Monday, November 16, 2015

Gare du Nord

Today
I have carried a pack under suspicion
Eyed by tribal minded ignorants
Who seek to be saved from last week's disaster
Which they clearly were not part of.

When young I would have angered
And shot back hate
But now I softly offer smiles
And quiet pity for their mistake
Their fear everywhere
Ill-equipped hatred
Indistinguishable from brotherhood
Throughout the City of Man.

Here,
Once you have passed the guards
And gates and magic wards
They offer free electricity
But not free water
And those in tailored clothes sit tapping
Oblivious of location, of space, of fear.

A young couple carousel
Like the escalator is an aisle
Oblivious of location, of space, of fear.
Spinning in a dream
A progeninating dream of dreams
And it seems to me
That mine were once alike, light
And floated like zeppelins
But now their broke, tear soaked
Components parts
Weigh down
So much more cumbersome to carry.

Thursday, November 05, 2015

Sobering up with my mother


There are some experiences that I would not wish for myself
Or any other
And one of those is sobering up
With my mother.

You see, the evils of society I blotted very early with curly wisps of smoke
And some have said, not in joke that I'm easier to cope with when I'm blazing dope
And so what hope
Sobering up with my mother

All in all drug withdrawal ought be called a good
For I stall in cloudy shawls enthralled longer than I should
But when the switches start to spark again there is oft some fire
I'd be a liar to desire this quagmire for I, my sister or my brother
Don't try
Sobering up with my mother.

Some arithmetic is additive some follows power laws
And trouble does not double but multiplies by threes and fours
Of minds I find some clearer, I hope better you treat yours
But mines been kippered up with biftas, since very early doors.

But ontologous onerous love calls the mortal in us all
And if I was the author I might not write it quite like this
But I cannot forestall for down the hill her house does fall
I hope no one gets killed, I will, life insists
Be sobering up with my mother.

Tuesday, October 06, 2015

My poems are getting old

My poems are getting old
Full of yellowed moments
With torn edges
Where I have sought to hold
Or edit.
Full of traced paths back
Down the slope, away
From this glade
With its liminal thickets
Its trickling brook.
Full of thoughts and comparisons
To books and lessons
Massaging regrets into
Existential letters
Addressed to the weather
In the absence of lovers
My poems are getting old.

Sunday, October 04, 2015

This East - VI





Eastwards
Glass mountains give way to concrete foothills
Tarmaced ravines and rivulets of brick
Wire fronted shops and paint peeled sills
Analogue aerials like tribal sticks.

How long will those armies wear Petticoats
And other civic Victoriana
Now the conduit of Commercial Road bloats
With bodies, traffic, it chokes. In summer

The ancient stench from delicate sewers
Gagging as from great glass cliffs tumbles
A weight of shit they were not built to bear
And always underneath the ground rumbles.

Later, some will ask what it is we did
And they will ask who built the pyramids.

Saturday, October 03, 2015

This East

Roman face pot. London 1st Century AD

I.
When paved and terraced streets I paced to school
Bounded all the tall known world then nowhere
Was without magic.

In red brick maqui, arches and ivy
I sought out alleyways, spells and witches
Cavorted by time machines and made merry
On a pitch built of patches and stitches.

In science at school we had a lesson
The teacher did TA in holiday blocks
On the half daft doctrine of succession
That swamp becomes forest, and this east clots.

Steel girders form the vanguard, staking space
Lancing the static swarming red brick sea
Above the parish' frail pensioned terrace
Over old walls; and while I sipped my tea

Carped about starting, procrastinated
My old landmarks were assassinated.

II.
And interred unheard from in unmarked graves
Plyboard hoardings like police lines hide crimes
Hide ochre pits, dust, grit and wounded clay
An economic guard, silent as mimes.

Move along, move along, there's nout' to see here.
Again a kid out of the underpass
Bewildered and lost under soaring sheer
Cliffs, once muck and brick, now towering glass.

Ape batteries, story upon story
In which men at desks are seen to look down.
Mirrors held to the Old Lady's glory
As engorged she weighs the weight of the Crown.

Her table bursts its belt and belches out
Over Barbican, Aldgate, East and South.

III.
When the flock had forsook our parish church
It lay idle till on one autumn night
Feral vandals set it blazing alight
As flames ate beams like they were twigs of birch

My mother ran in to save the bible.
After that it became flats, luxury
And Starlings stopped filling the four Plane trees
Once, there, playing cards I scarred my nostrils.

Roaming away from wide straight Roman roads
To the winding sheep tracks down by St.Pauls
Where buildings clustered like pilgrims with loads
You can hear brick scream, as clan by clan falls

The old yard's children, each slowly eaten.
Oblivious progress strides slums with lead feet.

IV.

After the scouts, forms a phalanx of glass
Looming over bowed ranks of cornered brick
Levels of a lost co-operative past
In this east the new dawn is rising, quick.

At Bishopsgate steel of imperial scale
Belittling people, the streets, the sheep
Tracks stacked with tall testaments and tiled
Mausoleums to corporate fiefs.

On worn keystones there is calligraphy
Statements left for us with care in the course
But this age speaks in its geometry
An implicit understanding of force.

With futures and interests and asks and bids
This epoch too builds pyramids.

V.

Eastwards, in the garden behind the George
If you buried fingertips into brick
Left blood in the cracks you could scale the walls
To the roof, look out over the city

Along the Lea sclerotic industry
Budlea capped patches of necrosis
Have lost the war and succumbed to disease
Boxed and shipped like bits of Acropolis.

Armies have won with modern logistics
Undone anywhere things were stored or made
With the autistic force of statistics
The shopkeeper's wide-eyed workshops are razed

Men may not scale these alien spaceships
And nature find nowhere to seed or to sit.

VI.

Eastwards
Glass mountains give way to concrete foothills
Tarmaced ravines and rivulets of brick
Wire fronted shops and paint peeled sills
Analogue aerials like tribal sticks.

