sometimes the title would just do,
                                                                      in the days
when fame doesn't echo throughout
the ages, where to find
   a Hector or an Achilles?
             only in times when life was
precious that it was doubly precious
by being audacious and teasing death -
where are the death-teasers among
us? who among us is a death-teaser?
no one... the myth of Sisyphus isn't
exactly a myth... what was a myth
in the 20th century is the plateau reality
of the 21st century -
                             there's a great joke
concerning Norway...
    a book sold half a million copies
          in a country populated by 5 million people...
so it's basically a village mentality "nation"...
i already said you should teach evolution
on the canvas of vikings rather than working
from neanderthals...
            berserker turned cultural clique -
the joke about the british decision to leave the e.u.?
hmm... multiculturalism? taking the genes
     to the cleaners in fear of hereditary weak genes?
isolated muslim communities who think that
britain is a country that's 75% muslim?
           it's, the, *******, irony... the brits can be
as well gifted in rude humour or smug with their wit,
but they've hardly explored their gaft of irony,
well, that's a miscomprehend use of a word,
for the mere phonos of the word: i had to use it...
   like gaffer is the chargehand on a building site.
what i mean is that the brits put so much energy
into a monty python sketch that they can't see
the irony they're implementing...
         can england ever become clique?
              did the british empire ever exist is a similar
question: yes, the british empire imploded,
we have three generations of the Raj living in
Islington, three Saudi generations living
in Marble Arch on Edgware Road...
                           we have hobnobs Harrods
lit up like sitting on a marble toilet with gold plated
toilet seats... tacky... that **** is tacky...
          and when people get rich, they just have
   a new way of saying they're poor... no taste.
me? i feel like having a patron... the pope, for example...
for all the god willing reasons i should have been
the poet along with the Renaissance masturbators
of the ******* in clay.... boy... Donatello really rubbed
that impression right into a David post *******...
look 'ere, placid like a gluttonous mosquito...
n'ah... fame these days is too much of a corpus -
it attracts hyenas and vultures once the lions
got bored...
   fame these days is too much c.c.t.v. -
             the omni eye looks at what colour my ****
was (and what consistency) from last Wednesday.
plus modern dialectical discourse has either become
too much solipsistic / autistic... or it's a wanking
marathon... which makes assurances to unsafe
*** between partners, and ultra safe *** between
pundit and *******, with the *******'s
reassurance: i get regular health checks...
        i mean, when she's so hot that after zenith
you jump into the bath and pour cold water
over yourself and she remains in bed *******
herself looking at you? genuine scenes there...
i have a ****** imagination... experience is so
much better... i'd rather slit my wrists than
work for Disney.
no, wait... wait! there's a point coming, referring
to the title... yep...
   a culinary rebellion against modern art backed by
Cézanne... you seen the recent Turner prize?
         i used to see a Turner prize every time i went
to the recycling centre near Upminster...
or a car-boot sale down Walthamstow...
i also used to go and see the dog-races down that route...
E17... when you used to have yella-double-decca
buses 123 and 179 travel the route...
        alright... look at a Cézanne still life...
(i call it instilled life) - now... can you imagine any
artist attempting to depict a modern culinary
experiment? can you, imagine a heston blumenthal
on a canvas in oil or watercolour?
      no, because you can't!
                                  the china or porcelain is the canvas
and there you have: a painting.
             this is a culinary rebellion against modern
art... the chefs decided to work from scratch,
or what you might call: working from Cézanne,
just because we returned to the Lascaux caves
  with huge open space art galleries and a toothpick
   that is cited: abstract of a pine...
                           and it takes 20 cubic metres to
be admired...                     (ever tried nagging?
  it's a steam-release, or like watching an entertaining
homosexual, same ****, different cover);
    and if you have a thumb's worth of a litre bottle
of whiskey? well... hail west!
             no sane artist would re-apply the modem of still
life into depicting modern cuisine...
  i know, i know... some dynamism went into
             turning a pear into a poached pear...
the hand of god...          but that transfiguration cannot
escape the stillness... it's not moving...
                 it's prefiguring a diner (not a place, a pundit
in a restaurant) doing a minor Pavlov experiment
when the plate is before him... at this point,
unless he's not a starving refugee, i think appetite is abstract.
          you know what was in the background
while i was writing this? ambiance...
  feng shui... refrigerator ambivalence...
     in a world when a chinese cobbler gets paid 2 squid
a day... and a poet in england gets paid zilch or close to
10 quid in a decade.

i was about to start writing this up when i thought:
another whiskey Quincy? **** storm,
spilled the remains of the one i barely touched
before having to pour myself a:
puritan Scot in Cheltenham.

