Still waters run deep
But sometimes a puddle's
Just a puddle

Is it the crack and report
As the hammer strikes true?
Or the spilt second scrape
Down the barrel ?
The discharge of gas
As the slug rips past?
Through the displacement o air
it does burrow
Is it the PEYANG! PATOU! Richocet
Of an old cowboy movie?
Or the acts of the Manson's
They thought that **** groovy?
Is it the swish as it grazes
A candidates ear?
Or the whimper of a victim
Rigid with fear?

Some days you feel good
Some of em are bad
At some point
There'll be two days
The best and worst
You ever had
Maybe they have
Been and gone
Perhaps they lie round the bend
Or you had one but not the other
No signs portend
But don't mull on it
It's not chapter and verse
Just compose a new mantra
Things can always get worse.

The boy stood on the burning deck
Cowered in the terrible light
A warmth below he felt
Cos in his kecks
He'd  *****.

Nom de Guerre
Nom de plume
You and your mystery
Revealed
Not soon
Name the time
Name the place
Draw a line in the sand
Punch yourself in the face
Name your price
Name your shame
Name the things that you did
To cause all that pain
Name your kids
Name your dog
Name yourself
Yet again
As you sit in the fog.

The ancient Egyptian elites
Took an army o dolls to the west
Each had a role
To fulfill after the rest
And then life beyond
What was known
Each defined by a spell
The master never alone
Free to enjoy his boat o millions o years
While the Shabti labour
And absorb
All his cares.

He was that drunk
He was reciting
Gilgamesh
In the original Sumerian
And the declaration o independence
Backwards
Like some
Autistic barbarian
Sloshing *****
On those around
A blessing
According to him
Baptism o scotch
saw his lecture begin
Which went on for time
And covered some ground
Revealed great truths
But I can't remember them now.

The way Bertha is described
She more woman
Than I could handle
You'll get more than
A Silent Echo
When you yodel
In that canyon.

Like life before instant gravy
I couldn't think of existence without you
Our meat juices comingled
Such a sweet and salty stew
But then the sauce had all dried up
Nevermore to play the love sick pup
Forgot the golden rule
Didn't give
Deffo on the take
So now I watch you
From a distance
Like a cartoon bulldog
Looks at
An uncooked steak.

What ever happened to flashers?
You don't seem to hear about em anymore
maybe the amount free online depravity
Is enough to keep the filthy **** offs indoors
But surely the act itself
Cannot be restrained for long
It's that compulsion
That drives them
In open air
To swing
Their
****.

What if there's an afterlife
For your energy
But not your consciousness  ?
Some part gets repurposed
Just not the part you guessed
The given of the hereafter
Is that you will be there
Some eternity felt in Devine ecstasy
Else endless strafed despair
Imagine being a suicide bomber
Happy to go beyond
And just before you press the button
The universe shows you you're  wrong
That you will not be rewarded
With what you think you'll get
You'll just be floating with the others
No joy and no regret.

Got arseholed and lost in Glasgow
Wandered off into the hills
Eons passed it seemed in stasis
Ended up in the Bootes void
Came to with a start
As I floated inside of eternity
Took me ages to get a cab
Then I woke in Central station
Laided out on a bench
In the lap of some fella
Called Rabb.

Once there was nothing
But nothing
Wasent having that
It wanted to be something
Something other than nothing
Yet there was nothing
And that should have been the end of that
Then there was something
So nothing must have worked it out.

Here comes the chosen one
Back for another go
The disc beard man
Has laid them low
So he had to depart

For Canaan calls them home
A new land by the water
That they might grow in strength
That they might  be what they aught to

Led from the desert harsh
To the haven
Of the bay
To begin again in hope
To bask in the nurturing  rays
Of the soon glory days

So King David has returned
And that fits
For he is
Between Moses and Christ
To these poor Evertonians

Last seen approaching low
At the bottom o Shaw St
Riding side saddle on his ***
He'll be there by this evening.

