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.