It's a conspiracy

If you landed in this hall

This land where language

Seems a family affair

And the tiles reflect pictures of

Different countries like a map

You could become confused

And all at sea perhaps

Bemused at the profusion

Of alloys from the pot.

If you took just the best, trump card

The richest, deepest from each

Muditha, natsukashii, saudade

Practice and adaptations from each niche

If you watched and copied

Edited and embroidered

A collage of all

The distilled wisdom in this hall

Would you be a street ahead?

A road in Jammu, Bosaso or Siirt

If you linked each end to end like Dido

What empire would you start?

.

But for those whose mind balks the hurdle

Of the changing colours of the paegant.

Whose blood curdles

At different language and pigment

Whose roots

Reach so far back in one spot

That they forgot animals move

And vegetables stay put

Immigration is a conspiracy,

Against the ignorant.

Its a conspiracy

Like wires against pigeons

And bronze against tin.

Like peer review on revelation

It's a slow yarn to spin.

Things not to say on tinder IV

Tempt me into sin
My mother is a feminist
I was just flicking past
On every face that came.

Tempt me into sin
For I'm innocent
And principled and so
Unschooled therein.

Tempt me into sin
I am just another one them
Lonely older men
That woke and found
That youth had passed
And all the inns were barren.

Things not to say on Tinder III

Oh Nicky, oh Nicky
To say this' so tricky
But I must get you
Wet and sticky.
Oh but know
That I'm so picky
And seldom one
To have a quicky
But like spice
The thought tender lingers
Of kneading you
Beneath reading fingers.

Things not to say on Tinder II

You were bad, but I'm flattered
I might be sad if it mattered
But I'm mad as hatter
And the pad is in tatters.

I might be sad if it mattered
You were bad, but I'm flattered.

Blame the moon

Blame the moon

Become mine, tonight

It is not too soon

This season, after midnight

As you imply

By morning light be mine.

When we are not ours

Blame the moon

When it is waxen full

Clotted like a bucket of milk

Bowl round

And you will find my all.

Blame the moon

Hear its beams make

These puppet silhouettes

Ball dance maquis of brick

Make these shadows of my lips.

Brewing clouds are not the storm

In all its booming might

Blame the moon

For tides and storms

Become mine tonight.

Glitter

My mind is all a glitter
My head all flocked in wool
Reflecting as I sit here
Wish I was better on the pull.

For she was rich as fire pits
And she all soft like down
And she was such a magic witch
And I simple clown.

And she was from the silver screen
A fountain sweet of spells
A groundhog day of might have beens
No story there to tell.

And she was joy like spinning tops
A diamond in the light
And all my head in fleece is flocked
Ensconced in bottled night.

My mind is all a glitter
My head all flocked with wool
They say it is a wise man's art
Naturally,  a fool.

Blueprint - Addicts

Them, with demon will to power, evil

Spirit of sheetless mattress, blood stained walls

Narrow, grime ragged, gap tooth, grey valleyed skin

Spirit of brown bags and reused needles

Know there is but one single rule to them.

Glass windows broken, locks crowbarred wrecked

Tall fences and high walls are no object.

To those, the desperate and demon driven

They take like they've right

Sell cheap to escape

To their heavenly and happy haven.

Them, demon willed

The mendacity of alcoholism

The puffed bravado and cruel thuggery

Of balance blind drunks, still bottle draining

The arrogance of cocaine, closed vision

The violence, loudest of all voices

With the busy unquenched lust to return

Quest back, to festering crack house. The den

Scoured of every object but vice

Detritus, cans, smashed glass and ash

All the rest sold off.

And quest back

Addicts

The same dopamine pathway

Pleasure kick

Personhood long lost in lust for a fix

The spirit of reused needles, criminal

Minded, possessed, demon tools

In addict ridden halls of power

In the Pyramids and Ivory Towers.

The same pathway

Each dose deadening receptors

The next fix must be bigger, and bigger

Till drunk on power, crazed, addicted

Till veins scream for needles, hands shake

For drink. There is no rule they will not break

Addicts

They must be institutionalised, like the Priory

In high security, watched round the clock

Till cured, and we can be sure

They are safe

To return to the society.

Blueprint - Butterflies

You are a butterfly, carbon fibre

Butterfly

You, yes you. No lie
To say your wingbeat

May cause hurricanes

In the course of flight

Resonate and amplify

Sweep flat all built overnight.