Junior soprano mourned the ungrateful ticker
Hank pondered over the cold cold one
Yet neither
Kept theirs in a cage
Like yer man Cassablancas
Which was thrown in the ocean
Dragged down by the anchors
That he forged in life
Like our friend Ebenezza
Who thought the merry
Should have theirs
Skewered by the season
Poe got grassed up by his
Two sometimes beat tempestuous
Like **** and Liz
The Aztecs used to show it to you at the death
It will surely explode if you smoke too much ****
Solzhenitsyn summed it up there's nowt more to it
The border twixst good and evil
Runs right through it.

2014 was a **** o a year
Her closest to me was riddled with fear
You know your classic
Slough of despond
A long dark crushing passage
I did not know how to respond

Then in June my dad got sick
an unholy malaise
Saw him on Father's Day
Looked like he'd been dead
For three days

We got the diagnosis the week after
They didn't hold out much hope
To avoid the disaster
See the cancer made his bones leak calcium
So they couldn't treat it
Harsh reactions
Would make the chemo **** him

So they pumped him full of saline
To flush the chalk away
It made parts o his body
Bloat and swell and sway
My mother said
His ***** had never looked so big
Nearly choked upon my laughter
It was a gag that I could dig

The thing then metastasized
And that was just about it
On September the 19th
His light got unlit

A week or two later
Our kid's girl
Found out she was pregnant
Just coincidence
Or the irony of heaven
And so nine short months later
Emily popped into the world
Red headed loud and beautiful
Like some  miracle occurred

So as you step into your life
You ginger tornado
You'll never know how much
Jimmy would have loved you.

All life a negotiation
From the global to the quanta
The placing o the terrible weapons
To the sub atomic particles
When you start in with a new love
You see where the borders are
What starts a screaming match
What brings peace and calm
How loud you crank your stereo
Versus the upstairs flats grandkids
Running round like micro elephants
All weekend long it appears
Dealing with your aresehole boss
A mismatch so it seems
But like any martial art
Styles make fights
And into the Fray you lean
Tense talk at the UN
Twixst The monolithic blocs
Brinkmanship an art
Best practised in the dark
The Arabs and the Jews
The Catholics and the prods
The Ruskies and Ukrainians
The living and the not
It's in the way you talk to strangers
It's in the way you part your hair
It's what it says on your baseball cap
It's in where you place your care
As we look to the sea's horizon
At the swelling biblical wave
Can I look you in the eye
And argue in good faith?

A host of disappointed optimists
Crestfallen once again
The odds were stacked against them
But they remembered when
A Ronnie Radford or Micky Thomas
Could explode a tiny ground
the roof would come off the place
An exhilarating sound
But as it drained down to ninety minutes
With chances growing thin
A thousand tin foil FA Cups
Are going in the bin.

YOURE NOT SINGING
YOURE NOT SINGING
YOURE NOT SINGING
ANYMORE!
BECAUSE YER MA
IS A *****!

Imagine hearing that everyday
As yer dad went off to work.

When you out and about
You felt the grip o the *****
There be somat about
The feel o someone you knew
But alone you feel different
Something you can barely construe
And so you delve down to
What you obviously knew.

Didn't the fella the Hollies ripped off
Rip off some classical fella?
Tell that to thom yorke
As he sues
Lana Del Rey.

The sky is clear tonight
Clearer than for awhile
Reflected off of the **** snow
We haven't seen in some time
There was an conjunction
But I think it's now gone
Like that meteor stream
Came at Chrimbo forlorn
I always miss things
I'm not that astute
But when you
See the sky through
You imagine it's root.

They creek
They have for years
The rust has had its way
The play has increased
Not too much dismay
The sound apparent
The grind that gathers now
Soon the gate will not latch
Enjoy it
It's your last chance
Anyhow.

When you get stabbed in the back
It seems an affront
You get knifed in the front
Then it's nobody's fault
Both seem conspiratorial
But it's the way that we are
Those who wield the blade
Are just those what we are.

I don't know about you
You don't know about me too
When we meet there's the loath
That I don't feel about you
And then I suppose you feel it
But I can never be sure
We view ourselves
So completely unpure
And why should we
What have we done from this mark
I see your shadow
Poor defined in the dark.

