Galaxy gardener sailing a ship,
through endless horizons it makes a trip.
She/he looks into the inky canvas blend,
then scatters some seeds in the spacial rend.
What does await this brave lovely soul,
when we see the universe's gears roll.

Ionizing radiation penetrates through,
while watering can always holds true.
Space turf gingerly shovelled over seeds,
her/his forehead adorned with water beads.
Nitrogenous nutrients now nuzzled into,
the serene slumbering seedlings to be.

Galaxy gardener greets growing greens,
lively lushscious leaves forward leans.
Wormhole worn star systems she/he fixes up,
as does she/he proudly prune her/his wondrous crop.
Many a plant has grown under her/his care,
yet she/he never feasts on the fruits they bear.

Archie was smart; at least he reckoned he was, because he had what he considered to be the good things in life: dosh in his wallet, a Cat in the garage, and a detach. in the green belt; all of which he had worked hard to acquire. Worked, is not exactly the word for it. Archie did deals. He reckoned he could always turn a fiver into a tenner an’ a tenner into a pony; a pony into a ton and a ton to a grand. He was one of the cash economy’s natural alchemists.  The folding stuff was the measure of a person, he reckoned. Archie never thought about anything; he reckoned everything, and nothing on God’s good earth was beyond reckoning, he reckoned. An ever-ready reckoner; that was Archie, and he loved himself for it. Only John Wayne did more reckoning than Archie, his old dad, bless him, used to say, thought Archie. In Archie’s world a grand was currency; less than that was just spare change. He reckoned he gave superior meaning to the expression ‘it’s a grand life’. The only blemish on Archie’s horizon as far as he could see was the lack of a class bird, or ‘ream sort’, as he preferred to say; hence this evening’s extravaganza at a posh French restaurant in the company of a beautiful lady. Archie only had two serious weaknesses in his existence: a fondness for the last word in a dispute about anything you care to mention, and his infatuation with his dining companion, the beautiful Carmela.


Carmela shared a common background with Archie. They grew up on the same council estate in the inner city. They were aware of each other’s existence as kids and teenagers, but they didn’t really know each other. Carmela was a quiet child and very singular; even in company she could be by herself. None but she was wise to her sense of solitude. She had three passions in life: knitting, sewing and weaving; the blessed trinity of her existence. Carmela interpreted the world by these three gifts. Here she was, she thought, weaving her way through an evening, in the company of three strangers. One she knew, herself, another she didn’t know at all, despite proximity and semi-shared origins. Then there was the complete stranger to the trinity: the waiter in his new and very polished shiny black shoes, “You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes”, Carmela’s mum used to say, she was thinking about that as the waiter appeared to almost pirouette into vision.


The waiter was a patient soul, it goes with the territory. The waiting game wasn’t something you should rush in to, he often told himself, in one of his more existentialist moments. He appreciated the irony of the comment in a Sartresque kind of fashion. He was from a steel town in the Rhonda Valley of South Wales. Iron was in his veins if not his appearance. A creature of paradoxes, that’s what he told himself he was. He liked that assessment of himself. It complimented his passion for all things French: French food, French wine, French philosophy, literature and art. He was learning the language at night school. Alas, his accent was as lyrically refined as the landscape that bred him He shovelled the words onto a conveyor belt of sound and meaning as best he could in the general direction of the person he was talking to, more in hope than in faith that they understood what was being said .The other passion in his life was tap dancing, and as luck would have it he could wear the same outfit for work and leisure, hence the very shiny shoes which allowed him to dance around the tables of the restaurant, practising his language skills on the clientele, His life work and leisure dovetailed with his ambition and he was pleased to wake up in the morning and set about the mortal trespass with a skip in his step. The waiter imagined himself to be a cosmopolitan and enlightened soul, in a very Fred Astaire kind of way, and life was a flight of stairs which he could ascend and descend in a Morse code type of style, just like Mr Bojangles.


The fare was fine. the wine was rare, but the conversation was spare until the cheese board arrived.” Good grub”, said Archie to the waiter. “We don’t do grub, sir, we only serve the finest Gallic cuisine in this establishment,” replied the waiter, in his usual mangled French, whilst smiling that smile that only waiters can manage when registering disapproval. Archie looked blank. It was Carmela who spoke: “C’était magnifique! Mes compliments au chef.” “Streuth! You speak better French than Marcel Proust here” said Archie.” I studied Fashion and Design in Paris for five years “replied Carmela.” “An’ I joined the Common Market many moons ago. It’s good for business” said Archie. The waiter was impressed: “Food, fashion, wine, Proust and Paris. This must be Nirvana” he said. “Great band, but a very dubious heaven.” replied Carmela, knitting together the threads whilst changing the pattern of the conversation in a very subtle fashion that was more to her liking.” “It’s only rock ’n’ roll” said Archie, an’ if you’ve ever heard French rock ’n’ roll it’s enough to make you believe in Foucault” “Foucault, my hero!” said the waiter, “a philosophical genius”. “According to Foucault, a knitting pattern is the hieroglyphic of a consumerist and decadent capitalist society.” intoned Carmela.” “And ‘A recipe is a critique of a cake’, said the great Structuralist philosopher,” interjected Archie, so if you serve the gateaux we may effect the collapse of western civilisation as we all know and love it”. “Allors, Let them eat cake” said the waiter, and everybody smiled at the irony of the comment.

The waiter bojangled his way into the night, tapping and clicking the pavement as he went.  Carmela and Archie got into a black cab. “That was a night to remember,” said Carmela, “very Proustian”. “A la recherche du temps perdu”, replied Archie, pleased as punch to have the last word. Carmela just smiled as she looked at Archie’s shoes.

Mr. Rory Richards
Lived his life,
Taking garbage
Out at night.
He shovelled drives
He swept walks,
He listened intently
While others talked.
Others talked.

When Rory wasn't
Weeding the garden,
He was outside
Hanging laundry.
Moms were jealous,
Dads were shamed,
But whispering neighbours
Never complained.
Rory's good
At the husband game.
He presented well.
The neighbours continued
To tsk and tsk.

On his way home
From work,
He picked up the kids
From daycare,
He'd find time
To volunteer there.
He'd have treats
At home for them,
And their friends.

He volunteered with
Cubs and Scouts,
Always finding
Extra time
For jamborees
And overnights.

One day the cops
Came on the scene,
Rory wasn't
What he seemed:
His computer
Showed a different man,
A lurking, luring
Child **** fan.
And the neighbours'
Tsks cresendoed.

At his trial
He sat abandoned,
But neighbours there
Gave witness to
A man they thought
They surely knew.
A family man
In his pew.
All his life
He lived beside them,
A man they let
Their kids rely on.

There wasn’t a lot of love to lose
Between Joe Brown and Brent,
Their farms lay either side of a creek
That now lay dry, and spent,
They used to talk in the early days
When they had no axe to grind,
But Brent came back with a bride one day
Who had been on Joe Brown’s mind.

But Joe was slow in the love-me stakes
While Brent was a bit more flash,
He’d cut on in at the Farmer’s Ball
To the girl with the bright blue sash,
While Joe walked off to sit on his own
And wait for a second chance,
But Brent hung on and dazzled the girl
Right through to the final dance.

The courtship took a matter of weeks
Then they came new-wed to the farm,
And Joe was down inspecting the creek
As Brent showed Jill round the barn,
There wasn’t a fence between the two
They used the creek as a line,
‘The land to the west is yours,’ said Joe,
‘The land to the east is mine.’

The balance wasn’t so equal now
With a new bride over the way,
Joe would have married the girl himself
But hadn’t been game to say.
He soon withdrew to his farmhouse, sat
And wallowed in his despair,
He’d been so set on marrying Jill
There was nobody else out there.

The Autumn rains came on with a flood
And the creek had begun to flow,
Brent stayed at home with his new found love
Not even a thought of Joe,
While Joe lay plotting to get him back
He’d teach him to be so flash,
And walked on up to the top of the creek
With a shovel and old pick-axe.

He felled a tree, and shovelled some stone
To block off the old creek line,
Watched the water form in a lake
Then rested, taking his time.
He chopped a hole in the old creek bank
The water washed it away,
And formed a new creek bed to the west,
And wondered what Brent would say.

When Jill got up at two in the morn
The tide was flooding on through,
In through the back door of their house
And cutting the house in two,
Brent went roaring up to the hill
Astride of his old half-track,
‘Have you gone crazy, Joe,’ he cried,
‘You’d better be putting it back!’

‘Too late, too late,’ said his surly mate
‘The creek is forming a bed,
And anything to the east of it
Is mine, the agreement said!
So move your things to the west of the place
For the east of the house is mine,
The creek that’s flowing right through the house
Will be the dividing line.’

Brent went muttering back to the house
And divided the house in two,
He shored up all the rooms to the west
As the water came tumbling through,
While Joe sealed off the east of the hall
Made sure that his rooms were dry,
While Jill looked over the barricade
At Joe, and started to cry.

