Payment

After 6 am, you come into the world from morning meditations, much has been in the pit and it's refreshing to greet daily life as you switch on 3 overheads: The washing machine washes your clothes, the gas fire - winter heat and the radio plays: 'Pictures Of You' by The Cure. All over your head. Slow burning pleasure and necessity for which someone must pay.

Minor Wound and Blues Tune

It could have been great but you lay in your wounds

You lay in your wounds for too long

There's no harm to show that

You're feeling side knows that

You've laid in your wounds for too long

Then you go out, you scream and you shout

Take rave lessons at local gymnasia

(There's no need to talk...)

The day you rose up, the kids were all out -

The stains on the sheets have all but come out

Just the ghost of a memory

a possible life,

but you'd laid in your wounds for too long.

Blues Major

Everybody got a new path to take
doesn't mean we're all on the make
but some of us are
and some of us know it
Some of us, hide by refusing to show it

You've got to say when your fanny itch
Let's all celebrate a stiff cock
Don't get so possessive
it makes you aggressive

Get the T shirts printed - let's rock

(solo I guess, and repeat to fade - if not climax)

3am: (These Long Hours)

It's 3 am and I'm on your media pages
you're showing well, its all on your side,
people are answering your ads and
showing you love online
you have your synchronicities
and your heart back...

The radio always plays the right tune.

But these long hours, in ghost silence,
Are when I press my 'send':
'Come back, I have no deeper wound
and yours is safe here - there is no end'..

Your heart was given - but lightly you say
Now you've taken it back in kind
These deeper wounds that you dance away
aren't allowed to reach to your mind.

So I keep a safe harbour
Not perfect, but true
A place I never hoped to make
A terrible beauty
To hold in a heart:
That was never a light gift to take...

(and wait for 4am...)

Ghosting

I am the in between
I have lived in your gut
And I occupy spaces
Between objects of desire
I am repulsion and
I am attraction
You know me by your breath
And by all small sensations you
Regret you have ignored
I smell of truth and fate
You cannot handle me
And I am subject to no will
I take heed of ancestry,
But never barter with the living
Who share the burdens of pain
Which I must exact by their
Unseen connections, their powers
Of fellowship in suffering and all
Other holy consecrations.
I am a blessing and a curse.
I educate.

Going Underground/ Let It Not Be

Going underground

New miners
Miners of welfare
Miners of truth
Miners of what you can learn from your youth
Miners of wisdom
Miners of knowledge
Mining all the stuff you couldn't learn in college
Miners of power
Miners of doubt
Miners of debt
Miners of cash
Miners of goodness wi nawt tekken out
Miners of Motown and miners of soul
Miners of God
Carrying a hod
Up a fucking long ladder
To a roof with no slates

Miners misunderstood Lord
Please, don't let it be.

Risk Assessment

gotta find words for this me this you this is all of us
go to not fall off the cliff
got to not need to fall to see
got to not need to jump to fall to see to
understand too late -
every inch of the journey down
and the never to be had hindsight
of the tragedy we would make

- Donald. Did China ever think?
- Donald: They thought
- Donald: Can you really speak for us?
Who are we?
Where have we gone?
How far down the cliff are we now?
Hindsight is so close
only time travel will help
Donald - we need magic
Donald - what magic have you?

Where are our leaders?
Where are our thinkers?
Where are our high priests?
Our shaman and nature gods?

Who will be our protectors but us?
Liberate, quickly. See truth.

Live free and know that the risk of safety is the biggest danger of all.

SOS Or More

arcane calendar entries?
synchronicities?
temporal loops?
or just a friend
sending you a message
at a particular time:
arcs of life that,
intersect and plane
follow and cradle
come together
and move apart
sometimes abruptly
and sometimes
inexorably slow
but to know our places
on the wasted patterns left behind
is a life time's work -
or more.

but im fucking ok

hey, joyful girl..
see that fray we missed and
maybe be part of it?

no joy shared and all was fascile
you reggae dancing
and me - well fucked.

O Business Plan O Business Plan

We'll not carry the can - o business plan.

#prisonvoicemail

'Twas heaven, but not for thee...

We'd visited the cafe for ages.

It was just so cool: Full of prisoners
all getting the very best out of our tax-payers money
and being re-habilitated right before our eyes and knives and forks

When we met you in the sauna like that,
It was a shock. We didn't recognise you with your clothes on.

I suppose I just felt a bit scared in such a confined space.

I don't mean to say there's any good reason
- I just mean that, you know, that - it's just a bit

odd.

That's all.

When you told us how all the prison workers only get £29 a week
and how they have to pay twice the rate for everythng in the prison shop

and some of those things you said - the stabbings and...

It was so awful and then I just got scared.

I am so sorry.

And that guy who was just going to the family courts to get to see his kid...

I've had JAmes look it up on the CPR rules and you are quite right

"It's criminal" you said - "It's Criminal what the CPS are doing"

What can we do?

Just tell us and we'll do it... anything.

Anything at all.

Give our love to Brenda when you see her.
We're so glad you've come through this and we're
really pleased you can now go to work and see the girls..
It's really wrong that they take so much of your wages

when the girls really need it.

6 months and you will be free.

I guess it's best we don't say anything about any of this -
at least until you are completely free.."?

