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.

Hip Service
By Julian Malek

The zeal of cobblestone tolerance arrayed in fashionable hues masquerading as crimson secrecy, elevates the tide of man but some boats leak in their foundations. Therefore a cork to every exuberance and a triumphant torch for every sorrow lives onward in collective time. Larks that abound because prescience and PUGET sound, that brown has become the new orange which in turn prowls as a concealed swarthy black. To antagonize the willful and frenetic pace, a prodrome of lasting but memorialized disgrace. Should I move to a state by first or last name, or is the final appellation worthy of much more lasting fame. I scurry down the aisles, bemused by shimmering tiles and the beguiled audiences who see much in my limitation but doubt little about my debited elation. Ringmaster Barnum, how much horticulture is needed for assured superstardom, how many cloisters must we evacuate from the incendiary plumes of a metaphorical Harlem..  But know that no virtual reality can supplant the reality that does truly exist, or at least our time is too infernal and purblind to resist. Carrey the tops of mountains in the humor of wellsprings and fountains, we engage a menagerie of egos lilting of an etiolated pragmatic concern. Evicted from paradise, littered with say-cheese demise ensnaring three blind mice eaten alive by snake-eyed vice. To feel good without incorporated tyranny, we must see blue and red as alternatives to the same destiny. A world that reckons with the futilitarianism of pacified malcontent and astroturf monikers that lead the impressionable into a slaughter shed. Established or not, any enchantment under the sea must include fishes once a pastiche of me, but to them I avoid their courtesy flush and never even faintly blush as my egalitarian statements are lavish thrush.

Five TO Won baby one in 99, everyone here aboard the titanic stays alive, you got your boat baby and I got mine, gonna make it with babies numbered in surreal primes. Halt the slots game the nines, a stitch in time is going to turn out to be Mine. Flanger goals, girded piles, liminal like an aborted Harry Styles, we climb mountains we issue tithes, and the turmoil is etched into 45-notched bludgeons and two-tucked knives. Excuse you, where have you been all day, have you been sauntering in a gentle rain or a genteel pain, have you wallowed beyond the mires of doubt and ranked above David Blaine. I hope you tell me of your magic tricks, rather than your other flicks endeared I stand to fight an ineradicable itch. But if not, you placid pond dented by so many rocks and so many ripples give your heart over to me, before I clinch the special Olympics *******, we ran, we span the homespun garments of your left and right hand, but death is a specter that ghoulishly carouses along the carousel terminal disease we call life. I beseech your deepest affection and want to console you for your deepest struggle, to be there every time wed with time rather than a throttled scuttle. Moons make you guarded but maroons leave me desiccated, don’t ever let that wilted flower die, always water it with a rich but gentle ties and widened deck for all to at once marvel and pry.  Monsters of Mars Attacks once flanked my bed, as though the **** brain scared every gooseflesh and restrained every frisson of mystery. I lampoon myself for those cold Dark Knights and the protection ended by the plight of the poor mattering nothing to the deliberately internecine rich. I struck gold in a valley somewhere, an oxymoron of paradox that now you have the privilege to dock, to stay aboard to be a vessel of peace less widely deplored. Even if we don’t sprout wings, we garner the exactitude of measured things and our glass elevator though easily shattered by the glower of enslavement is actually our vista to heaven or listening to brethren tingles for rich mans trinkets and other things. For humanity deserves a legend and a princess, a regimented desuetude and a flanged lust but in our mistakes wildly flouted in momentary moments we become purified by the temptations of an alabaster palace.