‘Why have you done this thing to us,
What did we even do?’
‘He cut me off at the Farmers Ball
In the course of a dance with you.
You never gave me another chance,
I was waiting to propose.’
‘But I would never have married you,
Brent was the man I chose!’

Brent went over and burnt the house
On the other side of the creek,
There wasn’t water to fight the flames
So it smouldered there for a week,
The farms are empty and vacant now
Two creek beds, dry as a bone,
With Brent and Jill now living in Nhill
And Joe in the scrub, alone!

David Lewis Paget

I was travelling through the country
That was once East Turkestan,
Keeping my western mouth shut in
The province, Xinjiang,
I wasn’t going to linger there,
I had planned to head due east,
And follow the Western Wall to where
They spoke my Shanghainese.

They spoke a myriad dialects
All over Xinjiang,
There must have been forty languages,
And I didn’t know but one,
I had to get by with signing ‘til
I wandered in through the trees,
Into a tiny village where
A man spoke Shanghainese.

He stood in front of a tiny shop
That was selling drink and dates,
And something evil that looked like worms
All white, and served on a plate,
He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in
And I took what I could get,
Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,
I can taste the foul stuff yet.

But there in the back of the tiny shop
Were a host of curios,
Most of them antique statuettes
The sort that the tourists chose,
But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp
Covered in grease and dust,
I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘More than your soul, I trust!’

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,
But that was the Middle East!’
He shook his head and he said to me,
‘Aladdin was Chinese!
His palace used to be over there,’
And he pointed out to a mound,
A hill of rubble and pottery shards
That covered a hectare round.

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound
And found all sorts of things,
Cups and plates and statuettes
And even golden rings,
But the thing he found that intrigued him most
Was the finding of that lamp,
He’d dug it out of a cellar there
That was cold, and dark, and damp.

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll
With instructions in Chinese,
‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought
For the Djinn will not be pleased,
There are seven and seventy wishes here
Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,
But if you should wish the seventy-eighth
Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’
But the old man shook his head,
‘If I knew that, would I still be here,
I would rather this, than dead.’
He said that he’d been afraid to wish
For the lamp was ancient then,
Had passed through many since it was new,
Back in Aladdin’s den.

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,
But he shook his head, and sighed,
‘I’d rather keep it a curio,
It’s just a question of pride.’
I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan
And his face broke into a smile,
‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,
And she’s been gone for a while.’

I paid the money and took the lamp
Then wandered into the street,
Held my breath and I thought of death,
And then of my aching feet,
Shanghai was a couple of months away
If I walked as the rivers flowed,
So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,
Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

It only had taken a minute or so
To travel a thousand miles,
I put the lamp in my haversack
And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,
I had a meal, and rented a room
And fell in bliss on the bed,
What I could do with another wish
Was the thought that entered my head.

I’m writing this by the flickering light
Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,
All I can smell is candlewax
And the air in here is damp,
I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish
But smoke poured out of the spout,
The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,
There’s no way of getting out!

David Lewis Paget

My knight in shining armour upon his gallant steed,
Or rather, truth be told, my gallant knight in his shining steed,
Rescued me in my hour of need
When I decided to adventure off piste
To view an ancient church,
For a couple of minutes, or so I thought,
With not a care for any danger or dragons.
But my wheels sunk deep into the cemented mud,
So I had to ring and surreptitiously confess my deed.
He came racing back
To the midsts of nowhere,
Thank goodness for what three words.
We pushed, we pulled, we added straw and sheets of wood,
But the vehicle was stuck fast.
With the light dimming,
We shovelled the earth,
The van decided to play ball,
And with a flurry of mud
Came free at last,
Thanks to my honourable knight
For rescuing me in my misdemeanour.

Oh me and my easily distracted brain!

The news spread over the countryside
As a clatter from iron rails,
The ominous sound of clacketty-clack
From their intersecting trails,
The plodding Goods of the 0-4-0
To the proud Express from Cheam,
It muttered as it was going past,
‘They’re going to get rid of Steam!’

The sudden shock brought an answering hoot
From the stack of the proud Express,
That whispered by on its 4-6-2
But shuddered to draw its breath.
‘And what will they pull their Pullmans with?’
As it passed through an April shower,
A 4-6-0 on another track:
‘They’re moving to diesel power!’

The steam from the Earl of Erin laid
A trail through the valley floor,
Its coals glowed red from the firebox grid
As the fireman shovelled more,
A Day Excursion that quietly sat
To wait for the train to pass,
Had whispered, ‘Sorry to see you go,
You’re King of the Master Class.’

The smoke that billowed from out the stack
Had turned from white to black,
The footplate shuddered, the furnace roared
As it raced along the track,
‘They say they’re moving to diesel power
And they’re getting rid of steam,’
The Earl of Erin had hurtled by
As a Tank Engine had screamed!

The driver, checking the frantic pace
Was trying to slow it down,
But nothing worked, not even the brakes,
‘We’re headed for Hampton Town!
We shouldn’t be doing sixty-five
We’re twenty over the top,
He slammed the door of the firebox shut
And the fireman’s shovel dropped.

The tender’s couplings opened up
And the Pullmans fell away,
The Earl of Erin had surged ahead
With a new found power that day,
It passed a struggling 0-4-0
As it headed toward the sea,
Gave one long blast on its whistle then
To say, ‘I’m finally free!’

The fireman jumped at the water tower,
The glass was going down,
The driver jumped when it hurtled through
The Halt at Hampton Town,
The Earl of Erin went racing on
When the sea came into view,
But locked the brakes at the water’s edge
Just as the boiler blew.

The Earl of Erin’s a rusted wreck
That still sits there on the line,
And children crawl on its footplate there
And dream of another time,
A time of dragons, a time of trains
A time they can only dream,
The age of romance, gone at last,
It died with the age of steam!

David Lewis Paget

When the roof came down in the copper mine
There wasn’t much hope, we said,
Those twenty men on the south-west drive
Are buried, and probably dead.
The guys came in from the midnight shift
And they shovelled away ‘til dawn,
Pumping air in over the drift
They propped where the roof was torn.

For nearly seventeen hours they worked
They took it in turns to drive,
A passage was finally opened up
Though the men were barely alive,
I watched them all come staggering out
They’d all survived to a man,
But the last one out had begun to shout:
‘There’s a guy in there, like Pan!’

They sent in the stretcher bearers, who
Were there for an hour or more,
The men were shaken and pale of face
And wouldn’t say what they saw.
The stretcher was bearing a crumpled form
That they’d covered up with a sheet,
‘We’d better be taking this to the zoo,
And everyone, be discreet!’

A rumour, much like a whispering sigh
Was spread through the mining town,
For everyone wanted to know the guy
They’d pulled from under the ground,
The men they’d saved from an early grave
Lay still in their hospital beds,
At every question they looked away,
Just lay there, shaking their heads.

Their syndicate lottery numbers won
On the Tuesday of that week,
A million each for the twenty men
But still, they wouldn’t speak.
I guess I was feeling curious
So I took myself to the zoo,
They’d closed it down for refurbishment
But I knew the keeper, Hugh.

He put his finger up to his lips
And he said, ‘Don’t make a sound!
You’ll get me shot if as like as not,
They see that you’re looking round.’
He let me in through the rear gate
That was clogged with vines and weeds,
And we crept unseen where we’d best be screened
In the shade of the lilac trees.

He pointed me up to the Tiger’s cage
And he said, ‘You go ahead!
I’ll not be going further than this,
But don’t get close, or you’re dead!’
I wandered carefully up to the cage
It was slowly becoming dark,
And something hung in the evening air,
A sulphurous smell in the park.

The Tiger lay all over the cage
Its body was ripped to bits,
Its blood was spattered in violent rage
A snarl was on its lips,
Then from the rear of the cage a shape
Came shambling up to the bars,
It stood upright as a human might
But it certainly wasn’t ours.

The eyes were narrow and slitted, and
They glowed with a dull rich red,
The beard was long and the teeth were strong
Set deep in a goat shaped head.
It seemed to be wearing an evil grin
As it seized the bars with its claws,
And over above its pointed ears
Was the hint of a pair of horns.

Its legs were the crooked legs of Pan
There wasn’t the slightest doubt,
I took one step away from the cage
And stifled a fearful shout,
But then its shape had begun to change
And a tail whipped round at the bars,
It was long and pointed, covered in scale
And marked with a hundred scars.

It grew in size, in front of my eyes
As I stood, stock still and stared,
Pressed its face up close to the bars
And grinned with its nostrils flared,
A sudden flame shot out of its mouth
And a voice rose up from its gorge,
And rasped a name that lay deep in my brain,
‘So we meet again, St. George!’

David Lewis Paget

The smell of old spice
and expensive merlot
follows you
everywhere you’ve been
every place you go.

Can’t connect to the time or place
when you became a mystery to me.
You were always busy
a plane and a train away.

