So often it would come to this

And then it would come to this
Some wide road, empty and orange
East of the known world and alone
This is like that.
Carrying the valuables
Fielding unsuitables
Adding another ladder rung
Nut to the scaffold
And then some unknown road
Not long from morning
Gone missing
So often it would come to this.

He was a sensitive child with his own mind
Even when he could crawl
He'd show boredom with coeing adults
Turn his long thick torso to the grass
The probation officer fell in love
That bored him
A love that needs the valuables carrying
Hands too small
For any oedipal shield
Or sword
The archetypes we learn
Are not our own. Formative
Chinese whispers and trauma.
So often it would come to this.

His grandmother said
"Welcome to Africa"
Opened the door on a whitewash room
Just large enough for the inch thick mattress
In the morning she drove me to Robben Island.
I never saw her happier
And then sent me on, out to Observatory.
They said his granddad jumped off a block
In Angola, when the revolution was won
After he had bitten tears,
Blessed improper funerals
Seen the fruit
That grew from high ideals.
So often it comes to this.

Teardrop haiku

All teardrops are salt
Salt water is poison to soil
It sterilises.

Requiem for human flourishing

You can't tell what we've lost

Her, drowned in the Med

With all the secrets that she held in her head

All of those things she could have said

The machines that could've come from her fingers.

There's no way to count the cost

He could have been writing like Rowling

But belt tightening and frightened of howling wolves

He goes begging

While Dem Belly Full.

There's no way of knowing.

That kid growing without folic acid

And he sits his SATS but behaviour erratic

Cos his mum is attacked by the panic

In sweeping up bread crumbs.

Attachment deficit. Label him, dumb.

We lost an Einstein illiterate

We lost another itinerant

We lost another at the border with no visa

Because his skin didn't fit

There's a cost to us all

No way of counting it.

To the confused (spoken)

They been confused by J.Edgar Hoover
Y'all gangster, movers and shakers
The music that your chains make for your abusers
The crackers. Ya Babylon. Vampire Squid
Pickney tricked the road to nick is paved in riches
Reinstitute the slave trade in weak minded bitches.

Man tell me they need crime to write a bar
I'm like ra-ra-ra, go bath in tar
Roll your self in feathers
Lock your own hands in chains
Since the sixties and Nixon J.Edgar Hoover had your brain.

II.

Why you think they shot King
Black fame?
Or because he was a messiah preaching peace
In rhythms of the King James.

Call it all jive
Farrakahns a racist and he's still alive.

Drowning horses

Washed hollow and prone

Frayed bridle cut through palm to bone

Beside this bedraggled, exhausted nag

Our breasts both rise like hills and sag

Its tongue lolls from sandpaper throat
On lake shore where clouds of pennies float

With heavy heart I exert these forces

I have been drowning horses.

Sure enough, in comfort lead

It whinnied not in those first treads

With husband hand I grasped the tack

We strolled in peace along the track

For sure this beast does have a thirst

With eyes to sky I ask what curse

For when I lead it to the lake

It just stands and stares and waits.

And though some may find other courses

I have been drowning horses.

Sticky eyed with foam flecked lips

It will not stoop to take a sip

Despite running sweat in beating sun

Ne'er spoons its tongue in proffered tun
I'll take a pale and douse it down

Careworn, it just stamps and frowns

So I wrest the bridle with all my thunder

And pull the damn fool's head right under

It is not without a grave remorse

I have to drown this horse.

How we thrash and flail like alligators
And draw a crowd of awed spectators

As in struggle we rise and fall

Making fountains and waterfalls.

I heard you can lead a horticulture

But can't make vegetables think
And you can lead a horse to water

But you can't make it drink.

I will apply my unconventional resources

I have been drowning horses.

Washed hollow and prone

Frayed bridle cut through palm to bone

Beside this bedraggled, exhausted nag

Our breasts both rise like hills and sag

It's tongue lolls from sandpaper throat
On lakeshore where clouds of pennies float.

The critical question

There has been some fuss
Over the referendum, EU withdrawal
Schengen schenanigans
Other addendums
The proper question for the body politic
These are not.
The proper question is
#BunDemHowHot?