now, i heard people say any town in Essex
is a ****-hole...
                            fair enough...
but there are darker recesses of England you
must get to know before making that
assumption...
                  sure, London, proper London,
zones 1 - 4, E17 (post code, outer reaches,
Walthamstow, used to have a dog racing
track - played there once,
like a typical Paris catwalk, those hounds)
can skive off Greater London
                    like New York can laugh off
New Jersey, it's pretty much like that...
the only thing is: Londoners don't know what
exists outside this area: the buffer zone.
this is the buffer zone...
                 you experience England outside of
this very sensitive area of integration,
take for example a 3 hour coach trip to
a little town of Cheltenham in Gloustershire
not far from Oxford (a hub of learning)
and Bristol (Massive Attack, and that
bridge by Brunel - funny, engineers are above
architects, in that engineers build things
that *work, architects are like science-fiction
novelists rather than scientists -
do you know how many problems workers
experience, because an engineer
"forgot to mention" something essential in the plans?
at least an engineer gives you a read table,
all architects work for Ikea -
          ah, here's pieces a - z,
put it together yourself) - anyway...
              spilled my Quincy whiskey, now i'm a puritan
of scotch - unlike that damning quote from
1950s Hollywood: whiskey with a drop of water...
   ok ok... a little **** of ice floating about...
when will the nagging stop? no one says jack
about putting water into authentic absinthe...
      why? cos it goes cloudy green when you do!
(too much digression, news paragraph).

   i was leaving London on Friday,
murky the way i like it... Albert Bridge never seemed
so out of cinematographic urgency -
               but the west end with its grand buildings
appealed to me to start imagining
                    Oscar Wylde ghosts leaving these places
for promenades in top cats and tiaras for the ladies...
                     west London... the best way to see it
is in transit... preferably rather urgently...
                    and in a coach with other people not paying
attention...
                       the Thames receded into the estuary (
as it does), those housed in boats experienced a wake-up
call with a 10° ***** into the mud -
                                past the Chelsea pensioners' abode,
past many monuments to be exact...
   and then onto the open M4... past Windsor Castle
and the streak of aeroplanes about an aerial mile
apart landing at Heathrow -
                                  3 hours later, there i was,
in Cheltenham - chitty chitty bang bang,
apparently dubbed the hub of all English literary
endeavours - well, if you're going to host
a literature festival, wouldn't you claim to host
it with at least one patriotic son of the word?
did i see any statue of a famous poet or writer in
that little rugby stockpile of excess triceps?
nope.
           well, at first i thought it was cute...
                                a little Portobello, albeit
without the St. Petersburg paintwork on the houses,
houses as grey as the skies...
                                           got lost looking for
the b & b hotel i was supposed to be staying at for
the night, went into a gas station, asked,
i was apparently only adjacent lost -
                           old school, map printer and no
g.p.s. on foot -
                                  i once read a map and navigated
a car from an obscure Essex city,
to an even more obscure city in eastern Poland,
past the dreaded Penta Germania consisting of:
Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Wuppertal and
obviously Dortmund -
                                           i call it the whirlpool
of navigation...
                            anyway, so i found the abode,
what a nice little place it was, shied away from
all the traffic - a lovely garden,
a room fit for a journeying writer,
          actually, everything a writer could hope for
to lock himself away and write,
            tunic scenic - everything to ease the literary
constipation - the surroundings, the whole decor,
i even took a picture thinking: shame if no
Balzac were to not emerge from these rooms...
                           i sure didn't,
i dropped all the things, took a shower,
went into town to do the g.p.s. topographic of
the city so i wouldn't need a map in the future -
bought a bottle of whyte & mackay with a huh?!
apparently this brand isn't popular...
               went back to the room and found myself
drinking in front of the dreaded sight...
well... it was a room fit for a writer...
               but it had a double bed in it...
and a mirror at the desk...
                                    i downed one puritan glass
and looked in the mirror: i don't need your company.
looked away and found to my amazement the
truth of modern writing: the industrialisation
of writing... it emerged in the 20th century when everyone
did it by himself, with a typewriter -
        the industrialisation of writing on an individual
scale can be quiet debilitating when trying to
rekindle the quill... i didn't write anything, i doodled,
and those were bad doodles, it wasn't writing,
it was doodling... i drank a quarter of the bottle
and went out...
        went into the first bar, ordered a Guinness and
and sat down by a table with a
(later disclosed) Gloustershire University student,
a Canadian, jacking-off a script for some
B-short-movie in a public place: to catch the oozing
exfoliation of inspiration from crowded places -
if ever that worked, it might have ever worked
in a graveyard...
                             we were joined by his friend,
some peasant, we got chatting, boy, it was such a thrill
to exchange names... the Canadian's name
i did remember: Darcy...
                          he had that look about him that made
it worthwhile to remember his name,
ah, when names fit the image...
                         chubby, pig-blondish, hairy...
i'm guessing a native of Quebec...
                               but i could be wrong.
so a few hey hey, yeah yeahs later i asked if they
knew something about this gig on the festival slot
that was starting tomorrow, 5 p.m. and for free...
sure sure... got to eye the guide... so i asked:
so, maybe we could meet up at this place at this time
and go from there....
                                  Titanic looked more graceful
sinking than the reply...
                                                 i had to really check myself,
this isn't London psyche chess, this is:
we are small people from a small town,
we think a charming stranger is a serial-killer...
                    the Yorkshire ripper case scenario,
not last... first.
                              i might have been ******* a lemon
by then and pretending to be drunk squirming
a Buddha look - i pretended the polite noting down
the details: suddenly i didn't think like attending
this ****** venture that would start at 5 p.m., end
at 12 a.m. and according to my travel diary:
having to wait 2 hours to catch the 2 a.m. home.
so i went to the first instalment of the "literature"
festival... lemn sissay and salena godden -
and i have to admit, it was a corker - a true
a champagne cork popped and hit the crystal
chandelier and i laughed... and that's how i lost my
virginity to "spoken word",
                                         i wasn't listening to poets,
but i was thoroughly entertained, i swear that
at the end of her performance Salena pointed into
the dark (great tactic, how can they be nervous
if they can't see anyone? they stand on a pulpit of pure
light and see black ahead, where the nerves?)
and said: esp. to my friend over there...
                i might have involuntarily back-laughed /
snorted like a pig trying to catch enough lung volume
for a ha ha...
                          got chatting to this lovely middle-aged
couple: told them: i'm being ***** with gags.
                prior, i was watching the queue build up
into the room, with a god-awful grin on my face...
i couldn't take it off...
                         perhaps because i was looking at
the demographic and thinking: where are my peers?!
i spotted about three people in a close age proximity -
the rest were farts and soon-to-be-farts...
                             now Sissay freaked me out...
in a good way... i met the two after the show,
i brought two copies of my own printed work to give to
them... i had to ask their publicist if i was allowed
to touch the Aegean marbles... luckily i did,
but then i asked the stupid question to Sissay:
so who were you trying to imitate when your eyes
were bulging out nearly gauged out like a Pink Floyd
song video of: teacher! let these children go!
               i should have associated something African
freakish in mask, a strengthening - the sort
of look that New Zealander rugby players put on
to frighten people off when dancing the haka -
he really did talk like that...
                                       the little devil voice didn't help
either... but i only asked that "stupid" question
while mumbling something about how hard it was
getting published and how anyone aged nearing 40
forgot the free press of the internet emerging and
how he asked for a q & a after the performance...
and... hand on my heart:
                                   got asked one question...
          and answered... only one question...
                                        a complete and utter ******* meltdown...
   not: oh yeah, so who's your major influence...
                      a Samuel Beckett moment from not i.
later i standing outside and smoking, a grand English
dame of the west approached me,
chitty chatty kiss the hand later i got to say the most
famous line known to the current Englishman:
unfortunately... from Essex.
             honest. anyone asks you in Essex the question
they always ask: so where you're originally from?
                         anywhere else in England
they just ask you: whe

