That passes

Willow by the bank
I hope you are well
With the water that passes
Under your tresses
With the brook that runs
With the nest at your roots
With this season of ruin
With the burgeoning fruit.
I hope you are well
With the water that passes.

Be worth it

Call me an idealist

But from the start

Just be worth

A broken heart.

I don't mind tarts

Artists, Spartans

But I ask this for certain

Should you strike with Cupid's dart

Just be worth a broken heart.

From a love that's lost
I bought the old bay tree

That rooted now

Grows wild and free

With leaves that lend

A depth to tea

This one thing I'll ask of thee

Even if we one day part

Just be worth a broken heart.

One dawn, one dusk

Above the sea

One lingered cusp

One hand in need

Even without bended knee

If to love you well

Means to set you free

I'll take the shilling and embark

Just be worth a broken heart.

Rock pools

Under the skin

Dip, like thrown rock

And it's cool

In a thin, sun-cradled layer

On the top.

Stretched hands out like darts

Into almost ice

In the dark, murk

Deep hollow of rock

Sun does not touch, dense

Almost ice

Swaddled in slowed time

And all within becomes fire

Fighting, almost ice

To the light, the surface and sun

The shining picture of mountains

When the skin stills again.

Blueprint - Ivory Towers

The bones of magic, dead enchanted things.

From the ground the tops look like needle tips

Gaudi's skyscrapers in seperate estates

So high they penetrate the atmosphere

Take the measure of stars.

Golden fire reflects off ivory like a beacon
After the sun's moved on to other lands

And from the high windowed panopticon

You can see all below like satellites,

In days and seasons when the weather's right

Though mostly all is fluffy candyfloss

Bright cottonwool of brilliant white,

Tracking the sight of storms wet eyes

In the pure unbroken cover of the sky.

Yet when it's clear
The earthbound look like black mustard seeds

Spilled from a jar

Cities like scars, you see no nations

From space. In the stacked cream. Right at the top

You cannot hear a scream.

Stretching up to the sun,

The stolen bones of slain enchanted things

Undone. Narwhale, elephant and unicorn

Space scratching scaffold of tusk and horn,

With balconies, with walkways and turrets

Through the troposhphere. And here

At the base, you can still see blood on the tusks

Dried black and brown and inside a prison

Countless incarcerated, trussed

And bound in cloth, leather, card

Shut cramped like slave ships

Billions of crushed trees branded

And silenced like dissidents.

With a telescope you will see space suits

Weaving a lattice of tusks, for ever more shelves

The cells of knowledge, the labrynth of crannies

The walls of these towers built of prisoners

Built of creativity and dissent.

Light and glass. With light and glass

They can be free, shake their cracked binds

Fly from between the tusks and horns

Like a snowstorm,

Like a typhoon of finches, hummingbird and butterfly.

Each carve it's own netsuke.

And let the pages live among the trees,

Live in cities on the rooftops and parks

Eat seed from the meadows and

Drop the letters of their brandings as they throng

So the streets and fields grow flush with wisdom.

The silos in the stratosphere are no good use of bones

Of the lives of elephants and unicorns

Of fishing magic beasts in arctic waters.

These seperate towers into space when we can fly.

When we have an international station there

Above ivory towers rising high into the air.

Haiku mentioning vampires

These watchful robots
Do they search for Dracula
Bats in the belfry

Glass I

It was transparent

Vinegar streaks from windowlene

Buffed to invisibility. Pristine

Clean windows. And the small fly

Shook it's wings with all its force

And drummed the pane in all recourse

But not without remorse

It was transparent

Clear. It could not pass.

The fly could see the rotting mass beyond

Could see the rubbish strewn about the public

Street. All the shit it could ever eat.

The fly could see it

It was transparent.

And if it called a million friends

They could not find a pass.

To show them shit and still pretend

A fly can force the glass.

It didn't have glass cutter

Later. I found a dry dead fly

On the sill in dust and clutter.

Blueprint - Oceans

We have built oceans in the sky

Glass bottomed that gleam in the sun

They are clouded, the keels of yachts

The slow whales, swift sharks visible

When the clouds part.

The great imperial locks and seals

The black bitumen seams that sweat

High vaulted walls, their narrow shore

The face of safe doors that perspire

Condensation on the steel skin

Creaking gaskets of old money

Dripping. Where the great pipes empty

In a Niagra, spray rises

High into the air and some winds

Set the waves to lap in thin cascades.

There are waterways in the sky

That we have built. Modern pipework

Like the Westbourne over Sloane Square

Canals that sluice, spaghetti mesh

Fairground wheels and yes

It trickles down.

Trickles in increasingly fickle

And unsettled rivulets through deserts

Carcasses, the bones of asses in the dirt

Reapers sickles over wishes, this dearth

Of liquid.

Hackney Brook, hundred foot wide at the Lea

The Tyburn, that Windsor's throne stole as rest

The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon valley

Are cased in concrete tunnels under us

Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins once precious.

Hidden in the Byzantine marble jungle

The York stone Baobabs with termite blocks

With ants, the concrete mangroves

Where the call of soot stained statues and tin rats

Echo

The penguins and the parrot carouses

Hidden here amid ceremony and veneration.