Wax, Petrol, Bottles and Rags

Wax, petrol, bottles and rags
My doubt in dhotis doubles
Trouble. Cartier cartels like Bolsheviks
Parasite this Empire's sunset
Sunset on the senate, quarterised Agora
Centuries since Tom Paine's tree transplanted
Tankers and satellites bring Ash Die Back
The Old Lady knocked the rafters from the house
This shack a sty,
Pigs plastering edits on the walls
Deifying myths of our perfection
This church takes more than Tithe
Thrives on human sacrifice

The pragmatic response?
Wax, petrol, bottles and rags

Turkeys balloted on Christmas or Thanksgiving
A needle in the neck
To paralyse the body politic, ancient medicine

Pump oil to the furnace planet
Till giants corner the ring,
Regulation as usual, business in digital.
A stitch in time saves nine
So they stitch and they stitch
Alibis over the crimes, wool over the House
A douse of paraffin is a sure cure for louse
Stockpile in case of
Disaster capitalist frags
Wax, petrol, bottles an rags.

I used to gaze at castles

I used to gaze at castles

And dream you'll understand

Their high stone walls

Pennants and armies at command.

My battle voice so rarely used

On illustrated plates

I used to gaze at castles

Think of all within their gates.

At Harlech, where the castle stands

The sea has fled

A golf course and a camp site
Sit in the harbour's stead

I dreamt how ships came into port
With mutton and with mead
Just thirty men to hold the fort
Was all that they did need.

There is no call for castles now
Walls just well built memories
That make this tourist town
There for all to see.

Caricatured in knights and wars
Moores of legend and of magic
I used to gaze at castle walls
Never knew a siege so tragic.

Things not to say on Tinder 42.

Oh sweetest Seraphim
Arc bright lamp so luminous
I've been off a-foraging
Through this landscape so voluminous

This landscape where
Your message raised me
So high above the penguin crowds
With butterfly net and razor
I have been picking clouds.

Searching only for the sweetest
Not the over-ripe and weepy grey
Those fluffy white with crispy tops
Not whispy ones that float away.

I picked vanilla cirrus, apple stratus
All the Cherry cumulus I'm able
Even Wasabi alto-stratus
To lay upon your table.

I cup them all in ramikins
Juggle the crop for all I'm worth
Until your thought evaporates
And I return to earth.

More must die

More must die
This battle not enough
My lord in wrath unquenched
More must die.

Though on these acres souls
Like stubbled fields of straw have fallen
Those callow tender sprouts misguided blow
Like flakes of ash upon the wind
More must die.

Though my footprints inked in blood
Ankles lapped in crimson tide of sacrifice
Breeches soaked in spleen and fluids as I wade
More must die.

A legion will not quench
Like starved hounds bays ire unsheathed
Though lit pyres sicken the morning sky
More must die.

Till artisans replace the forest with bones
And build cathedrals of skulls to placate my Lord
More must die.

The world's fracked

Gas, for gaslighting
Grilled world seconds from midnight
Eichmann in Houston
Short sighted pollution
Turkeys vote from one night of maddness
Before they ring in Christmas
Liquidate the forest, desecrate empty cradles
Civilisations and small business fail
When they don't price time.

Poison Ivy

The fascist apologists tend to come from the middle
Strivers, connivers, the safe
Those at the top are oft for the chop
Those at the bottom can see what is rotten
The conformist, uniformists that hate
They agree to the fiddle
Facist apologists tend to come from the middle.

Romantic advice

If he asked me, I'd say reoffend

For this love would not leave

And even if she's not that fond

Of you, in faith believe

This love would not leave.

In all sympathy abandon

To forsook incarceration

This is not how love is done

In any situation.

So there may be some frustration.

A love to set you free of course

Cannot leave you locked

To be the cause of such remorse

Is not the conduct of a rock

So go back to the dock.

Shoplift, or insurance fraud

Or barring that a fight

Such priceless love man can't afford

To let away in flight

For every sleepless night.

So reoffend my friend

The surest way to keep her

Give all the water in the Thames

For rare sips from that beaker

And absence make love deeper.

As she passes

Softly goes my sweet

In notes like snowdrops

A symphony of whispers

And gentle as a rose.

Pills

If you feel unwell
There's a pill.
And if that makes you unwell
There's a pill for the pill
And should you find yourself still unwell
Well there's a pill for the pill for the pill
Till your killed.
And if you should wonder why you never got well
Well, where there's a pill there's a bill.

And other mistakes

Some I pushed away

Some I just let go.

Uncertain on a foreign street

Amber catching the beach highlights

Awed my virginal eyes

After years, the airport, when you cried

A phone call over oceans

When I said there was no one else to turn to

And cried.