Where would I be
Without the Internet and Tellee?
Yes it’s telly I know,
With its glitzy glow.
They’ll be watching down there in Walthamstow.

X Factor, Big Brother and many a quiz,
They are the equivalent of ol’ Show Biz.
They say we are ruled by all this media,
That all those videos are a bad idea.
Without them though it would feel quite queer.

Newspapers now have become old hat,
There’s not a lot we can do about that.
I seem to live in Facebook Land,
But many say it ought to be banned.
They bury their heads in that golden sand.

The Google answers my every question:
Lots of info for my digestion.
Facebook’s full of gossip and chat,
There’s every scope for acting the prat,
So if you don’t like it, just Take That.

I’m on the net most every morning.
Sad to say, it never gets boring.
(Though it still might carry a Government Health Warning)!
Near Noon I have to drag myself away,
But not too many kids are out to play,
It’s video games for them all day.

Any kids about, they’re on their mobile phones.
They’re starting to look like devoted clones.
They hardly look where they are walking,
Busy reading and occasionally talking.
The traffic they are always baulking.

To real life they pay no attention.
They all deserve to be in detention.
I have to wonder how brainwashed we are,
Let’s go on a show and become a pop star.
It’ll soon be empty in the bar.

Social Networking is what they call it,
So very easy to install it.
Instagramming is now the thing,
It’s all about the imaging.
There’s nothing like that internet ping.

So there you are, The Media Rules,
Thanks to all these technical tools.
Soon there’ll be no need for schools,
But will we make geniuses, or a flock of fools?

