This is not a letter

 Sorry I have not written

I have not been busy or distracted

Have not had children running under my feet
Or court, It is just
I have not yet found silver
In my tongue
To bring the gifts I must
Not yet prospected some gold seam
Mined my heart for a promise or dream
To fresh bejewel your brow 
With crafted new crowns
Or woven a strong sail of truth
Fitted with veracity for a fresh
Voyage of proof
I have only these few dry words
Signed with a tear of two
I miss you

Dr.Quack and Mr.Higgs

 He really was a most curious patient. More than any other in my experience his presence completely permeated the room. Collapsed the moment he entered. Only, not quite like any other collapse I’d ever witnessed, he seemed to grow into something completely different.

“Ah sir, do put yourself back in the seat, you’re shaking”

“Frequently”

“And what seems to be the problem Sir?”

“The problem”

“Yes sir the problem. You’re shaking sir”

“Is that the problem”

“No sir, I mean, if that is the problem. Is that the problem?”

“Vibsing?”

“Vibsing? sir”

“Yes, to me its vibsing. Aren’t you vibsing sir?”

“Well, um, can’t say I am. I’m er, a professional sir, very little time to er”

“Don’t you vibes with everyone? Everyone that comes in, just get down an”

“Sir you’ve collapsed again, your collapsing”

“It’s just how I am.”

“You do that most elegantly I have to say sir”

“Kind of you to say so”

“Is that the problem”

“Kindness?”
“No sir”

“Elegance?”
“no sir, the collapsing”
“It’s how I made my name as a sailor sir”
“oh you were a sailor”
“I was on a ship, it didn’t have a sail as such, It was my father’s ship. Named after my father too. I was quite important at one time.”
“Captain?”
“Where?”
“No, where you the captain? Vice-captain”
“Bosun”

“Ah bosun”

“Is that why you’re, sorry, I mean, we’re, is that why we’re here?”
“Pardon”
“The problem sir? Is it related to your time as a Bosun”
“I was never meant to be a bosun I was meant to be in a field.”
He had, in the chair become a very energetic knot.
“Well, can’t a bosun be a bosun and still be in a field? You don’t have to be on a ship. Oh sir, your, oh, your collapsing again.”

And with that he was altogether quite a different. 

“Mr. Higgs, can you send the Gibbon up on your way down”.

Should I tidy my desk No.36

Thick as two short Plancks

Give thanks

But if my maths was better

They'd be longer

Probably energy is frequency

And mass is energy and mass

Bends space time and has gravity

So harmonius frequency

Can bend too short planks.

Eyeing up birds

When I go out I eye up birds
In the slow billious sky

Like cerebral cortex

A flash, twist,

Monochrome anomalys 

Black capped gulls, in a squall
A pair, a gust,
A solitary seeker of storms

Beats wings in firm wind

The Corvids take turns on the chimney pots

A brace of magpies, a heavy crow

A parliament on the tiles, along the gutters 

The pigeons like frightened aerobatic fish

A swinging escher print in vain escape

Synchronised round poplar trees race

A frantic school or flock, flayed against the evening sky

A red kite hovers

Eyes tight to some verge

Scrap of grass on a side street

Not languid like thermal 

Sitting sentinels of Delhi's sky

But a fierce menacing grace

I think of the red fort and youth

Against a blue white sky.

The birds are bipeds

With an L-shaped larynx

Like us. All they lack is

Thumbs and grammar

All we lack is warm feathers and wings.

Sheep

If it was just a nudge I would not begrudge one bit But if it shoves, caustic caterwauls and whips If it is a shilling for a life on ships There is only pain in the achievement It may be that I don't believe yet Or it maybe like enclosure That I sit a sheep on a high hilltop And remember the soft human hands They so wish that I forgot. And if this mirror were to crack Would the replica be more exact Would rafters make a better roof If riven. Would it be better home for ravens This freedom of the citadel Behind high walls, free from Falling in love, with no shame And no society to judge.

When the dam broke

So when the dam broke
I watched from high on the mountainside
How soft water plumed like smoke
Lifted, spun and tossed
Pharaonic blocks with ease
Smashing the tall thick gates
To shards, gravel that scoured
Sedge from the valleyside,
Sent trees wheeling in the torrent
Waves clambering on waves, shaking
Where once was the pent
Controlled stillness, manicured
Lawns and matchbox houses
Crescendoed a torrent, spewing
From the cleft gash, an explosion
Of nature, untameable till its own
Stillness returned and birdsong
I, shaken watched, from the mountainside
The flat, free river below.

Cocoa for breakfast

Cocoa for breakfast
Promotes neural plasticity
Then fast
Then faster, but
More haste, less speed
That's my advice
Funny how Einstein erred
And God plays dice.

The complex dance
The weather
Yes my friends
We are all in this together
I gather

Small flecks of gold
Like a placer mine panner.

If we think 
Therefore we are
Uncork the stoppered bottle
Lift the bell jar.

For which grain of sand
Will end up on top?
There's no way of telling
No matter
What calculator you've got.

This was spring

When
Escape became a watermarked flight
Beyond the speed of winged feet
When all I felt from your breath was fright
I became. The bridge of my moat frozen
So breaches to my isolation, inevitably
Felt like cold ghosts, such a stranger
To intimacy and company unknown.
I need new horoscopes.
This was spring
Some great revenge, against other wrongs
My mind cast through catalogues 

Seeking traditional songs. Not for nostalgia
But guides in my hideaway, gurus
To tell me, when water has eroded all
Memories, what traditions were.
This was spring.

Watching the clock

Catching the drops on a clock hand

Is hard
My knuckles failing, I feel
Pulling the belt buckle tight
Helps my gut
But that space is black. 
The space where the sheets creased
Scent. Is all spent, a finger trace, 
Reminiscence, I wish this
Was making love
Not war, not hornets sent in the post
The closeness of soft skin
Ends, that first crease begins
The topographics, in relief
Become a map of kingdoms lost
Of things I trust.
The second hand does not
Hold the round salt drip
The long hand, minutes,
Are not a spoon, hold no moon
Apple, nor star
The short hand drips errors
Airbrushes maps, as creases slip.
Its hard catching tear drops
On an old wrist watch. 

Dr. Quack and that thing

Quack, quack

“Comfortable chair, yes, please, do make yourself comfortable.  Yes, the upholstery, we had it bespoke, they were antique, 19^th I think, anyway, what is it I can do for you?”

Indisputably it was a curious animal that strolled in.

“do you have an appointment”
“um, last Tuesday, I think am I late”
“yes, ah you were the Tuesday slot. Take a seat”
“what seems to be the problem?”
“the problem?”
“yes, what is it that brings you here”

“a taxi”

“a taxi sir?”

“well, if I’m honest I came by bus and pony”
“have you left your pony outside sir”
“no they’re here”

“where, them”
“yes them, always reliable, well, generally reliable at least”
“don’t they belong to someone else”

“well yes, but he does lend them out”
“yes, I ride them from time to time myself, delightful on soft ground”
“yes, I do like them on the beach, barefoot”
“yes, anyway, what brings you here”

“this is a very nice chair”
“do you like it”

“yes, the velour, splendid colour, if this horsehair”

“after a fashion. Some time after the fashion it should be said”
“yes”

“Sir, to cut to the chase, is that a tree growing out of your head”
“a what”

“a tree”
“well, that’s why I’m here”
“because of the tree”

“is that what it is?”
“I confess, in all my professional years, well, I confess I’m not entirely sure.”
“do you take that everywhere you go”
“well you have one too”
“yes, but well”
“yes I do, doesn’t everyone?”
“well yes, I believe they do, but”
“yes”
“yes”
“anyway that tree, does it take much watering”

“sunlight mainly”
“sunlight?”
“keeps the er…”

“yes, yes it does, is, yes”
“so some water……and er,”
“not too much”
“no”
“sometimes on Tuesdays”
“was that last….”

“no that was a call”
“calling?”