Clyde and Co - This Is Not an Advertisement

Too full of ourselves:

Turning a gut, in sight of the Gherkin
Grayson Perry and George Shaw. Light and dark.
Arty Speed Dating on the 13th floor.
Some feel awkward, some might thrive,

Ghandi's maxim: 'Find yourself by taking an interest in others'

Altruism's good for business.

"Say not what you want to say about yourself,
Say only what you think They might want to hear"

"get people to talk about themselves
so you can frame what to say about you."

Not so much: "I am the greatest thing since Caligula"
but more: "Worship me now in the east -
but when I am dead, you may worship me in Rome"

(Knowing what everyone else wants is also safer
when whatever you want just aint happening)

Other titbits of arts promoter logic and experience were spread
but in the end, what gave the game away:

We never ever met our hosts, who shall remain un-named except for in the title of this poem.

Superficial Extremes

We're built to interact.
If you experience a full sense of your capacity in this respect
Just join in.

Whistling

Whistling In The Dark

WHIstling
WHIstling
Alone and it's dark and I'm Whistling

Nobody behind, no-one in front.
No Behind, no front:

Wind, whistling
In the dark.

Aeolius, Blood and Mercury ( Or: How I Learned To Hate Paul Simon)

This word blew away behind the door,
Through a crack in the plaster yet spread
like blood on a marble floor - as plastic
as meaning ever could be. As fluid as mercury.

That one, darted and lodged in the outside wall
where students passed by, muttering new words
about the institution or binary opposites or
other words, all moving in directions of some tongue

or another...

The words inside you all together, just massed
Words were no  longer enough but then,
neither was form. Nothing was enough
No things, no word, no deed was enough.

Maybe blood and mercury ought not to mix
Maybe blood and mercury can coalesce in magic
but not in everyday conversation - maybe.
Colour, divergence, love: all blown away.

Death and Birth

What other change happens quickly in relation to the evolution of the whole?

Place

Auxillary microphone - socket
Testicles, Asbestos and Sprawl

Disappointing looms of tired
and animated balls.

I, by Jove and Daniel Blake
imagining common operas

do reside by the level crossing with dogs.

A Node

make shape form ways of ways
old roads, meanderings
old train lines canals dried up
tow path cut back here to there

all those passages and paths
places and days. Ways, always,

always moving on, all ways
leading from one thing to a next:
History revealing, making
shaping, forming, leading on

do we know any other ways?
we could walk them back
to the beginning or just start again -
but they all go the right ways

our ways are much the same
so, just wander. It's ok.

Dear Donald

I had to write to someone today, so I thought I'd write to you, Donald.

'Congratulations' is, I suppose, the first thing to say. You pulled it off. Fair play to you. Whatever anyone might think, actually becoming the president of the USA is no small feat, so in that, if nothing else, you have my respect.

I have to be honest and say that you didn't have it in many other areas before that. I'm vaguely aware that you pissed off the Scots in some of your golf course dealings and I know you've been on the end of allegations about sexual offences. But I wont make any judgements on the basis of allegations. You're entitled to be where you are and you've earned it.

I even had the realisation that I agree with one of your foreign policies: That of siding with Russia to bring security first to the Middle East. I think we have all been very 'Russo-Phobic' in our dealings with this and far too quick to use blame to avert our own huge failings.

I don't think the fact that you are orange, or that your hair seems a tad impossible, or that you do weird stuff with hand gestures should be signalled and used to pejorate you or your views.

Now that you are president (if not before) you deserve to be taken seriously and on merit from this day. Maybe you will actually teach all of us liberal, or even neo - liberal, chattering, moralising classes that nobody has a monopoly on values or opinions and that being of a particular socio economic class or social group doesn't make anyone more right than anyone else.

I do wish you well.

Everyone agreed that we needed major change if not a revolution in public life. You're the unlikely guy who's going to give it to us. OK, we'll start there. No-one gets to have change on their own terms without resorting to illegality, coercion or cruelty to get it. You wouldn't do any of those things would you? So, I'm with you mate. Damn it. I'm going to trust you.

The only thing I think I should mention - just so we know where we stand - is that if you start to talk about my Mexican friends, or my black friends, or even my Korean friends, any of my friends actually, in any way that belittles them for who they are...

I was going to say I'll chop off you're fucking orange tits - but that's just locker room talk. No, but I will have you impeached in an instant because we do have laws about that sort of thing - as you will know coz hey - you're the president! LOL!

We do have laws about that sort of thing don't we?

Good luck.

Mr A Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church.

x

One Verse Song

look at that little misplaced love
one life's tragedy,
paint brushes in hand

Hey Books...

I didn't read any of you while you surrounded me
You kept us alive and you were always reliable
When hard times fell down on us, you fell like rain
Some ethereal justice, of timing or serendipity bound us

up, unlikely, but we lasted longer than most
and it wasn't just about staying together for love.
It was real. But then, I started to read you.
I started to understand things behind your insulating spines.

Books - 

Message

press send press send press send press send
press, send; press, send; press, send; press, send
Press: "Send". Press: "Send". Press: "Send". Press: "Send".
press send, press send, press send, press send,

reply sent reply sent reply sent reply sent
reply sent reply sent reply sent reply sent

Move to 'sent' folder?

Delete all items?

Seek benevolent advice on matters of the soul's jeopardy?

Civil emergency in this area
Piracy is not a victimless crime

You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention
Anything else you get is a privilege

Parking Only-
Violators will be buried alive:

'Twas heaven here with you.



