Elemental

When you looked at her, you couldn't think Tracey.

Fire and ice, Sheffield feisty

In a blue cocktail dress she could be the first lady

In a brown hessian sack this woman was racey

When you looked, you just couldn't think Tracey.

Drunk Note

Oh sexy minx
In slinky keks
Remember sex ain't hard to get
But intimacy, a scarce
A delicate capacity.
The lack of which makes liberty
A wasteland wanting happy.

X for Y

My mate said
I mistook an X for Z
And I
Sometimes in my head
Drunk, when I should be in bed
Mistake an ex for a why.

Sonnet for Berners-lee's Monster

"What is it like to be a bat?"
Nagel

A wobble of flesh wakens and reacts
Tap, tap
Plastic catalyst pressed calls on
Signals from silicon-carbon synapse
Electric charge along copper axon.

Glass dendrite lights, digital bytes echo.
Another road, connection reinforced
Traversed between terminals of macro
Neurons, silicon enriched wobbling flesh.

Fan cooled hippocampus in Finnish wharehouse
Orbito-celebrito lobes cross-linked
With Twitter-form Gyrus and various
Specialist regions on sex, cats. In sync.

It is anyone's guess
If it's conscious.
Anyone's guess
What its consciousness is.

Crowded world

This city is a crowded world
How to stand or move, push
Be pushed against, what lengths
Of stride for pigeon steps
What weight to pull
Be pulled upon
What tug to move you on.
It is a crowded world.

To be heard
Above the turning motors
The shepherd roads
To shout is hard
To harmonise, sing
Bring instruments
For few have ears close enough
One will hear a whisper
This is a crowded world.

To be seen
Amidst the herd
The sea of hair and hats
The brick facades, lift your hand
They'll think you drown
Step a box, a stage, on siege engines
Climb the pyramid of men
Scale
Don't look down
This is a crowded world.

New year sonnet

What work's this, the past to rest
We can but drag shipping threads
The rope of life's woof and weft
To shuttle days, blindly lead

By weather and dreams of youth
Weave the lines from every root
Bind the findings of your truth
To all selves you can recruit.

Eastern light will make the past
Less real than the rising dust
First palour of the year toast
And strike to smith the year's musts.

Spin all beams that fall upon thee
To threads of richest tapestry.

New year haiku

Clock ticks thick leg steps
Calendar leaf by leaf flies
Rearriving home.

Streets at lunch

White low sun in lunchtime sky
Paves and shods the City silver
And all the tarmac roads
Show their other face in this
False spring.
The crocus will rise
Before the year's done
There's a cherry
At the junction in full blossom
I have construction worries
Like builders
And London roads are silver.

Collateral love

They say all is fair 
But sometimes the battle gets rough 
And you're so buff 
You're causing collateral love.

I say you're beautiful, poised, powerful 
Others want all the above 
You're so buff 
You're causing collateral love.

And so many want to hear it 
But they just don't bring enough 
But you're so buff you're causing 
Collateral love.

So beautiful is this world

So beautiful is this world
It calls me like a siren
And I am bidden to gambol
Like a spring lamb
Stumbling as if drunk
Among it's wonders.

So beautiful is this world
That every noise is music
And all becomes a serenade
The joyous song of everyday
Makes me fizz like lemonade.

Extended reply to a superior and errant muse

Who claims someone else said it all

I'll accept your apologies
Not for me, but for you
We both know you never have need
And always a smile will do.

But I'll accept your apologies
Because we both know that it's true
You couldn't open without saying sorry
The respect just wouldn't come through.

I know it can't be a habit
That with men you must never have to
But I'll accept your apologies
Not for me, but for you.

II.

When I first drank Absinthe
Upstairs on the corner in Brixton
It was giddy, peripheral vision
Lost to my recollection
Hungover like fire
Brain in a tumbledryer
But I sobered up
I don't have the mind
To sip wormwood in the forest
Till blind.

III.

If you ask what am I to you
Not as much of what you need
Of what I've got it's true.
But please, give that no heed.

