1. love stuff’n , FAT LEMONS nonsense
she said she’d hypnotised me FAT LEMONS
and that whenever i wrote a poem
and thought about sex.FAT LEMONS
that i would type FAT LEMONS in capitals
and not realise i was doing it or see it after
and think how gorgeous she is.
she said she’d hypnotised me FAT LEMONS
and that whenever i wrote a poem
and thought about sex.FAT LEMONS
that i would type FAT LEMONS in capitals
and not realise i was doing it or see it after
and think how gorgeous she is.
of course , i knew she was kidding
FAT LEMONS , my god she’s comely !
i’m just not the type to be entranced
put under , FAT LEMONS
oh ! to be near her magnificence again.
FAT LEMONS , FAT LEMONS
she can’t fool me, pull the wool over
FAT LEMONS my eyes.
her eyes are deeper than FAT LEMONS
a love jug with a black hole in
and to many warm swirls to count
you can’t help but fall in
FAT LEMONS deep.
***
2. air
passed by an old man
who looked about as old as anyone could.
bent up double, one hand on stick ,other on wall
crawling along, you could sense his determination
to move along. every small inch forward counted .
stopping me, he looked up, his eyes appeared bloodshot
at the bottom, almost gone
like they were on their last legs as well
he asked if I had any matches
I said I had a lighter but he said ,
showing me his fifty pence
that he was off to get a cigar.
he called at my door once
asked me if he cleared away
some of the rubbish and weeds
if I could spare some change
I told him not too bother
gave him some change anyway.
so I guessed he’d got fifty pence from someone
for clearing weeds
and had decided he was going to live it up , for a change
and buy a cigar and probably did not have enough
for food ,tobacco or even matches.
would have offered to go get his cigar for him
but figured he wanted to make the journey himself
and that just being outside getting some air
and seeing some sights must mean a lot
when you know their won’t be that much more
air, rain, sights and ugly funny people to take in.
hoped it wouldn’t be his last smoke ,
everyone needs a perk
now and again, to keep them going ,
especially when almost their,
alone
weed clearing
looking for half forgotten memories
of better times
amongst weeds and rubbish
their only real friends left.
***
3. if we are the lucky ones?
there were two baby kids on the metro
two or three years old
in a double buggy.
they were both sucking red lollipops
which had almost disappeared.
one of them started banging the
red lollipop on his teeth,
bang bang bang.
like he was banging out a drum beat
to the sound of the metro
then the other one started doing it
so both were doing it in tandem
one a boy and the other a girl.
all kids do these amazing things
but sometimes we never notice,
but I did.
the girl gave me this huge smile
as she was pushed off the metro.
an unreserved smile that makes you wonder if
it actually happened
or imagined.
but then I wonder
all the time
if real life is all imagined,
especially the good bits.
because as human beings
our live's are a shorter distance than
a squirrels buried nuts.
surely we will in the end
know more about
death
and it might last a little longer.
as in an eternity and a day
than life does.
that our reality realm is really
death,
not life.
life is for a short short while
before death knocks us for seven,
again and again.
in life we see, smell, live, lurve, forgive, grow,
grieve, remember, forget, suffer, dance
and
grow roses down the avenues of the dead,
if we are the lucky ones.
worship shopping sex and religion
and sometimes other people if we are
are the lucky ones,
visiting Bukowski’s lurve dog from hell.
it makes you wonder how much it takes to
make it happen
just for us to be here.
for A to meet B
and our ancestors are the
one sperm that got through.
and all the suffering they encountered
to have their kids
and then their kids
had their kids
and they suffered beyond what we can imagine
to have us
and we somehow grow up into
the essential human beings we are,
if we are the lucky ones.
like it was so easy,
to be an essential human being.
as though we were all
unique
individuals
kissing the face
of death
whilst laughing with friends and family
if we are the lucky ones,
that have and see them.
as if death
only happened to other people.
everything ends
metro rides
even red lollipops
eventually,
who loves you baby!
