One...two...three...four....
Close the gate and lock the door.
Five... Six...seven...eight....
Go hide you must be quick.
Nine...ten...eleven...twelve....
Hear the zombies come out of hell.

weathered fingertips in sensual crescendo
arouse blitzing keystrokes to commove
wild Js and Zeds, Ks and Is too.
harmony of the king's three-thousand acre jungle
swallowing the stormy orange cyclical stew

and tantamount to its feral cavities
thrushes whet jagged spinal bones to split
news of the no-rhythm, sambas of new religious canter
infiltrates the **** cavernous walls

This inner ear and greater sound
knew to find sanctuary here.
Lends its awesome craft to the next
And next, and next, and next;

beautiful unboxed melodies
new unused sweet single-reeds
threading that 20s centrifuge.
Saxophone. Incantations unfolding

Aloof in its ***** it unwraps
The veil of green, a costume of black coffees
Cigarette stained curtains exhumed to greet
Thick plumes of albicant sinewy smoke
At the heap of its glorious song

Uniting the funnel of eardom to consecrate
Bliss. Intrinsic and purple
An irrational knot of Portuguese drum
Met over by African toms and rattles

A glue imbued into those unmistakable
Chakras of this spell of mourning and reversed
Names of starlight girls and their other'd selves
These are the weapons of our new key strokes.

And upon the cortex it reveals this lift anew
Where death greeted me to intervene a place
Where sound and silence meet, and new strikes
Put my hands in halves. Pear-shaped birds pecking
At the joints, and where bowl-shaped tones bring

Their impeccable limbs to atone with auburn and cerise soils
Beneath the high ridges of doom- the empowering backspace
Does not exist, only new nothingnesses and their hooves
Splashing into each step into the next, and the next, and the next,
And the next.

This poem is about a night out on the beer which almost went horribly
wrong



I put out my hand and touched the face of God,
. . .bit of a surprise, really, I was expecting my Hod.
Lying on the floor, thinking it was my bed,
Coated in *****, face down, arms spread.
I've ****** my trousers, shat my keks,
A natural reaction, to twenty three pints of Becks.
Stumbling through Cambridge, I can't find the Site,
I know it's around here, first left or third right. . .
Crashing through hedges, I've forgot how to walk,
I can't ask for directions, I'm unable to talk.
So, I'll go no further, here I'll sit tight,
Sneak back to the caravan, when dawn sheds her light.

I didn't feel the cold, the damp creeping through,
Best shirt, Purple Chino's and I'm missing a shoe.
It's my dancing outfit, for impressing and posing,
Ideal for the Nightclub, not alfresco dozing.
The temperature plummets, I'm giving it "Big Zeds"
Dreams of warm women and petal-strewn beds,
Breathing gets shorter, body starts to shut down,
I'm sweating buckets, beginning to drown.

Ronnie, the Night-watchman, knows I must be in trouble,
In an hour and a half, I'm due back on the shovel,
To keep the lads happy, with bricks and fresh Pug
And barrows of concrete, poured into trenches I dug.
Under an Elm Tree, thirty yards from the job,
Ronnie catches sight of this prone Northern yob.
He doesn't panic, just yet, he knows what to do,
He's seen it before, when a body turns blue.
Those First-Aid Classes, when he told us he was fishing. . .
Vital signs are checked, I'm in the Recovery Position.
Ron holds my nose, lifts my head off the floor,
. . .then he kissed me , in a way , that I'd never been kissed before.

he was strong. i could see that much. and bitter, with a black-coffee way of speaking that kindled thoughts of fallen soldiers learning to walk again. holding fast to my blue plastic tray in true freshman fashion, my focus wandered to the red band around his arm, akin to the one encircling mine—always a symbol of the hunter, never the hunted. but i could not pay attention to this small detail for long; a gruff voice was asking me questions and a pair of sea eyes swept me away with the tide.

he was tarnished. i knew from the moment he took his seat, like an elderly man would, holding onto the back of the chair for support before lowering himself down. though it was easy to hide behind an ever-charming veneer, the fine wood was peeling at the corners, revealing the coarse plywood beneath. we talked of the living dead, zombies and zeds, planning attacks like star-ornamented generals as casually as two strangers meeting at a coffee shop. we never touched, and a bridge was building on our crumbled foundations.

he was beautiful. an army assembled under his command. and with myself at his side, we were breathtakingly terrifying. breathers defended the air that had held them thus far like a secondhand cradle, yet we were the vacuum that ****** it directly from their lungs. the ruthlessness of it all stirred up carnal instinct in me that had existed millenia before I was even conceived. and he felt it, too. there was no denying that the hypothetical taste of flesh on our tongues was enough sustenance to keep us from feeling the bite of autumn or the memories of betrayal sulking in our war-punctured hearts. a different war, for certain; but there was still the hunter and the hunted, and we fought with every cell within ourselves to be the former.

He's my Uncle Steve -
he rhymes with make believe.

I never see him, but I believe he's there,
sitting near with his low hum,
refraining from making a show,
rather staying below, but making enough for me
to know - comfort, making me safe,
making the difference between sleep and awake,
between making zeds and making a peep,
making space for me
to make myself at home,
snuggled deep, quietly full of the stuff
that makes great mischief.

And when I awake I know he's gone,
taking his low hum back to where he came from.

He's my Uncle Steve -
he rhymes with make believe
and he'll make a return when I need him.

Zoplicone zeds
for artificial dreams
early alarm clocks
robotic regimes

The fog starts to clear
music fix in the car
a sheep on autopilot
to the thought abattoir

The right mix of chemicals
in order to function
circling roundabouts
never finding the junction

Stripped ham hock heels
from ill fitting safety boots
dripping auburn sweat
inhaling metallic soot

Sickly stifling heat
zero fresh air
seeing through *******
with a Bukowski stare

Benevolent benzos
keep emotions neat
another shift ends
rinse then repeat

The Brits, with their 'colour' and 'favour',  
Hold their spellings in high savour.  
But across the pond, Americans say,  
Why use a 'u' when it can be cast away?

'Organize' they cry, and 'realize' too,  
With 'zeds' replaced by 'zees' to make it all new.  
‘Catalogue’ trimmed to ‘catalog,’ for ease and for haste,  
While ‘theatre’ turns to ‘theater’ with no time to waste.

So here's to the quirks of the English tongue,  
Two ways to write, both right and wrong.  
Lazy or not, it’s diversity’s spice,  
Making our language a tad more precise.

all ok for me here
even though my battery
gone low

writing before
it recharges

life is pleasant
even with the arrival

of

monkey pox thing
avoiding zeds all together

guess you know more about war
than most

good you have your benefits
now

he asked to be friends
with suchlike

so we replies no just pals

and he don’t understand

hahaha

am not bothered
me

maybe you will help
with the writing

it was a documentary
so i guess it is still there

james

16.26

#slabcity