I knit together things to ask you
begging you to be familiar again.
The paper full of questions
crumpled in my hand
on your return.
Now is never a good time...

When alone,
I crawled through your life.
All stuffed in boxes,
Polaroid’s and negatives.
My eyes like hummingbirds
anxious and darting.
Found photos of you
of your past, unknown to me.

Someone I did not recognise living
inside those snapshots.
Long sandy blonde hair, wild eyes
riding motorcycles
boiling with life.

So serious now
a difficult man, who has witnessed hard things.
Who sips rare scotch, with two ice cubes
and talks of politics
and good hosts.

Mystery man,
Who shares my my hazel green eyes
And the color of my hair
Yours now short and grey.

With tears of dew in my eyelashes
I wait for you at our home,
Alone.
To speak of your travels
and trivial matters.
My unanswered questions
painfully shovelled from my mind.

and those who socialise
go among such few
as to be dubbed philosophers
for nonchalantly smoking
cigarettes in corners,
and there are those who shun
socialising as a pastime
equivalent of backgammon,
and smoke cigarettes entranced
by speaking back the nervous-twitch
embodiment of a sparrow's chirping,
smoking cigarettes as if they
were dragons.

the late 19th century was famous for its ménage à trois,
a profanity of a trinity, nietzsche rée and salomé
akin to edvard munch, stanislav przybyszewski
and dagny juell (ducha), and the evening by account of
jens thiis with stark naked satan unable to die
from pneumonia... we have much to congregate over,
less familiar stances to keep observance to,
and when the munch (moon khh, not
a marijuana smoker's pastime for a psychoactive
ingredient missing fuel or calorie),
exhibition came to london, i was expecting
the SCREAM... didn't get it...
fell in love with the madonna (1893),
such refined curvature, it was almost a
chair never sat on... pristine remembrance
of sloth never enjoyed for a book of letters
to be written by a politician...
shame, really... a homosexual's additive
enzyme of jealousy, who knows what chance
by-product  is worth keeping... l.s.d. or champagne?
well one produces psychotic people thinking
they're wheelbarrows, the latter produces anorexic models...
take a pick... take a sweetie darlin'.
that przybyszewski was an odd sort,
wrote solely in german, hallucinated,
was the stark naked satan at one seance of artists...
i'm guessing the next ****** will come
from a mono-****** marriage disdaining
the woman, the surrogate as merely *tool,
if not from there, then where from?
dysfunctional heterosexual marriages?
you can engrave an orphanage populace with the latter,
with the former you can't...
yo-yo was the craze when i re-entered english education
caterpillar of tiers...
you can't do with the former as you do with the latter...
they're too rich... godly power bestowed upon
mortals is only bestowed with a debased exchange of matter:
you guest it! money!
money is cheap as ****... it's basically an **** by-product
of a shovelled ***** squirter digging into it
with piston thrusts... money, an enzyme a catalyst
in reverse... poems are cheap as conscience...
while artistic doodles gain a multi-millionaire status
once the dabbler in oil is dead...
i sold van gogh's sunflowers for a country's g.d.p.
the over day... how's that?
the point of art is to be dead... that's when the hagglers
and merchants come... art of worth means the artist is dead,
dead;
so there we have it: men overtly invoke optics
into ******, they paint, watch a woman utilise
all vowels and one particular consonant into
an ******* contorting moan, hence they paint...
male poets are an oddity... they say:
painters go ahead, enjoy the sights...
i'll use words as wet thumbs and indexes
putting all the vibrant candles out from contorting
to a swallow's chirping twitch...
keep your paintings, sell them for a grand...
there are many more colours here...
than the primitive spectrum to a suited geometry
of contortion that only revels in still-life, the captured
moment: but indeed akin to the primary,
red and noun, indigo and pronoun, green and
adjective, yellow and verb, orange and adverb,
blue and proverb... while the other colours
missing are left to occupy the two canvases of
black & white, as writing, grammatical syllable
shrapnel of prepositions and what not.

I walked into her breakdown and all broken up she said,
"You've got to help me stamp out all the demons in my head"
I couldn't help myself and so I knew my use to her, was similar to a drowning man grasping at thin air.
She screamed and then went silent as I opened up my eyes.
I waded through her temperament and shovelled up her sighs.
I watched as she exploded in to frothy foaming seas and then I knew that I could do just exactly as I pleased.
The night fell out from its sunken lie
The seas ran red with ruby wine and then they all ran dry
I swear I saw Emmanuel break dancing in the sky..
But all I heard was the howling wind and her pleading plaintive cry.

The day tripped up as we all tripped on
The morning came and then was gone
We never knew when or just how long
We'd have to wait for the evensong.

So when we packed the cases and we sped out in the rain
The falling sun crashed down to earth causing us some pain
We had to lay in the sandy bay,prisoners on the Spanish main
But that's the way we did it and we'd do it all again.

The Cormorant was the darkest ship,
As dark as a ship could be,
Not only the paint was pitted black
From the funnels to the sea,
But deep inside in its rusted gloom
In the echoes from its shell,
It was like a monster roamed abroad
Released from the depths of hell.

It roared and echoed by day and night
As the boilers turned the *****,
Lurching across every wave that might
Try to break its hull in two,
It was laden down with a thousand tons
Of a cargo that made it groan,
While breakers slapped its quivering sides
As it made its way back home.

The Captain stood on the shuddering bridge,
A man with a heart of steel,
He tried to control this raging beast
As he lashed himself to the wheel,
He gave no quarter to any man
Who would shirk, avoid his task,
But called the crew to witness his due
As the man was soundly lashed.

Down in the depths of the engine room
The firemen shovelled coal,
Each shovel sprayed like a black dismay
In the light of that glowing hole,
And steam built up on the pressure gauge
Of each boiler, one and two,
As men would fret, while running in sweat,
To do what they had to do.

The seas built up and the rain came down
As the Cormorant rolled and swayed,
Then lightning flashed and it ran to ground
Like an imp in a masquerade,
It left three dead on the afterdeck,
They hurried to help them there,
But the captain roared, ‘Throw them overboard,
We’ve more than enough to spare.’

A mutter grew up among the crew
As dark as the bosun’s hat,
I never knew what the crew would do
So I wasn’t in on that.
But the Captain disappeared from the bridge
And the wheel was swinging free,
With the Cormorant broadside to the waves
At mercy of wind and sea.

They said it must be a miracle
When we finally entered port,
The bilge half full of water, they said,
And the Captain fell overboard.
But the ship was done, had made its last run
As the fires went out in the hull,
Then raking through the mountain of ash
I found the late Captain’s skull.

David Lewis Paget

The more we are told what to do

The more inclined we are to gather throughts new

To rise up and intentionally ignore

The mindless **** shovelled through the door.

It was the way his last breath escaped both corners of his half-opened mouth 
as if to suggest a lapse in memory or an opinion that demanded to be expressed.
It was the way the light leaked in through the slivered blinds of the half open window, causing my brother to squint in his sleep, dreams of staring at the sun without ever going blind before awake, forgetting to blink.
It was the way my mother gave me a one armed hug, mumbling a vague “I love you too” while staring off into the distance, handing me a half smile before driving off into the sunset of my vulnerability.
It was the way the music entered the home of my ventricles without ringing the doorbell, hitting the head of my heart until it was all black and blue, succumbing to the beat of its abuser.
It was the way I opened the flesh, the tiny red petals colouring the bath water red, planting little seeds as if to say: “Here. I am here. I exist.”
It was the way my skin grew over itself weeks after every wound, a thin layer of white snow covering it like an unwanted winter, begging to be shovelled, poked, prodded, or stepped on again.
It was like death on his doorstep, a couple of violins failing to comfort each other beneath a tired symphony.
It was the best way a band aid is to be removed. A little at first, then all at once. One clean swift sting.
It was a lot like 
leaving.

They’d shovelled her husband into the ground
Before she got to the grave,
She wasn’t able to keep good time
And her husband used to rave:
‘I spend my life, waiting for you,
You’ll be late for your funeral,’
That wasn’t due, but it may come true,
She was late for his, do tell!

He wasn’t a very pleasant man
He was known for his violent moods,
She’d married the guy, then wondered why,
He was often downright rude.
She knew what he was capable of
For he’d often flipped his lid,
And left a trail of destruction then
For that was the thing he did.

If only she had got to the grave
In time for a swift goodbye,
And with a spray, sent him away,
She may have just heard him sigh.
But he must have known she was still at home
When the hearse, with him inside,
Arrived at the local cemetery
On time, but without his bride.

She lay awake in the bed that night
And thought she could hear him breathe,
Just across from her pillowcase
And her breast began to heave.
The wind sough-soughed at the windowsill
And she heard a step on the stair,
She wished for once she had been on time
To know she had left him there.

But she hadn’t seen the coffin drop
And the hole was almost full,
She’d asked that they uncover it
But she didn’t have the pull.
She only hoped he was six feet down
Unable to get back out,
When there was a rattle, out on the porch
And she heard a dead man shout.