***
4. at the top of the stairs
three or four maybe , sitting, huddled
with elder brothers and sisters
in semi darkness
shush they say, keep still they say
stop fidgeting they say
trying to hear it all
tiny head on scabby knees
arms clung tight around legs.
shouting , crashing , coming from kitchen
mum screaming. dad back from pub
back from going to see a
man about a dog again
more screaming, banging.
what had I done ?
everything was always my fault,
I was just plain clumsy and stupid,
or so I had been told.
the dim light shining from the kitchen
illustrating the source
of the disturbance,
in the shadowed dust trail light.
is it the kitchens fault
and not mine, it sounded so angry,
I mused.putting my hands over my ears.
then leaving the fold for Grans.
what had I done ?
maybe it was the kitchens fault again.
returning to the fold, un-noticed
years later to a Saturday only dad.
what had I done ? I thought,
wishing the kitchen
would take the blame
for a change.
years later, once, upon drinking too much,
I would find myself, attacking a kitchen,
in a blind drunken rage.
as though I were still mad at it,
for letting me get the blame ,always,
for scabby knees, separations, arguments
broken plates and lurve dreams
turned ugly again.
***
5. box up clever the voices of the night
you say to yourself, stop thinking
that’s the answer!
no more mind battles!
just you, the drink, some music, the computer and the night.
shut out of everything except the night.
box up clever the voices of the night.
but they will edge there way in,
they always do,
they always find a way.
they seem a lot smarter then you
more street wize, cooler, even up-beat.
a friend even, to your loneliness.
although they never seem to know when to stop.
always arguing!
swearing filth at you!
they would go on forever and do some nights.
you think you hear them sometimes
the depth of night is like
a wire mesh around your brain.
you fine tune it to receive every
noise, animal, car, screech.
as though it was from inside your
night echo mind
rather then outside.
you fine tune yourself to in coming
sarky loose chatter in the head
who have fighter planes, battle ships, mind missiles, battalions.
your minds a balloon, floating, not here or there
or somewhere you know you would find it
put a finger on it,
nudge it back into shape.
the booze is your blocker of loneliness, feelings, voices
and the night is the drinks companion
and yours.
you never get barred from the night, never.
the night becomes like an escape, a life chute.
a parachute jump into another world beyond
reason, alienation, incomprehension.
finally you and the world of the night, voices, drink
feel at one.
a strange kind of peace is found.
you have given in to the voices
and the night.
the computer says you have a friend.
so you think well, if the computer says so.
the loneliness of the night
makes you feel the opposite of lonely.
its loneliness
and its hazy world view
is now your only friend.
all of it
every dark lazy chattering mad fat cat piss corner.
the TV buzzing its damn interference
the cat hissing their sex love cry’s in painful surrender.
your empty packets of mind meds and bottles of alcohol lie around
like forgotten things
you should have done and said
put right,
organized into a
cold hard day dream reason.
tidied up,
like a sub mission completed,
coming up for air.
***
6. be
be indifferent to indifference?
