nothings perfect but fire
and here you are
just siiting at the kitchen table
with an old friend

chewing the cud
watching the riverflow
laughing and joking
at the passing of pass time

and its all alright
enough in the memory bank
and stars light the room
we've been here before

and you'll be my funeral invite
and i your carrier
and we'll really laugh when its all over
but for now, absteem like men

caught in a friendless love
with enough above us
to be kind
and we hug each other and the kid.

who's dressed up as a pig
which is cool.

an exchange

a racehorse on a train platform
an old gentleman with sandwiches
corned beef and the vamping of forged iron on concrete
there is no rider
the beast is mad and the old man's acid is coming on...

it's raining, rush hour, tanoy, echoes,
miraculously the animal lays at his feet
inside the glass waiting area
he gives it an apple
Thinks the horse:

(in his newfound tranquility)

"This place reminds me of an aviary in Nottingham
..where there was that weird severed head of a woman.. a bust
I believe. ha No matter"

The man finishes his meal and bids farewell
The horse, unsurprisingly, is denied entry to his train

Later, the man is annointed with the vision of a wild stallion on a parrallel track
as he sips a coffee in the buffet car,
indigestion gone, for now.

Haiku is A FORM
OF POETRY THAT YOU WRITE
WITH DIFFICULTY

SO YOU GIVE UP QUICK
AND WONDERING IF, MAYBE,
WORDS ARE BETTER PUT

DOWN, AMONGST THE LOWER GRUMBLINGS OF THE SOUL
IN ALL ITS SEEMING LACK OF SENSE AND METER,
SUGGEST:

LET’S PLAY A GAME?
ONE FOR THE EASILY (OR NOT SO ) LED-
AGREE TO WALK OUT OF THE DOOR
WITHOUT REASON OR RHYME
JUST A SLENDER AGREEMENT
TO DO THINGS BY NEGOTIATION

WANT TO TURN LEFT?
IT LOOKS NICE OVER THERE
BUT HOW WILL WE GET BACK?
I DUNNO, WANNA GO SEE?

OK
DO YOU LIKE WHERE YOURE AT?
YES, THIS IS NICE
STRAIGHT ON?
OK.. YOU COMING?

THAT KIND OF THING
DOESN’T WORK SO GOOD IN PICTURES
WORDS ARE ALWAYS IN BETWEEN
IS that AN OK PLACE TO BE?

I THINK I’ll CALL THIS A FILL IN THE GAPS POEM
AFTER MY GRANDAD - TED
AND HIS SUGAR SANDWICHES AND CARD GAMES….

concrete anon...

Im grinding my teeth to your songs
Singing after the fact shone
Looking in the dark for light
Something comfortable is gone

And moving on I wish good
For you and your kids
Rearranging furniture
My armchair on the skids

Dancing after laughter
Not enough to get worse
Fighting>?
Won two lost one.

Run rabbit run.

Broadly……
Word I hate

What’s left
isn’t great

Make
Peace

Create

Make
Your
Own
Fe
Te
.

Girlfriend's In Bed

Upstairs asleep after a waking night with me and i'm calling round mes amis a la fortieth which hangs in the air like a bleeding pig waiting to be cooked and eaten. The fortieth birthday pig. Certain changes of status are unfolding: Professional, Single, Jobless, Tenant, Parent with care, Employed, Artist seeks work: Mr Benn. Make a note to learn some new chords and birds - names and calls. Bigger house with garden and things to swing. "Something to do before you die? Live." The visitors permit is off and the Walnuts are not ready in this hinterland. Linger a while. Linger a longer look. Every day I write that book. Look up boats on the internet and laugh at own temptation to blow a paltry life savings ( for a forty someone) on a boat - wood for the building and rent a dry dock. Music unmade, painting unpainted, poems to write and she is still dreaming. Bloody cat. Plastic beads. Don't like being called sweet. always preempts the end of something. Thought occurs: There's nothing behind the knees to wobble.... what you say that for? Politics all around I write myself back into bed nearly. Then, staring and sublime i achieve an higher consciousness and pass on... missing the whole party. Merciful Allah. blessings be upon his wondrous name. That Robert Mugabe. What a cunt. He can't come to Dads Cafe. He's embargoed. We could eat him, I suppose. But really, what a fucking twat. And what a fine freedom to be able to say it. Guess I'm dead now? Sympathetic look on a combative face calming the angry muscles into a sanguine attention to the facts and out of which social scenario details occur - as new and to be acted upon. Get camping gas and a bed. Bored now. Get up woman. The end. (Ilex would be a good name for a firm of Japanese white goods manufacturers).

