Four old  skel-etonians sat by the fireside,
playing truth and consequence and
every one of them has lied.

Yule logs waiting patiently to
crackle and to burn and each old
skel-etonian  was taking it in turn
to turn in more lies.

So I'm not playing party games this year
the fireside is full, I
think I'll pull a Christmas ******* and
just hope that she's not dull.

I blew it twice and twice they flew,leaving few upon the stalk to talk to friends,I thought those dandelion days would never end,but the dandelion knew the time,though I did not,and now I have the time my friends are gone,blown along the Summer breezes and as winter freezes man and beast,at least I have the pictures in my mind.

February finds me back there,older now and minus hair which once was long and flowing,I guess I'm showing my age when I speak of daisy chains and sticks of sticky Blackpool rock and yet I look for but cannot find the dandelion clock,perhaps it's locked away in preparation for some other Summers day.

The peerage and the steerage class.
(Titanic's in the dock)

The benefit,
the bit the government decreed is
enough to fulfill your every need,to
clothe and feed and get you through and
pay for fares to each job interview.
Meanwhile
in the House of trouts where
those who don't know they are dead still
have their snouts in the trough,
the ayes have it.
Yes
this species of faeces who don't have a clue,
give voice to the bills that tell us what to do.
I don't know about you but
to me that doesn't seem right.

Down in Brighton
everyone's a light on
waiting for the bomb to explode,
Hove and Shoredene's playing to the drag Queens
everybody's dancing along.
Songs of romance, wishing for a last chance,dashing down the promenade,
but life is hard for the artists
who end up in the back room getting slightly ******,
and down in Brighton everyone's a light on
waiting for the bomb to explode.

You're soaking and you're strung out
but your sleeping bag's been wrung out and
it's wrapped up in a damp rag that you carry in your rucksack

you turn your back on Strutton Ground and you strut off into London' town
like some mad demented peacock, but you're off to rock the Casbah with your crazy words or wisdom which you gleaned from empty matchboxes so very long ago.

The coffee opens early for the bird that scratches daily for a meagre bit of warmth to feed the soul.

and by St Pauls, the ***** of grasping pawnbrokers are gleaming in the frosty air
'pop the weasel ' goes in there quite frequently
you see the emptiness of picture frames in streets you recognise, no names,
because no one would remember them among the worn out suited gentlemen that you became but then it doesn't really matter anymore.

the evening strolls in awkwardly,
but maybe that's just how I see it and
it could be elegantly
I don't know.

and we're back to Strutton Ground not far from Scotland Yard
the new one, the old one's not too far from here and near Trafalgar Square, but you got moved along from there too many times, too many moons and wines ago.

An old leprechaun lives on my lawn
he cuts and keeps it neat
I called to him and asked his name
he told me it was Pete.

One day old Pete just went away
he didn't leave a note
before the grass turns into hay
I'll have to buy a goat.

Tea with the drifters
lifting lids on the kids there and
they're all on the skids there,
the dossers and tossers,the pikeys
and grifters,
all with the same name and
sidelined,
blindside of the game,
and with nothing
to choose between see or be seen
we don't see.

We don't see the lean one,the tall one,
the
skinny and the short one,the young or
the old one,
the one with the dream gone but
we all see the hands out,
all fear the question,
(could that be me?)
'spare any change guv for a hot cup of tea?'

On a Sunday for some when we pray and give thanks,
there are some that work hard in the local food banks.
It is to them we should pray and not to some God of the day
who disappears at will.
And I'm sure God will forgive me for saying this system is *****,
it ain't right,
someone's skimming the cream
someone's stealing the dream and
all we'll have left is
the night.

We shatter no illusions
when  breaking through
the looking glass.

Project the images behind my eyes and
feed me the words with the gravy of lies
mise over your chattels
but fight your own battles.
I ain't going to fight no more,
I ain't going to join in
I've told you before
you're just a mongrel
a monger of war.

There's a cold wind bullies in
from the West
I put on wooly knickers and
a hand knitted vest

were I from Yorkshire I'd
rub goose fat on my chest

but them's a strange lot
up there
tha' knows.

