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.