No More Pension At the Post Office
(old rockers at the GPO)

Old men in leather trousers
Eric Claptons Lesley Crowthers
Filling Albert Hall with Cream
A Who’s Who guide to dementia
Open shirts, clean white dentures
Suffering still from vanity
Or regular, jobbing, insanity
Pink Floyd Macca Rolling Stones
ACDC giving dogs the bones
Geldof saving Africa again
On a retro bakelite digital phone
Lots of gravy when you are old
Unless you’re at the Post Office,
In December and it’s cold
And Rosie behind the counter says?
“I’m sorry, Jack, the savings account is ending
You’ll have to open a bank account…pending…”
But, unlike Bob, you never have…..

xxxlovexxx

Liabilities and Securities
That’s what it was all about
RIP

Humour is always a defence
..til you polish the end off

And the blunt truth outs without time
Or timing
Standing naked

Before some object
Or some one

Just listens…
Then you’re not so funny
after all..

Then you shut up
And get smaller

And you’re just human
Again.

Then gone
Blood cells white
Down to four

Someone forgot to close the patio door.

Before The event it’s so easy to be right
Knowing nothing of what the event might be


And hedging those bets,
I wonder on life and fair play and
Christianity
Security
And what will be..
My Liability.

Heaven, bad ras…

And pursuant of something one-else - I leave a gaggle of wobblers behind me

End of nursery rhyme.

(and what I didn’t say in the text message: nobody love you like your mother’)

Fundraising In Heaven

Down at the Pearly Gates Community Interest Company (PGCIC)
There's a meeting of the many winged folk
A Committee has been formed
And it's a monumental occasion

God is there.

Present: Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Emily Pankhurst, John Cobb (of J Cobb and son's Boilermakers, Shrewsbury) Mo Mowlam, Charles de gaulle, Ghandi. other representatives of the regionalities. Previous rafts of previous measures.

Items arising: Should profit sharing for godly interventions be ratified in PG Law and if so - does the heavenly code require a referendum on the matter?

Chair: God.

Apologies: None - they've all been said.

Minutes: To be continued......

Refresher

She turned to whoring, out on the streets, with all the love inside her
Said Nancy
I wasn’t listening but what I think you meant to say was…

Said Rosamunde

And then they both did a little dance
Which made the air crackle
A proper pair of fairies
All dressed up and a jig.

The testament came from without
As this was not a scene from the dimensions of human vision
But they danced in many minds
Carpeting the Burberry felt of hard wearing headspaces

The musk of sweat and their hands entwined
To wring out the bad thoughts that life leaves behind
Granting wishes dealt out of old sins
They go about their work

Mindfully, we empty overnight
And the skill of their hands sometimes
Passes over our bodies through wives and strangers alike
Lady spanners laughing ladies’ loving

Not the kind we can keep.
The pool on the floor
Is wet underfoot in the morning
But we feel - fresher.

Bob Dylan Goes To Art School

Foundation Art School Paris Away Day.

They’re eating ice cream at the toy museum
They're painting napkins with silhouettes
The continental breakfast is all gone now
So they’re smoking their cigarettes

Ezra Pound and T S Elliot
have been on the piss all night
The Gendarme have said:
‘Youre in the wrong place my friends’

‘Allez - g wan now - get!’

And the blind Scottish alcoholic course leader
Has lost all the passports in town
None of them can ever return again
To dear old London Town.

So now, on the streets of Montmartre,
The English talent sits,
Painting European Torsos
and cutting out silhouettes

And if you see them please don’t overpay
They’ll get theirs some other day -
And all because Jim Kenny
Found an outstretched violin

One last word about protocol
You can send no letters - oh no
And don’t answer any postcards
Not unless they mail them from

Foundation Art and Design Row.

Found Poem: Lovely Memories

For the restoration of a Falklands veteran that saw service as a
Rapier missile command vehicle at Goose Green.

The cost so far has quickly gone beyond what the vehicle will ever
be worth but I hope someone may have some of the small and more
common bits tucked away in a shed somewhere!

Such as:

Any wood or metal ammo or tool boxes.

Small military issue pick-axe (has metal ferrule on end of removable
handle)

Jerrycan.

Old Land Rover seat cushions.

Cammo netting - any size/any colour (green or green/brown)

Short military spade, has "T" handle and heart shaped blade.

A Bedford, Landrover or other long starting handle?

High lift jack.

"Mushroom" lenses, tail, side or indicator.

Any bits for this FC101 gratefully received!

Thanks, George

no quality assurance here...

Prophetic and said.

Like Pat said;
How long do you want to live for?
What if you are in a hurry?
And everything you need is at your disposal?

And what do you need it for?
And what are you going to do with it?
And when they do say: ‘lights out’
Will you be done?

