Poetry

Sunday 10 November 2019

Pret a manger

Black coffee
 Black coffee
 Are you waiting are you?
Please take all this from me
Are you waiting? Are you waiting are you?
I give you bags for free

Somewhere way out in the solar system
A father is skype calling his son
And he's pretending to shoot a gun
Bang! Bang!
And then amid the mist
He asks if she is ok

And England is surrounded
In this quiet pale blue sky
That imbues everything
With a sense of calm at least

Bang! Bang! He says

Beyond the Pale

Isn't it all a bit beyond the pale?
The way he sits up there
With the wind in his sail
And preaches to us about
Rights and wrongs
Just as if he would write a song

Its all just a little bit beyond the pale

The way he talks like Jesus from his mouth
The way they hang on his words down in the south
The way he loves to tweet but like the ugliest bird
You find what he says is so absurd

Its all just a little bit beyond
The pale

What he says are un truths and lies
The false proclaimations written on blue skies
When on the horizon there are storm clouds gathering
Yet his lips keep moving in a kind of blathering

Its all just a little beyond
The pale

They have their influencers in the courts
Their traps are laid their victims caught
And as we malaise on complacent beds
He's off with his designs for more warheads

Its all just a little beyond
The pale

What can we do but swallow our pride
Stick our heads in the ground or turn aside?
If this is what our fathers did then war would abide
But instead they fought for liberty and in freedom's name died

So is this all just a little beyond
The pale?

Transubstantiation Road

The lay-bys are filled with ladyboys
And the car parks are filled with Carmens
Next to it is Elektra
Who is fixing the electricity substations

In Transubstantiation road
Jesus is running the pig market
And we are all on his rig
Every hook he hangs up in his stall
Has another carcass on it

The meaning in the tides is seen
By a fairy queen who grows
Cannabis and runner beans
On Transsubstantiation road

But each of us is merciful
Show me the pardoned man
He comes to us with his hands clean
And leaves in a caravan

In the wheel barrow he brings
Norse Gods filled with snow
And books on many catastrophies
That he says we ought to know

I leave them in my pockets
Until the bedbugs begin to bite
Then I fill my socks with all the words
That I want to write

The hotel is on the corner
Older than a cigarette
And its been burning the midnight oil
Since Romeo snubbed Juliette

The fastness of the street cars
Is a problem for the pets
Who howl both day and day
about the landless suffragettes

A snooker queue for the toilets
Is lined up black and white
And then the Pink knocked in the hole
The red and yellow over night

You wouldn't think it mattered but
There must be order to the game
And if there's not then Transubstantiation road
Should be given another name

I asked again for clarity from the Judge who
Heard my case
He said nails are sold in charity
By the Angels who run the race

And then he raised his gavel
And let the hammer fall
I was pinned like poster criminal
Against the courthouse wall

Let me out this prison cell
I need some worldy rest
Take me back to Arizona
Let me see and feel the Mid-West

I've been inking up my promises
In a garden of good intent
But all my stepping stones lead back
To the room I decide to rent

And it wouldn't be quite so bad
If the rain was heaven sent
But the King has built his castle here
And he's awaiting the day of judgement

I see him in the garden too
Sweeping up the leaves
He used to be a famous stuntman
On the film sets for the crew

But since then they've moved the scenery
And cast another scene
And he is left acting out the action sequence
of a plot that's a has-been

I know it's not a life for me
But still I wrestle with her ghost
You see she comes to me
In the hours when I need her most

And this road is full of souls
Who used to live in fame
Its just now when they lay down their flowers
Nobody remembers their name

And beautiful young maidens dance
In silence through the fields
And the cameramen roll on for hours
Because of the aesthetic appeal

But some little old lady
Stares over her crooked nose
And shouts about love and despair
And the Emperors new clothes

Because change is like a stranger
Who everybody sees but nobody knows
As he's walking handing out his flowers
Down Transubstantiation road