Butterflies.

You are a rock in the river

The current altered by your mass

We are all rocks in the river

Together shape its flow and course.

See this vast chamber

Roofed by satellites

Your cry will echo in this great hall

Of linked marionettes

That dance in chaos

Each leg pulling on another leg

Nodding and then wagging heads

The ripples in the current spread

The questioned begged
Who tugged the first, starting string?

Why some butterfly's, passing wing.

Know this truth
That rises from our enacted scripture

The god, Market, hears you when you pray
When you perform plastic rituals

It is moved.

The spiders high in the rafters of the web

They see you. Your every move

Moves them.

Tell them of the change you are

Tell them what your heart declaims

You, a carbon fibre butterfly

Your wingbeat causes hurricanes.

The sweeping dark

This sweeping dark, these dusks

I ask you questions

But you are earless

Without heart. And no reflection

In this mirror, this sweeping dark

The coldest shiver. Look down

All the appartitions quiver

A pall of tales, the sweeping dark

The dusk, the empty park

And jumpers. No reflection

And all the silver, the hidden moon

The unbidden wings of gloom

Sit o'er the sky, this sweeping dark

These dusks, an empty heart

When all the sails fall becalmed

When all the views in minds high film

Have so few and seem so ill

The sweeping dark comes o'er the scene

And all to come, and all that's been

And yet in all, as sure as must

Some dawn will always follow dusk.

Normal is what you are if you can't be anything better

From the time that I dressed

In my sister's corduroy dungarees

Many have said that I'm mad as a hatter

And I thank them, for their kind flattery

Believing in fact, that the fact of the matter

Is that normal is what you are

If you can't be anything better.

My mum once said play the game,

Just try and fit in

That particular game,

I'm unlikely to win.

But originality, is not the original sin

So I'll say this to the classes that chatter

Normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.

I heard men should wear uniform, go march in time

Get popular products, from production lines

Wear a suit, with a regular tie

And settle down to a safe nine to five

Anxiously conform to conventional fetters

Secure in the moores living law to the letter

I've seen folk strive to be normal

And end up quite bitter

Because normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.

Disparagingly average, damned by faint praise

The normal is never the finest of days

Regular never the very best way

Normal rarely really what pays

Would you rather follow fashion

Or be a trend setter?

Normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.

I've always worn purple

And walked with bare feet

And always found people

Who disapprove vehemently

And I'll tell you this, all types of go-getters

Know normal's what you are

If you can't be anything better.

As the blackbird flies these autumn gusts

On the bridge across the steel track and cable

Under grey block gabled sky

Wind high and blustering like a crisis bitten lush

I saw a blackbird fly.

Spilling arcs in the close storm's surf

Wings as shields stiff, neck locked he banks

Yaws and lifts like string snapped kite

Skates swift down wild waves unseen.

I saw a blackbird blown.

No compass in the colourless wash

Yellow beak unfollowed, sky and land

One sphere to its eye he dives,

Like fletched dart, black fleck

In swilled glass of medicine

For dirty streets, it dives again.

Not play. Taut against cloud's taunts 

And laughs, stiff agency betrays the joy 

Of sport. Once caught and slips, caught and slips so light, 

The current, like a skateboard from a pipe and vaunts 

These vaults a spinning top, an upward thrust.

Tell me Blackbird, I must know for true

Is my muse's heart like you?

Maintenance

I heard Stealth Bombers expand

When they fly, so high and fast they heat

And when they land and cool

All the oil and unspent fuel

Pisses out as joints contract and seals slip

The whole thing needs repainting

Before it flies another trip.

This muse is more like a cat

Leave out a bowl

It'll probably be back.

Things to do

Whistling like sailors

On the prow and in the spray

That lamb's tail

Never fails to shake with breaking day.

It does not all repeat like brick

These cycles like the Dutch

Like amonites, sediments, Fibonacci

Sequences, calyxes and such

Repeat and grow, repeat and grow

In iterations. Organic 4D tapestry, print

Time bound block weave of wet dyed wool

Half empty or half full

The glass will set the task

If you can set the rule.

She said she didn't like honey

She said she didn't like honey

Busy as she was in flight

165 jars

Almost every country

One over imported cheese

As she pours.

She said she didn't like honey

Jet driven, thought of the future

And talked of rafts of ants in floods

That some died locked together

And the rest floated on their drowned bodies.

She thought of the future

Said she didn't like honey.