It may be Sunday out there,
but in here it's ninety seventy-four, in here behind the bedroom door where the lights burn bright like that disco ball that blew our minds last night.
it's a noughts and crosses kind of a day, we make our marks and gurgle away and marks is what we are, cosmic stains on the universe, washed by the winds of countless stars, strands upon strands where each moment stands alone, a space of our own in a place full of plenty, but it's 'seventy-four behind the bedroom door and I don't care because she's so much more than the wandering rings that sing to themselves, in the galaxy we are pixies and elves and someone else is stacking our shelves, we play party games and if we are cosmic stains, so what,
what we are is what we've got and that's 'seventy-four behind the bedroom door.

In time, if there is an in, we shall strip off the moonbeams that dance on our skin and begin, to gurgle again, to take one more spin, to ride some and more behind the door back in 'seventy-four.

It may be Sunday out there, churchy hats and churchy hair, but where the lights burn bright behind the bedroom door it will always be nineteen seventy-four.

At the end of your tether
don't know whether to go on
can't  decide if you're sick of hearing
that same old song?

Find some solace
look in the face of your fears
and kiss them goodbye.
Get high
better than being low
because then there's only one way to go
and that's straight to the doors of the place that you know
where the fires burn bright
and the music's alright
out of sight out of mind
and in that place you will find
all those friends, who roamed off and left you
and went off to view
their own personal hell with a view from the windows
of their own private cell.

Well are you at that end
can you really decide if you want to send
yourself there
are you in a fit state to care?

I've been and come back
been stretched out on the rack of indecision
blocked with precision
by the walls of derision
and now..?
..now I'm a regular guy slightly shy
but I get by.
I no longer cry for my God to come and take me
to the woods out the back
and then to cremate me
I have burned and in turn I am whole.

There's a whole lot of living
just got to give
giving it a
chance.

I don't think I want to know no more
I've had enough of knowing stuff that filled my brain with grains of this and strands of that,stats and rats that chew the fur on ***** cats and bats no *****,Niagara falls and if it does why did it fell?,Tenses, tense that make me sick,Michael Miles and 'take your pick'
I can,not tin but aloo mini im or if you're Yankee alloo minum,oh what fun.I'm going round the twist,just spiraling not really ****** and reading down the list I see,
Her Majesty is having tea or as we say,a spot of tiffin,jolly good and splendid,spiffing,what a beezer that geezer is,Philip I mean and not the Queen,she's a lass I think and don't want to think no more.

In the quiet of your home
in the corner of your room
in the rushing of the street
in the time you're on your own

when the stars light up like candlesticks
when the moon begins to pray
and the oceans hear you groan
in the time you're on your own.

When the milkman comes and the sun's not shone
but the night has packed its bags and gone
and the dew is you upon the floor
in the time you're on your own.

One small kiss can resonate,
make universes hold their
breaths and wait
and still we wait
in the time you're on your own.

Setting up camp
I am caught in the headlamps of some corporate tramps with the wings of the albatross stamped on their foreheads,and quickly they come at me firing their guns at me,out of the sun, I can't see them to clearly.
Nearly got me that time
I must be beware,
corporate tramps get every where and try to disrupt me,corrupt me with credits and debits,in books I have read it that these are no good but sometimes I can't see the trees for the wood and they prey on the blinded and feeble and frail,they'll bang at your brain until they make a secure sale,it seems they can't fail,
because
we are bombarded with adverts perverting our minds,adverts that sell you all kinds of mindless monstrosities,colossal calamities and we **** on the corporate mammaries until we've had our fill,
then we burp and slurp it all down.
Welcome to the **** it and see almost but not quite free franchise town,
need a gown.a duck down eiderdown,brown shoes,black shoes anyway you think you win they know you lose but buy it here,buy regurgitated,variagated beer here in the franchise town.
'come on down the price is right'
the time is now
you're going to die so spend and spend and how you please ,use your cards and we will bring you to your knees,
Jeez
it's depressionville,third turning past the bank of **** creek hill.
It makes you want to **** something,someone,the corporations go on and on,before to long they will run out of space,then ,
option one kicks in and kicks you in the face and puts you down.
Join the rest of us.
in the almost but not quite free, buy me here,have a beer,
franchise town

I carry homelessness within my head another addiction among the dead,the outcast of society,those who have nowhere to go and end up going nowhere.
I share their wanderings, and begging on the street is just another nowhere place to meet old friends,
and they are few dying as they do among the bitterness of litter blown where dreams once treasured have now flown and soon I will be all alone
with
homelessness
no more or less a tragedy but I can't unlock my needs without the key and that has gone the way of friends
It always ends
it always will
the chill of winter icing those, not within without no homes and there are no sticks and stones for them,no names to call these nameless men,
if I count to ten and hold my breath,hold my breath,hold my breath until death takes hold of me.

