When you live on the flight path
You forget it is a road
With traffic lights
And diversions
The sky holds a heavy load
You get used to the rumble
Of the setting down
And taking off
Just faraway from the Tarmac
You can brush them noises off
Like all the things  you won't imagine
Like that persistent scratchy cough.

It's that 9/11 weather this morning
The pilots call it Severe clear
I know it's crass to bring it up
Maybe it's the time of year
Pretty close to a temporal antipode
Of that Day that brought such fear

The  contrails so bright and straight
Against the brunch aquamarine
Like determined daytime meteors
Their surety seems obscene

In no mood for delay
They push past the cold thin air
To be fast and true and punctual
Remains their only care

And then the Sky Beluga
As if to a call responded
That bulbous headed carrier plane
The Airbus A300
Swims low and slowly overhead
It almost looks in pain
To deliver parts to the airbase
So we can start again.

Tilly licks her lips
When the vinegar hits the chips
Don't you know now
She does backflips?

She'll walk by your side
If you have some scampi fries
Or perchance a cheesy moment
When it comes to food
She'll brook no opponent
Were  I to die
She'd eat my components.

There's is beauty in the pipes
Or so we're told
So we would like
Wether
Stone
Lead
Copper
Or polycarb
Are in them liquid?or gas?
Perhaps a solid slow moving mass?
I feel quite confident now
They seem to be heading
Toward the Bar.

The healthy buds on the tree outside my window
Have brought forth glowing little leaves
Soon they will larger
With not much space in between
A natural barrier
An undulating screen
Though it moves and twists at the wind god's wish
By my neighbours I will go unseen
Between now and the Autum months
And that's alright with me.

I sat on a bench
In the corner of a courtyard
About ten years ago
It was large but hardly vast
Near sixty yards square or so

Surrounded by a rough hewn wall
Round six feet high it seemed
Lost in a peaceful memory
A soft focus pre Easter dream

In the opposite corner
On the diagonal perceived
A fully laden Cherry Blossom
Swelled and shook and breathed

Through its essence and existence
Through it's roots and bark it heaved

As if ready to impart a message
I felt grateful to receive
A holy thing to take with me
When
I stood
And turned to leave

Then out of nowt
A tiny tornado
Appeared at the midway point
Like a spectral referee incarnate
Explaining the rules of the joint

He bowed to both parties
Swirled round the mortal pitch
Encompassing the tree
Every petal gently pinched
Then carried to me
In a widening perfumed gyre
I could feel it's cleansing warmth
An exquisite painless fire

I was encircled fully
Music like I'd never seen
Swaythed from head to toe
In the brightest of pinks and creams
The aroma almost killed me
The most cinematic of scenes.

Then the spirit was gone
Fragrance piled high at my feet
Now I did not belong
My dance card replete
I sniffed back a tear
I stood up and left
It's never happened again
Easter now so bereft.

These tariffs won't affect me
I never eat McDonalds
And I'm well sorted for
Depleted uranium ( previous regime).

''Tiswas a lovely lark in the park this mid day
Crap coffee  at the fountain cafe
Hippy busking the standards
Every now and then
Slipping in one of his own tunes
And that's the mark
Cos he wants to know soon
If the stuff he spews is worth a second listen
He trills off everyone who stops
To stop and listen
He thinks that this could be his mission
And he wasent bad.

I'm attempting to not to be a *****
But good lord!
Where would one
Begin with that ****?
Who gets to define
The benign
What turns into
The reviled ?
And how would you deal with it?

Too young for the first
Too old for the second
Quite the fine timing
When all is reckoned
He could have been one of the 20 percent
Destroyed at the Somme
Their flags and their bodies
Horribly rent
Or shredded with schrapnel
On Omaha beach
French liberation for them
Just beyond reach
Instead he was a docker
And fathered eight kids
Imagine the population difference
In this fair land
If Arch Duke Frankie
Had not got whacked
By the Gavrillo and the Black Hand
But the war machine rolled
And the tales all got told.
My lucky grandad
With his dockers hook
Stands and stares at the future
From the Liverpool Dock.

The curve of the Earth goes looking for you
It wants to find your trough
Stop eating for a moment
For this data is quite rough
It wants to tell you something
Why to this marble you are glued
Only now the revelation
After eons have accrued

It'll be different for you and me
And all that touch the ground
Why gravity is set that way
Almost but not quite bound

It lets you jump and skip
Without floating through the ether
Or getting crushed to bits
Each human
Whale
And caterpillar

Semi fixed in place
All tiny flavours slowly mix
But if just one evaporates
Premature

The brew is ruined

Can't be fixed

Climbing mountains
Aviation
Space flight
Are resistance to the plan
To keep all ingredients
Aboiling in the pan
The stew is almost ready
It just needs a bit more salt
Unless we truly slip them surly bonds
But that deffo won't be my fault.

Father Time and Mother Nature
Conspired one drunken night
Off the rip
To meet again
Decades later
Upon my gimpy hip.

