Mrs P.

Now even
the most mundane
of tasks
are a muddle for her:

she chews her oral pills,
she's incapable
of using the kettle,
and now the commode
is seeing use.

Soon, she will be
unable to live on her own.
A life will come to an end,
a new existence shall start
as her daughters

put her in a home.
They will shed a tear
and remember their mother
as she 'used' to be -
as she will never be again.

And Mrs P, she
will maybe cry,
and maybe throw some
mean words, keen punches;
or she will try.

But soon it will be better,
as she looks out
on a perfect morning,
a birdsong afternoon,
the visage something entirely

alien to her, as she
lives her past in the present,
projects the present
into the future,
and her days all haze 

into one.

Goldfish

Some people
are like goldfish:

they only swim
in one direction,

their brains mute
to possibility.

At the end,
maybe they realise.

But by then
it's too late

and then they die.

Paper Heart (Poem for My Future Wife)

It's only been
eight months,
and already
I know we will spend
the longest time together:

maybe not forever -
and I mean eternity -
but maybe long enough
to keep liking one another,
and raise a family.

Only eight months,
and already
count the times
your paper heart
has crisped with my touch -

gone 'crispy', you say,
in your foreign way.
And see how
our bed is now
a bed of cinders,

and not a love nest.
The girls before,
I would have written
sonnets for them,
waxed lyrical how I adored

them, my adoration
reaching out to them
like the two arms
of the shore.
But now I have more,

much more - and
it's real. So soon,
we will be married,
and not so soon.
And every thing will

be carried, every coin
tallied, between the
two of us. And
we will move through time
like smooth stones

through water, and
maybe one day
we'll become the stream.
But until then, my darling,
rest - dream.

Luminosity

Every moment
is an epiphany.

The pen can be a razor
or a torch:

you could be #Collins
or #Bukowski -

every moment
scored.

The Art of Capture

First, you most be open
and alert as 
a fox,

recognising the right moment 
when you come upon it.

You must act quickly.

Next, you draw your camera,
aim it lightly as
a paw placed upon the ground.

And in a sudden spasm of
awe and terror, you must
force the shutter:

click! click! click!

You have captured the moment
like the jaws of a fox
around a chicken's neck:

no need to shake it,
no need
to break it.

The tender press
of a hunter, the gentle
surrender of prey.

Never has murder
been so perfect.

But move on, go!

You must act quickly.

Some Home Truths

If you think
the universe was
made for you, then
let me offer you
some home truths:

the carrying capacity
of this planet
is 1.5 billion -
the only reason
we are here
is because of oil.

So the next time
you invoke God,
and remark how he toiled,
for seven days,
count the million ways
you are lucky even to breathe.

We've overcome disease,
we've overcome the soil,
the only thing we haven't overcome
is ourselves, our stupidity
a massive black balloon,
so beautiful in the sky
until it climbs too high.

You could say, O! if it were white!
Yeah, guy: like some Romantic fable
will put us at the table,
instead of staring at the grave.

Poetry cannot save the world,
but it can save you from yourself.
And maybe you'll save something much 

dearer, once you realise

you never held the dies.

Because Earth is not a gambling table,
nor is it even a cradle:

no metaphors can out-metaphor
the stupid luck of your even being.
So when you're ready to start seeing,
stop burning the oil: burn down the doors.

Ablur

It's amazing how two things can blur:

you take a brain and a drink

and everything slurs.

You take a century and a century,

and they just glide into each other,

future to past, past to future,

edgelessly, and seamlessly.

You see a plane in the sky

and close one eye, close both,

hold it, then open them: see anew 

how a baby would see

at four months,

or the the brightness

of a balloon

when you were two.

You take a body and a body

or two hearts, and soon

it's impossible to see

where one ends,

another starts.

You take two hands, pressing

but they stay firm:

they don't melt into each other

like chocolate, or

dissolve like dirt.

But in spirit,

they press through

each other,

like water, like air,

and yet they grip firmly,
always holding
each other there.

Starlings

The sky

is a white noise of birds,

bubbling over with starlings

their wings flitting with

the tiniest change in

a single bird's position.

