How Duth thou
Go forth
Wence from ere
Thou did came
Thence thy sallied by
Twixst the lullaby
''Twas to blame.

It's tough having  a bet on the new Pope
So few know the runners and riders
It's not like getting a tip on the Gold Cup
A sparsity of insiders

At least round here

Though there's no shortage of followers
The intricacies of conclave politics
Amount to insider trading
Could they go to Africa
Or the rar east
The home team
Must be leaning and persuading

Maybe ***** to the rules
Gender swap the role
Like they do these days in the movies
Get a lass on the throne
Resize the fisherman's ring
Perhaps everything will be groovy.

They reckon they might have found the ninth planet
After mulling two readings
A quarter century apart
They knocked down the likely influences
From about twenty to they think just one
Not quite a fine art

An ice giant
So they say
Rough five times our girth
Maybe between
Two hundred
To a thousand times
Further away
Than Our Sun
To this good Earth

It excites the boffins
Brings cosmology alive
As it drags those
Extreme Neptunian trans types
Out on a whacky ride.

Imagine seeing your vices
All Piled up
Or In a crate
or a vat
The eternal filing cabinet
Lists that
The Stirling equivalent
Of what you paid out
Could have bought you a boat
And not a cheap one at that.

If nature abhors a vacuum
Why doesn't she fill us in?
Does she know where the voids are?
Or how they did begin?
Cos there's plenty of em out there
As well as within
But they're never completely empty
Just scaresly occupied
Introspection
And space telescopes
Might keep us
Petrified.

Play up
Play up
And play the game
Gentle encouragement
The order of the day
Or worse
The path of non exposure
That just lengthens
And broadens the desert

Cmon now try and  watch the news
Not to extract some saliant views
But to know
By Repeated showings
The horror didn't come from you

Through time
Exasperation
Exhaustion and love
The meds
The sessions
Oh so rough
Your innards then
Had had enough
And so began to heal

Cos you can't stay frantic all the time
Terror and guilt
So must decline
All shadows
Get chased by light
Governed by rotation

That morning you said you felt a change
You licked your thumb to turn the page
Felt like my eyeballs would explode
From the sudden change of pressure

And so the daylight grew in warmth
Back to the world you sallied forth
That which seemed certain doom
Then drew a leavened smile
To pale your pitch down by the fire
At least for a good long while.

Everything's going somewhere
Even if it's nowhere quick
Those ahead are expanding
Into nowt that we can expect
And when we get there
It'll be changed by what has been
Is this some slow punishment?
The rubber
Against sin.

My mother tells me from an early age
I always loved old movies
I'd scoot my nappied **** across the carpet
Causing sparks
To see film noir intriguey(sic)
Kind hearts and coronets
Jimmy Cagney
The scarlet pimpernel
The red shoes and her descent into hell
On late Saturday afternoon.

In a former church
With friends
After a boozey train ride
A transient slide into
A magnificent side show
Of another's life
She want you to look into
The family bond
Of the performance
The beauty
Of the
Respondence
The glide on the way home

A weekend of Millney
Grows thicker
Through the years.

To be in a place
Where you feel
The warmth and the grace
Is a thing that
Don't often
Get replaced.

You're always writing out your ******
That's just the nature of the media you choose
Still every now and then
It can be a bit less hacky i suppose
When you  feel the spark
When  you fish the words out of the air
When it's not that embarrassing
To expose yourself to care
When the ether throws you a bone
And your radio turns computer
Drop your kecks and bend over
Here's comes another beauty.

The cartographer coddled by the satnav
He used to be king of the map
But he's become so reliant on it
Feels He should hand his qualifications back

The photographer produced such sterling work
Unattainable to the average ****
Now his darkroom tricks
Honed over decades
Leaves all cold
who can't do that?
We all reckoned

The scriptwriter a decade back
Pretended empathy with the working man
Total automation was the track
No human error was the plan
I'm ok I'm a creative they wouldn't dare replace me
Besides he laughed
No virtual engine could capture
The eternal verities.

He's psoriasis
And cirrhosis
Got the tablets mixed up
But both nestled
In his ale gut
It didn't matter
A ****.

The whole room swathed
And so moodily lit
Back when smoking
Was smoking
No one coughed
Not a bit
Like fat little zeppelins
They pumped out some fume
As the replicants
Gripped
By existential gloom
Studied the humans for weakness
Time to die would come soon.