How long will those armies wear Petticoats
And other civic Victoriana
Now the conduit of Commercial Road bloats
With Mercury's priests, it chokes. In summer

The ancient stench from delicate sewers
Gagging as from great glass cliffs tumbles
A weight of shit they were not built to bear
And always underneath the ground rumbles.

Later, some will ask what it is we did
And they will ask who built the pyramids.


Saturday, September 26, 2015

Helicopters

Two ends twist
Or bust
It's just
It seemed to stack so well
On all the other bricks
So that instead
Of my eye filling with dust
And fragments of wall
I could gaze from atop.
So I build more bricks up
Leaf by leaf
Until I look from high
Amid the tree tops
For helicopters.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Letter to Wayne Rooney

Beaker People Vase. Ireland. c.2000BC

Dear Mr. Rooney

I am just writing to say,
To say
I watched your fine display
Against the Swiss, the other day
Witnessed your fervour and magnaniminity in celebration
And would like to offer my,
My....
Dam this is hard.

You see I'm from down South
And remember you in Blue
Going through, a callow youth
And in truth, the headed touch
Made it obvious, but my word
Did you produce.
And now you are top scorer of your nation
I would just like to say,
To say....

That you have definitely scored
More goals than any other from these shores
And saw the pass that dropped the jaw
And made run that got ignored
And for all this I must applaud
And extend without hesitation
My sincerest
My sincere
My most sincere
Dam this is hard

I must clap
That the pack of hacks
That harassed you since that very first cap
For a month or two are off your back
While they sit down to eat some hat
And read the stats in white and black
So it's one of those situations
When you have to hold your hand up and say,
And say....

That down the pub or in the press
Some will say their mate rates some late
Player as better, but to the last letter or breath
That unavoidably makes you a modern great.

And we will argue ounces on the tonne
Whether Scarlet or Vermillion is a better shade of red
But of names to conjure, yours is one
Face upon the wall above so many dream filled beds
So I must offer my sincerest,
My most heartfelt,
My humblest, proudest

Oh the jealous tribal pain
But you don't need it from me,
Or any of the rest of us
The numbers put it simple,
The numbers say it plain
Your best is good enough
Top scorer for the country that created the game
Crack on son.
Congratulations.

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Debates

There are those grand debates
Where you are offered conterfactuals
And coincidental twists of fate

And some will bring forth shiboleths
Some foundation of the edifice
The narratives by which we exist.

And I will put a point of view
Somewhat different, if not new
And they will say it is untrue

That it comes from out the blue
That it's a fact they can't admit
All because they never knew.

And though we argue hard and long
Sometimes with careful tact
Sometimes with ardent passion strong
It doesn't change the fact
That almost all the way along
I am right and they are wrong.

Monday, August 31, 2015

If one should bring me this report

Harrappa Terracotta Horse. Indus Valley 2600BC.


I have to play
To play for you so you will sail through
And stay the course, I cannot force a thought
Shuttered owl roosts, though in this great midday
There's no sane way that we can stop to nap.

I can talk of bright coloured plastic wheels
Rolling under peels of bird-song, bells
In tufted fields, talk of family
Not modern dyads, but ancient kin
Upon the savannah in tanned animal skins
A school of small dwellings and cousins.

Where there are gluts of brick and cash and glass
Apes butt cheek by jowl, battery fowl buses
Rock clad paths and myths, back-lit myths of now
Blaze a beacon for flocks of sheep who seek this stock
Skip lunch, the sunk forgot, the beacon stoked.

A culture of cricket whites
From summer arm-chairs we tune such fare as the smack
Of leather on willow, of ordinance on entropy
Pillow talk the score under ordinary unbreached roofs
Unbroken triangles that spread forces.
Our silicon Oracles turn water to wine
Transubstaniate raw data to flesh
Out-calculate the entirety of
Humanity arraigned with abacus.

Amidst the glut of brick and wash of cash
The rock clad paths aren't as was told, faced with gold
But under-girded with glass and lasers, obliterating space
As stirrups, galleons and ball-bearings did
Before, but not for those who sunk offshore
“If one should bring me this report
That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day”
Not for those in sand dusted clothes the hand has closed
The door. The door will not close
These chalk walled pirate isles. Of Rhodes, Drake, Clive
This sanguine, stoic form of speech may sup
On schadenfreude or Siddartha
Court roots or court disaster.
Long since Subitai and Sulyeman
Since bodies piled up in Pesht and Harwich starved
Amid heaps of rotting herring.
Long since Ecumenical blessing apportioned space
Chain linked the ecumene across oceans
Since the roof truss placed spread force.
Truth, right, power. Kingston, Bristol, Accra
Unbroken triangles, of course.


Bastard princes engorged call feathered beds
Aged reds and credit
Over thirty faces and they're just chimps
To a chimp. The 0.1 percent
Difference. They lie like us, war and get high
But never pressed papyrus
Smaller frontal lobes and fusiform gyrus
But we scale. Horse back, iron horse, tarmac, cable
Wood, Charcoal, Coal, Oil
Till we have tasted flight
And eyes skyward wade torrents of plight
In opulence, afford to ignore uninsurable
Sunk dinghies, the latrine stink cess of promises
And declarations, obligations. The ghosts
Of Roosevelt, E. and deflation
Haunt a family in tanned animal skins on the savannah
Immiserate, immiserate.

Hiding under a canvas wagon cover
A one season teenage Temujin whispered promises
To Bortei, but a bud, too young for make-up or disenchantment
A heart that launched a million hooves
That day, what did she hear, what did she say?