***** the left-field wisdom of a pragmatic paragon ellipsis in prison, slip between the cracks and let my suburban muse become your urban ruse. To enchant a caged world beyond a reality delicately and deliberately unfurled. Squirming toads on highways enchanted but dead, are graves for the blue becoming purple in every dignified red. Gainsay assaults me with platitude, a repeated hitter quit on the first bunted ball into foul-line territory. Those gripes are swiped right in all circumstance no matter the plight. The pronged hearing of a trident sensitive to ambient collection, and suddenly we are all in the mad house even though the house of profaned pain is much worse. Glimpses of gambits that gambol for nickels in transit as occult grenades and known dice waddle through without artifice or device, and the laughter and slaughter that trains collegiate minds, differs no more than the tropes of a glamorous violence articled in sordid rhymes. This surfing movie means so much more than Surf Wax America pristine in limited but sacrilege nirvana. Teen spirits smell muskier than 90s pop dreams, the grasp and grunge of gouged eyes becomes a mummified staid, a scarecrow to those who disobey. Childhood flashes with blinding light, and new sight illuminates darkening blight, A blight eradicated only by two magazines and including one that houses the bullets that ***** themselves between death and comatose dreams both within astral sight. Littoral harbor on a seaside town, a shanty with a brackish gown that glides the gourmand to the cosmopolitan eatery on the outskirts of lost & found. But forever lost in embonpoint and forever gained in chavish that exonerates the gaunt, the etiolated prince in heart becomes irrefutable marrow in minded souls.

If I am a spy you are an ESPY, and if I cry than you are a baby,but since neither are the case my wiseacres will cultivate lava lamp dreams for a new generation and suddenly Boston bets on Harvard, but who knows of this piped blather squirming for relevance rather than voguish but temporary chatter. My regatta knows how to swim, my life now knows how to cringe and yet still win and in stilted plays of bungled sincerity the God of peace reminds us of our transcendent personalities. That we in sincerity top the barnacles of invention a novelty but a rarity. But the guillotine quill of emboldened unscripted parvenus ruthless in their eager dues, outdate and outlive the sued swayed blues that indemnify Clinton and make the atomic dog an amazing Winston hill a church often in sheltered disuse. Imps and urchins sting the sentiment, cloy the alimony of repentant betterment, but neither touches the gilded skies of pleonasm striving for raspy disguise as to dissuade further diatribe investigation. Lurking in those scared days of youth, the gore of unalloyed horror scourged me with a limp, that compassion itself could ever become a gimp. Now years later athletics better and scoring goals making the mildew sweat and the years wetter, not a global warming that can be alarmed by global mourning. Take peace at heart if distanced spears of separation make Idiocracy as a pastiche look exceedingly smart. And spar only with the true antagonists bridging malevolence with expedience. Killjoys sure, will joy even more sure, but still boys fluttered heart stopping dead at a stop-watched alarm the worst tragedy of our sordid sort. Give an African Child a real home rather than a spatial roam, a palatial desiccation of momentary Jonas Brothers snapping back at captives with sexualized foam.