“vocational training”
“really”
“well the switchboard, you know”

“well”

“you see
“well, yes I do, oh dear”
“there do seem to be quite a number coming in”

“incoming?”
“no this hour is all yours, but there is cyborg waiting downstairs”
“really?”
“well, professional confidentiality”
“I passed a Gibbon on the way in”

“Gibbon?”
“Gibbon, yes, lovely singing voice”
“Yes, its just she won’t sing”
“will she not?”
“such a shame, sings fantastic arpeggios…… and sonatas”
“why won’t she sing”
“sir, you surely did not come here to discuss the Gibbon downstairs”
“no”
“the Elephant?”
“very pleasant”
“then?”
“it is a very nice chair”
“the tree”

“is it a tree?”
“ I believe it might be, but er, it seems quite dynamic”
“well that is the issue”
“the issue”
“it’s the dynamism”

“dynamism”
“does move a lot”

“I see yes, it does indeed.  Cup of tea?”
“no thank you doctor, just water”
“and sunlight?”
“oh yes”
“Please, move the chair by the window”
“well”
“it is, yes”
“anyway, what was it”
“yes, that’s it”
“well, I have to say, I’m not entirely sure. Seems to be going in circle. The sunlight, it must be better”
“shade is nice from time to time”
“I do like it, dappled I find most delightful”
“hmmm”
“yes, well, it does seem very dynamic, I suggest you return in a week”
“I never travel I weeks”
“seven days then”
“Yes Dr, seven days would be good. Do you think it will grow much”
“Um. Seems, er, possible, but I have to say, its somewhat outside my competence”
“well?”
“I’m sure it will er, be dynamic”
“Well that can be a problem, I find it impossible to tie down”
“Dynamism?”
“Well if that’s all your offering I can ask the Gibbon in on my way down”
“No, no, if dynamism is the problem can I suggest something more concrete”
“Golloshes”
“I was thinking, more life, platforms?”
“Seems heavy on the walking”
“a fixed platform sir, somewhere to stand”
“ah yes, I understand”
“Over?”
“Under”
“Over”
“I’ll send the Gibbon in”
“Is it a Gibbon?”
“I thought it impolite to ask, she doesn’t sing”
“Oh. Great pity”

“Yes great pity”
“Still, in time”

Sunday lunch

This test pressed breath
My guess, goes, guesses, guest, gets
Nowhere, now here
I starved argued this ague
Fatigue and yet how I prayed
Fatigued teen, turned pro, carbo turbo
I gave word to the wrong tree
Alternately, what worth is this
I guess there are places

Far above this and whatever
They say I have
Can dance the toe tangled
Tango of each threaded hair
Fleece of my line of wool
Spooling graceful from the spindle
And there a thimble rings
That sweet glut a second ripe
Plucked to write or swing or run
Or travel to foreign lands
I have no advice for this

Instant of bliss
And each ticklish whisper
Of a love I forgot, forsook
Transferred to pawn
I was forewarned
But I weave back gentle calm.

Road to where? Here again?

Epi-pen? Epi-leming? Epi-leptin? 
Epi-fanny?
What road was that?
Road to what dam?
Dam what? Hamsters, impossible.

Road to dam, ask us?
Where?
Dangerous out there
Better turn back

To where? What?
Rome got Covid and what not.
Road, I'm all about road
But our roads are rivers
Our species has always lived there
By the riverside
Down by the riverside.

I am born with two legs
Skirted by the coracle

Round bowl of travel
Round this table served
Promethean inheritance
Baltic, herringbone omens.

Cognate of Brigid, Agni
When the camel whispered to the horse
And they sped the dream of fire
Drew the wolf pack

The Dneiper, black soil of the Ukraine
Yamnaya, my feet share the word for Birch
For Bear and Fox,
The Oxus, The Aral, Indus
Ganges, The Caspian, oars
Upon shoulders Rus
Herringbone fortunes, to Halifax.
Rochdale, the Calder valley where

The trees are but sixty years old
My feet revolve
Faster than the bullet
Train.
In stillness there is movement
In movement, stillness.
The sunlight, hot. Shadows through the fig leaves
This quiet
So frighteningly precious
Broken by whirring petrol
Motors and not 

As it should be properly
By song
By song, down by the riverside
Where we all come from

And belong
Dancing on Elephants
Dancing on Elephants unknown.




 

Sharpnel 28

What this brand new dawn
And this full drawn path is not yet set

For if I was to walk Nipon, agang guns

For furious furtive funds, forsook these nooks and crannies
No granny would I smile upon, no love nor look for children

But it is not his evil it is more
It past paths times to implore
It is too wrong to feel this way
No more

It's all stardust

Stardust formed in frequency 

In forces

We drink photons in machinery

I hold a roll of photons in my fingers
Planted and dug
After eons of heat and pressure
Millenia of giants
Like a circus motorcade, triangulated

Giant gymnastics, a top these shoulders

Dug photons in my head I taste
Stardust in my bowl
My mouth
And these vowels we share
All change please

We must press light

Press light in packets and dockets

Faster than production lines
There is so little time
Ford unaffordable 
These shores no longer borders
What have we become
Stardust.

For You who stops the traffic

You, like a duvet of warm cream
Fractions
In my bereft mathematics
You appear, sunlight in my attic
A delight amidst thick cobwebs
And coughing dust
Pass my marbles back
When I have thrown them out in anger
That makes me yours forever.

For today

Well so deep let
My quill dip your dark ink
And paint
Loneliness in this company
When cold runs in me
So few dare
Your arms upon my shoulders
More real for the absence
All I feel is your care

My bare heart
You parted from me. 

Oily issue

Here’s an oily issue
Public Debt, they stack it up

Pass the buck, bank to state, state to bank
Bank to Antiguan vault, many thanks (or few)
Here’s an oily issue
Price stability, what’s that cost if it’s not been made
But money’s free? Beyond me
Beyond my whares, my whares be
Minimal as needs.

There is a problem of BOGOF
And Rogoff (fake data, weighting
far columns invade the land facts)

It ain’t how we used to be, its how we act
Now.
Swap the cash between your pockets
Forget wage slips and pay packets
No mucking about, just hand the cash out
Metal mickey, R2
They’ll be picking cabbages for you.

To balance out, leave the issue in the ground
Leave it, leg it go, under pressure the pumps will flow
Without pressure lakes lie fallow

The oily issue, just leg it go
Then tomorrow we might find
A cleaner state of mind, and of those left behind
Well, they’ll never know.

I took a little metal bottle top
It was too much for the planet
One more little metal bottle top
And well they cannot manage it

We cannot be imperiously free
For imperious is serious a condition like a flea
Suckers, its an oily issue
A guess we’ll miss you, black gungy goo
But for serious you cannot be imperious

We must dance with humility
Hug everything from birds to trees
Just try and wait and see
There’s land beyond humanity.

Rhizosphere

(For Big G)

That which touches
Presses gaps, pockets of our toes
Skin, dusting grains, the icing on
Rich cake.
Rhizosphere
When magma has turned its red
Guts over into Basalt
Air made Pumice stone,
Layering sediments with care
The Gnomes beneath till
Till unruly worms roam the strata
Disturbing nutrients
Like cold currents of Earth

Two million species in a teaspoon
Dirt. Moist earth
Art starch, fructose
Softened star dust transforming
Into new frequencies, vibration
Mycellium, cellular cerebellum thing
Encodes connection.
What in the lightless granular
Pocketed compost? Fragile
White flecks like maps
Such wistful, delicate filigree
The brains of our earth.
Works away, slow digestion in optimum
Energy output and function
We connect with just
Earth chicken, fleshy fruit and see
Less than of our seas
What must they know?

The spirits of the moist earth.

Battle Bars Twelvty Seven

I come hard like
Life on a dollar
You the type
To fit your mum with a dog collar
Sell her for small change.
I hate that, getting fronted
By cat's with small brains.

Quite simple. Me
I ain't gully, I'm not ghetto

Sharp and elevating
Like the heels of a stilletto

Serious mind
Can you see me?
The type to watch static chessboards
Like most watch TV

You'll never make it on telly
You the type take your little sister
And sell her to R.Kelly.

What would the doplhins say

(“so long and thanks for all the fish”? D. Adams)

Fair noble Queen
Let me tell you of a dream
I have a dream
Let me say where I have been
It is bigger than MLK’s
But like Kings’ anyway.


