To the editor

To the editor
I often write poetry
Do you read haiku?

Trying for Sticky Toffee

They promised sweets of our heritage

And pink cheeked childhood

Cooking sticky toffee

It's not looking good.

That sweet sticky toffee

That you chew and chew and chew

Till you're sick

Seems simple enough
But it's a delicate trick.

If it's too hard

We'll break our teeth in a bite.

If it's too soft

We'll swallow all overnight.

Stir butter and sugar

But the heat's hard to judge

I've always preferred the imported chocolate
A British tradition,

They'll serve us a fudge.

(Diabetes is the only outcome of this shower

There's a mountain of butter, start over

The pan's a hard scour.)

Shrapnel no.7

Black coffee and acid for breakfast.
Tai Chi.
False spring starts me like a childhood memory.
You should stay one day
For coffee.
We could discover a whole new city.

Thing 2

Haul upon these mooring lines

Till separate gravities meld

He told me hard across formica tables

And I laughed

So far from Delphi

How would it be different.

The harlequin and bells

Against pavement teeth, stacked dice

With lights on on some floor

Adequate camouflage

Concrete, at least temporarily.

They changed hands

The cafe that made the churros

Watered down the chowder

And soon there will be funerals

Crush buckets like pallbearers

Pause.

Traditions, like guards

Will change

Like water through a lock

So soon forgot we'll say here's level

Even if it's the 27^th floor

And they still call the children African

Eating bacon, stale churros

And shaking shrapnel at their elders

To buy beer.

I cried the whole night through

You did not come

I cried the whole night through

Such that my soaked mattress

Became a marsh

Sinking in the thought of you

Submerged and all surrounding

Body riven through with flame in drowning

In the brackish, black undertow

Like a hot wash spinning

Sweat drops on my spine

Mustard tears on my cheeks

The thought of you sawing

On my stretched gut string.

You did not come

I cried the whole night through

Such that my soaked mattress

Became a marsh and I awoke

Surrounded by wading birds and heron.

Crisp Packets on the Avenell Rd and A letter to Arsene Wenger II

I. Crisp Packets on the Avenell Rd.

Crisp packets on the Avenell Rd

Under the clouding Sky.

What once was diamond, marble, bronze

Is plastic now, light and glass

Astroturf

Where was once was grass.

Hashtag protests staffed by ghosts

Journalists and empty crisp

Packets blowing down the Avenell Rd.

Felt-tip scrawl on A4

Out of all proportions lensed

Broadcast reproduction

Global distribution, trends

It's Freudian. The trapped at home

And fatherless grasp manhood

Through patricide. With Oedipal leverage
An edited double page spread

By buttered bread mercenaries

Goes blowing down the Avenell Rd.

Under the clouding sky.

Lesbian bloggers on the Avenell Rd.

Crisp packets in Damascus

The tactics of birth certificates

A war of pipes, fox holes and pockets

Non-linear dynamics, google mapped

OCEANs, fingertip cracks

Fissure outliers in the system

Literate multi-lingual sophistication

Went out of fashion.

And enlightenment so yesterday.

II. A letter to Arsene Wenger

A guess the cock if oft the weather vein

A shot at the big cup covers a couple

Of crying actors, tickets and twitter-bots

Same shit. I blame brexit.

After the game is done

Blinded by the Sun

They'll blame some crazy bastard from the A-team

Claim he didn't work his share.

After the game is done

In light of the sky and the sun

If we look around for those to whom comparison seems fair

What colour was your revolution?

Beyond Michels and Paisley

Like none since Ali

Alongside Gaddaffi, Assad, dare I say

Obama

A leader worthy of hyper reality psychodrama.

Transcendent in the end

As Kings are ever known as Cesar

The Gunners head will be Arsene.

Not for the rhyme

It ain't poetry that makes them fly from overseas
Swear they won't leave
Long after three
Holding cold cups of tea.

It ain't the rhyme
That makes them bang on the door
Call at the window
Wanting what came before.

I can't put my finger on it
It's on the tip of my tongue
It's not for the rhyme that they come.

Fish and refugees I,II,III

The bald heads bobbed above the standard seats

Like toffee apples in a bowl on Halloween

“I'm shipping the chest freezer all the way over”

“All the way over!”

“All the way over. Shipping's cheap.”

“I was a child in the Isle of Mann

It's their fault for having open borders

All the way to over there.”

“I know about the EU” he said

“We have an agreement with the French”

37,000ft in the air.

“Do you know how many people died on Thailand's roads this month?”

