High
and nothing between me and the deep blue of the sky
and I have to wonder,
not at the wonder but the wonder of why
I could cry.
These incessant questions never leave me alone
even up here
where it all should be clear
I am never as near to the answers I seek
as when I'm down there in the crowd.
I ask myself out loud
what is it that keeps me from sleep and defeats me
and why do I seek when I don't know what for?

It's all needles and haystacks
I can never relax
I feel like my back's up against a solid stone wall.
If I fell
how far would I fall?
If I fall
would I be fallen or would I have fell?
These pointless questions give me hell
I'm on a roundabout
a merry go round
above the ground
way up high
where the moon steals kisses from the deep blue of the sky
I wonder why.
I wonder how and what and when
and again
I wonder
I pen
exhume those words in pain
shout out
roundabout
spinning
beginning to find a trace on the line.
Before I run out of time
I will know
I will go away sated
The journey is long
and I've hated the waiting
the unknowing
of what the picture is showing
and who held the key
was it me?
was that the mystery?
I wonder

When nothing is sacred and there is no sin
we might as well be living from
the outside within,
where the devil drinks blood on the streets of the 'hood
and the good die young,
never place a reliance on chance,
you won't ever win,so
get used to living from the outside within.

Save me a seat at the table and we'll meet the prophet of doom,forget
empty places,the faces you knew,
the living goes on and the dead never do,but it's true and we know, seeds
of hatred can grow in the unlikeliest space,
and on the dead sands of biblical lands a trumpet will sound when the ground opens up and swallows,
I see it must follow on from where we went wrong and I wonder if this is the twenty first plague,
hard to gauge when you live from the outside within,hard to know if it's true and if so what to do.
When nothing is sacred and Lord Melqart is king we shall all be the same living from outside within.

***** got Fawked
somebody talked
to the Feds

and what did we get?

reds under the beds
missile attacks
packs of madmen
running free

zone one could be
so nice,
but
Westminster was saved
because some daft sod
raved about
*****.

I dream, I dream and morphine seems to take the pain away,
the poppy fields are my armour,
the shields against the clamours of
the day.
If I could,
I would and should awake but that takes moral fibre,
and I am just the turpitude, the crude and base, no shame,
and furthermore, I can't face the accusing looks, or
the debits in my credit books.

I dream, I dream and lean towards the light that
shines from the opthalmoscope,
there is no hope I hear them say,
more clamour in the clamour of my day,
more morphine takes the pain away.

I dream to dream and dreams dreams me,
dreams will be my
downfall.

The taller it went
the higher it got
the more that they spent
the taller it went.
But
as it went taller it
seemed to get smaller
a trick of the light?
or did it bend into the night?
Is that what they planned all along?

This lobotomy turns out to be not such a shock to me after all, I fall and I rise, sleep in my eyes, but the days work is done even though a new day has begun. This lobotomy, this excuse for me is going home — travelling to Stratford, London Borough of Newham from Tottenham Court Road London Underground Station.

My DNA has lost its way
I don't know who I am
the double helix strangles me,
can anyone untangle me
or would you leave me dangling,twisting,eroding
slowly in the coding,hanging from the lowest
common denominator,
apeman, ape man ,no escape man
it's all relative
we all sit in the glasshouse and
pretend
that we all live.

She wakes up
drinks tea and puts on her make up
leaves home and catches the subway
at the start of a new day
and her face looks okay
just a little bit older
two degrees colder
because the man on whose shoulder she used to rely on
to cry on
is gone.
The letter was on the sideboard
stating that he had got bored and wouldn't be back
and Jack(that was his name)
had packed up his bags left a half smoked packet of **** on the chair
and moved out of her place.

Her face is a picture painted in oils
boiling on the inside where the tears glide over the 'it's over'
No one had told her and she hadn't guessed
that she would be left all alone.

But you make a bed
you lie in it
make love
have fun then you die in it
and it is always this way
So put on your make up and fake it
take it
and break your heart
at the start of your day.
Is it not always this way?

She tenses
I sense her,
she bids me
to enter,
I defer
to her
will.