Leaves fall in the lake
To rot, to feed crab, to feed fish, to compost
For dark roots, the rot of social contracts, the compacts
With gods, with falling leaves, with post-war settlements
Unsettled shettles, flee shuttled in sealed buses
Flee blundering humpty-dumpty and uncle
These wars never happened, under the law.
The lessons of Dachau, of Auschwitz, learned lessons
Of aftermath, of outsourcing, lessons of digital distribution
Lessons of chaos, the schooled rapacious, debt fuelled
Scions of Cortez, the hounds must be fed
Chow down, Chow down
Snout brown in full bullion bowls, chow down
On pensions, on freedoms, on relations chow down
While others promise, chow down
There is enough for everyone, chow down
We sent no invites.

They will all drown
The family, savannah pinned in tanned hide
The self-selecting Darwinian footed thousands
The kerosene lofted connections, the cargo containers
The obliteration of space
And in time
Sit like Canute, and cry, cry for your Ayrian myths
Cry as waves of reality rend your misapprehension
Of culture, of humanity, cry
That the iron horse crosses your land, that the beacons
That have branded your mind have branded the savannah
Cry like Canute and sink.
The Assyrians have come, come in iron chariots
In God despairing iron chariots, Assyrians with wings
And chemical horses, shift beads on your abacus
Go to the beach and builds walls on the sand, build walls
On the shore, on the cliffs, build your walls against water
Against the lake, against the weight of numbers.
Shift your abacus, or come with clubs and dialects
Against the tide of Genghis and Cortez
Against the tide of these pirate isles
From whence warriors sailed
Against the weight of Clive, Rhodes and Drake
Come with your dialects and clubs.
There will be blood
You will drown in that blood.
A family, on the savannah, animal skin minded
May cry
Cry like Canute
There will be tears
You will drown in those tears.


Thursday, August 20, 2015

Mislabeled


One draught is never enough
Missing the old land lady
Gay days, frayed memory
The hand cradles amber nectar
Even amid buffed wood and steel
Of monotonous chain pubs
One draught is never enough.

But enchanted ones, canalside
Or pitched surprise on hillside bends
Black windows, low slung
Magic ones make me long
For alcoholism
Hang-overs and misjudgement
One draught is never enough.

I have paintings from Italy
Paintings from towns I don't remember
Paintings of towns I never knew
Paintings that call thoughts
Of sun, hills, Roman blue
Thoughts so easy to love.

A picture of a harbour bay,
A distant town, vineyards, roads
Church so far away
No details the vague wash holds
I couldn't see that day
Whether there are singers
If the harbour's rife with thieves
A brush as free as hope
The view as beautiful as it is remote.

It is my own painting that I love.
As other artists do
One draught is never enough
I could murder a forest with you.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Birthday Poem

Fusion
Star fuelled muse of all men
Hydrogen to Helium
Naturally, and all them
Photons
That bless skin a billion miles
Distant from the tides within
Life giving
Heart of summer
Light bestowing wonder
It happens to the lucky ones
These passing suns.

Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Locally


Forget the map
The church green
Let morning and evening
Cables and kerosene
Make their mosaic
Of local
Make scapes of familiarity
Repetition of scent
Repetition of sight
Repetition of memory.

Tessellating the High Road
With Kloveniersburgwal
With Rue Sous l'Eglise
With the High Road
With Bentley Rise
With the slate grey snakes of Lancashire
With the beach in Perth
Collected like classrooms
Memories of classrooms.

The dendrite linked streets
The bend, the taxi fleet
The station split and gapped
Like synapses
Electric axons
Reinforced with use
Cement meaning
Cement behaviour.

Cups of tea, cups of tea
I do not keep milk at home
But locally
That's different.

The carnation bush in the park
Again, the dog and his old man
The stairs in the dark
Alleys like the back of my hand
But not Spitalfields
Not Upper Street Post Office
Not the bridge by Markfield
Or even Dam Square
They are just along the line
Along the river from here
An inch on a map
Local, just across a synapse.


Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Half glass

The debate has been lengthy
Whether the glass is half full
Or half empty
I don't mean to kill it
But
You have a glass
Go fill it.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

We won't make it out alive

Ceramic reliquary. Gandhara. AD5.

For all we hope and strive
Not you or I
Will make it out alive.
And all we crave and love
Under the changing sky
Will not save us
Not you, nor I.

But there is time to love
To learn and cry
To suffer and struggle
Flourish or survive
But not you or I
Will make it out alive.


Tuesday, May 05, 2015

A letter to Arsene Wenger


Bowl. Incipient Jomon Period

Dear Mr. Wenger OBE,
As your pursuit of excellence is a perennial
And all engaging excercise I appreciate
Your time with us is precious
But I hope you'd entertain
As you are known to do
A train of sentiments
Amateur, but long thought through.

Many times before, of course
I have tried to write, like in 08
With those young hopeful greats
When I prayed you'd bring in Seedorf
And once in 05 after some rash mistake
I wished to urge you send Jens Lehman
To Tibet to meditate.
And many times to express
The tour de force
That is the Pride
The paper lit the crowd alive
The dot to dot
Like verse in Morse
But this letter is my choice recourse
To praise a mastery oft ignored
Your mastery of the long game.

Its a shame
That since we last one the title
Smart money flew
The commodities super cycle
To Moss Side and Harrow Road
Rubber stamping stars like mints
And now you coach a squad
To play not clubs but
Carbon footprints.

When Nottingham are lost in woods
And Elland Road is owned by hoods
Blackburn were just a flash
And many others gone to trash
I admire how you've played it long.

How my hackles are unshackled
By the prattle of myopic hacks
Who's copy does not detail
Battling clubs that oil backs
Oh the reams of tittle tattle
Almost always lack
That critical faculty
And strategy,
But clearly you could see
This earlier than Xavi

It's incredible
In the days of the debt frenzy
With a net spend that South End envies
When Moneyball men descend
From across the pond
Buying clubs from County to Rotherham
That all the while you've played it long.

And in the press, yes, there is praise
For Pulis and Allardyce
But when there's stats and figures quoted
This mastery is rarely noted,
The credit
For this success I don't often see.
But clearly you read it
Earlier than Xavi.

