"sixpence" poems
Melting down, crossing barriers, breaking out, stepping round.
Pieces fragmenting, character isolating. Green-acid, hair follicles, white is the blank slate, painting blues with reds.
Freaks from a sideshow, muscles in the sea, six-packs in a grog-shop, dancing improperly.
Beguiled by your bounce, sleep-walking this town. Fine is the white wine, poisoning the liver, spining on a sixpence, ********** follows dinner.
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 12:53 PM UTC
Even to an untrained eye
One can spot layers of foundation
Caked into her face
Is she a victim
Of some historical imperative?
Is she caged
In some arbitrary matrix?
Some fun-house of mirrors
While a mustachioed ringleader
Overcharges, shouting
“Come one, come all, bedazzled spectator
Behold, the distorted woman
Transmogrifying before your eyes!”
Or maybe she’s just vain
Or betwixt the two
Somewhere, a boy drops a sixpence
It rattles in the dusky jar
As he enters the dark show
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 8:51 PM UTC
184
A transport one cannot contain
May yet a transport be—
Though God forbid it lift the lid—
Unto its Ecstasy!
A Diagram—of Rapture!
A sixpence at a Show—
With Holy Ghosts in Cages!
The Universe would go!
3.5k
I wonder where the time went,
did I spend my sixpence for three minutes of idleness,was the less of me all I could see or be?
From Another Time by John Edward Smallshaw
it never came free
never lent itself to me
I had to fight for it
put up with,
oh
let's call it ****
but where did the time disappear,year upon year and now,
now
comes the winter of bitter regret.
I bet you have them,
the me in the men do
amen
is all we do
when we think this short life is through,
yeah?
fuckyou
I have no regrets
all bets are null,
pull up and put that in your pipe and smoke it out,my life's not about what might have beens,it means so much more to me than what I think time might see.
'From another time' is from another time and yet another rhyme and did you read that?
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 1:53 PM UTC
i
today we dress as cowboys
and the ladies look charming
but still is there justice
you are asking..
well,arn´t you the party poopers
up there is the moon
blow it a kiss
and down babylon..!
ii
do i sneak around and steal
from you
no..
do i sneak around and spy
on you
no
so what do i want..
you ask of me
i don´t know..
iii
well lily i think
that is just you
being paranoid
hell is this that
kind of world..
you scary cat
steal from you
spy on you
a kafka void
we must look
to what we
know as true..
iv
well i am not
here to hold
your
******* hand
i thought you
were..
no, this is war-
long periods
of boredom
interspersed
with inexplicable
fear and
emotion turned
on a sixpence..
we can´ t be
together and
we can´ t be alone..
that´ s true
so,we drink
smoke marijuana
and have ***
isn´t war hell..?
Sep 30, 2018
Sep 30, 2018 at 8:49 AM UTC
turn on a sixpence
i slipped on your silhouette,
as i crept in your shadow.
Obscured in your umbrage,
an abundance of dark.
Opaque mistakes clouded,
our nebulous hearts.
I shaded your colours in grey tone,
to take home,
your essence in plainclothes,
and our monotone goals.
I was your eccentric apprentice,
You were a trip to the dentist,
pulling me out of comfort zone.
I had decayed in ways,
concaved incisors seen better days,
yet in spite of my enlightened phase,
the sweetness of life took me away in a chain of abuse of penny chews and the absolution of front page news.
I choose me,
I choose you.
Now if i misstep,
i’ll turn on sixpence;
and my value to you will continue to grow over time.
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 3:43 PM UTC
A piece of green bottle glass
smoothed by restless oceans
seed pod from the horsechestnut
that shaded summer garden
sixpence stained by christmas pudding
dated 1928
a tiny fossil set in stone
rough to the touch of fingers
old lace from grandmothers wedding dress
now stiff and yellowed parchment
Sep 10, 2012
Sep 10, 2012 at 5:24 PM UTC
Transactions have redundant residuals
The remnants of commerce and trade
In pockets the small dust of currency
The left over cash of price paid
The clinking froth of things purchased
The metal remains of exchange
the leavings of costs and desire
the chinking bulk of loose change
It fits in you grasp like genitals
Warm, round with a vague sense of sin
What used to be golden and silver
Is now mainly nickel and tin
We are tired of the weight in our pockets
We are shamed by the drag of its need
For if it should fall from our fingers
We forsake our grace for our greed
For there is something quite reassuring
When you empty your pockets at night
You glimpse a glance of old memories
The sixpence of childhood’s delight
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 1:48 AM UTC
My lambs wool jumper.