Thrown forward from the past to break upon the bread was cast the scattering, if that's the word,
that was the word.

I heard it not so far away
as if I hear words as
I lay
asleep.


Dreams, they told me, but I know  dreams can hold me tight when all is certain to be lost and in these dreams from far away when words are ripening like hay I make them all my own.

My home was always home to me, no castles there for I was free to wander through the cornfields which led out to the rushing brook where once I took the vow that somewhere some day somehow I'd find the way to hear the  words thrown, wish I'd known then what I know not now and yet ignorance though no defence is the only one I have.

If only we were the executioners of our downfall
that would be a fitting windfall, and
a rollover on the lottery
win

as death grins on the side lines
I
remember the good times
sharpening the axe.

It's about anatomy.

You might think,
  
An atom, me?

But that's not what I said.

Astronomy is nothing to do with food
nor gastronomy
stars.

We have. sat together in too many taverns and isms to get tangled up in the anatomical caves and the caverns within 'em.

At sixteen I was rampant and now I'm almost dormant.

A Zimmer frame by any other name
is as heaven knows not only not a rose it's not a babe magnet either.

I am driven by demons that hole up inside me, the joke that they see is me, but there are saints sent to guide me
while the Vatican city sleeps.

Tombstone a home for some.
A holster
gun
some ammunition.
Rob the bank bring to fruition
history
more ammunition.

Up on boothill
down at heel
how can you feel so cool?
Earp's no fool he'll shoot and hit
then spit
as death chews on your bones
More empty homes in
Tombstone.

A lodestone
a rhinestone
everybody's got a bone
to pick.
Another hick ambles into town
gunned down
blown away
a tombstone day
not much I can say
about that.

...and there she stands as if on air
A light wind blowing through her hair.
A Demi Queen..
..using language that is so obscene
I have to turn away.

But she seems to know the words I want to say..
,,whip me.strip me
Pip me to the post.
After all I am first and foremost a male of the species
She's
A dark Demon who seems bent on my fall.

The Demi Queen is just a dream but the tracks across my back from the belial, belie the fiction as a fact..
..and later...

..As I sit upon the kitchen floor and look at my reflection in the safety glass of the gas oven door,
I wonder why I dream of pain and wonder,hope I'll dream again of wanton lust.
In the dust I shake off from my clothes I rise again but know she knows I wait for her to float in on the evening air.
And in the slip of moulding clay I'll feel the whip again
today, and in the meantime I shall pray.

(20 minute poetry)


Hands turning blue
Ice running through
my veins.

no longer the season of goodwill
and it will not be again and until
the Summer runs in
In its bare feet.

ruggedly sluggish in leaving a trail
down on the tube every day
without fail

Generally,
in matters of colour
blue is my favourite
but
on days like this
when the cold makes me miss
the hot summer sun
I could go for a tangerine
an aquamarine
an orange or lemon,

must put my gloves on.

The draft through the door rushes in and pushes cold air in my face
oh God
I have to get out
leave no trace
can't face another day
living this way.

Mercury freezes if mercury can and if mercury can then so can this man,
they'll end up chipping me out of an ice block.

Old Holborn
for a smoke
but it's the station
I'm sat in
no smoking allowed.

No one sets out that sets out to be this, when 
this 
is without anything.

I have dreams that travel 
dreams that unravel the timbre 
of time.

A full stop,
but I drop all pretension and
only mention this is as it is.

The fragrance always betrays me
when the desire arises within me,
we are the senses 
if senses can
sense the end to a beginning.

Was it in the loss or in
the winning that 
made being cynical the night watchman at the last 
innings?

and who was it being
bowled and caught?

A file in a life full of files flies away.

I collide with each day that gets in my way
moving over for no one 
on track for the big one 
in time

and

in a time when time becomes clear to me 
in the density and thoughts of eternity 
where I collide again and again infinitely 
I move over.

Well,
what a surprise
when you open your eyes and
the whole of the
weekend
lies there before you
and, before time starts to ride
you're into your stride
and out gallivanting.

Commercial poverty
an empty property?
there's money in muck or
so they say.