,

Twix

Some people go too far like barn builders
barn bracks, barn masters and oak merchants
Better under compression than flex
they don't spin a common kind of yolk

I've created notes for this lecture and
I've thought about all of your content

And when those guys you want to be loved by
come back to your site. They don't want to see

the same things again and again and again.

You've got to have traffic baby. Go Daddy (Go).

'Crawl through our webs' said the spider mites
'You're red and too small to take silk'
The merchants of oak, the merchants of law
The scribes of the bills of your armies duty

wait in the shadows while the terrible beauty

is being born - or dying.

Nobel Bob Blues

Well you've got one hand on the money babe

But your other is holding the cradle it rocks (twice)

Yes you've been counting out your dollar bills

But you can't spend them til the baby walks 

--

You been burning your life at both ends babe

Don't want to see the day your little baby talks (twice)

Coz every line that little baby says

Puts food on your enemies knives and forks.

--

There's been days when you wanted to and
there's been days when you thought you did your best (twice)

But you never got shown the light

And now you got a pain in your chest

--

You been working so hard now boy

Like a woman who's lost her mind (twice)

Now you survey your empires of sand

Each and every grain - you know how to find 

--

Now your baby she's all grown up

She swims with the tide that's comin in (twice)

Gonna wash away all your deserts and -

While you count the cost, she starts again.
--

So you're clean outta grains boy
Your tryin' to get back the use of your head (twice)

But down there all the sewer babies
Are wishin' they was somebody else instead....

Rag Rug

you wound, knitted
you insinuated you
- intimated - you: into a world
beyond, before and ever after the end
of your infinite desires and that
absolute incapability - to
miss, skip, jump, fly, flip, nip and tuck
matters
sideways, under or away

from your age:

Kevin.

MAXIMS AND APHORISMS

“There are things we know and things we don’t. It’s not either of them that divides us though. It's what we think we know.” 

Love songs

Dont go
Come back
Stay away
Dont come cack

ever....

Bronze Turd?

No Shit.

Dog Siting

Maybe it was bronze,
Maybe the rumours of a giant turd were enough
to necessitate the wild imaginings which ensued from
the mouths of those dyslexic group members
at the meet up, God blesem.
Yad Vashem
where did that un-mentionable come from Jeremy?

Para Morgan Rum and Yolk

A well-mannered yoke of shoes, perhaps not the most marvy, not are regularly, nor is organization moniker, having said that it may run for you to assuredly tour our period, Christian Louboutin UK only you can regard the happiness shoes demonstrate a tendency not to occasionally, it is possible that desired,but the injured indeed.http://www.getasicsaustralia.com This type of plight you requirement be struck by encountered, walked alongside killing the show cabinets in countless multifarious kinds of shoes you will usher stunning, certainly not to choose. The bring in meets your needs is entirely not superb, like high-priced, cordial predict fashion, feel good-looking men and women who regard as old-fashioned ... rebel elsewhere to be unequivocally enchant俥 ' by unaffectedly difficult. Pick to obtain, in the long run chose a duo, dress the span of exclusively to catch foot show, or not to augment their clothes,Christian Louboutin Outlet easy methods to give rise to it come to pass on over reacting members of the public	Anonymous	on 30/04/13
	Once you come to feel comfy, you'll be able to maximize the issue by using the stair climber motion. Also visit my homepage - bowflex adjustable dumbbells on Requiem For A slot Attendant	Anonymous	on 21/04/13
	Don't walk in wet shoes or expose your feet to extreme cold. But never use hot-water bottles, heating pads or electric blankets on your feet. Avoid socks with elastic bands or garters. Stay away from socks that constrict your feet. Always buy shoes in the afternoon, because that's when your feet are slightly swollen. In selecting [url=http://upnikeaustralia01.webs.com/]Nike Shoes Australia[/url] a couple of shoes, take into account the weather. When it is cold and wet, boot styles are suited. To battle the elements outside, choose a well-fitting and trendy pair of boots. This will keep you looking great. There are various forms of boots to pick from. Your needs will dictate what you turn out choosing. There are also classy [url=http://topsniketrainersuk.webs.com/]Nike Blazers UK[/url] booties that are presently popular. Mephisto shoes are well stocked on the latest trends of boots. You need to pay a lot of time poring as a result of images of lovely bridal gowns, try out many on over reacting members of the public	Anonymous	on 08/04/13
	In this regard, [url=http://fornikeaustralia01.webs.com]Nike Shoes Australia[/url] the sole of cheap snow boots is flat. When in the plane, people's arches are in nervous state so that it will cause fasciitis for a long time. You are supposed to rest every 2 hour when wearing normal shoes. Therefore, you had better not walk more than 2 hours when wearing a pair of snow boots. There may be some misleading of the name "snow boot". You may think it's suitable to wear it on snow. In fact, your feet are more easily injured because you can't see where the rugged snow-covered ground is flat. Online shopping [url=http://fornikeaustralia01.webs.com]Nike Australia[/url] for shoes is very popular in India. Many people prefer to shop shoes on internet instead of shopping in local market or mall. Especially girls like to sit in the comforts of their home and shop shoes online and get them delivered right at their [url=http://cheapnikenz-store.webs.com]Nike Shoes NZ[/url] doorsteps. There you on over reacting members of the public

the paths we take
the necks we break

Power walkers glide past a
Teachers' lawn (Chemistry)

The dramatic proposition
Consists of light rock

and rests on a mantle
in the islands of the dead.