My merciless mind goes traipsing through my time bank of bad memories.
Other people's bad management, misuses from my past .
Coming from nowhere. Coming from everywhere.
The memories just keep on coming .
My brothers . My mother . My father . And my sister.
Not a nice memory . Not a nice word form me.
Egregious individuals. And a devastating pack .
Three letters came one school morning.
I was six and my brothers a little older
The postman posted three brown envelopes
All a little weighty .
With a little bit of money .
We all three got a sixpence.
We all three got a letter.
So unexpected. A complete surprise!
The excitement of a letter.
The two older boys got theirs from God .
They were good boys .
Mine came from the devil .
I was a bad boy .
I was a humphy backit wee nyaff .
In writing . From the devil .
But thought I was a lovely boy .
Big brown eyes brown hair and dimples .
I never felt bad .
I never sought danger or conflict.
But I was .
In the middle of a battlefield.
Theirs .
You are a bad boy . I am a good boy .
You are being a sook . I am being a good boy .
You always want attention. I am an ill boy.
You always show us up . I am a funny boy .
You are stupid and lazy . You are trying to break this boy .
There I was as their swords flew and I battled their rages.
In my armour.
Made from my grandmothers soft wool jumper .
So soft and gentle and protective .
She let me choose the soft lambs wool.
It wasn't jaggy .
It didn't irritate.
It wasn’t abrasive.
And she made up the cost .
With every stitch .
She stitched with love .
With love for me .
Her boy!
The battle rages on inside .
The shell shocked boy now a man .
Still wrapped in the warmth of his gran.
And her protective lambs wool jumper.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 6:05 PM UTC
I.
You can always tell the
Virgins from the way they
Glide—cerebral giddy with nectarfilled
Hearts and earlobes full of
Wax/
Wane moonshine turf if you’re not
Dying for astronomers’ loves and what makes
Ptolemy different from Claude is
Given prove:
Equal and opposite reaction.
II.
Shove knife down pork
Wasn’t so hard, was it.
III.
TWO SOLIDS INTERSECT
In a plane. In the bathroom, to be exact.
What follows is not
Essential to the proposition;
Calculate the spatial
(surface area, volume of cubicle,
conclude insufficient is <
where escape
velocity is )
useless to
resistance factor 7 [prepare
for lift-off landing
taxi
To the Bronx of course where else would I
Be on a night like this it’s raining in the parlour
Wont you step outside?
III.
anemic & half-
starved half-
sandwich
go on,
have a bite.
IV.
in arm will undulate bloodcellspouroutcantstoptoowide
are you just imagining this?
What would they tell you in school blood is
thicker than water
i’m not sure they eat
carnivores here.
CARNIVAL
festival of meat.
Flesh
LIVE
trembling
quiver SWIFT shoot through air DUCK dead swandive nosedive outplug
BOOM go the couple in the cabin
lavatory
laboratory? Rats go bang in the night
crash & burn debris over Detroit is our
favorite way to die
colorful isn’t it rainbow—
brushfire—
bruises and fire storms out and around the
populace to decimate seems like mating by a factor of ten
V; or. X^2+i(70x7)=
aftermath:
my ex squared
with me seventy times
seven
equals in
fortitude (labor-intensive)
tea costs sixpence in dallas what about
you so
integral to my
being that sometimes I wonder if you’re just
imaginary or if
what it takes to be transcendental is
beyond what’s rational or even what’s
real to me:
eight is
enough for the eggs.
Sep 12, 2013
Sep 12, 2013 at 7:53 PM UTC
Like a shining sixpence perfect cloud
Why waste your light at bright noon day?
For when darkness cloaks us with her shroud
Who will light our way?
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 4:40 PM UTC
Just another crazy dream,
a third division sub routine
one more throw back,go to nil,and filled with images of course
Riding the China white concourse on the riderless pale horse which cost me plenty,twenty,maybe more,
don't remember keeping score
or how long the ride went on
or even if I was the one
sat there.
Dreams don't share this information just fill me with such consternation that I wake up in a sweat,
don't yet know what dreams do show me if they show me anything at all
and if I fall,
I fall alone through paper bags and tag alongs and uncaring of the rights and wrongs,if I hit rock bottom hard,it's my hard luck,
I took the first step on the stair
but still don't know if I'm sat there.