A more heavy metal protest song against the "great" repeal bill

Twisted bitch spit roast the nation
Parliament spit roast the nation
Making money, money
Off devastation
They got their tongue in, tongue in
The destitution
Fucking us like bunnies it ain't even
Prostitution.

All I hear is lies, lies, lies
And if you listen
It's just lies, lies, lies
To Rip Off Britain
More lies, lies, lies
And that's their mission.

Did mention
They're robbing the pensions.

Tax haven, craven, champagne glutton
Push button fuckers leading sheep into mutton
Double dutch press, spread gas like muck
Selling want, hate and don't give a fuck

It's a fifty fifty flip
It's a fifty fifty flip
Now go pick the coin out of the shit

They put gas in our blood
Gas in our blood
So it reminds of Moet when they suck
And they suck
Ticket sellers at the gates of the park
And they suck, and suck
Ticket sellers at museums for the trees
And they suck, and suck
Ticket sellers at the surgeries

All  I hear is lies, lies, lies
And if you listen
It's just lies, lies, lies
To Rip Off Britain
More lies, lies, lies
And that's there mission.

Did I mention
They disguise their intentions

we had a vote
Yes vote
A bit of hope
A bit of hope
Now the fascists stringing rope round parliaments throat
With a vote
A vote
A vote they say will vote votes away
Dismay, Mayhem
Rip the Magna Carta up and write it again.

It's all lies......

Protest song for the "great" repeal bill

The whole clusterfuck's been

Corrupt from the start

Dark black arts,
Foreign secret service, Saudi

And Putin's Oligarchs

Now the DUP want to rule over me

But they won't even say

Where they got their election money.

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse is out the coffin

And fascists are live

It's Germany in 33 and Italy in 25

Now the kids are on the streets

Sleeping in hungry in bags

And if you're in a wheelchair

Then it's just too bad

And the cheque don't stretch

So now your walking in rags

And they come of TV bragging,

Its the most jobs we've ever had

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse come out the coffin

And fascists are live

And they hang on it on the Muslims

Or the Polish too

And if you ain't got dough

Then they're slowly hanging you

And if you're old

A hospital bed will have to do

And if you ain't been told

This is a very British coup.

It's Germany in 33 or Italy in 25

We'll have take to the streets

To keep our freedom alive

If we let the powers be

Democracy's gonna die

Cos the corpse come out the coffin

And fascists are live

Voting is just joke

Cos the bandwidth stinks

The world is digital

They're still writing in ink

They printed so much cash

They don't think we make the link

And all they're gonna do

Is push the rest to brink.

It's Germany in 33.....

Let it slip

Let it slip

Let it slip

With touched fingers tips

To your buttons,

After the staring sun has dipped

The blue relaxed, the amber is lit

The clasp and the catch

An uncomfortable fit

Let it slip.

We will die like cats.

At least curious. At least curious.

Let slip a zip notch off your hip arch

Make one button fall undone

And cotton drip

Tip my thought with a sip

Let it slip.

The gate you keep

Meet by it, and there betwixt

Cup your back and catch like wick

Your laugh like sparks

Your lips like gusts

On grass lain all summer parched

Let it slip

Let it slip

With ringed fingertips

Over your shoulders

And down from your hip

Let it slip.

Shrapnel no. 22

The sky is a grimy sheep
And the street full of clowns
In tumbling, that wiggle
Down the windows in jumbled
Paths and splash punchlines
All the way from the endless
Blank stage above.
The street is full of clowns
Telling stories of love.

Double or quits

Double or quits

Double or quits

That's how you become a troubled

Gambling addict

With the hope of a lift

Throwing more down the pit

Then you soar when you claw back

The smallest of gifts.

Double or quits

Double or quits

When you're all in a bubble

And the wrecking ball hits

When one moment you're rich

Then its thrown down the ditch

Taking double or quits

Double or quits

When what you wrote brings a writ

That fan spread hot shit

But your pen pounds and pours down

Like mounds more bars might just drown it.

Thinking double or quits

Double or quits.

Shrapnel No. 47

The sun on my pen makes it a beak
Swilling krill through the bright lake
In swirls, across the ledge, shadows
Edge in drifts as curtains think of England.
They're talking about the parking space again
Outside,
More politely now in tones that hide
The squabble over territory
And then sirens like a paint bucket thrown
And someone thinks they funk
Then just soft growls and the siren
Comfortingly distant.