Category: sketches
this is not the season to talk of sowing seeds – cold earth & the frustrated gravediggers – nothing can grow now
good intentions count for nothing
she wrote all the questions down that gnawed away
“Oh Captain”…she often murmured – the cold fear of mutineers – go look out the window,
move the curtain and have a look
the mountains are getting smaller and that tree is dead the clouds no longer resemble anything you’ve said
night is coming to cloak us and it sets as we walk away
people are losing track of time
literally it’s falling down the back of the cosmic sofa along with breadcrumbs
hair clips and coins
a burnt out remote control
a family heirloom
a pen lid
all that shit that ends up in the bottom of the vacuum cleaner
the calendar is just a series of numbers and pictures
melding into others like
paint on a palette the
chalk on the floor
lockdown hop scotch boxes & the snake like lines leading to the bottom of ladders
but the pylons will still stand
like the iron man
transmitting pictures of your favourite seven albums no one wants to see
can I get a hallelujah?
can I get a hand clap?
this fat fingered cherub
a ghoulish gargoyle
basketball shoes
Your sense of smell went west
Stuffed crust pizza stained
your vest
More paracetamol (just in case)
that telephone doesn’t stop ringing
23 and
I counting
all the passenger on the side of a dead three lane motorway
carved through a landscapes of buried children dead trees trodden down amongst swine bone
we sit and wait for the blowback
cut price geometry
in the garden where we’ll plant the flowers
stuck in the mud with the burning man
the old buildings have all decided to collapse today
on a train with a basketball team
all long legs and size 12 feet
To
I write bad poetry to a man in Florida
who nurses the sick and thinks about
recidivists siblings and military memories
we’ve seen ghostly figures of Mike Jagger
scuttle across the page
caressing space age cutlery
made in a factory of assembly lines that never stop moving where the tannoys play white noise
and at the edge of town there is a pile of dead TV’s all empty and hollow
they told me the fillings in my teeth were satellites and I was being tracked by men in bunkers somewhere underground
I’ve always like word silo and have dreams
of fake names in hotel registers
the bruised knee of that honeymoon couple the burnt tourist asleep On the beach
at a time, we’ll just agree it’s now, when the weather can’t make up its mindand the animals outside just know somethings coming,
a static in the air,
a taste, metallic?
when the grey ground gives way to the brown crunch of dry leaves
I hear they talk about conspiracies
Nazi gold stored inside a Swiss mountain,
moon landings filmed in a downtown warehouse,
aliens living amongst us, and when waking up becomes a reenactment of the previous day and the day before that
I knew we’d never run out of things to talk aboutshe kept a diary of political slogans and propaganda posters
“ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS”
she mumbled in her sleep
He painted a whole town in black and white
the row of shops
the post office
the launderette
the butcher and his bloodied butchers block
I spend days waiting on that email
I checked my spam daily messages about people in my area looking for sex
money scams
girth enlargement pills
out of the fire
head first
into the frying pan
in days before computers
they spammed walls with petroglyphs
which no one could decipher
many names
many names like the father
son
Holy Ghost
different faces for different occasions
– passwords for everything stored in a secret file protected by more passwords, buried in a vault under a mountain in Switzerland
elaborate and easy to forget –
the fingerprints were fake –
my shadow is longer than you’d think –
I’ve seen your passport picture –
all beard and no eyes –
pictorial bible for the remedial kids at the back of the class – big letters and colourful pictures
– we forget who all this is written for
– the unknown readership in the backwoods and boondocks –
leather shoes,
new and creaking like trees bending in the wind,
bury me with the cutlery
and heirlooms
Polishing the stars
bad oxygen
your neighbours dogs barks a secret language while advertisers tell you their shampoo will give you stronger hair
and you imagine everything you see is an hallucination induced by breathing in bad oxygen
your lack of contact had me worried
I searched obituaries
looked in the lost and found
Three Bits
Rambling
he tried round up the escapees
chased them through fields and cities, across rivers and barren lands
how much space between the seconds?