Could I digress to reminisce
Of when I first witnessed,
The Colussus
Wednesday it was
Not any Wednesday
Furnace fresh steel
The educated industry
The artifice of empire
He echoed every bit that Wednesday,
To see ginger hair rise and fall
East to West like a copper sun
And Paddy off, on the run
Those days were more than fun.

But that stage was too small
For all the actors you have educated
Fashions you have dictated
And yet while others abdicated
You built a stage more elevated
Shown all how a small dog
Can maul a bear
And yet brought up puppies
With the greatest care
Built the greatest here.

For what could be coppers
You find boys strong as an Ox
Slicker than otters
Sharp as a guileful fox,
Houdinis with locks
Who run off their socks

How you taught a boy from olive groves
With feet as smooth as the gold that flows
To squeeze as hard as those olive presses
Play passes there's no second guessing.
The record is impressive
Officially, statistically the best.

Could I digress to discuss
An issue that is divisive
And that is ticket prices
The choir is too small
The circle lacking harmony
The entrance fee
Too heavy save
For those who already
Have their glory.
So Highbury refugees
Sit six to a season ticket
Packed pubs, clipped pitches
Its just not cricket.
In the next chapter
An action to bring back terraces
Would be most merited

But I digress,
Your mark is indelible
What you've already done, incredible
Long after your last players have played
In thousands of years in another age
Men will find what you have made
Look upon the work and say
This is a work of greatest endeavour
Thousands gathered here
Thousands did revere.
There can be no hesitation
Your canonisation
Is beyond question.

Sunday, May 03, 2015

Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas


Ne me quitte pas
Il faut oublier
Tout peut s'oublier
Qui s'enfuit déjà
Oublier le temps
Des malentendus
Et le temps perdu
A savoir comment
Oublier ces heures
Qui tuaient parfois
A coups de pourquoi
Le cœur du bonheur
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Moi je t'offrirai
Des perles de pluie
Venues de pays
Où il ne pleut pas
Je creuserai la terre
Jusqu'après ma mort
Pour couvrir ton corps
D'or et de lumière
Je ferai un domaine
Où l'amour sera roi
Où l'amour sera loi
Où tu seras reine
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas
Je t'inventerai
Des mots insensés
Que tu comprendras
Je te parlerai
De ces amants-là
Qui ont vu deux fois
Leurs cœurs s'embraser
Je te raconterai
L'histoire de ce roi
Mort de n'avoir pas
Pu te rencontrer
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

On a vu souvent
Rejaillir le feu
D'un ancien volcan
Qu'on croyait trop vieux
Il est paraît-il
Des terres brûlées
Donnant plus de blé
Qu'un meilleur avril
Et quand vient le soir
Pour qu'un ciel flamboie
Le rouge et le noir
Ne s'épousent-ils pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas
Je ne vais plus pleurer
Je ne vais plus parler
Je me cacherai là
A te regarder
Danser et sourire
Et à t'écouter
Chanter et puis rire
Laisse-moi devenir
L'ombre de ton ombre
L'ombre de ta main
L'ombre de ton chien
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas.

No don't go away


No don't go away
We must let go
All we can let go
What's already flown
Let go the times
We made each unknown
And time that's gone
To be wise to how
We let go these hours
Which sometimes slay
With blows of why
A heart of joy
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away


I offer you
Pearls of rain
From a realm
Where it never rains
I shall cross the earth
Till past my death
To wrap your heart
With gold and light
I'll make a land
Where love will be lord
Where love will be law
Where you will be queen
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away

No don't go away
Invent I will
Some senseless words
That you will know
I'll talk to you
Of lovers old
Twice they viewed
Their hearts ablaze
I will speak
A myth of this chief
Brought forth to death
Cos you didn't meet
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away

My mind reminds
That flame reforms
From an ancient hill
They called too old
It sometimes seems
That blackened fields
Give more grain
Than springs best yields
When dusk comes back
In the blazing west
The red and black
Will never nest
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away

No don't go away
No more will I cry
No more will I speak
I will just hide
Just so I can see
You dance and smile
And to hear
Your style and your song
Let me become 
The shade of your shade
The shade of your hand
The shade of your hound
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away
No don't go away

Monday, April 27, 2015

I have run out of rawl plugs

I have run out of rawl plugs
I wouldn't have known
I'd put hundreds of holes
In the walls of my home.

I've run out of rawl plugs
And there are some shelves
And holes drilled and filled
So you never could tell.

II.

In my infancy
Rawl plugs were infinite
Appearling like slaters
Expected suprises
Under furniture, behind doors
Boxed, scattered and bagged.

I laughed when I first bought rawl plugs
In a brick thick pack
Picked one strip and finished
Unthinking assumptions they'd languish
Infinite in the cupboard or shed.

Finitude, solitude
DIY.

III.

And yes, it's true I have used
A whole box of screws
Or two, 6s and 8s
A plethora of projects
Of temporary fate.

In my infancy
Screws were more infinite
Than rice grains
But I knew where rice came from
And carried it home.

I have  used a whole box of screws
Or two, 6s and 8s.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

The mountainside

Or

What my phone wrote in my pocket


The mountainside
Your beacon. Ever burning
I think
The mountainside your beacon
The mountainside
I have woken up

The second course
The mountainside
I tried to cope
Address bar of your feathered heart
But aside from the public domain names
The address is being held.

The colour and size of the machine
The second course
Untarnishably wonderful in all departments,
River queen

The mountainside
The mountainside, your sovereignty acclaimed
Light
The information contained in this email
This is theoretically doable
For the price
In may

How was (love hearts) a bit of fun
The only one
Of the machine and news
The address is correct
And up to Stokey on the bus
I think one
I am the mountainside
Your sovereignty
I am caught.

