Old bailey

Even best friends
Unquestioning companions
End.

The stone falls
To the well
And echoes tell
Measurements beyond sight.

Memory is the last
Remembrance.
Wish it be a brook
Fond visted
That washes smooth
Edged rock to pebbles
Like round vowels.

Even those we treasure
And best friends
Echo
Beyond our sight
And help us measure.

Tryptch

I.

Sunday vanished in the small box

Of ungodly hours

It was tryptch

A playfighting winter finished shift

And donned civvies, he said, widishins

I am too full of magic, too full of hex

To leave these streets, so empty.

Painted in earthen shades of London

Bi-curious and fluid in language

And youth in the low hall, undecorated

With the thick rimmed blind

And a set grey man who recalled

The fields of Athenry

They span happy in between

My glazed eyes wishing these

Good futures

Hair dye, simple questions and self-doubt

The finding out

Carved in stone somewhere far down the Nile

A likeness and they said they had no purpose

In a back street somewhere past New-Cross

So we walked off to another bus.

II.

It was tryptch.

The first frame left we heard on a bus

We had witnessed someone famous

Under lights that lit only the mind

Of epileptics, it took us to a place

Where everyone wears fame their own way

Down streets lost Sunday scant

The market like an empty bath

And scraped to where

A whisp of smokers jittered

Behind crowd barriers, shoulders

Shaped like hung marionettes

In the deep night and a great

Obsidian obelisk grinned

Wider than the narrow gate.

Curly locked, compact she caught apples

And let lament in arches and pirouettes

She needed him behind the bar

The other, later by the traffic island

Who left blushing in a hired car

Bi-curious and fluid in language

Sunday had vanished

But we were unaware.
Circling, waiting for a bus.

III.

It was tryptch

Hair shirt, she had given everything she had away

In pleas for goodness and treasured

Cigarette filters as her draw

For apple eyes. Cigarette filters for a bed.

Under arc lights, at the interchange, dehumanised

Made stranger by batteries of concrete

Bank vaults that rose from the clean tarmac sea

Like some new White Cliffs.

The cranes that lift us lit with red lights

In this blind dome night we could only miss

The silver arc across velvet sky

That might have made a wish.

At dawn, I was in the suburbs my mother

Would warn me of when she returned on her bike

The old Pit lay on the soft bag with fear in his eye

Tumours like tennis balls under his skin

In the vacuum of grief, she was gaunt

As if the chair in which she rested for years

Was electric. It was obvious why

They didn't take him to die and he lay

Scared, in the thin strip, bright, and almost warm

He could not understand

And I could not help

Other than to not block the March light.

Tryptch. To the bus, we stumbled a fresh

Gambol at the miracle birth of spring.

Back lit crit

And the stalker says

"I bought you wild berry jam for breakfast"

And a wall of texts, calling you a bitch

Some graphics

Depicting threats.

You're narcissistic, an accurate

Projection.

To expect.

How twisted is this shit?

"Who's Paula?

She's a great actress"

Tried to force her way past

After knocking on the glass

"She told me the house

Belongs to Sven.

You're narcissistic.

I said you had a girlfriend."

"I live just round the corner

With my boyfriend"

The stalker said when we met

In the pub, "I left him on the spot".

She said. "I'm just round the corner".
She says.

That's the rub.

II.

Eros infects with back lit ire.

What we hold close we clothe

Throwing our own shadow

If the light's not right. The danger

In spite of intimacy

Calumny and slight

On raised sights we hope might guide us.

How common is this?

To list the defects

Of that which we would call love

And project

Blind that we're backlit

Throwing our own waste

At Them, smothered in our silhouette?

III.

I didn't know the lodger was back
Till I went down to check

"Thank you and could I apologise 

For all of that." I said.

"She kept calling me Paula"
She said.

Evs

I'll be an artist, you be a survivor
You can live and let live
I'll live and spread fertiliser.

Walls

Why desire

Peturbance, initial volition

With desire

Those missions and force meaningful

But learn that nights will be cold

If you don't travel from here.

A fear of failed crops

That hapless harpist at harvest

But know this

Without walls built to store grain

The swiftest reaper suffers rot from rain.

A silo for ears

Like beehive stone huts that dot

The med, the North Atlantic shores.

And paint

Not walls in monochrome, but sails wide

And note there is no colour in the pallette

That you can touch to another

And leave that one unchanged

No two the same and in time

They will dry to different shades.

Without walls

They will have nowhere to hang

The ears will rot on the verge

The rain, weavils and rats

Grain spread flat on the fields

Compost for next year

The plough will tarnish and rust

As sight of heaven weights its tax

Looking earthbound, looking back

And looking up to see

Only emptiness between stars.

There is no flour from spread grain on the verge

Weavils find another living

Build those beehives

Where the sea breeds fish

Where the nights are warm

And know before reaping

The walls will hold safe those ears and more

Till they are ready to make flour.