Scilly, really.

Apologies - It's been a while

1. Apologies  you're trying
you don't always get it right
but you've been going this way for a long time now
and it should be taken for granted that you know what you're doing
but every now and then you find yourself with someone - younger - wiser - more experienced
who asks you some questions that you should know the answer to and you don't, so you do one of two things:

Maybe, you say: "Jeez, I really don't know - I'd have to think about that - let me get back to you" - and maybe that wasn't good enough and the young guy thinks you're dumb. You don't pass the test. Or, maybe you say something like: " huh? Oh yeah - THAT! - it's an old chestnut with no satisfactory answer. The more we know the further we get from the problem" - or something that just to sure up your credentials and reinforce YOU as the old hand. "Don't worry - your troubles will be safe with me" and so on... Maybe it works and maybe you never learn another thing in your life or maybe you don't get the job. Sometimes, it's enough for people to think you have the answer even if you don't - Is that not right?

Lol. Probz not! :-)

2. Send Invoice

3. Prep for interview day

4. Check budgets and prep financial reports for trustees

It's not as if love isn't always ever present. It's there, behind everything you do. A duty of care which you dispense with a careful watch, a prudent smile, a circumspect approach to all new possibilities...

Once you said: "It's a big responsibility, chairing an organisation like this - you really have to think about your responsibility to other trustees, funders, stakeholders - you know? One day you might understand" - to a guy who wanted to rent one of the shops in your growing portfolio of 'community assets'.

Sometimes, you wish you'd got where you were by not knowing what you were doing - but finding out the hard way - like he had. But you didn't. Now, you are everywhere you can ever be and going nowhere further. you got here by knowing the answers - and you never had to find out. Sometimes you write notes like this to yourself in memoranda notes and even in minutes of high security meetings. You don't publish anything with your name on though.

All data like that is securely protected - and for good reasons too.

5. Millie's Birthday at 5.

6. Early onset carer's meeting at 7.

7. Write list for tmoro

8. Brush teeth with blue toothbrush

9. Make breakfast with Cheerios in Yellow cupboard and put cheerios back. Read instruction on inside of cupboard. Go to list.

Lolz.

Dog Sitting

People you don't know with dogs who your borrowed dog does know say "hello" and smile
as you walk the walk of another - a dog lover. A mile in their shoes has served well to show that:
You aren't

But you've met some people you wouldn't have met and you've set the rate of exchange at a big thumbfull of Islay malt whiskey as a per walk payment, which seems light given the interruption
to life.

And it's sometimes useful - at certain times - to be able to see how a different one might sit against the setting light of your own. A move on in paradigms. No more a parent to the child, with a set of skills for only yourself.

How dull?

Clippings

Pointlessness; Pointlessnesslessness; Equestrian; Water Sports; Adult; Gum; Preservatives; Tools; Free top Soil; Alternative Burials; Phorensic Services; Wills and Probate; Dating; Adult Personals; Cruises; Special Interest Holidays; Dentistry; Carbon Dating; State Sponsored Kidnapping; Cinema Listings; Who's Who?; Private Security Systems; Dog Handlers, Personal Protection Services; Pickling.

Missing

..because Rough Sleepers never have children but Homeless Families do.

Natural History

Green birds and leaves
hippos and extremophiles
that look like one another

In browns and greens and purples and blue
Single rainbow, looks a lot like you.

A Sparrow chases a Seagull.

Without the moon, our tilt is unstable.

Are we a trillion to one fluke
or a routine occurrence of lives

in a multiverse jam packed and
with bacteria - like humans?

The Day Me Mam Fell In The Pond

I had two meetings, one was with the rural arts group
the other the Young Associates, all talking about money
on the day me mam fell in the pond.

Lee had shown me the ways the top players go about FoosBal
while I'd been at 'Blurb' and we'd played 'Marquee Moon' on the day before
the day me mam fell in the pond.

At 'Blurb' they rolled joints as long as your forearm and coated them in honey
before rolling them again in the neat crisp green of the cannabis they smoked
the day before me mam fell in the pond.

But, it was in between the rurals and the Associates, on the way, driving,
that I'd called her and she'd answered and I'd heard some background noises
and I'd asked what was going on and she'd laughed and said:

"I've just fallen in a bloody pond"!
(sounding just like she would after falling in a pond) and
"There's a woman here who's scared of dogs - hang on"

and I hung on and waited to hear all about what happened
and she told me that she'd been walking over a log and she shouldn't have
and she lost her footing and went over and then:

"I just fell in the pond" and "Now I'm wet from head to foot"
As you would be. But she was walking home and she was fine
I called later to check and she was. But one day, she wouldn't be,

And that would mean I would drop whatever I was doing - Young Associates
Country Arts or International Conference - and drive the 130 miles
from Norfolk to Nottinghamshire, where I would see her again

Death.

Cream of Mushroom Soup
was the taste in his mouth
He knows by reason and receipt

When the news came, from an uncle
Directed to the restaurant
By a baby sitter. He'd forgotten fast

But now, the taste is like a fresh memory
Salad veg of the mind
A spring onion, a radish

Too fresh but never to be forgotten
amongst the other complications
of linguini, prawns and  char siu

the memory has not yet begun
as life continues to throw barrages
of taste, pain and paperwork.