IV.

Well after I'd left home
I would get offended
By people's pretences and stratagems
Sulk insulted and think
Do they not understand
What I can understand in them
But then one instant understood
That they didn't, they couldn't
With all the will, they never would
Because they didn't, they couldn't
And I became more forgiving
And meet it now with quiet shepherding
Chevere, Chevere

V.

Streetlights brighten the drunken Odyssey
For all, even from afar, you can gaze
And see that this is what makes cities
Warm amber takes the doubt away
But streetlights are not free
Can't stop dogs pissing,
Or leave broken things unseen
You might look and see lovers kissing
I see a realised dream.

Streetlights are a public good.

VI.
Your smallest attention
A concentrated dose
The electrifying inspiration
Of having you close
Like pharmaceuticals
It makes me selfish, truth be told
Like it's stealable
I guess it's a hard struggle to toil
Walking around like a Tesla coil

VII.

You must have won many a battle of wills
With trophies to litter your mantle and sill
You could get me drunk and suggest
In a simple low cost conquest
And I'm sure you can smell them
The prey that offers less fight then Belgium.
It's not a field where I could challenge your might
You know I don't pick that type of fight.

VIII.

When I gazed into your eyes
For the first minute, I was just amazed
By their size
I guess most don't survive that first blaze
Fall prey to disguise and leave dazed.

I saw your need for vengenace
On the selfish, the inspired, that stole
The moments of Tartarus romance
Deep in the founds of your soul.

But you can apologise one of these days
Self sensitise and let struggle give way

IX.

Though you might try
There are things you can't fake
From forty yards your eyes
Said that you made a mistake

But you can apologise
I'll accept it
Though we both know a message will do

You can apologise
I'll accept it
Not for me, but for you.

Reply to an errant muse

Let's talk 
Tell me I'm not 
Your favorite stalker 
Of the current crop 
Bet you've had corkers 
I'll put it out I'm top 
In terms of the baddest 
Baddest kind of mad 
Bet I'm the best type of stalker you've had.

Santa needs a visa

It's all changed
Elf rights arrived
And they cast off their chains
Now they been rationalised
And replaced by machines.

Suppliers fly parts
From the Antartic on hire
Cos it's cheap
Now the Elves are in igloos
With nothing to eat.

And the reindeer
Don't like Springboks
Coming over here
But there's a shock.
They could never expect it
Santa needs a visa post Brexit

Slave labour, cheap foreign imports
Flooding the streets
Dumping toys on good children
And our boys can't comepte.

The RAF will have him
Before he hits Aberdeen
Send him back to his cabin
Keep Rudolf in quarantine.

And you think you're in the frying pan
But this is the nex' shit
Santa needs a visa post Brexit.

Faerie bears

Pocket fluff gets wanderlust if you're delicate enough and loft it
Aeolian. I often come across furry bears when truffling
In coppiced asparagus or a Walrus esophagus
But nonetheless
Faerie bears are very rare
They pass unnoticed, lost in luscious grass
Leading elusive lives and should be always
Indistinctly described
Like clouds.
Clouds make perfect answers
To any question
To all subjects, look up
Look up
Clouds make perfect answers.

Letter to an errant muse

The power you have over men
That power that affects me too
Can give no power o'er your sen
Your beauty can't protect you.

The hold you have on other hearts
Can never hold the heart within
Though you might glower, spit and smart
It will not shield Eros' sweet pin.

You can deny
Say there's no rush
You'll try and find another one
But then why lie
I've seen you blush
You're not fooling anyone.

Jogging partners

I get these moments when
Folk want to measure and won't pretend
And when they find I won't contend
They scoff and call me bats
And I say friend
Let's not offend
We all must find our track
I'm on the mend
And in the end
You'll find I don't race rats
I jog round the bend
And up dead ends
And it's more fun it fact
To run against dead men.

I dreamt the house aflame

When I awoke my eyes were full of flame

The house around me was a phoenix

And I was dreaming, a dream that wakes you.