Paul Butters

© PB 5\9\2015.

when was the last time i went ice skating?
at the old Romford ice rink,
it was one of my high school friend's birthday
party... i was perhaps... 13...
today was my second time on ice...
well... this time round i managed to walk
upright on the skates...
the skates didn't fold in on me
                        like i might be a *******
walking with the aftermath of polio...
i.e. my feet didn't buckle, and the skates didn't
push into my ankle bones...
giving my excruciating pain...

ice-skating is unlike the other gravity found
in either cycling or swimming...
one can look the complete fool when ice skating...
it's so simple: it's so simple the more adept
skaters say... i asked for clarification:
so which part of the legs does most of the work?

the top part... for a 2nd timer i advanced pretty fast
upon doing a second round, round the ice rink...
self-taught magic... fear of letting go
of the railing...
but that's not the point...
i was on a "date": or rather i "think" i was...
it wasn't a date...
          it was... gelling together of coworkers...
i've worked with some of these people for almost
a year...
it took a year for something remotely socially
related to be "established": i know:
calculative, frigid tongue of formality is my
go-to release, jargon: i know...

        outside of the realm of the brothel
where we are immediately imitate and touching
each other to this almost grotesque spectacle
of timid, lonely people, playing "chess" over pints
of beer, talking,
i'm more used to: nakedness and *** comes
a priori, all the other nuances of talk and mingling
come a posteriori... hell...
the world of interaction was standing on its head...
i had to remember:

as a man i'm not to talk about myself,
i have to ask the girl all the questions...
i can't revel in any details of me:
even though she might be a "cage-fighter" looking
woman... that she might be a lesbian
i still have to keep some contorts of manhood
in this interaction: i wasn't even overthinking
anything, there were no awkward pauses just
details of awaiting prompt...

first she asked me whether she put her right foot
into the equivalent right of the skate...
i told her: i see an aligning curvature...
she had them on the right way... took them off...
ridiculous: they were right of right the whole time!
so i told her: and you asked me to go ice skating
a second time in my life while you can't
even put on your skates on the right feet!
ugh...

walking on skates was fine... until i stepped
onto the ice... ugh oh... like i told her...
i'm going to make a fool of myself...
i'll be like that Harry Potter scene in the Prisoner
of Azkaban... were Wesley imagines
that cupboard demon Ridiculous emerging as a spider
made pointlessly scary by having
skates attached to its legs...

that was me...
    1h on ice... three or four more sessions and i'll
get a hang of it...
but there's an authenticity on ice...
unlike when swimming or cycling...
self-taught... well: i don't expect a grown man
to be endeared by getting skating sessions...
can't imagine that... it's not out of pride...
it's out of: i taught myself how to swim:
even for all the dearest of things in the world
my father wanted to teach me...
peer pressure got the better of me...
i'm guessing peer pressure is going to kick in once
more...

but she filmed me pretending to fly on ice...
sent the video to a few people... from 8 people...
400+ views... now she wants me facebook details...
i don't think it's such a good idea...
i internalise my experiences and i...
i don't mind talking to strangers... in a pub...
even today after the ice-skating she wanted
to go for a pint... we had three...
she noticed a Fred who works in the metal-scrap
industry near Rainham: has to wake up
at 6am get to Walthamstow for 8am... pick up
a tonne of copper... drive back... blah blah...
works an imaginary 80h week...
even train drivers... hell... surgeons can't work
the legal hourly limit of 60h per week:
fatigue... you can't work tired:
might as well allow work to be done by drunkards...

no... it wasn't a date... i was 14 and she was 13...
we went ice skating...
**** me: might as well have been a cinema "date":
but it wasn't reading each other's CVs
over food i'd end up paying for...
in the pub i realised i was going to be 37 in May...
i noticed all the young girls...
they spotted me with my "date": it wasn't a date...
she's a lesbian and i'm a brothel frequenter...
from one end of the pub.... we sat beside
Fred the scrap-metal-mogul and disappeared from
view... what happened?
three of them with one beta-buckle-buck sat near us...
suddenly an older lady... with artistic inclinations
of dress started hovering near the bar...
walking past her to the toilet she sort of excused
herself for being in my line of sight...
i'm just here to go to the bathroom...

        being human, like so, is weird to me...
i'm not used to it...
  i'm used to being alone,
not in a solipsistic / autistic sort of way...
  it's just weird that i can pretend to be a clown
without putting on any clown make-up...
i'd rather put on some clown-make-up
and disappear into: a film best not made...

has it really been that long? it had to be a lesbian
to (do i need to stress the fact that she is?
most people these days stress their little somethings
of identity politics, for example...
clinically "schizophrenic": in a Lingua Inglese world
of commerce... bilingualism is a quadratic /
a "clear" disability... two tongues too many!)
ask me to go ice skating and then have a pint of beer
with her? no... able bodied, no able minded female
had the stomach or the courage to ask for
something pretty and simple as, this?!