Flashbacks, needle tracks and red hot trains in coal black sacks and stacks of stacks that won't lay still and will I ever settle for the bottle or the pill?
and if I do,I lose the will I thought was mine,
traded off for one more time and one more line along the China white where walls of self delusion stand and fight illusions of my potency,
Important though it may be, there seems no synchronicity in actions I have taken,each action on its own as if it was a skimming stone that sank somewhere,
I wonder if I am sat there.
I had to wake of course
even horses need to rest and I think the dream was sent to test my fortitude or steadfastness,
in the face of nothing where another mess awaits and nothing states the obvious more than the blank look,like the first step that I took and the empty stair which is obvious to me leads me nowhere,
was I sat there
was that the third division sub routine
was this life nothing
but a crazy hedonistic dream?
but if it wasn't me
then I have a twin
either way
we never win.
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 1:02 AM UTC
I am concubine in another time
and another I am serf.
What purpose fate,
but
to make men wait
and to change the role
we play.
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 7:46 PM UTC
That woman really messed with my head.
I think she had issues. She left me whispering in bed at night while staring at the ceiling.
Ever recite her stuff in an altered state ? California for instance.
"Sing a song of sixpence". ? Twisted.
"Pease porridge hot" ? My word.
"Wee Willie Winkie" ? I am scared of you.
Great stuff.
Thanks Mother. No really
A Beautiful mind.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 9:20 AM UTC
SUCH A SUNNY DAY
the objects
in his pocket
have lost
their identity
their significance
to anyone but him
a hairy comb
photo of an unknown
woman
who can she be
a torn-in-two
train ticket
chewing gum
much masticated
yet put back
in his blazer's breast pocket
small change
a penny and a sixpence and
a button
from the cuff
no clue as to who
he had been
before the water claimed him
as its own
the disgust and fascination
of those
passersby who continue
to pass by
it such
a sunny day
for death to
intrude this way
the miscellany of objects
ownerless now
the waters of the Liffey
calm and unmoved
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 16, 2018 at 4:12 PM UTC
She rolled the sixpence between her knuckles,
As she thought about everyone she'd ever loved.
Was it love?
It's easy to say no, in hindsight.
Theoretically, your love should grow, along with that person,
Each person being loved more than the last.
The next person is one step closer to perfection,
Because we love, and we learn.
We learn who was right, and who was wrong.
Like the sixpence, currency, it changes, it evolves with time,
It gets stamped with a mark, true to its origin,
Even after decades of changing hands, that mark is still visible.
One penny could travel the world, collecting fingerprints.
Or it could stay in one place, as a collectors item,
You could savour and cherish it, waiting, waiting for its original value to increase,
Or you could let it go, passing it on to someone else,
Letting someone love it better than you did,
There's a reason we change hands, why we're shared out as we are,
Money is *****
Just like our hearts.
May 23, 2014
May 23, 2014 at 7:16 AM UTC
An old florist, dressed in black
Hands a white rose to a guy.
While the beggar pets a stray..
A bicycle falls by.
It’s the westerly winds again...
Rain peeking through the sunless sky…
Though everything is getting moist around..
It’s my heart that’s running dry..
There’ goes the artist’s beret
And the lil girl’s pink umbrella..
A child pays a sixpence..
To the friendly pretzel fella..
The street lamp winks
While it listens to the accordion..
Lovers falling in love again…
While I wait for my old companion
The sea isn’t getting any wetter with the rain…
Though my hands are getting wrinkled and white…
Then the same old man in his mackintosh..
Comes into my old ,weary sight..
We just saw, gave a reserved smile..
Then I cursed the different ways I chose…
Yet he melted all my regrets…
And held out that white rose…
Feb 21, 2014
Feb 21, 2014 at 5:44 AM UTC
Philoxenic appetence
Misplaced
Disproportionate benevolence
Dissipate
Myself: an object, given away
A transient drifter with always somewhere to stay
Exuberant sorrow ever-wishing to deject
Distortion
Deception duplicates
A heart burnt black
Focussed on the lacking, unable to bounce back
Mouths to feed
Needy hands grapple to extract
No fact needed
Smoky contortion
Inhaled greedily
Ready for the downfall
Open to the wind
Upward spirals shy away from the world they crave
Mischievous nymphs dance merrily on a stage,
Unmade
Then lay down to cradle their babes
Slaves to the slovenly
Behaviour of unrest
I know they’re trying hard but is it their best?
Sing a song of sixpence, your fingers in my pie
Life is not serious
We’re all destined to die
High.