I feel sorry for the intolerant
For peanuts taste just great
They've got that indefinable
Extra layer of taste
Especially when they alter them
Salt and vinegar
Sweet chilli
Barbecue
Come on get em down your neck
What's the matter with you?

I keep listening to and shaking my wristwatch
Yeah,that will make it go
Winding it lasts just a few minutes
Times unconcerned flow
Like that movie with Grodin and Deniro
Came out in eighty eight
Same year as that REM album bemoaning the worlds state

I've got one them old printers typeface drawers
******* to my living room wall
The kind you put keepsakes and momentos in
A lady made me install
But I am barely in it
It's all trips she took alone
Or nods to friends I've never met
The separation shown

When she left I put a couple of my own in
Then quickly took em out
Felt like a performance
What was that about?

So it clings there
All concert tickets and folded menus
Bithday badges blood donor pins
And I heart Amsterdam
Don't know why she didn't take it with her
As to the future she ran

So maybe I'll take it down
Deal with the brighter paint
Forward the tiny relics
Stop being what I ain't
Take a few new readings
Assess the things I lack
As The Duke said to Jack Walsh
I don't think she's coming back.

The only thing stopping you
Is that massive unclimbable boulder
You pretend can't be walked around.

For those who miss their mothers today
Take comfort in the fact
They might be talking to my father
And he's a gent
So there is that.

Off to see me Ma
She doesent live too far
Just round the corner
Up the hill
To carry flowers
And good will
She might take a glass of rose
Mixed with Lemmo

But that's her limit!

And then she'll go
To my sisters
For her dinner
Avoid the reflux
She's a winner.

80 and still kicking ****.

To be eaten by yourself
Is madness of course
How can you put the blame
On that one exact horse
That ran away
With your dignity
And all of your cash
To chase that loss
In the future
Relies on the past.

The burn
Which won't stop learning
The immovable thing
That is easily turning
Straight to which
There is a yearning
For that you cannot have

But then again
Where would you put it?
The storage space
You can't afford it
So it lays just where you dropped it
Until
It gets ripped off.

When you see a friend you haven't seen for awhile
His wife is out
And his kids gone hyper style
They won't be back till
The morning climbs over the miles
That you recount
With ***** and remicicile
Style o talk
Of what you used to be
And how it's funny
That now
You both struggle to ***.

To my drunken friend in Bristol
He's not from there
He just is there quite a lot
It's a good place to dash off
His kindly ****** up plots
To aid charity
And bonhomie
Inspiring tired artists
To create stories
Dripping with catharsis
That only comes
From real love.

I see Andy Kaufman has finally admitted he's not dead.

I looked right at it
They told me not to
Now I'm walking into walls
My retinas shot through.

I'm up early to see the eclipse
Even only if Its just a little bit
There you go I'm lying already
It's cos I'm off the drink
Sleep patterns unsteady
Don't fell like death
But super fuzzy
It's been a month
Slow acclimation is a whacky doozy
The light is strange
The slight conjunction still a couple of hours away
The birds seem spooked and muted
Cept one robin defiantly hootin
That's the way those little ******* play
Could of course be all for nowt
Heavy cloud bank rolling south
The disappointment
Could lead me right astray.

It's time to get to grips
With a partial eclipse.

The timing belt
On the conveyor is loose
It jerks and it stutters
That won't be taken as excuse
And the boss man refuses to shut down the line
Got to keep his numbers up this month
Short sighted selfish functiory
Without any spine
So the drones work like drones
With staples and tape
And put their hands in the moving machine
Praying it won't break
Risking injury and death
Cos the job must get done
As the ******* sneaks off early
Away to have his fun
But the tales always the same
The line is bound to choke
Then they'll wheel in the next dicksweat
And trust again to hope.

Television
First bastion of the po faced ******
So the masses could see the visage close enough
Since out evolved by the magic box
Now we all can get into this stuff.

The buzz of the bite
The cinch of the choke
The Ah ******* and rolled eyes
After the punchline is spoke
The kindness of strangers
Abused and never retuned
The double ended candle
Through the night which is burned
The rub of the green
Takes you into the red
How the sausage is made
Is how your family gets fed
To refuse the mob
That's how your flag gets unfurled
So shines a good deed in a ******* weary world.

I have a problem with timing
I can't do a soft  boiled egg
They either come out solid or slimey
As I hop from leg to leg
I know the time and temperature
I'm waiting with a spoon
But I drift off or go early
Ovoid perfection is doomed.

There's a sweet silver hue on the grass this morn
Soft defracted through the dew
A warm misty drift is formed
Soundtracked by the pigeons
Moaning low
A quiet transcendent being is born
The briefest of existence
Magnifies it's vague brilliance
As a cloud bank rolls over
And screens it for awhile
You know that it's still there
A bulwark against the care
That been persistently nagging you
To be alive
But when the sun appears again
something has know changed
It's flattened out
All joy gone south
Your eyes cast down
And once again
Yourself you do chide.

