LORRY DRIVER

lorry drivers eyes
are narrow trenches from road sun
like
a
good bouncer
or
a
noir PI

he dont deliver here anymore
but
he
still
comes in cos his dads in a ward throwing up black blood and shit

he comes in rolling like a beer barrel
dirty
and
torn
to tells me hes parked out of everyones way outside
and wont be long
and JUST WANTS ANSWERS cos his dads had a heart attack too
and
his
build-up shakes never came 
and his water was left out of reach all night

his fighters eyes long-haul stare glisten wet
because
HES MY FUCKING DAD, YOU KNOW, AND WE JUST WANT HIM HOME

1970s DEVON MEMORIES

counting west country arc bridges from the back seat 
homemade eyespy undone
and
cold services petrol carparks in before dawn dark
strange foyers
and tiny arcades empty
and
men doing their teeth in the toilet sinks

i'd been carried asleep to the car in pyjamas
and given a rug

and when we got there the rooms smell like
the inside of wooden wardrobes
with
their swaying empty attached hangers

i'd have a new t shirt or a new jumper for dusk
to hang in there
or lay on a small shelf splintered on the edges

they'd be oxtail soup off a plastic table cloth
and
a
man
who took pictures he developed into tiny red plastic viewers
to buy

other families with other cars had other rooms on other
detergent smelling floors
other parents with other jobs and other children with other toys

after dusk walks by low rocks and floodlights in bushes
i'd
sleep
thinking about the toys i didn't bring
under thick blankets
sea air in my freckle nose

and early seagulls echo song would wake me
to
picnic packing and maps and plans
to National Trust mansions and open farms
in
a
long
day of weather and ham rolls in the car

they'd be the burnt diesel smell of small model motor boats
and the lying allure of a red rollercoaster
and
beach blankets
and
rock pools of plastic sail boats
and
brave swims in the freezing sea
and
photographs from the camera
to look at weeks later
where we all do our same poses
and
peanuts and fizzy pop on the patterned gold table top
in the hotels tiny bar
till
the tiny sadness of packing and travelling backwards
with
a
new
thing from a small shop in my hand 
all the way home

EIGHTEEN MONTHS

eighteen months
or thereabouts - my mantra of amazement

so 
the dr asks how much i drink

we're talking about sleep of course
she is a specialist

her 
thin face is pale and tired and blotchy
but
composed with a subdued joy

her pregnant belly rises like a tide

i say
NOTHING! FOR EIGHTEEN MONTHS!

i say it 
with 
pride and implied disaster and determination
with
light and dark and liberation
with
hints of regret at loss - of wild glory and accelerated drama
and
with
sadness and some embarrassment 
like
its almost a secret i had to stop
and
with
honest shame about how drunk i was
and
my stare is 1000 yards deep into the scuffed pattern 
of the plastic office floor

she says
OH
and makes a small quick note - an insignificant note!
thats
completely at crazy odds in its small flourish with
the
complex architecture of 
those
Eighteen Months

GIG

meet him in a pub up TC road

get the table in the window/good for watching people

smokers

and wet tourists

and students flush with spirits

and the guy with the sandwich board

plugging

electrics

first round is

four beers/two scotches/two scotch and cokes

cost

god knows how many pounds for the two of us

and

off 

we

go - cold glass glory

and

we

suck on the ice

cos

its

summer

barman clears empties away with cautious eyes

till we don’t give a fuck about the gig 

not really

but

fall

onto the District Line anyway

and

go

out to Hammersmith cos its always out in Hammersmith

till

the other end i go looking for a toilet in some sad and busy mall

leaving

him

to get

in strong coffees slumped on some coffee chain table 

mumbling

what a good idea or whatever 

while i loose twenty-pence pieces 

all 

over 

the toilet floor

meet someone else in some wine bar for short drinks 

and sudden drugs

then buy a bottle - or two

in an offy

to smuggle into the place past weak searches

and buy tall cokes with ice

we

top up in the dark

and sweat out

in

the rock and humidity and sweat

while

beer-guys behind in a cheering row 

all

shirts-off and banned fags 

chuck warm beer all around

i dont remember who was playing

PLATEY

ANOTHER WEEKEND,  ANOTHER CROCKERY DOWN

UK HAIKU

grey May is all rain,
bank holidays all bright sun -
England's upside down

START OF A STORY; DOG WALKER

In the garish glow of the hallway fluorescents Hounslow hands Moloch’s lead to Frances Bell.  The Labrador takes the park smell of conifer and compost inside.  Hounslow touches his top button looking down at her tall wooden wedges.  She always wears good shoes.