Narrative blinds shuttered in an Island among mountains hardly ever wiser to sanitize the sanitarium among the wasps of stung power. Police crumple their uniforms as they prowl down the avenues, looking for misfits and widened platitudes. Somehow that the vigilance of those corrupted by their very career choice, look even worse when megalomania of private is the limelight of public, to their defense few turrets I can muster but castles in the sky will be the apartheid judge. Those that cling to virtue to eradicate Porsche-driven faked or real deaths at the most breakneck speed, that Fast & Furious operation if disclosed completely would turn the Shire of the ring into the hatred curtailed by a song in Sing-Sing. Immunity must not Yoda implore, that livery Liverpool marooned on islands can also to deplore the R.E.D. and still whet the sharpened stead and the fly-by-night Manchester United alights like militant peer pressure for wranglers in tights. But beating the Beatles at a game of Walruses and egg-shelled eyeful towers likely impedes rinkside hockey from anything over bellicose ballyhoo…it exists as a transient fixated glower. But who knows about soccer speculation when love is the transcendent temptation, when nest-egg hens rather than neglecting rig Bens of clockwork and clocked words designed arise better for their token ken. Do I must repeat the subtext of submarines, yellowed as though ugly unused as though unseen, as though the quixotic earthquakes of tintinnabulations Avatar dreams. Wafted souls console the disheartened thoughts of a dashed dream that Berlin hates more than a Furor’s unbridled and useless scream.
Demotic clips slinging from the bedridden silence of a token moon and its token friends, swimming in a shore of ambiguity whether history mellows or whether its furor melts away momentary doubts. I want to avoid the sting rays exorcised by due providence and become the amalgamated talents gentry and of course the upstart swagger of Jack Dawson. But with the psy-op going on, the people manipulated on all sides of a gray picket fence will the relationship bloom without muttered dissent or pretended smiles. Will we take upon the shuffled shuttle and dig with shovels deep-rooted Christmas trees and toast our lives to Dos Equis. We may never go out of style, but the treacle of illuminated imagery when divorced from sentiment bristle shows a swagger that prioritizes rather than amalgamates all love. I love being brash and brazen and honest because when she finally ditches the grandstand of delayed frenemies fandoms of other tinsel decorations without any substance beyond meretricious thrill. You want a roller coaster on some days, but most often you want the nutcracker to elope to secret hiding places. Swim with adventure not just in love, not just in affection with the starlight now matter how luminous, sixpence all the richer is no centuries any poorer and we could be that gilded couple of star and screen and if we ever have to scream, let our screams unite us in passion, rather than a milquetoast deference to pedestaled beauty. but of course the end times don’t laugh at your crumpled wizened relapse. Not out of convenience wed by a discriminating genetic harvest moon but a deeper engagement that flatters when stylish and bristles when romantic but never defiled, never riled of specious pretense. Promise me that you will always remember me in my flaws and my faults, in my scause factory destructions and the penults of PEN-ULTIMATE wisdom that comes before the grace of God in the annihilation of passion for eroded omission. If your goal is to be remembered, check that out…but the most admirable goal is as the propinquities of souls dusted in the wind returning to a spring equinox of passion and if you find in yourselves reservations do not depart from sacred land, and never jilt me because of a boisterous and menacing friend. You are everything to me right now, and I Hope this persists despite the vicissitudes of star-favored afflictions mixed with utter benediction without the pontification of stilted Benedictines  or rather the hyped ludic effrontery of termagants being made of younger and younger women. Leave it at this ,32 leaves the royal secret in royal hands and the Knights Templar and us we altogether hold hands, if only a prelude for a masquerade ball. But the stilted embarrassment of crestfallen time, let that be relegated and emphatically lets embrace what is like to not ever need a real white horse to get back into your favor, because we never go out of style we can brandish the best elements and reject the sentiments of the too newfangled and the too stodgy. We in our crenellated pleonasm can eager ride the lightning to another tomorrow and another yesterday and if even not that, we virtually make an indelible impression of embroidered love not too distant in ivory towers and not to vulgary( catering to popular sentiments) to become a trash glam movement. We soar, others deplore but let their purblind doubts render them blind to our burgeoning love.

Forget the brisk trees dangled in the wind on winding paths through haunted forest or remember them because of ghoulish fortress but with our apotropaic lamp we can avert most evil and call the rest fun and gains and shun but fames never profaned, never inalterable a destiny to magical to be some whimpered catcall. Or we could linger beneath lambent street lights disguised as though wilted garb, attrition of circumstance waiting patiently for the matinee and the vintner to escort us beyond the garb of pretense in a city so abundant with it that it deserves castigation. But I digress, a beachside cliff overlooking tepid waters tumultuous in their power but august in their noises, the cadence of love will sing a half-moon bay on full-moon nights and we will frisk each other like grasping at straws of permanent tracks trammeled of the elite and a sidetracked basque bet. Trim those antlers and instead grow metaphorical wings, to us we all sing but few can match your elegance and everyone would be crazy not to see your ennobled age and together thrilling songs to emulate thriller in sales we will collaboratively sing.
Haughty sneers from lifeless lycanthropy straggling furtively along the pastiched sidewalks of grime, livid because they can’t share the lingering limelight, with as many guarded perks of privacy clambering like a hive of snarky sharks. Lets ditch the big town dreams in terms of posh and stature if only for a caressed moment beneath the unadulterated stars and if you find spars **** to the extent they are amiable than I say guess what my name is Lars! Or wait a second, paused in the big city spotlight our stenciled hearts will guide whatever progeny is yours or mine or ours together we will sing the most comforting lullaby, and caves no longer must we abide. Yearn and earn every inch, as I gripe with my delicate saddened pinch but I think the innuendo speaks . Ripen with our trips to Napa, long afternoon sunsets swim in our hearts as we taste the vanguard’s toast on elegant wine.I console with entreaty to disavow the omen of that San Franciscan church October 2008, the doom implied by Einstein, the raillery of a world grinding down the endless decadence of a railed future inalterable in destiny or partialy amenable to widespread coquetry.