How it goes
Without the mountainside.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

A note on voting


I heard it said
From high on horse
That we should vote
Because others fought.
But this post
Won't be stamped
And enveloped
And offering
Just one vote
Is like asking
We go by sailboat
A nice way to travel
When the crew is good 
And the weather's bright
Once in a while
I just might.
But as other's fought
To enjoy new rights
We should not just vote
But fight.

Friday, February 20, 2015

She said she was in love

She said she was in love
As if this one word
Would make good
All that I'd just heard.

She said she was in love
As flighty adolescents do
But nowhere was the care and curiosity
Of the word I knew.

If each love is a key
Mine was not the lock
The turning that would free
Our spirits from the blocks.

She said she was in love
As lust confused from time to time
If each love is a fingerprint
Hers was at a crime.


Saturday, February 14, 2015

Valentine for Y

There is water between us
I will go down to this water
Now, when it is dark
And dive and pull and roll
Each lifting and then crashing wave
Each stroke rake through raging storm
Through Biscay, through Golden Coast
And on and on to round the Horn
Swim in thunder and blinding white
Swim with longing through the night
Swim through however many dawns
Till all natures forces come becalmed
Until I come to haboured beach
To stand again within your reach
As all the gods I have beseeched
Are there to answer all for each.

The fool in Jolene


Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just take me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go, for once just understand

Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green

Your smile is like a breath of spring
Your voice is soft like summer rain
And I would be complete with you, Jolene

Your face it haunts my very dreams
And every night it always seems
I wake up wet and crying out Jolene

And I can easily understand
How you could soon have any man
But you don't know what you mean to me, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just leave me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go, for once just understand

Though my love was always true
Love like yours I never knew
Now your the only one for me, Jolene

I had to have this talk with you
My happiness depends on you
And whatever you decide to do, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just take me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go for once just understand.

Can't get next to you

I lost your number
To a pick-pocket down the Arsenal
I would've given an engagement ring
Or all my summers
For that one simple thing.
Humming Al Green.
I miss your integrity
When I find myself in times of trouble
What your voice says
I guess it's unpossessing
My house is less of a mess.
A lick of paint does wonders
For your conciousness.
I'm just about driving now
If I buy a van
We could elope as spouses
Rent the houses
And raise kids in Kyrgzstahn
Or Australia
But you've probably got different plans
Like I said, a pick-pocket took my dockets
So I had to email ya
Give us a call
Love
To hear from you and all.

English donkey


There is a donkey
That carries all the portage
For the village and the palace
Carries to all quarters
Harnessed up with baggage.

Some have seen it at the palace gate
They say "that gold's a heavy weight "
Some have seen it at the butchers
And say it carries meat
Some see it at the hospital
Bearing medicines for meek
Some see it in the quarters
Where they say it runs cocaine
Some see it piled with wood and straw
And think it poor and plain.

But the donkey goes about it chores
However understood
Forever lifts and forever hauls
'Most every type of good
One day dray horse, one day mule
One day pet, one stubborn fool
But always on the donkey's back
Is some good of value
To which we're attached.

For there are cars and there are planes
And even dog-led slays
But they never ever carry it
In quite the donkey's way.
Some petrol fuelled, some larger limbed
Some even work in teams
But it seems
It's the donkey that we turn to
When we want to carry dreams.

Though short and plain and spindled legged
Its strong and versatile as eggs
And carries all from water's edge
For high and marbled palace.

Valentine for uplink

You're my every hope and solace
My every focus like opium
The dopest promotion for human beings
A voice like seeing dawn E'ing
I can't depict the state of addiction
Search for superlatives in fan fiction
The Aphroditeest, Venusuviusest
The finest moviest, stars like Grace
Leaving Bacall in your wake, trailing
Oh the depth of the fall
Infinite, unfailing
Like bars, chains and a jail
Lead where the largest freedom could ever avail
Gold cast female
Hot as your own star
I'd forget every object of worth
For your presence
Like heaven on earth
If its a crime I plead guilty as charged
Face any penalty
To be even part of your entourage.

Valentine for A

There is love like wine
Love like air and water
Love like gold and jewels
But your love, for me
Is more like trigonometry
A truth and understanding
Of unpredictable utility.
Value that will never cease
Like pivot points and levers
And knowing dawn is east.

Valentines

1.
Singular or plural
Water birth or epidural
Church or a beech
In a suit or sandles
Do you count the candles
Valentine
Your place or mine


2.
Oh hot bird what flies in air
It is with heart too full of care
I long to squeeze and pull your hair
Slap your arse bent taut and bare
Oh how I long to kiss you there

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Clarinet

You never would expect
A foghorn aged become clarinet
Those clarion cries we can't forget
And yet...

She was a warrior of raucous nights
Her cries would frighten dawn
But now with notes sweet tender light
She lullabies her fawn.

Now she glides on summer lawns
Without the cider bottles strewn
Strewn like those souls left to mourn
Those suitors who beseeched the moon.

Oh I could tell you
Of the Princes, oh the dukes and heirs
How they queued and how they howled
That ever she be theirs.

There were wails and there were tears
From her peers there were glares
Laughter's heard at sunset now
In peels and in pairs.

If you are here, now
And not lensed through all those years
It's easy to forget
A foghorn was this clarinet.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Anonymous

On a journey though rain
Not showers
But rain that comes in cords
Not driving
But windless falls
The tall clouds
Closed to bind the sky as one
A single shaft of sun
Moving storm fast
Found me.

A gasp of brightness
Light across the stone
Lifted my face to the rain
To the pale northern sun
Ice in the eye
White against grey
Shone, burned
And was gone.

My iris carries stars
As if I saw some fey spirit
In the grey soaking air
Leading
A ghost of spring
Hope of spring
As winter closes in.

At King's X, we filed in
Polite murmurs
And I took the Tube.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Call to arms

For starters,
We need a modern Magna Carta
Cos the half the bastards need shaft of
Sunlight
It's the best of disinfectants
When done right
Let's start tonight
Get the budget in the pipes
Update your rights
Update your rights.