He asked, almost accusatory.

“How old is yours?”

“36”

“You don't smoke”

“No”

“No”

“Not anymore”

“And how old are you now?”

“We can have the fish”

“You can't just fish more fish there are scientists”

“Scientists give our fish to the Spanish.”

Fish is 0.5% of GDP

97% of migrants are not refugees
This I didn't share, lean in, intervene
From my chair, given that obviously,
Small changes can cause chaos

In a complex system

And at the time we were all 37,000ft in the air.

“I haven't done as well as some of my friends

From the Grammar. Secondary Modern?”

The other nods

And I don't blame my father” to strangers

37,000ft in the air
With no mention of the City, or pensions, tax
Empire, sunset havens, their asylum.

“but you want to know what went wrong of course”

The man from the Isle of Mann agreed.

And they talked fish and refugees.

II.

Because the commonwealth will come and help us

Because we were raised on these myths

That Johnny Foreigner loved the way we give it to em

Because coal black, white tooth sambo

Will offer up his bowl

In exchange for a touch of British class.

Because they were lucky to have us

We were raised on these myths.

What have they done to Greece?

To Sumeria?

Ruins now and aped in architecture

The house that power built and myths

Stripped and shipped and worn

Like ermines of our time.

Do they build like Christchurch in Korea?

Will we who first burnt coal be remembered in our forms

Will they read Shakespeare and Newton any more

Like Pythagoras and Homer

Will these stories fur our descendants shoulders

Even as their great arc breaks on this new era's shore?

The myths don't tell you
That we dismantled the cotton industry of India
For the mills of Manchester

Dismembered the Ottoman Umma when oil was new and cool.
Fought the Chinese for right to sell them smack
Fought them again to sell them more.
Murdered the Irish for nine hundred years,

James, Henry, Cromwell, the blight,

Filler on the Western Front.
Armed Benin to enslave the Gold Coast, Guinea
Then broke them in debt

Our myths don't record this
But the Irish, Chinese, Ghanaians, the Indians

They all have their own myths.

Our myths speak of a heroic past

When pith helmets paved the way for God

And God spoke in English

When we bought trade to backwaters

And illiterates ululated, encircled, enthralled

Crowned us with garlands and feathers
Showed us gleaming treasures which we took.

Our myths never say that maybe they
Expected garlands back.

And so we go
Cap proudly on our head

And offer up these myths to the French
Who we fought for five hundred years
And sneered at.
And Germans, who we fought and humiliated

The Italians who we fought, the Austrians and Hungarians

Who we defeated. The Dutch for whom we invented
Concentration camps.
And the Spanish where we've got a rock

Stuck like a pile in their butt

And say give us this, for these myths

But they have their own.

III.

The driver made the ride scream all the way

Down the road from Bangkok, professional

Past low foundries, platoons of effigies

Blurring like change, green and sweat, square shacks

Body shops each block like the vehicles here

Are broken.

The green Island rises above grey sea

Like a well sung myth. Roof gone high and wide

Above the shrubs, pale sand, dark palm fronds splay

Like torn Venetian blinds against the sky

Pennants of a paradisal army

And some, beetle eaten their headdress slipped

Make littoral a harbour of stalled ships

The tropic thick air presses like a dilute sea

Seasoned by butterflies, blooms, these foreign

To my eye the lizards, bugs, the plants here

Flower until they die.

From the shore at night you'd be forgiven

For thinking the fishing boats far cities

Lost Atlantis and its suburbs risen

From the sea. What chance do squid have, what pity

Soft flourescence the most delightful spell

Of all sweet dances in staged Darwin's hall

What chance do they stand against the blazing lure

Appolline, Venusian halogens

To see such beauty so immense and pure

That we could not know, but to call it awe

So they rush to the net, the plate, their end.

There are young teak stands, seas of cane acreage

And the jungle brush fires reak like temples.

Throughout the year, when the cane stands tall

After sundown men go from the village

Set flaming torches to ripe sugar

And it lights the countryside like pillage.

The saddest part is to see elephants

Balding pink patches, hunched, dropped ears, limp trunks

Chained waiting for riders they cannot want

Far from home jungles and most often drunk.

A couple, young and bronzed track the water

Footprints snakewise though the sand and jetsam

Their hands are not together, heads are down

This dream they both dreamt in another town

Seems dreamt now in separate minds today

Like they woke in a brochure and full of reproach

The saltwater washes their tracks away.

