WORKPLACE RHYTHM

monday morning - here we go again

tuesday - i hate tuesday's, such a nothing day

wednesday lunchtime - half way there

thursday - had enough by thursdays, nearly there tho

friday - thank EFF its friday!  

also some bastard says soon be monday morning

and repeat

REEL WERD

the ragged edges
like we all really talk
and that

then, like, yes no, you know - false starts and that

like we all really talk
innit

half sentences only start
abandoned to eyebrows and hands

open ends
we silently fill with common assumption

MNMLST POP 2

less is m

more or l

if its bold

MINIMALIST POP

what is, is

isn't it?

tracking code/not a poem

<a href="http://www.hypersmash.com">HyperSmash</a>

LITTLE PARADISE

when i dont itch with insect irritation
and got nothing that needs a scratch
and no brown rot in my teeth 
and no one laid out in a hospital gown on thick sheets to visit
and there are no urgent scrips to fill
and my trousers fit good and comfy
and everything sits in the right pockets
and my feet are happy and cool where they are
and everyones mood is adequate or better
and the news and the globe are just things outside the dented fence
and the scribbles in the many notebooks are not chaos
and the dishes are kind of done enough for me
and the isnt too much cat litter spilt on the porch floor
and there seems to be Space and Air and Time
and the future is not a black wall of dead bricks
but easy events on a blue horizon
and there might be a good movie waiting on the coffee table
and i'm not too tired to think
and the tentacle mutants climbing out the bookcase are a forgotten dream
and the book open on the kitchen table among the friendly scatter of crumbs can hold me and impresses me but wont make me feel small
and the radio is gentle and no white static yell
and nicotine gum and cold water are enough for now
then
i
can 
begin
to 
relax

and breath out slow

and file it all away for a mental apocalypse day
when i need to 
KNOW 
that these times happen

LIKE IN AN ARGONAUT MOVIE

even if a giant eagle
swooped down tomorrow

and lifted her off the street

and dropped in a mountain nest of massive hungry chicks

it still would be a six months
to
tell
ANYONE who listens all about
for
ever

g

£1.69

round man in red t shirt and rumpled shorts/walks a dog
stands between a pillar box and a phone box

you can picture the row of red
lit sideways by the dying sun
burning down the rooftops at the bottom of the hill

he's calls to a woman 
got out an ice white Audi/shining obsidian roof

YOU ALRIGHT? he says

ACTUALLY I AM, I AM she says
and
because of her tone/relieved inspired alive
i think
i may overhear some personal drama 

but 
she was worried about the mornings rain
and
her
hair

at the chiller in the shop the juice has gone up 60p
thats quite a leap
wasn't so long ago it leapt 20p

i feel old in the land of expensive juice
and
the Audi woman comes in the doorway/beaming a smile
and
her hair
is truly average

SUPERMARKET

cold aisle/packets of bad horse and bacon

shades on

in shock from hot dust of Outside

plastic basket of meat and cheese to eat

and its 

Bomb Blast Bright

and its

Alien Cold

i MUST get out

big floral woman at till

asks me to pay for her marge

so

she

can

leave

NO i say

ANTARCTIC LONER

electric eye
and 
german director
and
crew
in a land of aztec palms and twilight guitars
film a penguin 
heading away from his collective noun

returned to them/he leaves again

inland/toward mountains and death

alert a base camp a few km inland
and 
catch footage as he passess

determined
steady
alone

inland/toward mountains

and

death

BRITAIN FM

britain FM
has too many sponsors
and
a
small playlist on heavy cycle
of
barely disguised remixes

the beat of the day
under
the
rhetoric
of forever

the consumer is consumed
dancing
like a good taxcow

HOSPITAL COLOURS FROM A WINDOW

suneye shines on yellowline hospital hatchbacks
turns their blue bonnets silver
everything
is
dialled
down
to a quiet insect hum

washed out colours struggle thru a haze of beige

nurse pulls a blonde ponytail tighter and tugs down a dark dress
walking fast and late in black flat shoes
past
grey/white panel walls no shadow on their flat mute glare
hiding patients 
on 
tired green sheets
in 
dull orange jammies

van drivers coast in dirt painted vans
their slamdoors muted in heat
and
shift matte brown cartons to cool white inside
without
the
normal 
swears