Sign here
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/democratic-budget-give-citizens-a-choice-in-how-the-tax-we-pay-is-spent

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Sight seeing

In a sweated September
Dusk had come and left
Us lost amidst the lofty
Concrete cliffs
A mist of half heard conversations
Tumbled from the yellow nests
Our host was virtual
Silent in a sulking tiff
And unassailable
So like jetsam we did drift
The steep graffitied streets
And sluice from bar to bar
Till tarmac turned to cobblestone
And sandstone echoed far off Rome
Through pigeon packed seated throng
We tumbled to the Nervion
A tidal umbilical of silk
The wide roads strove to ape
Curious and seas from home
Our host he called us ingrates
But our agent had an interest
As such folk are wont to do
And showed us to a place of rest
Far better than we knew.

So I raise a toast
To our virtual host
For if he hadn't let us down
I never would have seen these streets
This cathedral or this town.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

A call

So she calls
In distress
Canned and bottled
Stopper pressed tight
Light throttled and lost

She says she's lost
The wide well travelled road
Of youth and now the path
Is less trod, mossy
Fracturing like arteries
Like split ends
The trees crowd and whisper
Shoes slip in dust

And she says meet here
On this wild forest track
That leads to barren rocks
That leads to scree fields
Meet me
There is no way back.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

A funeral

Soot black crow on ashen skies
Ashen as the skin, ashen
Ashen as her weeping eye
Silk strung lash drip
To blossom, cast
Gone but not forgotten.

There is no forgetting
Day of dust and ashes
The full fret of brevity
All the sorrows of mortality
Above all sorrows of life
And yet
There is no forgetting.

Swept hair, glacial smooth
Pinned grief
Under the black winged hood
The black mood
The soot crow's screech

There is no forgetting that we can know
A salve.

Corgette seeds

I strip pith from the fruit of trifids
Fan leafed behemoth so prolific
One hollowed marrow
Engorged gourd
A corg
No ette.
I have eat its little sisters
For months
Dish after fleshy dish
Persistently grows
The very sight of courgettes sickens
Yet these seeds I pick to sow.

Friday, July 04, 2014

Witch on the hill

I know this witch on the hill
Who sits weaving spells
With two black cats on the sill
She hexes ill well.

In her cupboards are words
And great cavernous halls
The feathers of birds
And broken down walls.

With a flame and some secrets
She stirs over her brew
While prowling black creatures
Swish tails and mew.

Then just before dinner
With folk settling down
Her incantations float
Out over the town.

Out under the moon
Through the ivy-clad oak
Out through the fumes
Hanging over the Smoke.

Around tragic minds
Slow, sallow and blue
White magic she winds
Till sight becomes new.

Widdishins, widdishins
She mutters and stirs
With pin cushion dummies
And handfuls of herbs.

Widdishins, widdishins
In go the words
While under her wings
Purring sun-god concurs.

Vice-held voices
Rejoice in a song
The one carried silent
They've sung all along.

While out on the hill
With two black cats on the sill
She sits weaving spells
And no one can tell.


Thursday, July 03, 2014

A comment on kidnapping

An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
The blood of another
For one murdered youth.

Bronze-aged moralities
Industrial fatalities
Untenable disparities
A very sad reality.

Rotor blades
From overseas aid
Make umarked graves
Collateral of young braves.

Twisted bigotry
Hiding in history
Belligerent racists
Lead an ignorant state.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Wolves at the door

Hittite Jar. Hattusa. 13th century BC

The wolves have come
Come howling from the moor
Howling scratch the bare wood door
I hear their paws in snow
Hear their whines and chatter
And tremble in the cold.

Alone, down to lamb bones
And boiling broth
Down to scraps they did not save for rope
Down to comfort sought
In the remorseless winter
Chorus of wolves.

They will come again tonight
Certain as sunrise
Again tomorrow.
Past christmas now
Past the season of feast and gifts
Past generosities.

What is to be made
Of lamb bones and old rope
Of empty pots
Of spotless knives and spoons?

The wolves have come to my door
In cold I will not tremble
Or worry over circled tracks
Worry for their whining
They are welcome back.

The wolves have come to my door
Tomorrow I trade fur.

Letter to some editors


Dear Editor,

Nigel Farage's call for greater direct democracy is welcome.

However government today is as much about spending as legislation and traditional ideas of democracy did not face this problem.

Public spending has grown forty fold since the beginning of last century.
(http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/threecenturiesofdata.xls)

A novel form of direct democracy in a digital age would be to give citizens input into public spending decisions.

The elected government should publish its spending plans immediately after the general election. Then allowed a period for citizens to adjust each budget line by some precentage.

This would make our democracy more inclusive, less a la carte, political promises more binding and politicians more focused on persuading the electorate to back policies, rather than making empty promises to secure office.

Further, mandating policies might allow the retention of budgets within the civil service and end the incentive to profiligacy that comes from having to spend or return budgets within a year.

The next general election falls on the eight hundreth anniversary of the Magna Carta, which created parliament for the purpose of overseeing the Sovereign's tax and spending.

Representation may have been the best option 800 years ago, but the web now allows us to publish and collect feedback at little cost.

British innovation in governance was a competitive advantage for centuries. We should again focus Britain's “unique moral genius” on the issue of governance, harness the wisdom of crowds and use National Participatory Budgeting to build a more inclusive, more efficient and more direct democracy.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Murder on Ferry Lane

This and that
This and that's been said
They say this and that
They say this and that about him
Like it's justification
But that facts be
Execution by police of a man in a taxi
Execution by police of a man in a taxi
Execution by police of a man
This is repetition
No apologies.

No medicine
This bitter pill
Killed by the law
Verdict
Lawfully killed.