Monday 4 November 2019

Wit and wendy
Galey, Whaley Wh Smiths
Oxfam in the rain

Missing Australia
Missing what you don't have
Missing what you do

Staying home feeling sick
Staying sick feeling home
Feeling homesick

Smoking from the roof tops like a chimmney
Climbing to the rooftops like a monkey
Sitting on the bus stops like a lackey

Merry- go-bus

Round and round in circles
Like a merry go round
The bus is turning corners
Lights churning up with sound
Street names flash on the window
Fountains statues surround
Empty pavements
Others crusty with the crackling of busy bodies bustling
The loquacious lucky locket wearing window shoppers staring
The tourniquet led tourists twirling their turn styles dropping coins into slots
Or clocking off tickets like mechanical stocks
The stocking wearing spinsters who howl back at their dogs
And the merry go round bus turns around their world
Picking up penny pocket poor to the ribald rugged rich man's servant
The pale pored pasty pastiche of it technology tutorage
The tacky techno teens who train their caps to sit on backwards upon their tussled tops
Like some form of sea life existing in rock pools
Then heavy set hulks who heave their bulk
Towards the bulwarks of their barn door homes
To bed down with the oxen they weight lift in their sleep
And the pony tailed phony fellows whose pelt is hung across their shoulders
Like the Pawnee people
And rosy cheeked cherubim whom their mothers cherish in arms

Send me flowers

Send me flowers from her grave
You know I'm tired of being brave
I can hold no candles to a wave
Send me flowers from her grave

She has died but I can save
A piece alive I never gave
I'll tell you one thing I won't waive
Send me flowers from her grave

The world is lit in a special light
It comes where I sit these words to write
I could've hit I could have fight
But I keep it hid in myself tonight

The autumn rounds like a cannon ball
What goes up soon down must fall
And in its arc it forgets to call
The shallow shark of the swimming pool

So send me flowers from her grave
Promise me primrose salvage me sage
Pick me a bouquet of rosemary and thyme
And let me smell their scent divine

Tell me the names of love

What do you call it
Oh thingy you know
The the one with the black and yellow ribbon
Its driven in gold
Its a golden calf or Trojan horse
Or a microlite, a virus
Or is it a magical force

Its that thing on the tip of your tongue
The blood that drips from your ceiling when you are on your own
Reminding you of the skeleton you
Left buried in your closet
Or the corpse that keeps on giving everyone
Its own embodiment

Its that case of champagne you import
Thats cost you more in duty 
Than the Queen's winning horse
That she bet on Mr Nobody
On love's end
On Jezebel
On shower at the exit
Don't forget to Ring the bell
Its that word you must recall
I cannot say resell
Of course its a puffball
Like at level of a cell
I mean every body is at it
They're shouting down the street

Come on just stand up pout abit
The cockrel crows
And we all must meet
Some of them are cowards
And walk towards the heat
But then they run away again
When they smell the burning of their meat
They say is it hot in hear or is it hell?
Is it Her I'm inching beneath
In my slithering swell?
Is it Her or She whose heel is on my back
Is it she who rocked my cradle
And then put me on this wrack?

Is it four feet under
Or eleven fathoms deep
And can you still see Eden
Through a hole in your seat?

What of all these names for something none of us need
Or bleed
Yet if like some puritanical preacher
I suppose I am your teacher
And tell you it does not exist
Only flavours of a drifting sky only
THe dye cast in the eye
That makes them swell and run
I should say they know 
No better that blind spots on the sun

What when the light is behind me
My shadow's cast is long
Then all who care to mind me
Wile be treading upon someone
I am my shadow
He is me
And all these naughts and crosses
Merely games by which he sees
The one
As perchance the inventor is playing
Some games
With all of these
Names 
of love in a song
Songs of endearment, sweet heart

The whole world is fighting
Fighting fighting
The whole world fights

Give me all this love
The right the wrong
All the above
Fill not my world with hate
The world screws down on me
I leave through a side gate
I know I'm no Charles atlas
And John the Baptist 
Can carry my weight
They want my head on a silver platter
What's the matter with this world?
It got sold they say
But not everything that glitters is gold
Today like tomorrow 
Will be the same old sorrow
But I need the strength to swallow
And keep moving on