Flashed by her eyes and
lashed by her tongue,
she cuts me to pieces
and that's just for fun, but
she stands at my side and
she watches my flank which
is
better
than money in anyone's bank.

Do I love it?
you bet and
you'd lose
don't confuse what you think
with the things that I know.

In Sorrento

where the soft winds blow
where if I knew she
would know
before me,

it's hot here
but you should see her,
as cool as a cucumber
she watches
I slumber,
she's thinking my number
is up.

Then she wakes me to take me to
the depths and the highs,
we make it and
time flies away.

At times it seems that lines are all I've got
not complaining though
'cause I like lines
I like lines a lot
they're sleek and meet you far away.

I walk on these lines everyday
straight lines I find are always best
can't stand the wavy ones
the crazy ones that shuffle,scuffle and take you round the bend
they're enough to send me off the rails
send me on uncharted trails.

I like the lines of beauty
infinite in symmetry
delightful in simplicity
a lack of them in this,the City
but I don't mind
I find the ones I know are here and wander off to some unknown end where other lines that angle off will send me back again
and I refrain from deviating off these lines
into other scrub marked lines which are the lines of older times
well trodden down and almost worn away
but they'll remain and stay as a memory
of what lines should never and not be.

I see those lines scored on your face
a face
a face
I see the grace and beauty too
that is what these lines of times can do
each mile post sign etched by a line and so lovely for me to see
it means I'm on the road on which you live
and heading off to be
another line upon the track
another never looking back
and one more reason why I love
these lines
so left so,so right
so knocking on your door on what is halfway through the night
I hope the future that we see is lit by lines so bright they'll light another
line upon the road
another road upon each line
and one more time that we will be
in Synchronicity
a harmonic playing
in an eternity
of lines.

This feathered quill with fluted nib stands idle in an idle hand and a man with little time to spare,despairs of flowing from its point,a point to make,a case he cannot state.
It is late the ink has bled,I am being led to some conclusion,propelled to see a page, unwritten not by me but by the elements.

Underwater I breathe air,a little trick I found when underneath the earth and being ground, they thought into fine dust,the fire was just a place to warm my bones while the winds sang songs to me in dulcet tones.

And still the quill sits silently as if begrudging me a moments rest, it  would be a feather in my cap if only I could slap another word out of its tip,but no letters slip to form these things,it seems that silence only brings me emptiness,even less than that when words within are crushed and flattened by the fattening of worms that squirm and hold me in their coils,and any words there were are spoiled,deleted,secreted quietly and forgot about.

In the tomb without a light, this ink is but a link to further things to think and if only I could force this quill to spill something.

Underlined in red and on the tombstone up above it said,

'here lies within a man so thin
and yet so thick
his quill
a magic stick
his ink
a skating rink

Magic couldn't save him'

But this is of another page when reached upon a ripe old age and suitably I shall erase that which pertains to me.

we hang on to that ****** thing

hoping it will bring

us luck

does it?

does it?

the **** it does.




shove it,

don't hang on

don't love it




In these vaults where faults are bound to overwhelm me




the Skipper's all at sea and we are all alone




a helmsman with no land or home to tide him by

a reason only if to

if I want to

want to

die or why it has to be this way?




An Oracle would bid me sit and say.

'why hang on at all

Rome built in a day will fall'




it all takes time.




Time is just a cross to bear

a watch to wear,

a moment

dare we look?

dare we

do we give a **** about that thing?




what thing?




I've moved on away from that thing




that thing never did me good

I thought it would,




at one time

I thought the World was flat




that thing

circumcised my brain




colonised my train of thought




I need a ripcord

a Gordian sword




I found it in the word.

If the Sun doesn't get you
the scorpions will.

There were four of us in a half track and a little way back lay the fifth.

The Sun got him good
roasted and peeled him like a spud.

Tannoy, the radio man was the next one to go, slow like a withering vine,
sounded like static on the line
then he went dead.

