I spoil her

We shall go to the sea late summer

When a faraway storm brings waves

When moon is waxen yellow and low

And all the sky is a nave.

We shall go to sea late summer

When the air is a syrup of blooms

When the air is an oven of slumber

And all the shore is a room.

The waves will be our whispers

And all we have to tell

The waves will be our cradle

In the frolick of the swell

We shall taste salt on skin

Salt upon our mouths

Salt upon the air that swims

On the shores of the seas of the south

We shall go to the sea late summer

Without gravity or edge

Without the trappings of fashion

With nothing that needs to be said.

We shall go to the sea late summer

When a faraway storm brings waves

When the moon is waxen yellow and low

We shall go to the sea and be saved.

Make me an honest man

Make me on honest man

This tongue of mine so lose and free

For I believe there's one who can

Carry this rich hyperbole.

Would you make me an honest man

I have such sweet, fine things to say

So few who gently understand

These words so often throwaway.

Oh, let me shower them on you

In whispered passion or sweet jest

Be one to make these words ring true

Make them not lies upon my chest.

If I should say that in your eye

Is all beauty one soul could bear

Could you make this not some coarse lie

Oh, make me honest if you care.

Were I to call your touch divine

Could you make that phrase ring true

Whisper you've a heart so kind

Could you make that truthful too.

If I sung there's nothing better

Than to spend my days with you

Would your spirit make the letter

Of this commandment ever true.

Oh love make me an honest man

How sweet nothings flow from my lips

And rising flames they unseen fan

This careful tongue so often slips

And with it words slip to your soul

Like diamonds on your heart to hold

To speak in lies does leave me cold

Oh, make me an honest man.

I only wish to hold your hand

And sweet nothing seeds to flower

Would you make me an honest man

So rare that one has the power.

Thoughts of a grey day

Well, I guess it's a mess

Frayed trust is a hard set to adjust

All static

I can't ask you to do this

The edges of my cover

In lose filaments, the weave

Fading, unbraiding and disordered

Caught on the less populated edges

Like the first dogs

I must mutate to stomach

The rubbish, fed with rubbish

And fed up, to the gills.

These storms of mind worsen

There have always been squalls

Burnt carbon, methane

Now they are hurricanes

And the thick black pall

Hangs on the horizon for seasons

The only deliverance is mutation

Controlled cell growth under this light

Adaptation. The lodger left the toilet broken

My ex got drunk and pulled the guest

Of all, I know not what should be spoken

This frayed blanket is a mess.

Obama,history may see you as black

For America,

Obama, you were a great act

A mixed descent Kenyan

American of melted origin

But heritage, will see you as black.

In Damascus

They will see you as black

In Tripoli and Cairo

They will see you as black.

And all those in the Umma

With their homes on their backs

Well, they might just too

See you as black.

100 years since the Kaiser

Put Lenin on a train

The oil fields in flames

And your closer

The foreign legacy

Was a right Turkey.

You sold yourself so short

In memory of Ted Hughes

You deserved it

Outside the great court

After all our courtship

You sold yourself short

So short

Too cautious, so obvious

You chose less risk

Thinking it was safe

That he would never see you lit,

To turn your back on changing sea

And boat your passions on a lake.

Do you pretend

For a second

That I could not have made that conflict quicken

As you scurried sticky

Under the Plane trees.

I let you shrink

Not worth the ring

Not the worth the mink.

We pretended

Long after it all went awry

When you became offended

That I said your mother had surrendered

In Kent, to defeat.

And I became offended

That you couldn't think on your feet.

You can carry on pretending.

You won't forget me

Or forgive yourself

For missing out on love

However old you grow.

I saw your wedding photos

Who were you thinking of, what

That day?

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.