We danced across the roof of the sky,
with the lightning flashing by
we laughed and held each other tight.
It was just another night in Monterey.

And dashing from one bolt to the next one
the dance carried on 'til the break of day,
when we set aside the morning light.
Then held each other tight once more,
stepped up to the door of dawn
and opened wide the seals.
This ,
the reason why we're born to dance with thunder
and split apart
the gentleness of the aching heart.
To
step inside the eagerness of why we hide
and slide down rainbows,
twinkling toes and stars that shine are yours ,
be mine.

Time slips down along with rain
and what hurt once,does so no longer
and while the storm we carry gets much stronger
we become
serene,
moving,dancing in our dream
and amid the streams of crashing life that smash upon the shore
we open once again the door
and are born once more into the
dance we make.

In this sunshine
there are
as always the impoverished who strike out with careless hands for alms, dark of complexion and with faces crossed by the lines of their passing years.

The young one sits by the cathedral on the third step
perhaps tomorrow she will move a step closer, but for now, she rattles a tin, a few coins grumble noisily.

The sound of a mercy?

Even here in the most beautiful of places, there must be sadness and this is the balance of things.

A suited (albeit crumpled and old) gentleman sits by the gates of the museum and sings softly,
I listen to the music in his eyes and drop some coin into the cap so casually placed at his side.

And walking through these streets there are memories I make to bring home and taste of later.

Bustle
as the city lives
and in each
the dream
gives
new life.

Who walks with spirits of those who walked before walks with a measured pace.

I am too quick at times to notice anything but the footsteps.

I leave my shadow in these ancient alleyways,
a place to return to and renew friendships.

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.

Time grins awkwardly at me,can't see the joke
but only time can see the smoke that leaks out through the backs of old cracked hands,that hold the stubs of cigarettes as if letting go,will let time know the end has come,
for some it will as minutes climb up on the hill of hours past.
Only second chances last and are written on the dials,posted tightly into files and filed away.
Then the day filters slowly away into the flittering, skittering shadows that we fear.
The heart beats faster as it slows and only time knows why,
Time drags feet and then it flies
never dies
lives forever
severs links
never thinks but
time links us all.

So we are taught that the need for greed is greater than the need for nothing at all
and nothing at all is what kite flyers get when they let go of the string,
it's a hollow thing
when your stomach rings out the hour on the hour
and your power of locomotion was left in the pawn shop
the one stop
to top up your wallet or purse
could be worse
that packet of peas in the kitchen will please as you check book recipes for a pea dinner
on a winner or not
the day's still quite hot
so you save on the heating
you also save on the eating when you find that the mice have eaten all the peas
mice do just as they please.

I wish I was a mouse
paying no rent for my house
and eating dried peas.

So the scene's being set for a bet on the horses
the bingo's a no go
because the callers a know it all and he caught you cheating
that's why you would have been eating peas
if the mice hadn't of beaten you to the kitchen
do you
understand that the balance of probability is out of your hands
as you hand in your wager
to the girl at the counter and she counts out your winnings
and you think that it's cricket and go in for one more innings and lose the whole wedge
We're on the edge and we're tipping as the whole world starts ripping us apart.

The event horizon
dies on my lips.
The outside of me slips within.

At the edge of a reasoning
this thing that would bring me
to an alternate state
cannot wait and it swallows.
My cheeks become hollows as I **** myself in
and the event shall begin with
a flashing of lights.

When the night turns to spin and the angels pin their hopes
against the twisting of the corner ropes
and the bells do not chime against the rushing of time that races past in glee.
I can see me in a negative
A picture I would give this life for
More and more the night gyrates,waits and then it rushes on
into an inner halcyon
long bygone.

In the end there is no end
no beginning
no point in space in which to face the past.
Held fast the faster that I go
a blurring in a fiery glow and eventually I will finally know
that which was hidden behind the lies.
Then my eyes will rest easily upon
the other side of
event
horizon.

Tell me this,
how nice is paradise
is everything free
or is it cut price
Is it Harrods or a Tesco?
That's what I'd like to know.

Do you sit do you sing
do you do anything
or do you just float in the air
are there many up there?

can you fall in love
or is it just him up above you adore
what do you wear?
I care to know.

One day I'll go and give it a shot
will you forget me not?
in the gardens of Eden we'll meet
parting is not sweet
just bitter.