What desire.

A silo for ears

And sails set wide for paint

Settled that nights maybe cold

If you travel from here.

What's a man to do

I used to have one stalker

Now I got two

And all the time I was looking at you.

And this is gutter

But it ain't nothing new

All the time I been looking at you.

And I ain't fixed the bell.

I should be able to tell

And I don't think the door will go through.  

That and the cell

And the WhatsApp as well

Left me thinking what should I do? 

I used to have one

But I picked up another

Tired and drunk

Late in some jam or other.

If me talking to you

Feels like her talking to me

Then I best pack my bags

And go overseas.

Something scary

There's something scary

Coming over the hill

And that's a privatised A.I.

That's ready to kill

A private A.I.

That's ready to drill

A hole in your pocket

And end your pay packet

And you can't stop it

Or even lock off it.

There's something scary

Come over the hill

That's a private A.I.

Manipulating popular will.

That gets in so many heads

With what you've watched and you've read

That you have to give credit

How well we're misled.

There's something scary

Coming over the hill

And that's private A.I.

That won't for a second be still

That will out think you and I

And that really smart guy

Just easy as we

Would out think a fly.

There's something scary

Coming over the hill

That's a private A.I.

That's ready to kill

That's a private A.I.

Backed by silicon mills

In the hands of a gang

High on satanic thrills.

There's something fuck scary coming over the hill

This is a very, very, very, very, very, very dangerous moment

Don't sit back and chill

There's something scary coming over the hill.

Hot sauce

Hot sauce

The type that stays on your lips

After the tissue wipes.

Stays on your lips after wine.

Stays on your lips

Like a galaxy of light explosions

Rolling them together

Anticipating

More sauce.

Dipped meat caramelised

Comes alive. Succulent

And moist on the fork.

The aroma of this sauce curls

Gently scented around your skin.

Like incense burning by your ankle.

Laps your thigh encircling

Then splits like shoots of ivy, jasmine

Sweet Honeysuckle in spring

Raises you in scaffolds high

Adorned and flowering.

This is a sauce that coats

Like slow water, sweet

Envelopes to tongue's tip

The more you get

The more the pursed edges

Of your lips drip hot.

Piquant

Unquenched

A forceful sauce, spice remorseless

Unstalled by waterfalls, bread walls

Or heart rent caterwauls.

From your throat, heart, 

Gut a burning chasm

Volcanic. The type to wake

A mount from dormancy

To shaking pyroclasm

The type to delicately

Move your fingers on cutlery

And stir your tongue

The type of sauce

That says there's so much to come.

Excess bars

I got excess bars
Barred for black sheep barbarism
Banged like sing-sing
So many bars make prison
Riven and penned
In editorial decisions.

It's all the tall Ls
Like walls, lullabies over the fells
And moors, and more,
And more, like a cast in foundry
Liquid bars pour
Cup ringed in waterfalls
Can't mop phrases from the floor.

I got excess bars
I let you into a secret
They're secret
If I tell you this
You must not repeat it.
Repeat it.
I got excess bars
Puns so bad they're barbaric
Call to the lawyers
I need to be catching a car
I can't get stuck behind bars.

A bye

Compassionate, confused
She smiled like she didn't know
Why I'd say thank you
As we turned to go.
I'm glad I knew.

Pity the maladjusted

Pity them
For they hate pity
Hate their narrative and hold it gilded high
Proud of difference, they hate
Difference.
The poor terrified hallucinations
Monstrous others
Stalking their imagination
Rapists murderers and thieves
In lurid shadows, indistinct, unknown
And intimate to themselves.
Their own hate and fault
Could only be others.
Pity them whose fictions
Are their only pass to status
And stress relief
An identity of less cortisol
Evaporates in myth.
Terrorism.
And how they hate
Pity.

In the car parks

They are but ten years old
Some as young as seven or less
Standing in car parks alone
On the edge of commercial space.

Our conscience of this is young
We make war on their lands
Murdered old nations and tribes
Acre on acre of genocide.

They had families and cousins
Who would guide them
A parent to suckle their growth
Now we stand them by streetlights alone
With no concern for their loss.

We realised, enlightened
That they have something to give
That we love and need their presence
So we transplant some of the kids

To the margins
Where they humanise brands
The great steel wharehouses
Motorways and railway tracks
Collared, isolated, startled and scared
Passive and under attack.

How long does it take
To find one of their kin
In the next pen
Fingers reaching out
To touch in darkness
Under the toxic shelters of black rock.

Over the tops of old brick
The elders rise, storied
Like veins on the sky
Like the earth's drowning hands
Thin as a cortex.
Will they adopt and make friends
Toddlers delivered swaddled in cloth
Just babies,
These trees, child refugees.

Principles

When you're up on your high horse
And moralising
Riding well shod by those just surviving
Remember, and this may be banal
In human behaviour, context is all.
Think about what it's essential to bring
Principles are expensive things.

