She said she was in love

She said she was in love
As if this one word
Would make good
All that I'd just heard.

She said she was in love
As flighty adolescents do
But nowhere was the care and curiosity
Of the word I knew.

If each love is a key
Mine was not the lock
The turning that would free
Our spirits from the blocks.

She said she was in love
As lust confused from time to time
If each love is a fingerprint
Hers was at a crime.

Valentine for Y

There is water between us

I will go down to this water

Now, when it is dark

And dive and pull and roll

Each lifting and then crashing wave

Each stroke rake through raging storm

Through Biscay, through Golden Coast

And on and on to round the Horn

Swim in thunder and blinding white

Swim with longing through the night

Swim through however many dawns

Till all natures forces come becalmed

Until I come to haboured beach

To stand again within your reach

As all the gods I have beseeched

Are there to answer all for each.

The fool in Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just take me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go, for once just understand

Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green

Your smile is like a breath of spring
Your voice is soft like summer rain
And I would be complete with you, Jolene

Your face it haunts my very dreams
And every night it always seems
I wake up wet and crying out Jolene

And I can easily understand
How you could soon have any man
But you don't know what you mean to me, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just leave me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go, for once just understand

Though my love was always true
Love like yours I never knew
Now your the only one for me, Jolene

I had to have this talk with you
My happiness depends on you
And whatever you decide to do, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I'm begging of you please just take me as I am
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don't go for once just understand.

Can't get next to you

I lost your number
To a pick-pocket down the Arsenal
I would've given an engagement ring
Or all my summers
For that one simple thing.
Humming Al Green.
I miss your integrity
When I find myself in times of trouble
What your voice says
I guess it's unpossessing
My house is less of a mess.
A lick of paint does wonders
For your conciousness.
I'm just about driving now
If I buy a van
We could elope as spouses
Rent the houses
And raise kids in Kyrgzstahn
Or Australia
But you've probably got different plans
Like I said, a pick-pocket took my dockets
So I had to email ya
Give us a call
Love
To hear from you and all.

English donkey

There is a donkey
That carries all the portage
For the village and the palace
Carries to all quarters
Harnessed up with baggage.

Some have seen it at the palace gate
They say "that gold's a heavy weight "
Some have seen it at the butchers
And say it carries meat
Some see it at the hospital
Bearing medicines for meek
Some see it in the quarters
Where they say it runs cocaine
Some see it piled with wood and straw
And think it poor and plain.

But the donkey goes about it chores
However understood
Forever lifts and forever hauls
'Most every type of good
One day dray horse, one day mule
One day pet, one stubborn fool
But always on the donkey's back
Is some good of value
To which we're attached.

For there are cars and there are planes
And even dog-led slays
But they never ever carry it
In quite the donkey's way.
Some petrol fuelled, some larger limbed
Some even work in teams
But it seems
It's the donkey that we turn to
When we want to carry dreams.

Though short and plain and spindled legged
Its strong and versatile as eggs
And carries all from water's edge
For high and marbled palace.

Valentine for uplink

You're my every hope and solace
My every focus like opium
The dopest promotion for human beings
A voice like seeing dawn E'ing
I can't depict the state of addiction
Search for superlatives in fan fiction
The Aphroditeest, Venusuviusest
The finest moviest, stars like Grace
Leaving Bacall in your wake, trailing
Oh the depth of the fall
Infinite, unfailing
Like bars, chains and a jail
Lead where the largest freedom could ever avail
Gold cast female
Hot as your own star
I'd forget every object of worth
For your presence
Like heaven on earth
If its a crime I plead guilty as charged
Face any penalty
To be even part of your entourage.

Valentine for A

There is love like wine

Love like air and water

Love like gold and jewels

But your love, for me

Is more like trigonometry

A truth and understanding
Of unpredictable utility.

Value that will never cease

Like pivot points and levers
And knowing dawn is east.

Valentines

1.
Singular or plural
Water birth or epidural
Church or a beech
In a suit or sandles
Do you count the candles
Valentine
Your place or mine


2.
Oh hot bird what flies in air
It is with heart too full of care
I long to squeeze and pull your hair
Slap your arse bent taut and bare
Oh how I long to kiss you there

Clarinet

You never would expect
A foghorn aged become clarinet
Those clarion cries we can't forget
And yet...

She was a warrior of raucous nights
Her cries would frighten dawn
But now with notes sweet tender light
She lullabies her fawn.

Now she glides on summer lawns
Without the cider bottles strewn
Strewn like those souls left to mourn
Those suitors who beseeched the moon.

Oh I could tell you
Of the Princes, oh the dukes and heirs
How they queued and how they howled
That ever she be theirs.

There were wails and there were tears
From her peers there were glares
Laughter's heard at sunset now
In peels and in pairs.

If you are here, now
And not lensed through all those years
It's easy to forget
A foghorn was this clarinet.

Anonymous

On a journey though rain
Not showers
But rain that comes in cords
Not driving
But windless falls
The tall clouds
Closed to bind the sky as one
A single shaft of sun
Moving storm fast
Found me.

A gasp of brightness
Light across the stone
Lifted my face to the rain
To the pale northern sun
Ice in the eye
White against grey
Shone, burned
And was gone.

My iris carries stars
As if I saw some fey spirit
In the grey soaking air
Leading
A ghost of spring
Hope of spring
As winter closes in.

At King's X, we filed in
Polite murmurs
And I took the Tube.

Call to arms

For starters,
We need a modern Magna Carta
Cos the half the bastards need shaft of
Sunlight
It's the best of disinfectants
When done right
Let's start tonight
Get the budget in the pipes
Update your rights
Update your rights.