Empty eyes,cap in hand,watch them stand.
The pride and joy of our great nation bumming coins outside St.Pancras railway station,boy 'if they could see me now'how the other half survive,turned up collars,downcast eyes and if you see them too,tell me please,what do you do,'walk on by' pass some time,give a dollar,throw a dime?
In the dockyard,broken down but once the busiest place in town sits Tony Green and he has seen years come and go,could tell your fortune from your palm and yet he's blind to his own fate,so he'll wait until the soup run comes and walk slowly with the other outcast tramps and bums,some who've had such different days and now like the docks are in decay and this is pride,the British way.

If it's true we live and learn and yet don't concern ourselves with others,sisters,brothers on their uppers,
what does that make us become?

The Bishop on the radio
playing solo to an audience he cannot see
makes me
think of loneliness.
Perhaps his Holiness the Pope can keep me company
with the radio and the BBC.

This Bishop's drooling blood and guts,
damnation and hellfire
Jeez,
I'm glad that I'm not in the choir.

I find religion is like a game of chess
move a pawn and get reborn
Blessed are the knights and those other things
which turn out to be the Queens that run rings around the Kings.
Which again in turn brings me back
to the Bishop
care of Radio Shack.

Yes.
Sunday being a day of rest and recuperation
is the day we atone for the sins
of the nation.
I get down on my knees and pray,
Say dear Lord
don't punish me for being so bored with this
there's only so much bliss a man can take
please make the sermon stop.

The Bishop on the radio will never know I heard him speak
and no doubt next week he'll speak again
of eternal pain and such.
I touch the good book by my bed
and switch off the radio.
I think he's said
enough.

On the chair she sits and pits her wits against mine.
I love her,
she wins easily.
I love her,
every time.

A tunnel to France,
what for,
to find some romance?
fat chance.

There'll be trouble and big
if the silly sods dig
a trench
to meet
the French
head on.

Tails I lose.

... of course the side effects have some effect,
slang terms in a dialect,
being near with one defect,
perfect.
it kills me with its monotony
a gluttony of verbose,
such grandiose schemes
lost in daydreams and
of course the
side effects kick in like
oil I slip in and spread out
rainbow style.

Out of shape
I bend slowly
into an old
man.

You bought the Express,
I wanted the Sun
you wanted it your way
I wanted a gun.
It's no fun any more
since the day
'the mother in law'
stepped through the front door and started laying down the law.

I really try to get along with her
but I can't see her being fair
she wants things done and doing right
I should have run away last night
but she caught me opening the bedroom door and laid me down a lot more law,smacked me in the face and now I'm sore
can't take this misery
what more can I do.
Nor can I tell if this is a living hell or hell among the living,
well she'll have to go
she'll have to know that she's not sharing any of her uncaring here
I am not going to live in fear any more.
Is that the door?
Oh god she's back and I haven't done the breakfast dishes
if anyone has two free wishes
lend me one
and if wishes really work at all
tomorrow she'll be gone.

She's cool but hot and got the lot,sophistication,determination,she gets what she wants and gets it all.
She's tall and slim,sharp as a pin,I can't fool her and wouldn't dare,but sometimes when she's unaware,
I pull a funny face at her and laugh inside just like a child.
She makes me wanton
She is wild, especially if she gets riled,she makes me smile,she makes me sing and
she makes me
everything.

And then there was slow,
the falling of dandruff like snow and it's tough,I am
taking the rough with the smooth or taking a ticket for the suicide booth,can't decide if I should get the return trip or just ride.
And then there was slow,
it's like you know where you're at but don't know where to go,so
you put on a show and it folds the first night,
bankrupted,disgusted,
you walk,
talking with crows in the slow.

The half smoked cheroot you dropped and trampled underfoot
was like the
time you stopped and walked all over me
or was it time that stopped?
was it I that dropped
off the climbing frame and cut my leg?
and begged you not to go but you went anyway
and we didn't play together any more.

Then twenty years on when the pain of you was still as fresh as if someone had painted it in everlast and we all know those things that shouldn't last but some do.
that was how and when time flew
I followed you again as if back on the climbing frame and aching for a cut or two
you
just smoked a pack and blew the smoke in curling blue
and with the picture cards that posted on the books we knew
we played that childish trick or treat
you tricked
and I never got the treat
but if I meet you twenty years from now
I know that I will find somehow
the match to light your cigarette
the flame to make you want to get
another climb
two children in the frame.

