Salt and ashes

Cast this cargo seaward
Salt and ashes, what it fertilises
I will neither know nor tend
Only seeds upon the wind
I will not pass by here again.
The watermark is low
Cast this cargo
And should some find value
Fish, urchins, crab
Let us celebrate next habour
With logs, flagons and song
They will not mark this spot for long
Not with an X.
But let us celebrate
Sacrifice to fish
It was but stowed weight these gifts
This fresh wind so swift
She skips across the crests
And runs the storms like Terns
Tell me are there ports to West
Or South of here
I have a hold so capacitous
Maybe in Dalmatia
I'll find pepper I can trade for wine
This cargo is but salt and ashes
The wind is good, the weather fine.

Patterns

If as from my life seems clear
I fall in love every seven years
Then by the time I love again
I'll be 49 and to what end?
To just repeat this pattern.

It's a thought and part a fear
A cause to check the course and steer
By the time I love again
I'll be 49 and to what end?
To just repeat this pattern.

She was so hot

When I met her I was like

"Where do you shop?"

She was so hot she burnt cotton up

Made nylon melt

She'd walk in the rain

And turn wool into felt.

I said "Would you like a drink?"

She said something with ice

Didn't blink 

Held my heart like a vice. 

She was so hot 

She turned shower drops to steam

Kept changing the channel

With infrared beams

She could cook an egg in her hand 

The constant smoke alarms

Give her oats, butter and

Honey, she could make flapjacks in her palm. 

She was so hot 

She was so hot, I candid confide

I was afraid for my child

Because of piles of bromide. 

Like an explosion

White heat, blue lights, A&E, third degree

Six months in traction, intensively. 

There were times I thought it couldn't last

Like after the fourth skin graft 

Making love in an ice bath

But the water wouldn't last

And we wouldn't stop

Wake staring up at a pitying doc.

After the fourteenth graft post-op

Got a consultant proper top

Nobody's fool

And he suggested investing 

In a swimming pool. 

It didn't take long. 

We got an ice dispenser

Opened a hammam as a community centre

Then thought why not. 

Got a turbine charged 20p a kilowatt. 

Now everyday we fill the whole pool with ice.

Steam generate making nice.

The Venerable Should

In the Understood Wood

In the Foothills of Good

Lives a beast known

As the Venerable Should

With two hundred heads

And a great sense of smell

The Venerable Should

Is often unwell.

For with two hundred heads

It has two hundred minds

And they don't all agree

All of the time.

So as one is given

To climb up a tree

Then another is given

To burrow beneath

And it furrows the brow

Of those in between

A hundred howls echo

Through the glimmering green

For a Should could do this

And Should could do that

You will often see Shoulds

Going forward and back.

And sometimes its coat

Is a big fuzzy ball

And sometimes it molts

And is clean cut and small.

And if you see one

You sometimes can't tell

For the Venerable Should

Changes colour as well.

Sometimes its brown mottled

And brushed into the green

At others, pink polka dot

That cannot be unseen.

One head likes to fish

And stay down by the river

Another gets colds

Its nose all a quiver

And yet another

Will eat only fruit

And the next one along

Likes Trivial Pursuit.

And they all think that they're right

And they generally are

But the Venerable Should

Seldom strays far.

For with two hundred heads

And four hundred eyes

That it is often confused

Is no great suprise.

In the Foothills of Good

The chorus of Should

Is sometimes seen chasing

For Ifs and for Woulds.

And rarely, when the stars

Are all in correct sections

The two hundred heads

Face one direction

Then, in the Understood Wood

In the Foothills of Good

Goes trotting forward

The Venerable Should.

Jerry Beck's grant cheque

Jerry Beck's grant cheque had knees
And jumped from bank to bank like fleas
They gave him this, and gave him that
And soon that grant cheque grew fat.

He took the entertainment cash
And put it all on railtrack
Over summer made a stack
Then returned the balance back.

Jerry Beck had patience
And asked good questions too
From fractions of a cent or pence
His yeastlike fortune grew.

Jerry Beck's grant cheque had knees
He plays cricket
With the Cayman Island cricket team.

Weather balloons

We read it very early on
As the hole in ozone bloomed
NASA in Alaska with their weather balloons
They captured all the data
And when it was not what they assumed
They said it must be calibration
The gadget out of tune.
So they put it back to benchmark
Light made dark by folk so smart
We'd just been to the moon.