‘Late, you’re late, you’re always late,’
It moaned, in an eerie tone,
‘You couldn’t get to the grave on time
So you left me all alone.
You’d not come even to say goodbye
And for that, you’ll pay the price,
For I’ll reach out of the grave tonight
And I promise, it won’t be nice!’

The shutters began to rattle and bang
And the door flew out, ajar,
The wind howled in like a taste of sin
‘I know just where you are!’
She shrieked, and pulled the covers up
And placed them over her head,
‘You just can’t stay, please go away,
You can’t be here, you’re dead!’

The covers were torn from her huddled form
And from what the coroner said,
‘Her face was white, she died of fright,’
Curled up in her lonely bed.
There was just one thing in the autopsy
That was missed, and he made a note,
The thing was botched, for her husbands watch
He found, was lodged in her throat.

David Lewis Paget

Through the drawn kitchen blind lurks a hand
Resting upon the island mantelpiece
Where a deserted ham resides.
The hand extends from the crippled man’s gaze
And he simply seizes the ham, traversing the kitchen maze.
He takes the ham to the second stair.
Here is where he retires - the second stair
Is where the deserted ham and crippled man shall expire.
Where man becomes ham but retains his crippling attire, and
Ham becomes man staying lost and yet still desired.

Heaven would be naive to willingly believe that this,
This strange analogy, is indeed about a ham and a mere man.
Rather, a man is nothing but a mere ham.
His life begins as someone else, perhaps a pink perfumed piglet.
Born into mud and stuffed to the brim with dirt laced love.
A ham, like man, comes from a humble and simple dawn but is
Swiftly thrown into a larger lie or a shortcrust pie.
A lie of paradise and quiet, a pie of mustard and thyme.
We, like the ham, are ripped from our genesis
And forced to be something sublime.
Something needed,
And something that never gets the time to bleed.

Man is to be consumed just like the solemn ham.
We are sold as ideas and ideals. And never separated
From those very same stale ideals and ideas.
We are what we conceive and we conceive what others
Wish us to be; never do we truly conceive our own reality.
And often we will wait aimlessly, not at the kitchen side,
But by the side of our lovers and others.
The resting ham sits in its juices, taking in the rosemary
And amber, sticky honey.
Man also sits in an array of flavour; tastes of dark thoughts,
Fleeting romance and persistent boredom.
We soak up our own shortcomings and we leak out all and any
Chances to not be eaten.

Man is devoured not by others but by reason.
The very tool we use to debate, learn and
Understand the ever changing seasons.
But what of the ham? The deserted tasty ham.
Well, it like man, is either shovelled into a waiting gut or
Left out to rot, and befriend dust.
Never to decide when they cease, but both
Are destined for the grave nonetheless.
What has left the man crippled and the ham deserted?
The realisation that man and ham are the same.
Man leaves the ham to rot
On the kitchen counter top, sending it to be removed
From the world. Never to be consumed. Never to be consumed.
Man’s neglect of the ham is a neglect of connection,
Man has crippled himself in hopes to remove association.

And so, the crippled man
Extends his hand in hopes
To regain the deserted ham.

I am the reckless voice of a thousand nights spent driving down
highways too close for comfort when hometown familiarity
was everything I was trying to escape
                                             only to end up face to face w/ cold
                                             concrete Bank Street(s) where reality was shovelled
                                             in my lungs, where fatality was imprinted on my veins
                                             & where circumstance became a real reason for
those overpasses where I constantly searched for a friend..

you see, the strangers I’ve met have melted into my memory
& given me such capillary strength that the whole world seems like
it’s right in my own backyard too often, & it’s never too late to
                                                extend an energy to save another’s skin..

warmth now pours from their eyes & I realize that it only takes a second
to change a life, a striving moment can be stretched out to last a lifeTIME!

so we survive in these streets of small towns or big cities
& we strive not to repeat what’s been taught to us by silver & living room screens:

I am the reckless voice of a thousand days spent walking on & along sidewalks
                                                                                            on dirt roads
                                                                                            on early morning wet grass
                                                                                            on those highways heading home

In the deepening **** there's always some acerbic wit to hand you a *****,hand made by the powers that be just for you ,to dig yourself out or deeper into the pooh.
Life as we know it,deep in the dark pit, stinks,
I ink out these words amongst the flotsam of turds and wonder what's going on,
where has the scent of the roses all gone?
No doubt stolen away by those who can pay for the luxury of stuffing their noses with perfumery,
I see a time when all this can be yours,but for now it is mine,
so ready yourselves, shovels in hand and we'll all shovel away in our, 'green and pleasant land'
and one day when we've shovelled the **** all away
we can start to live.

now i'm breathing cigarette smoke
into fog....
it's local and it's bypassing
the global narrative...
i'm sitting perched on
a windowsill
debating whether
d.n.a. predates the other curses:
i love music more
than women,
i'll say it again: i came to love
music more than the Tehran's worth
of women, the music over-powered them,
i wash shaking at the knees
of ac / dc, and i asked for d.n.a.
inclusion... because i was
bothered to read it as otherwise...
and i know there's a woman out there for
me.... and i known there's
  a lesser comic book hero to guide
the matter into a mortgage...
but i know where they gas the liberals,
i know know where Switzerland is...
   i'm bound to a boredom already
hijacked...
      ai'd gas a few liberals had i been given
a chance, like my gradfather likes to
recount: herr! bite bonbon!
         i don't mind writing about extinction
i'm quiete dodo about it,
       if the music plays, the women can shut up.
i heard my grandfather whisper into
me a chinese whisper about ensuring
your heart remained small...
             behalten herz, klein herz...
           herz uber alles.
i don't mind being an extinct specimen
akin to the dodo,
        that might sound insane around here,
but i am vague about the argument
to pro the alternative....
given the culture i find no worth to scatter
the proof...
      music overcame my want for women...
and i what comes next is a stamping,
i just want to fear the end of gravity
but instead i'll probably hear a harnass flinging
Amazonian bridge between compensator and
instigator... and i hope
   i'm wrong...
                              all this dyslexia
and anti-Rousseau sentiment... had i not read Voltaire...
but i have no one to cite...
              apart from them, so it really does seem
like all other clubs: slightly selective...
                       after a while not getting any
makes your forget that dating sites exist,
    you start to learn the proper narration of the world:
so close: yet so far away...
                           i can't state the last bet i made on
the roulette of passion, i decided to feel nothing
concerning it...
                    it got a bit worth a right of a bollocking...
all i needed was a club, and a barbwire wrapped
around a club for a signature, to turn
the debate with the right ink...
                i said n'ah, i prefer music more than
a woman's nagging... women married always
tend to make other males more useful than their own
partners...if there's a love: it will tear us apart...
otherwise we'll congregate with the accomplishment
of jealousy...
                 and if we feed the little heart:
there's no great love to be had...
                                    i can't expect this to sound
as a guiding principle, as Athos said:
  the best advice: is to give no advice at all...
                      i just love watching what
darwinism did away with the historical narrative,
we'll all be dead within the next year...
                            we're all counter to what could be
taken as worth keeping...
            i mean... we already said that fame was pointless
given there was no competition left to
usurp us... having congested the edges of the world,
becoming prime in Siberia... and lavished
in Arabia...
                      but i know that this is really
an anglophone reality, talk this talk in germany
or france and the reaction is different...
                   the more i realise that i do speak english,
the more i wish to not speak it it...
i get tired of it...
                   i sorta lose the plot, wishing that
there actually was a plot to care about...
                                          i can't see the plot,
i can't see the plot because there isn't one to begin with...
   it's architecture kept by invoking a care for
superglue... i can't see it as migrational,
   i can't see it as eastern european economic migration
or the african stampede, or the eternal-judeo
   dispersion...
            if the western people are bewildered by their culture,
then i'm doubly bewildered by the export of all
body-works to china, leaving earopean man with
menial, but rather mental works...
                  and i'm drinking, so that's a +,
but i just can't see the end as related to d.n.a.
being upkept... i can't see that narrative...
                          my concept of eternity can't really
transgress your lack of it...
                        it's get boring after a while talking
with atheists... i'd prefer talking with ahumanists...
        i'd love to pair an atheist with an
ahumanist... because i don't actually see a lot of
human in what's god's own...
                    a- (indefinite article), meaning without
god, or the kaleidoscope finger to the eye
suits the noun right... thetheism is also a very
ugly noun that could exist.... before god has no
parameters, i'd prefer to look at the words that can exist
but don't, given our care for lubricants...
     the- (definite article), meaning with god....
    well the alternatives are islam... christianity...
or the argument by populist secular commuters:
we actually do believe in the same god...
question is: what's there to question in your spare time?
        after that it becomes a hellish enterprise...
  or a dictatorial reality... or the democratic basis for:
i don't eat with you, i won't sleep with you,
and i'll certainly not turn the central heating for you.
   the least thing accessible for me, is to
watch television with you,
                 because that's how it works.
given we've moved into a.i. and robotics,
i'd like us to play god, beyond definition, by simply
not being there... just so we can perfect creating the robot...
so atheism must come with ahomo...
                          best prescribed via ****...
   or the *****...
                         well, if we are to forsake the existance
of god, and fully embrace creating the robot,
we shouldn't technically be here...
                                which makes Heidegger's
dasein really useful... given that popular culture
made fun of germans as not really human but
merely robotic, until the human peeped through
the veil of Auschwitz and everyone was like:
um... revision? just like they thought the Jews
were stupid clinging to the tetragrammaton...
  they did... in the past 2000 years of "judeo-christian"
interaction, you'de get more crucifixes than
talks about the tetragrammaton...
                well, if we're serious about building
the ******* robot, why not do away with god
but also humanity? i don't see the point of disposing one
and keeping the other...
           in our ambition to create a.i.
we didn't forsake god, we forsoke ourselves...
    i don't care whether god is dead...
                     given we have youtube
                  stars that act as clogs in the advert machinery
i find no care to find a deus mort, or a **** viv!
i find, no concern, in finding a dead god,
  or a man, alive... non deus mort, vel **** viv!
  counter:
    numne deus mort: **** est non viv,
             **** contra viv... contra deus...
                 strange to think,
a non-existent thing: to be so obstructive,
and later construct one's life around him
being so beneficial, as to make a life from
orating atheism... a tad bit funny...
        how can i perfect this vulgate?!
numne deus mort, **** emortus...
                evidently, given our preoccupation
with robotics and a.i., the death of god
came with the baggage of becoming gods
and asking to spark a secondary case of the Edenic
charring...
               again the Latin... it's a fetish, my apologies...
deus mort (god dead, est, yeah), or
                        **** viv (man, life bound) -
   it appears the two aren't as explicit as it would appear...
it seems there's a natural basis for a god,
whether satan's clause does actually involve
being paid in toy-structures and cleaning the conscience...
          and i do speak worse Latin than
most English people speak modern English...
luck of the draw... the long straw.... i win a tumble dryer...
you win a voltswagen beetle engine...
   we both end up hearing a midnight song of
mechanical burps and fake stomach maracas...
       i just thought i'd say:
either god is dead, and man has died with him,
or god is really dead, and man fakes living a
posthumous life, encouraged to create a robot...
which he has done, alternative to prayer,
  creating something a god might occupy himself
with then man has abandoned god...
                    i sometimes think:
of all the anglophone writers, i use the word
god as shamelessly as most anglophone writers
use pronouns... i use the word shamelessly...
  because most anglophone writers use pronouns
so freely... i know this doesn't give the fat
of the argument... but i use it freely...
       i'm starting to wonder wether
            god is dead gave us anything more than
people paying for a grave before they get
shovelled into it...
                  as it stands: quiet the opposite...
long before the epitaphs or the dates are
              enshrined, they have already bought
the parody of owning a home...
they are already waiting for the marble space
beneath the maple trees...
                 which is why i ask by restating
the end of metaphysics, if gott ist mort,
            what mann ist viv?
     last time i checked, i found more human warmth
of my own voice asking a refrigerator about
the weather, than my neighbour about
    last Sunday. i'd sooner punch my neighbour
dead than ask him about his feelings.
6ft1, 115kg... i guess i could put a sock in
the right case of gob.