So:
Bye dad - now in life
(Mike and the mechanics)
The bass hums other songs

I heard you in my ear before email
No less a miracle
Hope to hurl
World unfurl

Forget about the nuts
Sinead - fuck off
You old talking head
Jimmy and Ted.

Not dead?

And that fucking hearse?
Whatever am I boverred?

Is this what you would say?

thing written upon invitation from rosamunde

Soak

Hermetically sealed invisible microcosmic ocean environment

With plastic woman and Italian Pasta. Crimped:

A homely dish buried eternally with a marionette

Serves a multitude right or wrong.

Things having lives after, before and now

As at home, with a plastic egg and fake crackle

(What do you breathe in my lovelies? Out?)

As in as they are out - do you voodoo?

Just one small three hundred and sixty degree piece

Amongst the many thinking to hide behind glass

Masquerade as a centrepiece for a while

Taking notes about the inevitable panoramas we are.

A shaming device perfectly mixed and mingled?

Maybe a predictor of weather? What clocks might have been

If female emancipation had never been an issue -

A machine. That’s it. Well oiled, slick and economical.

No magic at all.

Phew….

bar the skeleton leaves' drinking apparatus

rotted to lattice.

FUTURE TENSE SPINE QUANDARY: ELEMENTS OF CHI STUCK WIND

Now the time has gone and I behave badly
Doing things at non appointed times without significance
But dissipating fear of the linearity and inevitable - ness
Of the next thing. Assuages guilt and vice.

The way to the devil and the Brandon papers
Youth in trouble inside language
Robert’s French Revolution and muscles: testing and function
Random-ness was always good enough dad. Why you want a what for now?

Says the sun. Ray’s wearing a sun hat and shades now.
Cannot drive in the mornings without. Wet country road glares.
Leeds two places off the play offs. Someone on loan from Bury
How the mighty fall and the wind outside is fifty miles an hour.

The sea is un-deniable. Wind flotsam connects.
Childhood is now an industry - capitalism has eaten its children.
Somewhere in the subject the titles get lost.
But the good keep trying.

Thrashing around like a Romanian orphan in an airport lounge,
I figure on pots and a trampoline for the neighbourhood teen danger.
Get more paint. Write fewer words. Look up the new Holmes precedent.
And other book titles; pursuits of happiness and occupation….

A3

There’s the deal and there’s nothing inside of it

All you got to do is speak:

Ask.

Featherlight moments such as this don’t come along

In droves so carpet diem

Eh?

Some girl is walking on a beach feeling her dads mind

Inside of her

Tell.

Picking up a stone and throwing it into the sea

All moments equate to

One.

I’m funny but I don’t do jokes says a boy

Spit of his mother

Some tiny sunspot of resentment in a father’s eye

interrupts a sleeping heart 2000 miles

Away.

Many a tear has to fall, I am thinking as

I inherit her fathers bag

Worn.

And now I will try to sell his work and loves

Squandered already - posh

Porn.

A sideboard of a gift passes three degrees

Between lovers and

Family.

Three more degrees of separation waiting to

Be born. A nine year old’s valentine card reads:

‘Thinking of You’.

Sweet.

In the wink of an eye stranger hearts melt

Everything they did well

Collide:

Thinking of you.

We are nine

And so alive.

To be woken in the morning from sleeping in your dreams

Renders new vistas on the screen saver

Shut down

‘Reborn’ awaiting thumbnail.

Heart stops

Sinus rhythms apply…

Heart says: “Please?”.

Happening

Down On Magdalene Street

A flashmobb of a moment
In a place
Near a gift-wrap shop
And after the sally army
(which was closed)

Maybe it was Jumperdamn?
Or the Flowerman of Anglia Square
A Flaneur. A bon heur
Pour un moment
J’etait glycolic*

(This was written in part by a spell checker
Esoteric place, the word processor
It pays to be docile
When you’re bearing witness)

Still, there was peace, ambience and
Maybe you’ll know what I mean
If I say:
Scaturient saturnine equanimity?

It was just a moment
But it was a good one
You know, when you’re, like -
Whole?

Ah fuck it.

Ok - not quite:
Small e-lab:
Headlights; Rabbit; Freeze.

Can we shift it?
Yes we can!
Can we move it backwards?

Not unless you’re bob the builders late brother
Or The Doctor..
Me? Thanks for asking -
I’m a bookseller.


* Glycol - An artificial compound linking glycerine and alcohol - serendipitous to this poem with the possible linkage of explosions and drinking ignoring the ulterior connections to hypoglycaemia and upon further reflection: In freeze moments, can we not still swither and twire?

bit sinister this

BITS OF MARK CHAPMAN:

devoted Japanese travel agent, Gloria.
We can spend a great deal of time alone with ourselves
Which is fine if we are good company

"Your course of conduct over a lengthy period of time shows a clear lack of respect for life and subjected the wife of the victim to monumental suffering by her witnessing the crime."
Parole board 2004.