And throughout the 70s
And in the 80s too
They threw out what they saw
For what they thought they knew
We sprayed aerosol and CFCs
The hole above us grew
And all the while they changed the spreadsheets
Thinking them untrue
And these were folk of science
They were not buffoons
Whole teams for decades
Deaf to weather balloons.

Forget all this

Love, why not lover, come to bath, to wash
Come to the table, to cloth
The cost, the hurt, would make this love so firm
On deep cut foundings we will grow and learn.

Know it's only you
Your cautious grace, a slow embrace
Like every space is kissed
Your regal air, your will to dare
Makes every place a palace.
Forget all this.

Forget the day, these hours
The shackling clock so slow
Forget the brick, the towers
This city paved in gold
Forget your doors and curtains
Your furnishings and clothes
Forget all your bright jewelry
Forget them all and come

To the forests, the briars, the dark thickets
Beyond all lies and truth
Beyond veracity and acting
Beyond age and youth
Tear yourself if you must
Till blood drips,
Drips from the wire pen
Sunshine, our land
Are not yours till won.

Rugby ball

This may be not the thing to say
But we'll make it right another day.
And now if you admit your fall
I won't treat you like a rugby ball
Seek to grasp and runaway
Drop kick to touch to make a play
Throw you swift around my friends
And push and barge off other men.

This may be not the thing to say
We'll make it right another day
When you call, it's joy to fall
You won't become a rugby ball.

Therapy notes

Too much the child
They will not help you up
And fix you
They've done their time
This what their skills can do
They will not help you up.

And if they could've done better
Settled all the butterflies
Set up all the dominoes
You know they would've done so
This is what their skills can do
They cannot help you up.

The slow rolling of the hill
The greying hairs
The baggage train of unexplained
Armaments, defences
The rusted buckle on well stowed pain
The ordinary pretences
The soft and seeping sore of love
Too tender to be touched
Too much the child
Too much the child
They will not help you up.

That passes

Willow by the bank
I hope you are well
With the water that passes
Under your tresses
With the brook that runs
With the nest at your roots
With this season of ruin
With the burgeoning fruit.
I hope you are well
With the water that passes.

Be worth it

Call me an idealist

But from the start

Just be worth

A broken heart.

I don't mind tarts

Artists, Spartans

But I ask this for certain

Should you strike with Cupid's dart

Just be worth a broken heart.

From a love that's lost
I bought the old bay tree

That rooted now

Grows wild and free

With leaves that lend

A depth to tea

This one thing I'll ask of thee

Even if we one day part

Just be worth a broken heart.

One dawn, one dusk

Above the sea

One lingered cusp

One hand in need

Even without bended knee

If to love you well

Means to set you free

I'll take the shilling and embark

Just be worth a broken heart.

Rock pools

Under the skin

Dip, like thrown rock

And it's cool

In a thin, sun-cradled layer

On the top.

Stretched hands out like darts

Into almost ice

In the dark, murk

Deep hollow of rock

Sun does not touch, dense

Almost ice

Swaddled in slowed time

And all within becomes fire

Fighting, almost ice

To the light, the surface and sun

The shining picture of mountains

When the skin stills again.

Blueprint - Ivory Towers

The bones of magic, dead enchanted things.

From the ground the tops look like needle tips

Gaudi's skyscrapers in seperate estates

So high they penetrate the atmosphere

Take the measure of stars.

Golden fire reflects off ivory like a beacon
After the sun's moved on to other lands

And from the high windowed panopticon

You can see all below like satellites,

In days and seasons when the weather's right

Though mostly all is fluffy candyfloss

Bright cottonwool of brilliant white,

Tracking the sight of storms wet eyes

In the pure unbroken cover of the sky.

Yet when it's clear
The earthbound look like black mustard seeds

Spilled from a jar

Cities like scars, you see no nations

From space. In the stacked cream. Right at the top

You cannot hear a scream.

Stretching up to the sun,

The stolen bones of slain enchanted things

Undone. Narwhale, elephant and unicorn

Space scratching scaffold of tusk and horn,

With balconies, with walkways and turrets

Through the troposhphere. And here

At the base, you can still see blood on the tusks

Dried black and brown and inside a prison

Countless incarcerated, trussed

And bound in cloth, leather, card

Shut cramped like slave ships

Billions of crushed trees branded

And silenced like dissidents.

