hand reaching over
the phantom scars on her leg,
eyes profoundly broken as
flickering christmas lights,
a child weeping inside
the grown woman.
she smiles, she sighs.
there is grey where there
used to be sunshine,
there are desolate trees,
where the birds used to sing,
and crane their necks
like curious strangers,
at women who sit on lone benches
cradling palms,
stirring up memories of
touch so gentle it hurt.
until people float in and out
like a lifebuoy at sea,
until a wolfish man in scruffs
whistles and waves slowly,
as though time itself has broken.
she sinks deeper into herself,
into the womb of mothers;
into all the love
and all the heartache.

a torn sole which collect
painful rocks all along the
way.

the heels have collected
wedges formed by the
pounding of the stone.

collection of scruffs that's
formed rough art from the
miles of travel each day.

tied to fake comfort to
makes the steps easier
to make.

old and no longer needed
but faith has it grips to say
take one more step today.

A midnight daydream could not match my prolonged slumber,
but the ice cold grin of isolation prohibits my resistance
and such theology burns crisp justifications into my hands.
Golden locks of hair surround the frayed edges of a rug
conversing ideas and mocking the unscripted door I stand on.
So I fabricated a tasteless disposition
to leak through a thousand inconspicuous sermons
that lean against me like a pile of corpses.
Without a single whisper, I abandoned all but a faulty quest
which holds me like a rotting prisoner
between the contrived confessions of a minister
who is required to dress into the eligible axiom,
so he repairs his scattered dependence in the light of day
and polishes the scruffs of his boots with the blessed liquid of God.
But I required none but the shimmer of this crescent
which produced this aberrant midnight daydream.

Its Friday and school is ended
Home we run, both trying to win the race to the garden gate
Hot and red faced, my brother beats me by an inch
I tell myself "I let him touch the post before me"

Into weekend scruffs we climb, piles of school clothes left behind
For mum to gather, washing to be done
My brother and I have something more important to do
We need to make sure they are ready

And they are, all washed and clean and ready for 7-0'clock
When the pop van comes.

4 empty bottles, waiting to be handed back and reborn
4 empty bottles, worth 5p each off the next ones!
4 empty bottles to exchange for 4 full
But what will we choose
When the pop van comes ?

7-0'clock
4 bottles, 2 each
We march to where the van full of wonderful fizziness will stop
My brother and I stand in line, there are children all around with their bottles too
All waiting for their turn to swap
1 empty for one full
with 5p off!
When the pop van comes

My brother chooses first as he beat me to the gate (I let him win)
Raspberryade!
Now me, Shandy please, (I like to pretend its beer)
Finally mum joins us and chooses orangeade and a bottle of dandelion and burdock for dad
We take back our bottles, excited, thirsty,
Into the glass I pour my 'beer'
Glug glug, glug, glug, fizzzzzzzzzzzzz,
gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp.
Too much!
Bubbles tickle my tongue, I lose my breath, too fizzy
Buuuuuuurp!
I love it when the pop van comes

Life in solitude, emptiness surrounds
Silent mist rising in the serene woods

The birds seldom sing their songs
Satins, sapphire, and soul

The stream slithers in slender streaks
Squeezing past senile saplings

Squirming into the smooth sky,
Set clouds slink upon the heavens

Brush speechless under solemn gaze
Tranquility seduces scruffs of leaves

From past autumn, someday stalling
Another year, or another two

And life keeps skidding, sliding
Around the slow line of time

No stopping, no pause
Sanctified continuum.

the people who i live with, actually don't me drinking... i missed whiskey, so i have to add: they might cite that i stink of alcohol in the morning, but by the time i forge a cure for the dehydrated body with 2 pints of water + squash, and do the chores... well? tomorrow i'll be making a hungarian dish... potato scruffs with a goulash sauce inviting beef to simmer... scruffs? finely grated potatoes, flour, eggs... fried... served with a welcome helping of horseradish infused coleslaw.