Even the daylight feels heavy on me and the clouds have conspired to cast weights on me, the sky is a slate grey and this is the way of it.

I need the safety of steel bars surrounding me so the people can stand and look in on me,
I hope that they don't try to set me free because
the burden I carry is too much for me.

There is lightness somewhere and it falls on me
in unfortunate blindness,
I cannot see,
so I fall on my knees and I make a plea
to the Lord of the heavens,
he don't hear me.

When days like this come along in tandem
I cry like a man and then whine​ some, but
my tears are acidic and
only make me feel more sick,
if only the weight didn't weigh on me.

I am happy,
I am
and I know it
even when I know and
can't show it,
but the weight that hangs on me
drags me down and
points only to misery.

I wonder if there is a feelgood factory
and could I be factored in
by some chemistry?
if so
would they bother to take the time
to takes these weights off
of mine before I'm dragged
deeper into this feeling
of misery.

I wrote it
rehearsed it
performed it
I owned it.

The spotlight, hit me just right and casting my gaze through the haze of blue smoke which rose from the cigar smoking crowd,
I announced quite loudly,my name
and my game was to be a night full of poetry,
if they had the time for it
I had the rhyme to hit them head on.
and then I was gone,
full on in a twister
a blistering piece about pulsating quasars,black holes and lasers,wrists cut with razors in the dead of the night,
I had them alright
there was a silence that stunned them,then I shot them with love songs,short rhymes but long lines,
then before they recovered and came to their senses,a poem followed on about the pretence that men favour
and the flavour of lies that lick off the tongue,another twelve bored out shotgun and a run in with death that undressed them,slightly depressed them,
and a funny rhyme about Harry Lime which the older ones got and the young ones did not.

Taking a ten second break to await the applause,I cut it off short,got caught in another rose,a tinctured vial full of prose,elastic and bending,sending this crew into waves of delight,
it was late night in Wigan or it may have been Crewe,I wasn't so sure but the audience knew and I didn't care there was lots more to get through,and the words partied out,spread about the seated like spice heated so hot, it would burn them, or it would not,
another shot from the stage,the rage of a victim on Jeremy Kyle,held out in my words,another funny one,make them smile,they never forget that,
they may forget me
but they'll remember my poetry.

Another ship sinks.

So
drinks to the helmsman who knew only too well
and sailed us all off to end up in this hell.
and the Captain turns to the crew
who were blue with the cold that was coloured by the sea
and with a voice we could not only hear but could see
said,
'drink up your *** boys and don't look so glum boys
your sails will be filled up tonight
with delights from the mermaids who've laid on a party so drink up your *** lads and be hale and hearty
and the devil takes care of his own'

John Lee came home at ten to three and kissed his wife so easily and had some tea.
But Mr's Lee had other plans involving paint and lots of cans
oh dear me.
Stripping walls in halls and pasting paper was not the kind of weekend caper that would float his boat.
He grabbed his hat,put on his coat and in the farewell note he wrote,
a single line,
'next time you plan to decorate, my darling, better not to wait 'til Friday night,
a man's a right to relaxation without the need for decoration, just paint it white'
Mr's Lee was sad that he had gone but she knew that life would go on and so it went,
her time was spent in knitting mags and smoking endless cork tipped ****,
oh what a loss.
But she knew that she'd find one day a man that would quite clearly say,
'dear,
you're the boss'

In the private hostel
and
a tiny bit of gospel
because we still have to
sing for our supper.

They still try to sell you
on things that they tell you
and we listen and
pretend we believe.

I saw Satan in the soup dish
and an angel in the cake,
fourteen knights and old King Arthur
who were
standing by the lake

I take communion with the lady
in the shower meant for men
and a mass for me at midnight
when the lady comes again.

We are eighteen carat diamonds
Methuselah wears us well
and we're in the private hostel
halfway home
half way to hell.

As modern as day is to night,
why don't we shout out,
'bring back Bakelite.'
It's a wonderful thing,it
makes records that sing and
radios that play those.

While we're about it
bring back
the Milkman,the jerry can,
the men that pan gold,
the youth to the old.

As modern as day is to night
bring back my hindsight
it might not be right but
it would be good.

(20 minute poetry)

Popeyed
I look at the goil with the olive complexion
and the ink drips like oil from the well of my fountain
pen.