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 9:41 AM UTC
I like mine two cream, two sugars my addiction sans friction.
You see coffee is my benediction to alphabet soup.
Sing as song of sixpence.
a pocket full of rye.
four and twenty blackbirds
baked in a pie.
Sister Loretta.That witch.
She gave me my first hit.
So long ago I had forgotten.
5 foot 2 eyes of blue. In a nun's habit.
I was all of eight years old and full blown away by the woman showing her chin and brow
in the Caribbean heat cool as the other side of the pillow Strange. Even then strange that a woman
would choose to dress in a black full length jacket that swept the ground as she walked.
Sweet as cane syrup. patient as a monk.
She gave me the love of words.
So Where is sister now I wonder ?
Probably pushing daises from under. That was many years ago.
Mia culpa. But I always wished for x-ray eyes. to see beyond her disguise.
Was she all woman or some holy mutation.
built to reject natural passion.
Mia culpa.
sister Loretta was forbidden fruit. One of god's many wives.
And I could only have one ?. Hmmmmm leme think this one over.
Blasphemer.
8 year old wood is hard to mess with.
Any dude out there who went to parochial school and did not have that one
on the replay spool, throw yer hands up.
.....That is what I thought.
Okay. just had my cuppa Joe.
And now I'm gonna let you go.
Just wanted you all to know.
Sista Loretta was Smokin Hot.
Oct 17, 2013
Oct 17, 2013 at 10:23 AM UTC
The psychic was in any event
surprised, she looked into
her crystal ball, cast
a line of Tarot cards into
a deep blue tablecloth,
took my palm, to
read
between the lines of this life and
the silver sixpence which was insurance
for the things that happen
unexpectedly,
She read between the leaves
which formed a leaf or
page
of
history and detailed things that only she could see but things I knew and told me of a drought to come, a plague, a heartbreak and some fun and Julie Hargreaves in the sun but that was back in '61 or maybe '62, she knew but wouldn't say and sixpence doesn't go so far,
The time declined my offer of a further reading and the psychic never said if
I'd upset or if there was some road where it was leading me and if so would it all end there.
Spend a moment and one more and every moment is the core of a moment yet to come, each minute moment as foretold, bold as brass and the psychic, such a pretty lass though she didn't see that herself and
couldn't tell me or wouldn't say and afterwards the passing of my day in Colliers Wood, felt good, felt fine, even though time had declined to interpret what was shown written in the lines upon my palm or in the bottom of the cup of cards.
I'm sure that time had meant no malice nor no harm, it's just a case of wait and see and what ever was and what will be and psychics drinking cups of tea and me minus a silver sixpence and none the wiser for the loss.
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 5:39 AM UTC
Adam!
turn me over and sing me a song of sixpence
hearing voices, not seeing faces ... with the radio on
it's just me myself and I
driving between towns emoting, gushing
*hurt me, break me, **** me!*
at the top of my lungs
finding bars buried in backyards
on back roads of insincerity
birch bitten and chewed
logs wet and rotten
and still, chords neatly stacked in ordered rows
can you stand me on my feet?
back home
brushing my teeth yellow
biting my nails turgid, hoping she will come with me to a show
my state is of a lower-class shambling
hoping for a renewal
or rebirth
sweating on the train repeating God's name
gasping for air making people nervous staring
at their phones wondering if I am going to keel over and die
it's just me myself and I
that's right, write it out in long hand first, then go back and edit
(wishing to write like Tarkovsky)
comparing father and son - an unchecked exception
they were buried in separate coffins
one in France the other, in a timber cask
but won't I be
too?
I wish I could say, "we have a saying in my country" or "scripture says" or
"I'm lost without you" (I am and now found).
In ruins at the end of a day
building pigeon flap (or come what may)
ascending a scale of notes in a mirror of songs
behold an image
in a scale of descending notes at dawn.
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 2:25 AM UTC
The dream last night had seemed so real… But it was just a dream, right? Those shadows, the messages on the mirror, the walls, all the groaning and the shuffling of feet… That was all just a dream, right?
This is all just a dream, right?
Fairly ridiculous question to be asking yourself as you’re being chased through the halls by this… this, this thing. Whatever this is. Its neck is limp, head resting on its shoulder. Its grin is huge, its face coated in blood.
Have you ever heard the children’s rhyme about the Crooked Man?
*There was a crooked man,
Who walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together,
In a little crooked house.*
This… thing, you’re being chased by, that you’re fighting off with a fruit knife, that you’re setting on fire and pushing into holes and still won’t die…
This is the Crooked Man.