heavy breathing
fear of capture drives some one
-reluctant nostalgia at a time never forgotten
– no chance to cash in
so you throw the coins away
– trinkets with germs
large letters that will fizzle and fade – like short lived fireworks – radiant for a second
– sorry
I was distracted by something over there
where she passed
did Noah thank you for rounding up the animals?
ctual events are never 100% accurate distorted
through a prism
the vomit lake thrown up by 8000 mongrels
she had a friend who wished life was an Iron Maiden cover
machines hammered out plates nail marks secret signs
at the foundry
in the factory
Marx and Engels playing parlour games
the forerunner of leviathan
thrown down and exploited
too many ways to mention
furious rage was common place & funnelled into violence
he watched from a distance while it fell into turmoil
the monk, thelonious
the heirloom and souvenirs were stored and bought out on special occasions to keep the memories alive –
(a song once told me that souvenirs only remind you of buying them)
I saw smoke emitting from the old homes beyond the forested hills –
a thousand diaries were aflame –
faceless people tried to rescue secrets from the inferno
secrets turned to ashes and were blown by the western breeze
she told me not to look
she told me we existed in a series of vignettes
we were not what we thought we were
or what we wanted to be
dogs are not Gods – unless your dyslexic – and they shiver when they shit
chosen to guard the gates of hell – promoted to guard the library steps
covered in turpentine
hidden under sheets from prying eyes
the fines will mount up –
the deficit acknowledged
my wife doesnt know if she loves me or is suffering from Stockholm syndrome – we will call a professional and let them decide
Encyclopaedic knowledge of nothing
100% dedication
to the wrong thing
he’s a good looking man but he has legs like twigs
she is an attractive lady with hair like a thorn bush
bleeding fingers run through the foliage
these days, people don’t light cigarettes they turn them on
all things are electric
I run 50km a week but I always end up back in the same place, shorter of breath, weaker of knee
just think about it all
dedicate an hour a day to it
luddites world view – man should not fly we are not birds we have feet not wings – planes are the work of the devil – heathen transport and old world views – they write this on computers there is confusion over facts
THERE IS NO CONFUSION WITH POETRY
black box recordings
faint noises and whispers in foreign – theories of alien abduction suicide pacts mass hallucinations none of this is real
inmates dream of planes
the pleasure of pushing your finger through a hole in cloth to feel what’s on the other side – blindfolded circus games
Piñata filled with fortune cookie predictions which will never come true – piñata smashed with a cricket stump
you live in a town that has different meanings – the spies are still out there –
furtive glances
the smell of new shoes
as a child you used to lick the side of coins, the copper coil, the tongue running along the edge, the taste…
it tasted like blood, coins carry germs, jangling in pockets near the sac. The smell of a coin, the metal token
paper money is becoming obsolete everything is just zeroes and ones
15 minutes of jazz
A lifetime of pleasure
people fall from the sky every day but it happens so often we don’t notice. Until someone points it out…
They buried her face down and she dug her way to China where she had a meteoric rise through the ranks of the Communist party. She is remembered on stamps and has national holiday name after her.
…but not everything works out THAT well.
she gave me stolen scents,
shared with me sordid secrets cut from tabloids – black and white pictures under headlines – a famous death, an incident that we will only truly grasp and understand in 20 years time when we no longer remember or care.
Things thaw.
Unhappy clowns paint on new faces. J
own cars fall part after driving them for two metres.
Clown cars fall part after driving them for two metres.
No one wants to insure clown cars. It’s a loss leader.