I.

For you, my Dolphin of Mekong
We in clean water do belong
You must not quit the river
We all are meant to be together.

But you know the wind and weather
Will not go on this way forever
Maybe in love when this is done
We will find salvation.

For I am blind, and deaf too
So little can I see or do
So little think I, we ask of you
You who think you’re free

II. Noble queen

My dolphin of Mekong
You knew this all along
I am blind dolphin of Ganges
Together we belong.

We need the roots
The roots of trees
For they are the sea’s
Kidneys.

Mangrove and the Banyan
Yes, we speak as friends
There were times when
The rivers kissed us fresh

We fled the salt and shrank
Came up the Amazon, Yellow
River and Yangtse
What have you done with your cities?

What have you done
To Mangrove and the Willow tree
They are your lungs and our kidneys
We are I. I am we.

You can’t deny
You see it in the tea leaves
The blind dolphins of Yangtse
Ask what has become of our cities?

We used to swim the Irrawady
Orrinoco, Okavango, Missippi, Floridas Quays
But now the prawns are toxic muddy
Why do this to we?

III.

Our finger soft, all round flesh
Press against the sides and back
For what we have we know you lack
And we lack what you possess.

Push your fingers to the wall and press
The back of your hand you know
Forms a mountains from whence fingers flow
Yangtse, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Indus, Yes

Brahmaputra and Mekong,
My dolphin we belong
For you are blind by me
And I am blind by you
And yet we both can see
What we have to do.

We did not this to you
We do not touch the child sea
Your mother earth does birth
We cannot help the prophecy
This is up to you

IV.

You cannot take more sand
More marshes and more swampland
The rivers need to breathe
Or will choke the sky, the seas.

If we cry tears, riverine that run and flow
Then it may snow
On the Himalayas. Their great tears
May still bless
The rivers of tomorrow.

V. Ex tempore, aka #DailyFrees

Oh my dolphin it has been too long
Since I swam in a clean Mekong
What is it the we have wrong
Where is it the we belong

Ah my dolphin you and me
I blind dolphin of Ganges
And you so smooth, gentle too
I done things you disapprove

But if you knew
My heart is true
My sweet Mekong
Dolphin come

And I love you and you love me
Blind Dolphin of Mekong, Yangtse
Ganges. Irrawady too,
We are all gone
What is there for us to do
We are all blind dolphins now see
What have you done with your cities?

Our friend Manatee, the propeller cuts
Burn and burn, consume the watts
Burn and burn and burn our burial grounds
We buried our dead
Millions of years ago
And you fled
Upon the lands, below
My sweetest dolphin
Oh my Queen, from your high throne
You must have seen
From the high throne you rest upon 
You know here that you belong
You the River’s true power
At this hour we say to you
You fools
Foolish I am, for I am
Blind and stammer
Through the dark and murky water

I don’t know what you have done
I don’t’t know what you have done
because the sound does not return.
Propeller cuts,
I cannot even say my name
My daughter’s name
My father’s name
My Lovers name, is lost in all these whirring chains
And we cannot complain
For we have no hands!

We have no hands attached
But you have thumbs
You have thumbs and all along
You have done this with your war drums
And your smoking chimney stacks
We can feel the tang of that
And the tinge upon the surface
Uhh
You think our lives are worthless
And all the plastic
It is fun,
But it does not go
The sound does not tct ctc tct
It does not return
We cannot burn these things
in the sea
So we live in mad blind fear
Oh my love
What have we done
Who are these you send within
Who are these you send down river
Deliver poisions, make me shiver
We blind dolphin of Ganges, of Mekong
And all the seas
For we have known the Amazon
And we have known as all our cousins
Are dying here
And blind.
And oh yes we can help some how
As I would help you without my hands
Without my calloused thumbs
I know what is to be done.
The Irrawady, Okavango, Oxus too
The Congo long the Jungle through
Nile, Orinoco, Amazon
There is no Salmon in the Tay.
No Salmon in the Seinne.
They have all died away
What have you done our friends?
For we are the blind dolphin of Yangtze
We see the plastic comes for we
Plastic comes for we like devil spawn
I am not like that, no pawn
I come to thee, I rub your back
Kind, light hands and tenderly
With the soft touch of buoyancy
The buoyancy of floating seas.
I swam the waves
We were there together for days
So many days it made us weak
Now I’m weak and long to speak
So I speak to you my dolphin
So sweet, so kind, always evolving
And if I had a lobe like you
I might understand what’s true
But since I don’t, and I can’t
All I can do is chant this cant
And think of Kant and have thanks
But rather than have thanks, give.

I’d love to see
My love, my lover too
Orinoco, Blue Danube
Missippi, Hudson, Murray
I do not know,
There are so many rivers flow
Ah the Blue, the White
Nile, Ah, the Thames-Rhine, the Dnieper
We must not go to sleep there
We must awake now with all powers
Ask them how.

My dolphin
Flip the ball back, the plastic one
I dropped in your path
The plastic one that’s broke in half
Kick it back to me my sweet
And I will mend it, make complete
Just flap it out the estuaries
We will clean the seas with thee
And maybe then some currents stir
In the arctic waters here.

The Whales can circulate
Arctic waters here
We can make the war drum waters
Silent, clear.

 

 

 

 

Do not go gently

 

A bath to keep you warm
This
All that retired.

To carry, do my best
Confine such an incidence
In depth of gut and chest
Even yet I still forget.

It fills up again
I lack, I know you back
See below. Sea
Incidence, probability

Inhale all this breath
It.
It made the
I love you

Let him hate till all his angst
Lives out of foot or arm
Love back more than I can share
I wish you well. So vital here.

If this verse should draw acclaim
The many many unslept dreams
The time just goes. Your gentle rose?
The Thames it flows on still.

I put my love in every breathe
Put my love in every step, in every thing
Sing a song I know not yet
Sing of what tomorrow brings.

I Wish it full of sprouts and beans.
But all this through mists is seen.

Step, step there is plenty more
Tell me, tell me please!
Ah, this world not ours to know
Love, sleep and be at ease.

Vital there in all your form
For you will move within storm
Though I was not really warm
I tried to not be of the norm

And of the Norns?
A plectrum, or a bow?

I wonder why?
We all do have your smile
I wonder why
Is that a teardrop in your eye?

Smirk at me
I am ever so, ever so
Silly
I will. I do. So proud of you
I can be less loud too.

And we will jest in happiness
With Nu and T above this mess
We’ve all a service due
New heart, new lungs

Grass with dew, the sign of sun
Oh these new bags of fun
I reckon you can run and run
Well, stroll and stroll

With mind in moment, not some goal.
What the stallion, what the fowl.

How they do stitch up the seams
How you shall ever sing and sing
Our final act is yet unplayed
Any time I made you fret

As only empty vessels can
Please forget and understand

At some time we must  meet for lunch
Blossom forth, least one more year
Quilt brocades of gold, not fear
By your name, the tender hold

Cops dem robbers not to tearaway
And I say

Do not go gently into that good night.

Does it not pique curiosity
To draw. Draw up and paint
Shift a little give complaint
For you bear this all just like a saint

For you have suffered all of this
And not even hit me pissed
Let out a little grumble, rage if you shall
Rage and yes, I feel you still

The light is coming in the doors
Wiggle your toes, wiggle your jaw
It is not yet time
There is more to do

Isn’t there
This is true
There’s more to do
Just another book or two

Maybe half a dozen new
For all your cousins are still due
A present for their reckoning
This great world a beckoning

This new future that will bring
The joy. Or Kiko and of Florin
These young minds alive
We will thrive

Once again to Jazz will Jive
Go play some now
Some LP that tells of youth
Some little jiggle.
One sip, Nephew, Overproof.

These waves come upon me
Know not where I from
Baroda, still strong
I rode an elephant into the sea.