be bi-polar
be manically depressed
be obsessive-compulsive disordered
be trans-gender
be different
be understated
be underdressed with frills
be over dressed
be the wearer of hats
be stupid for a change
be outstanding
be misquoted
be misunderstood
be amazing
be apparent
be ethnically diverse
be strange but true
be working class
be sacrifice
be co-operation
be spiritual growth man
be re-birth
be transformation
be reclamation
be nobody’s fool
be this life-death cycle
be cancer remission
be hippy dippy shite
be socialism
be as small as a Victorian wooden compewter mouse
be as good as you get back
be as smallminded as the worst of them
be a lurve that can not speak it’s ******* name
be a beatnik hippy punk
be a useless drunk writing damn good poetry
be a raging alcoholic writing damn bad arse poetry
be a smalltime family crook law upholder
be a city walking the ugly streets
be a hurdler who falls over but still wins
be a cross-dresser stubbing your toe in the morning
be a pirate
be the elephant in the room
be the book you’ve never read but know you should have
be the righter of so many Tory crimes against the poorest
be the Karl Marx brothers who don’t want to join the club
be the spark that lit the fuse that burned it all down
be the carrier of the flame
be the bicycle with new wheels going somewhere
be the kid with an invisible new best friend
be the train that never stops except at the end
be the inner in inner lurve
be the anti-hero kicking arse in the sixties TV series
be the ranter of nonsense
be the 99% getting fecked over again and again
be the poem you cant get out of your head
be Kate Bush on teen walls in a sky blue leotard
be Johnny Lydon in positive anger subliminal hypnosis therapy
be Kurt Cobain in a white dress
be one of the psychic heroes in The Champions
be an under-achiever getting things right
be inner change
be inner lurve
be inner grief
be inner beauty
be inner pain
be inner sadness
be inner joy
be your inner self
be your inner bliss
never be brainwashed
never be someone else
never be the same as everyone else
never be indifferent to indifference
***
7. the L in my Lurve
I am something you forgot ever existed
I am the spider in your bath
I am the fly in your soup
I am the sadness you forgot you had
I am the fly on your wall
I am death speaking loudly
when you thought you had
forgotten all about it again
I am minus zero
when you thought it could not get any colder
I am climate change
when you thought there was none
I am the silent minority talking loudly
for a change
I am the great book you never read
the one that could have changed
how you look and feel about life
I am the age you would be if you were
not quite as old as George Clooney
I am the bloke on the bench with mental elf issues
you never ever notice
I am the problem part of the city you fear to tread
I am not that old and hooked on booze
taken to get away from
all those who are dead inside
I am the film that changed your life
I am the poem
that made you laugh smile cry
or just write another one
I am the capital F in Feeling
I am the capital T,s in Thought and Thinking
I am the capital W in Willpower
I am the capital C in Co-operation
I am the capital T in Tenderness
I am the capital D in Deceased
I am the capital G in Grief
I am the capital S in Sorrow
I am not you unless I loved you
big time
then I might be
and you would be
the L in our Love
FAT LEMONS , my god she’s comely !
i’m just not the type to be entranced
put under , FAT LEMONS
oh ! to be near her magnificence again.
FAT LEMONS , FAT LEMONS
she can’t fool me, pull the wool over
FAT LEMONS my eyes.
her eyes are deeper than FAT LEMONS
a love jug with a black hole in
and to many warm swirls to count
you can’t help but fall in
FAT LEMONS deep.
***
2. air
passed by an old man
who looked about as old as anyone could.
bent up double, one hand on stick ,other on wall
crawling along, you could sense his determination
to move along. every small inch forward counted .
stopping me, he looked up, his eyes appeared bloodshot
at the bottom, almost gone
like they were on their last legs as well
he asked if I had any matches
I said I had a lighter but he said ,
showing me his fifty pence
that he was off to get a cigar.
he called at my door once
asked me if he cleared away
some of the rubbish and weeds
if I could spare some change
I told him not too bother
gave him some change anyway.
so I guessed he’d got fifty pence from someone
for clearing weeds
and had decided he was going to live it up , for a change
and buy a cigar and probably did not have enough
for food ,tobacco or even matches.
would have offered to go get his cigar for him
but figured he wanted to make the journey himself
and that just being outside getting some air
and seeing some sights must mean a lot
when you know their won’t be that much more
air, rain, sights and ugly funny people to take in.
hoped it wouldn’t be his last smoke ,
everyone needs a perk
now and again, to keep them going ,
especially when almost their,
alone
weed clearing
looking for half forgotten memories
of better times
amongst weeds and rubbish
their only real friends left.