Forget those rumbles in your past that made you feel partial to insecurity and learning the ropes you transcended all and live in all eternity. Thimble and brook, tolerant of all those tokes I took your rebellious side flattens the yeast of Exodus raspy in its begrudged clapping. But the Pharaoh of the modern world sheltered me under his prickly thorns, shielded me from the sickly things that life adorns. We have the numbers on our side, the weight of destiny on our shoulders, dedicate yourself to yourself and I will preen the most vibrant wisdom and love will leap like Apollo across all borders not for camel-****** hoarders. We are culminated destiny in the wings of the best daydream

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.

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.

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.

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.

ACT I: Collecting Jigsaw Puzzles

My life has been a series of jigsaw puzzles, the first as pretty a picture as you could wish to see.  It never occurred to anyone that anything could mar the image of a bonny baby in all her glorious honey-hued, gurgling perfection.  

They never found out who crept into the playroom and stole the first piece. It was only one little piece – the size of a sixpence on the baby’s left ankle.  Hardly noticeable. A pity though that such a pretty puzzle should be incomplete.

The next piece to vanish left a leaf-shaped hole in the baby’s back. Did someone accidentally knock over the board? Perhaps the lost pieces are on the floor or down the back of the sofa.

But if that is so, why could they find no trace?  Surely it had to be the work of a thief because it did not end there.

The next puzzle was a toddler.  How strange that the same pieces were missing here too.  Not only that, but a third and fourth piece had gone – the other ankle this time and now a tiny gap at one corner of the child’s mouth.  Why would anyone want to remove random pieces of the puzzle? And how did they do it without getting caught?

No one had any answers.

Successive puzzles depicting a panda-eyed schoolgirl, a shy adolescent, a carefully groomed young woman – all plundered by unseen hands – revealed more and more of the blank surface beneath and ever less of the subject herself.

One day I opened a new box and asked myself “Is this puzzle half here or half gone?”

There comes a point when a puzzle ceases to be a picture with gaps and becomes a blank space strewn with fragments like the excavated remnants of an ancient mosaic.

Would some archaeologist dig me up and fill in the blanks to show posterity what I once looked like?

The jigsaw of a woman in her 40s would have been quick to complete, since so few of the pieces actually connected. Scattered across the board, it was impossible to decide if they, or the space between them, were the real object of the exercise.

I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.

Over the course of 50 years my unplanned jigsaw collection progressed from Bonny-Baby to Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet? What would the next puzzle be called… The-Invisible-Woman perhaps?

If you think jigsaws are frustrating, try my next hobby…

ACT II: Painting by Numbers

Number 1 was the original skin tone, a light golden beige, my favourite pigment.


Number 2 was the colour of nettle rash, mottled and roughly textured.


This was closely followed by number 3, a stark white, applied almost symmetrically in random patterns, some clearly delineated, others splashed carelessly across the canvas like spilt milk. (No sense in crying over it. There is no cure. It won't **** you.)

There’s nothing quite like summer for bringing out the colours of a painting.  A hat and long sleeves were no match for the persistent sun and by the time the picture was finished, the numbered paints ranged from 1 to 20 with a different abstract brush stroke to go with each one. My canvas contained a tortoiseshell patchwork of shades from brilliant white to violet, golden ochre, burnt sienna, chestnut and scarlet.

And yet this was the height of my blue period.