Even if I sometimes storm
Even if this doesn’t scan
Even if we cannot hold
Even if we’ve not been told
This

Far, far better than my best
For my best, is, I suggest
Is in the future not the past
And through and through, all your dues

There must be some who will stay true
There must those with faith anew
They will come through
They will come through

Fettle and in health
For my mettle made for wealth
If not of gold then mind and soul
I could not bear to carry poles

For love that empties as it goes
Just grows and grows
And grows and grows

So I send gone out the gate
How does the world turn of late?
How does the World need us here
I cannot understand.

I cannot, cannot, leave you cold
A shawl about your shoulders still
You know, I know my strength of will.

I didn’t think embarrassment
In front of all your mates
Like bad jokes with dinner plates
I guess grates, on greats

Maybe it is true
I do not feel it is your day
Don’t feel it’s right that way
But hey, we feel brand new.

We must go for a pint
Yes a pint
In cool glass, Long draught (draft, daft)

I feel that it is not your turn
I fought fire with fire. Y
I have a hunch, the serving wench
I know you have the finest nose.

I see a crack upon the plan
It hatches with cartiligious beak
To crack and peak though Calcious
Shell. Well, well, well

I so unread and you unsore
With too much fire to find some more,
Oh there are so many floors
Tell me how does your garden grow?

I till the plough
Seed tomorrow
Tried to be not just pawn
In this pall a shawl keep warm

I will forgo the chamber maid
I will forgo all alms all stale
I will forgo these arms for sale
Will forgo all beyond the pale

I wonder what they’ll make of it
A top 20 hit ?
We could just get a bot
It would make us better.

Don’t go to join with Tariq Mehta
Its meta.
Metaphysics?
I sure did
And it was quizzical
My wizard.

It was magic and thee were spells
They’ll see you well.
Are these many holes?
Is this a bucket on a song?
Not under foot
So yet we sing

Yet we dance with brave love strong
Talk, discuss, debate
I am punctual. But always late
We have time to make this great.

Love this
And embrace
Not this farce, the higher race
Not all these shingle stakes

It makes me giddy, tickles me
And you so much, so strong
Oh how it tingles, how we belong
You will, you will, you will

I would climb for tea to bring
Climb, I would to hear you sing

I, blessed love, I do digress
I have digressed, I do suggest
I’ll say his maths is great
I mean, what would I know any rate.

In fact, actual material fact
Let me do far better.

In much my life I could be no dumber
Let’s not think twice, like last summer
And yet time will dice
If you were right, right all along.

You can laugh and can be strong

At very least wiggle you toes,
Move your feet
Oh how it helps the blood to flow
Oh I know your nose.

I know your nose can’t leave this show
Is the century not made for thee?
It carried me. It was magic
Just like magic

Let me just expand my chest
Bless.
May likes you more than it lifes me
For you write laws, and I just poetry

Me on my knees
Must twist again

My lord,
The weakness in me, upon me
I can only cry apology
I did not know, just how to use me
I did so somewhat incautiously

My love, my dad, the finest friend
No, no, this is not a getaway
Not when all the steps you made
Not when all the world’s a stage

Now let us not be overwrought
Let us take little metal bottle tops
Little metal bottle tops
And nail them upside down on the floor

The tiles will last for ever more
Wiggle, wiggle, your toes and stand
Oh howl I would
Love to make you proud

Its quite a Himalayan hill
Like Stuart Mill
And act of will.
Act of Will

Oh my love, I err
Err, err, so far
So good
I wish I could know what I should

But I have hid with head in hoods
With hoods in hoods
I never did, thought never would
Know another compass

And between us
I guess this little time
At least gifts my sisters
At least I can say I missed her.

And if I am not true
I guess there’ll be more missing too
For ever since I caught the flu
I have not known just what to do.

My doubt, My doubt
Of my own clout
Well it wheels me about
And in discipline.

I struggle, rarely win,
They say your soul is wearing thin
That I am lost afore I begin
Therefore (I do not believe a word)

if all I have is rhyme. Without brine
Let us speak o love, till dinner time
And if there are but hours left
Then there is no time to jest.

Your friends that I serve drinks too
In leather patterned shoes
I thought were just your normal crew
Sure, they were normal just to you.

But in my Clarkes I did not know
Their weight, mistook mine
They’re great, I wow, another time
And wow again, like wow. Wow!

Upon the cork I trod. Never thought me shod
For marble halls. Where you are ermine robed and all
And I’m so sorry that I called
So late to save me from my fate

This is a lasting memory
And if T is to be

Oh yes
Oh yes
Oh yes
Oh yes.

I wonder how they kept their seats
I think I may miss your tact
But have your cheek, Oh.
So slow, I must, I know.

And to get your cheek
I know the ladies knees go weak
But you must need a nice hot bath
Yes, and laugh

A nice hot bath
When did you last give love to you
By my watch your share’s overdue
Run, run, run, the water

Be serious
The water, not the park
Relax a while and have a lark.
Do you have any books to read?

I guess you might have one or two
Two or three
Four of more
Well you ought to have four score

Really well, a century
Really, what wicket’s this?
Anyone’s guess
The bowlers not got bails yet

I reckon a bath and sweat
Roll and roll. Royce

Sing a song from out the trees
Smile a while and take a rest
So high in clouds for want of girls
Yes, I confess, I just lacked confidence.

Sparu, Starling
Sparu, Starling
I ever I can lift you darling
Breathe in you some breathe of life

Stand, overstand
For you have helped this foreign land
And how they treat you oh so grand
Lord of all, of all the Strand

And the Dickens
What the Dickens is this anyway?
Solutions for our whole clade
Some fasting, and some deep breathes.

Step up
I’m up. Lets do it
What dat?
I thought I saw
Chew some fat
Step up to bat
I know you sing a little flat
But sing, I’ll sing back

Still we must play

Stochastically I fell from trees
On Abrahamic prophecy
They all misread, save you and me
We cannot leave them all mislead

Suits you, like a preference choice
If I learn to drive
I’ll be sober
Then I can be your driver.

That now you are my king
That so many parties seen
And hearty now I see you still
My brod, chew some garlic like the cud

The communists come dressed like this?
I confess, a great surprise
And believe that we must thrive
You always had a flourish
 
In tennis, cards, in wit
The finest life to chapter write

The pawns are all gone again
The rallies and the jazz,
The backspin run and run
And sweat upon the tennis court

The revolution finally
Then all I have is poetry
I always thought impossibly
Their’s to have

They say you’ll be soon to jive
For we must twist again
This is a dawn
This is just beginning.

Who ever thought
This wind is yours beneath your wings
Those early doors of course sometimes
We pause and passion rest a while.

I inherited some style
Inherited a pleasant smile
I can see your all this while
Wiggle, wiggle. Just some more

Though of course,
I prefer solar powered horse
Or car, I am sure
Rolls Royce will get that far.

All this just beginning
Possibly your Butler too
But maybe more your Lenin.

To ease the liver and the spleen
To ease the throb of Tennised knees
To life, brave love and company
To make you ease.

Turn, turn again my friend
Twist again, with Kishwa and us three

Unless, unless I can find fame
A game, empty nothing left
We will be family
I will soothe my phuva.

With lover’s words, placate, prostrate
We will, we can, we even If
We’ll dance upon a marble floor
Do you remember Clapton?

The poor carpet. When you came
Held the floor to much acclaim
And danced amongst all those young dames
Who saw me then with different name
Oh

Well it’s just not cricket
Who was he
Who dropped the banana
Made apes walk upon Savannah

Oh this great Rift unhealed
This gift I wish to write, to feel

With salt and manganese
Wrought this world
Yes we shall dream, a ream, a gleam

You will
You can, you will .
Just clean.

You I know medicate
Desire of late and well
You know that I, know my will.

You know when blessed I run through pain
And dance stone floors with sore chill blanes
Can dance to music of the sun, the birds the trees
There is so much more, more to run.

Do not go softly into this new dawn

You know that I, know my will
You know that I do rise at five
You raised me as that different sort
Raised me good to not get caught

You will
You will
You will
You will

Not your will. Caroline Ahern
God I’ve so much to learn
God I’ve only started term
Unforewarned. How’s your lawn?

Does it need a little clip?
I’ll come over, in a bit
Just a short and patient while
I was you, most patient child (?)

Yours is acknowledged
I a silent foot note

Yours still burns
My mind still designed to learn.