Fitzroy, the Sepoy, more of a boy than a man
prayed for a day and then went on his way to whatever heaven it is that Sepoys go.

Bill, a bull of a man from Mill Hill and who spoke with a permanent stutter
uttered his last and I travelled on at half mast
cursing the Sun and the Sand and the hand I'd been dealt.

Felt the scorpion sting as I pulled up and funny thing too
I could swear that the scorpion looked like
Frank Sinatra.

I
being crucified
died.
You did not see me fall
or see the memories that dripped my blood down the concrete walls of yesterday and when I lay there still and broken by the empty stores and unlit lamps,franked as if by postage and the stamps that stamped upon my shattered soul,I felt
whole.
In pieces and yet pieced together,the man you like or not it's up to you whether you do.
I remain a reminder of the pain now gone and one remembers a touch too much at times,
hard and easy times,crayoned soft times,lead pencil lines that tore across my skin,tin tack look back time pressing in on me,
but you did not see me fall or bleed, recognise the need,stem the flow,
it was I who stood aside and watched me slowly drop and couldn't stop the embolism,attacked by criticism,the symbolism all but knew and I,and I
was crucified bled out,read out cuneiform until it dawned on me that you could see and I was but a symptom not the cause.

No ifs
no buts
he called you all *****
and that puts him in the doghouse.

She
spins stories
like
spiders spin webs
I
am spellbound.

'What time is it', asked the rock, who had turned to dust, and the voice replied,
'rise o-clock'
and the legend began.

Rumours ran rife that the man with no wife had returned, someone burned bushes in honour but that had been done before.

The rock that was dust blew away but returned as a man and I hear people say, Peter, you're cool, but Pete was no fool, he knew there was a reputation to salvage.

In Virginia on a blue ridge a cowboy, head slung low, which matched the slant of his guns
hummed tunes from a memory that his Ma' made in Yosemite a long time ago,
the man with no wife who was also a cowboy rode far into a canyon and it fired his imagination, and more bushes burned as he passed.

'Nothing new here my dear', he said to his horse and he talked to his horse more than he talked to most people.

By a steeple in Piza, leaning towards a disaster, a singer of ballads sat eating chorizo because even singers need to rest, It was Monday and the light burned which was a nice change from bushes.

'It'll never be the same, we should have left well alone' came a disjointed voice from an unworldly zone and that's the way of it, gods and aliens like to play a bit, sometimes the game gets away and they lose the plot and what have we got,?
Easters eggs and fun
bunnies watch them run as the sun
passes over the sky.

Jaw jaw.

Bless 'em all,bless 'em all
and let's hope those ******* will fall,
off
their high horses and into the ****
I'd walk right past them and
not care a bit
'cause they're grinding us into the ground,
the pound is worth **** all at all
so here's to the mighty and farewell
to blighty,
cheer up my lads
bless 'em all.

Leaving well enough alone
I go home
where only your words serve to burn me
remind me to learn that to be free
is to be one with
oneself
And alone very selfishly I turn over another leaf.

Oh thief, come then and take me
and let us not tarry
marry me into your night.

Out of sight out of mind
the wallpaper lines the drawers in the wardrobe
and mothballs like meteors
flash warnings to creatures
do not enter
and the scent of her lingers
I lick my fingers as if I could taste her
as if I could paste her to the walls.

On the inside of life where I fall into tomorrow
where yesterday lives in the crook of the hollow
below my cheeks and today sneaks a peek but decides to return
to a place I would spurn
Oh if only I could.

She is still here or there
somewhere in the recess wearing that Westwood creation
I station and anchor myself to this point
and at the point of a pin
where the needle grows thin
I jab it into and under my skin and I blunder
along wildly
in panic, but that's nothing new
to a fool who would do such strange things.

Eventually relenting
and I on repenting she brings me to her
here or somewhere each place names the same as the last
and each one disappears as fast as it came.

This is a round about big dipper,dip for a duck
childhood fair ground game that we play
we all want a coconut
but some don't want to pay.

She comes to me to say
'it's okay it'll be fine'
and each time I believe
until the mothballs remind me she leaves and I grieve
And the drawers remain shut
the wardrobe is but another reminder
a laughter at me
one day I will find her
again.