Peterborough

well you better get ready now,
you better fix your eyes and cheeks
and set your faces against the rain
and remember Mozambique
coz they can see you, riding in your sun hat
so fine, like a torn down echo or a curtain
or a telephone. let's not get stuck
on what you are like,
just get ready and don't scream.
It's happening tonight, they're in town
All the lions, listen to the lions
All the dancing horses
(bring on the dancing horses)
Send in the clowns. No, don't bother.
They're crap. This is not the land of make believe
This is June in Peterborough.
We've got things to do
and passports to get and
there is not a single public loo
in the whole damned place.

The Great Great Yarmouth Cash Cow (GGYCC)

Rise up! You have hands.
In them lies your own fate.
We can re-build this place.
Together, we can make something,
bigger than ourselves.
Something to preserve your history,
your culture, your art and your invention,
Something that will feed you in fallow times
and quench your thirst. Something that will
draw you together and make you strong.
Something that will be there forever
Something that will bring the wealthy back and
make you Great again: Like a new Herring.
Something for everyone:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give unto you
The Great Great Yarmouth Cash Cow.

Amongst us, it will live - always there
Never resting. It will have no home of its own
but shall belong to all of us.

It will be made on it's very last legs first
and its last legs shall be it's last forever.
It's legs will be preserved. Maybe the salted timbers of the sea
or the beams of some long gone civic hall, or Nelson's
oaky rafters themselves. Whatever they be, the first shall
be the last and never will they be made new.

So rare and precious
will be it's legs, that it shall have only three.
It's limp will be the talk of the town.
People will come from far and wide to see it list
and they will feel Nostalgic.
In their great Nostalgia, shall they feed pennies unto the cow.
For pennies are one thing the cow can eat...

The great cash cow shall bestow gifts upon us all -
so long as it is fed. But pennies shall not be enough
To keep us in our Great Abundance, the Cash Cow shall need more
than just pennies from the hands of a traveller's child.

Unto the Cash Cow, we must also make our sacrifices. So I say unto you this:
It will eat from the sins of our own overproduction.
Upon the very waste of our conveniences shall it dine and unto it, by littering,
shall we fill our streets with food (Not the seafront though)
And Lo! From our own waste shall be born the milk of human kindness
and of this milk shall we drink. So long as we are profligate, shall we have milk.

Yet shall ye worry. Yet shall ye cry: "But from where shall we get the cash to build it?"
Fear Ye not.
This Cash Cow shall be built by the memory of great deeds
This Cash Cow shall be modern in all ways and most of all -
In it's great love of those old times, when Great Labours brought Great Wealth,
It shall be a New Testament to the Old: The Great Great Yarmouth Cash Cow
Shall bring forth and be born upon a miracle and the miracle shall be this:

Thou shalt not work. Put back thy hands into thine own pockets.
Put up your hoods over your heads and be still. Be still and list,
Like the Great Cash Cow upon its three Great legs, limp.
Limp under the weight of the memory of His Greatness.
By the Great Mouth Of Yare shall ye limp and
out of that Mouth shall pour forth gifts and ye shall be happy and content.
So long as ye shall follow Him and limp, shall ye yet be free.

By His Great Providence shall ye be set free and shall ye prosper
So long as ye shall follow him and limp.

For unto thee will also come a great Raft.
Upon this raft shall be Measures and by these Measures
Shall thy freedom also be borne

And ye shall be happy.

Being Cooked For

Living on your own
is paradise until somebody
makes your tea.

Flying redundant Chinese planes is fine
and so are fish and chips: Beer after
the landing is - optional

Are there no rhythms that can
motivate a single reader to care?
and did you even start with

half a thing that mattered?

Some things are ok microwaved
but don't be fooled - even they
are drowning things.

Old Folks Perform

So, we all arrived and were treated to a free drink and invited to pay whatever we wanted.

Then, after some chat and another drink we all sat in the bar where there's a new stage for performers and this woman comes on carrying a box, which when she puts it down, turns out to have a baby in it. She's wearing a sort of Leotard and doesn't look like your average mum - especially when she starts dancing round the stage with this baby under her arm... Then she puts it down and actually, it did hit it's head a little bit and this older guy in the audience looked at me - like I was in charge or something - ? But he looked a bit worried - and so was I to be honest. But the baby was OK, and we all laughed and then the lady did some more dancing, then put the baby in a chair, because no-one wanted to baby - sit and then got a big red wine and some chocolate cake from the bar and said it was 'me time'. We all just watched. Then, she danced a bit more, then she gave the baby away - to it's dad and then she came back, danced some more and then she took her clothes off and ran away. Then came back with the baby - fully dressed and ready to take the applause. It was nice.

Then:

In the big room, there were seats going up on, like, a scaffold thing and a last was sitting down on - well there wasn't a stage - but she seemed like she'd be in charge coz she wasn't in the audience and she had a rose on her shoulder. We sat down nd waited for it to begin, but it didn't. Well, we did notice that there was another audience facing us on a screen and they were quite old and the lady in charge told us it was some people in an old folks home. She said the name of it and then she started to read out something about what the performance might have been like if it had been and then we all passed giant plastic chess sets around and ate popcorn and waved at each other and all the old people looked really happy and that was the end.

The lady asked us all to re-tell the story of what happened so I wrote this.

