It's a conspiracy

If you landed in this hall

This land where language

Seems a family affair

And the tiles reflect pictures of

Different countries like a map

You could become confused

And all at sea perhaps

Bemused at the profusion

Of alloys from the pot.

If you took just the best, trump card

The richest, deepest from each

Muditha, natsukashii, saudade

Practice and adaptations from each niche

If you watched and copied

Edited and embroidered

A collage of all

The distilled wisdom in this hall

Would you be a street ahead?

A road in Jammu, Bosaso or Siirt

If you linked each end to end like Dido

What empire would you start?

.

But for those whose mind balks the hurdle

Of the changing colours of the paegant.

Whose blood curdles

At different language and pigment

Whose roots

Reach so far back in one spot

That they forgot animals move

And vegetables stay put

Immigration is a conspiracy,

Against the ignorant.

Its a conspiracy

Like wires against pigeons

And bronze against tin.

Like peer review on revelation

It's a slow yarn to spin.

Things not to say on tinder IV

Tempt me into sin
My mother is a feminist
I was just flicking past
On every face that came.

Tempt me into sin
For I'm innocent
And principled and so
Unschooled therein.

Tempt me into sin
I am just another one them
Lonely older men
That woke and found
That youth had passed
And all the inns were barren.

Things not to say on Tinder III

Oh Nicky, oh Nicky
To say this' so tricky
But I must get you
Wet and sticky.
Oh but know
That I'm so picky
And seldom one
To have a quicky
But like spice
The thought tender lingers
Of kneading you
Beneath reading fingers.

Things not to say on Tinder II

You were bad, but I'm flattered
I might be sad if it mattered
But I'm mad as hatter
And the pad is in tatters.

I might be sad if it mattered
You were bad, but I'm flattered.

Blame the moon

Blame the moon

Become mine, tonight

It is not too soon

This season, after midnight

As you imply

By morning light be mine.

When we are not ours

Blame the moon

When it is waxen full

Clotted like a bucket of milk

Bowl round

And you will find my all.

Blame the moon

Hear its beams make

These puppet silhouettes

Ball dance maquis of brick

Make these shadows of my lips.

Brewing clouds are not the storm

In all its booming might

Blame the moon

For tides and storms

Become mine tonight.

Glitter

My mind is all a glitter
My head all flocked in wool
Reflecting as I sit here
Wish I was better on the pull.

For she was rich as fire pits
And she all soft like down
And she was such a magic witch
And I simple clown.

And she was from the silver screen
A fountain sweet of spells
A groundhog day of might have beens
No story there to tell.

And she was joy like spinning tops
A diamond in the light
And all my head in fleece is flocked
Ensconced in bottled night.

My mind is all a glitter
My head all flocked with wool
They say it is a wise man's art
Naturally,  a fool.

Blueprint - Addicts

Them, with demon will to power, evil

Spirit of sheetless mattress, blood stained walls

Narrow, grime ragged, gap tooth, grey valleyed skin

Spirit of brown bags and reused needles

Know there is but one single rule to them.

Glass windows broken, locks crowbarred wrecked

Tall fences and high walls are no object.

To those, the desperate and demon driven

They take like they've right

Sell cheap to escape

To their heavenly and happy haven.

Them, demon willed

The mendacity of alcoholism

The puffed bravado and cruel thuggery

Of balance blind drunks, still bottle draining

The arrogance of cocaine, closed vision

The violence, loudest of all voices

With the busy unquenched lust to return

Quest back, to festering crack house. The den

Scoured of every object but vice

Detritus, cans, smashed glass and ash

All the rest sold off.

And quest back

Addicts

The same dopamine pathway

Pleasure kick

Personhood long lost in lust for a fix

The spirit of reused needles, criminal

Minded, possessed, demon tools

In addict ridden halls of power

In the Pyramids and Ivory Towers.

The same pathway

Each dose deadening receptors

The next fix must be bigger, and bigger

Till drunk on power, crazed, addicted

Till veins scream for needles, hands shake

For drink. There is no rule they will not break

Addicts

They must be institutionalised, like the Priory

In high security, watched round the clock

Till cured, and we can be sure

They are safe

To return to the society.

Blueprint - Butterflies

You are a butterfly, carbon fibre

Butterfly

You, yes you. No lie
To say your wingbeat

May cause hurricanes

In the course of flight

Resonate and amplify

Sweep flat all built overnight.

Butterflies.

You are a rock in the river

The current altered by your mass

We are all rocks in the river

Together shape its flow and course.

See this vast chamber

Roofed by satellites

Your cry will echo in this great hall

Of linked marionettes

That dance in chaos

Each leg pulling on another leg

Nodding and then wagging heads

The ripples in the current spread

The questioned begged
Who tugged the first, starting string?

Why some butterfly's, passing wing.

Know this truth
That rises from our enacted scripture

The god, Market, hears you when you pray
When you perform plastic rituals

It is moved.

The spiders high in the rafters of the web

They see you. Your every move

Moves them.

Tell them of the change you are

Tell them what your heart declaims

You, a carbon fibre butterfly

Your wingbeat causes hurricanes.

The sweeping dark

This sweeping dark, these dusks

I ask you questions

But you are earless

Without heart. And no reflection

In this mirror, this sweeping dark

The coldest shiver. Look down

All the appartitions quiver

A pall of tales, the sweeping dark

The dusk, the empty park

And jumpers. No reflection

And all the silver, the hidden moon

The unbidden wings of gloom

Sit o'er the sky, this sweeping dark

These dusks, an empty heart

When all the sails fall becalmed

When all the views in minds high film

Have so few and seem so ill

The sweeping dark comes o'er the scene

And all to come, and all that's been

And yet in all, as sure as must

Some dawn will always follow dusk.

Normal is what you are if you can't be anything better

From the time that I dressed

In my sister's corduroy dungarees

Many have said that I'm mad as a hatter

And I thank them, for their kind flattery

Believing in fact, that the fact of the matter

Is that normal is what you are

If you can't be anything better.

My mum once said play the game,

Just try and fit in

That particular game,

I'm unlikely to win.

But originality, is not the original sin

So I'll say this to the classes that chatter

Normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.

I heard men should wear uniform, go march in time

Get popular products, from production lines

Wear a suit, with a regular tie

And settle down to a safe nine to five

Anxiously conform to conventional fetters

Secure in the moores living law to the letter

I've seen folk strive to be normal

And end up quite bitter

Because normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.

Disparagingly average, damned by faint praise

The normal is never the finest of days

Regular never the very best way

Normal rarely really what pays

Would you rather follow fashion

Or be a trend setter?

Normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.

I've always worn purple

And walked with bare feet

And always found people

Who disapprove vehemently

And I'll tell you this, all types of go-getters

Know normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.