let's go ice skating! let's go cycling!
let's have a picnic in Hyde Park!

i came home, said sorry for being late... i was only expecting
to go ice skating...
gave revelations of my lateness...
spoke to mother (dear)... waited for my father
to finish watching Match of the Day 2...
saddled myself in the chair before a computer
and started writing out my father's invoice...
tomorrow i'll be working on his VAT and sending it off
to a new accountant...
my mother started sobbing...
why? i'm already the freak i was supposed to have
become...
    base: closeness with others?!
is that, even, remotely, possible?
if all the world is a stage... i'm playing the role of actor
pretty **** well...
i'm not going to allow myself the frivolity
and the escapade of not entering the arena of intra-personal
relationships with... former, youthful... hopes...
naive feelings off of: FUZZY-THRILLS...
what once was mammalian has become
lizard... cool, cold, calculative...
that's how you adapt to the environment presented
for you to digest...
everyone is playing some sort of game...
the Thespian intrusion into all expressions
of art... hell! beyond mere art...
this... Thespian Dictatorial Reign makes all other
expressions of art obsolete...
no wonder painting suffers the most...
why has painting suffered the most under the Thespian
Dictatorship of appealing to the masses
while poetry is... a hiding demon in a dank, drab...
petty 3 x 3 x 3 cubic expression of cut-out yet still waggling
like a decapitated head of a chicken sort of:
magic act?!

no amount of Paul Celan
in the mouth of a Norwegian super-star of literature
could ever fathom-dim
this fabrication of close-relation-ship? ahoy!
ah... **** it...
                      tiles and count the loaded bullets...

this ordeal of the everyday lived:
from the tumultuous ordeal of the body:
thus, summoned to give presence-count
of the "grieving" grave...
my own told woe being unaware...
of the woes of others...
such the price: of a life short-lived...

prior to the said engagement...
rereading some snippets of Spinoza's
Theological-Political Treaties...
because... i own a copy of the Ethics...
but not in English...
i like to imagine myself gloating
on what's readily read contra what' readily
available: and not...
      
i'm not dating material.. trying to imagine, thinking
might have curated me better...
she gives me ice skating...
i want to give her... a Walter Sickert exhibition...
we're not going to match...
over a pint i tell her: i was never
into these DATNG APP matching...
these window-dressing exhibitions:
and how many have you met, face to face?
2?!

i didn't tell her but i was sort of going to:
there's me and this gall from Hawaii...
she sent me honey and dried pineapple...
i didn't... we're mismatched...
she's lesbian and i'm a brothel frequenter...
life since my idea of teenager dating has
become, serious, ugly...
i don't want to have anything to do with it...
for almost half an hour i felt like...
a lion bound to a cage...
impossible to conjure up a lion
without a cage... classifying it as: pet-worthy...
something to make people pretend....
a wound for a heartbeat...
this beast better perform...
  prior to the details of boys
sending girl their ****-pictures:
oh no, no prior to the hard-on...
some variation of a p.s.:
when the blood runs dry...

                  they send their ****-pics after having
*******, when the blood is "drying up"...
not prior, shrivel, limp, lacklustre, prawn-curl whittle 'ichard...

i was going to write about how
i made kolhapuri masala for a curry i made...
and how i forgot one ingredient
when writing about it
and how i solved a sudoku puzzle to remind
me of it...
and something about...
   the men-yoroi...
               and details of a dream...
             but why detail all of that?
     after all... i reserve the content of dreams
for myself...
i dream so rarely: i rarely have a chance
to ponder them...
i hear about elaborate labyrinths of
dream-walkers... and those people who
have recurrent dreams...
  part envy part: ******* idiots...
reflex not working... hell with a knee ****...
the entire knee is missing!
dream-walkers: ghost-limb extensions
that some make a summary of: brain's ditto:
ergo tweet!
otherwise the real deal...
      the idea came with... a book...
not just any book...
the romford public library can blush...
picked it up in edinburgh...
sold at £28-        the cheapest online? £60!
well... itch... itch... behave... behave...
it's not a shoe... or a pair! ha ha!

it's just a first edition... 1985...
   the anatomy of madness: volume 1 -
people and ideas ed. by w. f. bynum, roy porter etc.
    tavistock publications
         for more information...
please write to: 11 new fetter lane
                            EC4P 4EE...
    east(ern)-central... believe me... no city in england
is given a NW... or a SW... the greenwich
treatment of... far far away in
the "honk honk hanging with kong"
or... whatever that sort of postcode is...
i would say anything with E17 is probably
Warsaw or Berlin... and hardly walthamstow...

if you're looking for the centre of the earth...
otherwise please write to:
      29 west 35th street
                           NY 10001...

