Blueprint - Cake

Silk bussel, silvered mirror and wig

She thought leavened eggs

Sugar, risen golden baked,was cake

A hall of silver mirrors and lace.

With a common touch,

Grease fingered and muddied

They called pie

Higher, with deeper slices

Stories tall sliver of filling

Steaming via the podium

From some nation's womb

And it's news.

Pie is how we organise sunshine.

Calm at the eye of the storm, cake

A gyre spread across continents

Wrath or bounty in a wing's breath

Bodies of men and women, steel hoppers

The wheels of lorries, docking ships

Hands in chain across dimensions

Plane brake smoke on bitumen

Cake is not the the thing in the tin

Cake is how we organise sunshine.

Certain as it rises

Balance a pyramid on pin

Set head after tail, after head

After wing, after leaf, after blade,

After photon..

Alfafa, Cock's foot and Timothy

Concentrate blue grass to cream

Organise worms to custard

Box sunshine in steel and ship it

From under the watchful eye of Christ

To glass mountains

Soya beans marching like Napoleon

Rivers be dammed, greenhouses

Built on sand. Blood on the walls

Blood in the drains, for Pie.

This is how we organise sunshine.

Therapy Notes II

In calling after echoes of you
I found hard walls
Tunnels reverberating
In hurled questions
Heard the old curse repeat
And repeat and repeat
Until it settles.

In calling after echoes
Calling out to walls and tunnels
I heard a wailing child I could not find
Beaten by bounced brick bats
Indicted by blame
Found that comfort missed
From the call of anguish
That repeats and repeats and repeats
Until it settles.

In calling after echoes of you
I began to find missing screws
Piston bolts, the grit, lost teeth
In lightless vaults retrained sight
Retrained my ear, like bats to
Echoes
That repeat and settle.

They make the air a vice

They make the air a vice
And the pension crisis
Solved by wolves

Fear in the hollow eyes
The houses, mouths open wide
Respectably shocked
And silent.

They make the air a vice
Pressing like a coming fire
Walking with hands ready
Clenched, missing a rosary
Worry lines like tectonics in streets
And an ad break.

What's the benefit of all this
Orwellian project handed in late
The trail of a small jet
All the clothes a little older
Decorated.
Chop and change like shops
The air is a vice
Invisible wolves in the clouds
There will be looting.

Like Nandrolone

I'll see you soon
Means the same as I'll phone
She loved me
Like an iguana in fish tank
I loved her like Nandrolone.

Going to sleep on the job

Here's a thing

And you may think it's odd

Top pros

Fall asleep on the job.

It can be a hard day's work

Full of stress and strain

But when the jobs on

It's not time to complain.

When it's all up in the air

And there's lights flashing up

And all about

Have just run amok.

Here's a tip from the top

And you may think it odd

Top pros

Go to sleep on the job.

When they're all out there

Looking on you

When there's no way out

And more chores to do

The solution, is not what you think

Find a spot right by the fuss

And take forty winks.

When is comes parniing down

And they call off the dogs

That's when top pros

Go to sleep on the job.

Salt and ashes

Cast this cargo seaward
Salt and ashes, what it fertilises
I will neither know nor tend
Only seeds upon the wind
I will not pass by here again.
The watermark is low
Cast this cargo
And should some find value
Fish, urchins, crab
Let us celebrate next habour
With logs, flagons and song
They will not mark this spot for long
Not with an X.
But let us celebrate
Sacrifice to fish
It was but stowed weight these gifts
This fresh wind so swift
She skips across the crests
And runs the storms like Terns
Tell me are there ports to West
Or South of here
I have a hold so capacitous
Maybe in Dalmatia
I'll find pepper I can trade for wine
This cargo is but salt and ashes
The wind is good, the weather fine.

Patterns

If as from my life seems clear
I fall in love every seven years
Then by the time I love again
I'll be 49 and to what end?
To just repeat this pattern.

It's a thought and part a fear
A cause to check the course and steer
By the time I love again
I'll be 49 and to what end?
To just repeat this pattern.

She was so hot

When I met her I was like

"Where do you shop?"

She was so hot she burnt cotton up

Made nylon melt

She'd walk in the rain

And turn wool into felt.

I said "Would you like a drink?"

She said something with ice

Didn't blink 

Held my heart like a vice. 

She was so hot 

She turned shower drops to steam

Kept changing the channel

With infrared beams

She could cook an egg in her hand 

The constant smoke alarms

Give her oats, butter and

Honey, she could make flapjacks in her palm. 

She was so hot 

She was so hot, I candid confide

I was afraid for my child

Because of piles of bromide. 

Like an explosion

White heat, blue lights, A&E, third degree

Six months in traction, intensively. 