Words in my head. Unspoken Unsaid...but they slip and they slide ride out and deride bringing untamed desires to the fore. Words are the core. They are all that remain after heartache and pain when the world and its eyes and its peoples despise the lives that they live. Only words can forgive. But words in the head are impotent..they're dead. You can feed words to the starving but they cannot be force fed and thus words left unread.I've said it before..words are the core. Silent words are no good..never could be if no one ever could see what you're trying to say. Hiding words away behind a curtain is certain to obscure any meaning so when you have the leaning and you're ready to fall you have words that can call the words into a book to be read. Not unsaid but out loud to the crowd..to the throng. Is it so wrong to hear words that have love. Sweet Jesus above how could it be when words and their meanings mean so much to me.Do you see where this is leading..down the road of constant reading, with words and what they bring as they sing into today for each and everyone, until the day when words are gone. And that'll be a long time coming.

In outline
brushed strokes so fine
and flyaway hair
is where I want to be
with you,
blinded in blue and through the mastery of imagery
I'd be able to see
more than the artist ever could.
Would you draw inside of me inside of you,two who are blinded in blue?
you can make the man
plan the lines
draw the blinds
and with soft pencils bleed me
into the blinding of you.

She moans in tones I understand and as I moan too we move through floating notes across the scale,
her nails are sharp against my skin,she moans again to let me in and we decide to ride the milky way,
against the night the day sheds tears as we shed wakefulness and any fears we may have entertained.
And it's nothing ventured nothing gained,
I may rule the roost,but over
me
she reigns.

Caption this,
lips
a
kiss
a
loving touch and
how to caption
missing you so very much.

Writing becomes the margin
The annotations,exclamations..
In the corners of my life.

I am stifling in the sutures of some silicone filled future
where the real becomes the fiction and with a predilection for affection.
I search out with some conviction to look for something more.

In the corners of my eyes where constellations live and die..
..and where stars are born and burn
I turn in to inner space
Hoping there I'll find the place
Where this pen that meets the page is divested of its rage
And in the margins once again
Only peace and ink blots will remain.

Books are made to frame these words.
Sturdy things with wire bound spines.
Many times, I have looked within and been taken far away..
..from where I lay..into another world within this world.
In the whirling of narcotic free.
A story.
This is the me.
The light against the night the wrong way round
The day that breaks without a sound and yet remains unbroken
A token that will win no prize
More constellations in my eyes.

Progressively I believe in more and more of my own lies.
And surprisingly..I knew this would occur
This event was written in the margins when I wasn't there
But was read and readily digested as another fiction.
Fact.

Something that I missed..I lacked?
In the margins..life is difficult and to define a future..
..has no future but the snipping of another suture
Binds these wounds and hurts abate.

I would not write against the margin of my fate
Nor relate the pangs of hunger as I take
An empty page again..to sate my rage again.
I must behave again..
..must be brave again.

In and on a dusty manuscript where one more dream was stripped
And one more life was ripped to shreds
I put to bed my haunts.

I watched her as she slept which kept me wide awake and for every breath she took which took my breath away,I wanted to wake her up and say,'how beautiful you look as you lay there fast asleep,but I count another breath and think myself to ten and when my heart begins to slow,I know I'll leave her to her sleep and my imagination screams to keep that picture in my mind.

and now there's only empty space
lonely eyes
haggard face,

mothers ruin in a mug
I take a slug and
though not lead it
smacks me squarely in
the head
which is the
empty space inside
the haggard face.

All this and more and yet not me
not sure and never was
or was it forever meant
if ever to be
and empty space is
Schrodinger's preserve or
so
I'm led to believe.

One day these chains will break
One day I'm going to take
One day
at a time.
And one day I will be free
like the raging of the sea
and on that day
I'll surely see
what these chains
have kept from me.

Inside the back of a cigarette pack where a picture card sat I read about Mafeking and Cathay,
I saw 'Grace' with his bat and 'Miranda's fruit hat,steam ships and trains, which monarchs reigned,butterflies and stars,the age of the cars,airplanes and costumes,fruits and legumes,flowers and trees,birds of paradise which pleased me,pictures which teased me,
and all of this sat in the back of a pack
of cigarettes.

