Happy birthday

Many happy birthdays
Long sundays
And sunrays
Expectant mondays
And fun days
Well used tuesdays
Good news days
Tender wednesdays
And friends days
Cut and dried fridays
And fly aways
Chattering saturdays
Good latter days
Try and succeed days
Brave days
Well worth days
And always happy birthdays.

On a return

I missed your love.
Missed loving you
For time, a long time.
Until distractions, complications
And daily degradation
Made me just miss love,
Miss care and company
Miss being something someone wants of me,
Miss meaning
In this quieting
This careful contemplation
Of my hard drive humming
A moment's movement
Of my central heating
And the company of the wireless bleating.

Ginger tea

Ginger tea
Was prescribed
By the witch
And I inbibe it
Writing poetry.

Its not that she’s evil
Just magic
Not white or black
A mixed magic
One half, two quarters
To be exact.

She’s fetching
But there’s never any object
Clearly bewitching
But I can avoid that.

It’s a rarity
Intelligent, curious company
I guess that why I sit here
Alone writing poetry.

Papers

When I sit down with my papers now
They don’t always roll and rhyme,
Sometimes now my papers
Are made of grids and lines.

And where before the score
Sang always of the past
Now it sings about the future
And regiments my tasks.

In my papers I find orders
Of all the things that I might do
The past now represented
By single line struck through.

In my papers,
There was much confusion
Often I would loose them, abuse them
Or get lost in sketched illusions.

But now I use my paper
To store my thoughts for later
So all the little potterings
Add up to something greater.

It’s a marvel
Now in my paper I find plans,
And they might not make the weather
But they tell me where I stand.

Painting the town

The pains you cannot confront
Perhaps you can paper over
With the craft of wash and brush.
Like you do the plain,
Pale and thin dream caught
Flat in your reflection
Watching a new layer of foundation
Grow up over the bruises
From swift draughts drawn up
Inspiring new abuses sustainable
Within this old, crowded amalgm
Of Self, blinded to the pain of the past
By the distress flare smile that leaves
To join will-o-wisps frozen in amber
Beyond the glass.

The magic has been paved over in this city.

28th November

Dear Gorgeous,

Could you afford us some spare moments?
Save a few up and keep them together,
So that I can come by and take you to
A comedy, gallery, Galilee or whatever.

If we gathered up some hours
And squeezed them real tight,
Perhaps they'd drip some minutes
That we could cast into the night.

It's just in this metropolis
There’s much that gets on top of us
And time between here and there
Adds up to such a loss.

But somewhere amid bricks and aisles,
Paving stones and tube
There are golden instants, moments, whiles
We seldom ever use.

Save a few for me.

Then maybe if you’re so inclined
Spend some of that precious time
Over tea in Galilee.

Some similes

So silliness
Some simple similes.
You are like the morning dew to me,
Disappearing into sunshine.
That night like a shady tree
A sun-kissed rest that’s cool and kind.
Can I be extravagant
And say lying with you
Was like touching firmament?
Better not, unless I throw in
You’re finer than Kate Moss on top.
But then why stop?

It’s late, but loosing sleep over you
Is like the only dream I’ve known.
Your hips move like horn section
In Nina Simone, feeling good.
Seeing you was like seeing trees
When before all I saw was wood.
Being alone before was like meditation
Now it’s like wondering
Whether there’ll be another train at the station.
In your eyes I saw the birth of creation,
You holding me felt like a slave’s emancipation.
Possibly, maybe, going for a touch of sensation,
Buts that’s what you are,
More than an A-List occasion.

Burnt sugar

I swear you were like demererra
The way you used to wear your carefree karma
Compare you to a summer's day, your fairer
For cares you got arms or tarmac to tear away the drama

Your error, you never used to wear no armour
The terror and scares caused by hooks of charmers
He's clever, your pure, he's insecure he'll harm ya
The dilema, you don't want a cure for your Broadmoor panorama

A stretch

To this I stretch
The next day in threadbare elastic
Carry pennies in my pocket, for comfort
And seek a virtue in solitude.