It was always the goil that Bluto desired as Wimpy ate burgers
looking awfully tired.

Though Popeyed I tried
to make Bluto see
that the goil in question
was the goil for me.

Lliving a cartoon is like life on the moon where there's no air to breathe, but being here where the atmosphere is rare unlike the burgers that Wimpy won't share
is fine.

The goil is mine and if I eats my spinach there will come a time
when I knock
Bluto out.

(It always sounds like goil to me when Popeye says it.

It was a sixpenny slot
which wasn't that much,
but when that's all you've got
it was.

twenty shots to *** twenty ducks
and you'd get your sixpence back,
quack ****** quack
never once got it back
and I always walked home,

that should have taught me something
about something, but when you're ten
you can't know anything about something
or I never thought so.

A slowcoach cockroach ambled past me
what an indignity
for me to see.
If I am slower than a cockroach goer
I might as well.
give up

We all know that
sometimes we have to let go.
A case of,
'press and release to win some peace'
it becomes pointless to hold on to what's gone,a feeling so dull almost like
bottling sunbeams once they have shone and finding those beams do not shine quite so bright,will not light up the darkness if you stay in the night,
we have to let go,have to let yesterday flow with the ebb of the tide,inside the minds of some men there's a pen that writes queries,writing the forehead with lines,
the weary should know if they'll only let go they will find the blotter to mop up the ink,there's a link between here ,now and then, it's how you perceive it and when you believe it you'll know
that
sometimes we have to let go.

Underneath the spotlessly clean and polished antique teak deck
Lies the engine room
and it is a wreck
a bit like me.
Look under the wrappings and that's what you'll see
a body that once looked like something like me.

Life's engineer has not been anywhere near
since last year
or the year before that
my batteries are flat and I'm wasting away
sailing a ghost ship
and what do you say?
"it'll be alright
you'll be okay
today is the day you will shine like the deck"

Well
break a leg
break your neck
but the deck isn't me
it's just an image portrayed
of what I'd like to be.

On an orange box wearing bright blue socks
can you see
The madness of me?
I just want to be left alone
to my own devices
The spices of life can be mine
if you just give me time
if you just let me be
let me clean up the engine room and then I can see
what I'm doing.

Nothing is ever just black or white,day or night, dark or light it's always someplace in between.Something that you may have seen
you don't know what or when or where but something that you knew was there,
words unspoken,a promise broken,you know it,
I know it's just a bit of the puzzle we puzzle over,the wool we pull over our eyes,the lies that we tell to tell to ourselves that all will be well
but we are not and never will be until we set our eyes free in order to see what is there,
and in between things is where things do occur,
things you would swear you had seen but have not.

In between has got
substance,
it vibrates in rhythms that escalate, yet you hesitate and do not hear the secrets that are whispered in your ear,
and do not see or feel what is and could be there,in between,not often seen or felt or heard and words are cheap.
keep the shutters on your eyes,spread them thinly on the lies that lie obscene for I have seen the in between,
between the fat and lean and I have
known well Jack Spratt's Queen within the nursery rhymes between the in between of fabled lines and
there are times
I wish I did not know a thing.

You toss a coin
or turn a card
anyway you throw the dice
you know that life is hard
so you want to take it easy in some nice bijou apartment
but you know that 'heaven sent'
is just a figment of imagination.
Creation's just a spirograph
it makes you cry
it makes you laugh
and in the end
someone will send an 'etch a sketch' to wipe you clean.

So fetch your dream ******* in bows
tie it to the arrows of the discontent
let them fly off to our parliament
and then forget,
that we were once the future that was told
but now we're old
we are expendable.

A bit skint,
so,
I thought a 3D printer could print me some dosh,
now I'm under the cosh and
heading for clink,
you wouldn't think it was right,
I might see if a 3d printer can
print for me
a file in a cake,
but it's got to be fake or
I'd
print for me
a sunny sea and golden sands,
in the hands of man a 3D printer can
be dangerous.

I had her heart in my hand
but she held my breath in her wonderland
attractivated she motormated me
and magnet-ied  my eyes
laser beamed with just one goal
that
touch me,please me,feely feely
Really it was very nice
an understatement
even if said twice.

I saw some distant planetary system
when she kissed me and I wished then on a star
which fell
and far from being here
she had taken me out there
to share with me
her luminosity.