Shrapnel 32

Damn fools got trolled, sell the crown jewels for roubles

Posh trash and screwballs, wash cash with new rules

The carve up, of the imperial cigar butt

Ash for the hard up, putting robots in Starbucks.

Penny pinching cos your pockets is picked

Taking in inches cos you swallowed the shit.

Since the voyage of the Begal

Stitched by thread-needle, the spread eagle

Spreads-evil

Easier to rob oil when the country is feeble.

It's like banks leak to barbados

Played us like guitars and invades us.

Treat the whole world like Vegas

The shit's worn old

Rachet strap attachment for fascists

Get the scaffold.

Ask me this

Ask me this
In magnesium flares
That which you wish
If you've will to dare.

And I would grow flowers
Cut flowers like the heads of heathens
Like harvest corn.
What colours would we make
Kaleidoscope and follow fate
Through fractal days,
Reinventions, iron filings
In the fireworks
Cream in the puddings
All this patience in the dark
Ask me this
At the end of a touch paper
Full of spark.

Fish and refugees. III

The driver made the ride scream all the way

Down the road from Bangkok, professional

Past low foundries, platoons of effigies

Blurring like change, green and sweat, square shacks

Body shops each block like the vehicles here

Are broken.

The green Island rises above grey sea

Like a well sung myth. Roof gone high and wide

Above the shrubs, pale sand, dark palm fronds splay

Like torn Venetian blinds against the sky

Pennants of a paradisal army

And some, beetle eaten their headdress slipped

Make littoral a harbour of stalled ships

The tropic thick air presses like a dilute sea

Seasoned by butterflies, blooms, these foreign

To my eye the lizards, bugs, the plants here

Flower until they die.

From the shore at night you'd be forgiven

For thinking the fishing boats far cities

Lost Atlantis and its suburbs risen

From the sea. What chance do squid have, what pity

Soft flourescence the most delightful spell

Of all sweet dances in staged Darwin's hall

What chance do they stand against the blazing lure

The Venusian halogens

To see such beauty so immense and pure

That we could not know, but to call it awe

So they rush to the net, the plate, their end.

There are young teak stands, seas of cane acreage

And the jungle brush fires reak like temples.

Throughout the year, when the cane stands tall

After sundown men go from the village

Set flaming torches to ripe sugar

And it lights the countryside like pillage.

The saddest part is to see elephants

Balding pink patches, hunched, dropped ears, limp trunks

Chained waiting for riders they cannot want

Far from home jungles and most often drunk.

A couple, young and bronzed track the water

Footprints snakewise though the sand and flotsam

Their hands are not together, heads are down

This dream they both dreamt in another town

Seems dreamt now in separate minds today

Like they woke in a brochure and full of reproach

The saltwater washes their tracks away.

Fish and refugees, postscript

Because the commonwealth will come and help us

Because we were raised on these myths

That Johnny Foreigner loved the way we give it to em

Because coal black, white tooth sambo

Will offer up his bowl

In exchange for a touch of British class.

Because they were lucky to have us

We were raised on these myths.

What have they done to Greece?

To Sumeria?

Ruins now and aped in architecture

The house that power built and myths

Stripped and shipped and worn

Like ermines of our time.

Do they build like Christchurch in Korea?

Will we who first burnt coal be remembered in our forms

Will they read Shakespeare and Newton any more

Like Pythagoras and Homer

Will these stories fur our descendants shoulders

Even as their great arc breaks on this new era's shore?

The myths don't tell you
That we dismantled the cotton industry of India
For the mills of Manchester

Dismembered the Ottoman Umma when oil was new and cool.
Fought the Chinese for right to sell them smack
Fought them again to sell them more.
Murdered the Irish for nine hundred years,

James, Henry, Cromwell, the blight,

Filler on the Western Front.
Armed Benin to enslave the Gold Coast, Guinea
Then broke them in debt

Our myths don't record this
But the Irish, Chinese, Ghanaians, the Indians

They all have their own myths.

Our myths speak of a heroic past

When pith helmets paved the way for God

And God spoke in English

When we bought trade to backwaters

And illiterates ululated, encircled, enthralled

Crowned us with garlands and feathers
Showed us gleaming treasures which we took.

Our myths never say that maybe they
Expected garlands back.

And so we go
Cap proudly on our head

And offer up these myths to the French
Who we fought for five hundred years
And sneered at.
And Germans, who we fought and humiliated

The Italians who we fought, the Austrians and Hungarians

Who we defeated. The Dutch for whom we invented
Concentration camps.
And the Spanish where we've got a rock

Stuck like a pile in their butt

And say give us this, for these myths

But they have their own.