For it’s a funny age to be born
Do not go softly into this new dawn.

Do not go gently into this bright dawn

Last night a demon cam to me and said
That he wanted the planet dead
And this was my reply
Tears in my burning eye

We can make the world anew
What are these brand new tools
We can make the world afresh
Will sit down as heavens guest

The time ancient feuds is done
No time for jealousy or fear
For we here are in arrears
And so far is left to run

There is no time to spare
To look upon the ticking clock
For we must tread with love and care
All we have to do is share

All we have to do is love
We have just one planet here
God made this in seven days
It may take us longer still

We have until the December
And your contribution be remembered
For all women and the men
And all the herds that are our friends

And ants and bees, the fish and rivers
And the seas, will all boil
The trees with ashen leaves
But I know you are great are brave

And you can make the world remade
Do not bow down or be a slave
Ours is yet the race to run
Before the burning of the sun

For we can make the world anew
For all the ship and all the crew
Turn this tanker round
Or we all must drown

For there is but one planet here
And she is sick
But have you seen the trees of late
And they are pleased with their estate

And how the eagles celebrate
Finally gone ov’er the gate

For we can make the world anew
With care and love so beautiful

With all the drudgery to quell
We do not have the time to dwell

We must make this world anew
With brave love and spirit true
Turn, turn, the ship around
Until we come to solid ground

Until our ancient mores are found
Restore land to horse and hound
We can make bright future here
And think of all the we hold dear

What use is silver, what is gold
What matters, what value do you hold
I you brave men, and true
And with great ambition too

And I am but a simple pawn
Do not go gently into this bright dawn

Tell me, you must feel the same
Not live with hate and blame
For we inherited a law of fools
We can remake with brand new tools

For we are of one mind
We are just, are humans kind
Turn, repent your sin
Your soul is there still yours to win

For they picked us off illiterate
When we were weak and separate
But now we are all one mind
And we have  so little time

And though I am a simple man
And you mighty may have other plans
This world I know not, nor understand
But tell me you don’t feel the same

For I am lucky, I don’t have kids
But how I would feel if I did
For it is our responsibility
It was us, you and me

We burnt the oil
Cut the trees
Pulled the fish from out the seas
Yes, I do not deny, I did this with knowing eye

There is no one else to blame
Not our ancestors, they’re not in their name
we should weep and hang in shame
For we knew, and did it all the same

And yes I used the power tools
And yes I drunk from drinks in cans
And yes I carried plastic bags
And wore new clothes instead of rags

We knew, all did
You cannot say you missed and hid
We knew the science and facts
And we went on and did not act

This our responsibility
The grass now desert
The ashen leaves
What is their to leave kids

What will they say when they know
What we did,
When they lift there lids and ask
What will your answer be?

For we can make the world anew
And we can make a profit too
For this is enough silver here to share
What we need is love and care

What is it that really matters
The values that make life better
Those things we cherish and we hold
Is it love and care or gold

For we can make the world afresh
And we will sit as Heaven’s guest

Turn, turn again
We shall go forth as friends

There is no time for ancient feuds
For rudeness and bad attitudes
We with science can improve
The world is ours, and ours to lose

For even demons need love too
And they need more than me and you
For we are them of human kind
And now we are of all one mind

They picked us off illiteratre
When we were hungry, separate
There was once space to war
But now we are one planet here

And all we have to fear is fear
And little time to shed the tears
And turn, turn and repent your sin
You are human with your soul to win

Do not be a demon’s pawn
Do not go gently into this bright dawn

For we can make the world a new
We can make the world afresh
Bless
We can sit as heavens guest

For sainthood is yours to win
You men men of great renown
DO not know tow, do not bow down
You have the powers and the mind
But we have so little time

And even demons must feel the same
Who would want a sterile planet
Who would rule a barren rock
What’s to torture, where’s the game.

And you might flee to moutaintops
And the world is wet and hot
And might burrow in a bunker to
But who wants to live as troglydtes

Where the birds and where the bees
Where the trees with spreading leaves
And the rabbits might same, damn it
The apes have gone and saved the planet

Who ever would have thought of that
Who ever would expect it
They might turn and say God dam it
The apes have gone and saved the planet.

For we have all these brands new tools
Database and internet,
many more unthought of yet
We can make genetics splice and rewrite the code of life

For we can make the world anew
And you have the power to
And what is it that you want to do
The same as yesterday, a little better.

Free yourself, let go the fetters
Look inside what really matters
And they always say I’m mad as hatters
But it is my responsibility

I took the train, burnt the oil
Used a power tool for toil
They look upon us as lazy
Our descendents id they be
Will say we must be crazy

Look at the material, the medicines
From all those long chain bonds
They will say they say
Can you believe they burnt it all

But we can make the world afresh
Some step up to right this mess
The prize is sainthood, nothing less
And you will sit as heavens guest.

Do not be no devil's pawn
Do not go gently into this new dawn.

Drosophila's Eden

When the top came off the Sherry Bottle
It revealed paradise
For fruit flies. In some unguarded moment
Amorous adventures led a young couple
To this Eden. They lived in opulence
Proliferated in their dim Utopia
Knowing nothing but a carnival of alcohol
And the safe confines of towering glass
The riches, the Tang, rotting sugar and gas.

The names are lost

Their names not our tongue to speak
They came in chariots
Bit and bridle, smelted bin
Unrusting stele of the Indus
The Ithiop. From this rift
Neolithic. Brown obsidian
Along the Danube, Dneiper
We cannot trace their names
Yamnaya, Shintashta
The horse God gave us love
Gave us legs as centaurs
Gifted us graces of fire and moon
Held the harvests of each before us. The east
The great wide blue.
There are messages lost
Thousands of messages of love and lonliness
Cast lost in glass stoppered bottles
The great blue blue ocean
The stirrup stepped again
Bit and bridle foregone for gear sticks
Demon steam and fire.
Przewalski, my little pony
Where is your pasture's boundary now?

If only you knew

Where the hills. Stars
The Great Bear dips
Sparkle. All the sky's wonders
In this dark
Dark night. While there is still sky
I would breathe out my last
Delights into the ink of your
Darkling tress.

Hot Water

I tell you. I was like 9 to 5. Missus. Lab. Two Kids
And then well
Well, well, well
I tell you I seen the some drug action
Across the board, balls of steel
Pair of grapefruits
In and out of hot water I was
Day after day. Oooh me kidneys
did I get a kicking I tell you.

She was undeniable
Raunchy. So hot I stepped
Into the cold shower
Half a minute felt like six hours

Dam nymph, had me walk with a limp
A bit of heavy breathing
At least it was moving my
Lymph, wink wink.
Did I say a bit,
Straight slamming the abs in
I standing, full wind
Digging my heels in
At it like skiing
Bringing it like
Swing, swing, swing

In and out of hot water for days I was
Darling left me starving
Had a bash, had to
Still starving. I’m like darling
She’s like “no dinner”
Tuesday, Wednesday and then believe
A plate of leaves
Raw garlic everywhere telling me I’m a vampire
“Go eat that if you don’t feel like kissing me” she says
“Vampire”.
Funny Greek,
Ain't had no meat in the sandwich for weeks.
Swing, swing, swing
I’m knitting her a sweater in Camberwick Green
Parsley,
Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
Coriander,
Chilli, Ginger and black pepper too.
Whatever works
I’m still in the dog house
All she wants is tears out of me.
I’m like
Swing, swing, swing

Now I’m like
I wonder where my sugar’s gone

My bread butter
It’s been weeks since I ate pasta
I’m like please sugar
And she gives me leaves, cabbage soup
Bone broth and black pepper
Says "Go drink the oil, the vinegar, it suits your face."
Sour she is
Still, keep it fresh
Swing, swing, swing.
All she wants is tears out of me
Lemon.

So I give her tears,
It’s the only thing that ever works
When you got in the guts.
Lemon.
She wants tears. Lemon
I gave her tears for days.
She just gets snotty. And spits.

Where’s my sugar gone?
I’m like, back down Pineapple studios
Chasing ballerinas
Hot chocolate with chilli in.
Swing, swing, swing.