***
3. if we are the lucky ones?
there were two baby kids on the metro
two or three years old
in a double buggy.
they were both sucking red lollipops
which had almost disappeared.
one of them started banging the
red lollipop on his teeth,
bang bang bang.
like he was banging out a drum beat
to the sound of the metro
then the other one started doing it
so both were doing it in tandem
one a boy and the other a girl.
all kids do these amazing things
but sometimes we never notice,
but I did.
the girl gave me this huge smile
as she was pushed off the metro.
an unreserved smile that makes you wonder if
it actually happened
or imagined.
but then I wonder
all the time
if real life is all imagined,
especially the good bits.
because as human beings
our live's are a shorter distance than
a squirrels buried nuts.
surely we will in the end
know more about
death
and it might last a little longer.
as in an eternity and a day
than life does.
that our reality realm is really
death,
not life.
life is for a short short while
before death knocks us for seven,
again and again.
in life we see, smell, live, lurve, forgive, grow,
grieve, remember, forget, suffer, dance
and
grow roses down the avenues of the dead,
if we are the lucky ones.
worship shopping sex and religion
and sometimes other people if we are
are the lucky ones,
visiting Bukowski’s lurve dog from hell.
it makes you wonder how much it takes to
make it happen
just for us to be here.
for A to meet B
and our ancestors are the
one sperm that got through.
and all the suffering they encountered
to have their kids
and then their kids
had their kids
and they suffered beyond what we can imagine
to have us
and we somehow grow up into
the essential human beings we are,
if we are the lucky ones.
like it was so easy,
to be an essential human being.
as though we were all
unique
individuals
kissing the face
of death
whilst laughing with friends and family
if we are the lucky ones,
that have and see them.
as if death
only happened to other people.
everything ends
metro rides
even red lollipops
eventually,
who loves you baby!
***
4. at the top of the stairs
three or four maybe , sitting, huddled
with elder brothers and sisters
in semi darkness
shush they say, keep still they say
stop fidgeting they say
trying to hear it all
tiny head on scabby knees
arms clung tight around legs.
shouting , crashing , coming from kitchen
mum screaming. dad back from pub
back from going to see a
man about a dog again
more screaming, banging.
what had I done ?
everything was always my fault,
I was just plain clumsy and stupid,
or so I had been told.
the dim light shining from the kitchen
illustrating the source
of the disturbance,
in the shadowed dust trail light.
is it the kitchens fault
and not mine, it sounded so angry,
I mused.putting my hands over my ears.
then leaving the fold for Grans.
what had I done ?
maybe it was the kitchens fault again.
returning to the fold, un-noticed
years later to a Saturday only dad.
what had I done ? I thought,
wishing the kitchen
would take the blame
for a change.
years later, once, upon drinking too much,
I would find myself, attacking a kitchen,
in a blind drunken rage.
as though I were still mad at it,
for letting me get the blame ,always,
for scabby knees, separations, arguments
broken plates and lurve dreams
turned ugly again.
***
5. box up clever the voices of the night
you say to yourself, stop thinking
that’s the answer!
no more mind battles!
just you, the drink, some music, the computer and the night.
shut out of everything except the night.
box up clever the voices of the night.
but they will edge there way in,
they always do,
they always find a way.
they seem a lot smarter then you
more street wize, cooler, even up-beat.
a friend even, to your loneliness.
although they never seem to know when to stop.
always arguing!
swearing filth at you!
they would go on forever and do some nights.
you think you hear them sometimes
the depth of night is like
a wire mesh around your brain.
you fine tune it to receive every
noise, animal, car, screech.
as though it was from inside your
night echo mind
rather then outside.
you fine tune yourself to in coming
sarky loose chatter in the head
who have fighter planes, battle ships, mind missiles, battalions.
your minds a balloon, floating, not here or there
or somewhere you know you would find it
put a finger on it,
nudge it back into shape.
the booze is your blocker of loneliness, feelings, voices
and the night is the drinks companion
and yours.