I never relied on the eyes only cried on the shoulders of strangers and a heart only ever takes so much then it breaks and it all falls apart from one single... touch and it's gone, that infinite omen that seeks its own fortune among the wreck of a nation.
One minute to last us a lifetime and one more to build me a fortress, it's a mess in the mind when you can't even find your own thoughts you relied on but the eyes only cry on,
ask Noah or Jonah who drown in the flow of the mountains that melt into streams, ask the generals who fell through the wars that they fought through and ask them who knows, but the answers we look for on the pages of papers escape us.

I am angry at me at what I cannot see at what I do not knit into the futures that sit in the laps.. and at the gods up there, I swear I could nail them all to the cross when I'm cross with myself.

When I sink and I will, when I fill up the bathtub,
When push comes to pull and the bathtub's quite full and the eyes do not cry any more,
the last touch of a madness like the last drops of rain only fall when the evening sweeps the daylight away.

Some sides are better left outside and outside is some side for some,
inside is a side that is sometimes outside but inside or outside it is still the side inside.
I suppose as I often do that you have an inside outside too,
a heart on your sleeve is I believe a practical demonstration of this,
a kiss held within
a breath given out
a word that is swallowed and turns inside to a shout.

But not everything is about the things that we see, things existential, that which we cannot see,
the face is a fabulous affair,
we can see things that appear and do not appear there,
a perception that fosters the deception of mind
I don't mind,
I see what I want to and what you want to show, inside or outside it's the same don't you know

If you are
not an
ocean
do not
make
waves.

The conclusion,
the fusion of everything when everything's melting in one giant ring,when you're hit by the concussion wave of angels who sing, hallelujah,and ask,'who the hell are you?'.

A good question.

In the end we defend what we did or did not and what we get,where we go depends on the remorse that we show,if we go knowing that, it gives us a shot at the moon,
but the end as it will always wills us to go off too soon,
I hear the Angels croon to me,'come to me,accept this as your destiny',but this endless cycle of eternal misery is hypocrisy and not for me,just let me be alone with me and my thoughts.

You have to circumcise me with precision,
don't surprise me
don't close your eyes and tell lies to me,if you cut me I will bleed and I only need you because my religion says,
I must do
well ******* and **** the pope we have been born in a world with no hope and you can't conceive or believe that it's true
that this son born of man is saying, *******,
are we just peripheral to the spherical or can we see through to the satyrs who wax lyrical and do we care?
*******, I'm not there and never was,religion tells me it's because I was unclean,
well
dream on genie and call me Fred Astaire,I've told you before that I am not there and now it's you that doesn't care,
well stick the knife in and let's be fair and cut my ******* so you can wear it on a chain and
pull me towards you
oh what pain,
but you'll enjoy making the boy in me
cry for you.

I wonder what died yesterday
what was forced from this life
because it couldn't pay,
what say you
do you know?

I go through the papers
one letter, one word, one sentence
one line,
one page at a time, but
no reports of a death.

So I breathe again,
tomorrow
I'll wonder what died
yesterday, but
today is for the
living.

I'm getting old and I am falling to bits
think I'll give up the ghost
and just call it quits.

It's alright for you,
You're all so young
and so very vibrant
but I am reliant on doctors and pills
and every day I go on just brings me more ills.

The Priest Calls...

..and tells me,
'that life is but a distraction
and afterwards the real action begins
Repent of your sins'
Oh Christ
I don't want to hear that no more
I show him the door.

I try to shuffle around
but I admit it at last I am almost bedbound.

The Lady Calls...

..I let her in
another repentable sin?
but she just looks and she laughs
and says,
'the only thing you'll get in that bed is bedbaths'
I don't need to show her the door
she's there before
I even know it.

Yes,
getting old is the pits
are you also thinking of calling it quits?

Life is a fight
nature fights for the light
we are all blind in the night
and none more than me.
I can see I'll go on 'til the day's finally gone
but nothing tastes good any more
I wonder who let my taste buds out the door.

The Devil Knocks..

..and that shocks me awake
but I never really sleep
got to keep my eye on the green line.
Beep.Beep.Beep
the monitor doesn't allow me to sleep
but 'Old Nick makes me sick
he's even older than me
why would I want to be one of his acolytes?
they're just little shites.
I show him the door
and he roars into flames
feckin showoff.