     ‘You coming in Hounslow?’  She bobs to one side and red wine in the balloon glass swirls.  Her eyes dance anywhere but him. 

     ‘No.’ Laying awake next to her he found her small snores ugly and her rainbow crowd of stuffed animals fixed him with blank button eyes.

     Frances shuts the door yawning like a waking tom cat. 

     He’d not long put one out but he rolls another cigarette anyway and leaves the bright hallway down carpeted stairs.  Hounslow lets himself out the ground floor security door by a glossy cheese plant.  He is done for the night.

CLEAN STREETS

so theres a road now
a clean street
with signs i notice
and
symbols i made on gate posts and kerbs

used to be in a dark car park
underground behind the big waste bins
or
on the roof on the razor wire service towers
dangerous and out of hours

so theres a road now
a clean street
and
if
i
can get my big end running
and
stop napping on the soft cool verge
it
might
even
lead somewhere

CHEAP HAVEN

They sat there passing the bottle around, and there was nothing that could bother them, nothing at all.

It’s cold in the garage, but there’s a bottle for warmth and canned beans to be turned over a tea light, slowly bubbling.

It’s a cheap haven.  Oil stains shaped like Africa and kipple abandoned against dull concrete walls.  A small plastic ventilation window hasn’t spun in years.  A dozen pasts buried in boxes all the same brown-grey now and heavy with damp.  Never be unpacked again.  The past didn’t bother them; it couldn’t, not at all.

Bottles askew on the rough concrete floor are smeared full with cigarette ends and spent matches are stuck into the hard wax of candle spills like sunken ships burnt masts exposed at low tide.

In coats and hats pulled low their breath hang’s undisturbed like dock mist.  The cold didn’t bother them; it couldn’t, not at all.

Tea lights buck and flick like valley beacons.  Cigarettes are rolled and lit and the bottle goes back and forth.  Talk radio murmurs bulletins out the plastic short wave.  Penetrated corks and bombed screw-tops are checked by armoured insects on patrol on the dead dust of the floor.  Stained tumblers are lost in the shadows; they drank from the bottle, sometimes wiping the top with dirty cuffs.

Out the side door they’d rattle the back fence with thunder-piss under a sky of startling stars or bleak rain; just a variable to report.  

When summer came it would smell fresh and the roll-door might be raised and they would watch people passing, going somewhere.  In winters black cold they kept still unwilling to disturb the warm air that built around them like an aura.

They played chess.  The board battered and peeling.  Its two halves had separated long ago, frayed and warped and uneven where they pushed together.  Wax in clumps clung to the board to be picked at with chewed nails.  A peeled treble A battery was a black rook.    

There was no rush.  There was no anything.  They were untouchable.  The bottle a raw comfort of reassuring weight that went down fast but they never ran dry anymore.  There was always another bottle.

The week and the world and the morning couldn’t touch them.  The chess was a distraction but the bottle and the waiting for the pass and the holding on to it, that was the real focus.

The bad news on the radio came out crackly and dry.  It was a source of mirth and couldn’t touch them.  Sometimes they’d swap books and discuss history’s classic follies.  It was a source of mirth and they mocked all these things bitterly drinking away tense and blind mercury hangovers in the stale shadows.

Nothing could touch them, not at all, not with the cool warm bottle and cigarette smoke that never drifted away and an age to sit and choose a move on the ruined board.

The game had been on for four years now.

DRIED LEAVES AND COW JUICE

shop girl is a rock chick
but
her
hair is clean and her denim fresh

her springsteen shirt is artificially aged
but
her
skin is too young to know of any lines

i buy baccy and milk with a heavy bag of loose change
and she gives me a shy smile

i think its a shy smile

her eyes are up from under 
and her make up, well, contemporary?

so she's not a rock chick yet
but
she
cant be bothered to count my change
so
she's
on
her
way

CONCRETE MUTHA

so
i'm whining again about being tired

thats what i do/how i roll/what i write

cos
the day
is always a shit-heavy Concrete Mutha!