Rubber Johnnies

They have a special talent

to bring a shiny hue to anything

the dullest ring is made

to seem like new..

it cannot be rubbed off or worn

or criticised. Every mark on every work

is perfect and un-circumcised.

There is no need for cleanliness, or

Maintenance or planning,

There are sometimes ‘Operators’

when perfection requires manning.

But, in it’s essence, they produce

the Goods - the real McCoys

The (insert an object of your chagrin here) will not send men

to jobs best done by boys…

Conflation Is The New

Because you said that, you are not to be anymore.
If you hadn't said that, there might be ways to prove you thought it.

As it is, your utterance is all the evidence we need and you will be expelled
- if not hanged - without prejudice. Let this be a lesson to all.

Those who might be tempted to agree with you - in thought or in deed. You are wrong.
All of you. If there was an 'us' we would be right, but we are above right and wrong.

We decide for you. When you have that responsibility, you will understand.
Until then, you should not speak.

Tits

There are Tits on my nut sack

and the Liquidamber Styraciflua hardwood cutting
is now a tree. Two wood-pigeons live in it year after year...

Can they tell a foreign field from an Ice Cold Beer?

I've been put straight so many times. Conceit is now a plague.
Some other address might work: Natural History, tree-veined gold...

The ability to ignore everything about another - person, argument
feelings, questions and just take a position of pre-eminence?

That wasn't a question - you fool.

Cut from a standard and planted as part of a small corner of social housing,
It has achieved more in it's short life already than it's parents.

That is why I now have Tits. They have been slowly growing for years.
Now they are here, I will teach them to speak.

the social media comments novel?

Ken Livingstone’s Hitler Comments Echo Into the U.S. Presidential Election

FORWARD.COM

Like · Reply · 1 May at 05:18

Liam Murphy Interesting. Transvaal and Orange Free State might, in part, be the comparison the author seeks tho no such hypothetical place can really exist. Sanctions did the trick there. I think the stark elephant in room fact here is that no black race, tribe or nation has ever had a country created for them. They've only had white enclaves of other countries created inside them... Black people (along with most white people) have always existed as 'foreign nationals'.. The Jewish people have not existed as a nation since the 3rd Century until 1948. The logic is flawed in the same way most criticisms of 'anti-semitism' are if they conflate criticisms of a nation state with racial hatred. No comparable 'black' state has ever moved so swiftly and resoundingly from oppressed to oppressor. There just is no comparison - and that's why arguments like this one don't really progress the debate. The 'Neighbourhood Bully' tag is not one Israel can or should duck - and questions about it's right to exist are no different to questions about other county's rights to exist as pointed out by the author... but it's defence against (always 'leftist' criticisms -?) does not lie in accusations of racism but in defence of it's own policies (which are the only things missing from this sudden and widespread explosion of interest).

Liam Murphy ..and the suggestion that 'black people', like Jewish people, have a single racial identity... is that racist or just naive?

Like · Reply · 1 hr · Edited

have a look at Btselem and Breaking the Silence if you want to understand more about being Jewish, Israeli and pro peace. Read the novelist David Grossman. The problem is the occupation. happy to discuss in person but not on FB x

chairs etc.

I don't know what is right
and I can't even think of much
that ought to be in my top priorities
of things to be right about.

Its not un-usual to get angry about things you thought you understood
only to find out you stand in a different corner
and take a view not familiar nor
fitting to your more oft felt emotions

Foreign scenery of familiar facades
and furniture that all looks as banal
as the evil of the bottoms
which, upon it sat.

A Liturgy In (KG) B Minor.

International Secret Intelligence Service
A young policeman and someone not clever
enough.

"Will you shut up"? Russian spies are trying to kill me.
the GayGB and the Crippled hillbilly Spies
Want to watch.

Jesus, Mary and Josef Stalin.

Teargas, Water Cannons, Molotov Cocktails and
Rocks.

Psychogenic Retrograde Amnesia.
There's a thing.

Suzanne takes you down to Lovers Corner
where all the single ladies say:

"Put your hands up".

Advestments

Oh Language Child,
Can't you go for counselling?
Here's your sweety silly dog
You've changed your hair Robert -
It used to be white
Lo Lo Ferari and the bongo bottom crowd..
healthy lottery gets you involved..
there's two hundred and fifty chances a day to win the jackpot
Irish barley. More hops, more taste, more character.

Regenerate the nation.

mayflair jackpot slash 'Vegas'

Quickbooks old motherfucks.

A sea of bluebells

Heroes reborn

The best of BAd TV.
The radical world of the hunter in Northern France must have been bewildered
as the first farmers started appearing on their doorstep. Don't eat me.

Big stones stalking through the smoke and perfume.
Skin so light. Demonstrate strength in faces
of people we dont understand.

Neolithic car tombs and cookery programmes.

i am leaving.

Sink Town Blues

I've got an idea and the will, strong arm and love to burn
repeat
I've been to see the not for profit gods
I can get me some nuthin, every good nothing deserves its turn

I got my constitution written down and my logo's on the way
(repeat)
If I can't do something
I can get paid for bein' that way

Well I got asked to make shoes for the poor by an old man passing by
(repeat)
But he didn't have no constitution, so I just said: "goodbye"

Bull works, Bulwarks and Bolognaise

Everyman stepping on their toes, name on spine;
A Bullwark episode from number 58. "We want to be aware"

"What's stopping us?" "We know what we've got to offer" and
People are exhausted; "I think the way the Pope does"

"It's to see what they actually do - get in first, it's business!"

