NOTEBOOK ON MY KNEE

i write OLD
five times
in the notebook
on my knee

& then TIME
seven times
with this pen
that the nibs
gone all feathery

& next is war
& i write that like a whisper
like this would make
all the tanks & planes
turn into whispers too

& last BOLLOX
eight times
one for each season of the year

ACCELERATED ELECTRIC HEAD

within minutes
no seconds
of waking

i have diagnosed myself 

with 7 rare disorders
& held the floor at 3 wakes

fought a policeman
& stopped a war

killed a murderer

& snubbed a king

all in my accelerated electric head

& it dies down some with coffee

~

like things on a microscope slide

oily shimmering rainbows
strobe in my pov margins

& a chad of light is displaced

by a black hole punched 

into the centre pane

& everything & anything
i do / manage / achieve

this morning

this afternoon

all week

is herculean heroism
in my viddy newsflash

FRAG 37

never has the past looked so rosy

thinks everyone

every time

the fan 

needs another 

deep clean

~

like the radar station

disguised as a water tower

from the last global war

looks

quaint & retro

these days

to me

THREE HAIKU & A BIRD 3

SHIT ON 

A BLANKET

 

her toilet was too far

drunks prob died on the lava rocks
    

    depression

    confession

TV RAIN

CLOUDY SKY


gods turned their backs

movies are 

          just wallpaper

bruised by hard rain






DESPERATE 

WALLET


full empathy winds
           
mud & wars 

          forever arms

fetch the penny jar

photo Shed Penguin from the Dagenham Archive

HEMINGWAY STOLE MY TB HANDKERCHIEF

i pond skate over
those clever depths
that scare me rigid
from 
the 
bolo loaded bookshelves
their ferret rounds
ready 
in paperback disguise


~


the prose like glass
the full metal jackets
& 
the cut of
a 
between-the-wars
wilkinson sword

vonnegut
at least
gives me a shoulder
before
the
bayonets
at
dawn


~


theres no comparison there
theres no inspiration there

that
wont
make
me
bleed
struggle pup tears

& hemingway
he stole my tb handkerchief


~

tears-
their own catalyst 

ferment
in the ennui petri dish

of
the
uks
daily no way

from amazon.com

MONDAY POPFLOPS

there
is
something
ancient & bored
inside 
of me

it is never surprised

i think
it
must 
be 
my bones


~


bet that smells
like pork belly

he said
looking at the war

focus you fool
i said
& estimate its carbon footprint

youre
making
me
hungry


~


looking at the 
bright side
these days

well
its just the shadow 
of a scratched itch

from insidethemagic.net

BROWN DROWNING (CLICHE / LOON ALERT)

knee deep we are

in shit now

& rising

i read
the poles are collapsing
&
probably realigning

everyone is indecisive

all the bees are dying

nationalists

putting their time in

not surprising

big enough opening left
to dive in

democracys belly exposed 
flawed & dividing

dont we need to be
(cliche alert) 
u n i t i n g ?

always a war 
to skip out & die in

if
you
tire of permissible sin
daytime tv 
& morning gin

tv has them polar bears

on an ice cube
thin & staving

all i do is eating

& if i said this was new

id

be

lying

but something basic has broken 

invisible line crossing

&

its

escalating

whales beaching
like monks
immolating

hollywood repeatedly
filming our ending
like we need reminding

& since the 40s
(loon alert)
aliens been climate warning
but
im a fruit loop
just for saying

knee deep we are

in shit now

&
rising

everyone best buy waders
big enough
to keep
your 
kids in

from pinterest.com

A DREAM TO THE TUNE OF A SONG

i look in thru the windows
i look inside the door

everyone in there is playing god
on a ps4

i am falling asleep at the rendezvous
falling asleep on the floor

when i wake my belly is swollen
ribbed and ripped and ready for war

and the crabs are calling for passports
calling for their own custard creams

there is benzedrine in the breakfast potion
its washing my mind out clean

and in this dream i am suffocating
doesnt matter what i have seen

open another box says homer
doesnt matter where theyve been

from inceptionradionetwork.com

OLD GUYS AND THE TRUTH LAWNS - POPTASMS

1.

  we are past 

    Truth 

the rags yell-

completely 
   forgetting 
  their job

and i am only trying 
to 
get 
my first coffee down

and
it
tastes
like
boiled stone



3.


out the window -

no shitehawks on my lawn

its 
all 
clean out there

  the
leaves laid out by an artist

no headlines
  for
broken
  eggs
   in 
   the 
 young starling trees


3.

and the old guys
from the old times
who fought the old wars
still
go
up the shop  
             s l o w l y

for
their
8 am
rags

every single bad news day


4.

and
our
forever
queen 

wrinkled gin puppet
 empire fresh
  on her 
 golden potty
calls for lavendar

picking
a
castle
for
the
weekend

from www.onceuponatimeabc.wikia

VISITING NAN IN HOSPITAL

they had her on a mental ward
they said for lack of beds

we clusterfuck
in a sunny courtyard
fag butts
everywhere

her eyes shine 
as if from far away
like 
when
she'd
tell
her
stories
about hanging out with