They pop in and out

like particles in the void,

they murmurate in a murmuration

speaking the voice of the wind

as it mutters gently

and unintelligibly

in the fraught

cold winter sky.

The Ending (the Never Returning)

The vultures are wheeling in the sky,

carrion before they carnivore
the carrion they adore.

And the tree branches are curling
in and around fingers, long before the

grasping, long before.

And the sky is unrolling

like a sheet of lead, and everything's

grey, everyone's dead.

And the land is hollow, pock-holed,

the wind howls, and has forgone its hallow,

the holy now only

in remembrance's marrow. But no one

remembers the Sparrow, jocular,
and the Robin's wing sunk

in that last, final spring.

Interstellar (White People in Space)

There's a place called Earth
93 million miles from the Sun
and it's full up with humans,
O boy they're having fun!

And on this planet
known as Earth
that bears this human race,
we launched white people
into space....

And now there are white people in space,
white people in space.
Get aboard this ship
and put a smile on your face.
We got white people in space!

A man called Democritus,
in Ancient Greece, said
'Earth is not the centre of the universe -
it's the Sun around which we sweep.

And thousands of years later
a man called Kepler said, 'Hey yo!
The Earth goes round the Sun!
Did you catch that, Galileo?'

And then hundreds of years later,
in 1969, Kennedy said,
'Let's go to the Moon -
then everything will be fine!'

Aldren and Armstrong
(not forgetting Michael Collins)
went up and said 'Wowza!' -
but after Gregarin.

But humans are like milk cartons -
they leak all over the place.
And now we got
white people in space!

Yeah, white people in space.
White people in space.
Climb aboard if you're white -
even black people have a place!
Yeah, white people in space!

And now the Chinese and the Indians
are at it. Landing on the Moon
and sending probes to Mars.

But we all know the stars ain't yellow -
they're white! And space ain't brown -
it's black! Mr Patel, it's such a shame
to have to cut you down!

Space is ours, and space is white!
Come with us, my little darlings,
and you'll all be all right. Come with us,
or we'll leave you sleeping in the night!

We've buggered up the climate,
we've buggered up the seas.
We bugger up everything -
we're a bloody disease!

Our societies are run by crooks,
our economies favour the rich.
And none of us reads any books 
unless those words are beamed as pics.

And we think we're all separate;
I tell ya, we're a waste!
But sod it, hop on board -
we're heading into space!

Because we're white people in space.
White people in space.
Come aboard, little darlings,
and let us save the human race.

'Cause we're
GOING
INTO
SPPPAAAAAAAACCCCEEEEEEEE!

A Few Lines for Dickhead (Fertiliser)

He always used to say,
Life's a piece of shit - and then you die.

I guess he was just an irksome fly
lingering around the scent
of putrescence.

Drawn to the darkly side of reality,
lingering there in some diseased banality.

I always used to say,
'Life's like a pair of tits:
when faced with the squeeze
you can eat it up or split.'

But, in reality, life is what you make it.
I'll only be in flight if I put my wings on right;

you can call experience fertiliser,
or you can call it shite.

A Verse for Jeffers

When man is ruling
with an iron fist,
it's time to become a little
anti-humanist.

A (Not So) Simple Truth

Either everything's Holy
or nothing is Holy.
And if the only thing Holy
is your Holy Book,
then you, my friend,
are wholly
a holy crook.

People are Stupid

People are stupid,
people are stupid.
I'm here to tell you that
people are stupid.

People are reckless -
people are pointless.
I'm here to tell you how
most people are feckless.

One minute we have it,
the next one we lose it.
People are crazy
and we all abuse it.

We walk to the car,
drive to the mountains
only to go cycling
and then go pint-ing or stout-ing.

We drive to the market
buy food then cook it,
when we could go out
and get others to do it.

We shout at each other,
sisters and brothers.
Say one thing then
turn and do another.

We decry cruelty -
say that it's faulty,
but then overfish oceans,
eat steak every Tuesday.

Because people are stupid.
People are stupid.
We are a pestilence
and we are ruthless.

People are stupid,
people are vapid.
And if the world wants to get on
it better squash us while we're napping!