Vacant faces say it all no need for writing on the wall
and who could read it anyway.
Education in the pay of politicians.
They dumb us down to line us up to knock us down,
intelligence is frowned upon and yet
we get back up and carry on.

Fodder for the factory,
the workhouse is a house when all is said and done.
I see no ships
I see no Sun,
blinded on the run and some place far away from the refuse tips and folderol  I'll find a place to stay and sit to read a book and take some time to take a look at what things really look like.

It is in her oceanic heart
that the beginning shall start
every tide will bring in a
new day.

Every way she can be
she is the deep of the sea
and the flow of the river
in me.

The perimeter was limiting,
the interior more inhibiting
and the Islander lived alone,ambitions dissipated,sun dried,dessicated,he waited for the ship to come,
he lived on coconuts and *** and Wrigleys spearmint chewing gum and two tonne of cargo from the hull of the ship that nearly pulled him to his death.

He was blinded by the sun and sand,so carried lightly in one hand a parasol (made in Taiwan)
not one known to complain,he found it hard to explain to his companion,
a turtle he'd named Marion,in honour of his life and his poor departed wife
just how he felt,
but he knelt before the sea creature,which, though he didn't know it then
would feature in a hot cooked stew somewhere in the distant future.

Sad to tell that the Islander spent eighteen years on his Island hell and went quite insane
thought the sand was rain and bathed in it twice weekly
leaking fluids from his skull he swam out to the rotting hull and danced a jig on the ancient deck,
both man and wreck sank deep below where only sharks and shellfish go and the sea ****** both to their sad demise.

No stone marks the resting place,no words remark on who lies there,but the Island stares out to the sea and knows the turtle was eaten for tea
and Islands never forget.

In the outfit I can
be
the outrider,inside of
danger man,bigger
than superman,although
not quite as dangerous as
away in a manger man,
but I can always
dream.

I pass myself off as a replica.

previous applicants need not apply?
why?

are we just fodder for cannon when needed
and when needs arise
who dies?
not them tinpot general men
it's us
and then the telegram's sent
to the family?

I suppose they just text telegrams today
it's another institution that passed slowly away

there's much to be said for the personal touch
but we don't get too much of that.

On Sunday I usually hate Sunday
which is the day before what I call
no fun day
a monday
and I want it to be Friday

I'd like it to be Friday in
nineteen sixty nine
but likes are like time mines
they blow up in your face,

that's why I pass myself off as a replica,
I never knew the real me.

Sitting on the grass
watching buzzards as
they pass,
they're watching me
wondering when.
Let them wonder as I wander far from here and
clear my mind and
in the clearing there I see her.

She waits and has been for so long
as I have waited for this moment to belong
to something greater than I see,
she greets me with a smile, a
'golly gee and glad you came'
to the buzzards it's all the same but
it means the world
to me.

It's always like this,
One moment I'm listening
and the next
I miss what was being said
because the voices booming in my head
and taken me to that other place.

Up on the dais I am superman.

I can do it all
enthrall the audience
with my eloquence
but near to you I am struck dumb
numbed by the words that you speak.

I am weak
this I know
and that's why I go to that other place
but I carry your face in a cup
and drink it up
when I feel lonely.

If only I was filled with the will to be strong
I could hang on longer
Assuage my hunger.

On the dais the voices remain in my head
and listen to me
and to what I have said.
Why don't you?

One day I will hear
those words in my ear
and those voices I fear will leave me alone
until then,
I'm on my own and only I can understand
the man upon the stage
who stares into the distance
with a look set on his face
of another place.

The stars were stitched into sparkling quilts by the hands of the one unseen
and the Earth was tilted on its axis so that everyone could dream.

While the dream may end in a cul de sac
we can go back and
dream again.

Every orbit is within us
and a universe inside, but
the whole human race is just a
pimple on the face of the one
who designed the ride.

The houses of Parliament set in relief
against
a background of greed and sheer disbelief
and Big Ben struck a quarter to the hour of ten
while the bespectacled gentlemen filed in a line
to vote on the amendment for the
twenty third time.