Gravity is beating up light
But it's a Hollywood fight
Smoke and mirrors
Gravitational lenses
Viewed from the right angle
You can't tell the bar stool is made out of matchsticks
The camera placement as the cowboy slips the punch
The sheriff thrown through the sugar glass
Then it's a wrap for lunch
Or a Star Wars effort
Claiming they got two suns
We knew they were kidding
When the space telescopes come
Now with the Jimmy Webb
He deffo would have approved
Cos by the time he got to Phoenix
The whole universe had moved.

It starts early
The reverie
Of making it pro
The yawning maw of the Kop enthrals
All that hold true
To the way of the deep red
Hoping against talent
But not time
The impossible dream
Against reason not rhyme
It goes away
When the calendar balances
Still now and then
You drive a sweet one
As the defender advances
Into the bottom left.

A friend of mines mother just died
I haven't seen him for awhile
But when I think of him
It always makes me smile
I haven't got his number.

Ansel Adams was ******
Once people started getting into
Ansel Adams
Cos they went to where he composed
And thought
Anyone can do this.

I see my serial killer neighbour
In the sharp early evening light
It does him no favours
Looks like he's had a fright
He put something in the wheely bin
Took a step
Turned
And fished it out
Cast a look over both shoulders
Cupped his burden
Went back in his flat
He is so slight and skinny
A breath of wind could Leave him prone
He's clearly subduing them with drugs
Before doing what must be done.

Your tongue will dig your grave
Yeah but  that will take awhile
And in the meantime
The displaced earth
Will roll back
Into the pile
From wence it started
So it goes
Like yer man Sisyphus of old
You'll die mid pisstake  baby
Just like you done bin told.

It's Easter
It's gone
Like the promise
That Christmas purloins
The thought of how we might treat ourselves
No point to aim at
So to hell with the meanings
Back to the pavement
That stops us believing .

It's the night before they took him down
Imagine the damage
From when they take him down
The yanks of tired agony
Gainst the nails and the wood
The type of suffering
That is scarce
Understood.

Ritchie Blackmore
On that white strat
that vid
Live between the eyes
Late summer 82

Just down the hill
From the Alamo
Pyro expected
And so given
from Ser Blackmore to you

Had it on VHS
The Beeb braoadcast it
At three in the morning
Got my autistic little brother
To set the recording

It's on YouTube now
And that's quite the relief
Was about to do battle
But it saved me the grief
From that box in the cupboard
Forty odd untitled tapes

They sit there in layers

And I haven't even got
A video player.

What must it have been like in Jerusalem
After the dust of that first Easter settled?
Imagine the recriminations
On all sides
Including the Romans
The way it was handled
Who was a traitor?
What now?
Who wants to lead?
What the **** just happened?
Will the grief
Not be relieved?

Target acquired
We got him on the thermal imaging
Yet he neutralised the threat
We could not launch against him
He walks twixst the raindrops
He hides in plain sight
All attempts to bring the hammer down
Just end up in *****
He seems so protected
Just what has he done?
To have the machine and the earth
Pressed under his thumb

The cabbie who took me and my ma from hospital to home
Straight away started in with a tale all alone
Out of a clear blue sky
Struck in the head
And then by lightning
Boiled his innards
Popped his bones
Broke his head
Did the damage you might imagine
He was dead for awhile
Met his grandparents and God
They played Snap they were all smiles
Until it was deemed time for him to come back
He's wrote a book called
LIGHTNING MAN
I suggest you read it
It's remarkable
He's just doing whatever he can.

I love Easter
It like a more honest Christmas
A few months stumbling
To really what what's life is
To take the glory
Then run?
Or take the deal
Already spun?
The Apostles
All dealt in their own way
Wether the 30 bits of silver
Or Crucified upside down to deliver
The affirmation
Of the light
The truth
And the way.

Have you ever been to one of them Electric Hills?
Where gravity runs backwards
As up the incline you freewheel?
And it gets sold as part of a day trip package deal
With a ruined Abbey
And a plate of squid?

Meteors again tonight
The Lyrid so I'm told
Once more the weather forecast
wonders preclude
They say the best angle
And light condition
Comes an hour before the dawn
I'll set my alarm
It'll do no harm
But I'll deffo sleep through it.

That memory you have sculpted
Though of course it was not you
Is starting to the take the polish
From being so often viewed
You used to view it as intractable
but you're beginning
To catch on
that perfect sunset
The day that you met
The moment your father died
Editing software
Gives a parallel.

It's the Last Supper tonight
And everyone's invited
But I never know what wine to bring
Don't want the host to feel slighted.