The Country in the City

I grew up in the country.
There, you grow up easily
as an ear of corn:
you are as tall as the sky,
and time is only measured
by the engorging of berries,
in the birds' chirps and cries.

When I was in my twenties,
I moved to the city: prosperity
waited there for me. Frequently,
I'd look up at the buildings,
which seemed to gaze down on me,
steely as a mountain crag
looms above a valley.

But one day, I saw a weed, freed
from between two slabs of pavement,
grabbing at the sky in its up! up! up!
of never giving in. I too looked up.
It was then I started to notice the man
picking the scattered cans, like fruit,
the old woman watering her small patch of garden.

I looked up at the elevated roofs.
One caught my eye in particular:
a pebble-dashed rough-shod flat.
I climbed the stair case to the top,
walked to the edge and surveyed, and at that
I saw, on every building, others staring out,
their arms flung wide open, their faces facing the sound

of the Sun up above, pouring down.
I too opened my arms; I opened my mind,
and the rays struck like a bolt the rod of my spine,
and my heart became light; my mind became sight.
I went down to the street, bought a pitchfork and some soil,
planted trees and shrubs and herbs on roofs:
the city's skin now a spurt of leaf, its blood a glug of oil.

Peace Comes

I am sitting in the garden,
listening to 'Recurring',
the atmosphere relaxing,
the Sun - Earth now October-tilting -
gently shining,

when all of a sudden
my attention is snatched
by the snuffling of a bee
in the lavender bush.

I realise there are things
whose beauty
will always be beyond me,
like the rose
was beyond Bukowski.

I let the feeling
pass through me:
it goes.

Peace comes.

Channels

The human experience
is not matter-of-fact,
but hazy stabs;
dribs and drabs at truth.

From the murk
a glimmer of lightness.
It tightens, releases,
then soothes.

The Feminine Masculine

I was a rampant angle,
an acute stab
in her tenderest parts.

But acute is only cute
for so long - becomes obtuse,
and obtuseness
becomes baseless:

an open wedge, flung 
ever wider, flipping 
to horizontal, then inverted,

before my arrow
became her bow, 
my shield
became her sword.

And now, she hunts me
in the night: her moon
a watchtower, her stars spears
penetrating

the darkest spaces 
of my heart
with light.

And I take it like a wolf
lulled by a soft dream 
of saffron and silk,
yet still ravenous for meat;

licking his wounds,
licking his lips,
whimpering for milk.

And, O, I have known pain....

And, O, I have known pain:
I have cut into hardwood's grain, and seen,
in those rings, stories of woe, and rain.

I have heard tales of waiting for season again:
for the soft touch of spring's refrain;
the return of summer's sensuous blaze.

And, O, I have heard women complain
that womanhood's joy is but a bane -
that every tear of joy is slain,

cut down by some tyrant's blade,
whose ego made him weak and grey -
they have nursed my ears with soft tales of pain.

And the sun that sets alone in orange flame,
and the widowed moon in her frozen frame,
waxing, as the stars onwards train, into absence, without a soul who came.

And me? Well, I have known pain.
Yes - these wings were once bound in chains;
now heavy feathers, like stone engrained.
But one day they shall flutter - and I shall fly away.

A Short Aside

In this cold universe,
try to give a little warmth;
try to sing into verse
the very colours that haunt
your most beautiful dreams.

And remember:
we are here to fight entropy.
And nothing
is as it seems.

The Best Things About You

Your laugh
is the upper and lower mandibulars
cracking back and forth,
like the tail of a whip.

Your handshake
is a clinking trove
of small bones.

Your smile
is a defecation
in the mouths of children.

Your heart
is a plant pot
full of earthworms.

Your joy
is a murder of crows.

Your lungs
are slabs of filmy sac
grabbing for air.

Your brain
is a bath of acid
dissolving dead animals.

Your words
are rusted 19th century shells,
removed from the dead bodies
of brave soldiers.

Your liver
is a leaking car battery.

Your tongue is a severed tentacle
feeling its way about for sense.

Your teeth are flecks of snow
struck white, and fossilised,
in fear.

And your thoughts are the
impatient crunch of gears
on a sweet dispensing machine

as you turn and turn,
and feast on a small prize.