I had to paint by numbers for 50 summers before I could enjoy my third (and final?) pastime…

ACT III: Joining the Dots

By sheer fluke, at the age of 51, I discovered the secret of the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces. They were there all along – just not visible to the naked eye.  


They had been starved into transparency but, as I began to feed them, atoms of them materialised like specks of golden ink on blotting paper.  Tiny dots like pixels on a grainy satellite image, jostling, overlapping and joining together until they looked something like the missing jigsaw pieces - if a little mottled with mildew.  

And gradually the mildew has faded - along with the sense of loss - to reveal glorious, even colour.

Of all the activities I ever found in the playroom of my life, the most cherished, the most miraculous, the most deeply longed-for and appreciated has been this game of Join the Dots - an unremarkable pastime, you may think (if you have never walked in my shoes), but one which has brought me on a return journey along a jigsaw road from
Almost-Invisible
via Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet?
past Half-Here-Or-Half-Gone?
by way of A-Pity-That-It’s-Incomplete
and finally – if not quite back to Bonny-Baby – then at least back home to a grateful woman of a certain age who can look in the mirror and smile to see her whole self.


   Vitiligo: A Play(room) in 3 Acts © August 2013 Vitiligo Protocol

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat *****;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and *****-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

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

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!

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.

Sixpence could buy you a lot
A plastic doll from Woolworths
Crayons and cut - out books
A pair of socks
Packet of curby grips
Box of handkerchiefs
Half a yard of lace
Cheap lipstick
Flannel for face
Pears soap
A remote boat.

The counters of Woolworths
Were stacked with joy
Something for all the
Boys and girls
Suspenders for mother
Shaving stick for dad
And packets of sweeties
That we all had.

Love Mary x

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..?

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

Old. New. Borrowed. Blue.
I wrote to you about putting
Down my shield.
Opening up.
Still, wounded as I am;
When you speak of marriage
I run like the opposite
Of a Viking.

I have battles.
Fight better without worries
For a loved one awaiting my
Return.
Visit me when I'm wounded.
Bring water. I'll have new scars
For your lips to
Learn.

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?

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

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.

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.

The coach is parked outside the gospel church along Rockingham Street. Brown with a yellow line along the side with the name of the coach company's name: RICKARD'S.

Janice stands next to her grandmother waiting to get on the coach; she's wearing  a flowery dress and a white cardigan and brown sandals. Next to Janice's grandmother is Benedict and his mother and Benedict's younger sister Naomi.  Members of the gospel church who have organized the day out to the seaside are ticking off names from a list.

Weather looks good- the grandmother says, eyeing the sky which is blue as a blackbird's egg.

Benedict's mother looks skyward. - It does, hope it stays that way. Benedict looks at Janice; she smiles shyly. She's wearing the red beret. Her hair looks nice and clean brushed. Sit next to her on the coach.

Wouldn't surprise me if it isn't a little cold by the coast- the grandmother says, looking at Benedict's mother, seeing how tired she looks, the little girl beside her sour faced.

Maybe, hopefully it won't be for their sakes- the mother says, looking at the coach and the tall gospeller with the one eye. - mind you behave, Benny, no mischief.

That goes for you, Janice, no mischief or you'll feel my hand- the grandmother says, her voice menacing, and don't forget to make sure to know where the loo is don't want you wetting yourself.

Janice blushes looks at the pavement-  I always behave, Gran, and yes, I'll find the lavatory once we get there, she says.

One Eye ticks off Janice and Benedict's names; his one eye watching them as they board the coach,and sit by the window, and look out at the grandmother and Benedict's mother and sister. Kids voices; smell of an old coach stink; the window smeary. Janice waves; her grandmother waves back. Benedict waves; his mother waves and smiles, but his sister looks down at the pavement.

One Eye and two other gospellers stand at the front of the coach calling off names and the kids respond in return in a cacophony of voices, then they sit down at the front and the coach starts up. A last minute of hand waving and calling out of goodbyes and the coach  pulls off and away along Rockingham Street.

Well, that's it, just us now- Benedict says, looking out of the window, looking past Janice.

