scrap (January 2011)

When you became mortal in my eyes we truly became friends
Your vulnerabilities and limitations jumped out at me and kissed me on the mouth
You’re not the only one saying ‘why so serious? You’re still young’
But talking maturity is a young mans game
The heaviness hasn’t yet settled on these shoulders
So what can I do but conjure it
And do my best to listen inside you

moving in (summer 2010)

you said the hairs on my arms were fluffy
and abhorred my limited taste in bedclothes
But on that bed they made sense and so did you
In my garish 3 stripe jacket
Facing back to front
Your arms outstretched, eyes intent, reading Henry Rollins
(You bent the cover back and I felt small for minding)
Your pure prescence
Natural, easy, impulsive
Took us onto Hampstead Heath in the late night rain
There were four, but I had eyes and ears for one alone
The next afternoon in Soho
You disappear with your boyfriend
Young and curious
In a fashion I can't remember ever knowing
And I feel tired and anachronistic, though mostly tired

Wood Green (November 2010)

Wood Green is Alive
If I know nothing else
I know this
As the people swarm under Saurday twilight
Queasy street lamps leak anaemic orange
buses line up and toddlers run
between their mothers legs
amidst the shopping bags

Wood Green is hungry
Driven
Pulsing
Never pretty
Its hunger charges me through the seat
Energy running
Rushing
Streets are awake now
Wood Green is Alive
Alive to the couples, the rubbish in the gutter,
To the sirens, the shopping shrines and the cinema
Waiting for the moon to rise


When the Vacuous Neon Glares
In tourist ridden squares
There is a Wood Green shaped hole in the heart
In the stomach
In the memory
Brown Eagles perch
No pigeons
Wood Green is free

scrap (December 2010)

This isn’t born knowledge
You have to cultivate it
Im bound to
Its not about paper but that’s a tool to trace it
Blood for blood
Mixed up interrelated
The past and the future live in the present
That’s the basics the bare bones the fundamentals
Drunken master and asetics warring for the temple
The dervish whirls and the pious man sits
But is there to catch me when I sleep
I step too far and just trip
So I’m falling clutching at straws
Nauseous in a crowd rushing for the doors
So much noise could be cusses or applause
I crave silence
Just now I lusted more
The hunger for more put the grind in m jaw
Now outlined with a beard that makes my features obscure
Stole the holy water and drank it
Im filthy and pure
Excommunicated Excavating the raw
Uncut long untouched
As yet unspoilt truth
That energises like the suns rush
Walk with me
That takes some trust
Im scared of the succubus who could end my world with just one touch
Not dumb
Still seen men lose it all to a dumb rut
Or a thousand dumb drinks
Certain people of mine I look in their eye and just sink
All I see is a busted flush
Opportunity spent
Never saw the gaps in the rink and kept skating
Red face never facing up to responsibility
Stuck to juvenile ideals boxed in by invisible walls they never bust through
Im trying to evade that fate and talk truths to touch you
No crown is rustproof

Untitled (15th-16th Nov 2010)

South to North
Vacant
Practicing
Foxhole Diplomacy
Get your Warhead on
Make up bag full of face paint
Full Spectrum
Blaring Our Fear in Technicolor
Questions
Reflections
Through a London bus window seat
Could I be a European Bastard Child of Stress and Misery?
She is perfect form and perfect nothing nothingness
Early rises for Eternal balance
Erudite though I might be
Such elevation eludes me
And the hours that keep me
The void people fill and language maps
Collapses inward
Existing in three times
Telling me what I always remembered
Words are never without owners
And Sentiments are never without intent or consequence
In this false economy
Disdaining property
As sinful when you don’t believe in sin
Gives a fleeting monopoly
On the highest ground without an in
Above the flood
But beyond Humanity
The air thins
And you breathe your last
Lonely and cold
Stones Cast Without Sin
Come back around to become
Your pillow
Your bed
Your place of rest
Paving the way for the next wave of tests
Of Tanks, of Troops, of Talks
Laying the foundation
For the walls that curve and bend around us all
Within these four that I call mine for now
I’m talking through and around
To check the pulse of peace and joy
And Reason and Rhyme
Check
Our hearts are still beating...
This is not finished
Check
Our hearts are still beating
This is the Magical Realness
Check
Our hearts are still beating
Without the aid of machines
Check
Our hearts are still beating
We EQd the ECG Flatline
Check
1,2
Check 1
Check 1 girl or check myself
Bring it back in space and time
Regret I'm tasting mine and swallowing
Leading from the back and following
The guiding lights of beacons lit by trailblazers
Excavators
Recovering the greatness
Denied by our condition
Situation
Temporary position
And not pausing for food, water or stock options
Move
Even on the spot
Pirouetting
Shilouetting
The possible against the sunset of expectations
And the moonrise of hope
Full, Pink tinged, Billous
The man up there
Is on the lam
From a life left behind
Travelling into an afterlife
Of splendid stellar isolation
His regrets shining
Embedded in the firmament that defies our primitive horizons
Reminders of the space between them
Seeds he sprinkled
Absentmindedly in unripe sky
Now they burn beyond control
and he shelters on the dark side
Permanent night providing his style advice
And shame and resentment his permanent smouldering accesories
He lets them off
Periodically
Flaring
Streaking the skies
Like blood in Delta sands
And we look up
Catch a glimpse and call them beautiful
Never wondering where they come from or where they go when they fade
Falling to earth
Terminal
Like the screens we stay stuck too
That marshall our labour
That project our liberty
That educate our children
That are educating us
Pull the plug
And see if you're still breathing
Working, Free,Learning
But don't fool yourself that the man in the moon is any better off
Set it off
Technology is the vehicle
Not the driver
So don't blame it for being drunk
On booze or power
Remember that when the meteors shower
Or your choir reaches critical mass
Yet can't break the Sound Barrier
Your tools are the carrier
Your voice is the virus
Would you rather be an analogue Jesus or Digital Osirus?
Essence exhausted on dual carriage super highways
Being passed by a thousand different Mash Up Messiahs
Transforming Observation to Obligation
We see the potential in the heart of the pitstop pariah
And don't stop for service
We stop to start serving