THING

This
Wish that, transparency
Dance like it is harp string delicate. The Norn's
Thread. Fresh spun time. This
Sadness these joys. And I forget
All that was. Wash.

Wash in waves soft
In waves
Towering, waves. If this wish is
To be
It will
I am but flesh, body. Matter uncollapsed
Not yet
Soul. I know which way
To go. We shall be gathered
Where water lies while
It lasts. Listening to skies

Clouds. The changing sky plays
Seasons. Cinema of empires gone
Ice breath.

I wind.

Hate like yokes

This hate like yokes
Does not cook in frying pans
Like egg, rashers, toast.

This cockerel
For all it crows on waking
Speaks of ghosts

A hurt, the misplaced expectation
The surrendering of youth
This hate like stocks at sunrise.

The hate like stocks and yokes
At sunrise is not breakfast.
No sustenance for famished heart.
The ghosts are bottomless
Ravenous, without cessation or satiety. 

An angel came to visit

This angel came to visit

Like to Abou Ben Adhem
I wish I was like him
I hope I am like him
I hope I am like him.

An angel came to visit

I gave him ladders

As he had lost his wings

For he gathered, that I gathered

Feathers and other things.

I said that when the wind blows
I make pillows
And these days sometimes duvets

And he said oh, oh,

You see the chiefs need them for their headdress
Not these common bedrests

And at this address we guessed

We'd find them all piled in a mess
I said, yes, yes,
I have a long to do list.

1. Abou Ben Adhem

Play silver flute

When the magic people, pixie folk

Take fright in nightmares

Peep from behind the flowerstems in fear
Play them flute. Lips to silver cane

See how light sounds touch upon the evening air
As sweet notes open flower cups
Lullaby the magic folk

Till beddy byes, beddy byes
Calls and strokes their smokey eyes.
Dreamcasting they will dance the broad stiff

Flowerstems, hand in hand in rings
Singing of the garden sweet
Its mossy mounds and moist dark nooks
Its spreading fronds so pungent.
Where the water falls in drips
From the lip of a broken pipe

They will play music on the stocks and tulips
In revelry through raucous night.
Take flight above the pretty blooms
Beating wings a blur, till buds closed, blossom

Petals a tremble vibrate delicate like glass
Resonate in harmony with silver flute's long gasps.

Put your lips to the flute and trust
Magic folk will make their fear art, order at the edge of chaos
And flourish.

The first flush is lost

The first flush of Darjeeling is lost
The Clippers, scaffolds, as stirrups, swift
The fastest and first, the fattest profits. Cutty
Sark
The asparagus is lost
And all the delicate crops of spring
Gone rotten in this distancing
One day the peppercorns will fail
Glass houses in the trees
Ice caps upon the mountaintops
The monsoon. The pipelines

The first flush of Darjeeling is lost

All to dust
Hands cupped to higher powers

Have you been at prayer these weeks
Have you been delivered

Will we be delivered?
In brick caskets, data in a matrix
They will not wash.
Out, out, damn spot
They will not wash.
And when the sprouts spring again
Will the rains come?
Last year there was no rain.

The first flush of Darjeeling is lost
The last sinews of pettifrocks and pith in Africa
The orangeries have escaped
The exotica is alive
Yellow Mountain is turning green
And the Emperor will die of thirst.

Clouds

Those clouds spreading tears
Wanting thunder
Misunderstand
Weeks of parched blue sky
When the air is clear, still, dry.
This is what brings thunder.

Nothing free about markets

There is nothing free about markets
you pay a price
For good, a service, device
Or its called a gift or a theft.
You sell, what you say you are selling
Or they'll be screaming and yelling
As it goes by the name of fraud.
Contracts and laws, predictable rewards
Brought us out of piratical darkness
But there is nothing free about markets.

All hail the Pangolin

All hail the Malayan Pangolin

That makes the mighty quake and quail

Bader Meinhoff, Al Qaeda

Others have tried and failed.

The Ides of March

Comes a reckoning 

What is it that you great Kings owe

The Malayan Jungle and its Pangolin

Pay now before tomorrow.

Shrapnel No.27

Willow, my owl
I wish I were as wise
Wish for you
For you
The wish for you
That is for me
An anguished wish
Of rivers where the water's passed
The falling leaf is carried off
The wish of when stars pale lost
Willow my owl my best wishes,

No virus for old men

It spares the women and children
The way our liberal leaders won't
They're busy giving rights to armies
And making war on every front
War on every back.

They've the power to make the weather
Can control the tide
And from their high panopticon
There is no place to hide.
Their machines consume a continent
Raise towers to their pride
They bend space and time
With the massive gravity of lies.

And from atop their pyramids
What they fear most of all
Is that little germ they cannot crush
Invisible and small

For it spares the women and the children
But not old men who fly on planes
Emergency, emergency this must be contained.
The fearmongers all gone fearful
And what they fear most of all
Is that germ their armies cannot bribe or crush
Invisible and small.

Scrap Mr

Waist high pale child pulling on the worn wire
Stretches a small mitt to clutch thin thread and tugs, tugs
The loosened lank snake, looking for coppers
Expecting no connection. Fed on scraps
Broken junctions, where the lines are dead.
He with two small others slightly taller
Waddling like bowling pins
Living short circuits. The wide street hill
Gap tooth mill terrace leads to fields, tatoos

Women screaming like squalls in a storm
Men cry when the bunting is flying.
“Scrap Mr?”
Three bowling pins, pipe broke gangland in egg.

II.

Voices, shells, pipes, wires
All break
The yard will bale them
Send the pieces east like wool
Like when sheep first drove people from these hills.
Plunder of the monasteries and rail

The Communists made this
Imperialist dialectic.

Scrap Mr, Scrap Mr
They'll pull on all the strings in this old town
Stripped and scrapped
Stripped and scrapped.

To be

You will be brave for me
For if you are not
Then you are not.
So you will.

To be at all
For you, Ubuntu
You must be.
By me fearless
What you think impossible.

So you shall
Cross the wide water, still
That surrounds. A Coracle
I'll send, your knees
Wobbling, step in.

We both know there are sharks.

A note

It's almost an injustice
You did not waste any of my time
Gave more in that short current
Than others I was part of didn't
Who were part of me.

The inequality of magic.
It's almost an injustice.

There are men who built their life
On one sentence of my advice
And women too.
I know the pitchforks. the brands the fearful bring.
They claim it justice.

Valentine

When you're famous
For being so powerfully glamorous
And have an office, staff and PA

Then I'll send you piece
To make your staff laugh at least
And you oblivious, can go on with your day.

Rhymes with

Binge drinking

Singed sinners besiege Saturday
While out back
In syringe filled alleyways
A minge clings to a tale of solstice at Stonehenge
Her one time at the Fringe
The way summer begins.
And the sky was tinged orange.

Old man of the forest

And when, from an ancient Teak
On the last escarpment
The Orang saw the steel towers sleek
He dreamt he would one day make
A great wooden saw
And cut through all the blocks at their base.

Rope and cocaine

So I went down there
With bundle of rope and bag of cocaine
Knew she comply with the pain
And how she'd complain.

So I went down there
With rope and cocaine

This is not what you think
It was more of a game.

All that tension and friction
Restriction and sweat

All bent and all folded
Position all set.

See the scenes from the screens

See they get in your dreams
And she so keen for me to mean
So I went down there
With a rope and cocaine

Like, bike shed half glance, when fumbling
For a hand was moving elephants
Over the Rubicon, Rubicon was fruit,
Beer tasted as strange as a kiss
Memories like wolves gooseberry on this,
Cupboard full of tins

So I went down there
With a rope and cocaine.

We watched TV and drank tea
And I came home again.

I stole this to do it better

Lay me in a sunflower field
Lounging sun flowing over my face
Songbirds serenading my falling
Into a world of you and I

(plagerised from Uma Thandeka)

As an alternative to salad

Magic pickle sparkle root
If I was a wise philosopher
Well I would sit and whittle truth
From clouded confusion of crowding delusions so loud in profusion
These confounding variables.