I wonder if this is all the Crooked Man knew?
His crooked house, his crooked relationships, his crooked… crooked body…
His body’s only crooked because of the rope, though.
Maybe he couldn’t handle being crooked anymore? All he knew was a crooked life, all he owned were crooked things.
I wonder why he’s chasing you.
It could be to drag you down, to slaughter you, to make you feel his pain… More than you already have… To make you end up like him.
Your pasts are so similar…
Or maybe it’s to warn you. To say, “Don’t end up like me.” To make sure that you don’t die the way he died. The way he staggers, his limp neck, head hanging loosely, his unrealistically large grin…
Why did he make you put that gun to your head, then? Why is he trying to drag you down?
That’s a problem for you to figure out on your own. But you’d better hurry.
By the way, I noticed earlier… Your neck is a little crooked.
(This one was based off the video game, The Crooked Man. Yaay, video games.)
Oct 31, 2014
Oct 31, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
I gave it up for lent
or whatever went before
and I don't think it anymore
well not so's you'd notice
but if a kiss is just a kiss
why do I miss it so?
Ah
old men and pipedreams
where it all seems so long ago
and long ago is where the old folk go
to talk their tales.
The outlaw Josey Wales had no time for that
flat out on the badlands with his big sixguns in two big hands
I wish I were him
life here is grim
like in a Northern town
where the Moon rises and never goes down
where the Sun can't be found
and daylight never touches the ground
and the soot is something we cook with.
I give notice here and now that somewhere,somehow
I will shine
or sail off in a dhow to no man's land
and will my life away in a shotgun shell
Life here is hell.
I
in my instability cannot see
what's in front of me
and irrationally
I think I'm in a bind
blind to all these other things that this good life brings
but not wise enough or even tough enough to tough it out.
About ten o-clock
when I have taken stock and the food is running low
I go again to the corner shop where I take a pop at Majid and his fancy prices
I tell him rice grows in the paddy fields
he yields and lets me off for sixpence.
I feel so grand as if he'd broken wind and kissed my hand
and now I go
before the police arrive
can't survive on bread and water
ask my daughter
she feeds me when I hunger for
chop suey from the Chinese store.
All this with just one thought
one kiss
I ramble on
Life has gone and passed me by
I try with vodka,coke
a smoke or two
and it doesn't do it
life here is ****
but I remember down the pit with props and pony
only I could tolerate
second rate is what I got
not a lot but it will do
until the life I have is through
but had I been the outlaw Wales
I would have told such different tales
and life is but a coffin full of nails
awaiting on the hammer.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 3:59 PM UTC
White blank pages, wars through the ages,
reminiscing the fallen but forgetting their faces.
Turning the blank page, only to amplify our rage,
living the dream; getting by on minimum wage.
Every day is a struggle, so we lacerate our morals,
no concern laid fourth, reflecting on our laurels.
Criticized on a subject that was laid upon the table,
choking on my pride only to find I was able.
Mis-lead interpretation, personified through false conclusion,
has un-wound my path, representing deluded illusion.
Approached by a stranger, as he clenched for my grasp,
soon I was awoken, and daunted of my past.
The man’s fragile nature, and disheveled presence,
only beckoned for the call of a cheap, lousy peasant.
Disentangling his mysteries, wasn’t on the agenda,
but allowing him hope, meant less chance of surrender.
Now I find myself here, far away from a throne,
sacrificing my living, and everything I own.
The poor, ragged peasant ceases to exist,
and to top it all off, Grandma’s knickers are in a twist.
So down I went, on both my knees,
closed my eyes and began to squeeze.
I couldn’t see anything, that was for sure,
but what happened next, well what a ****** *****
The ***** old Grandma lay down on her bed,
took off her underwear, and this is what she said:
I’ve got a magic sixpence, will you come and give it a rub,
I’ve got hairy canary, and a belly full of flub.
Bewildered at this shocking scene, oh fast I did run,
only to be pulled by the neck, then up went her thumb.
***** old Grandma, this just isn’t right”
“oh wind your ****** neck in son, I can’t believe you’re so tight!”
Grasping for air my lungs began to bulge,
I headed for the nearest exit, only to be told.
“Son, there’s one lesson to be learnt in life”
“Oh really, is there Grandma?”
“Yes”, she said. “That is ******* right.”
Apr 5, 2012
Apr 5, 2012 at 5:21 AM UTC