a many a great things have happened recently...
hmm (insert a weasle's snigger)...
i was watching a russian production of...
the escape from sobibor...
yes... i know that rutger hauer is dead...
but not unless listening to some vex'd...
citations from blade runner:

    firey the angels fell - leaping thunder rolled
around their shoulders -
burning with the fires of orc...

at least that's what i heard...

    i want, more: life... ******... which echoes...
no not that 1987 tv flick...
the russian produiction...
      of recent years...
          upon this the god's green earth...
        i could watch... schindrel's list two times
in a row... before being subjected to...
escape from sobibor...
                if only i had a toothpick handy
and pickles and some martini and god forbid
the onslaught of yawns...
         only one aspect of the film stood out...
a sort of:

    the death of Matti Nykanen...
the finnish ski-jumper who ended up being
a stripper...

    i didn't recognize him at first...
or "at last" i'm usually good with faces...
esp. those on film...

         i think the film itself was supposed to
be... the need to capture "the look"!
      oh believe me... a cary grant or
a gregory peck would never...
                                a rock hudson?
a john wayne: drawl... yep: that six-a-piece
sharp shooter...
guns 'n' roses: civil war...
opening citation: from cool hand luke...
paul newman eating all those... hard-boiled eggs...
paul newman couldn't give "the look"...
that antithesis of roxette's pop stamp...
the verb that is actually a noun...
when there's someone worth it...

no... they could never convince me of ever
having: "the look"... these major actors...
paul newman or a robert redford...
i'm counting only the men...
this one's spezial...

        from first hearing queen... to seeing the movie...
Karl Frenzel...
   that same tortured soul
of a Ralph Fiennes playing Amon Göth...
i had to wonder...
did they decide upon psychopaths...
or was it already a priori from the words
first uttered in the hitlerjunge?

nope... completely amiss...
is that really christopher lambert?
raiden from mortal combat...
connor macleod...
                 hell: if this be the fate of skin
to be a much later devised
disguise in stretch-armstrong of leather...

but it was all about "the look"...
it was so intimidating in it being intimate...
"do you still remember me"...
i don't think i had such trouble
with val kilmer...
then again: who's the busy body
in my receding memory loop-hole to loot
from?

  they must have used dubbing...
otherwise it would seem that christopher lambert
spoke the very base of german
like a puppet of a ghost...
most certainly a changed man...

he had that look in his eyes that read:
i don't remember myself...
this face is no good: for you... either...
and it truly wasn't...
truly petrifying this enigmatic cloak
of ****** features...
but those two voids like a lemniscate (∞)...

i can X with my eyes when concentrating
on the egoism of the tip of my nose
and see the water inside the aquarium
all blurry and salty and mirage prone...
but not this...
this was a sensation of...
seeing an unrecognisable face...

again: i'd sooner revisit watching schindler's
list: because of it being in black & white...
otherwise cudos for the work
by a yanuš kamińци... that red dress:
"here" and... "there"...

for a russian the poles are traitors...
but thank god for the bulgarians
being the bell-boys of their whole
affair of wounded pride...
given the bulgars frequent the aisles
of st. cyril...
             but it looks like... the mongolians
are having... "counter-productive"
thoughts: themselves... good for them!

so close to the germans:
is it eastern europe west of kiev?
is it?
  traitors... oh god... those minor
denominations of the baltic states...
   perhaps... once upon... a time...
prussia would have been just a pocket of influence
akin to estonia... or latvia...
let's not mention lithuania...

it was a christopher lambert... by god...
sure... he was suited to age...
isn't everyone? but not like this...
in a positive way, though...
incomprehensibly unrecognizable...
a loot of enigmas...
well... if gérard depardieu a citizen
of ol' mother russia...
what doesn't stop a christopher lambert...
being dubbed when speaking german
like a manakin does running...
eyes that scream rather than peer...

it's one of those sad affairs of appreciating...
beside theatre... acting...
of course everything is in the detail
of the edit and the production of the end
product: with at very little hiccups as is to be
avoided...
it's a russian production: nonetheless...

but thoese eyes...
i didn't remember him...
was it perhaps donning the uniform...
or was it perhaps... perhaps of:
    seymour hoffman?
   but why couldn't i pick out...
a b-list actor... look at me... mr. hierarchical prone...
but no?
    chris cooper... bruce greenwood...
sure... no problem...
always the general, the "protagonist" of
"real" life... somehow along the line:
hardly a basis of a shadow meets shadow
compromise...

i think i saw a human being that became
unrecognizable from the burden of life
off-screen! i actually found a conviction from
a thespian... i saw two blinding cauldrons
of ire... which was...
ire... it wasn't fire...
    two blinding cauldrons of ire: i saw...
a blue tinge of flame... i saw tears...
it wasn't a purity of fire that will be later
made into a recycling power...
it was...

a fire that keeps intact a status quo...
that unfathomable perspetive
and an unmoveable object:
even if armed with the binding will
of a sisyphean determination:
where are the demons whipping him
to comply?!

   i was two blinding cauldrons of ire...
i saw fluorescent blue of glowing squid and less
revealing monsters of the deep...
i saw... a face disguised as a mask...
i saw a face from beneath a donned niqab...
more clearer than the glee of smile...
the chubby moon-clip
or the scythe of reasons behind...
the bulging shadow of harvests pending...

all this... and not much more...
  i'm good with faces...
   apparently not good enough...
was it really christopher lambert playing
karl frenzel in escape from sobibor?
i try to bypass the glamour and all that dry
artifact affair of keeping score...
to denounce all actors as...
the last and the least obliged to put pressure
and fathomability of the concern
for human... "things"....

