Pills

If you feel unwell
There's a pill.
And if that makes you unwell
There's a pill for the pill
And should you find yourself still unwell
Well there's a pill for the pill for the pill
Till your killed.
And if you should wonder why you never got well
Well, where there's a pill there's a bill.

And other mistakes

Some I pushed away

Some I just let go.

Uncertain on a foreign street

Amber catching the beach highlights

Awed my virginal eyes

After years, the airport, when you cried

A phone call over oceans

When I said there was no one else to turn to

And cried.

The grey air in that manhandled flat

Grills on the windows

When you returned

Charged the air like coming thunder and said

“He said don't cheat on me”

The door, an invisible valve

The candles you lit, if I stayed

Till they dripped together into their plates and shook

So wise, gentlemanly, I thought

To leave unknowing for the next party's entanglement
And revenge, caught in somebody else's war

The door was like a valve. I recall

A mind full of abstracts, taught ideals,
That lacked a sherpa's barefoot intimacy

With the undulating track, details
Each hillock, stone and rock, how imperfect we all are.

The wintered Hackney streets

Through greyed snow, when spring was within

And concrete felt like rubber underfoot.

Some I just let go.

Picnic short of a muse - Things not to say on tinder 86

If you're a sandwich short of a picnic
Then I'm a picnic short of a muse
Fruity, cheesy with some breadsticks
I've got something you might use
We'll go country, find a hayrick
Pass the offy get some booze
If you're a sandwich short of a picnic
I'm a picnic short of a muse.

Blueprint - Ghosts

Those that pass through walls, the halls, courts unseen

That raise the terrified from their sleep

The rustling papers, the forms of dead

In screens, smiling, seductive, that lurk

The fridge, dark shadows, the laundry machine

That haunt the story high fonts of our streets.

Do you dress in my mind of them?

Do you believe in them?

Ghosts.

Do you wake, dress and wash at ghost's behest

You, of solid flesh, by borders bound

And steel word of law. They pass through walls.

Your desk they pace and press the circled clock

Between your blades, to find a spine

Pushing honey up the twine, 

String lines to marionettes.

Putting money in your pocket.

Do you buy old rope from ghosts?

Do you sacrifice

The pennies, hours, sensibilities and principal

For the invisible

Look your brother in the eye and lie

Steal, turn people from the door

Over to the law for the undead unseen

For the rustling papers

Would you operate ovens

For ghosts?

Crates and paper travel like the poltergeists are puppeteers

The chill hand inhuman

A morality of Gyges, picking the pumphouse lock

Come by, and whistles. The crook.

The dead with unfinished business

Some functionary faked the paper for a cheque

Fiddled while the world burnt. Banal concerns.

The furniture is gone, the railroad and pipes

The miracles of yestyear's endeavour

In flames devoured. They gather

In a semi-circle and rub their hands

Stretch their formless palms towards the flames

Solid flesh blisters, yet ghosts cannot get warm.

Uniformed armies at their beck

Daily ford the river, daily scale walls

Battle blind and raging at their foe

Soldiers cannot see the war

Yet blood let, pillage and enfief their fellow ape 

The corn we tend, the nightingale. What if from far, far off

With a bottle top taken as a token to a wraith

You choked the albatross.

Do you believe in ghosts?

The belief in fear

Listen, casually. Believe what you hear
And you will be made very, very, afraid
What was it last sent a love to the grave?
Terrorism is the belief in fear.

Life's a short surf on this thunderous wave
A wet board under foot all in balance
Accidents, incidents, timing and chance
And what was it last sent a love to the grave?

There's a war on, and foreign invaders
Blast bombs everyday,
                                      but not over here
Terrorism is the belief in fear
We're worried yes, that's how they made us.

Painting a picture on bright coloured screens
Truth's got shoes, there's fibre optics for hoax
They'll teach you hate like they taught you to smoke
A hollowed out husk in the spider's machine.

Do you wear raincoats when the weather is clear
Need protection, rally round and obey
What was it last sent a love to the grave?
Terrorism is the belief in fear.

II

They've mapped new Asian pipelines on a plan
Because they fell in love with LPG;
And Russia's gas transmission monopoly
So, well, they taught us to hate all Islam.

Two men stabbed a soldier in Woolwich and stood
They were nicked, arrested and sectioned
Flew a kid back from Libya,
                                   to Manchester
                                             in the election
A Home Office assett, he ended up dead.