How could it last
the fires that burn so bright
still cast shadows on the wall of my desire
but she took me high above
all thoughts of love had taken leave
I believe she was angel or a demon
but she led this man into
her Queendom
and when done with me
she loosed me like a cannon ball
which is an entirely different kind of wall
like an illusion
a colliding of materials
in colour sorted serial codes.

If it bodes well
I'll find she came from heaven and not from hell
but at the moment I can't tell
and to tell the truth
It doesn't worry me.

These young kids
look for but don't get it
thinking
Netflix,
boosting
kicks from butane,
got no patination
not old enough

but the last generation
seen it and
deem it
reprehensible
that secondary modern education
fails them because now they
think they're sensible

brawling on Friday night
crawling home
Saturday morning, they
have razors to shave with
high street banks they
can save with
but nothing to give them a clue.

I'm through with this ****
old enough now to sit out my days
in a tobacco filled haze and
gaze at nights full of stardust
because
somebody must
before it all disappears.

Cats stuck to window sills as languid as the rolling hills and craggy like the rocky tors
sheep sleeping underneath a portcullis of a sky
as steel grey clouds disguised as prison bars soothe
them gently with the Lakeland lullaby

I saw no Viking
but I did see hikers by the score
up the scree
scrambling up the tor

being me,
I wondered
what you doing that for?

Boats across the lake
too much
Kendal mint cake
and your jaws ache
take the Lilliputian train
we're toddlers
toddling off again

Such fun.

Shut out
cut out
put up
fed up
kicked in
locked in
I've been there and back
attacked
smacked
slapped down got up
but shot up
I went down again and it's not the same.
I'm older now
can't be bothered any more.
Kick the door in
stick the knife in
anyway
you're going to win
and the end..

Well
the end has already been and gone
it didn't leave a calling card
life's so hard
and then you die
or if you don't
you wish you had
sometimes it feels like it's all bad.

With my back against the wall
and so very high up
I could fall
forget it all.
In a rush of passing air
in a moment I'm not there
do you really want to share the pain
and anyway it's not the same.

Solo was the game I played
and solo I have stayed
should not have strayed
mistakes I've made
laid it on the line and now the time is here.
nothing like a bit of fear to make your stomach growl
nothing like a drowning man to make your neighbours howl in fright
tonight
tonight
tomorrow night
I take my flight
will you be there to watch the show?
watch me go
see me fly?
watch me go
watch me go.
In the echoing
In and at the final reckoning
when two and two add up to so much more than four
And anything I ever knew
I know no more.
Will I be sure that I was right
tonight
tonight
or any night
I wonder.

I chance to pick up a pen and scribble
the end of the World again.

The lunar eclipse?
just one more of
this Government's tricks.

Make no mistake about this
the next asteroid
is not going to miss.

I chance to pick up a pen which
always happens when the
World ends again.

We wrote our hearts in permalink
and etched the light into our eyes
and in the ink that never fades away
we lettered each and every day.
In peppered nights with parasol
where in the heat that spiced the hands and touched the soul
we founded dynasties
and finished mysteries
then slept like dogs among the charcoaled logs of past desire
but woke to another more intense and spent a little of the fire before the coming day.
and was it thus this way?
Did I really write all night
did she come to me all dressed in white with hunger on her lips
did I rip the pen away and leave the page unwritten and unread
were those words she said meant for me
and could she, could she not see excitement on this parchment where the ink was legible?
to be honest it was hard for me to tell
and in the telling it gets no easier for me to see.
The ink is in the permalink, the permanence and what substance that there could be
in this the mystery
in this the she, and she is this and this I see?
simply put
but strangely said
again we stammer off to bed in hesitance another permanence
but that is good
and that is too and both of us know what to do.
The pen is light upon her page
and the stage is set
we get another taste and tuck into the chapter one with other chapters more to come
and with the wetness of a passing storm
both her and I are born.

I didn't know
and
I told her so,
she asked again
I replied
the same.

Where do we go when we die?
she asked,
well,
obviously beyond the sky where
angels fly and cherubs sing
and everything you ever wanted
will be waiting for you,

is that true? she asked,
would I lie to you?
I replied,
she seemed satisfied
and went back to sleep.

I carry an envelope
half full of emptiness
empty of hope
addressed to someone who
might understand
someone in Paraguay or
Nyasaland?