Are the great pump houses.

Gargantuan pipes, the old hide replaced

By copper, by stainless, in a forest

Concrete towers like a tall coal furnace

The spinning whirlpool

The suction mouths of graft, quotas, licence

Empty all liquid from vast depressions

The great motors turning, bound in velum

Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and levers

Whirring din of paper bladed turbines

With the power of language and routine

The monumental PSI

To force this liquid

To vast oceans in the sky.

The velum casks that bind the pumps are rotting

If they were to rupture, burst

And all this liquidity flood upon the common

A thousand flowers. The Flamingoes would return

Elephant and Ibis. The Whales in the sky

Sharks, yachts would beach upon glass bottoms

And watch the earth's innumerable flowers

There are oceans in the sky

That take PSI and power.

Blueprint - Oceans III

Hidden in Byzatine marble jungle

The York stone Baobabs with termite blocks

With ants, the concrete mangroves

                                                     where the call

Of soot stained statues and tin rats

                                                     echo,

The penguins and the parrot carouses

Hidden here amid ceremony and veneration.

Are the great pump houses.

Gargantuan pipes, the old hide replaced

By copper, by stainless, in a forest

Concrete towers like a tall coal furnace

The spinning whirlpool

The suction mouths of graft, quotas, licence

Hoover all liquid from vast depressions

The great motors turning, bound in velum

Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and levers

The whirring din of paper bladed turbines

With the power of language and routine

The monumental PSI

To force this liquid

To vast oceans in the sky.

Blueprint - Oceans II

Trickles in increasingly fickle

And unsettled rivulets through deserts

Caracasses, the bones of asses in the dirt

Reapers sickles over wishes, this dearth

Of liquid.

Hackney Brook, hundred foot wide at the Lea

The Tyburn, Windsor's throne stole as rest

The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon valley

All cased in concrete tunnels under us

Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins once precious.

Blueprint - Oceans I

We have built oceans in the sky

Glass bottomed that gleam in the sun

They are clouded, the keels of yachts

The slow whales, swift sharks visible

When the clouds part.

The great imperial locks and seals

The black bitumen seams that sweat

High vaulted walls, their narrow shore

The face of safe doors that perspire

Condensation on the steel skin

Creaking gaskets of old money

Dripping. Where the great pipes empty

In a Niagra, spray rises

High into the air and some winds

Set the waves to lap in thin cascades.

There are waterways in the sky

That we have built. Modern pipework

Like the Westbourne over Sloane Square

Canals that sluice, spaghetti mesh

Fairground wheels and yes

It trickles down.

II.

Trickles in increasingly fickle

And unsettled rivulets through deserts

Caracasses, the bones of asses in the dirt

Reapers sickles over wishes, this dearth

Of liquid.

Hackney Brook, hundred foot wide at the Lea

The Tyburn, that the throne stole as rest

The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon valley

All cased in concrete tunnels under us

Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins once precious.

III.

Hidden in Byzatine marble jungle

The York stone Baobabs with termite blocks

With ants, the concrete mangroves

                                                     where the call

Of soot stained statues and tin rats

                                                     echo,

The penguins and the parrot carouses

Hidden here amid ceremony and veneration.

Are the great pump houses.

Gargantuan pipes, the old hide replaced

By copper, by stainless, in a forest

Concrete towers like a tall coal furnace

The spinning whirlpool

The suction mouths of graft, quotas, licence

Hoover all liquid from vast depressions

The great motors turning, bound in velum

Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and levers

The whirring din of paper bladed turbines

With the power of language and routine

The monumental PSI

To force this liquid

To vast oceans in the sky.

He read the Mail

He entered like he was expected
The face of a Cypriot Greek
Greying, chiseled to English sag
And bulldog cheeks.
He read the Mail.

He didn't want the cabbage
And mocked in voice
"So poor all I can afford is
Cabbage."
He read the Mail.

"And carrots and peas
And tea and gravy
The gravy not in the tea"
Like the waitress would think
That was funny
Like his wife thought
That was funny.
His wife wasn't there
He sat hunched in a chair
And read the Mail

Noughts and crosses

x
xx
!xx@!x*x@x!
o
x xxxx xxx
xx
x

Blueprint - Germs

Let's talk about how the germs get in

The parasites and virus

On the matchstick frail and weakened limbs.

Leeches latch on among us

Who wade the muddy current waist deep

Up to our neck, the choicest.

Bully the hungry and short on sleep

On those who work the hardest

Carry most

That's where parasites will find a host.

When broken in, to broken body

Then they multiply again

Begin, select vectors to infect

The whole flock till every sheep

Is sick with ticks. “We gave you freedom”

All the grass you could ever need

Emaciated. So many mouths

To feed.

That's how germs get in and louse.

Influenzas, to name some

Kill the old and kill the young

Knock off all the bottom rungs

Then see how long they have to run.

T-Cells only recognise

After the infections come

The broken fragments of a virus

Make an innoculation.

Germs will still get in unless

We can recognise the parasite

And every body old and young

Has the strength to fight.

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.