you never get barred from the night, never.
the night becomes like an escape, a life chute.
a parachute jump into another world beyond
reason, alienation, incomprehension.
finally you and the world of the night, voices, drink
feel at one.
a strange kind of peace is found.
you have given in to the voices
and the night.
the computer says you have a friend.
so you think well, if the computer says so.
the loneliness of the night
makes you feel the opposite of lonely.
its loneliness
and its hazy world view
is now your only friend.
all of it
every dark lazy chattering mad fat cat piss corner.
the TV buzzing its damn interference
the cat hissing their sex love cry’s in painful surrender.
your empty packets of mind meds and bottles of alcohol lie around
like forgotten things
you should have done and said
put right,
organized into a
cold hard day dream reason.
tidied up,
like a sub mission completed,
coming up for air.
***
6. be
be indifferent to indifference?
be bi-polar
be manically depressed
be obsessive-compulsive disordered
be trans-gender
be different
be understated
be underdressed with frills
be over dressed
be the wearer of hats
be stupid for a change
be outstanding
be misquoted
be misunderstood
be amazing
be apparent
be ethnically diverse
be strange but true
be working class
be sacrifice
be co-operation
be spiritual growth man
be re-birth
be transformation
be reclamation
be nobody’s fool
be this life-death cycle
be cancer remission
be hippy dippy shite
be socialism
be as small as a Victorian wooden compewter mouse
be as good as you get back
be as smallminded as the worst of them
be a lurve that can not speak it’s ******* name
be a beatnik hippy punk
be a useless drunk writing damn good poetry
be a raging alcoholic writing damn bad arse poetry
be a smalltime family crook law upholder
be a city walking the ugly streets
be a hurdler who falls over but still wins
be a cross-dresser stubbing your toe in the morning
be a pirate
be the elephant in the room
be the book you’ve never read but know you should have
be the righter of so many Tory crimes against the poorest
be the Karl Marx brothers who don’t want to join the club
be the spark that lit the fuse that burned it all down
be the carrier of the flame
be the bicycle with new wheels going somewhere
be the kid with an invisible new best friend
be the train that never stops except at the end
be the inner in inner lurve
be the anti-hero kicking arse in the sixties TV series
be the ranter of nonsense
be the 99% getting fecked over again and again
be the poem you cant get out of your head
be Kate Bush on teen walls in a sky blue leotard
be Johnny Lydon in positive anger subliminal hypnosis therapy
be Kurt Cobain in a white dress
be one of the psychic heroes in The Champions
be an under-achiever getting things right
be inner change
be inner lurve
be inner grief
be inner beauty
be inner pain
be inner sadness
be inner joy
be your inner self
be your inner bliss
never be brainwashed
never be someone else
never be the same as everyone else
never be indifferent to indifference
***
7. the L in my Lurve
I am something you forgot ever existed
I am the spider in your bath
I am the fly in your soup
I am the sadness you forgot you had
I am the fly on your wall
I am death speaking loudly
when you thought you had
forgotten all about it again
I am minus zero
when you thought it could not get any colder
I am climate change
when you thought there was none
I am the silent minority talking loudly
for a change
I am the great book you never read
the one that could have changed
how you look and feel about life
I am the age you would be if you were
not quite as old as George Clooney
I am the bloke on the bench with mental elf issues
you never ever notice
I am the problem part of the city you fear to tread
I am not that old and hooked on booze
taken to get away from
all those who are dead inside
I am the film that changed your life
I am the poem
that made you laugh smile cry
or just write another one
I am the capital F in Feeling
I am the capital T,s in Thought and Thinking
I am the capital W in Willpower
I am the capital C in Co-operation
I am the capital T in Tenderness
I am the capital D in Deceased
I am the capital G in Grief
I am the capital S in Sorrow
I am not you unless I loved you
big time
then I might be
and you would be
the L in our Love