The Love Song of the Dolphin

At first I was protean:
no more than
a gelatinous blob
in love's hands.

As I grew,
inflated by sensation,
like a gallbladder,

love seemed something
serene and blue; tingles
twinged down my notocord.
I felt a feeling beyond words.

But soon, I felt a feeling
like drowning: my lungs
filled with water, my little blue heart
a dwindling pearl,

love merely a playful mate,
a joking game: a heartbreak.

But then I clicked onto her;
more like a flash on a radar,
my echolocation failed to reveal
her elusive nature;

and, eluded, my desires only grew,
until the ocean was but a pond:
my heart like the blue-lit shore-arms
of some azure spiralling galaxy.

The stars fell down from the sky;
the algal blooms cyan-awakened,
the eddies of my heart
a swirling eruption of glittering light.

Balanced on her Aquarian scales,
like a dry measure of powder,
I felt more like a feather.

And then I breathed:
two lungs filled my chest.
A love-lung too squeezed.
It filled up my breast.

Let It Be

One day,

he might be driving you

down some country road,

the kids in the back

joking and screaming,

and you

sitting silently

by his side.

But what if you looked

in the overhead mirror

at their two faces

and saw my eyes

in their skulls,

my hair on their heads,

my smile on their lips?

What if

you were living an illusion,

quite happy in it,

forcibly restrained in

some false self-belief

in an entirely negative

situation?

And what if I

were long gone,

with only the memory

of a slip of a girl,

such spritely wit,

writ with such self-defeat;

such a turn of phrase,

such a jagged grace?

I would not put you in a paddock

or bind you in the dock:

I’d only remember the girl

with the flame in her heart,

the fierce flame of life –

not just the fierce flame of art.

If you were to turn to me

and smile, put your hand in mine,

the breeze would guide us,

the sun would shine a path;

our hearts would be the rhythm

to which our lives played out.

So let me festoon you

with the merits you deserve;

let me be the man

moulded by the woman,

at your side; let me be

the one to let the horses out,

free, never to corral them again,

but see them dance at sundown

atop a meadowed hill,

as the sun carves their silhouettes

in the dust-excited air,

knowing they’ll find their way back home;
knowing they never had a choice.

Fast Food Poetry

To you,

poetry is nothing 

but fast food.

First of all, you have the sesame bun:

a soft cushioning for a way in

to something of little consequence:

something not to shake the shabbily glued

illusion of that brittle world of yours.

Next, the salad:

the crunch of fresh, moist lettuce;

a burst of tomato juice,

the crisp tartness of a pickle

as your teeth turn the bun

into sogent carbohydrate gum.

Most importantly, here comes

the meat of the matter: thick

and juicy, but really thin;

thin as the veneer of your smile;

smoked as a done cigarette.

A squirt of sauce:

the sweet and sour of ketchup,

the watery heat of mustard,

combined into a sickly treat, to sit upon

a thin ooze of cheese

that in turn graces the toasted bottom

of the other half of bun, which closes

this micro meal, this little nutritious nugget,

into an easily digestible commodity:

something you can start at one train station

and have done with by the next,

as the world passes you by

and you in turn pass by it.

But to break this artifice for a second,

dispose of what has come before, like

paper wrapping, as it were,

what am I in all of this? Am I the cow?

Have I made myself succulent with words

just so that you can devour me,

and take my rich flesh for granted?

Would you like the real thing now, perhaps?

A porterhouse steak with a baked potato,

a fried tomato and gravy?

Well fuck you: eat this instead.

Joy

Some people call me crazy:

I'm not a stony-faced misery.

Just because I'm happy.

I tried joy on for size;

it fit too big. I thought,

Why not wear it?

It's because I feel the music.

I know my blood is ephemeral.

So I start a riot

in the middle of a funeral.

When I laugh

my lips don't just move.

And when I dance

I am the groove.

I'm climbing up the walls,

but I'm tethered by a rope:

hope. Only hope.

That meagrest of threads

tied on to a life. Like a wedding band,

knotted to a wife.

Some people call me crazy,

but can you blame me? I see;

O! I see! Up here it's not hazy.