I wash potatoes
And daily list the absences
Pen scribing another wish
On my essentials shopping list.

And there it hangs
Like a role call of past captains,
A celebration of success
While I avoid the excess
Of a sandwhich.

Another lightbulb has gone
And faithfully I write it on
My illusions lengthening
Like late shadows,
Another line
Underneath tomatoes.

My own have grown small and sweet
Parched often in their bag
Organic, they are in all irony.
And soon I'll have luxury
Of picking a single strawberry.

A wish

If I make a wish
Will it come true ?
When will it ?
Can it ?
If I only knew.

If I make wish,
The right wish,
Can it come true ?
Can I make it ?
A modest wish
A small one will do.

If I only knew
That small and modest will do
I could probably
Make most of my wishes
Come true.

Yoohoo

You, are you there
Who
You
I do still care
For who
You
Are you there ?

An equation

So what of it, the black stuff.
Selfishly raiding the burial grounds of shellfish in new forms of desecration
The industrialised world undoubtedly has a raging addiction.
The geopolitics of the situation complicated by the fact that oil and water don't mix
And without delving into specifics, an irreducibility of differing monotheistics.
And ah yes markets.

Statistics presciently predict in text this conflict long hence.
The sense that increasing consumption of a finite resource
Plus bigots times power over arms equals
Recourse to violence cannot be silenced by current events.
For a fuss over lubricant it all seems a bit tense.

War seems rather warmer than when the world
Was wary of silos and bombers,
Gone is any honour, but much is claimed in raining terror,
And of course those guided by their lord will admit no error.

So in the echo of marbled halls various voices drawl
Grey haired men enthralled by their status cut a dash
With much blood to wash from gushing cash
And the Asian flu an atomic rash.

Horses move in manouveures that would make Enron blush
Manufactured media-cased motives are those of purity
Freedom, democracy,
New markets created in health, construction, security
And a rich price available for liquid energy.

Accusations fly and are reflected in retort
That the pursuit of energy masks belligerence
And belligerence the pursuit of resource
The opening of old sores, the pursuit of old scores.

I don't remember before the Ayatollah
But the dollar does,
So inoculation seems the only course of action
Against a whole range of Asian infections.

Each nation drawing its conclusion
To latterly adopt a strategy that's MAD
As differences are analysed
Between Pyong-Yang and Baghdad.

But we keep on guzzling,
And the bombs will help juggling
Of currency, devilry, deficits and epithets
But they won't fit the last peice of the puzzle in.

A last piece, replacing a highness.
But not that last peace
If bigots times power,
Over arms
Equals violence.

A problem

Some simple things I seek
Some are most complex.
Of which is which I cannot speak
This crux does leave me vexed.

So as I ponder, wonder
Oft I blunder,
Through conundurum, confusion
Of what is solid, as the ground is under
And what is all illusion.

Kippered sot

To whit
The rain spits
The brain splits
From spliffs,
Ifs become nots
Tasks forgot
This is the lot
Of the kippered sot.

Fable II

There was a man who was loved by all women who kept his company, for more than he was broad and comely he had a kind and gentle spirit.

Seeing, in his youth, both the great joys and woes that union can bring, he was affectionate to all, man and woman alike, and with that he took great care, spreading that part that was joy with his company wherever he was politely accomodated. For this he was well received and his company much in demand.

At length he came upon a woman with whom he fell more deeply in love than ever he had hither, and he declared that his life would be for the loving of her. But she replied "am I to sit here the while you love me for ever, what of the loving of life ?" And she left.

He grown so used to a life of loving others, could be given no reason to find good or purpose within himself, though there was much, and never could answer the question she asked.

A fable

There was a talented man, comsumed in the passion of his work. His office light always on, his house always cold.

He met a beautiful woman, he had always dreamed of marrying a beautiful woman and she always of a talented and passionate man. They married.

She in her life found that men would do what you asked of them, and had grown accustomed to asking. He had known no distraction from his work . His office light was always on, his house always cold.