They saw them at Mcminville
They had nothing to gain
Betty and Barney Hill
Experienced real pain
At Rendlesham forest
They ****** with the recruits
In Phoenix in 97
It seemed the governor
Was in cahoots
The go fast
The tik tak
The gimble
And the cube
The ******* huge triangle
But it's not evidence accrued
Cos they would have to land
At The Don's inauguration
And even that
Wouldn't  cure my
Constipation.

The hell that's other people
Is clipped out of context so they say
Others stick to it's apparent obviousness
Simple misanthropia on display
Like an impossible inner housing ladder
We envy characteristic real estate
Which leaves us only sadder
In our current state
But if we got our desire
To move into someone new
The walls would all unwire
Foundations buckle too
The house would terrify us
It's feel it's sound it's smell
Someone else's intrinsicness
Would become our living hell
So forget all your envy
Cast off your wanton care
It's writ large in the small print my friend
It says
Buyer beware.

The biggie of course was Fredo Corleone
Betrayed his blood
Cos he was passed over
He had plenty o time to think what he'd done
Till he didn't on a rowing boat
At the end of a shotgun

Joey pants in the Matrix
Did it for wine and steak
With little  time to contemplate
His moral mistake

You can hardly blame
Lando Calrissian
They threatened his people
With total destruction
And he made up for it later
When he led the attack
That threw the empire
Down into hell's crack

When eagles dared
Richard Burton let Colonel turner
Jump out o the plane over the frozen tundra
Some say he cheated the hangman's rope
But Burton's logic is easy to scope
Flying low over snow
It might not have killed him
But shattered his body
So in agony freezing
He had some time to
Mull his betrayal
Maybe he felt some regret
Before his eyes went pale

And at the Hot Gates of Thermopylae
After the slaughter and terror
As Leonides hailed Ephialtes
MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER.

I just seen my footprints
In the snow
Good lord!
I walk funny
Like the left leg
Doesn't like the right
And won't look it in the eye
The problem is the hip
Denuded of articulate cartilage
The grind and weakness
Make my gait so obvious
If it gets much worse
I'll be walking round in circles
Getting more pathetic
Like an inverted turtle
When I look down
At the frosty prints
It's really quite a shock
If you want to know what time it is
It's always nine o clock.

The delay between the bite and the taste
The eight and a haf minutes wait
For the sun's rays
To penetrate
The good Earth

Try and swat a fly with your hand
Your brain will put it in another place
Like some winged Lomachenko
In the space
Where your swipe was not

A similcast that is out of phase
You hear the goal
Before it's visually displayed
That brings dismay

And then of course
There is the worst
When you get kicked
In the *****
And time gets reversed
Then know you've got
A second or two
Before you cry.

Sitting in a pub at midday
Sipping scotch
And doing the crossword
I'm the only punter
No chance of a crossed word
Well maybe the barman
But he seems pretty relaxed
Engrossed in his phone
Probably sending a fax
Or whatever it is that
These crazy kids do
And im alone with the god's
Like Bukowski used to
The air is so peaceful
I can't help but smile
This is my life now
At least for awhile.

Two minutes to midnight
The hands that threaten doom
Two minutes to midnight
To **** the unborn
In the womb.

Bus poem
Bus poem
How I wish
I had
Your ma
To go on.

Who knows what went where
And indeed
Why anyone
Should care
But then again
Look over there
While I remove
Myself from here.

Photon?
Aw go on
I don't mind if I do
Well actually
You've got no choice
It is essentially you.

The bells the bells!
They made me deaf
They also made me blind
But I was ok in the morning
Cheap ******* Scotch
That isn't really that cheap.

I knew a spiv
His was called walker
His first name wasn't Andy
That good old boy
Was nothing but dandy
This man a corker
Every meeting a con
And there was a war on
While Mainwaring fumed
Morality he eschewed
As he pedalled his wares
Double standards accrued
Jones the the Meat
Subserviently concured.

I did not issue
And I'm not that sorry about that
But to those who did I tip my hat
they did the work that I would not
With  faith and love
That I could not
Bring  my self
To bite the bullet
I was not able
To stand upon it
And I'd do it  again
Cos what you are so rarely changes
We set our path in certain ranges
And though I would not readily leap
I say
I still hold my manhood cheap.