But I'm but a buttonmaker
With a penknife and a pen
With woods and pearls and ivories
And occassionally some tin.

A simple buttonmaker
Making saucers, circles, sometimes squares and stars
Mind like mouth or stable door, constantly ajar
Though a million truths may be
Some secret, old or new
I know one or two
One or two I know
Or at least I think I do.
Sitting making buttons here's a truth that I can share
The bit that makes a bauble a button
Is the hole, that's the bit that isn't there.

Shrapnel No. 486

Call on this, the knocking of brass and wood
The faerie grounds, tall typhoon
Come again, the lilt of streams
Forest eared, tell that squirrels slept
Curled fur cocoon, all forgotten

Till spring's brass rubs the glass bright

Turning the contents, oddly titled chapters
And meditations.
If all the passersby rode Pennyfarthings.

I could lie like this, dissemble and stammer
Talk of everyone but you
As you are language, are grammar.

Enquiry into Vampire Squid Robots

Does the squid robot still live?
The Giant Vampire Squid robot
That sniffs the wires from Quebec
I enquire after it, after all this
I just do it for the hits, the kicks.

Blind watchmen

It watches over us
But is no god
They watch us
But are no hall of angels
No pyramid, cherubim to seraphim
Full of virtue and good will.

Millions have prayed for a jealous god
Full of brimstone for this Gomorrah
Millions pray
Would such truth be better?
Did not Gyges sin and Golem?

In spectacle they fornicate
A hall of stages for the panopticon
Elevate and immolate and all of us look on
iPad notes with white coat.
The push and pull, this power,
It is no God that looks and listens
In their blindness and their pidgin
What canon inculcate? What virtues
Make sainthood for blind watchmen?

The flocks of rock doves in Trafalgar
Startled like dust clouds from a dumped pallette
Some would say
They're outside the National, they're art.

What harmonies to resonate, incubate
Birth hatchlings of our nature with what wings​?
Fear, fear how they make you fear
In this future, fear for our odds
It is no hall of angels.
And vain hope to wish it watch of jealous god.

Zero-interest

I got zero-interest in forest

Turn this land to dust

Zero-interest in the deltas, ice-caps

Just keep that tap open.

Wrap a noose of pipe
Round the planet's neck

What plague of lice infest?
Just invest, in this instant

I got zero-interest.

Jam today

Pickle to follow

Some beg, some steal and are jailed

Some borrow, and are free

There are no charges

For stealing from tomorrow.

Shrapnel no.4

Of course I loved you
As we all did
As everybody does
But if

When I was young
I knew what it was to be human
The difficulties
What we can give and all our common flaws

If I'd known these things
And seen you, as you were then
I would have loved you even more.

Painting

I cannot paint like Turner
Nor Van Gogh
Not with any brush,

Not by any measure.

But the process of this failure
Is always a great pleasure.

The last to know

If you were the last to know
Everybody you speak to knows

Too obvious, show don't tell

When over the wall exploring
Like scent precedes the flower
Like light precedes a break in rain
Long before you even saw.

And all that seep through the whorehouse
Full of song, some would settle opposite
As Istanbul.
But other myths.

In Istanbul

My love first saw snowfall

Pulled confusion close in daylight
After arguing, I could have cried
My way through the labyrinth till death.

Are you really the last to know?

Sometimes I find modern poetry has poor technical structure and goes on in purple about idealised intimacy

Modern Poetry
They share so much online now
A little verbose.

More point in refugees

What point Oligarchs and bankers
Who ride upon the backs of millions?
Send not these high men who surf the mass

Send those who are cobblestones
Beneath, those ground under hooves

That would make most of us dust.

These foundations, flint hard intrepids who leapt fences

Swum sharks, send ingenious escapologists

From minefield homes who have left
So as not to take up the gun. Send these
Pressure tested, un crushed carbon based lives
Not fat, soft feathered opulents
Buying golden visas for a seven-figure fee
No, I see more point in refugees.

What discord followed

Did I not tell you
As family and friend
Never to deny your love for me
And yet you did.
What discord followed.

You grasped the rose
The wrong part
Too tight and fought
The air about your nose.
A sorry show.

Did I not tell you
As a guru and a guide
Never to deny your love for me
And yet you did
What death of joy.

What ashen wrangle
Smashed china sorrow
There is no reweaving of ripped cloth
A stitch, a patch, a scar, a loss.

He told you
In jealousy and fear
To deny your love for me
And for him, you were not brave
From such instances our lives are made.

The Oracle at Brixton

“All change please”
Prescription clear as scripture

The robot implores
Doors still closed

You could not state a truer picture of our times

And this dilemma

“For your own safety
Please stand back from the yellow line”

Hear, these are those unsafe times
We must all change
And to change
Must cross the yellow line.

By Etonians, for Etonians

You can't say he didn't tell you

They're in it together.
Tailcoat banquets
Sanctioned dole cheques

They gave your tax breaks
To a fat cat in Sark.
Dark. I think of Lincoln
Don't buy it again
A government of Etonians
By Etonians, for Etonians.
They're in it together my friend.

DNA Rights!

The birds, the bees

The educated fleas
They all have love

Have fear and pain.

The flowers, trees

Even cultivated peas
Care for their children

Can flourish and gain.

Is it fear of our similarity
More valuable for singularity
More comforting in unkind disparity
All life deserves respect not charity.

Fight for life, by day and by night
For all upon earth, call DNA rights!

Google it

Look we can Google it
The tools are all in place

Just give MPs a Google account

And we can track their every pace

See their smiling face

Hear what songs they sing

And what company they grace.

Offer helpful suggestions

Prick their conscience

Pique their interest

Get prompt answers to those questions.

All for about £1300
We seem slow to understand

We have tools to control democracy

From the palms of our hands.

Sack em all put whitehall on a Wiki

You might say vote this one
Vote for that one because of that
But in truth, I'm not that picky
Sack em all, put Whitehall on a wiki.

Amateurs from out of town

Sent to London to watch the crown

Was a great idea in 1200 AD

But obviously

With the web we can sack em all
And put Whitehall on a wiki.

Some of them corrupt, lazy

Incompetent and such
Some of them be tax evaders
Eating the “double Irish- Dutch”

The solution is not tricky

We can sack em all

And put Whitehall on a wiki.

You want policy done by people who know what they're doing

MPs know about a lying and bring the country to ruin.
Before the situation gets any more sticky

We have to sack them all, put Whitehall on a wiki.

They will not sell the NHS

They will not sell the NHS

Trust me, I know best.

They'll sell the land beneath its feet

And cut the staff like fields of wheat.

You'll get every drug from N.I.C.E

Without a blink, at twice the price.

They'll bury it in a mound of debt

And all the while let's not forget

When you watch another hearse

It will all be paid from the public purse.

The free press

They fought and fled
In shackles died

To have books read

And town hear cry.

To make print free

Words cut and dry

So all decide

With their own eyes.

They fought and fled

In shackles died

And yet it seems

Under Sun and Sky

The free press now

Costs much to buy.

Voter

You say you love the country
Sing god save the queen
Recite the school taught history
Keep Great Britain clean.

Don't claim to be a patriot
You're an idiot.
Puppet for the global loaded

Fodder for propaganda bots.

Sons of empire

Will you get a price for her down river
Will they ever

Listen to you again.

Friend you're not a patriot

You're a short sighted

Destructive idiot.

Deceased in Smog

All's well that ends well
Sometimes the wise course is
A trouble to tell
But on counterfactual, conjecture
We should not dwell
Like @Jacob_Rees_Mogg choking
On the 19th floor
Of Grenfell's smoked filled stairwell.

Dead letters

Wick ghost, most cherished

I sketch pissed emphemera in pencil

Soot tress this spring all the more

For the less of you

When callous

I laugh at your choice

Ignorant of the act, ill observant

Yet you know

I would be harder, demand you grow

Than all the giddy drunks you make

The muse like seasons

Persistent           I celebrate you wanting

More              in your unkowing

Wish you every blessing.

It is with some hurt, my jet

I laugh at your choice

But I do.

So do you.

Shrapnel No.56

Because I was effortless
In the giving of these gifts
You took it all for granted
Didn't think they would be missed.
Good friends we had
Good friends we lost
Along the way.
I hope we meet again some day.