My auld man
Saw a ghost when he was alive
In England's most haunted pub
Strangely enough
He swore he wasn't lying
Or that he was half cut
The ***** doesn't work that way
Unless at the extreme edge
Not in the middle of the day
When asked what the spectre looked like
He said "Just some normal fella."
He liked a joke Jimmy did
But in his voice there was a tremor
And a tone not oft heard from him
in point of fact not ever
His mates started calling him The Exorcist
A double meaning both were clear
For he'd visit you in the evening
And make your spirits disappear.

Judge
Jury
Bailif
Death row guard
Priest 1
Executioner
Gurney orderly
Coroner
Private ambulance driver
Undertaker
Grave digger
Priest 2.

It's falling out the ether
It wants to find your 🧠
To slide down your 📡
Is it's exclusive aim
It exists to make connection
With you and you alone
No other mind  can house it
Cos it's come so far from home.

I've fallen asleep
At the back of the class.

The nature of hierarchy
It's there for a reason
Just take it with a pinch of salt
Or out your brains you'll be sneezing.
Ah ****! That's pepper isn't it?

When you look into
The oft talked about
Black mirror
Depending on the light
Your face seems thinner

Your features sharpen
Your eyes fill in dark
Like a cute super villain
Not one of them that
Lurks in the park.

They could stymie
All Hip Hoppers
Dittyists
And poets
By banning the word LIKE
You can still make comparisons
You just can't ride on that bike.

They say it's all downhill from here
Is that in mind or in body?
As the track disappears
Into the mist
Like a mountain railway

In a photo of the grand gallery
You really can't tell
If your looking up or down
To or from
The Pharoah's great well

You think you're one thing
Til the Doctor says no
Not anymore *******
Them waters don't flow

Not anymore
It's come off the spool
It ***** unattached
In the gathering gloom

The dimming of vision
The dulling of sound
The fear of collision
So close to the ground

The cattle are lowing
The children asleep
From Chrimbo to Easter
All lives slowly creep

To the place of the skull
In the crowd gathered hence
We came to pass judgment
We can't sit on the fence

So here is a stone
Do with it what you will
As impossible lightning
Crashes down on the hill.

Frosties aren't Frosties anymore
They've changed their tack
The sneaky ******
They are now Shreddies
(The frosted one)
Sounds like AI Tolkien
The end's begun
Here I was trying to be healthy
A victim of marketing stealthy
Bracketed smallprint
Unbecoming
I still put extra sugar on em.

Memory is a *******
It lets you stay there
In that fuzzy place
Beyond fear and care
When you think back
It's not the event you recall
But the last time you recalled it
In the records hall
Edited each go
By what's on your mind
Subconscious gymnastics
Act as a blind
To what really went on
Decades ago
If you saw as true
Up your guts you would throw.

That giant redwood you could drive your car through
The Buddhas of Bamiyan
The old man of the mountain too
Magnificent Palmyra
The docker's umbrella
Things of beauty
Sent off to landmark heaven
Wether
Time or vandals or poor public planning
They are all now gone
No more time they'll be spanning
As the recycle rate
Kicks on with new pace
Enjoy the things that you love
Before they're erased.

It's Magnolia season
Reminds me of someone
How soon it arrives
How quickly it's gone.

How many frying pans will you buy and throw out?
Especially now they are worth a ****
I've had two in the last eighteen months
My own fault remorse
Short sighted reasoning
Is par for the course
To bite the bullet and go long
Has you singing
An environmentalist song.

"I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I got this plastic Jesus
Sitting on the dashboard of my car
Comes in colours pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark cos
He's irridescent
Take him with you when you travel far

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones
Sitting on
A pedestal of abalone shell
Goin ninety
I ain't scary
Cos I got the ****** Mary
Assuring me
That I wont go to Hell

Get yoursef a sweet madonna
Dressed in rhinestones
Sitting on
A pedestal of abalone Shelley
GOING NINETY
I AINT SCARY
COS I GOT THE ****** MARY
ASSURING ME
THAT I WONT GO TO HELL."

He's was drinking like a senior ****
In the bunker June 45
Staving off the foul inevitable
To face his actions
When alive
Half a mile from ground zero
Two minute warning
A minute past
Like Hetfield said
Take a look at the sky
For it will be your last
The terrible is arriving
see the widening infernal plain
They've traced the call
They are coming
To make him wear his blame.

In a period of sobriety
I tend to wake up early
Still somewhat fuzzy
Deffo unfocused
Twisting forest path
Unclear to me
So many possibilities
Even though
Over the ****
Strong sunlight
Filters through canopy
Inspiration
To avoid the slump
Back into sloppy reverie
The pleasant endless drunk
But it could end right here
With a cool breeze on my face
The fawns and the rabbits
I Sort of like this place.

God lord them ******* can sing!

The mark of your smartness
I failed of course
It meant the school
You got sent to
From central casting
Divorced
There's probably somat similar
In this modern age
But I've got no kids
So I cannot engage
On the way we educate
And who goes where
So I shrug to my fellow dummies
You'll  be fine
Ignore the *******
I'll see you over there.

David Eugene Edwards
Said his banjo was
A work instrument for God
That's some holy confidence
Yet it doesn't seem that odd.

It only just a couple of years ago
I found out that cocktail
Isn't called
A peanut collider.