what sort of a man is a christopher lambert
wearing.. if his eyes are...
pencils and needles piercing me...
that i can't recognise his face?
have i been gorging on too many
digestive biscuits... or something?

    by faking it... but i didn't see a slouch
of wanting to fake it...
given the numbers...
          what are the puny rhymes...
                   i want to see a rhyme
that riddled a blunt hammer-axe at the end
of this... foreboding of "contemplation"...
i want to find it soothing
for man to justify the antics of a slaughterhouse
concerning the wailing pigs
and the... cowering aum litany of the...
sanctity of beef...
            or the lesser kind via
the goat of the graces of riccota...

          i don't exactly know what i saw
in those eyes...
    but i saw enough to make me forget
a face.... i would most, be assured to...
have a memory of...
i was drawn into the eyes...
it's not like brian may aged so badly...

i did see the flabby skin of a pig become
stretched... then contracted...
over a square mile of a Berliner's post-code
"hum and oops"...
    little ******* good that would ever
do me!

              these tires need to be burned...
this soil needs to be shovelled...
this butter needs to be spread on
oozing warmth toast...
this rootweiler requires a leash:
are you the sort of walker
to allow a lessening of tension...
mind you: this "hanz" and "heinrich"
tends to tug along like
a pirañha on a diet...

                 the other head
of... the clamour fest... of feeding of...
cerberus... this night-walker this...
shadow-thief...
                   this... burden of my pride...
synonym coupled with ego...
rottweiler to the east...
       dobermann-pinscher to the west...
get this...
a ******* pop-up head of
a dachshund heading south:
                                        in lombardy!
hey presto...
                    my luvvie-dubbie companion!

for me... give me a harem of 72 dogs...
i'll sooner dog-wrestle bit
and chow-mein
and clash with teeth before...
         don't make me...
preside over the gratification of having
72 virgins: that same number
of the names ascribed to the hebrew god:
you and not you...
"you" hairy-hey-rab! ibin!

there's a barking... i'm pretty sure i don't
hear anything worth biting into?!
i'm quiet unamused hearing barking...
when i'm not entertaining
the convinction to suma summarum
it with: chewing...

              i would most certainly like
to hear less barking...
****** punctures of flesh...
i'd like that very much...

              i'd like filled stomachs of dogs
to be the only precursors...
the wolves are at the gates...
    
           words like daffodils easily
plucked up...
                  is that serious enough of "us"
to have these minor griefs...
as... vectors for what's to become
of the unfolding rest?

Horse manure shovelled around a delicate rose
Now what is that all about and why?
I think possibly the plant holds its breath
and starts to moan and then cry.
That is a nice pleasant smell!
Do you think the rose thinks that?
We all know its the goodness it'll absorb
and not just like a smelly doormat.
But later when the blooms are large
Who is the one getting the credit then?
Back the horse up with a smile on its face
Lift up the tail and shout "when".
Out plops the steaming stuff on target
just right where the plant grows.
The gardener with hope in his heart
Strength in his arms and a peg on his nose!

Street plows
Push snow waves
To douse
My shovelled drive.

Ebenezer's got his knees under the table
watching movies on your cable TV,
Scrooge gets it all for free or didn't you know?

And we came down from the trees for this?

Fight for what we get and when we get
we get little or nothing and nothing's about the measure of it,
we're being treated like **** to be shovelled away
while the fat cats play us for fools.

Nothing schools you more than what you want and can't ignore,
I'm thinking the tide is about to be turned
time that we burned down the old order
and
bring in a much fairer system.

I see management wannabe's trying so hard to be pleasing, but they can't have it both ways
pick your sides and make sure that you're sure,
no cure for losers or baldness.

We wish you a merry Christmas get ******, make sure you miss us, we wish you a merry Christmas and see you next year.

She kept the jar on the mantelpiece,
Our Grandma, Eleanor Flood,
A plain ceramic with just one flaw
A cross that was scrawled in blood.
We didn’t know what she kept in there,
We’d ask, but she’d never tell,
She merely said if we opened it
Our souls would go straight to hell.

It sat forever above the hearth
And stared at us as we ate,
My sister said it was filled with earth
Scraped up from somebody’s grate.
I thought it might hold a pile of coins
Of Spanish Dollars and gold,
I’d read so much about gold doubloons
In pirate stories of old.

But Grandma Eleanor pursed her lips
Each time that we asked her why,
We couldn’t look and we couldn’t touch,
She’d sit, and stare at the sky.
‘You vex me, child,’ she would often say,
‘You’d tempt the devil to tire,
Your parents left me to care for you,
The day they died in the fire.’

She used that story to shut us up,
She knew to pile on the guilt,
She made us pay for each bite and sup
By shaming us to the hilt.
She made it seem like a deadly chore
To have to cater for us,
‘My life,’ she said, ‘should have been much more,
Not that I like to fuss.’

We’d often ask about Grandpa Joe,
Ask what had happened to him?
Her eyes would turn to a fiery glow,
‘He died in a state of sin.’
She wouldn’t tell us what he had done,
What got her into a state,
We looked for signs that she’d loved him once,
But all that we saw was hate.

The house was heated from down below
A furnace under the floor,
I’d have to feed it with coal and coke
I’d bring from the coal house store.
She’d make me empty the pale grey ash
And scatter it on the stones,
Out in the garden, by the trash,
And next to a heap of bones.

She said that Grandpa had kept a dog,
And fed it on butchers bones,
Then threw them out by the fallen log
And next to the pathway stones.
My sister said they were burned and black
And like they’d been in a fire,
We wouldn’t have dared to answer back
Or call our Grandma a liar.

One day, while dusting the mantelpiece
The jar had crashed, and it burst,
The sound of shattering porcelain
Drowned out our Grandmother’s curse.
For spilling out of the broken jar
Was a pile of ash in the light,
And sitting there was a skull as well,
Along with the ash, bleached white.

Then Grandma let out a weird wail
And fell, to kneel on the floor,
She stared, and the skull was staring back
To tear at her cold heart’s core.
‘Why have you come to haunt and stare,’
She cried, then toppled and fell,
Down on her face as her heart gave out,
Sending her soul to hell.

Two jars now sit on the mantelpiece
Of Joe and Eleanor Flood,
A matching pair, and each with a cross
I carefully smeared with blood.
I shovelled her through the furnace door
And later, raked out the ash,
While now there’s a growing pile of bones
In the garden, next to the trash.

David Lewis Paget

It was a need to get out
From under his own feet.
It never paid to get too
Comfortable.
They were getting itchy
Under the table.
And he was just one step
From taking the milk train.

The more he thought about it,
The more he wondered.
If he was reading his own signs
From the wrong angle.
As he ate,
A very large plate,
Of crispy bacon,
Plum tomatoes and
Two, very runny eggs,
What fuelled his desire to leave?
Was he afraid this was a story
With legs.

He had always been short
On staying power.
He enjoyed the chase,
Until something changed.
It was a rhythm thing,
He got tangled up
In the heat of it.
And before he knew it
He grew tired of the place.
The change of pace.
The easy grace.
Heck, even the smile
That lit up her face.

But it was good,
He thought.
As he shovelled up
The last of his food.
It was time to go
But he was curious,
Would she be furious
If he didn’t show?
Would he be missed
When she awoke?
If he went back now
Could he slip
Back in, alongside her.
Would she know,
He had thought to go?

It was now or never.
The train was due.
But without being clever
Or doing the math,
Assessing the rights and wrongs,
Weighing up
The pros and cons,
He realised he didn’t mind
If he ever caught a train again.
His bones were crying out.
All they wanted to do
Was spend their days
Rolling over
In her bed of clover.

He was ready
To face his music
Whatever the tune
He would listen.
So he finished up,
Paid his bill,
Smiled at the girl behind the till.
He knew these people now
And was it really so bad
To be known.

It had taken a long time
To realise
Life was a thing he needed to choose.
What did he have to lose?
You can be happy
And sing the blues.
It is a mind thing.

And now that he said it,
He felt at ease.
For the first time in years.
Did she do that?
He wondered.
Maybe she did.
And he was content
To wait
And see
If she felt at ease with him.
Maybe she did.

The grave was freshly dug

Just awaiting the arrival of the body

Four Ghosts stood silent in wait

They had waited a long time

The waiting was over

The gravestone would remain nameless

There would be no mourners

No prayers goodbye

The body was checked for the final time

A customerly nod would start proceedings

The coffin was placed into the hole

The gravediggers quickly shovelled the earth back into place.

No words were spoken

Satisfied, they left

Four Ghosts stood silent in wait

They had waited a long time.

The waiting was over

Four Ghosts

Now

Became

Five.

i'm sorry...

   i don't know where
i'm at with
what becomes the worth of:

******* into a sandpit
and moulding a castle...

the work of: sight of once,
made expendable,
twice: null and a grey
afternoon...

discoveries of:
℘ (℘)
      ℑ (ℑ)
                   ℜ (ℜ)...

vowels: less akin
to the odd,
   number:
consonants:
less akin to the even...