place

It’s a powerful and scary place
Rough Men down below excavate the old and set the foundation
For more growths alongside us.
More steel and glass to encase distant neighbours
More flat carpet space between islands
To give this inertia a sense of purpose we cut figures of poise and containment
Runway lights on our ceiling make me want to take off arms spread wide
Chest bared to the arrow and the hailstones
I’m hoping to hit flesh and stick
Fresh, presentable, slick shoes a week off next polish
I’ve tried to sanitise this inspiration
But I want to be wet, sweaty and exhausted
Panting in giddy glee with you
And if that doesn’t sound attractive what can I do?
This clean sanity is so damn boring
I can’t sleep and in these late nights
I go travelling, fantasies run wild
Don’t want to live life like a widower by a graveside
So I’m bursting through this window to touch the fresh air
Clutching at rising wildflowers
Tasting the sickness of the city and feeling it lift
As the wind lifts me and takes me beyond
Above over and out into the Ocean above where lights pierces but never wounds and Darkness falls in shades making us beautiful
Spectrum washing over us to illuminate what lies beneath our skin
Symmetry in synergy like iron rich desert sands shifting physically
Colour Changing instantly
It’s a reaction and an anticipation
A powerful provocation
More than just a craving
It’s Boukman inciting Haitians to burn plantations
It’s a Chemical, Physical, Biological Fascination
Alive in my imagination and becoming flesh with every breath infectious with every step growing larger stronger bolder every little loving liberation growing larger stronger bolder every single act or thought or message pure growing larger stronger bolder larger, stronger bolder, than the power, larger stronger bolder than the fear larger stronger bolder than limitation we stand tall we see we hear we know we understand
This is what we have to hold to cherish to make our own and we’ll never let it slip slide, drift, let it go, never, as the waterless waves blow and unseen hands stitch our lives together now and these stories are told we can’t see the seams just feel the folds ripple along our smooth surfaces caressing those sore patches... good wine to a thirsty throat.

(Untitled)1-4th October

Buddha Heads and Pot Plants

Inhabit this space

Spot-lit stage where no performance will pass

Shadows fall

And hope rises

Grace exists in the stillness of

A Poet in the land of nobody

When the night draws down its curtain

Over this bare window

Nothing changes

The cryptic questions we never answer

But don’t stop trying to

Paralyse me now

Force my hand and shade my tomorrow

Slumps and highs

Push me to push on a red door in a quiet street

After red bus journey to you

On the way here I

Saw the old man from the bookshop

Scuttling under the streetlamps

He walked quicker once he heard my footsteps

The fear evident in his voice when he acknowledged my greeting

In the dark fledging friendships vanish

And we yearn for safe arms length anonymity



This Sunday has been atypical

I played dominoes in a bowling alley and retired on a winning streak

I cooked simple food slowly and enjoyed it alone

With the rain drumming along

And then it came back to me



We’re asking for something more but

The requested operation requires elevation

In surplus city we’re all skating

On ice that gets thinner with every passing day

Even as the temperature drops

And the rain drops

And the pound drops

And the Bass drops

And the shells drop

And the bodies drop

And the penny drops

Into the gory gutter

And the stench rises

And the smoke rises

And the high rises

And the flats rise

Into the plane streaked sky

But fall short of greatness

Cement Ceilings on the hopes of generations

Black hoods for the voiceless

Shielding them from the cold world they’re facing

On suspended walkways to nowhere

Looking for the perfect angle for the run up to the moment where their wings emerge and they hit the evening breeze in flight

Beyond the grey walls and neon bars

Further than every man with a price

Past the low horizon of this empire
There’s more
Past the low horizon of this empire
There’s more
Past the low horizon of this empire
There’s so much more