Back when my lower half still worked
When AstroTurf was where we learned
To off gas the weeks work
It was the nineties
The fancy dans
Got together
To bring down the leather
On the clearly less skilled
They thought that talent alone could ****
But they reckoned against
****** determination
And spitting bile we sure created
A ram it down your throat
Football unit
And soon enough
We certainly proved it
That if you
Like to but heads
Against the elites
You'll find
Their skill is weak and so effete.

Every time I think of you
I'm overcome
No excuse
It a feeling that should not be
The pull I feel
So close to thee
I imagine you and me
In a state o ecstasy
I know it never will not be
Is that what I meant
Contradictory.

You got to love the ego
It does so much **** work
Dealing with the judgemental Superego
Harsh reality and the Id that ****
The Id just wants to **** and fight and feast
Superego tuts and rolls its eyes
Reality stands there laughing
This is hardly a surprise
Freud called the Id the cauldron
Dr Morbius said it had monsters in it
As the unthanked ego labours on
Stoic true and finite.

The ham sandwiches
You had as as a child at them funerals
Will never be beaten
Yes I know that seems crueler
Than the nature o what makes
You seems holier
Than the Pope his self.

When you mean
What you overstate
There comes
A gap that some o your friends
Won't rate
Cos they clearly
Don't care for
Where you
Head for
The gate
And dive
Through.

Licking *****
Is. O course
The job you have signed into
When  it goes  to  
The thing that thing
Doth damage the plate we know
That stamps the truth
How doth thou it do
And then contemplate into
What We all die alone
That seems where we came in here.

Wrench what
There then
Up the front then round the back again
Over a bit toward what you want
Do a back flip into your own font
Talk to the ether
And expect an response
Take an audit of what you true want
Remember the thing
And then immediate forget it
The thing that you are
Is the sweat off the dickith.

I recall the King Kone
I think that was its spelling
Like a competitor to the Cornetto
The 80's market now swelling
For high sugar poison
To shove into
yer kids
Although I've got to say
We've only gotten much worse
In the Classic
On allerton road
They had King Kones
Not Cornettos
But that's where
I saw all of my movies
So it's a microcosm
Or maybe not cos
Picture houses of a different stripe
Deffo favoured Cornettos
As they passed through their life
In short it was a war
That only one side was fighting
God rest the King Kone
The Cornetto ***** lightening.

They reckon close to one hundred million
Died in WW2 and the things tied into
Three percent in then current standings     so
Just think how the world would be

With all them antecedents
And then of course
All the **** since
It seems so silly to total up them
As if you make a point that stands up to
Any thing at all

And all the business
Religion and ideology
And family feuds
Personal animosity
The ******* being rude on the bus
And anything that you
Can call a fuss
It's not your fault.

How dauft it work
That thing that thou dauft ****
Then thou dauft freely shirk
O nonny nonny
Counter truth dauft rise
Between thou ma's thighs
Dauft brings the compromise
O nonny nonny.

Round and round the ragged rock
The ragged rascal ran
He knew not of the point o it
Or how he had began

The rock it was enormous
And though he'd only been round twice
It felt like several days had passed
The sun set at least thrice

On and on he kept
Unwilling to maintain But unable to stop
On this vast remote empty beach
Around that ******* rock

His beard it grew
His feet they blistered
But round and round
He still persisted

There was a lady somewhere
Outraged her care worn thin
But that can't be it surely
What was driving him?

He wore a rut into the sand
That became a trench
Had she put a curse on him That cruel vindictive witch?

He limped now in agony
Circuiting his narrow canyon
Till a freak tsunami wave
Gave him peace
And drown him.

There must be strategy and tactics
If they are not the same thing
Spacing pacing
Distribution o sizes
What does it take
To win all the prizes?
Is it resist first or tug?
Or maybe give it a shove
Oh no that clearly won't work
Blitzkrieg or endurance test?
As you sweat there in yer vest
It may seem completely manual
But it helps if you have read the manual.