With a telescope you will see space suits

Weaving a lattice of tusks, for ever more shelves

The cells of knowledge, the labrynth of crannies

The walls of these towers built of prisoners

Built of creativity and dissent.

Light and glass. With light and glass

They can be free, shake their cracked binds

Fly from between the tusks and horns

Like a snowstorm,

Like a typhoon of finches, hummingbird and butterfly.

Each carve it's own netsuke.

And let the pages live among the trees,

Live in cities on the rooftops and parks

Eat seed from the meadows and

Drop the letters of their brandings as they throng

So the streets and fields grow flush with wisdom.

The silos in the stratosphere are no good use of bones

Of the lives of elephants and unicorns

Of fishing magic beasts in arctic waters.

These seperate towers into space when we can fly.

When we have an international station there

Above ivory towers rising high into the air.

Haiku mentioning vampires

These watchful robots
Do they search for Dracula
Bats in the belfry

Glass I

It was transparent

Vinegar streaks from windowlene

Buffed to invisibility. Pristine

Clean windows. And the small fly

Shook it's wings with all its force

And drummed the pane in all recourse

But not without remorse

It was transparent

Clear. It could not pass.

The fly could see the rotting mass beyond

Could see the rubbish strewn about the public

Street. All the shit it could ever eat.

The fly could see it

It was transparent.

And if it called a million friends

They could not find a pass.

To show them shit and still pretend

A fly can force the glass.

It didn't have glass cutter

Later. I found a dry dead fly

On the sill in dust and clutter.

Blueprint - Oceans

We have built oceans in the sky

Glass bottomed that gleam in the sun

They are clouded, the keels of yachts

The slow whales, swift sharks visible

When the clouds part.

The great imperial locks and seals

The black bitumen seams that sweat

High vaulted walls, their narrow shore

The face of safe doors that perspire

Condensation on the steel skin

Creaking gaskets of old money

Dripping. Where the great pipes empty

In a Niagra, spray rises

High into the air and some winds

Set the waves to lap in thin cascades.

There are waterways in the sky

That we have built. Modern pipework

Like the Westbourne over Sloane Square

Canals that sluice, spaghetti mesh

Fairground wheels and yes

It trickles down.

Trickles in increasingly fickle

And unsettled rivulets through deserts

Carcasses, the bones of asses in the dirt

Reapers sickles over wishes, this dearth

Of liquid.

Hackney Brook, hundred foot wide at the Lea

The Tyburn, that Windsor's throne stole as rest

The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon valley

Are cased in concrete tunnels under us

Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins once precious.

Hidden in the Byzantine marble jungle

The York stone Baobabs with termite blocks

With ants, the concrete mangroves

Where the call of soot stained statues and tin rats

Echo

The penguins and the parrot carouses

Hidden here amid ceremony and veneration.

Are the great pump houses.

Gargantuan pipes, the old hide replaced

By copper, by stainless, in a forest

Concrete towers like a tall coal furnace

The spinning whirlpool

The suction mouths of graft, quotas, licence

Empty all liquid from vast depressions

The great motors turning, bound in velum

Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and levers

Whirring din of paper bladed turbines

With the power of language and routine

The monumental PSI

To force this liquid

To vast oceans in the sky.

The velum casks that bind the pumps are rotting

If they were to rupture, burst

And all this liquidity flood upon the common

A thousand flowers. The Flamingoes would return

Elephant and Ibis. The Whales in the sky

Sharks, yachts would beach upon glass bottoms

And watch the earth's innumerable flowers

There are oceans in the sky

That take PSI and power.

Blueprint - Oceans III

Hidden in Byzatine marble jungle

The York stone Baobabs with termite blocks

With ants, the concrete mangroves

                                                     where the call

Of soot stained statues and tin rats

                                                     echo,

The penguins and the parrot carouses

Hidden here amid ceremony and veneration.

Are the great pump houses.

Gargantuan pipes, the old hide replaced

By copper, by stainless, in a forest

Concrete towers like a tall coal furnace

The spinning whirlpool

The suction mouths of graft, quotas, licence

Hoover all liquid from vast depressions

The great motors turning, bound in velum

Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and levers

The whirring din of paper bladed turbines

With the power of language and routine

The monumental PSI

To force this liquid

To vast oceans in the sky.