at around the no. 9263 it happens,
an european making
a minimalist statement concerning
the asiatics "appropriating"
their overt simplification of numbers,
and it happens to the best of us,
we, who say: sure as ****,
the chinese didn't invent the wheel,
or the omicron, or the zero...
toothpicks, matchsticks, fireworks?
hell, yeah, but the O / 0?
not them...
                  hardly... just like the whole
biological big bang theory of africa:
more like much bling when african culture
was translated in america,
thanks for the jazz though,
at least i get a breather from classical
music, and i'm still trying to find
a touch of hope's worth of appreciation
for *philip glass - ******* hard,
esp. since i can stomach górecki...
penderecki though?
     should i attest listening to him with
my cooking skills?
banging pots and pans, thumping against
piano keys with clocks?
i heard you have a fetish for swedish cinema,
that would be a worthwhile scene, mind you.
   the chinese are good at mathematics
because it's the first time they've
managed to see "letters"...
from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...
finally! the chinese expressed! letters!
units! clear distinctions!
    the chinese don't have letters,
they have syllables...
or what the greeks call letters by: nouns -
omega for an ω..
       or alpha for an α...
why do you think the chinese are so good
at mathematics? they only have the "patience"
for ten "letters": 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...
  that's the chinese "alphabet"... that's it!
the rest shoo shang shee bollocking...
call them what they are:
ideograms, icons, whatever,
there was no point building the great wall
of china... funny... i thought
the grand canyon would be more
visible from space...
   you already have the borders in
the language, intact...
        shweng shui show!
           if you have a complex phonetic
system, you will evidently excel at the theory
of numbers... given that you have
no letters, but syllables...
          hence the haiku perfection -
the haiku already sets the explanation...
different thing minding the japanese puzzle...
might look chinese, but hardly is,
by no. 9263 in the sūdokú marathon
in a newspaper supplement...
well...
       once the puzzle is nearly complete,
you can forget the matchsticks
          and the chopsticks,
what you're actually left with is
the following:
                                   =       +,
i've understood my limit, never to attempt
a samurai version,
   the samurai bit came via a theoretical
answer...
nearing the end of solving a sūdokú,
that's all you're left with,
well...    more like                   ||       +       =
oh, look,                                                □,
count the chopsticks...
         10!      9/10ths...
         or? 9 squares in a single square...
but that was to be expected,
      with only ten "letters" as compared
to 24 (greek) or 26 (english) -
      you'd expect perfectionism
in mathematical affairs...
               given that the greek decided
to craft syllables for letters,
that later the barbarians adopted as nouns
in their scientific endeavours...
after all: π is an elongated sentence of
god's sigh: the perpetual gagging of ouroboros,
the squashed-omicron's genius component,
hidden within rotating order, flagged
by the un-seemingly chaotic linear pattern
of change, with glitches of cliches,
of the lost surprise of: history repeats itself.

strange... oh so strange... this liquid fire,
  and the emerging oyster's worth
of tongue,
   and this, this,
thi strange sensation of counting
the number of teeth...
  ah... to touch the lips of death,
to feel one's bones...
complementing the constant
recurrence of: dreaming of teeth -
are they to turn to iron?

i call philosophy the belgian waffle -
please, speak, continue speaking,
continue searching for the ultimate
thought, as scientists seek the ultimate
theory, the theory of everything,
the unison synchronisation -
the final debt paid -
    whether in ratio or in fraction -
feed me...
  
the more you waffle on off on a tangent,
the more i transpire into a welcome
guise, hidden, bereft,
          i never liked crosswords because
i never liked the thesaurus invitation -
conjure a synonym / antonym with
a cryptic clue... i better puke over all of that
"craft" with beelzebub's *****
    what sort of fascination:
to spew one's digestive ***** into the food
before one's poly-diadem eyes
and then slurp it back up?
well... humanity uses yeast...
   hence beelzebub's answer - you throw
yeast into flour dough, you hibernate
yeast over autumnal grapes,
pouring over them crushed a gallon
of warm water with sugar melted into it...
clarity, murgy see-through waters of
sugar melted in water...
   like the chemical orchestra of petrol
dissolved in a puddle...

i have mine: now let's see yours...

     ah... mention the un-sayable thought?
to endure the silence?
    such reach high above your head (ego),
just mention the application of diacritical
marks...
      and how english has become
so debased as to c u l8er...
   mangled, decapitated souls -
those, befitting dante's inferno, soaked in
sulphur and **** bombs...
      ugly dyslexic things...
              
mind you, i can wake up with a "hangover",
mawn the lawn, do the laundry,
       peel the tatties for hungarian scruffs
and watch the hungarian broth boil...
    and then read a few aphorisms of heidegger...
and manage to count myself a worthy
addition to the current day...
   i have my obligations, never mind the drinking...
you really couldn't compete with me...
i'd drink you under the table and then take
you below the earth, drinking you into
a grave...
                 spoil yourself, you little *******...
pardon my french...
           point being, i'd love to see
what you'd write, having drunk as much as
i have.

on your wits! boyo. on your wits!
make that mental uniform well ironed;
ah... always the multitude of personna -
  as if dignifying the icon of some hindu god.

The gates to the mill at the top of *** hill
close at one minute past five,
they open again in the evening at six to
let the mill workers go home.

God it were tough in the sheds
the overseer banging heads and
shouting wake up you lazy scruffs,
but he were on a bonus
while us poor sods
were on bread and dripping.

They try to sanitise what's gone
but the muck and the grime
and the clanking of the looms
pass beyond the test of time
and will remain
in our collective memories.