sometimes it's just necessary to hit a plank
of wood with a spandex whip...
or... bop around seemingly on the verge of
drowning and misguide a bottled message...
or... droll! what's a droll?
curious or unusual in a way
      that provokes dry amusement;
yes... hardly a doll.

might as well start calling it...
Dickensian out-of-vogue: vogue etymological
revival of... the victorian lexicon...
being heavily influenced by...
the attire of the empire being...
that of saving the myth of rome...
with... good manners... b.d.s.m. ******
parameters and... brandy drank...
with some water...
like... a frenchman would clean his palette
when drinking an espresso...

the essay in mind?
        w. f. bynum & michael never:
   hamlet on the couch...

well so much for english jurisprudence:
due process, innocent until proven guilty...
and all that "jazz"...
not under the flimsy / quasi-hippocratic
"oath"... machado de assis: the alienist...
you are always to be presumed mad:
you have to be presumed sick...
before you can be well...
it's not like you are ever to be well...
otherwise: how does a psychiatric logic
work? yes... all those "metaphysical"
conundrums...

     point being: my new discovery
of my rekindled ability to dream... is my new ****...
my new privacy...
how does hamlet on a couch matter?
how about... dickens in an armchair?
this is my alternative "doodle"...
if a shakespearean character is lying
on the couch...
what am i to do? in passing "listen"...
but doing nothing of the sort...
instead... reading some dickens...
and... having to finally...
succumb the victorian common colloquial...
i.e. of words: directly derived: etymologically
from latin - and loaned into english...
oh no... no romance concerning
Charlemagne, the vikings, the saxons...
the swabians or the dutch or the french...
what victorian england spoke:
having this phonetic encoding...
less and less imperium romanus and more
and more giuseppe belli sonnet slang...

cappuccino!
        e jjeerzera me diede un'antra stretta
    (last night she made me have another fit).
credi che ffussi uno scorpione? eh ggiusto!
era un pizzo d'un osso-de-bbaleno,
che jj'ussciva cqui ggiu ffora der busto.
    (you really think it was a scorpion?
yeah right, and not the piece of whale bone
which stuck our of the corset that she wore)...

so much for ancient rome...
so much so for victorian england...
what would you call it these-days...
if you started calling "it" a... 'lard-buff'?
    
as far as i am concerned: psychiatry is a branch
of "medicine"... or rather...
medicine has a tenctacle that reaches into
the parts of hades that only wriggling worms
get to chew on...
and at that: you're not presumed innocent...
you can't me... adverse logic:
you have to be sick... therefore guilty...
and how did ever... this loophole escape
the grand justices of the crown?
people pleaded insane: therefore guilty...
but thereby somehow exempt...
it's a satanic laugh i tell you...
                      no other... no less...
                  
                      you can't plead a case of law
when facing an antithesis copernican plea
of now standing up-side down in
australia: or the black swan...
or if caging a wallaby will ever bring you aid...

under english law: you are innocent...
until proven guilty...
under an extension of the hippocratic
oath within the realm of:
practice of psychiatry in england:
you are sick... until cured...
                 never can you be semi-well...
and therefore treated...
and by being treated... chances of you
making a recovery? ha ha...
chances of you becoming a spider
in a web designed by learned men...
lost in prefixes and suffixes and other sort
of ******* of rubric terminology?
oh hell!         cudos! applause applause
to you sir!

                the hamlet on the couch is
but a fraction of shakespeare...
for which i prescribe only one course of action...
some Dickens in an armchair...
no other cure for it, sir... and dearest madam...

and oh! oh i almost "forgot"...
why is it sourced as:
woda (water) and wódka (*****)...
such a close alliance...
but no... it's not a drinking water...
so much for water...
what is mirror? lustro...
       well...perhaps it shouldn't be called
for what it's called wódka:
the ill-water...
            perhaps it should be called:
pite-lustro...             drank-mirror...
well... it can't be called a verb and a past-particle
of that verb: pić-lustro: in the present-particle
of: to drink a mirror...

eh... nouns... loan words...
no man's land... brothels and judases...
easy targets... the bulk of the army hides waiting
in grammar...
unless... there's an army...
of "gender neutral pronouns"...
who wouldn't jump first and thirst for the idea...
mannequins eerie: err west!
the middle kingdom mantra began...
no nukes... nukes are not economically viable...
send em a bio-x-factor that the Y in XY will
sooner or later want to forget:
rather than forge...
we **** poor but our women give
the ****** of accelerated reproduction...