In God we trust but the economy went bust and we ain't got a crust of bread.
Got no lead in my pencil,no ink in my pen and I'm wondering when my memory's going to go.
and I'm getting slow,
I remember a time or it may recall me, when as a young man of twenty ,or two maybe three, I was wealthy and healthy and full of it all but then came the crash and I started to fall.
And I dropped,stopped being an earner, learnt to survive on week old stale pies and hand outs, the hand me down,the other side of life in any big town,
where you pay your trust to the temples of dust and the soup comes free,with a touch of religion on the crust of dry bread and sometime's I think that God must be dead.

We do as we do and we can't do no more and the poor will always be poured down the drain,thrown out of the door,not let in,begging on street corners,
don't they look thin!

They do as they do and they do it so well and they got us believing in a new branding of hell where the adverts pervert the minds of the young and that nothing good comes from it being homespun and the gun at your head is something to think of and, is God really dead?

Led to the queue and waiting in line for another strangulation,I am choking on time.
I want what's mine,give me my due
You own it all
for now.

With a lopsided gait
I decide and..
I wait.

By the river.

Stood upon the rusted piers
Looking out across the flowing years
My youth drifts in with fears of death.

A soft breath of an Autumn breeze
Whispers slightly.

Like an unbound ship I rose and fell
The well of life is never deep
Only deep enough to keep some dreams.

The seagull.

Screams and wakes me to a change of tide
If only I could ride under its wings.
Would things be different..would I have seen?
The well within another dream.

It is the way..as surely as night follows day
Time will take us..all away.
And what appears and disappears or whatever fears we fear
The end is always near.

And a body.

That skin which feels so cold to touch
How much I loved the heat.
Beaten down and toasted brown
Never thinking I would meet this day
When all is taken...all forsaken..

..as I stand and watch the shift of light
Shifting slightly to my right to get a better view.
The years I knew
The years that were
All there standing in a line...marking time.
Taking mine and me
Away.

What if,
what if became what when?
what then?
and if then when
what if became
if what?

I lose the plot, but
can you see me
trapped in my own
duplicity?

Down on platform twenty three
I saw her
and she saw me
but didn't wait.
The train for Margate left at nine
on time.
I was late for the weekend date
she'd gone with another Mother's son
and left me there alone and glum.
At five past ten when ready to leave
a young lady grabbed me by the sleeve
and I could not believe
she had come back walked a mile
on the railway track
for me
what glee
she
is the best that she could be
I'm just lucky.

Is it the culture of vultures or the vultures of culture that carries us away?
dress down or if you want to impress, don't dress at all,
a place guaranteed in the hall of fame,
name?
no worry,
we'll jiffy one for you in a squid's arm or two which is shorthand for quite very soon.


If the TV don't get you the radio will, one or the other will interrogate you
'til you crack and you'll go out and buy the latest rack for the records you no longer own,
an Englishman's home is his own Barbara Castle but that was forever ago and lots of John Snow have flowed under the bridges since then,
Why,
I remember when beer was only two and ten and for those of you who don't know that's 2/10p in slow mo'.

eat drink, be merry
I shall,
with my feet on the pouffe  and an old trusty pipe, have a small tot of sherry,
the culture
the vulture
my life.

Walking in crowds ,it's like I'm walking through glue and half of them texting on mobiles,it's vexing.
Some solvent will solve it,dissolve them away,
I should have thought of it earlier
but it's been a hell of a day.

Where do they come from,why don't they go and why don't they move,that's what I want to know?they're in Primark and Tesco and eating alfresco,(MacDonalds of course)how coarse can one get?

I should be a reclusive find people elusive and that is my dream until then I shall scream at them,Ladies and Gentlemen clear me a path,I don't want to bath with you just want to pass by you,
just like I'm walking through glue.

we get to get more and we give and give less and yet profess to be Christians that walk with civilians.
in whose army could we be if we don't see
the starving?
if we don't lend our eyes to the poor.

We're being faked out,taken out,shaken down, by skulduggery so rife in London town,and we wait for it,salivate for it,cant get enough of it, we even pray for it.

Lubricated,down the pan and flushed away by 'the man',ending up or bending down,it's all the same to London town.