Sign here
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/democratic-budget-give-citizens-a-choice-in-how-the-tax-we-pay-is-spent

Sight seeing

In a sweated September
Dusk had come and left
Us lost amidst the lofty
Concrete cliffs
A mist of half heard conversations
Tumbled from the yellow nests
Our host was virtual
Silent in a sulking tiff
And unassailable
So like jetsam we did drift
The steep graffitied streets
And sluice from bar to bar
Till tarmac turned to cobblestone
And sandstone echoed far off Rome
Through pigeon packed seated throng
We tumbled to the Nervion
A tidal umbilical of silk
The wide roads strove to ape
Curious and seas from home
Our host he called us ingrates
But our agent had an interest
As such folk are wont to do
And showed us to a place of rest
Far better than we knew.

So I raise a toast
To our virtual host
For if he hadn't let us down
I never would have seen these streets
This cathedral or this town.

A call

So she calls
In distress
Canned and bottled
Stopper pressed tight
Light throttled and lost

She says she's lost
The wide well travelled road
Of youth and now the path
Is less trod, mossy
Fracturing like arteries
Like split ends
The trees crowd and whisper
Shoes slip in dust

And she says meet here
On this wild forest track
That leads to barren rocks
That leads to scree fields
Meet me
There is no way back.

A funeral

Soot black crow on ashen skies
Ashen as the skin, ashen
Ashen as her weeping eye
Silk strung lash drip
To blossom, cast
Gone but not forgotten.

There is no forgetting
Day of dust and ashes
The full fret of brevity
All the sorrows of mortality
Above all sorrows of life
And yet
There is no forgetting.

Swept hair, glacial smooth
Pinned grief
Under the black winged hood
The black mood
The soot crow's screech

There is no forgetting that we can know
A salve.

Corgette seeds

I strip pith from the fruit of trifids
Fan leafed behemoth so prolific
One hollowed marrow
Engorged gourd
A corg
No ette.
I have eat its little sisters
For months
Dish after fleshy dish
Persistently grows
The very sight of courgettes sickens
Yet these seeds I pick to sow.

Witch on the hill

I know this witch on the hill
Who sits weaving spells
With two black cats on the sill
She hexes ill well.

In her cupboards are words
And great cavernous halls
The feathers of birds
And broken down walls.

With a flame and some secrets
She stirs over her brew
While prowling black creatures
Swish tails and mew.

Then just before dinner
With folk settling down
Her incantations float
Out over the town.

Out under the moon
Through the ivy-clad oak
Out through the fumes
Hanging over the Smoke.

Around tragic minds
Slow, sallow and blue
White magic she winds
Till sight becomes new.

Widdishins, widdishins
She mutters and stirs
With pin cushion dummies
And handfuls of herbs.

Widdishins, widdishins
In go the words
While under her wings
Purring sun-god concurs.

Vice-held voices
Rejoice in a song
The one carried silent
They've sung all along.

While out on the hill
With two black cats on the sill
She sits weaving spells
And no one can tell.

A comment on kidnapping

An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
The blood of another
For one murdered youth.

Bronze-aged moralities
Industrial fatalities
Untenable disparities
A very sad reality.

Rotor blades
From overseas aid
Make umarked graves
Collateral of young braves.

Twisted bigotry
Hiding in history
Belligerent racists
Lead an ignorant state.

Wolves at the door

The wolves have come

Come howling from the moor

Howling scratch the bare wood door

I hear their paws in snow

Hear their whines and chatter

And tremble in the cold.

Alone, down to lamb bones

And boiling broth

Down to scraps they did not save for rope

Down to comfort sought

In the remorseless winter

Chorus of wolves.

They will come again tonight

Certain as sunrise

Again tomorrow.

Past christmas now

Past the season of feast and gifts

Past generosities.

What is to be made

Of lamb bones and old rope
Of empty pots
Of spotless knives and spoons?

The wolves have come to my door

In cold I will not tremble

Or worry over circled tracks

Worry for their whining

They are welcome back.

The wolves have come to my door

Tomorrow I trade fur.

Letter to some editors

Dear Editor,

Nigel Farage's call for greater direct democracy is welcome.

However government today is as much about spending as legislation and traditional ideas of democracy did not face this problem.

Public spending has grown forty fold since the beginning of last century.

(http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/threecenturiesofdata.xls)

A novel form of direct democracy in a digital age would be to give citizens input into public spending decisions.

The elected government should publish its spending plans immediately after the general election. Then allowed a period for citizens to adjust each budget line by some precentage.

This would make our democracy more inclusive, less a la carte, political promises more binding and politicians more focused on persuading the electorate to back policies, rather than making empty promises to secure office.

Further, mandating policies might allow the retention of budgets within the civil service and end the incentive to profiligacy that comes from having to spend or return budgets within a year.

The next general election falls on the eight hundreth anniversary of the Magna Carta, which created parliament for the purpose of overseeing the Sovereign's tax and spending.

Representation may have been the best option 800 years ago, but the web now allows us to publish and collect feedback at little cost.

British innovation in governance was a competitive advantage for centuries. We should again focus Britain's “unique moral genius” on the issue of governance, harness the wisdom of crowds and use National Participatory Budgeting to build a more inclusive, more efficient and more direct democracy.

Murder on Ferry Lane

This and that
This and that's been said
They say this and that
They say this and that about him
Like it's justification
But that facts be
Execution by police of a man in a taxi
Execution by police of a man in a taxi
Execution by police of a man
This is repetition
No apologies.

No medicine
This bitter pill
Killed by the law
Verdict
Lawfully killed.

No medicine
These questions
These questions of character
The actors
The character of the actors
The act of shooting
A radio
The script of the actors
As answers
For questions
Unanswered questions
Of running guns and guns running
Questions at the gates of Downing Street
Questions, questions
Because they shoot first
And ask questions later.