There were times I thought it couldn't last

Like after the fourth skin graft 

Making love in an ice bath

But the water wouldn't last

And we wouldn't stop

Wake staring up at a pitying doc.

After the fourteenth graft post-op

Got a consultant proper top

Nobody's fool

And he suggested investing 

In a swimming pool. 

It didn't take long. 

We got an ice dispenser

Opened a hammam as a community centre

Then thought why not. 

Got a turbine charged 20p a kilowatt. 

Now everyday we fill the whole pool with ice.

Steam generate making nice.

The Venerable Should

In the Understood Wood

In the Foothills of Good

Lives a beast known

As the Venerable Should

With two hundred heads

And a great sense of smell

The Venerable Should

Is often unwell.

For with two hundred heads

It has two hundred minds

And they don't all agree

All of the time.

So as one is given

To climb up a tree

Then another is given

To burrow beneath

And it furrows the brow

Of those in between

A hundred howls echo

Through the glimmering green

For a Should could do this

And Should could do that

You will often see Shoulds

Going forward and back.

And sometimes its coat

Is a big fuzzy ball

And sometimes it molts

And is clean cut and small.

And if you see one

You sometimes can't tell

For the Venerable Should

Changes colour as well.

Sometimes its brown mottled

And brushed into the green

At others, pink polka dot

That cannot be unseen.

One head likes to fish

And stay down by the river

Another gets colds

Its nose all a quiver

And yet another

Will eat only fruit

And the next one along

Likes Trivial Pursuit.

And they all think that they're right

And they generally are

But the Venerable Should

Seldom strays far.

For with two hundred heads

And four hundred eyes

That it is often confused

Is no great suprise.

In the Foothills of Good

The chorus of Should

Is sometimes seen chasing

For Ifs and for Woulds.

And rarely, when the stars

Are all in correct sections

The two hundred heads

Face one direction

Then, in the Understood Wood

In the Foothills of Good

Goes trotting forward

The Venerable Should.

Jerry Beck's grant cheque

Jerry Beck's grant cheque had knees
And jumped from bank to bank like fleas
They gave him this, and gave him that
And soon that grant cheque grew fat.

He took the entertainment cash
And put it all on railtrack
Over summer made a stack
Then returned the balance back.

Jerry Beck had patience
And asked good questions too
From fractions of a cent or pence
His yeastlike fortune grew.

Jerry Beck's grant cheque had knees
He plays cricket
With the Cayman Island cricket team.

Weather balloons

We read it very early on
As the hole in ozone bloomed
NASA in Alaska with their weather balloons
They captured all the data
And when it was not what they assumed
They said it must be calibration
The gadget out of tune.
So they put it back to benchmark
Light made dark by folk so smart
We'd just been to the moon.

And throughout the 70s
And in the 80s too
They threw out what they saw
For what they thought they knew
We sprayed aerosol and CFCs
The hole above us grew
And all the while they changed the spreadsheets
Thinking them untrue
And these were folk of science
They were not buffoons
Whole teams for decades
Deaf to weather balloons.

Forget all this

Love, why not lover, come to bath, to wash
Come to the table, to cloth
The cost, the hurt, would make this love so firm
On deep cut foundings we will grow and learn.

Know it's only you
Your cautious grace, a slow embrace
Like every space is kissed
Your regal air, your will to dare
Makes every place a palace.
Forget all this.

Forget the day, these hours
The shackling clock so slow
Forget the brick, the towers
This city paved in gold
Forget your doors and curtains
Your furnishings and clothes
Forget all your bright jewelry
Forget them all and come

To the forests, the briars, the dark thickets
Beyond all lies and truth
Beyond veracity and acting
Beyond age and youth
Tear yourself if you must
Till blood drips,
Drips from the wire pen
Sunshine, our land
Are not yours till won.

Rugby ball

This may be not the thing to say
But we'll make it right another day.
And now if you admit your fall
I won't treat you like a rugby ball
Seek to grasp and runaway
Drop kick to touch to make a play
Throw you swift around my friends
And push and barge off other men.

This may be not the thing to say
We'll make it right another day
When you call, it's joy to fall
You won't become a rugby ball.

Therapy notes

Too much the child
They will not help you up
And fix you
They've done their time
This what their skills can do
They will not help you up.

And if they could've done better
Settled all the butterflies
Set up all the dominoes
You know they would've done so
This is what their skills can do
They cannot help you up.

The slow rolling of the hill
The greying hairs
The baggage train of unexplained
Armaments, defences
The rusted buckle on well stowed pain
The ordinary pretences
The soft and seeping sore of love
Too tender to be touched
Too much the child
Too much the child
They will not help you up.

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.