Don't try to tell me,that this is right,or we should bite the bullet and accept our lot,it's a dot on the card when life is so hard that we have to stand and fight.

The 'establishment' might not like us
but those ******* in their close knit groups,storm troop us every day and take away our pride,chide us,ride us,grind us down,remould us,reminding us how cold it is when we can't afford to pay for heat
don't let them beat you,defeat you,cheat you 'cause we'll get through
and do them down.
Life is like that,
London town,it's krap
It's going to snap
to fall apart
the streets will rise,the building's fall and down at Mansion house they'll call us ****,
well, that don't hurt a bit
Let them **** on caviar and sip sauvignon at the trough, while poor men cough their lungs up,
brung up,wrung out,strung up and finally thrown down,
why would anyone want to live and try,have children who die in
London town?

Notes,
like boats on the sea,
softly sailing through me,
the music makes waves in my heart.
I am listening to, a
Rhapsody in Blue and it's hot,
a top hat and tails
and off Gershwin sails,
one more boat that will be,
sweet
music sailing through me and
into the depths of my sea.

The wheel must spin
the fat become the thin,the rich take on the poor man's garb,the gossip monger feels the barb of their own tongue.
It is done,
the wheel stops,
thirty on the red and all who have too much are being bled of what they do not need,those in hunger feed and those who want shall want no more.
All this written down in chapter twenty four of some great book which I never took the time to read,
when upon a tireless time,I thought it was the action, not the deed that mattered most and to boast of such accomplishments that meant the world to me was in effect a greater heresy.

The wheel will spin for it is writ that everyone
deserves a bit of happiness.

Today shall be a talking day
a walking day
and I shall walk and talk and say things
to myself and maybe others too
and if I do
it may make this day seem okay.

At times the rhymes that stymie me
those unreleased
I will set free to walk and talk along with me
another piece of poetry.

Others look and wonder why this man that mouths words passes by
with spittle dripping from his lips and tips of cigarettes unlit
just waiting for a light to rip into his eyes and slip a match into his hands which make the shuffling of the pack
another cigarette and back to walking
talking
stalking through the rush hour crowds which pass like clouds around my feet
and will I ever find a seat
to sit?
unlit again.
'Hey mister have you got a light and if so might you give some substance to the nicotine'
and I,unseen
the haunted of the haunting dream
lit,unlit and barely time to clean or clear and my oh my oh dear
the heavens open up and fill my begging bowl which in actuality is a Starbucks cup which in the breaking makes a better place to put my shamefaced
unlaced misery.

A cup another cup of steaming tea
sweet,delicious and given to me by a sweeter looking lady who maybe felt a little pity,sadness too
but who am I to know what goes on in the minds of those that throw this sausage dog a bone?

I howl and I can howl and how I bark
but not when I am in the park sat by the swans and ducks and in being somewhat of a lucky man
which I most assuredly feel is what I am
feed the wildlife with stale bread and talk the words that flow in seasons round my head.
I'm sure these birds appreciate my soft spoke words but they don't tell me so, and so I go into another walk and talk
with skateboarders,
talking tall orders as they whizz and skid along the concrete tracks
on which the local councils with their tightened schedules close their eyes and turn their backs.
And back to City
unmade streets
leaking drains and leaking brains that leak through walls and wall street halls and madness ramparts
broken and rebroken hearts
false and even falser starts until it falls apart.
The falling I can understand
another matchstick in my hand and one more cup of tea
I've had enough of lunacy and lunatics
I shall go home to egg and chips
retire and
sat by the fire will watch the flames that flame out names and burn the corners of those pictures that I carry on the inside
another fireside
an ash grey day
a walking,talking time today
tomorrow
who knows?

In the unbroken smoke, where the cream on the coffee can choke
an unwary cat
that's where I'm at.
I didn't look for it,book it,get this life at cost,so **** it,
I never asked to be here,
the price I must pay is too high and I fear I will die.
The sanatorium,
humorously called a
gated community where
electrodes are placed on my brain,
is that normal or sane?
what kind of people are these?
I can walk as I talk with the trees in the garden that's known
as Gethsemane
where I feel all alone but know that nurses are tailing me.
The smoke drifts away
there'll be no shocking me today.
Napoleon comes by and he waves and says 'Hi'
I say,
'not yet'

There are stripes on my T-shirt
oh **** me
it won't hurt
or shoot me and that's
what I wrote.