Blueprint - Oceans II

Trickles in increasingly fickle

And unsettled rivulets through deserts

Caracasses, the bones of asses in the dirt

Reapers sickles over wishes, this dearth

Of liquid.

Hackney Brook, hundred foot wide at the Lea

The Tyburn, Windsor's throne stole as rest

The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon valley

All cased in concrete tunnels under us

Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins once precious.

Blueprint - Oceans I

We have built oceans in the sky

Glass bottomed that gleam in the sun

They are clouded, the keels of yachts

The slow whales, swift sharks visible

When the clouds part.

The great imperial locks and seals

The black bitumen seams that sweat

High vaulted walls, their narrow shore

The face of safe doors that perspire

Condensation on the steel skin

Creaking gaskets of old money

Dripping. Where the great pipes empty

In a Niagra, spray rises

High into the air and some winds

Set the waves to lap in thin cascades.

There are waterways in the sky

That we have built. Modern pipework

Like the Westbourne over Sloane Square

Canals that sluice, spaghetti mesh

Fairground wheels and yes

It trickles down.

II.

Trickles in increasingly fickle

And unsettled rivulets through deserts

Caracasses, the bones of asses in the dirt

Reapers sickles over wishes, this dearth

Of liquid.

Hackney Brook, hundred foot wide at the Lea

The Tyburn, that the throne stole as rest

The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon valley

All cased in concrete tunnels under us

Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins once precious.

III.

Hidden in Byzatine marble jungle

The York stone Baobabs with termite blocks

With ants, the concrete mangroves

                                                     where the call

Of soot stained statues and tin rats

                                                     echo,

The penguins and the parrot carouses

Hidden here amid ceremony and veneration.

Are the great pump houses.

Gargantuan pipes, the old hide replaced

By copper, by stainless, in a forest

Concrete towers like a tall coal furnace

The spinning whirlpool

The suction mouths of graft, quotas, licence

Hoover all liquid from vast depressions

The great motors turning, bound in velum

Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and levers

The whirring din of paper bladed turbines

With the power of language and routine

The monumental PSI

To force this liquid

To vast oceans in the sky.

He read the Mail

He entered like he was expected
The face of a Cypriot Greek
Greying, chiseled to English sag
And bulldog cheeks.
He read the Mail.

He didn't want the cabbage
And mocked in voice
"So poor all I can afford is
Cabbage."
He read the Mail.

"And carrots and peas
And tea and gravy
The gravy not in the tea"
Like the waitress would think
That was funny
Like his wife thought
That was funny.
His wife wasn't there
He sat hunched in a chair
And read the Mail

Noughts and crosses

x
xx
!xx@!x*x@x!
o
x xxxx xxx
xx
x

Blueprint - Germs

Let's talk about how the germs get in

The parasites and virus

On the matchstick frail and weakened limbs.

Leeches latch on among us

Who wade the muddy current waist deep

Up to our neck, the choicest.

Bully the hungry and short on sleep

On those who work the hardest

Carry most

That's where parasites will find a host.

When broken in, to broken body

Then they multiply again

Begin, select vectors to infect

The whole flock till every sheep

Is sick with ticks. “We gave you freedom”

All the grass you could ever need

Emaciated. So many mouths

To feed.

That's how germs get in and louse.

Influenzas, to name some

Kill the old and kill the young

Knock off all the bottom rungs

Then see how long they have to run.

T-Cells only recognise

After the infections come

The broken fragments of a virus

Make an innoculation.

Germs will still get in unless

We can recognise the parasite

And every body old and young

Has the strength to fight.

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.

As the blackbird flies these autumn gusts

On the bridge across the steel track and cable

Under grey block gabled sky

Wind high and blustering like a crisis bitten lush

I saw a blackbird fly.

Spilling arcs in the close storm's surf

Wings as shields stiff, neck locked he banks

Yaws and lifts like string snapped kite

Skates swift down wild waves unseen.

I saw a blackbird blown.

No compass in the colourless wash

Yellow beak unfollowed, sky and land

One sphere to its eye he dives,

Like fletched dart, black fleck

In swilled glass of medicine

For dirty streets, it dives again.

