Poetry

Tuesday, 12 July 2022

When the chips are down

 Will you still love me

When the chips are down

Oh the trees are now green,

But as I have seen, soon they will turn brown

So what I want to know is,

will you still love me

When the chips are down


I heard from the owl that it is night right now

And the sun it has gone down

Well more than that prayer or feather of your care

Will you still love me 

When the chips are down?


When the chips fall down boys

When the chips fall down

I'll pick you up

And set your crown

When the chips fall down


And out beyond the steaming morning

And the Church bell's chime

The storm that brews, it calls a warning

Of a hard and trying time

Will you come to me in my hour of darkness

Will you come to me and say

All the things good and bad in bargaining

When the chips are down?

Prime numbers

 Now, I'm not saying it is special

And I'm not saying it is fair

But just bear with me like heavy metal

When I say that you should care

I can walk, thank the Lord Jesus

I can walk at last

It has been a slow train coming,

And I didn't think it would pass

But with your blessing I can feel it like a weight lifted from my spine

I can walk without my spiders

I can walk my own true line


There were many who were my detractors

Some bad and also some kind

But they all served to me as reminders  of

What might happen if I didn't shine

So take back your protractors and calculators

Leave me the numbers of prime

I will divide each by themselves and then leave them

One at a bloody time


Prime numbers are much like my lovers

They cannot be counted nor divided

Except by themselves

And even the elves knew they 

Were having a good time

Night owl

 Night owl hooting in the eves

Stomp, stomp, stomp of the night creature 

whoever he is at this time of night

traipsing along the pavement alone

Looking for what?

Or what's looking for him?

Up and down the streets of gin

Clear night calling, refreshing in its quietude

It's a night owl avenue 


Hear them calling

what do they want?

Wise creatures asleep during the heat of the day

Away from crazy man and madness

All the sadness gone away

Some other night owl

They will find us

Surely walking keeps at bay

This feeling of ever saddening

Hunger for love or cheer or pay


Night walker, stalker, dark talker pray

What have you come to say?

Monday, 11 July 2022

Do the skeleton walk

 I do the skeleton walk

All bones and elbows

Like Jesus on my cross of crutches

All trussed up, a walking puppet

Stilts of Dali's elephants in deserts

Top heavy

But now loose hung together by sinews

just what is needed for my frame

"Hang loose"

The Romans said to Jesus

When they saw him pinned up there


We make a crucifix of suffixes and prefixes

We make a bonfire of our vanities

And shatter the mirrors of man in God's images

Ever receding an infinity of apes

Ever diminishing the square root of our madness

Human ideas are bound by shapes

None can get beyond their own boundaries

All must, like Lucrece, give way to our rape

and hold in the eyes the pennies of badness

And let fly the scarves that would hang our own nape

Saturday, 9 July 2022

The green, green grocer

It was late in the afternoon, as I was closing

When a shopper came in with forlorn look of wanton care

 He was begging for it oo he wanted it yeah

 He was begging for it oo he wanted it yeah

He said I want it quick, give me just one of your pears

Give it me behind the counter

Give it to me in the shop front

It can be our brief encounter

Just don't stop me getting what I want

 He was begging for it, oo he wanted it yeah

 He was begging for it, oo he wanted it yeah

So I gave to him his bag of salad

And I gave it to him, I gave him a conference pear

I said take them all, why not buy a bunch of flowers

I said to him why not buy another pear?

He said I want it quick give me a ripe banana, oo yeah

He said I want it quick give me just another one of your pears

So I gave him it, I thrust it into his brown paper bag

I gave it to him saying we're out of passion fruit but don't despair 

He couldn't stand it, it drove him wild, he was pulling at his hair

He couldn't pay for it, I asked him if he had a banana down his trousers

He whipped out a gun crying give me my groceries man, I don't care

I said he could take them as he found them for what's an apple missing here or there

Out the door I saw him scarper, then I thought down the street I'll hear him harper

Cos that brown paper bag I gave him needed some repair

Sure enough the bag broke and the joke was on him

The thief who stole my conference pears


Of square pegs and round holes

 Free me from the triangles of love

Free me from the circles of lust

From me from the squares of mistrust

And all the shapes of a heart's bust


Free me from the prism of lies

Free me from the vortices of eyes

I am free from the corners where you have blocked me

Am climbing free over the walls of pride


I am getting over the rhombus of your eccentricities

And the pyramids of co-dependencies

Without the circumference of your expectations of me

I am beyond the boarders of a new world paradigmatically

Into the dimensions of a new universality

And a real world I have cut for me

From the flat plane of existential misery

To a new realm of exciting possibility

So don't fence me in, please



Poem for A

 Oh you fat slob

With your sallow mallow, mealy mouth

Pale as a Nursing shark swimming about

In your pool of women you hide in

You pale-faced poser, you cowardly yellow belly

Roll over you hog in the dirty mud of a littered mind

In the crossed wires of our communication

And why not try hanging yourself on one of them

And I shall nod to you and acknowledge your bloated rotting

Corpse that will be feed for crows

Just as they pluck from your skull

The black beady eyes that gave me a look once 

of one who thinks he knows me

And can tell or understand from a single line

The meaning or spirit of another


Well with all your insight I hope you know

This poem is about you, you fat motherfucker