On a slow boat to somewhere,
but definitely not China
I wine and I dine her
but she doesn't care.

In the left luggage office,
the officer greets me and
at
the old railway station
she wants to meet me head on,
but too late
I am gone.

I am gone now
and
somehow
still here

Something hysterical
or maybe
it's
classical
music.

I'm in the
shower room
plotting an overthrow
this body
just has to
go
soon.

It all turns to dust,
the days are getting shorter
the night's are much tighter
I long for the lighter
mornings
to come.

Something hysterical or
me
waxing lyrical while
the sun burns a hole
in my headstone.

The time in point and space where it is alleged that we stand
is like some foreign land that only travellers know
but that place in space
moved on a million years ago
and we are no longer there
should we care?

In the endless magnitude of stars,planets and comets,meteors and quasars
nothing is still.
Everything moves to some greater will
until the place that we knew becomes just one in the queue
of discoveries we make and friendships we renew.

When this became clear to me
problems so near to me
dissolved.

The all is much greater than me
I see
the circle defined
in degrees of my mind.

Another universe expands into more foreign lands
which we travel beside
ride trails astride of it
we've laughed till we cried with the joy of it
and understood not a bit of it.

In aeons of atoms
we have merged and we have parted
started and ended
defended our right
to look into the wonder of night
and
Dream.

The future that we bought into has ******* us, all
due to those weevils in the counting houses playing handball with our cash.Give 'em all three strokes with the cat o nine tails,let's hear them moan and send their wails across the land so others of this thieving band may listen and take heed.
I'm sick of being bled bone dry so they can feed,I need to take a stand and start an anti weevil band but that takes cash and dash it all,it's all being counted down in county hall.

I have counted many lucky stars while laid out on the floors in several bars and then have counted several more when making it out of the door into those spaces where I know the sad and lonely people go
but I'm not one of them thank God,I've always been a little odd like that,the flat sound and Elliot knew it too,the wasteland of the tasteless,few will guess how I digress and each day more becomes the mess I make,this jiggery pokery keeps on poking me as if I could be anything other than the skullduggery I partake in.

I have spun my sin into this shawl I wear and call to some greater being to help me bear the shame but it seems like '*******' is my name I hear it often cited by the counting men who couldn't count the Viscounts in a biscuit barrel,
and so I do a barrel roll and bowl along my merry way which I do quite nicely every day and if tomorrow is another day
when do we start the war?

Disappearing
step by step and one by one
soon
we'll all be gone.
The things that we once knew
are like the people few
and far between.
Everything you've ever seen is being vaporised
and rebuilt
in concrete,steel and lies
and there are spies
cameras watching every move you make
can't take a krap no more without some busy-body camera
poking through the toilet door.
What is the world that we once knew
coming too?

Well you
can stick your face where the sun aint never going to shine
we'll all be gone in three months
time.
Fine by me
I'll just put a match to the gas and blow myself one free pass
into the other place.

At number twenty one Leadbetter Street stood Pancho's cafe
where the local lads would meet
to talk and drink a cup of chai
watch the girls go by
but that's gone too.

Who could have guessed that all we've known would be blown away
by the city boys who earn more pay
the more that they destroy.
Oh boy
what a place.
The face of it has changed and I no longer recognise the roads
where under clear blue skies I grew.
Now I chew on candlewax and **** on fishbone stew
Not the world I knew
Oh no.

Time is all I've got
I find a little lonely spot on the dial of Grandfather's wind up clock
tucked under number five
and the big hand comes and wakes me every hour
just to check if I am still alive.

One day I'll wake and find that there is nothing left at all
everything will have disappeared
and I'll fall head first
into the void.
Should I be annoyed at what my fate is going to be?
Should I kick off big time and attack some nameless ministry?
or should I take the big six
lick my wounds
chuck out the sticks and stones and watch my bones disintegrate
or have I left it far too late?