The graffiti is illegible, scribbled lines, spiderweb mess. The lines make it look like the wall has veins. (It doesn’t. I’ve checked for a pulse).
their generational motto will be WE DIDNT KNOW WHAT WE WERE DOING!
feeble excuses will not be tolerated write that a hundred times
dead cells
Inca kisses then they ripped out his heart and raised it to the sun
the crumble of bivouac leaves ruffled by a sidewinder snake handling priest drinks for the captain please
drown the stowaway
the census is wrong how did these numbers add up? the accountants crunched the numbers all night
to the right
of the decimal point
your view across this landscapes street lights outside empty car parks in the dead of night
the warm hum of printers on standby
dust settled on plastic plants in the grey sterile office hell of league tables
motivational words and health and safety notices
underwritten by names that have no faces that have never been seen to walk these corridors
the whip hands controls the stockroom
the whip hand owns the data
on read only spreadsheets of dead cells
girth pills written on the wall of caves
He painted a whole town in black and white
the row of shops
the post office
the launderette
the butcher and his bloodied butchers block
I spend days waiting on that email
I checked my spam daily messages about people in my area looking for sex
money scams
girth enlargement pills
out of the fire
head first
into the frying pan
in days before computers
they spammed walls with petroglyphs
which no one could decipher
bad gateway
Your’ll be eating mountains soon
like Cinderella in her new sparkling shoes
we moved to close to the moon
we touched the bottom of the ocean
it was once all connected
this land mass
with that
your connection is weak
I can see your face
I can see you lips move
but I can’t hear you
your backgrounds have changed
again
re-boot get off the
bad gateway
think your on mute
think everything
right now
should be paused
put on hold
while we wait for the sun to set
for this passage of time
to blow over
mosquito
grey coat
rotten fruit
and a costly mistake
you in that dress
we’ve all been long X’ed
remember when it all tasted like
bubblegum and nicotine?
Stitched together.
work in progress
city of moving parts
pirouetting cranes
skylines of keys
Elvis died on his throne
click bait fisherman
my stomach is rubbling
an empty echo like dolphin sonar I have lost a package in transit I am working outside my comfort zone this meeting is on going
I can feel my beard grow millimetre by millimetre I’m growing old right now an Easter island head peering into a digital void inert but be still my beating heart
be still my baby bird
laid low by foul disease
a nation of pox
a nation of forgotten passwords
in a Möbius loop
hidden in witnesses protection my name was changed I was lost in New York
mowing my lawn every Sunday
until it it became a religion
I don’t know my neighbours real names but I suspect some are biblical
I was home alone with the ghosts of dead Prime Ministers the king of dust shuffling Tarot
the Tower card turned
the ancients thought the lightening was God’s wrath they looked at angry skies as they watched the stars form around Polaris
and maybe I’ve been wrong all my life about our position I all of this
cranes
city of moving parts
pirouetting cranes
skylines of keys
Elvis died on his throne
click bait fisherman
my stomach is rubbling
an empty echo like dolphin sonar I have lost a package in transit I am working outside my comfort zone this meeting is on going
I can feel my beard grow millimetre by millimetre I’m growing old right now an Easter island head peering into a digital void inert but be still my beating heart
be still my baby bird
laid low by foul disease
a nation of pox
a nation of forgotten passwords
in a Möbius loop
hidden in witnesses protection my name was changed I was lost in New York
mowing my lawn every Sunday
until it it became a religion
I don’t know my neighbours real names but I suspect some are biblical
I was home alone with the ghosts of dead Prime Ministers the king of dust shuffling Tarot
the Tower card turned
the ancients thought the lightening was God’s wrath they looked at angry skies as they watched the stars form around Polaris
and maybe I’ve been wrong all my life about our position in all of this
after two days in the trench I put my head over the parapet and they clean shot the cigarette straight from my lips
mud and grime
drying to cement
in my head
I returned home at night my wife said I’d changed
I was beginning to fade
to a grey facsimile of the person she fell in love with
— drained and washed of colour
a slow death in front of spreadsheets
I still hadn’t written that novel
or made it to the edge of the continent
and in this new landscape
it was so easy to get lost like the blind tourist who touches his way around the world
finds his way back home by following the smell of cinnamon
the roar of traffic won’t put him off
the Doppler wail of the red fire engine moves around him
easy
like flowing water
milky ovaries and we smoked autumn leaves in those days that failed to appear on a calendar and the lunch time barber found a secret door in the back of my head
unlocked and looking in he advised me of what he saw
500 families and forgotten memories and posters of David Bowie
I paid and left and made an appointment to return in a month
amalgamation of comments
hetried round up the escapees
chased them through fields and cities, across rivers and barren lands
how much space between the seconds?
