BETTER ATTITUDE TOMORROW BILL

i heard
the window cleaner

calling handsfree 

saying 

if i dont come home today
i'm in prison for killing bill -

hes acting like its his OWN jubilee

bill arrived in a rattle of ladders

bill heard this 

bill left in a rattle of ladders

better attitude tomorrow eh bill ?

STRANGE NAKED SCULPTURE

theres 
been
no water
running
in 
the
town centre fountain
for 
at least 20 years
& today
there 
is
an
abandoned mountain bike
ruined & twisted bad
under
the
strange naked sculpture
of
mother & child

i am wondering 
if it adds anything
artistically
&
am leaning towards the affirmative
when
a
street cleaner
gets off her
hoover cart
&
huffle-puffing blasphemes
drags the fucked bike 
over to the good bikes
locked
up safe
against
the
precinct square railings

i admire her pragmatism
&
assume this
is
not
her
first rodeo

from gladfish.com

MAC THE CLEANER

mac the cleaner has deep carved wrinkles under wide bloodshot eyes.  this morning he hides himself under a blue anorak hood. a brown roll-up is visible sticking out toothpick thin from white bristle lips.  he lights it in solitude out on the hospital back lane.

he looks rough these days.  he is death white pale.  

he didnt used to be.  he used be old leather.  

his eyes look down at cracked concrete and pebbles laying where the rain left them. he used to look at the grey clouds and loudly disclaim all and any weather.  

he says MORNING but the life has vanished from his voice.  less a greeting now an automatic observation. 

i know he used camp with old rockers and retired bikers for the volkswagon weekender and drink homebrew from stone jars and cook Aldi steaks in a half-drum bbq.  
i know on a monday he used to say FIVE DAYS TO GO and laugh a throaty smokers cackle.
i know on a wednesday he used to say HALFWAY THERE and laugh a throaty smokers cackle.
and on a friday WOOHOO.
i know he has a married daughter over the river and no wife.
i know he visits his dad twice a year saving up for the train. until he had a fall and they moved him from country isolation to a local home.
i know his moaning used to be cheery.
i know he stops for a pint with the market traders on the way home everyday and sometimes i'd lend him money for it.
i know he always paid back prompt.
i know he reads fantasy paperbacks by people i never heard of feet up in the broom cupboard clutter of the private ward.
i know before pay day he'll ask for baccy and i'd let him roll a few from my pouch for the evening.
i know he'd use his own brown liquorice papers.

i known him a long time but i dont know him well.

i think he may have had bad news.
concerning his dad.
or his own health.

but his face no longer invites conversation.

the funnyfarm

NHS MOMENTS

cant tell his age because of how his hair has come out in clumps and his walk that's a straight-legged limp.  he's fiddling with a phone like a younger man but his eyes are watery will illness. his skin is indoor blue-white and his belly bulges randomly like overstuffed pockets or hernias.  
he comes rolling down the hospital corridor with that awful limp rocking him side to side swinging his bad leg out wide pulling a trolley too big for the narrow space.
the guy he's with, cant tell his age either but he has to be older.  he's balding in a more conventional pattern with a greasy wispy top tuft bending to the corridor drafts.  a thick handlebar moustache hides a mouth that never smiles.  
they take the corner in each others way in a moody silence.  the loose padlock on the empty box on the trolley is hanging free and bouncing back and forth in metallic rhythm.
i hand urgent drugs in a box dense with stickers, a before nine delivery i'd been lumbered with because today's DHL driver is new and didn't care.
the sick guy with the watery eyes signs for it in a laborious tiny cramped scribble.  it is illegible.  i ask him to print too it takes longer but looks just the same.
the moustache guy stands silently big hands by his knees clutching at nothing.  
the bleep of a hospital pager prompts a flow of swearing from sick eyes.  he drops it in the silver box bleeping still and limps on hitting laundry trolleys and fire extinguishers and everything else he can.
i watch them go.  their pace is slow.  bleep still bleeping.
they stop and talk to a teenage cleaner with a short mohican who leans on a mop handle with no head.  
sick eyes and the cleaner have their phones out, jabbing with thumbs.  moustache stand there silently.
i turn my back and head outside.  i have time for a smoke in the bus shelter with the dizzy and the elderly by A&E before the meeting in the admin tower about my sick time.  
my work phones rings.  it is my union rep.  he cant make the meeting and that really doesn't matter at all.