From Sparta with all warriors slain

In emptied halls I watched torches

Watched one torch with my heart

Jumping at each gust

In each obscurity.

Screaming to the runner

Set it down

Set it down

Set it down on the dry heather, the parched gorse and sedge

Set it down

So it may teach and I may learn

Set it down

Fool, it runs swifter than you.

I gathered marbles in the Menalaion

Flaming marbles

And watched them burn through my hand

Felt like the other guy who stayed in

Looking through the window

With Armstrong and Aldrin.

Looking through high regency windows

The sound of cowbells, cars and marraccas

Surrounded by Tuxedos and bolts of cloth

Loki enters with a silver platter, burnt

“Is that Old Bond St.?” I ask

“Refreshments?”

Blackened leather apron, thick Hellenic beard

The tailor drags his gammy leg and hunch

Flip-top pocket watch and tape

Measuring my chains

“So light” I say “I've never worn any so light”

And float.

Ear to an oyster shell

High in the Atcama

I set a circle of campfires

Each in a mound

And from the centre speak

In Italian, today

"Cosa ti piacerebbe fare per oggi"
Fresh roast black coffee

Curved shoulders falling forward

I can't save myself from hanging

On these words.

She smiles like she knows what you're doing next summer.

Roaring like an orchestra, like the circus is in town

We gather staring till our orange faces stretch like drums

Broad-shouldered, leaping engorged, hair free
Pan's troupe pipe a raucous feast in glade of light

All bow and shy, even with our backs turned

We feel the forceful presence of the blaze.

Sun blind into the blazing furnace

The silhouettes of men pounding iron poles

At it's heart

And sparks fly
Like Sheffield in days gone by

Poles, then hands, redden and sag

Then the rump melts, then the rest.

Steelmen softening to pools of dribbling slag.

Settled on a glowing bed
Calm as candles in an empty church

I heard a whisper

Late in the day in the outdoor air, from a sofa

In need of tender and close enough to breathe on

The embers had fallen like tea leaves

A map of silk faced charcoal roads

And piebald scars, I heard confess in whispered guess

The spot to crowd hot ash to light with breath

That which remains, to gauge log or branch

To aid surviving heat, that yet might thrive

And dance, wick and char, smoke gets in your eyes.

Smoke gets in your eyes and then you see,

If it will make green twigs spit

Where to leave and let the flame run free

When fire calms

And calls you close enough to breathe.

It is light and warmth, food

And all of art and science

The house was a phoenix

And I awoke, it felt

In Sparta, without fear

Of fire.

The sunny days

The sunny days
They slip away.
They slip away
To winter grey
And rain that brings
A grave dismay.

You're almost perfect

I know nothing but your beauty, your grace

Like a pink Pescara marble pillar

In visions was Galathea released

And you could be a cold blooded killer.

You're almost perfect.

For sure they'll be no tears over this

No complications when the football's on

No vengeful face turn scorn on sorry kiss

No callous laughing when the moment's wrong.

No “we did not dance to my favourite song”

No grounding bumps, back to reality

No fear of secrets hidden all along

No blue confusion of intimacy.

I know nothing but your beauty, your grace

Nested so remote, I doubt we'll ever meet

Any abstract trope or shade will freely trace

Pure hope, like fresh primed canvas, incomplete

You're almost perfect.

Oh I'd ruin it if we met for real

You never disappoint, almost perfect

You're ideal.

You must know love well

My love was not enough for you
Or in truth
You were so like magic
I never thought you could be true
In theatre it's called tragic
My love did not arrive on cue.

I hid elements of my affection
From my conscience, safe
In a forest of judgements and young bravado
Useless
To try and hide a heart from you
Pocketed it as you left
When I thought it was still by that bush
Pocketed it as you left
College
The way you lose school friends
And when we met again
It was not adventure, not the same.

II.

Since you've had my heart
You never served it on a plate
Or used it as a hook
Play with it, like a cat or stoat
Never treated it a joke.
You never stoked its flame
Or teased it to uncertain hell
You let it breathe.
And that taught me
Love
That you must know love well.