More underwhelming than supermarket sushi

This bad haiku that
Doesn't scan at all really
And then goes nowhere.

Standard 16

You ain't heard of me
I ain't got badges in Queensbridge
But if you wanna fuck around
Then you need bring team with.

I don't grip mics for the rep
I leave Django upset
When Babylon run up on drums
Then I'm not among the suspects.

Dip shit MCs ain't got wit to learn in weeks
Talk is cheap
Come correct
Don't even quit in my sleep.

And if you wanna look me up
Go check Who's Who
I thought you knew, those that do
Don't talk, and those that talk don't do.

You hurt the whole world

You hurt the whole world

With what you did

Not just me and you

And mum and Nu

And all the bods in the crew.

But all the others

My work would've helped

If my sense of injustice

Wasn't corrupted

By feelings I felt as a whelp.

You hurt the whole world

You did.

Never, ever

What,

Don't you like riding dragons?

Maybe it's poor eyesight

Flagons and moonlight

But I really thought you the type.

Tell me you've got spares

Who'll hang diamond teardrops in your ears

And lace your marble neck with gold.

You look better in silver

And I'd bejewel your soul.

I don't own pets

Don't need you to be any less

And you can guess one thing

That should you fall

You're heart and all

You'll find yourself flying

On a wing.

What,

Don't you like riding dragons?

I thought you would dare
Unlike the others,
Too coy or too scared
Fair, with poor insight
Can't see if you stare.

Love you've had plenty.
Loved you've been for sure.
Suitors list lengthy

But none the type to open doors

And make you realise

You never, ever

Really loved before.

Brambles

At the end of the night

I expect to be hurt

Not by a fight

Or the flight of a skirt

But the pang of the hooks

Pulling on twine

From some backward look

Long lost in time.

In my organs they bite

Zig-zag snagged line

All caught up tight

In the brambles behind.

My kilter all faltering

Taught lines pitch up short

And I find myself baltering

Between barrels of oughts.

Sideways is pain

And back seems ok

But forward I strain

And hooks rip and flay.

Somewhere, someone has scissors

For a dagger carapaced back

To cut lines so they quiver

And fall shung and slack.

Then maybe, just maybe

Berries I'll find

Following lines over my shoulder

To the brambles of mind.

All I can think of is you

I wanted to write a piece about

How free movement of capital
Allows the evasion of national regulations
And political control

Piling up mile high guarded mountains of gold

But all I can think of is you.

I wanted to write a piece about

How the value of networks being a function of their size

Combines with the weightless economy

And digital goods to facilitate global monopolies

That bleed the world dry,

Feeding small pools of leeches

In Seattle offices

But all I can think of is the time

You wore gothic eye makeup with silver studs.

I wanted to write about

How all encompassing property rights

Within a system of profit incentives encourages

Rent extraction of our common heritage

Co-opting distributed pillage

Like a virus defiling the planet

But my mind is filled with the image

Of you in a white bonnet with flowers and beau lace
And all I can think of is you.

I wanted to write

A polemic about how the efficacy and endemic limits

Of bureaucratic administration creates a situation

Where government is buckling under its own weight.

How the width at the base determines

A pyramid's safe height

But my mind
Keeps going back to that fight we had on the stairs.

I wanted to write about
How surpassed nationalism is floundering

Due the decimation of capital cost of broadcast.

The geography of communication fields bequeathed

By Mongolian, North Atlantic and Islamic imperialism

In comparison to our border being a hundred miles

But all I can think of is

You brushing your hair
From your smile, compassionate, confused.

I wanted to write about intellectual property

As a simple conceptual heresy against

The inherent advantages of humanity, GNU

The defence of Academy to protect

The intellectual future of our race as the task

Of the present generation to gift.

About the necessity of using our freedom

To develop new institutions, forms of cooperation

Demonstrative architectures of distribution

And possible uses of blockchain for value inclusion.

I wanted to write about a new Rochdale

But I fail

Cos my mind is locked on the picture

Of coloured string in your pigtails
And all I can think of is you.

I wanted to write about

Transnational communication, the evolution

And creation of new communal identities

The necessary inabilities of global hierarchy

Against mathematically proven efficiency

And resilience of networks meaning

Their dominance is given

And consequent logical implications for feminism.

But all I can think of is your spinning hem

And feet,

A second of silence after when our eyes meet

And your whites, wide, just for moment

Tell me.
All I can think of is you.

Footnotes

Pickle
That tickled me
I could call you obtuse
Am I cheating my duty
To use your peerless beauty
In want of a muse.
Afflicted by vacancy
But that ain't no news
Love in its latency
Doth always amuse.

It's just that I'm inclined
To spend time finding
New ways of describing
Your grace in text.
The curve of your brow
The fall of your neck.
Making up more nice things to say
Really must be the best use of my day.