Not play. Taut against cloud's taunts 

And laughs, stiff agency betrays the joy 

Of sport. Once caught and slips, caught and slips so light, 

The current, like a skateboard from a pipe and vaunts 

These vaults a spinning top, an upward thrust.

Tell me Blackbird, I must know for true

Is my muse's heart like you?

Maintenance

I heard Stealth Bombers expand

When they fly, so high and fast they heat

And when they land and cool

All the oil and unspent fuel

Pisses out as joints contract and seals slip

The whole thing needs repainting

Before it flies another trip.

This muse is more like a cat

Leave out a bowl

It'll probably be back.

Things to do

Whistling like sailors

On the prow and in the spray

That lamb's tail

Never fails to shake with breaking day.

It does not all repeat like brick

These cycles like the Dutch

Like amonites, sediments, Fibonacci

Sequences, calyxes and such

Repeat and grow, repeat and grow

In iterations. Organic 4D tapestry, print

Time bound block weave of wet dyed wool

Half empty or half full

The glass will set the task

If you can set the rule.

She said she didn't like honey

She said she didn't like honey

Busy as she was in flight

165 jars

Almost every country

One over imported cheese

As she pours.

She said she didn't like honey

Jet driven, thought of the future

And talked of rafts of ants in floods

That some died locked together

And the rest floated on their drowned bodies.

She thought of the future

Said she didn't like honey.

A more heavy metal protest song against the "great" repeal bill

Twisted bitch spit roast the nation
Parliament spit roast the nation
Making money, money
Off devastation
They got their tongue in, tongue in
The destitution
Fucking us like bunnies it ain't even
Prostitution.

All I hear is lies, lies, lies
And if you listen
It's just lies, lies, lies
To Rip Off Britain
More lies, lies, lies
And that's their mission.

Did mention
They're robbing the pensions.

Tax haven, craven, champagne glutton
Push button fuckers leading sheep into mutton
Double dutch press, spread gas like muck
Selling want, hate and don't give a fuck

It's a fifty fifty flip
It's a fifty fifty flip
Now go pick the coin out of the shit

They put gas in our blood
Gas in our blood
So it reminds of Moet when they suck
And they suck
Ticket sellers at the gates of the park
And they suck, and suck
Ticket sellers at museums for the trees
And they suck, and suck
Ticket sellers at the surgeries

All  I hear is lies, lies, lies
And if you listen
It's just lies, lies, lies
To Rip Off Britain
More lies, lies, lies
And that's there mission.

Did I mention
They disguise their intentions

we had a vote
Yes vote
A bit of hope
A bit of hope
Now the fascists stringing rope round parliaments throat
With a vote
A vote
A vote they say will vote votes away
Dismay, Mayhem
Rip the Magna Carta up and write it again.

It's all lies......

Protest song for the "great" repeal bill

The whole clusterfuck's been

Corrupt from the start

Dark black arts,
Foreign secret service, Saudi

And Putin's Oligarchs

Now the DUP want to rule over me

But they won't even say

Where they got their election money.

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse is out the coffin

And fascists are live

It's Germany in 33 and Italy in 25

Now the kids are on the streets

Sleeping in hungry in bags

And if you're in a wheelchair

Then it's just too bad

And the cheque don't stretch

So now your walking in rags

And they come of TV bragging,

Its the most jobs we've ever had

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse come out the coffin

And fascists are live

And they hang on it on the Muslims

Or the Polish too

And if you ain't got dough

Then they're slowly hanging you

And if you're old

A hospital bed will have to do

And if you ain't been told

This is a very British coup.

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse come out the coffin

And fascists are live

Voting is just joke

Cos the bandwidth stinks

The world is digital

They're still writing in ink

They printed so much cash

They don't think we make the link

And all they're gonna do

Is push the rest to brink.

It's Germany in 33.....

Let it slip

Let it slip

Let it slip

With touched fingers tips

To your buttons,

After the staring sun has dipped

The blue relaxed, the amber is lit

The clasp and the catch

An uncomfortable fit

Let it slip.

We will die like cats.

At least curious. At least curious.

Let slip a zip notch off your hip arch

Make one button fall undone

And cotton drip

Tip my thought with a sip

Let it slip.

