it happened to me like it once did at the Gants Hill
Odeon, i supposed to see Jumaji,
instead i saw the Little Princess - with two old women
knitting - don't know how it happened -
the little girl got out of the attic like a revision of
Cinderella - somehow - later i ran skipping imitating
a deer hop home - i don't know, i must have been
10 at the time.

i said i was seeing Nabucco - but instead if was seeing
a version of operatic Goethe - (gef eh), read the work:
die leiden des jungen Werthers - the sorrows of youthful
Werthers - can everyone stop the ******* clapping
before the act is over, stop your provincial habits
like eating food without a knife only using the fork!
**** me... stop! you do it more so during ballet -
but in opera? please! stop that seagulls' flapping of wings!
mind you, that's how it goes these days -
tourists from home counties are seated -
pensioners - who apparently have no money -
i'm 30 this year, you think i wouldn't spot someone younger than
me in the oyster shell of an opera house dome?
a few, by a few i mean arithmetic of one palm of my hand -
that's about as many youths appreciating classics -
no more thereafter.
so i sat there, i was told it was Italian opera,
later i was told it was Wagner (i hate Wagner) -
but there were french horns in the orchestra and the opera
was done in french, what the ****?!
so adding the dot dot dots... the french are real bores
in Opera... the french can't do opera! for the love of god
they can't do opera! i admit a almost cried with
a dying wish and a toilet break when Werther sand his
last - i almost ****** a tear like salting a curry -
but the French CAN'T DO OPERA!
the German can, Italians too - let the French write philosophy,
the French CAN'T WRITE OPERA -
although the fourth act saved the entire spectacle -
i do admit with the back of my mind present
that the children's choir was a salvage point -
oh poor Werther - soft-spoken German, must be either
Saxon or slang - *verter - vide cor meum -
the French aren't allowed operatic expression -
banish them toward the ***** of Stendhal - banish them!
but you know... i can count almost half a year to
respect my memory since i last stood in an urban environment,
with Duck Trump accents demonising the air -
so tacky, so ******* out of place...
prosthetic limbs equated as people with their
tourist visa permits scaffolding the areas where
a Guinness sells at 5 quid while in provincial pubs it sells
well under 3 quid - i came up with a maxim along the way,
waving Kant's critique of pure reason along the way
(exaggeration, well and truly established, necessarily) -
a book contra a mobile phone use -
when i got back to the outer suburbs of London, or "London",
or simply greater, after seeing the panic in the central
sphere of commotion, i simply said the words:
an hour for them is a day for us.
an hour for them is a day for us - drop the paranoid
straitjacket clause revised -
there is clear distinction - in my fashion i was worth
less than £100 - most people where worth per item an excess
of that - London is an eerie place there days -
e.g. Sarah (33) communications manager -
an Arab stole her chance for a one-bedroom box or
something resembling living space -
Eve (24) -property guardian etc., 27 people sharing
one kitchen, quasi-squatting in a removable van of brick;
Aletheia (33) back with her parents in Brighton
(cue the scene from Hellraiser: Inferno - the last
scene, the noooooooooooooooooooooooo! and your childhood
bedroom) - well, d'uh; t'ah d'ah!
London is eerie - the only person smiling was me,
the rest of the people looked boxed, Hammersmith
Hamsterwheel types with duck-taped around their foreheads the
slogan: jog on... jog on, keep calm, keep on jogging.
you said Doreen or did i say Doreen and was this a
short-term memory placard advertising a "wish you were here"?
the French can't do opera - they're the same bores
in opera as the Germans are in thinking -
Jules Massenet did no wrong but undid so any wrongs -
but then crescendo! the most ****** fragment of the opera -
next to me a plump beauty with her boyfriend -
throughout the second act our arms were touching
and i rhymed my breathing to the rhythmic of hers -
clothed, neither naked, neither penetrating -
i guess the English pinnacle of ******, chaste -
in the third act our legs were touching sadistically knee to knee -
nonetheless London is to tacky - so eerie - so foreign -
so not imitable English - forget Soho or the East End
like you already forgot the folklore of the ancient
English smog of the 18th century chimneys -
it's gone - bye bye - it won't return - it was never intending
to return - it seems only Camden remains to be levelled -
or Vauxhall... we'll all be rich phantoms by then -
whether a real swimming pool for the rich or a virtual
swimming pool for the poor, it won't matter -
dreams will hardly be summoned for poetic partisan expression
bewildered as to whether the simulation or the actual partaking
are that far apart - it won't matter -
such a night in London i summed up with words:
for them an hour, for us a day - the discriminatory relativity
poker-handed us the ****** expressions that way -
but in the countryside... so much air, and so little
minute phobias grown into offshoots of skyscrapers -
so much air... so much air... so much air...
and no courtesan airs... bow... mm hmm... huh?
THE FRENCH CAN'T WRITE OPERAS!

