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.