And:

"extreme malicious intent:

“My lips and tongue were content. My stomach and heart were disintegrating”

Nigella Express Delivery Breakdown - One Cover

I nearly started on the cooker
Daft as it was long
It failed to cook the dinner
And wouldn’t let me sing my song

I tried to speak to it -
Might have been oblique to it
Don’t think I done it wrong
I tried to speak to the cooker

Damn thing -
Didn’t know the song.

Republican Wicker Rocking Chair Piece With Plastic Plant Pot Embellishments

Drizzle on a hooded face
And walking with the humility
Of immanent death

Stops a bottle short
Thinks of songs and poems
About men and boys

Crossfire, tcr
Other electric toys

The Leeds united fan club
And the sewing room
Gone spare

Nick a gnome
Break a hill
If you dare

Separate beds, cards
A morning blue clock
Pattern of carpet

Hides under the bed
Satan enters
Leaves

Later

Much later

In allotment conversation
Says… I feel the same.

Thrown out of the house again

He wakes his brother
Warm water after cold
And the hearse waits

Did I upset the nuts?
Or are we all fucking mad?
The passing fad passes

Dad to dad.

Private and Confidential

Emolument

Crenelated flesh of your back
Warm air rising in a certain position
Arrived at unconsciously
Out of desire for more
Communions
Without lust.

Sleepless

Reliving your nursery slopes
Breath in draws you near
Calls you in to my self
Outside of us both
Intimacy
Beyond space.

Wanting

Lends heat to the head
Innocent pornography
The bubble of a moment killed
Floats new recipes
Which will never
Be eaten.

Submission

Cooling insomnia
Seeks warm air girl
For heady fun
And soulful emoliations
Walks on beach;
Cosy nights in.

Return

To the coil, outstretched violins;
The hunting hands
Will never
Be the same again.
Must like children
And dogs.

Breakfast Re-engineered: ‘F4N’?


The air is fugged but fizzing
Currents of ideas and names
Dart from the media; radio
Internet, TV, and make soup of
It all until nothing matters:

Hungarian leaders; Retirement
Should be a slow process
Not a short, sharp, shock.
Radon to the mind; disintegrating,
Thickening; corn floured toxicity -

Where domesticity ends and
public relations begin, sits The Form;
On the kitchen table,
Clean next to a stream of creolised milk
again; like the news

And it's likely outcomes which will
Or wont.. We are nearly passed caring.
Except for some benign lump
In the belly which should end
In a song. But, instead keeps fizzing

Like Alka Seltzer for the soul
(History is just one fucking thing after another)

In this word biology, the poet
Physician would turn magician
And split the atoms of someone's gut.
Maybe that would end his case?
Too long open, explodingly, shut?

On the other hand, the one that isn't free
Is God's made work.
Our hero claps like a seal awaiting fish.
In captivity we keep breeding,
While some human makes clothes for us

On the cheap.

Now, the imprinted palms are idle
Waiting. Arbeit Macht Frei;
The Devils wide smile
And the turned down grimace of a God;
Make a Fish 4 Needing dough... what a good idea -



The Bible.

Homage To Wood Dalling

I see my daughter aged 63
kneeling, slowly, in the garden
she's cutting back the grape hyacinth
and I like to think
She's thinking of me

I see my daughter aged 63
not so great on her feet but
she's thinning out the white balsam
'please mans helmet'
two thousand and three

Then, she remembers
blue eyes yellowed
hair blond to grey she sees
a man pass by on a bicycle
i know she knows it's me.

Down On Magdalene Street

A flashmobb of a moment
In a place
Near a gift-wrap shop
And after the sally army
(which was closed)

Maybe it was Jumperdamn?
Or the Flowerman of Anglia Square
A Flaneur. A bon heur
Pour un moment
J’etait glycolic*

(This was written in part by a spell checker
Esoteric place, the word processor
It pays to be docile
When you’re bearing witness)

Still, there was peace, ambience and
Maybe you’ll know what I mean
If I say:
Scaturient saturnine equanimity?

It was just a moment
But it was a good one
You know, when you’re, like -
Whole?

Ah fuck it.

Ok - not quite:
Small e-lab:
Headlights; Rabbit; Freeze.

Can we shift it?
Yes we can!
Can we move it backwards?

Not unless you’re bob the builders late brother
Or The Doctor..
Me? Thanks for asking -
I’m a bookseller.


* Glycol - An artificial compound linking glycerine and alcohol - serendipitous to this poem with the possible linkage of explosions and drinking ignoring the ulterior connections to hypoglycaemia and upon further reflection: In freeze moments, can we not still swither and twire?