The gate you keep

Meet by it, and there betwixt

Cup your back and catch like wick

Your laugh like sparks

Your lips like gusts

On grass lain all summer parched

Let it slip

Let it slip

With ringed fingertips

Over your shoulders

And down from your hip

Let it slip.

Shrapnel no. 22

The sky is a grimy sheep
And the street full of clowns
In tumbling, that wiggle
Down the windows in jumbled
Paths and splash punchlines
All the way from the endless
Blank stage above.
The street is full of clowns
Telling stories of love.

Double or quits

Double or quits

Double or quits

That's how you become a troubled

Gambling addict

With the hope of a lift

Throwing more down the pit

Then you soar when you claw back

The smallest of gifts.

Double or quits

Double or quits

When you're all in a bubble

And the wrecking ball hits

When one moment you're rich

Then its thrown down the ditch

Taking double or quits

Double or quits

When what you wrote brings a writ

That fan spread hot shit

But your pen pounds and pours down

Like mounds more bars might just drown it.

Thinking double or quits

Double or quits.

Shrapnel No. 47

The sun on my pen makes it a beak
Swilling krill through the bright lake
In swirls, across the ledge, shadows
Edge in drifts as curtains think of England.
They're talking about the parking space again
Outside,
More politely now in tones that hide
The squabble over territory
And then sirens like a paint bucket thrown
And someone thinks they funk
Then just soft growls and the siren
Comfortingly distant.

Shrapnel no.65

They take spring lambs too young

Buds touched by frost grow flowers with a twist

The caged bird sings a cruder song

Chicks fall to hawks ere they fly the nest.

For there are men of force

Who so desire beauty

But fear its addiction more.

How the fear and the power felt

The spoiled reward of shame and guilt

Four pillars that, great St. Peter's built.

Fired like this, what warmth would melt?

For among us all

There are those who so desire love

But fear its addiction more.

Epistle to addicted pussle

Cat, puss, wustle, woodly woodly wuss

Whatever be your name

What is it you wish

That makes your tail swish

That makes you cupboards brush

That makes you whine and fuss

What is it you wish?

Not this dish of fish? Not beef

Or lamb or bread in milky mush

All left untouched

And yet you fuss and swish

Come over from the neighbours house

I'm only guessing which

What is it you wish for?

Whiskas

Whiskas crack biscuits? Ah yes

What's in this? Nip?

Cat smack that racks your naps

With thoughts of crunchy rock.

Ah wuss, Ah wuss

You wish a dish of fix

What war on drugs.

I wonder what's in this?

The Socialist Revolution

Let me tell you something about the socialist revolution

It happened. While you were sleeping

It happened when workplace terminals came creeping

It happened when the computer came home

It's happened. That's why you check your phone.

It happened with satellites and fibre optics

Computer chips, when the internet replaced television

It happened with the collapse of communism

It happened when stocks stopped being about dividends

When you no longer had to make things

To get rich, just three guys with an app and a pitch

Capital factories high and dry as they put it online

And you pay for bandwidth to reproduce all that.

It happened with SourceForge, Linux, Apache

When geeks united across time and space

According to their ability, to write software

According to your need. Indeed

It happened with the advent of cyrpto-currency.

It happened. But maybe not quite as envisioned.

While you were sleeping.

It happened when you became valued for your data

When they started giving 99% free

To sell you 1% later.

Are you're awake now?

When with a big bang the banks flopped

You woke up, and saw there was a problem

Went to the cook-book and called it

Capitalism, Nationalism, Liberalism

But the revolution had happened

And all the mud you slung got no traction.

As you cried “Burn capitalists”

But capitalists had turned to taxes

And burning cash in Silicon fire pits.

As you cried “Worker's rights”

But workers are nowhere in sight

And electric power runs robots all night.

Tank remix II.III

In the low ceiling crypt

Where they chose to gather

The etched and rounded brick

Thows a mesh of shadows

With candlelit plot soup thick

She waxes again, like sips

Of hot coffee, water.

Energy courses as tips

In spring force through dark earth

Bulb to light, flip state switch

Kite born over the sea

She feels free for sprouting

Throughout the estuary

She still carrying her

Physical memory

And will not be waylayed

On road to them, she found

A way, there are others

And dozens of others

Who will be a band in

Waves and light, uncovered

Chorus of voices unite.

Fight gave purpose afresh

They were not the usual

Superfluous flesh.