Best player ever

Ballon D'Or,

Phwoah, do a step over
Dribble some more.
The world's best player
For those who are savvy
Was once called Xavi – Iniesta – Xavi.

Most footballers count one-two
Wall pass, fly through
But great players make triangles
We all know they do.
How do make one with two, not three

Ask that player Xavi- Iniesta – Xavi.

Some players read the game
But a few write the book
Know the next chapter
From only a look
But there's a novelist, with multiple triologies
That player known as Xavi-Iniesta-Xavi

Duels won zero, successful dribbles, zero

You'd think his man-marker was some kind of hero
The truth is the poor lad never got close
Spent ninety-minutes just chasing a ghost
With passes so sensitive they're type you could marry
Off the boots of that player
Xavi-Iniesta-Xavi.

First world problems

The rich have private jets and yachts and yet the shops
Have no cocoa
These boutiques of Brezhnev where you cannot even queue.

I got first world problems
I got first world problems
Like they dissolved jobs into chips and bits
Extract my characteristics
To bamboozle me and sell me shit.

I got first world problems
Like the 20th century infrastructure miracle distilling
Sixty cents in the dollar
Piped, alembic like, into the infinitely capacitous pockets
Of Jeff Bezos, that leaves the rest of us.....

I got first world problems
Like they only make magic money to rearrange property rights
Privatise my collective services
To incompetent fly-by-nights.

I got first world problems
Like they covered the land in tarmac
So you can't grow food
But you can drive to buy it back.

I got first world problems
Like my mind is under attack
By nefarious cabals
That develop their social agenda on crack.

I got first world problems
Like social organisation is complex beyond my comprehension
N-dimensional factorials. An utter dependence on expert systems
Like trains, traffic lights international logistics, wires and gas pipes.

I got first world problems
Like government beyond amateur comprehension
And I've got amateur representation
They said I was above it
But then they closed my station.
(What would you do?)

I got first world, timeless problems
Like barbarians inside the gates
Power high coke fiends that pillage and rape.

It's loco
I got first world problems
I bought the shop out of tropical products like cocoa.

Lost phone

It was shiny and new
Boo hoo Boo hoo
And its camera shot true
Boo hoo Boo hoo
I lost my phone down the Tube
Boo hoo Boo hoo.
It did so many things
I don't need to do.
Boo hoo Boo hoo

I said its dead.

99.9998% of people on the planet
Fight over 7% of the world's wealth

That's 7% for your food, family, education and health
1300 people own everything else.

Is it broken?

Say you're woke but have you woken?

Bleat capitalism, sheep track, goose chase, dog bark wrong tree
Can't see, the wood, forgive him
They make money of you breathing and living

Life's cheap
Turkeys ain't got franchise

If you're woke then blink
If you can't see what's in front of your eyes
Then you'll only ever know what they told you to think.

From each according to their ability
To each according to their need

Sounds like Linux, Sourceforge, YouTube tutorials to me

With 7% for us.
Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos the surplus.

Citizens of nowhere

Citizens of nowhere
Dog whistle, it's Daoist
The yin and yang
Each word its opposite manifests.

Citizens of our Empire.
Citizens of nowhere
Dog whistle the map dots
Spots like Rockall
Sandbars, cocktail bars, Anguila
Citizens of nowhere.

Mother of that vision
Citizens of nowhere
With zeal and greed
Private planes for old men, old women
Handcuffed.
She stole a nurse's passport
And made her die overseas.
Citizens of nowhere.

Leaves like ears and tongues

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower

This village of grey green furred leaves like ears

In spring rooves spread curved about the compost

Now build cathedrals, articulates spires

Skyward, like furred radio towers.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower.

How it has grown, grey-green furred leaves like tongues

That wag in wind, pregnant with utterance.

Rising like a snap of timelapsed helicopters

They stretch their soft cupped tips slowly upwards.

My mother says it is good husbandry

To snip back stem to base before it seeds

Or that lush Sage company grows chaos.

Sparse mess of wooden lines, withered ears

A mass of snakes at death. The roots expire.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower

This tall copse of rushes, soft leaves like ears

Still in the morn, a landing patch for flies

Around the black bin a grey forest throngs

Steadily rising furred leaves like tongues.

Faeries make their home there, in purple cups

A bit like bluebells, with a summer outlook

A feast for bees now the rocket has passed

All the Daisies and Borrage, Thyme flowers.
Since retired my mother's Thyme is pruned

To perfectly round bowers, pres d'Agen.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower
Its towers engulf the old compost bin
Slender grey green palms now stand two foot tall

Their bobbled leaves loll slow like thirsty tongues
Hanging silent in the July sun.

Thick trunked trees well mulched, strawberry patches
A thatch of dry grass, Ivy and Yew
And the faeries will stop, when they pass through
Sprites and pixies too will come
For the purple flower with veined leaves like tongues.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower

From rising tongues it has built its empire

Elaborates joints like candelarbra
The old black compost bin in forest lost
A cloud of veined grey-green tongues that thrust.

I thought, clear in error, some dyslexic
Misfiled season that Sage when it strung
Its palisade in spring would purple bring
And faeries soon but many moons have sank
And still, my mother would have said the other
A, not April, how fell, my foolish mind
Does serve me ill.

At some august time, correct and proper
After purple sentinels have trumpeted their nectar
The grey-green tongues have fed the zenithed bells
When flies have drank and bees, the faeries swum
In purple cups and pixies played harp
Upon the petals; I will take scissors
Cut stalk to base afresh, tight bunch the stems
With Honeysuckle twine and hold bright flame
Carrying all about house and garden
As witches would have done
A censer make of silent grey green tongues.

For good faeries will come rushing to aid
And bad faeries will turn tail and run
When they smell the scent of a home burning
The purple cups and their soft ears aflame
Fig hollow, foxglove will house those that came.

And set ground afresh for spirits next year
I have been waiting for the Sage to flower.

Shrapnel 102

I put a pin into a fountain and it failed
What is one to do when there's no donkey for the tail?
What is one to do when you've an aeroplane to mail?
I put a pin into a fountain and it failed.

Shrapnel 31

The was I time I ran
Broken mooreland and glen

And clouds gathered like a temper

The clouds were not looking for me
I did not dance for them to come

Yet it rained

The gathering weight of water drops
Washing salt, sweet over my lips
I drank every breath.

Therapy Notes III

I don't care

The frayed child's lie
You should not argue with those not there.
The washing machine will not clean
The churning of these waking dreams.

Pouring dirt in the powder slot
Push the button, pressing play
Turn the dial to boiling hot.
A grey matter, you cannot run away. 

Nor waste in anguish yet more days
For all the fearful love you share
You should not argue with those not there.

Wasted

I.

The cranes are pecking at the mudflats
Scarred ground and glass

Unresting spirits, in torment, the ghosts
Of terraces down west and east are lost
At night, great red eyed rats sit atop

The office blocks
Great red eyed rats, fat

They have evicted even ghosts
And busy making new ones from the young.

II.

Cup aloft in flowing throng, young, tall and blonde he loudly calls “Can anybody help me”

Falters his voice through heaving halls, "Can anybody help me. I'm homeless" receding backs "Can anybody, anybody. Help. A hurry, hurry of hair and cloth stickles past the paper cup; stick to the path in forest, for many are lost; to the escalators “Get out, Get out” The bluecoats shout at she, traffic powdered pallid hurt, knees up, sunweathered spots and anger. Shouted "Get out" as the portly lady just put a KFC bucket at her feet. "Get out" when she got a mega bucket at her feet. She standing now clenched and shouting, silent; not her parents, the numbers, she, we, we've all seen the numbers, all of us, the figures; kid's gait, small storm, zephyr in an alleyway till the grey, bitten hand carved of frostbite says.

“Go get your food”.

III

“Les enfants danse sur la cupole" seulement
Without religion

They offer opiates and racism

Like the bones are no longer in our mouths

Like we miss a season when dead flowers bud.

The children are crying in the tunnels again.
Git, git, git

Glug, glug, glug.