ⰗⰖ!
        ⰗⰖ!
                     ⰕⰖ!

the logistics of:
occupied time,
via,
interludes of:

( [ {
                        &whatelse?(;)

i code:
but i no brick:
i layer:
i hammer:
i: dodo: could
do with something:
else...

i **** on snow:
if there be:
any more snow...

work of and if: art...
by writing:

no hammer - no cue...
better:

   variety of:
the wind blew south
and i, ventured,
north...

             disorientating
poetics
in the variety of:
i'm comfortable
having acquired
limited scraps of:

"ditto"...

         the feud the life
the: cushioned wording,
the:
      best we gravitate
toward a less:
fathomable cult
of tomorrow...

     no point giving into
learning:
no one these days is
in for the plot
of: passing hereditary
     scoops...

   as far as i am
concerned:
no one really bothers
teaching others...
solipsism...

         self-
prefix: grand
regurgitator...
   but with no
-self worth suffix...

       the tiresome
burden of what was
once called life...
and now...
              pit,
a charging bull,
  sea...

        honesty:
why bother educating
children,
when what
you're educating them
with is a combat versus:
the delusion
that contradicts the
exercise
of the real world?

      educated bastion
emeralds...
       shovelled grip:
           with a languid
          utility of a shovel...

life has become
an agitated presence
of a canvas i'm
supposed
to fill...
              but am,
consistently
revolving around:
needing to
speak the equivalent
of the sound,
associated with:
flushing a toilet.

if etymology is a history - but not a history: in that it is
more a historiology - which, well: history is the study
of time: but time as exclusively begot by man,
a temporal study of man: by man...
history is, after all: not the history of geology:
since stones have no memory:
only friction and pressure and a time-space exclusivity...

what am i talking about?
probably a quote from the pre-Socratics,
the inquisitive genuis: genius of the Greek
spirit - without citations of Homer:
because i won't: will not cite anything Greek
beside the romantic curving of lower-case
a as α

     perhaps it's just a dreary winter mid afternoon
and i'm feeling all "sentimental":
but sentiments are for women
while emotions are a masculine "thing"...
yes... i see the divergence of the sexes -
my words will not become pop fictive in any retrospect:
handed or mishandled...
etymology and history...

i wonder why i still have the capacity to utilise
the word:     ALBIET
albeit....            to substitute it for ALTHOUGH...
albeit = although...
           old Germanic sing-sing-along...
i would rather use albeit rather than although...
or... rather: that's alðough
raðer ðan                   ðorn:
a halo and a crown?

  i ask again:
         a'h geislabaugur og a'h kórónu?

now i will not ask:
why a'h? otherwise the English tongue would not
hollow out the vowel to a simple a-plha
lymph ah... but a as ~aye... a as a yes...
no...
       ah: dental care: say ah with your mouth open
and a dentist's hands shoved in your mouth...
that sort of ah... but a'h... not ah...
as in no: ah! of relief... an a'h of dental inspection
"constipation"...

hmm... i just had one sharpshooter whiskey
drool of a moment and i'm all ***** Wonka and
the Chocolate Factory in my head...
my eternal demise will be not exploring
the imagination of Roald Dahl as a child...
didn't have time to be a child...
learned how old-English conservatism worked
circa the 1990s in terms of illegality of
migration...
i remember punching the walls when my father
was arrested with my mother: handcuffed...
day short of gaining legal status
since arrival circa 1990...

                    my revenge: banana-boat migration...
now the floodgates have opened for
the miracle of the roaming stars...
but England is a ******* besides:
it's the weather that's a drag...
you must have a melancholic-Scandi disposition
to digest the morose and the melancholic...
by now England is so multicultural that
i begin to wonder whether the English even
noted that: waging war against **** Germany
on principle of defending Poland was
ever a good idea...

       given that Polish soldiers joined the RAF
and fought on English soil all the while no English
soldier stood foot-by-foot on Polish soil...
is Ukraine any, ******* different?
master posing ridiculous affairs of double standard
ethics.. ha...            

ah... another word... constenation...
i forgot what it means: but i remember the word...
"á propos" / pardon pardon:
consternation... not constellation...
akin to the rubric of the word: not grievance...
hmm... not belegarence...
belligerence...

           funny tongue this English and French:
hide letters, show letters: eat letters... regurgitate letters:
dyslexia must be a phenomenon in
the anti-orthography of the English tongue:
'leash... my leash:
my poly-schizoid Shakespearean:
if an apple fell on Newton's head...
a pear for a quill to break the mind
and let explode-in-exploring the phantoms of
abortions...

me? no, i don't have the luxury of choice...
i could (perhaps) choose a naive 20 year old woman
as (a) "compliment":
but then again i find naive women discouraging
for my taste... i don't appreciate the dynamic of
fathers grooming sons or daughters into becoming
the same: football team supporters...
i'm privy to this subtle hyper-paedophilia...
it is... a hyper-paedophilia since the hyper- prefix
denotes: it is collectively: collusively(?)
no, not collusively... openly done...
football team fan grooming...
it is: hyper-paedophilia... a variation of brainwashing
without adherence to ****** acts:
instead... *** ARMY... per example being
a child with a father who's a Tottenham Hotspur
supported...

having digested Ezra Pound's Cantos...
currently digesting Charles Olson's Maximus poems:
i'm not assured anything by postmodernism,
clearly the 20th century was a bridging-gap
in how evolution was to play out
societally...
                  industrially...
already i'm sitting on the throne of bypassing
the old function of journalism:
i have come to question journalistic integrity
with due diligence and find it:
bankrupt: bankrupt like the priesthood:
that journalism was the priesthood of the secular
world i see me: heretic: obnoxious stamina orc...
i'm yet to die... and till then i will:
conjure a hammer and a scythe for every moment
i endeavour to feel a canary of a heart
in my ribcage...

as i was thinking:
of the difference between men and women:
of women and the cycle: birth and rebirth...
the beginning and the end...
while with men there is no cycle:
there's only a way through, a dead end and...
from nothing -
i have no luxury of the riddle of the chicken and egg
i only have the ego and the O of oscillation
i oscillate and do not idea-morph a re-:
recycling, rejuvenation, reincarnation...
i'm a crow's beak device of honing in...
by eclipses of the suns and the gods
and all that is sheen and mirror-smiles...
i am a fetishist of death...
as much as: well... only when life becomes
intolerable do i become: a death-fetishist...
which raises my libido and poo...

         (cut off... not necessarily implying i *******
while taking a ****, but given that
cats can't **** and **** at the same time,
it feels rather natural to ******* while
on the throne of thrones)....

what came first? the ego or the cogito?
that's simpler... can i think without "i"?
clearly i can abstract, which is like: the wording
of division (÷) with words and not numbers:
then again pronouns are like integers...
but given the current climate of "politically correct"
pronoun fetishes of they zee zoo
we have people who have no concept of
pronoun-integer compactness -
fraction-peoples ***-unit abuse victims:
by any decent scrutiny of a glance...
           somewhat casual-schizoid and not:
the classical schizoid-bilingualism...
more schizoid-bisexuality... brains in the sheets
and in the hemorrhaging genitals...

one could add: there appeared a rainbow at
the spectacle of Golgotha...
sickly sweet genius of the Greco-Hebrew conspiracy
against the ailing military genius of Rome...

i am going to write an apologetic letter to
Fulham F.C. for granting me work...
till the end of the year Fulham shifts are clashing with
Tottenham and West Ham shifts and i just won't
be able to fulfill the demand:
and given that both the Tottenham stadium
and London stadium have a summer prospect
of entertaining artists for concerts...
well: working at Fulham is a sort of regress...
although the rate of pay is circa £20 while the other
stadiums pay less... it's still less pay given
that Fulham is only a football stadium
and cannot be utilised as a concert venue

a much needed letter of apology:
given that until the end of the season Fulham shifts
clash with Tottenham shifts...
and that given recent developments at
Tottenham invoke me in a supervisory role:
outside, hands-on... directing the crowd
like a Moses... obviously the escalated "burden"
of accountability is a promising aspect of
any role: given the mantra of:
the easiest job in the world is not appealing...
alias of: but i'm not heart-surgeon either...
tongue and language this spare plaything of mine
i will notoriously retreat into grammatical-gymnastics...

just to reiterate: chicken or the egg?
that's wording it in old Latin,
avoiding shrapnel wordings...
i.e. what came first, the chicken or the egg(?)
similarly:
(what came first) the ego or the cogito?
primo ego vel primo ego cogito?
clearly the construction of consciousness
"consciousness" begins with "scenting" the optics:
"scenting" the optics?
oh... coordinating the senses...
coordinating = harmonizing...
even though thought leaves so much room for
error and does not actually invoke any
active participation in the senses...
the ego: doesn't either...