I won't explain

I won't explain

And you won't ask

Cracked vase in the aftermath

The over watered pot

The mucus covered calving

Sentences. Things I just forgot.

I won't explain

When paint runs

The current flow

At surface and at depth

Split.

I didn't think that fag was lit

Didn't pour that drink.

I won't explain

A whisper's touch.

Spray breaking upon bare rock

Bamboo shaken in a gust

Gravity lost in rolling surf.

I won't explain.

Tanks remix

I.IV

 

It was after the funeral

The tears and the drone. After

She'd gone up the hill. Near her

Home.

A young man came across tilled field

Covered in sulphur from head to toe

Gave her physical memory, will

And said to her, “You are not so

Alone.

These are their addresses and history

Their branching and probable destinies.”

There in the files the man had names

Important names, hers, others

His. History, chains, more. Their

Curse.

Foot snaps a branch and paths fork, part

From then on whatever occurs

She'd kiss an obituary. Walk

To the field where she first heard

Worse.

The window

In the rain, walled in by clay shades

And the scattered brick that repeats in rooves

Breaking spumes of green, this framed scene

Is the stuff of epics, snow blind boredom

Of escapes and flights. Yoked madness

And demons beaten like sled dogs till they drag

Some words, from the whisper of car wheels

In spray, from the soft pat of footsteps

Kissed by moist concrete. With this

Turbulent pot of spider stocked molten soup

Thick with all that's caught between Colombia

Canaria, East India, flies swarm, drawn

To the sweet rot, scent of piled corpse and sacrifice

The old headstones stacked like index cards

Against the moss stippled yard wall

Of St. Someone's church by the flats,

That sits locked like it or god forgot;

To the sediment of the anthropocene

The rich alluvial deposits of longitude

Of law, the first thawings of power's grasp

And what jungles grew, what jungles of souls

Where cut, chainsawn to planks

By the strong arms of freedom, shipping rope

And sails stretched like spider silk past sunset

And the clay shaded walls left

As testament, as embers and magnets

This horizon of stacked brick and rain

Is the stuff of epics. It's plain.

Blueprint for the revolution I and II

It has to be leaderless

As we understand the risks. Power corrupts

Dopamine makes fiends of Kings and Queens

Makes schooled folly and bullies

Makes a mass, a forest from trees and the rest of us.

The attraction of hierarchy, addiction

Of our institutions,

Manacled to mammalian mating patterns

As natural as they are arbitrary.

Did the enlightenment ever happen?

This great hubris of humanity.

We ape gods.

It has to be leaderless

Poly-centric, poly-archy, poly-anna

Democratically selected technocrats and planners

In a structure of proper etiquette and manners.

That is, checks, gibbets and balance.

Connected and injected with

All affecting the manor.

It has to be leaderless

A network that gets the best work

Tests first, then iterates

Builds and communicates all that is great.

It has to be leaderless.

II.

It has to be transparent

Infinitely perspicacious

Clearer than water

Clearer than glass

It has to be like optics and maps

Like microscopes, telescopes

Stethoscopes for every bloke

To slice and dice

Comb out vices, ticks and lice.

It has to be so transparent

That the path of every penny

Is crystal clearly apparent.

Every signatory and functionary

Every spreadsheet and file

Every phone number dialed

It has to be transparent.

Blueprint. Pyramids

We stand before Pyramids

We stand beneath pyramids built of wires

Built of cargo ships and computation

Built of our venerated law and custom.

That heave from deserts, where the band plays on

Upon the wreckage of old certainties

Upon famished, unwashed, terrified pleas

On legal instruments, players play on.

Watching seasons of reflected sun

On the gold crowned apex, as at Cheops

When the Nile flooded with slave bodies

When the mind budded with new found signs

When Egyptians learned how to split one

Into fractions and built pyramids.

There is no gold atop the pyramids at Cheops.

Their gods long since submerged by grains of sand

Their temples swept by grains of sand and lost

Their dead tongued edicts shorn of old meaning

The broken bodies of their carved idols

Like the scattered jigsaw of a crime scene

We could not begin to know

How to worship Pharaohs now.

We stand before our Pyramids, gold crowned

The gold cap atop Cheops long torn down.

Blue print for the revolution. Intro

Let's get it on, stop pretending
That we're stuck in the days
Of typewriters and pens
Bookends and postmen.
Just stop pretending.