      Xin said to Wae Wae:
and that's how the Yang was brooded...
   and Chan said to Ezra: mind the Tao...
please!
  and all other politico: tic-toc
        tic-toc
                            some say it's *****...
some say it's: lustrzyca...
a mirroring-counter-effect...
  blind narcissus...
                my psychiatric ills:
too many words Wilhelm! too many words!
i need the pleb-lingo herr doktor helmut himmler!
to: "fitz inz"!
      
oh y'as sizzor: scissor sir: wery ilz sez he'z...
past the fever's crux 'n' zeniv sirs...

and of course... bad latin grammar...
working from vide cor meum:
     and ad hoc...
                             and a hiccup...
and carpe diem...
      hic: this...
   diem: day
   est: is
           mea: mine...
this day: is mine... or is it...
           hic diem: mea est!
   let's go with that...
  (because it just couldn't be
ancestral language with modern
english... this day: sure...
        is mine? n'ah n'ah'ah'ah)...

             bad english into french can't be
as bad as... good german into good
english and a zeppelin shower...
i.e. good english into bad french...
because it's most probably going
to be... good english into circa-good german...
which is... always the rage of a pwoblem...
you can write bad english into bad
german... and good english into good german...
but however you write good english into
french: it will most probably become:
bad french or... gascon...

    hell: call it a burgundian appealing?
it's a hush... elsewhere... a welshman...
a kashubian... a ruthenian... hell... even a prussian!

sam weller would state, so: wis as whittle
as: theta on the tip of the prefix with
the whiff of: THis!

chem. soup brain... or Brian...
no song of no more new to come,
no new song of all that's to come,
no bride of either westminster
or wandsworth or walthamstow...
not within the confines
of the ****- burnings of the dolphin
skins of the yorkie-pies
of the ol' shire... coal-mined veins
from no, to no lesser Silesia...
among the Picts... dear widow
of London that's the current spirit
of lemon-suckling brine?!
oh my dear, what no aloof...
shying from the haggis, from the neeps!
the tatties!
and the myth of the deep frier
marzipan...
the fidget of the fudge explorers
of the Rhine of Yer **** Messieurs!
come to think of it...
i came to england as a fleabag of
eastern europe with a nietzschean moustashe
i borrowed and burrowed from and into
my father dear...
but when in SCOTland...
i arrived as a Dane...
this beyond past comparison arrival
willing to... **** a lass beside her senses
and her geography...
and in that... all was made sane...
because i see no reason to believe
these metropolitan daughters and sons
of fairies...
should they still exalt the ghost
of shakespeare...
and his art a mode of transcendence...
when all his works require!
actors!
the gob and goblet with my tongue
pickled in it like
the body of frederick barbarossa
arriving at Jerusalem...
London: the Salem of my Trials...
will ever and forver old Burns make
a speech: to later sigh...
because the English girls from Leicester
and Norwich arriving in Loon'don
will make it plain and far...
we from the foreign lands:
from the countrtyside will but and but
and but some more!
dear starlings pure... please! recite me some
of your love of Shakespeare:
as long as it rhymes... it's poetics;
ticks... those lesser tapeworms off...
here's a better terminology concerning
a cow-bell... roy orbison will never be allowed
to reign over the status of a black sabbath riff...
but...
he has the rest... nazareth and...
flea of the dog...
royal scots dragoons: this unison of
a non-continental aspect of land...
these isles...
and the english swans these english girls
will have to return,
cite their sonnets and never lend themselves
to "anecdotes" from the plays...
what did i say?
it is worth as much a misnomer
as it is worth a metaphor...
because for all of Shakespeare's worth...
he too would gladly rest,
his final sentiment via Bach's rolling technique...
should it be, when it is already well known...
no one recites a sonnet by a Shakespeare
when old Hogmanay is over...
when St. Sylvester's is celebrated...
and never this, very english... cold-ce
firecracker fore-warning the:
part and parcle of Guy Fawkes' night
of toy-terror...

what words and what words aren't...
and then those words better sung?
of never have,
of never heave...
of never baron over: of never "steve"
(stephen's claim and rite)...

so much for Shakespeare's sonnets...
when come new year's eve
and all that resounds...
is auld lang syne...
and all sing to embrace...
and none sign to what's...
nonetheless later sung...

was man ever to fathom being
so disillusioned to early...
to early as to catch a prosper from
the scent of thyme?
i can't stomach the recitations
of Shakespeare...
they sound to me like a clogged toilet...
i do not require a new recitation...
i require the proper reincarnation
plumber for this gobshite blockage
of what doesn't require to be ******* out:
re- again re- again re- again
and once more until another ted hughes
calls it: an "event at Wimbledon"...