Today begins the Tenebrae
The extinguishing of candles
The gradual diminishing of light
Then a loud noise in the darkness
It's not practiced much these days
You need the requisite clergy
And the will to witness after midnight
the desire for which deserts me
It seems older than Christ
Redolent of the Egyptians
Like Sekhmet in her Karnak chapel
Unlit
Against time
Resistant.

In the Indiana Jones movies
Spielberg uses a device
Where the heroes
Get pushed toward
Or away from danger by a crowd
Layers of meaning
Is his vice.

Just past Easter 2013
Arlington National Cemetery
In the state of Virginia
After a long hot day of seeing the sights
Me and my girl
Wandered silent round the fields of the fallen

The unseen lights

The red not there
But certainly
The White of the crosses
Against the Blue of the sky
As Japanese cherry blossom
Around us did fly
Crested the rise
That is John Fitzgerald's hill
Next to Jackie and baby
Laying there still
We were alone
With what seemed like the Gods
In this most visited place
What were the odds?
We looked at each other through the eternal flame
Each told the other the future
Neither one was to blame.

As he and the eleven
Rested In Bethany
The iscariot chose this Wednesday
To fall profound into infamy
He sold himself cheap
Didn't go for the big money
The standard price of a slave
Thirty pieces
Was all he had coming
But that play was a ruse
A ploy and a bluff
He just didn't think The Lord
******* enough.

This time it's Ecumenical!
Especially if you include the pagans
All rolled together
Ritual,food and offerings
To both the Carpenter
And Goddess Eostre
That what was Ceasre's
Could have been laid before her
Fresh Cherry Blossom
Swirls down on to rotting Magnolia
And it's only Holy Tuesday.

Great
Holy
Easter
Bright
The week that unlocks the door to the light
In the six weeks since the pancakes and the ashes
Selected abstinence
To the Lord brings a confluence
A coming together of saviour and saved
Through the shared experience
Of gratification delayed
While he starved in the desert
Tempted by pure evil for forty days
We gave up chocolate
That's how the lord we did praise.

It's Life Of Brian season
I'll watch it a couple of times this week
As we slide into Easter
Christianity's peak
Malcolm Muggeridge called it tenth rate buffoonery
Casting stones made of disingenuousness
Though they could hardly be accused of flagrant too soonery
The Bishop of Southwark clutched his pearls
It's like they never heard of the sacred and the profane
To throw mirth at the infallible
Everyone gets it
Everyone to blame
We all have an effect
Wether in or out the game.

I was told my poetry wasent literal enough
You got me there
In point of fact
It's just the wheezey stuff
One huffs and then puffs
But don't blow no house down
The ravening wolf
Who soft approaches
Wears his frown upside down.

Call no man happy till he's dead
Call no man Flintstone
Till he's Fred
They seem
The same
Until contextualised
Call no man happy till he's died.

You were like thin bleach
On a ****
You smoothed it right out
And removed any residual nutrients.

When Butch and Sundance
Watched over a plea
to raise a posse to **** em
Turn into a pitch
On future bicycleism
Old Butch went into a drunken diatribe
Bout how he could have been something
And all that transpired
Sundance the much younger man
Fixed him with an equally sloshed
Rik Mayal eye
Propped himself up on one elbow
Delivered a line that gave truth to the lie
"Well,it's too late now!".

Imagine having to write
Jesus's autopsy report
You'd be there all week.

South Park must have watched
The Life Of Brian
Liked  the 360  degree
Vitriol spraying
And then thought
Where did they get it from?
Spike Milligan.

When miserable ***** turn up
They do so in big trucks
Cos they like to travel en masse
To block the light
They won't let it past
But their convoys aren't that long
They believe they are
But they don't throng
And round a curving mountain pass
A serpent turns to eat it's ****.

When Loudons in a mood
There's just nobody like him
Seems he could spit regret and bile
Ad infinitum
Found one of his CDs
At the back of the shelf
Still had its cellophane jacket on
A lot of dust it's repelled
It's one of them
My father left to me
Without knowing
Turned the case over in my hands
Tiny aftershock
Sweetly glowing
Seems almost a shame
To take its thin coat off
But it won't feel the benefit
When it's time to shuffle south.

You can cut and banter
About form and intent
And about the nature of where
Intensity is meant
But from what is implied
To what that gets said
You've got to give to them Millwallians well met

No one likes us
No one likes us
No one likes us
We don't care
We are Millwall
Super Millwall
We are Millwall
From the Den.

I like the word preternatural
It's like a bridge between
The achievable
And the functional impossible
What we all might do
Versus some Hellraiser ****
The step that says
I can't believe
You got away with it.