"I hate the Italians because they betrayed their own leaders"
We didn't agree on everything even before I knew what I thought

Stripped of a voice, cut down to nawt, bellowing forgotten words
as noises; you just take it all and lie down to wait for nothing

Scouting was a diversion. Athletics distracted. Exercise in general;
The soft red oozing of a sliced open hand on fireworks night

A token of the contempt and disdain your mother would always show to
beer bottles and drinkers, people under 'the influence' and having fun

"Don't do that. We are going to have to apply for funds. Not council funds though.
They're all gone". I remember collecting wood lice from the rockery

Kept em all in a big jar with lettuce and air holes. Lice Olympics.
1973. Where did all the gravy go? What happened to tartan patched jeans?

Food has moved in 30 years and so has the state of the nation;
a mis-spelled search takes me inside the workings of a rodeo bull:

License Unknown but 'Shareable'! Acknowledgements©

The Happy Days Of Paranoia and Good Old Self Loathing (or 'Puff Gone')

It doesn't paint a picture of the place or evoke anything of the feeling
but I have a list of the things that were there when it all became clear.

Not clear in a shorthand, obvious, easy to explain kind of way,
but clear in a deeper, more definite, authentic, feeling kind of a way.

It was just a street, well, an entrance to a street, that comes off a park
A sort of exit-come-segway from a 'green space' to a pedestrian crossing

ring road place to some inner city flats and houses... It was a memory really.
A particular memory of how, neatly folded in to this beautiful, green, connected

cultured, slightly self obsessed place, there is an iron curtain of closed shop
self indulgent 'we'll actually never meet the not of our like ever if we can avoid it'

crowd.

But you'd never know it. And though that sounds like a blessing at first, in fact, your
ignorance will add to the sensations of exclusion, smallness, irrelevance, cluelessness

and ultimately poverty and death, which you will suffer alone, knowing, finally
that you were not one of them and that there was no-one else but them, in fact, ever.

This will be your only blessing and it would be worth remembering how you'd been there before
and how the belief that you'd ever left was ultimately erroneous, as confirmed now by your final breath.

Inclusivity, Inclusion, Inclusiveness, Diversity and Equality

Women - this is for you.

Us, this is for us. We are everyone.

All of us are everyone. Not some of us.

We are all, equally, together and collectively, one

and many. We are us, you, them and they. But not

'Those'. We will not be 'Those' ever again.

That's not for us, you, them or we or anyone.

Those are not us. Those were us, or so they thought

But they are not us anymore and never will be again.

we are what they thought 'Those' might have been or even were

but not now, because we have changed all of that.


Now: Men...

We will not forget men - men are important too.

She's OK

Ghost of this street

Walking, Windows,

Places meet the walker

Frame it and proceed

In time to be memoried

Again. In time Again

Your light touch self nudges on,

Unabashed, but wearied and more

Waiting than last time or place

Of coincidence.

Can I have my smorgasbord back?

Dogwood and Fairy Lights
Crystals mist inside daylight
on panes of death and bone conduction:
Ice melts a Lemon Torte by time's hand.

And, it's beat three miss one and repeat
Trust the bones if not the meat
We will never this way pass til
beasts inspect, heads down low,

This instance: Fallen Mistletoe...

The festivity's severity, by me myself and mystery
has revealed just what it means to me:

Bleeding Christmas. Dripping, sodding, farting and scrap-booking

Mince Pie heaven with cheeses. Selections of Cheeses.

CHEESUS!

Poetry For The New Age

See 'Nouns, Prepositions and Descriptors'

Blood Grass From Above Lends Hand

No stimulus to cause afray dry this flat dont iron
Argue the hill. Cast bridges, sea going, errata ip
iscus ip idiom imperata cilindrica 'rubra' - or -
japanese Cylindrical Bloodgrass. it's the bloodgrass we love.

Blood ties knot a read in a flute is thin gruel for school leavers
what are you talking about? who are 'Prospects'? grantsized
accommodations for teenagers and pocket liners one man bands
nobody knows or unsderstands. is there anybody out there?

Hello....?

Digital Futures (or why I don't like Mondays)

Frigid? Suit you sirs..
Bridget'll choose us
Rigid Al's sutures
Midget Abusers...

All them nasty, cold, hard, un-politically correct men and women who do bad stuff to small people...

Damn them all to Hell
(and clap them back)

A. Diddyman's Dreamsong number One.

shlush.

Noun, Preposition and Descriptor (NPD)

Like a snowflake in a potty
or some onions on a fire escape
or a whole life forgotten
or a really bad argument at a ferry terminal
or a city with no public toilets
or a little Skimmia bush that never grows
or a Chinese take away with smelly pork
or three pipes in a darkroom
or an in joke that died with your best mate
or piled up rubbish outside a Georgian basement flat
or Leicester City losing at home to Aston Villa
or a very old negative you remember the photograph of after you find it in your mother's garage on a cold Monday morning
or the disappointment of desertion or disinterest
or the banality of evil's face
or the familiar feeling of being right - but penniless
or seeing your children suffer because of the ghosts you never slayed
or a yellow bowl that looks like one you remember as a child
or a house you once lived in - unrecognisable
or the sound of white poplar leaves in the wind
or a dead frog in a plastic compartment box
or the next olympics
or something your grandma used to say
or shining like shit at Shelford
or ambition
or ambition's death knell
or a national insurance number card in a shoe box
or an unfired vase from Portugal:

something, somewhere, somehow...