No more bomb sites after this for a few hours- Janice says, no more being made embarrassed by Gran. I know she worries, but I am eight and a half years old, not a baby.

That's the elderly for you- Benedict says, always thinking us babies when we're almost in double figures.

Janice smiles. She looks at Benedict. He's wearing a white shirt and sleeveless jumper with zigzag pattern and blue jeans. He's left his cowboy hat at home; his six-shooter toy gun has been left behind, also. Glad he came; like it when he's near; I feel safe when he's about.

Have you any money?- Benedict asks.

I've  two shillings- she says, Gran said I might need it.

I've got two and six pence- Benedict says, my old man gave me a shilling and my mother gave me one and sixpence.

The coach moves through areas of London Benedict doesn't know. He looks at the passing streets and traffic.

Billie, my canary, has learned new words- Janice says.

What words has he learned? - Benedict asks, looking at Janice's profile; at her well shaped ear, the hair fair and smooth.

Super, pretty and boy- Janice says.

Talking about me, is he?- Benedict says.

No, about himself- Janice says, but who taught him the words neither Gran or I know. Was it you? She asks.

Me? why would I teach him to say those words?- Benedict says. If I was going to teach him words they'd be naughty words.

You haven't have you?- Janice says, or I'll get the blame; Gran thinks I taught Billie those words when I didn't.

Well, I may have said certain words in his presence when I came round the other week- Benedict says.

Was it you who taught him to say Billie without a *****?- Janice says.

Benedict looks down at his hands in his lap. Did he actually say it?- Benedict says.

Janice nods. I got in trouble over that- she says, gran thought I taught him; came close to getting a good smacking, but she thought it over and said she didn't think I would.

So, who does she think taught him?- Benedict asks.

Janice raises her eyebrows. Who do you think?- she says.

So, please don't teach Billie words- Janice says, or I could be for it.

Sorry- he says, looking at her, thought it'd be a laugh.

Gran doesn't share your sense of humour- Janice says. Now she wonders if she ought to let you come around anymore, and I like you coming around. So please don't teach Billie words.

I won't- he says, not a word, not a single word.

She smiles and kisses his cheek. He blushes. What if the other boys on the coach saw that? How would he live it down? Girls and kisses. He's seen it in films at the cinema. Just when a cowboy gets down to the big gun fight some woman comes along and spoils it with that kissing stuff. He's seen Teddy Boys who seem quite tough, spoil that impression when a girl gets all gooey and kisses them.

Janice looks out the window, watches the passing scene. She like it when Benny's there. She doesn't like most boys; they seem rough and tough; seem loud and spotty and smell sweaty, but Benny is different, he's tough in a gentle way, has good manners and that brown quiff of hair and his hazel eyes that seem to look right through her, right into her very heart.

Benedict doesn't think other boys saw the kiss; he sits feeling the slight dampness on his cheek; he doesn't think having a kiss, makes him look weak.

Sitting on the patio, drinking margaritas

Letting summers glow wash over me

Listening to the radio, taking in the summertime

Sitting, being single being free

Suddenly, "our song" came on

The first time that I'd heard it

Freezing me just exactly where I was

Overcome with feelings, I almost had a fit

We'd been married nearly 15 years

And this song, it defined us

But at that minute on the patio

I'd been thrown I was making quite a fuss

At first I went to change it

Turn the station, find another

Then I took another sip

And sat down with my Mother

She said "I always like that singer, dear"

"I thought you liked him too'

"Didn't you dance to one of his songs"

"When you wed in ninety two?"