ey yo if you think that 9/11 **** is crazy, take a closer look at jfk pushing those daisies, you could mistake this for the facts of life theme song, sticking its head up the rabbit hole and now you just seem gone, but if you grab on tight and then you pull it, up comes boundless theories of grassy knolls and magic bullets, wheres the love when a 10 year old can a spot a liar with his vision, swiftly points a fat finger at the entire warren commission, what happened we all forgot how to ask questions? lips tremble from a holstered police smith and wesson, never stopped to think if its just water their testing, scapegoats getting arrested, and then promptly murdered, just to take this trip a little further, leaving a **** taste in your mouth like ******* down an entire bag of werthers,
people laugh at 9/11 **** and downplay all the evidence,
but would you put it past a country that murdered their president,
for political gain, theyll put 4 shots through mine and your brain, keep us detained, for days, chuck us in guantamo bay, and then one day we're on a plane flying towards some towers, or wait no we're picking out flowers, bang flash, for my wife, shroedinger's life on the end of this knife, so stop you ***** just listen, this **** may seem sick and twisted, but please wait there is absolutely no reason we live in a police state, thats just what you've been told needs to be done, had consumerism forced down you, and you're told to have fun, and you say thank you and walk way, i'll take my stand another day. and yeah that farmer was an ******* i loved when he got overthrown by the pigs, but we'll wake up one morning and want bacon for breakfast ya dig?
quis custodiet ipsos custodes

I remember the sun kissing our
neon zinc-ed faces, heating tiny cubes
of red track until the rubber,
warm to the touch, clung to resting
palms and thighs.

I remember the smell of watermelon,
hot dogs and gatorade mingling with
the acrid smoke of the starter’s pistol
and the feral horde of butterflies
fighting in my stomach each time
the gun would blast.

I remember ghosts of friends from
back then sharing laughs as
we warmed up, muscles strong,
nerves tight, bravado bared to all.

I remember his folding chair,
right there at the end of every race,  
rain or shine, he showed up, coaxing
tired bones out of his favourite
recliner and into his giant, blue
oldsmobile, the interior littered
with cigarette holes and
werthers candies; he showed up
with pride, without fail.

I remember overhearing the boys
talk about the old man smoking
by the finish line, how gross it was
and why was he even there anyway,
and I remember shame taking root
and spreading: I knew the old man
was there for me.

I remember the day I stopped running
through the ribbon, straight to that
striped chair, to that time bowed man,
with his precisely combed white hair,
wearing ironed jeans, wrinkles
and a smile that could charm anyone.

I remember his funeral, not long after,
sitting in a room stained with
dust, tears and time arrested;
shame and sadness lodged heavy in
my throat as I wished for just one
more chance to say I love you.

young suicides have spoken out
an echo from the lower rocks
bruised souls uncertain how to shout
or even listen to the clocks
celestial or most terrene
that ridicule the future past
armed crosses planted in between
young werthers with their futures cast
corrupted out of innocence
too soon to have the stoic eyes
unblinking into providence
rejecting even death's disguise
in words like these that slant the truth
poor folks palavering like brutes