A second class stamp
because
I can't afford any more.

A swiss army knife for a wife,
sharp.

There is hope by the score,
expensive though
at the second hand store
I wait in vain
in pain
for someone to say
Je t'aime

(which means love in French I think, but
she can be Irish or anything
just something)
(ps it might mean something else in French, but it has a nice ring to the sound when I say it out loud so I hope it means love)

One day this envelope will flake away
before that day
my day
our day
will get in the way.

In the gallery of statues
men with granite eyes
think granite thoughts
on marble floors.

When you're heading into the unfathomable deep
it's hard to keep a perspective view.

There's a hole in my shoe dear Liza,
but
you've got me mending the bucket.

The old songs stand the tests of time
I sit and take mine.

It's a malfunction we're not "up the junction" we are on the right track and if you've got my back and I've got yours, we will both be in trouble from
her sat indoors.
she can scold until your blood runs cold,you will rue the day that you hear her say,"what's going on here?"
Learn to fear her,don't go near her,for me it's too late,we had a date with a shotgun,I tried to run from the registrar but didn't get very far,her father was waiting,short fused with a rifle
and though he didn't choose me,she did and that's no trifle to trifle with.
She is possessive,aggressive and doesn't like any of my friends and you know how it ends when she calls out to say,
friends should know when to go and know when not to stay,it's the way and I know it,if I have a gripe she says,stow it, and I must toe the line
hmm
but I'm glad that I'm hers and she's mine, it makes the time we have together fine and we can weather any storm that could appear,
but you must
fear her.

When the pack ice closes in and the evening ends only to begin,there comes a point when you realise
you cannot win.
The world will spin but you do not because you're rooted to the spot and you haven't got a clue,you don't know what to do and so you freeze.
The morning breeze unfreezes you but still you don't know what to do and you shiver in the early air wishing you were anywhere but here,
and the fear you feel is just as real as shadows that you cast,though you know deep down that fear like shadows fades away and does not,cannot last.
The summer comes,that evening goes but you felt the melt of snow along your spine
so you sit and wait 'til it gets quite late and you do it all the time,but time is moving on and you're still rooted to the spot,still without a clue,still do not know what to do and really there's no helping someone who's closed off like you.
The ice holds tight
for some the night will never end and some will never lend their eyes to gaze upon the clear blue...
lights and skies and butterflies and I have wandered through the why's and wherefore's
stored multitudes of memory in the rack,been there and back and still the ice pack closes in,
this spin of mine ,this start and stop and waste of time,this snow that melts along my spine,
in the shallows of my mind I dine alone.

(20 minute poetry)


What a depressing looking day
dull and damp and more rain on the way,
what a depressing day.

Feels like I'm walking through the cemetery in the middle of a night and the night or the cemetery is me.  

Going back to bed looks a better bet and it'll save me from getting wet, but who'll save me from myself?

What a depressing looking day and the powers that be, will in their wisdom make it last twenty four hours especially for me,

am I being a misery?

This shadow will rise if I open my eyes and to be honest that's what I must do.


Blue
electric
wired or not
I plugged into the day
and that's what I've got.


This tube's a torpedo
running.

and somewhere the Kapitan
is sunning himself
ready to explode.

bites the bullet and writes this note.

( this kind of mood leads only to the Coliseum where the lions are waiting )

Rinse and repeat
Rinse and repeat
this thing's got me beat
rinse and repeat.


No matter how many times,
the stains still remain,
the washing machine,
the rinse and repeat
is to blame.

Powder and bleach
they do not reach
they cannot teach
the soul
to be clean.

Rinse and repeat
Rinse and repeat
these
repetitions will beat me
to death.

(20 minute poetry)

Never more sure
than this,
a kiss.

Start if you mean to go on
don't bleed me and leave me.

If all's fair in love and in war
give me more.

In the tenement
they give the last sacrament
to the old city gent,
a testament to the living  
and to faith.


Knowing I'm going somewhere
be it straight
be it narrow
I fly like an arrow through
the thinness of air,
starting when I know
I'll get there.

Travelling light through
the night holds no terrors,
it's not like I'm looking
in mirrors.

And it's Friday
that's a good sign,
another week over and
the weekend to cling to
brings the week to
a satisfactory conclusion.