I said I did and it was playing

Didn't want to hear it though

She said "Why, it's just some music dear,"

"It'll help the feelings go"

"I know it hurts at first to hear"

"And be taken to the past"

"But, the heart will heal so quickly"

"And you'll forget about the past"

I sat back and I listened,

To the singer and his song

"San Francisco Mabel Joy"

and I knew she wasn't wrong

His voice, the words so pleasing

New memories would I find

I would take this song of sixpence

And I would hide it in my mind

We danced to it in Frisco

Saw Mickey Newbury at a bar

And it etched into my consciousness

And it never ventured far

For every time we heard it

"Our song" as we would say

We'd dance no matter where we were

And we would listen to him play

So here I am twenty years on

From the first time that it got me

Sitting drinking with my mother

Being single, being free

I wasn 't going to lose it

Miss out on this piece of music

Just because my life changed

I was just divorced, not sick

I wondered about Mabel Joy

and listened to his words

And I thought about their heartbreak

As I listened to the birds

I thought "would he be listening"

"Would he feel the same"

"Was it just our song to me?"

"Did he even know it's name?

A few songs later, we went in

And we ordered in some food

I went down to the basement

At the risk of being rude

"I'll be right back" I told my mum

I had to find that song

And I pulled out the old album

That "Mabel Joy" was first played on

I thought of all the good times

Sat, and held the record near

Then I let them empty from my head

There was none that I'd hold dear

Across town at the very time

"Mabel Joy" was on the air

The other half of "our song"

Was just sitting in his chair

He thought, she used to like that song

Although I don't know why

We'd always dance when it came on

And she would always cry

He went to turn it over

but the voice went to his core

So he sat down and he listened

to "....frisco Mabel Joy" some more

He thought, that ain't a bad tune

It's one that tells the facts

So, he popped another beer cap off

And he sat back to relax

Across town in the kitchen

It was then she chose to laugh

Beside the title , "Our song"

written by her other half

So , it once meant something to them both

It's what made them both believe

That music makes you whole

The heart's hard to decieve

Across town, he thought about the tune

And who the singer was

He knew it wasn't chapin

and he though it was "The Boss"

He thought, I might go out and find

The cd, by that guy

Even though it used to be "our song"

it never made me cry

Now, back inside the kitchen

drinking more than being fed

She pulled out the lp, for to play

Before she went to bed

"San Francisco Mabel Joy"

was the third song on side two

She would listen till "our song" was done

And her mind would fill with new

Memories of this great song

Sitting drinking with her Ma

And these memories would stay with her

They never would venture far

So if you have an "our song"

Put it on, go back in time

For when you exorcise your demons

That's when "our song" becomes "Mine"!

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?

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.

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

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…

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.

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 *****,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.

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.)

Who rode the ****-horse to Banbury Cross,
Didn't see the fine lady and white horse,
For she had just fallen on hard times and …

the finger rings and toe bells from her feet
had been sold to everyone she could meet,
And it also happened during this time …

The two dozen black birds baked in a pie,
Had all survived and none of them did die;
So then when it was quite near dinner time …

When the pie was opened before the king,
The birds flew away, none wanted to sing,
And the king disgusted, then decided  …

To go to the house and count  his money
But had  heart attack from stress and worry,
In the meantime in the royal kitchen …

While eating her bread and honey the queen,
Ate too much and has never more been seen;
So does this tale have a decent ending …

Well, the sixpence song has a happy turn,
Because the queen's maid in the king's garden,
Who had finished hanging out all the clothes …

Did have the last laugh and the final word,
When she got her nose back from old black bird.

A line from a movie,
'you can't organise creativity'
and that line has stuck with me
for half a century.

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.

I write words
which are guilty by association
a biased vanity
a weakened proclamation
a rhyming confession
vaguely detailed obsession
which preys upon my idle mind
occupying my excess time
if I could just
relish
this coffee scented existence
like Marley I won't wait in vain
my character was built
on inconsistent persistence
with all of my offenses
its no wonder you present such resistance
hesitance for an obvious reference

midnite will arrive on its own terms
may it come in waves
I'm emotionless and starved
hoping for the best and the rest is reality
its a stoic majestic bleak perspective
resplendence can't be bought with a sixpence
when innocence is subjective

acutely disputed and often refuted
everybody is down on their knees
echoes throughout empty halls
empty hearts exposed to loosely associated truths
and poorly conceived metaphors
a malcontent in mismatched boots
equally disinterested with
the feelings and good intentions
or any other invention of idle minds

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.”