ON THE BACK PORCH OF EARTH

with
a sabre of love/a dagger of art
with
a shiv of survival/a Gerber of growth 

i
whittle wisely/shave subtly
and
hack with the hatchet of have-nots

(while
whistling dystopian themes)

at
the tall and tremendous tree of life

to
force and form
and
to
craft and coax

a defined and lasting point

WAR GOES BANG

spring turns red
in
strange urban crusade

camps of god bulldozed 
like
Iran's smirnoff sea
and
gulf storm 1 Caterpillas on black oily sands

west PR words are weak rain 
essentially 
say 
'sideless unwar'

low chopper thuds on the square
and
bullets anyones windows

they are globe citizens
and
they
pick
at
scabs with wounded fingers

GROOOOWL REBEL BELLIES

fish dna frostproof science fruit
from across the sea
is a wonder
and arrives in time for breakfast

at
closing
surplus
locked 
outback in bins

still fresh
still wrapped
bar-coded 
and 
logged as acceptable loss

banned
by
law
from meeting poor peoples empty bellies
science
grew
it
for

WHILE IN MY HEAD ITS AN 80S JUKEBOX

after dawn is blue morning
full 
and clear
and born with cars

and the rich conifer
huge
like a Pixar muppet
looms over unkillable blacktop

100 animals behind town walls
flare wet noses 
at a blim 
of autumn draft

and
the orange ball tho silent
still 
asks 
us 
what 
the night did

TRYING TO EXPLAIN THE SCALE OF THE EXPANSE

on the ocean world
in the isolated kingdom of sea
cameras catch whales warring
in
the deep blue forever

soft zeppelins strange appointment 
in the wet universe
says
man is tiny

a
whale
drowns a calf 
big as a lorry
hundreds of miles from mans small land

BATSHIT DREAM

Everything is sludge green.  The terrain is de-forested jungle. Thick mud and deep roots slick from rain.  There is a group of us.  Half a dozen.  We carry bulky bags and heavy equipment.  I recognise one as an actor from the sitcom Community.

The going is difficult.  Visibility is bad.  We pick up the pace and call out to each other in half heard voices.  I have tunnel vision and a desperate sense of doom.

Things like tumbleweeds wound with christmas lights and filled with motherboards overtake us.  The light in the low sky changes often.  Green lightening and electric thunder.  The murky soup of mist and diffuse murmur of faux dawn.  Or dusk.

We find the dam.  Olive slime clings to the dull concrete and monsters appear in the distance.  Huge shadows in low cloud or silhouettes before the dim sun.

We work, our mumbles muffled and useless.  The quicker we work, doing i don't know what with whatever any of this stuff is, the closer the beasts come.  More tumbleweeds shoot past.  There is a palpable sense of escalation.

Our tasks dissolved into chaos.  Our hands are all thumbs and we start to run and stumble across sludge green fields giving into panic.

There is a large building just like the Richmond Holiday Inn.  I go in the revolving doors.  The receptionist is familiar in that dream way and tells me i have been doing it all wrong.  

'Do LESS', she says, 'and the alternate realities won't catch you up.'  
'You been doing TOO MUCH', she says 'there is no need for the monsters.'

We head out and slowly we wade across a river of white topped khaki.   

'Thats one thing done', she says, 'so lets wait a while.'  

We wait then wade thru deep mud that sucks our shoes and reaching the edge of a busy dual carriageway.  Again we're waiting.

Things are seeming safer but its all very tense.

'Cross the road', she says, 'and get the box in the ditch but remember do one thing at a time, do it SLOWLY.'

The road is no longer a dual carriageway, its Lampits Hill near my house and i'm standing by the farm where we used to buy potatoes by the sack when i was small.

I cross the road between traffic.  In the ditch i wait, a small box is down in the weeds.

Everything stays as it is.  The sky is uniform grey-green.  I pick up the box and i wait again.  Then i climb the verge and stand by the side of the road in the bushes and wait for a space in the hatchbacks.

There is no path here and the overgrown verge shrubs block the view up the road.  Opposite are old brown flowers on a lamppost. A tribute to the victim of a fatal accident.

I notice a pedestrian crossing right by my feet that wasn't there a second ago.  

I step out on it assuming the traffic will stop . . . 

JACK ON JACK

JACK ON JACK ACTION

(Jack Kerouac and Jack Straw)

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

Lights up on JACK STRAW approaching a front door holding a clipboard.  He knocks.  KEROUAC answers.

KEROUAC    Here I am writing on a Spanish typewriter when the door goes knocking.  Can’t make up my mind.  Answer or no - I’m yelling with joy and madness.

STRAW          (Holding out his hand) Mr Kerouac?  My name is Jack Straw.

KEROUAC    (Ignoring the hand) Jack Straw from the Peasants Revolt?  Did Allen send you?

STRAW          No, no.  Jack Straw the Leader of the House of Commons.  Allen didn’t send me.  I work for the government and I wanted to approach you for your support.

KEROUAC    Is this a message of compassion from the centre of the universe of Essential Mind?

STRAW          Yes.  Yes it is.  Please, take this New Labour badge.  I want your celebrity endorsement to stand for party leader.  The cameras are late.

KEROUAC    (Doesn’t take the badge) I’ll write a haiku about this.  Burn it with matches.  A mighty and beautiful thing.

STRAW          Thank you.  Is that a yes?

KEROUAC    I’m dead you know.

STRAW          A party donation can smooth anything over right now.

KEROUAC    Your party.  Is it an unworldly state where my father and hope are hellish currency?

   

STRAW          You put it very well.  Things have been better and can be again.  I’m in a soft job right now and I want power, Jack, you can help me get it.  I want more than Blackburn.  We’re not so different, you and I.  I was there in the 60’s when it all went down in Chile.