Fish and refugees

The bald heads bobbed above the standard seats

Like toffee apples in a bowl on Halloween

“I'm shipping the chest freezer all the way over”

“All the way over!”

“All the way over. Shipping's cheap.”

“I was a child in the Isle of Mann

It's their fault for having open borders

All the way to over there.”

“I know about the EU” he said

“We have an agreement with the French”

37,000ft in the air.

“Do you know how many people died on Thailand's roads this month?”

He asked, almost accusatory.

“How old is yours?”

“36”

“You don't smoke”

“No”

“No”

“Not anymore”

“And how old are you now?”

“We can have the fish”

“You can't just fish more fish there are scientists”

“Scientists give our fish to the Spanish.”

Fish is 0.5% of GDP

97% of migrants are not refugees
This I didn't share, lean in, intervene
From my chair, given that obviously,
Small changes can cause chaos

In a complex system

And at the time we were all 37,000ft in the air.

“I haven't done as well as some of my friends

From the Grammar. Secondary Modern?”

The other nods

And I don't blame my father” to strangers

37,000ft in the air
With no mention of the City, or pensions, tax
Empire, sunset havens, their asylum.

“but you want to know what went wrong of course”

The man from the Isle of Mann agreed.

And they talked fish and refugees.

Note

In lieu of a hotel
I spent the night in Pattaya
In various bars
Decorated with whores
But you had exhausted me
Of all, none seemed worthy.

Emotional Intelligence

I had looked in through a lense

Bent light magnifying the focal point

Making elephants from sea horses

Like a ship's captain or spy.

Espionage on my psyche.

Infiltrating which why.

Straightening my spine
In mantras, calming horses in the garden

Until once I just heard waves

Like radio from inner tides

Like surf wash, too wide for the eye

Meaningless through a lense.

The voice the forest makes

From all its combined parts

Asidophilous, the gut, the heart

The eukaryotic colony, full symphony

Messages formed before the ear

Before words reach

Wi-fi in the mitochondria

Answers like a village greeting

Within the citadel's defence

In waves received emotional intelligence.

List

Phone battery and lense
Tracksuit bottoms.
This is an incomplete list.
Add wanderlust for spice
A thimble of zest
Add white to blue mornings
And watch the sky lift
Add enthusiasm and stir
Thrice widdishins
And check the clocks
Add why to nots.
It will never add up
If you look for the answer to be four
It's not arithmetic, this course.
This an incomplete list.

Acts of faith

The roads are an act of faith

The old world left

Where time was taken to cut corn

Cement empire, mitre ashlar boulevards

For this florescence of concrete rectangles, coated beige

Like religion has faded from yellowed walls

Low houses lost, the undergrowth

Like stenciled adverts peel, eaten by the sweat of air.

A verdant florescence of failed Tetris

Crystalising out of poverty like an invasion

Necessity's efficiency, three to a scooter

While the bloated SUV sits marooned 

In traffic, in rivers of screaming steel

Pheromone lines of industry swarming

A cacophony of honks and horns storm junctions

Like piston driven Wilderbeast across the Mara, Mbalageti.

Over such self-organised acts of faith

New Collossi tower, children of Luxor

Stronger, better fed, clad in dark glass, bones of steel

Saturated in benzene smog like an afterbirth of wealth

The Napoleonic dream lucid in this half light

Tarmaced ballistics, the gyre on thin wheels

Young trees, scaffolded in the flood, a sticking plaster

For this incensed place, that boils.

The roads are an act of faith.

Valentine for L

Moon over water
In love I went diving in
Trying to find you.

Valentine for an errant muse

It's a scar upon my mind that kiss
Etched my nerves like lithograph
Parting peck branded my cheek
Now this sense unbidden comes
The skin blushes
And the bone
A tactile hallucination
The sweetest gift I've known.

Valentine for uplink

Am I allowed to miss you
All this while elapsed
And you moved through
Jail birds and murderers
And I through houses
I was rich then
Favours in my pocket like bank notes
And all so valuable
Most, Most
Favours are not printed from a plate
Each art work unique
Your imprint so soft and brief
And I ended so off and chief
Am I allowed to miss you?
It wasn't ever
That I thought your soul not art
The work that you have wrought
So beautiful, a perfect crystal
Of balanced love, warm joy
And tact
Am I allowed a fond look back?
I will miss you
When I'm a faded memory
And you grey haired and courtly
When the towers are being torn down again
When the seas come, and each season
Is a blessing.
I'll miss you
And know love better in the missing.