The grey air in that manhandled flat

Grills on the windows

When you returned

Charged the air like coming thunder and said

“He said don't cheat on me”

The door, an invisible valve

The candles you lit, if I stayed

Till they dripped together into their plates and shook

So wise, gentlemanly, I thought

To leave unknowing for the next party's entanglement
And revenge, caught in somebody else's war

The door was like a valve. I recall

A mind full of abstracts, taught ideals,
That lacked a sherpa's barefoot intimacy

With the undulating track, details
Each hillock, stone and rock, how imperfect we all are.

The wintered Hackney streets

Through greyed snow, when spring was within

And concrete felt like rubber underfoot.

Some I just let go.

Picnic short of a muse - Things not to say on tinder 86

If you're a sandwich short of a picnic
Then I'm a picnic short of a muse
Fruity, cheesy with some breadsticks
I've got something you might use
We'll go country, find a hayrick
Pass the offy get some booze
If you're a sandwich short of a picnic
I'm a picnic short of a muse.

Blueprint - Ghosts

Those that pass through walls, the halls, courts unseen

That raise the terrified from their sleep

The rustling papers, the forms of dead

In screens, smiling, seductive, that lurk

The fridge, dark shadows, the laundry machine

That haunt the story high fonts of our streets.

Do you dress in my mind of them?

Do you believe in them?

Ghosts.

Do you wake, dress and wash at ghost's behest

You, of solid flesh, by borders bound

And steel word of law. They pass through walls.

Your desk they pace and press the circled clock

Between your blades, to find a spine

Pushing honey up the twine, 

String lines to marionettes.

Putting money in your pocket.

Do you buy old rope from ghosts?

Do you sacrifice

The pennies, hours, sensibilities and principal

For the invisible

Look your brother in the eye and lie

Steal, turn people from the door

Over to the law for the undead unseen

For the rustling papers

Would you operate ovens

For ghosts?

Crates and paper travel like the poltergeists are puppeteers

The chill hand inhuman

A morality of Gyges, picking the pumphouse lock

Come by, and whistles. The crook.

The dead with unfinished business

Some functionary faked the paper for a cheque

Fiddled while the world burnt. Banal concerns.

The furniture is gone, the railroad and pipes

The miracles of yestyear's endeavour

In flames devoured. They gather

In a semi-circle and rub their hands

Stretch their formless palms towards the flames

Solid flesh blisters, yet ghosts cannot get warm.

Uniformed armies at their beck

Daily ford the river, daily scale walls

Battle blind and raging at their foe

Soldiers cannot see the war

Yet blood let, pillage and enfief their fellow ape 

The corn we tend, the nightingale. What if from far, far off

With a bottle top taken as a token to a wraith

You choked the albatross.

Do you believe in ghosts?

The belief in fear

Listen, casually. Believe what you hear
And you will be made very, very, afraid
What was it last sent a love to the grave?
Terrorism is the belief in fear.

Life's a short surf on this thunderous wave
A wet board under foot all in balance
Accidents, incidents, timing and chance
And what was it last sent a love to the grave?

There's a war on, and foreign invaders
Blast bombs everyday,
                                      but not over here
Terrorism is the belief in fear
We're worried yes, that's how they made us.

Painting a picture on bright coloured screens
Truth's got shoes, there's fibre optics for hoax
They'll teach you hate like they taught you to smoke
A hollowed out husk in the spider's machine.

Do you wear raincoats when the weather is clear
Need protection, rally round and obey
What was it last sent a love to the grave?
Terrorism is the belief in fear.

II

They've mapped new Asian pipelines on a plan
Because they fell in love with LPG;
And Russia's gas transmission monopoly
So, well, they taught us to hate all Islam.

Two men stabbed a soldier in Woolwich and stood
They were nicked, arrested and sectioned
Flew a kid back from Libya,
                                   to Manchester
                                             in the election
A Home Office assett, he ended up dead.

Shapes

These loves of different shapes

They do not always tessellate

Naturally slip to fit, embraced

Like fate cast each for other's sake.

In an instant stick, attach

Some may not stretch, to depth

To fill that hole, some gap

Or knot that stops the closest breath.

But oh, those fine balancing acts

Dynamic, each in flux and pivot

Like champagne, upon a plaque

Upon a hand, upon a ship.

With time some loves may mould

Flow to sediment depressions

May shave or carve, swell to holes
May grow
We never sat that lesson.

And you, you loved me

Like I was a leak in the gutter over your pot

And I, like you were a lost

Lego technic toy from the attic.

But the shapes didn't fit.

I knew it. Did you

Did you make that mistake?

The shapes don't always tessellate.