**** it... yes... it was Primrose Hill...
unlucky for me... the Prussians never made it
into the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth...
nor was there a deluge to recount
on the canvas of a Bayeux Tapestry....
but sure as Sherlock ******* Holmes knows
his Watson...
cite and recite all the Shakespeare pedagogy
all you want...
the man would prefer rotten cabbages
to be thrown at the stage than having to endure
the immortality of a Bach...
esp. when... the words of a scotman are
sung come the eve of a new year's day...

by abide the Roud Folk Song Index...
this poo'em will too, not disappear as frequently
as the next to "new" viral video...

if only i wandered as far among
the Welsh... perhaps...
among the Richards of Little Ireland
and all the clever deargfriochta!

what's there to compensate with?
Southend... Colchester... Clapham Junction...
Prince Irvine of Clemence & Chelmsford...
epilogue of Epping -
as glutton Loon'don and...
fair well... bride Bethlem...

a song to not having parted...
a song to not heaved a last farewell...
a song for yesterday...
a song for: everyday!
a song for the domesticated dog...
and never the abides of a lost
leash that also calls itself a dog in horse-ridden
stirrups!
a song to bypass Leicester,
Doncaster, Newcastle, Carisle and...
the lesser domains of Hadrian's scare...
those BIG in domine dominos of history...

my putrid lot to have to remind...
it's not Shakespeare that's sung...
come the advent of anewed...
bubonic Edinburgh...
or how the first skyscrapers were born...
how the first bridges were raised
over no river or any manner
of a body of water...
how i came across my first
scottish "witch" and even if she was
the 2nd or 3rd Fiona...
i didn't fall in love with her...

old clinginess of a mythological Kiev...
somewhere between
Warsaw and Moscow...
yet again... it would have been
better that i return to the squalor of...
forget me to remember:
London 20th century 90s and 80s.

Oh Mr Spaceman, it seems a long way off,
Since you landed, carefully, on a lunar spot;
Standing at the station gazing at the stars,
On our way to Walthamstow to spend happy hours;
I recall that day, vividly, holding Roger's hand,
Thinking how wondrous,
And lucky I am.

Love Mary **

All saints day
One for the romantics too
Standing under a cherry tree
In the wrong spot
There's a beauty in a face covering
But you couldn't tell

The dog are doing laps around the track
At the Walthamstow Racecourse

Blind Spot.
Full Stop.
Steady walking
Like breathing
Quiet all the needing

Blind Spot.
Full Stop.
My pen tries to point out
What will be saved
What goes to the grave
I can't tell which is which

Blind Spot.
Full Stop.
Is it the preparation?
Is it the situation
Is it ripeness?
I want to write it down

Blind Spot.
Full Stop.
Get away from me
Let me breath
Let me breath
I'll be ok

GERTIE.  

A family of nine
Mother died
Father took a gun but no one knew
He blew
For the sorrow was too much
I heard.
But you my children's Nana
With your country life
Potato digging
Outside toilet
Did not expect
A Rolls Royce
You came to visit regularly
And at our door
My children stood
Arms wide for your smile
The smell of lipstick
On their cheek
At each third weekend
Roast beef in paper bag
Toys and sweeties galore
At first I found it hard
Different flesh I suppose
But came to love you
As my own
A second mother
Not home grown.

And when you died
At eighty
From a brain tumour
I felt I had lost
Someone I could trust
Stoic saviour of my soul
Whose knitting
I have still.

Love Mary

To Aunty Betty my children's wonderful Nana from Walthamstow. Thank you for all your love and I m

They're stepping things up
by
closing things down
and keeping us safe in
old London town.

An old man told me
that the country
is going to the dogs,
I said,
not Walthamstow
that
closed years ago.

Pastimes are taken away every day,
a little bit here and dab on some fear
then they'll take a little bit more.

When they close down the subway, the railway,
the day will be darker, the streets will be busier,
will we be any safer or just tired?

Italian stiletto
Talk of artificial islands
A water bound Streisand
There’s movement on the second floor

No loyalty or obligation
Just disproportionate
False dawn’s and sleeping giant’s
And fractious separation

Feedback Old Bailey, peel, perfect pitch
Too many bells, in Shoreditch
Arlo’s and De-Borah’s infest Bromley By Bow
Coming to Leyton, then into Walthamstow
Earring’s for dogs, Marmalade in Coffee
Remember Mr.Men, now the Mr.Many
Feedback St.Clement’s, peel, perfect pitch
Too many bells, in Shoreditch

I’m not seeking an opinion
Or approval, logic dictates
A stunning lack of foresight
Vampire’s become victims

Joke’s are obstreperous children
History enshrined in wood and wire
Imagineer’s and funster’s
Snap, crackle and K-Pop

If I remember, nobody could wait
To sell their plot and move away to Essex
Mary-Le Bow held no charm then
In Maggie’s smoke and mirror’s property fix

Feedback Stepney, peel, perfect pitch
Too many bells, in Shoreditch
Occasionally yes, but basically no
Rebranded idea’s, everything’s retro
Hirsute Wally’s and Wilf’s as far as the eye can see
Don’t try the slang, son, you ain’t got a Danny
Feedback St.Martin’s, peel, perfect pitch
Too many bells, in Shoreditch