On the Foundation of a Relation-House

I do not want a relationship:
one that floats on ocean waves.
I would not want to give the slip, and sink
to some deep-blue watery grave.

I'd rather have a relation-house:
one to move on a flatbed truck,
and take it with me north or south,
to wherever love inclined its luck.

I'm not abashed at making words:
I'll peg them down with my heart's hammer.
And if that says to you 'absurd'
then maybe I speak a different grammar.

I rove the land in my celestial ship,
I soar the sky in my love-spun orb.
And I do not want a relationship:
I want the land, and I want the core.

Stiff

Stiff upper lip,

Stiff dancing,
Stiff rigor mortis;

There's more to being English
Than looking grim as a tortoise.

Country day-tripper,
Pub-goer - forever chancing.
Being loose in the bedroom,
Loose on the floor.

Those who came before us
Stiffened in love, left the rising
To the pudding - put the coldness
In the glove.

Stiff dreams,
Stiff politics;
All damage and coyness;

There's more to being English
Than living thoughtless and joyless.

There's more than fusty living rooms
Full of long-dead conversation,
And sterile-white lounges
Full of the TV's static vibration.

Whatever happened to the Eccentric,
The Romantic - the Madman?
Sod all your mores and ideals:
I'll be myself; I'll be a glad man.

Loose lipped, silver-tongued,
Loose moved and free;
Only stiffened in death's cast.

There's more to life than worry,
for what will be will be.

There's more to being English

Than resignation to the past;
There's so much more to being English:

Hands, and lips, and hearts.

In the Ocean

Sometimes, life seems 

like a dredger: 

we are pulled along 

by unseen forces, 

bickering amongst ourselves 

as we squabble and fight, and 

all the while the boat 

still chugs along. 

We are the fish at the top of the net, 

struggling for breath 

and daylight. 

Below us are those who do not stand a chance 

but still fight on. And below them 

are long dead and 

suffocated creatures.

And left behind 

in all of this 

is a seabed 

left decimated 

and debauched.

But life does not have to be like this: 

it will only ever be like this 

if we carry on seeing ourselves 

as the fish. 

Some want to be one of those men on the boat;

I just want to be the ocean,

pulling in and out

with the billow and blow of the wind,

the hug and release of the moon,

the gulp and the scallop

of the gulls and the land;

as waves form, and break, to their own tune,

and the world cups us briefly in its old, loving hands.

Scar

I trace the scar on your

knee, that was made

when you were eight;

when you fell

from the apple tree

in your back garden.

I touch it gently,

the skin pale, and

silky, sensitive still;

I want to eat your scars,

peel them off like communion wafer,

let them melt on my tongue;

chew you up and spit

you out, smooth and clean

like a polished stone.

But you are you:

scarred and whole.

The stars stare down

enviously upon you.

Now crown my firmament:

let me take you home.

Breath

My heart was an ember

          and you blew on it;

took out your blade

          and carved 'true' on it.

You blew on my fire

          with a faraway wind;

it took for ever to come,

          but time does magic.

Now, as I unwind,

          I wonder, will it stop?

But no: this fire is strong;

          this last act is long: not tragic.

         

All sonnets must end

          with a rhyming couplet,

but when I look at your form

          I see formless -

So fuck it.

In the Deep

We were out there in the water

swimming in the deep,

seeing things as they were living.

But where were you

whilst we were swimming?

Were you sitting on the beach?

Whilst we were out there,

swimming: swimming

in the deep.

The phosphorescent blooms

of coral were steep,

as the ocean fell away,

down into the deep.

And where were you

whilst we were swimming,

swimming in the deep?

Were you

in the mountains?

Were you tending

to your sheep?

O! but the things we saw

when we were out there,

swimming in the deep!

Things we could not tell -

things we could not keep.

But where were you

whilst we were swimming?

Were you sitting

on the beach?

Lyrical (untitled)

You consume art
Like a man consuming chicken hearts,

But what's left in your heart
In that afterdark,
When the taste has melted away?

Sensation goes the way
of sensation:
It greys,
Leaving you craving something

Meatier
Far richer,
A treat for yer
To cloak your hurt.

You been craving.

That material
so-real-to-you

craving.