a mire of sludge and a sluice of marsh
thick
like
chocolate
but all a bad rotten brown

whining about
the tight-wire of coffee one
the rocket launches in the wrong morning
shower mist hanging in the air

and
my
eyes
always say its 3 AM
and my legs like hot lead/hauling my devil heavy hooves
thru
the
Concrete Mutha

whining
about
the
lead-poison fug of this autumn spring
where
the
alchemy is mistaken/suns vitamins locked by ash grey clouds
and
by
ten thirty i had enough
of
the Concrete Mutha squatting cracked on my eyes

and the plastic corridors of work
are overlit and blank 
and 
shallow sitcom laughs and shouts
inflate 
my head 
like a steel balloon

and i am Uninspired
and i am Flat
and i am Concrete
like
a
Mutha

DARTMOOR 2

icy spike cave shelters of the ancients
now hold GPS tupperware games
safe
in
a
moss slot
from the horrendous Moses winds
under
the top of the sky

moody couple have afternoon teas
too late for roasts
and
an
ambidextrous toilet
is guarded
by
a
huge hulking black money Sambo

dwarves tired of mining left here
with
all
the snarks eggs in mesh bags
and
set
their
tiger dogs loose to roam and dance on the rocks
pure packs of tight dense muscle
that
boo-scare tourist in ankle boots and bags
keeping
their
backs warm with tang sweats
as they march rested calf's and tight thighs
on the blown-flats
in the Moses winds
under
the
top
of the sky 

OCEAN SPRAY

the Ocean Spray cordial
and
the extravagantly virgin olive oil
sit still
and
RIGHT
on
the 
black worktop of faint white cat tracks
and
the charity shop biscuit jar with weird tea in
is
very CORRECT

i notice this 
while 
the buzzes and tickles of electric ants
jab and tease
painted flames onto the hatchback on my arm 

it all seems to be in order today

the atoms are not misplaced/not at all
and
there is no hot urge to tidy 
inefficiently
in a useless scram rush 
just to cheat some quiet moments of peace
between the
hiss
and 
blam
of white noise and monsters

yesterday it was chaos and wild/everything WRONG
everything
needed - REALIGNING . . . 

but
now
i
can
sigh
and listen to the needle thrum and drone and smile
at
the
Ocean Spray cordial bottle and its dead red inch
past
the
use by date

MR INK IN THE HOUSE

SMOKING

they line up against a featureless wall
at
any
featureless time of day
in the weather whatever

and
tap phones
or
gaze at nothing

and light up
their
poisonous leaves

SPIDERMENS

YELLOW STAR

the AM hospital smells
like 
sandpits and bleach
cut flesh and old toast

and my waking mind is reminded 
of
endless junior school PMs
trapped on a small seat or in a shining corridor of adult echoes

maybe its guilt that joins the now and then like hands

guilt then of Whatever and Who Knows
and
guilt now of sick time and cancelled counselling

guilt that is healing
deep in my heart bone and slow in my lizard brain
like
mornings rays from the yellow star reaching into the valleys
of
the
clammy rain wet country lanes
where sweat prickles my cycling clothes 
and fogs the glass on my nose

the thick lurid green looks claustrophobic and messy
an enormous and humid cupboard under the stairs

and 
i'll paint it all one day
in childrens crayons and free biros
of mint and sea-blues
on
the
blank challenge of nude A4
i'll
climb the feint lines with cramp and lunges
of weird experience
and dull insight
both 
at 
once 
armour and a spear

LIKE A KIDS BOOK

toy tears like shiny buttons like from a kids coat
fall 
with honest magic from a clean heart
like from a kids book
where
the soft round kitty was lost like an orphan
was
trapped and hid and missing in the weather 
was
rescued by a boy cat to sit by the cat flap
still like peace and silent like fluff
and
where
the bus kids hands are dry with worry like pumice 
like the base of glazed clay
but heal by friday like promised
with
love
and
ointment
and play 
with varnished wood toys like adventure at tea time
and
where
everyone lays toilet pellets like rose balls 
like soft shiny marbles
that
plop quietly and sanitary like a chucked pebble
making
rings like orbits on a still summer pond
and
toy tears like loose buttons
fall like baby gasps
at
a
missed goodbye like an accident nothing
thats a real something
like
in
a
kids
book

DARTMOOR 1

the 
cottage of thick beams and uncleaned webs 
filed with paper coffee cups from travel stops
half way up a dark hill
in a one pub ville of freezing stars

i had bbq chicken sweats in the cold water shower

Dartmoor - gnarley orange arms of nature spread out! 
black face plastic crevice rocks
and
green soft upholstered land of acid fuzz
and 
hobbit waterfalls and snork prints