'homo's in the west end'

during
the
war

from en.wikipedia.org

I AM NOT CERVANTES

am 
i
a
sancho panza ?

  maybe herding
  maybe following
  the 
earths quixotic delusion
     waiting
     on
     some
     concrete gift
i will
never 
understand


or 
am 
i
a
saddled rocinante ? 

  lost in my own
  small
  windmill
  war

  from www.travellingboy.com

WORLD - AARGH !

my inability to adequately articulate
  my
frustrations and dissatisfaction
  with 

  governments
    world order
      gods
        banks
          the religious
           the dumb 
             the music industry
               war mongers
                 space explorers
                   computer coders tickling the depths of AI
                     and 
                     more
       
           and
my difficulty in pin-pointing
  where it went wrong

if
it
was
ever
right

  leads to poems like this
that
lack
much
intrisic merit
insight
or
viable life alternatives 

 from behindthevoiceactors.com

BONES ARE OF FAMINE AND WAR

tho
i
cover and warm
my
chilled chicken skin
in
supermarket
Gortex
fleece
the bones i dont know
still
show
symbolic bleached and wanting
thru
the
beach sand
and
Fifth Ave
of
soft
Western
privilege 

 from inhabitat.com

ONCE I KNEW TWO SOLDIERS

ex-soldiers 
on
fucktowns ear-bite streets
work
temp contracts
in
the
malls dusty backways
demobbed and dumb
tight
with
steroids and shruken tempers
fighting off duty cops
on 
a 
drinking night
in
the
light
of
a
MacDonalds window
locked up now
on
Dartmoor
painted too real 
from wars smudged palette 
of 
greys 
and 
red

from www.worldwar1postcards.com

BIG STUPID

between
the
crap-shoot of soft health 
and 
feet-up backroom tardiness
the 
hot lust for nothing 
but

Big Peace and salty carbs

is

derailed like a movie train

by

anxiety news of money and murder

and

the

military drums bang-banging

a

white noise whine-hum anthem

of 

World and War and Waste

and 

avoidable mental disaster - its the Big Stupid 

getting

in 

the 

way

of

simple ideas that pass for easy dreams

like

road block uniforms on imagined borders

that

keep

our

debated souls burning

between

the

missed somethings and avoided anythings

of

essential school-broken futility 

in 

the 

drunk stumble steps

that

pose

as

time - the unstoppable journey

to

unscared 

death 

 from healthhabits.ca

FAIRY WAR ?

the
summer sun 
sinks again
behind the 
tv sky
and
shines goodbye beams
on 
garden-hose water
shooting out 
the sprinkler 
like strobes -
shines it
into
rainbow sparks
from
soft welding

or 

into 
a shower of 
baby laser beams
like
the fairies
are playing
Star Wars 
in among 
the rose bushes
and
lavender

i hope 
theyre playing - 
maybe there
is
trouble / maybe
tooth territory 
is under dispute . . .

Nature - pretty as a picture
reassuring as
washing nodding 
on the tilted
rotary line

but 
Underneath - 
a Black Flipside
we
rarely
notice

from telegraph.co.uk

WAR AND MUD

what do i know of war ?

ive read Dispatches 
and the controlled crashing of 'nam pilots 
and Martha Gelhorne 
who couldnt find any nazis in Germany 1946
and Anthony Loyd
a war too far in paranoid black Chechen rubble
and
ive 
seen
the
awful transformation of a child 
in
the
Ukraine in Come And See

ive seen the photographs of Errol Flynn Jr
disappeared 
on 
a 
motorbike 
over the Laos border 
ive read Cats Cradle
and the solution to wars worse obstruction - mud
mud
mud
mud
wading thru mud with a canteen of gin
in the South Pacific's estranged islands

i 
know 
about 
Kovacs
and
Macnamara's Plan B
i 
know 
about 
the 
elephants declared enemy combatants
and
the
pilots who never talk about it ever - never ever ever
and 
all
the 
irish 
nurses
say 
LET MEN HAVE THEIR WARS 
BUT 
CANT THEY LEAVE THE CHILDREN OUT OF IT ?

i know some never get over the dark
and 
some 
never 
eat 
pork
again
the pigs you see - the pigs left behind
by
running 
farmers
well the pigs - they cleared up
the
battle 
fields
with
awful hungry blameless snouts . . .



ive read the trench poetry
mud
again
always mud
deepened by tears
and
i
been in memorial museums packed with shoes
and
tiny
torn
purses
and i read the lists of names in stone
wondering who died sleeping under a tank
that 
sank 
slowly 
in 
the 
mud
just to get a night out of the rain

its
all 
LEST WE FORGET - like we could !
with
Hitler 24-7 on freeview channels

and
Kissinger still alive 
and
working