Stop offering wooden soles not rubber treads
Stop offering fruit picking instead of bread.
Stop saying pigs can't fly.
We've a dozen ways to make pigs fly.

I'm not calling for a bit more for the poor
For men to do house chores
Or to let live and ignore.
I'm calling for all these old walls to fall.

For the cathedrals and palaces
To be redecorated, reconsecrated
For the entire architecture to be updated
I am not the only one frustrated.

Each election is an  affront
A front of rubber stamps and shackled tyranny
It's obvious when you understand it
Parliamentary democracy
Is premised on poor bandwidth.

Cherry groves

In these high days the fruit trees bow so low

The cherry spreads its sweep to brush soft pates

Of shrouded idlers slumbered through the grove

Above hand's rest hang all the jewels to sate

Any appetite.

                     Why scale the smooth ringed trunk

When there is fruit to hand to make you sick

Ripe fruit to hand to get you giddy drunk

And baskets brim from catch of beaten sticks.

Would it be greed to leave this tussock

Reach like apes, curious amongst the branch

To push and pull the lush sweet summer luck

Or derelict to spurn these gifts, this chance.

What paths to muse, lain prone in cherry groves

With windfall presents, these sweet merry odes.

Power to the people

When they cried 'power to the people'
They didn't mean it.
Just a them and us confrontation
Against power's concentration.
But it was people that had power.

Now they mean it. Increasingly
We will say it and mean it
Against the unceasing creep of invisible webs
Networks and algorithms in people's stead.

Computers are blind to the streets
Blind to banners,  deaf to demos and chants
Algorithms do not have to face
Their children, their uncles and aunts.

When we cry power to the people
We will mean it.

We, myself and I

So this guy, who I've never met

But connect with over digi shit

From keyboard skirmish in some debate

Pops up on messenger to ask

Who are you?

And I'm like, wait.....?

I am at least 43% bacteria

Who are not me, who do not share my DNA

Governed by linked Eukaryotes

That hold at least some sway.

So who are we, this team

Bounded in a lipid skin

That processes all this data

From without, within?

A nested complex system

Fractal departure in fractal set

A mobile arc for DNA

Electro-chemical and wet.

An optic set of stories

And culture that I've sponged

A city built on many towns

Foundations, deep, unknown.

I am all those I know

And how I know them too

The other teams of storied cells

A node in the Ubuntu.

The Greeks will tell I'm an immortal soul

Ever true like maths

That there is one unchanging me

If I mill through all the chaff.

But if I'm an equation

Then it is one non-linear

The answer made each moment new

With situation and parameter.

For I am not that three year old

Or that young man of twenty

To go chasing after some true self

Is just a quest that's empty.

I am not me ten years back

Or even yesterday

And I am not who I will be

Even later on today.

I am we, is what we find

The more sciene probes

For there is at least one self

In each temporal lobe.

There are neurons

In my heart and gut

Not just in my head

And chemicals that change

With every book I 've read.

Chemicals that change

If on my head they place a crown

Or bind me in shackles chained

In prison, beaten down.

Chemicals that change

If love holds me for a time

Or I run a marathon

Or live on nout but limes.

I have understandings

From animals extinct and dead

And understandings from unique genius

Like Einstein, in my head.

I'm a complex adaptive system

That mills meanings as I be

And even by this evening

I'll be a different form of we.

She is a survivor

Be kind to her

Even if she has grown to wear the crown

Be kind.

Soon after birth she broke

Murdering family, self-harm

Long before the uncle appeared

Be kind to her.

Acount the infant trauma

Questions and pictures of hurt youth

Frozen at heart to know no path

Away from these vexed complexes

Rooted in past and tangled in her hair.

Treat her with kindness and care.

She still walks with stars in her eyes

Still dreams, still streams with tears

And screams, still finds the same faults

Can't stitch the torn seams

Still fights the guilt, clings to toys

Pulls up the quilt. Still cannot help

But see the pictures of those young eyes.

Still caught in recriminations and hate

Asking the same questions she asked then

Young questions from a long held crown.

Confounded in the same debates

From the 1860s

Darwin, Melanin, Socialism or Liberalism

Like she'll never move on, be kind to her

America, her civil war

Survivor of childhood trauma.