Dartmoor - smashed black turds on mist horizon
and
druid castle settlements of old water paths crazy paving
and
orange tourists march in sideways snow and PM sun

stained sheep's period 
PHOTO IT she shouted/i didn't 
in the bunny currant field
sloping and drying and beige faded ancient troughs

Dartmoor - shining ice rivers on deserted worlds roof
land a b & w circle of wind and dotted towering pagan peaks
where
snorks
crawl at night
down the old dragon paths and ice holes
and
like Mordor it undulates and rips in deep stone pits
and tufty heather
where backpack Germans pass car park Jews in peace

Mordor - white land/one green haired hulk smiling 
in a shop/one shop!
sold papers/was open!
and 
the green-green and great slab crashes and afternoon teas
and 
mottle brown moss carpets burst thick of droppings
striped in the sun
on village greens where i lay with bags fed and undrunk
my ghostfeet
grounded
on the paths of snarks and ocelot trails
walking
tired
thru nature and icy spike caves

A30

well 
an A3 silver hatchback on the outside lane
is 
followed 
by
an A4 and then an A5/this Audi parade is only coincidence

they cut across the lanes like knives
with brief late indication; a token nod to proles
and hoot and blast and roar and undertake
like they are Kings when they are Cocks
and
then 
they
do
it again

they drive like Cunts in A30 bank holiday traffic
and
never really make much time

Mercs and Beemers guilty too

sane men and women become arrogant Masters of the Universe
when
sat comfy and enpowered
behind
the 
plush wheel
of a German machine

and few deny it
and
if
i
had
one
i'd do it too

GUNNY

GUNNY AND TWO SHADOWS

SANDWICH

SANDWICH? SANDWICH!

SICK MORNING

things my head in a fluey AM

Blondies Heart Of Glass

electric chairs and long term death row stays

colds, of course, what is my body doing?

the cotton mysteries of TIME

Kissinger in Moscow STILL working the geo

and

that song that goes THE ROTTEN AIR IN VIETNAM . . .

well the fever has made me slow as drugs

and 

draws

a

quiet quilted shield down with my eyelids

and

of course

my hands are a bit like two balloons

(to quote a song)

and

(to quote some poem)

i am a reformed monster

a

stick

of

aches and drama

POEM A DAY

the dr says 
its ok
to write a poem a day
to help 
to hold
the ennui at bay

but its not him finding the frills to fill 
the white yelling abyss
with
the
dust 
of
ticking time and glances

PROBOSCIS

train up to town
fills the rail like an expanding proboscis
hungry
and
hoovering

stops rarely and reluctantly

stations way over across the tracks i've never stopped at Dagenham Heathway/Beacontree
are thick with cut-out people 
distant and waiting and small 
but detailed
with
white headphones and low satchels
like
a
vision
of an alternate life/a different dimension
with
similar stops/so slightly changed

the train is quiet going this way at this time
and the sun makes a flare on the greasy window
shining
the
scratches
into slits of atomic light
and
the angle of a small plane
coming out of City Airport
makes
its
expanding and diffusing vapour trail
into
a
silver teardrop

towns new skyline bulges and stabs and prods and slices
into new postcards over old flats
and
all
the
workman cranes lean this way and that
tied and still
alone
for the weekend

SHOE

SHOE WITH GUNNY, PM

SWEETACHE

small patterned rugs with tassel ends that

point

like the starting line up

of

a

worm race

and

the photos with dated pattered furniture already old

of cheese-grin people

sitting on a sofa theyd never normally all sit on 

at 

once

and

the cupboards with packets of unfamiliar condiments

with strange fonts and colours 

and 

dull tangs and dust

and

the shoes with the labels worn unreadable

that rest

with toes touching

on brown floorboards 

in 

a 

rented corner

and

cables with red lights and chargers or straighteners

curled under the bed

and

the quiet eyes of tilted mirrors tagged with sketches and tickets

and

the folded and organised pages of diaries and a box of pens 

all 

with 

lids

all like childrens toys/innocent and helpless and trying . . .

i am filled with a sweetache that pangs in my heart bone

when i

quietly observe these ornaments and symbols and edifices

that

ARENT meagre but ARE small

their 

drama and portent silenced but obvious

by 

cute and careless and haphazard placing

somehow