No medicine
These questions
These questions of character
The actors
The character of the actors
The act of shooting
A radio
The script of the actors
As answers
For questions
Unanswered questions
Of running guns and guns running
Questions at the gates of Downing Street
Questions, questions
Because they shoot first
And ask questions later.

Monday, December 02, 2013

Return love


Var life
Var love
Var happiness
Var I

If (life != happiness) {
    find (love);
    love = array []
    For each I in love []{
    I = 0, I++, I < love
    return love[]}

Else If (life = happiness) {
    love = array [];
    for each in love []
    echo love}

Else If (empty(life)) {
    find (love);
    love = array
    For each (love []){
    I = 0, I++, I < love
    echo love
    life = love
    return life}

Else If (love = 0) {
    life.live()
    life.work()
    life.make_merry()

    Find (love)
  
    life.live(love)
    life.work(love)
    life.make_merry(love)
  
    If (love > 0){
    return love};
    }

Else If (love == 1){
    life = happiness
    return love};

Thursday, August 08, 2013

They come 'ere taking our jobs

A contribution to the debate on immigration


They come 'ere taking our jobs
With their funny food
And their bad attitude
And their gangs of drunken yobs.

They come ere
With the their strange ways, strange schools
Closed communities, their own rules.
Some say they're cool
And we should leave them alone
I say London's full
Country whitey go home.

They come 'ere taking our jobs
Talking odd
Clogging up our hospitals
And clogging up our roads
Breaching peace in parks
In self-important tones
Pushing up the house prices
But one thing I've never known
Why they don't stick to their devices
In the counties they call home.

Don't get me wrong
Heaven's be foresaken
This misplaced tribal ignorance
Ain't based on pigmentation
We've always had the Irish
The Germans and the Jews
And French and Dutch and Spanish
More than one or two
And Euston takes the Scotsmen
But Paddington should close
Cos London's full of country feet
Better walking country roads.

Don't get me wrong
Heaven's be foresaken
This ain't straight xenophobia
We still need immigration
A cornucopia metropolis
Of each and every nation
Rich as ancient Thebes
New York or Los Angeles
Or the prime of Rome
They ain't coming to your village
If it bothers you go home.

Why make space for bumpkins
When we can tap the global talent pool
Why clog up our economy
With web-foot, hair-lip fools.
We could take one or two
On a quota if they're of use
And house a case or two
Of institutional abuse.
We know what they're like afterall.

Now if they come 'ere and was humble
And stuck to cleaning floors
And worked only in the small hours
So that they could be ignored
I wouldn't grumble or begrudge
Just that odd one or two
But on the farms the fruit needs picking
So they should stay and work their due.

So spare us all you stiff-necked toffs
With prattling myopic aires
Our hands are better washed
We can tend our own affairs
So take the Queen and go tend the sheep
And take the parliament to Birmingham
Westminster we'll keep.

So all of you who don't know
Who where the weavers of the wool
Who built the railway and roads
And staff the hospitals
All of you who don't know
What makes a modern Rome
There's no place for you 'ere
You might as well go home
And leave the jobs to Londoners
And the best the world can send
There are green and pleasant lands
That you should stay and tend.

Sights across the city prove
What makes a modern Rome
And if you can't see how tide moves
Like Canute you'll lie in foam
So go back to the hills
So the chickens aren't alone
There's no place for you 'ere
Country boy go home.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

F-Words

Certain f-words have suffered abuse
I have witnessed and heard
Some scurrilous use.

The four letter word
On so many lips
Has been turned to turd
The way ad-land use it.

Free. Everything free
Say linguistic parasites
And we'll buy if it's free
As the price seems right.

And then there is fresh
Which means unprocessed
But when it left the land
Is anyone's guess.

In plastic wrapped boxes
For one penny less
You can buy all you want
And its free and its fresh.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Windows on summer

This is a season of Cabbage Whites
In chaotic courtship
Who knows what hurricanes they cause
What they feel in their stomach.
Dancing in zephyrs like clumsy
Trapeze artists in honey
Over and under and past and over
And on
Like doppler rhythms from open cars
Calling satisfaction
That this democratic dream
Sunshine
Is all mine
And the Cabbage Whites'.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

They're having a gas

Does Obama
Miss Osama
Is that why he sends Syrians
Heavy Armour?

There's Carlos the Jackal
But Bin Laden I'd rather
He was the best looking rebel
Since James Dean and Guevara.

The US has a concern
In regionalisation of the conflict.
They're having a gas.

From Pakistan to Somalia
Mali to Georgia
A war where we are unsure
Which targets we hit.

We're in want of a monster
Where is our monster
So we bomb and arm
Bomb and arm, bomb and arm
The whole of the Umma

What could be dumber
Than giving every angry young man a gun?
Auctioned futures
To give each rocket launchers.

The US has a concern
We will see violence escalate.
They're having a gas.

Lest we forget
Rambo 3 and our TV screens
Promoting Muja-hadeen
Staunch, with shoulder launchers
To take it to the Soviets.

To be forthright
It would seem poor foresight
To pour arms into a fight
Quite like what in hindsight
Spawned the air traffic
For those four flights.

I asked Humpty Dumpty
He said "sure right,
They're having a gas"

Blood, money and derivatives
To the victor the oils
So to backers with so much to give
It must be win
Win.

Aiming to install through proxy
Servers, processes and algorithms
For the new model of democracy
As seen in the Iraqi
Kleptocratic batshit strategy
Export standard is Beta
And may contain known conflicts.

We are all familiar with a different Utopia
With wheelchairs and legless beggars in our streets
Familiar with fatherless martyrs of the Middle East
They won't all, in the drama, don Semtex and rest
Some, like Osama, will take the rocks and look West.

Monday, July 01, 2013

Poem for the NSA


We met for a game of Bridge
Human to human
Drew out borders and grid
Drank port with ice
And served roast pork
The atmosphere was much enriched
As we talked long and loud
And as the pipes began to burn
There was not so much plume as cloud.