Dining Club

Old Flat Top
Him.
A funerary procession zips by
Speeding before the corpse is loaded
with an imaginary siren screaming:
"LIVE' ("you fucking ants") LIVE..

"Anyone who has never read a poem doesn't really know what poetry is"
spake the old man before his quad bypass (successful)

Comings together have happened in many ways:
Before we invented time, it's possible to imagine
some light may have been seen over newly killed meat

Maybe less has changed than we are given to believing
or maybe much has altered and some chaps who didn't go to war
will, one day, get their invitation to the mum's formal

Vixen's dining association at Fitzwilliam?

Poultry on the menu.

Bring photos and stories to share ladies...
Muffins for the workers, maybe a chocolate brownie too.
Sarcasm, verse, the art of never reading a poem
are all qualities to be cherished at the Vixen's Dining Club

Chew, chew eyeballs, holy rollers...

A leg and a bum and a wing

I remember some of it but the best bits are all the rubbish we make up!

Inchoate

Near the people's palace the black n white barber remembered me
6 years on. Egyptian memory is well and girl trouble everywhere.
I got a comb-over.

Laughing period vampires of Equity eat at the Leon trailer food bar.
Chocolate striped sesame seed bars come cheap for appeasers as I
do the pots again.

I am alive and I have words and things and deeds and they are sensible
and immersive and profoundly engineered, planned, scheduled, worthless.
and expensively crafted.

fill in the numbers de valera

if enough of the people of Eire moved to the north to exercise their views - any future UK govt will be bound under the Good Friday Agreement to return the north to the 'south'...

WORD GAINS

shadow+ken = 'SHAKEDOWN'

This and That (advice to a young journalist)

Be quicker
have ideas
know things
like posh common
stuff
or like porn rich porn poor stuff
or like initials, like
BME - and stuff
say cool things
be smart
like a reporter.

have a blog, an RSS feed
and a username
many many usernames
and passwords

don't search your soul
for the reason you are
conscious as a human

or travel thousands of miles
to fulfil your beliefs
in blood or some other bodily manifestation
of conviction.

and try not to worry
or be cowed
by the mysteries and small pains
of your upbringing's deficiency

It will not hurt to show your fear
in deference to great folk
they will like it and talk expansively
you may laugh at them, later.

and you may be laughed at
when you make your reports.
keep in mind the Lothario
and the floozy.. they are you

and they are me.
They file reports which get seen
and heard as well and
we all do well to remember

this and that.

Bowie With All

The Day Bowie Died

It’s a learning thing - how to mourn.

when a public figure dies, we don’t usually take it to heart.

But when a pop-star (for he was) dies, sometimes a cultural icon dies with him.

This is one of those deaths and millions of words next to these are being penned. But something about the clarity and the extreme singular, cohesive sight in Bowie’s work did bring a tear to my eye. Here’s a man who sat in my record collection for 35 years. I don’t need to go to You Tube. i am on a bus with no Wi Fi or I would, but instead, i start humming the much-sampled-Morse-bleep of ‘Starman’ - and I know it. It’s stayed there all these years - every word, the whole arrangement is in my head. He wrote songs I have loved and he did it for millions. So one of our true ‘Heroes’ is dead.

The tear is real. He has touched something in many of us. He set himself up as a Demi-God - and got away with it.

Now, my thoughts turn to the financial value of Bowie’s death. The train I am on is taking me to Cambridge University. To the Judge Business School and, specifically, it’s opening 3 days of ‘drilling down’ candidates business ideas to their core. These are social businesses. The course I am seeking access to is  called ‘Social Incubator East’. it’s ground-breaking. I am enthusiastic - with hard seams of cynicism to temper my blue sky thoughts.

Bowie’s death (and it’s undoubted resultant spike in sales and revenue for an host of unknown licensors, media agents and producers, CMO’s - who knows? - etc… ) is relevant in more ways than one and I turn to wondering about how a fellow like him in his dotage, with such an idil-syncratic portfolio and estate of great work and cultural value has chosen to organise his finances.

I replied to a friends Facebook post (so many to come) that I had just heard and know that, like only John Peel and John Lennon, I will remember exactly when and where I heard the news. David Bowie mattered to me - even more than some of my real friends and acquaintances who have died - if Im honest.

So, with this in mind, i turn to the purpose of my trip and as I said to my Facebook friend: I intend to dedicate the last few years of my life to ensuring that some of the proceeds of the vast sums of money that these iconic songs and their like ( I could only think of Ray Davies as a UK ‘act’ of comparison) go back into what I called ‘work of merit’…

Which brings us away from a eulogy and into the swirly waters of the old high art/low art debates, objective and subjective notions of cultural worth and all the years and tonnes of wordage that still goes in to - dare I say it - public funding for the arts.

Still, the public funded Bowie because they loved him and his music. Now to find out where the money goes and to wonder how many of Simon Cowell’s ‘productions’ will provide us with a death in years to come which cause so many of us to simply know where we were when we heard, to shed a wee tear and to never forget…?

Work to do. Cambridge here i come - and I mean business - we can be heroes at least for one day!