KEROUAC    My good friend Huncke says we’re all ‘yipping’ in a pre-ordained world.  He’s dying from infection in a jail hospital.

STRAW          We can use that.

KEROUAC    Say that in church in Manhattan.  I’ve become a Bleak Prophet in our own poor faces.  Huncke wouldn’t like you.  He’d get you drunk and rob you.  Why should I help?

STRAW          I was sacked because of American pressure.  American pressure can get me back.  Come to England with me we can get you on some day time TV.  Have you a book to promote?  Richard and Judy would love to have you.  They like books.

KEROUAC    I don’t fell well if I leave America.  Got dysentery in Mexico City trying to rewrite On The Road and Doctor Sax into one subterranean book.  In Tangiers with Bill - had to come straight back to the tremendous and awful walls.  Tell Richard and Judy I can meet them in Denver in the fall.  You got a match?

STRAW          Would you do a TV spot?  I think that’s what you call them here.  Get you on tape saying something.

KEROUAC    You’d have to drive me there in a death car, long, black, sleek, Cadillac coffin.

STRAW          Anything you need.

KEROUAC    No.  I’m not doing it.  Buddha saith ‘it is body which moves and changes not mind’.  (Closing the door)

STRAW          The cameras are late.  Don’t go in yet.  Let me at least get a photograph.

KEROUAC    You need to be more realistic.  You’re in the wrong country.  Barking up the wrong Bleak Prophet.  Get off this pockmarked stoop.  Must write on my Spanish typewriter.  Find a match.  Write to Allen about you.  I can smell your awful perfection of doubt.

                        Door closes as a lone photographer’s flash catches STRAW alone.

SILENT GARDEN NIGHTS

wait for small green apples
to fall out of the tree
and
bounce and be still on patchy
brown
lawn

8 pm - hot
air is still and muggy
reminds me of warm beer/of funerals

walk to the shop for ice cream
warm cig smoke drifts slow
from 
wound-down hatchback window

off licence lights murmur and shine
the busy bottle shelves
flash me back 
to 
the 
wild heart of drunkness

but now
i'm only waiting
for green apples
to
fall
on a brown lawn

40 NOT OUT

dear 40
made it - hello!
the age of recovery 
and 
fearless work sin hopeful
must
rise from tired drafts

this is home now - outlived most of the heroes
and
everyone on tv is childyoung now

will have 40 years of toxins massaged 
out my muscles
my
tired kidneys will them squeeze them free 
in golden streams all night
and
the
drs finger will helpfully search
around
inside my arse

dear 40
bicycle tires hang on the back of my bathroom door
and
lego men stand in line/plastic psychopaths on my desk

my
desk -
effort poems and short panicking prose
i post to electric ether
and 
tho 
my job does suck
it pays for trains and breakfast eggs
and
good people that struggle there
smile on me
in the 
lurid daytime week

dear 40
i've dug up the bodies/my cupboards are empty bare
i have stopped drinking all the booze
i waved my skeletons for therapists to record
and
i would take over the farm
if there were any chickens 
left anywhere 
anymore

dear 40 - not out!
but still ill
sick with the world blindness and headline lice
but
clean
with restraint 
survival 
and vented complaint
a migraine phoenix
from fire of exhausted youth and arrested development

dear 40 - i'm tired
and its difficult to think
ford 4.0
relaunched
repainted
new bugs
and
drs updates waiting 
in 
a 
rubber glove

ART MANDATE

art 
must stink of ourselves
stink of a week in a tent
with 
spilled booze fermenting and burst dreaming
crumbs and roaches and visitors
and 
cheap dealing
and the looming big moon and the low yellow ill moon
and
all the thick rain
that
ruined everything and hid the stars

art 
must be an unshaved wart
a beer fight
a reckless dangerous running night
caught in amber
in the
sickness and weakness and unapologetic guilt
of 
the bedridden and whining next day

art
must
be simple and readable by all
the
cutlery monkeys
eating 
kfc

ADULT?

men are little boys
with
their
short trousers long handed down

schoolyard knocking order
faded into
smoking corner silences
and
staff room chat
with shirts tucked in voluntarily now

men are still little boys
see
it
their cars and bikes
and
freetime poker nights

and
clumpy
shoes

MEMORY ORPHANS

memories walk odd in gossamer shadows
from tea trees 
and conifer
and
what i saw there in the dappled puddles
and
what you saw there on the bleached kerbs
can never agree

memories walk odd like orphans
like i dreamt them
and grafted them onto photo's
or 
made them up on a bad hangover saturday
covered in gin sweat and horror
and
tho
maybe
wrong and created in blank solitude
i encourage them to haunt me
afraid of . . . WHATEVER . . .
if
i
let
them go

?GOVERNMENT?

target poor and sick,
fund bankers, selves and royals.
rain thunders, scares cat.

ILL POP

illness fascinates
the patient in his boredom
pills rattle like rain