day we met.

Where Cindy and Cathy sit talking about the world
and tell me of their troubles
because they know I'll understand.

Where the sea pounds gently in the distance
whipping the wind sometimes into a frenzy
and molding my hair into a salt-ridden sculpture
on my head.

I don't miss it
when I'm in the city
on the contrary, I love the beat of the sun on the concrete,
the thrash of the trains in the distance,
even the wheezing exhaust fumes
feel like they fit somehow.

But it's nice to be back sometimes
where the trees still grow on the roadsides
where the fields are green even in winter
where the pubs are cozy and quiet
like their clientele.

I went back there today
and I loved it like always
I loved it as ever
I love it still.