In a grain of sand
where timelessness and all time would stand
linked
in a semi permanent embrace
for we would be not of an age, to watch as grains build up the Cities, where our children's children would face another mountain that crumbles away
to be washed out to sea and one more day
we,
cannot comprehend another grain that would end in an ocean of sand by the shore
is this what it's for?
the eternal rebuild
the world to be filled with the scents of the past that have passed through the sea and then built up again
so we can see and be the futility of what is not timeless
where time means no less than the time that we take
to make offerings to urchins
and...
..I perch on my post outside the temple of another most holy one
and watch as citadels rise
and watch again as in a blink of a terrapins eye they are gone
and where do I belong
in the ocean,the sea or on land?
in one of a three and in all, I am but a grain of sand
timeless and not,
broken to rot away in one more day
but not the same as the last that has past and passed the point of a no return
to burn in a desert
or to become and be made into an obelisk
a risk assessors nightmare
where
at each turn of his hand it turns back into sand
and again to the sea
to the mountain, to me
and in time it will be
a place where all children play.

Not in our day
we stand as we stand
or we sit on the sand
and are all washed away
in granular form, born and reborn as the tides take their time
and one day
one
day it will come that the sign on the beach reads
'Minefield
danger to life and limb
entry forbidden do not enter in'
but what is seen is not hidden away
and the grains have a way of ignoring what's written
smitten with time
another sign reads
'ignore what you read it's only put out to feed your dreams'
and everything seems as it should
in the timelessness that isn't,
isn't it all so very good?

Shapes in the landscape and kisses left on window panes ,
stains on the bed sheets and all of these meet in the end.
Most of the time
I live far below the waterline where the air is strung out in bubbling lungs,occasionally climbing the rungs to the surface.
I have seen all that I need and fed lightly on greed,watched the passing of wars, saw raw hatred and love cooked in the hearts of desire.
I now have the tranquility of being deep undersea,the wall of the artery is built within me and my home.
And even deeper where the sleeping dogs lie there is a light that dances,flashing glances I see that the light also sees me which is something I strive for,something to stay alive for.
But the ocean is a turbulent place for the man with no face and the waves conspire to put out the fire that burns,each wave takes it in turns to pummel and pound the watery ground where I stand,not knowing that I am the rock that this man stands upon,we are one and the same,
I am the kiss that smudges,the stain that refuses to budge,the shape that you see,the blood that flows hotly through the heat of the artery.
I am the heart in me,I beat against time and time beats inside me,under the sea
it's all it can be
I expect no more than that.

I walk and can hear the glass crunching
it's like snow on the Screen when in the old days of the Queen it was all black and six two five lines white,
at least I think those figures are right, but I was only eight, stayed up 'til nine, read books under the blankets and read out the time by the light of my torch, tried a magic lantern once, but the pictures ruined the story for me.

So the numbers never had a chance of adding up to five or fifty five or anything really
my hands were tied by the binding on the books I read, I couldn't make head nor tail of reality, it was all one big adventure to me unless it was a romance novel which I turned to now and again when the pain of whatever it was bothered me and sometimes I just went for that long walk, took a longer time, too much Rip Van Winkle wine and woke before bed and time to read again,
eight is a fabulous age to discover
a new page in an
old book.

They take it in turns
multiplying like germs,
ideas wreaking havoc between
my two ears.

If there be a vaccination to relieve
this situation,
let me know.

Ideas grow
and like dynamite they blow
the world apart.

But
between these two big ears is
another world of hope that's
filled with fears and the germs
accumulate, they never want to
cooperate
leaving me in such a state that
all I want to do
is sleep.

Like a clown that drowns in the echo of laughter after the show is done,
I run through the programme always looking behind,
expecting to find something I cannot see,
but that's me.
hoping I'll cope with the ketchup of history which is listed in the programme under subsection 3b.
I always felt in two places,hence the belt and the braces,never sure of myself, wherever I went I spent time looking around,testing the ground,making excuses,checking the exits,expecting the sluice gates to open and flush me out,push me out to where history exposes the truth in the posing and posturing.
At times it is comforting to hear the mad laughter knowing that what will come after is the silence,this may be the penance I have to endure, to be in the asylum knowing there is a cure,
to drown like the clown
still unable to see,
ketchup on the pages of
my history.

Life,
at various stages I have raced through its torn pages and stripped off in the margins for reasons unclear.

No nearer now than I was way back then to the finishing line.

Never knowing the plot
never knowing a lot
I think the author has got
severe problems.