Mister Lee who used to have a Chinese take away
saw it all
before it all was took away
I never listened to what he had to say
one more regret
but that will disappear too
they always do.

Mr's Singh who had the corner shop for as long as I recall
lives in a three bed semi now
somewhere in Southall.
She took the fall as did her shop
the mavericks that betrayed us never stop.
I feel like tooling up and taking on
but even thoughts of violence have been taken
they're all gone.
Disappearing one by one
and tomorrow should it ever come had better learn fast how to run
or they'll take that too.
This is not the world I knew
and every day is more oblique
I should seek some medical advice
which would be nice
but they took the doctors
disappeared them all away
and that was only yesterday
which is also gone.
I can't go on living in this bubble wrap
it's krap
I see that now it's just a case
of disappearing without a trace.
So long
I'm gone.
Feed the cat before you go.

In her pram which is a trolley
she carries a baby, which is really
the life that she has in old carrier bags
and a holdall which carries
nothing.
She lives in her dream of
french fries,scones and cream,
kindly people would pass her
and offer some coin,
she accepted,quite gracefully
fully aware that dreaming or not
she needed her pennies to buy her a ***
of London Dry Gin.
She spoke in third person as
if she was not there at all,
a bit like the holdall,
empty.
No faces to face the faces that faced her
she hid in the barbed wire of unkindly
stares
where the world couldn't find her
and her baby was safe in
the bags in the pram.

Life carries on until it is gone
and then carries on a bit more,
somewhere in between
I bet you have seen her
perhaps
you have been her.
The queen of the street
with jewels on her feet
which are
tatty old shoes
but she lives in her dream
that way
she don't lose.

Let's go down to Soho square and when we're there let's take a peek at the corner house, Number one,Greek Street.
A quaint old looking place with a forward thinking modern face,outpacing homelessness I see by being an employment academy.
A setup unlike those I've known that shows a pathway to a home,a job, a feeling of and I detect, what I feel and that's self respect.
Quite cute this charitable institute and well thought of through the years,so if you're down there in the West End wend your way to Soho Square and take at look at what's happening there,it is truly
a revelation indeed for those we find that are in need and there are many that I know who've been and gone and now go on
into that brighter future.

Echoes know
That as echoes go
Echoes echo and just grow and grow.
And echoes mate
Conjoin and integrate
Then as the echo spins
It turns it's echo into twins.
Echoes roar.
Echoes echo more and more
As each echo echoes off the door.
But echoes die
As echoes fly into the sky
They fade into the fading light
Silently echoing off the soundless night.
I like
Echoes.

John Smallshaw   2011.

I know the eternity of midnight
where the days don't light the days and the night
stays tight against my wrinkling skin,and the only way out is the way you got in,but you can't find the way and you're lost,
so you stay.

And midnight never ends,this eternity wends its way slowly to your core,clambers clumsily in through each and every pore,and though you try to reach the sun,for some the sun will never come and here you stay,
Crumpled, where the night becomes the only way to live,
crumpled, where the night feeds on you,so you give,and
pleading silently for this eternity to end,
for one brief moment to pretend things will work out, but doubt assails you and you flail wildly,
childlike,sadly stuck
so you sit and **** your thumbs until eternity makes up its mind and comes,
whenever that may be.

The memory of a death comes knocking at the door,but of a death that has been and gone before,
and it will come again, as it has for many years and many tears have been shed.

Fred Wimbow didn't know the time and wasn't quite sure how to dress for his interview,
but he knew enough that to impress, he'd better look his ***** and span,best boots and spats a nifty cravat and hair tonic on his moustache.
He set of to the interview with answers ready in his head and was hit by a van which was driven by a short sighted man from Hartlepool and then poor Fred was dead,quite so,
and when Death came a knocking at the door the widow Wimbow knew what for.

And she was waiting case in hand to go meet Fred in the promised land.

I stop there,
pop
her
the question,
awaiting
the reply.

Atlantis,
a place to miss
when
planning a
Summer holiday.