His facility with cards
Was well known
I did not heed the warning
Thinking I was smart,
I crested in six clubs
But was to crash and bust
Plot collapse before closure
A hostage to my hubris.

I never saw the diamonds glint
The toxic cargo smuggled by
Before the storm,
The threat seemed distant

There had been poor communication
Not so much as a flicker of understanding
A black out I'm afraid
All my partner could do was watch
They could not help nor aid

I started in a flood of trumps
You know the drill,
The attack looked all excercise.
But then delays started
The atmosphere crackled electric
I strained but could not recall
Which numbers had gone
And then a breach
The errant rough hit like a bomb
And an avalanche ensued
Lightening fast the looting of Kings
Running riot like pirates in Hispaniola
I had no power against the outbreak.
And in terror I was overcome
Relief was swift
The incident left me sick
Like a parrot with H5N1.

Vocab inspired by the NSA's key word list
http://redditgifts.com/exchanges/now-sharing-absurdity/

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Excerpt from batshit

....
So I went to the shed
And in some cluttered corner
Under things I was saving
To do something with someday
I found, mangy and resentful
My career, emaciated.
It upset my friend the most.
I used to bring it to the office
When we worked together
Bright eyed, it would
Entertain him, fetch things
And do tricks
He had been away
And hurt to see it sick.
He had some scraps
The usual fluorescent lit terminal
Window on a light well
In some piece of listed dilapidation
Listing and sorry like an old ho
Seeking solace in a bottle
I feed it keystrokes and it might
Live through summer.
........

I used to love dawn
From any angle
The delinquent birds
Are my friends
Singing to street lights

I still love dawn
But seldom when too long up alone
The garden looks so fine
I have made a home
And grow rocket from the walls
And yet this home will fall.

I have become choosy
About my dawns
High summer Tai Chi
On still days only
When I am well rested.

The intoxicated dawns
Of ecstasy, when all
Night has been generous and warm
And these dawns
The drunks whisper so soft in the street
I hear my pen scratch.

I have so many
They can't be listed here
All dawns to choose from.

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

I must be muddled

I unchartered Chartist
In uncharted power struggle
I must be muddled
Sitting and thinking
And sitting and thinking
Sitting
A new beginning in Dao
I-universe, beyond ego
A new big innings
They'll laugh at you
I must be muddled
I should go down to the water
The sick and slow canal
To separate some of the muddle
The things that are there
And here
I must go down to the muddle
A sick and slow caned fool
To play my part in the struggle
Like I learnt at school.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Rain

Am I to blame
If I make myself the target
When Eros' arrows rain
Martyred like the a varaed bull
In the last lists of pain
As painted on my face
By Eros arrow's rain.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Some hope

Would you be my lover.
Forever.
So that they name stars after us
And wedding cars carry our figurine.
Is this an innocent or idle dream?

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The beach

Last night tar skies were harbinger
Wind awash with ides
Galloped the stretched beach
Grain routed over grain
Fled the tide in vain.

Like Hannibal from West
Rolled billious stratus
Bloated with scorn
A pall, moonless and deaf
Told of pain by morn.

Sail open below the awful ranks
With little room leeward she ran
And was broken
Vessel threshed 'gainst cliffs
Wood rent and canvas tore
As land and air and water
Vied in blackness, each unsure.

Unblessed her crew were lost
Their cries like candles in a furnace tossed
Dashed and drawn down restless deeps
For Davey Jones their souls to keep.

Now sun is splayed like deck planks
Upon the beach
Sick mast rifted through deck
Decorates the break.
Figurehead cast upon a crest
Lies a lonely mourner on the wreck.
The rest has become flotsam
On the path in this morning fresh
And some young wife
Dons spinster's dress
Such crushing loss,
In passing interest.

Friday, May 10, 2013

A note of clarification

My love is not the first blush of summer wine

I thought it was a well known fact.
Beside Richmond's wide narrative
Tide tickling shoes and tyres
Doe fretted from barb to captor
And back
From what I thought
A well known fact.

I didn't note the polysemics
The grand Victoriana
Colonnaded against context
Grass bank and straw boaters
Placed me in another time
I thought you knew
It wasn't wrote between the lines.

I should've known
Should've had more sympathy
For your semantics, so unladdered
I said it
Just in observation
Meant it
Not as declaration
Thought it
No great revelation
But echoes of other utterances
Spluttered and frustrated
The dreams they trick Carp with
Must have caught your word
And made it grow
As misused beauty does
So unlike you
Misunderstanding
Its just
I meant it different.

You of all should know
Should not be suprised
It's not like I never told
Or gave it much disguise.

But I should probably know
You must have heard some lies
And looked upon a wintered rose
That promised much but died.

But since misunderstanding
Has budded, lest it flare
Let me hasten to the clifftops
And with pride to all declare

My love is not the first blush
Of summer wine
But like Brandy, the reserve
Rested, more refined

No quick crush
Of some rushed harvest
That bubbles heady light
A stronger liquor
The vapors lost
In alchemy of decade nights

No spritzer, diluted
Or coloured with Gin
Downed with a song
When the evening begins

A burnt love
Distilled drip by drip
From the alembic
To be sipped

Not the driving ocean wave
That claws the sand
Or raves at cliffs demanding
Or mirror vain and valueless
Till beauty gives its gaze

A love lain cellared
Vanillaed in oak
As seasons have ripened
And frozen
And blown to colour again
And children grown from swadling
To broad and sturdy men.

Beyond the flame of wax and wick
That startles timid at each breathe
A beacon blaze in optics set
To rest, in storms, the mind of ships
And proclaim above the cliffs
Occasionally
You are ever part of happy
And out to sea
At least for me
You know
I guess I always felt
You would save me from myself
I trust your judgement still
You always held my heart so well
Even at a distance.