It would be easy to submit
to admit that total failure,
and the cesspit smells so sweet
when you're beat.
But if you beat the blues you win,when you
lose the frown begin to grin and
spin the wheel again.

We're all a little bit roulette
spinning round until we get the
back to front and back attack and yet we lap it up
and when your cup does overflow
where do you go?
back to roulette ,I bet.
The alpha set,the wire net,we're all caught and one day we'll get a double zero, go and catch a super hero,
we all need one of them.
I am not now nor have I ever been a perfect ten,I am the tarnished score and the music in me wants some more of what it is that I require and I want it now lest I retire and fade into the wallpaper.
If life's a caper then I'm the apron that the butcher wore,stained by blood and guts and gore,no wonder then that I should want much more,
or is that being greedy?

Someone is peeling the skin off the sky
the baked sun has begun its scratching.
I am hatching a plan to escape if I can
and to bathe in the sea
the scratching of skin never bothers me
if it's flaky and dry.
I want fins,want to swim to the end of all time
I need to find out what's there,what people would dare to reside
at the end of the tides,at the turn when times bides its time.

When the weather is fine and I'm feeling spot on
I feel I belong to the cosmos
because I melt into light where night never creeps through but with fins I could do
so much more.
I could bow and dip down to the ocean floor
I could knock on the door which Davy Jones locks
with a shock of blond hair waving here,waving there,I could meet up with Poseidon,try on a trident for size
I could open my eyes and could breathe underwater,could sort out the pearls from the shysters,those oysters that dive and make jewels out of grit where they sit and they filter.

I have built this dream from vanilla ice cream and am slowly licking it away
a cornet they say
plays a very nice tune
and Neptune agrees
as I float in the seas of the shore of no more and the sharks mill around as if they're knitting the sound of my death on their breath
which by the way stinks of fish.

My wish and I wish it comes true
is to sink into a heavenly bed
and to sink in it with you where the truth always lies
and the someone who peels all the skin off the skies
dies into the day
If I had my way
my wish would be your wishing too.

Last night she came into my bed
in the dead hours before the light snook into my eyes and through the shadows lined up like labourers on the walls in my head.
She woke me into another dream I'd had some years before and as I stuttered to form the words to speak to her,
she shared with me,
a picture,some melody I remembered vaguely
which though nice was rather sad.

Quite glad that being well prepared for these invasions of the night, I had snared a little spot,not too cold,not too hot and we could tot up what we got up too, as morning grew into the day it would become.

It's like I won some inter-universal game of chance,first prize,last chance of romance and I have glanced quickly through the rules,
as fool as I am,not sure how to be a man and anyway I never knew what the plan would be
or if entering this game of chance was free or would there be a fee to pay.
She took my mind away from thoughts like this and in that first kiss when my body being in overdrive felt like I'd arrive before I'd even left
she put me back to idle speed
and now in idling how I need her more to stamp the accelerator to the floor and race me on to that place where all doubts have gone and we will get there
in time to share cakes and teas and
indulge ourself in pleasantries.

Tonight I need her to come again
to come with me upon the dead hour train that speeds through lifetimes,through those windowed pains that although washed and cleaned have dreamed of sordid sights in more sordid nights and now
and now
the train of thought has stopped
this malady crops up from time to time
and I say that 'my memory's fine'
but then I would.
I want my caller in the night to think that I'm so good and not affected by that infection,age
she might
not notice line and wrinkles that twinkle in the star or moonlight
or she might.
I make light of this and wait for more,just one kiss more
one kiss I guess is more than less
one kiss
and then I sleep.

When this evening ends and sends us both off to sleep
will you keep me close by your heart
will the start of the night
become part of the rite
of two lovers who dream
in dreams of a day when they both live to say
I love you and you too and do you think it's alright when we sleep in the night if we turn off the light and light the flames of our hearts and that's how it starts
and how it ends
when the night sends us both off to sleep.

If you're going to bow
kowtow to the ***** in this ocean that is life,
you'd better get a snorkel tube and lubricate your nether parts,
broken promises and the hearts that drown of those that bow down just float away,
if you're going to stay
stay tall
tread lightly
don't fall,
we all break and at times we all take a hit,
just keep shoveling the **** away,
if you're going to stay.

It's greener somewhere and the ocean's air is a soothing balm and the storms subside and it all seems calm,
somewhere
we'll get there
if we keep
paddling.