no amount of thinking equates to the participation
in identity, thinking doesn't
stubborn ego is all about the id in the capacity
of the ideologue of identity...
a quasi-magnetism of adhering to
fixations... a unit a baron of the integer
never too sure whether or not capable
to disintegrate into a schizoid fractionable pronoun:
semi-noun politics:
wording at play...

    of course i'm drinking: to get through Olson
you need to drink...
to get through Pound you have to...
****'s sake... go and see an opera...
to get through Ginsberg you have to listen to jazz
and for the rest of the *******:
i like to listen to anti-feminist lyrics
of Sheryl Crow while reading Bukowski...
something about a "home" being a place
where men lie...
not lie as in: take a rest...
but rather deceive...
       i don't like deception: i already have a shadow
so the night is deceiving me
dragging behind me...

men and women: unlike an INXS (in excess) song...
men think disparagingly:
women think disproportionately:
women have really **** spatial coordination...
i almost punched a woman in the face
while giving directions at Fulham...
apparently my open hand seemed like
a pucker kiss in her mind:
"learning disabilities"(?)               maybe...
the world O so cruel:
but not                            Ω    (i.e. ooh not oh)
so cruel: like there's some juice to be squeezed
from a frigid lemon: frigid?

who can i complain to...
a girlfriend in her 50s and me nearing my 40s
at least i don't have a reproductive incentive...
woke up to fun fun fun
went to bed with fun fun fun...
calls it creamy-pie when the junk juice of
alligator drools oozes from her ****...
because i really couldn't stomach
a woman in her 30s with a Cpt. Hook syndrome
of wanting children...

tick-tock-o-ah-clock-tick-tock-o-ah-clock
(have a double helix on that, mate?)

i'm too fail-safe for that sort of jargon...
if i didn't replicate my genes by now
i want the "fun" to continue...
surrogate fatherhood sounds most appealing...
in line with my sentiments for ancient Roman
history...

but let's face it (face it i, not you or we):
men's thinking distinguishes them from others (other men)
while they return to a generic man...
prototypes galore...
we all want different things...
either riches or festering in a semi-digested state
of existential prowess with mothers and fathers
and hobbies...
some want to scale the heights and have eleven children
by 6 different mothers... rich enough to do so...
as men we want different things...
regardless: even being homeless is a Bob Dylan
phantasmagorical allure for a freedom
deeply associated with: of Sinope (Diogenes)...

the modern world has taught me to be more of a cat...
i imitate a cat:
i like a roof over my head...
i'll cook i'll clean i'll keep conversation...
Matthew the cat...
i like the cold but i also like the warmth...
woman is a universal creature:
all women want the same thing...
although their allure changes from woman to woman
each woman is different, individually:
as a person...
but in terms of a woman being a thinking creature:
all women are the same...

men? men are the same: thoroughly throughout...
every instance... it wasn't a man that caused
the Trojan war...
Trojan war and the accountability of being inquisitive
from the metaphor of Eden?
men are generic in person...
although different in thought: since we want
a variety we come to represent...
by our ***-outliers...
criminality is: rest assured: a search for freedom...

coming to the conclusion that...
well... there was German idealism there was Platonism
there was scholasticism there was there was...
but... what? first wave second wave third wave...
it's still feminism...
            no original thinking no...
it's still stoic feminism...
it's still going to be cynic feminism...
a **** contraceptive pilling of... cartesian feminism...
prefixing femme fatale to anything
a man thought of first to cope with
living without children...

but i do have a surrogate girl i'm very much fond
of so much fond of that i was willing
to stay up almost all night to bake her a birthday cake
so good so that during the pool party
every single attendee SHUT THE **** UP
and gobbled down the carbohydrate plush-hush...
****'s sake...

stoic "feminism"...
one movement to rule them all... Sauron hypochondriacs
of owning *****... as if the role of mother
was a burden...
and not a negligence of "self-discovery"...
oh sure... those desperate brats are brimming on
a necessary spanking but seeing them being
spoiled and not affected by a cane
is also, sort of, disorientating for them...
the joke being: you give them "too much" freedom
and... guess what!(?) they won't be able
to decipher freedom, denote it,
filter out what they might end up wanting!

stoic feminism my ***...
my *** greasing up a donkey's hind with a warm ****...
2000 years of men thinking:
reduced to 50 years of women playing
the crab-bucket game of cocktail miasmas...
it's infuriating given the innate persuasiveness
of women to: get the Trojan horse on the move
by men... gaslighting 21st century advent...
mind you i've been with enough
prostitutes to know the difference between
staged: receiving pleasure and
staged: faking pleasure as non-received...
up to a point where she's calling you up constantly
and you keep reminding her:
listen... i've found my little Robinson Crusoe
isle of happiness and i really don't
mind not proving my manhood anymore...
i've tried a ******* and i can vouch that
it's not an ego boost but a hindering experience
of not seeing a lover's face during *******...

because it is like the execution of the prophet
Isaiah: being cut in half at the bowels...
it's disorientating: ******* two women at once...
of sure... it looks great for a ******...
but in practice?            no....       n'ah ah...
unless... you reduce it to one jerking you off
into the mouth of the other... or something like that...
then again all the ****** tension in the workplace...
by the time you arrive at ****** intimacy
with someone... it will probably be...
something akin to: 2 years
                                              and 7,186 miles away...

or at least...
there i was thinking: what also came first,
letters or names?
nouns...
i'm pretty sure we said words long before
we used letters...
we only came back to conjuring letters after already
conjured up vector-meanings
as words...
the ancient Greeks confuse me with their
anticipation of atoms...
but there was surely a construct of meaning
concerning water before w-a-t-e-r
                    and certainly before H₂O...

so yes... words came before letters...
it's only later that we designated the cutting up of meaning(s)
into... more so...
a - a letter but also an indefinite article...
i - a letter but also a pronoun, personal?    sure... "i" too...
in ******
you have w - which translates to 'in'
and z - which translates to 'with'               yes...

there is a distinction between "air"         and 'earth' quotes...

we must have grunted shovelled, breathed in breathed out
and then! the genesis of the first word...
i wonder what the first word was, ever was...
it sure as **** wasn't god...
given that god was probably the last word...
sun and moon and water and
first to speak of giving names to things
to coordinate... much later time and space:
concepts per se...
curiosity by noun
yet confirmation of a shared experience
by the inequality of verbs:
like banking is not plumbing
and the disparaging rewards of:
say, borderline automation fancy of markets when
investing money and not,
    and when not providing enough poems
or: charitable carpenter with...
hoarding musical chairs no one will sit on?
lopsided supply-and-demand nature of money...
compared to actual goods...

plastic-money... there's too much of it in the world...
apparently money doesn't grow on trees
anymore... since these days banknotes are made
of plastic... and there is too much plastic in the world...
paper-money: simple thinking...
let's go back to basics...
point being: i enjoy books and music...
i buy whiskey and once upon a time i used
to transfer my earnings to prostitutes...

money isn't paper anymore...
nor is journalism a secular priesthood...
the true advent of democracy via the internet
and all the while the current politicians are clowns...
beside who the true politicians are:
the soloists akin to the demagogues and dictators...
because that's who you "suddenly" end up trusting:
solo-actors...
          well at least they are immune to conspiracies
of "in-groups" that languish any accountability...
at least i know who is accountable for what...
because Tony Blair and...          are...    will       be?!

by writing this and posting it...
i can bypass all that editorial scrutiny of what will
sell or not sell...
i earn enough to not worry about money...
that's the whole idea...
money per se being something akin to a "philosopher's stone":
i can turn a piece of "paper" into a plumber...
i can turn a piece of "paper" into a train driver...
i can turn a piece of "paper" into...

money is the "philosopher's stone"...
oddly enough... water imitation...
let's keep out of each other's way...
    best that way...
but there is too much wealth in this world...
wealth that is not appreciated: but squandered...
squandered by being floundered...

hell... i'm quite frankly content to cycle through
London, use the public transport than
have to "compensate" with "contritions"
of being mechanically - (&) viable
          for the workforce without a horse but a car...
esp in this oorban gungle... j j jade...

Through the gloom,
The air's brisk bite
Shovelled through and
Down my throat.

As I stood with them,
But alone
Outside your window;
Inside,
Memory
Came back to a mind,
This mind,
Scatterbrained and
Singing lyrics we
Once bellowed to eachother.
You sing and laugh in there still.

The things done in that room which
I'll never set foot in again.

Catharsis and chocolate
Coat shingles of my mouths roof.
This is what happens
When you run out of nothing -
When only a Viking funeral pyar
Would do
For you,
All of you,
Even the parts you couldn't get back,
When you smoked a James Joyce,
While the nurse let you out
For a cigarette.

Girls in tears,
Boys choking on bones of regret.
We're just children
Wanting, teething, weeping;
With a few more grays,
A little less grace, and
Every heart swelling with love,
Bursting into song,
tears, flames.

In nights with no sleep,
Only conversation,
The morning was years away.