heavy breathing
fear of capture drives some one
-reluctant nostalgia at a time never forgotten
– no chance to cash in
so you throw the coins away
– trinkets with germs
large letters that will fizzle and fade – like short lived fireworks – radiant for a second
– sorry
I was distracted by something over there
where she passed
did Noah thank you for rounding up the animals?
ctual events are never 100% accurate distorted
through a prism
the vomit lake thrown up by 8000 mongrels
she had a friend who wished life was an Iron Maiden cover
machines hammered out plates nail marks secret signs
at the foundry
in the factory
Marx and Engels playing parlour games
the forerunner of leviathan
thrown down and exploited
too many ways to mention
furious rage was common place & funnelled into violence
he watched from a distance while it fell into turmoil
Marx and Engels French kissing in the stairwell
the monk, thelonious
the heirloom and souvenirs were stored and bought out on special occasions to keep the memories alive –
(a song once told me that souvenirs only remind you of buying them)
I saw smoke emitting from the old homes beyond the forested hills –
a thousand diaries were aflame –
faceless people tried to rescue secrets from the inferno
secrets turned to ashes and were blown by the western breeze
she told me not to look
she told me we existed in a series of vignettes
we were not what we thought we were
or what we wanted to be
dogs are not Gods – unless your dyslexic – and they shiver when they shit – shiver so hard it looks like there’s two of them –
chosen to guard the gates of hell – promoted to guard the library steps
covered in turpentine
hidden under sheets from prying eyes
the fines will mount up –
the deficit acknowledged
my wife doesnt know if she loves me or is suffering from Stockholm syndrome – we will call a professional and let them decide
Encyclopaedic knowledge of nothing
100% dedication
to the wrong thing
he’s a good looking man but he has legs like twigs
she is an attractive lady with hair like a thorn bush
bleeding fingers run through the foliage
these days, people don’t light cigarettes they turn them on
all things are electric
I run 50km a week but I always end up back in the same place, shorter of breath, weaker of knee
just think about it all
dedicate an hour a day to it
uddites world view – man should not fly we are not birds we have feet not wings – planes are the work of the devil – heathen transport and old world views – they write this on computers their is confusion over facts THERE IS NO CONFUSION WITH POETRY
black box recordings
faint noises and whispers in foreign – theories of alien abduction suicide pacts mass hallucinations none of this is real
inmates dream of planes
the pleasure of pushing your finger through a hole in cloth to feel what’s on the other side – blindfolded circus games
Piñata filled with fortune cookie predictions which will never come true – piñata smashed with a cricket stump
you live in a town that has different meanings – the spies are still out there –
furtive glances
the smell of new shoes
as a child you used to lick the side of coins, the copper coil, the tongue running along the edge, the taste…
it tasted like blood, coins carry germs, jangling in pockets near the sac. The smell of a coin, the metal token
paper money is becoming obsolete everything is just zeroes and ones
15 minutes of jazz
A lifetime of pleasure
people fall from the sky every day but it happens so often we don’t notice. Until someone points it out…
They buried her face down and she dug her way to China where she had a meteoric rise through the ranks of the Communist party. She is remembered on stamps and has national holiday name after her.
…but not everything works out THAT well.
she gave me stolen scents,
shared with me sordid secrets cut from tabloids – black and white pictures under headlines – a famous death, an incident that we will only truly grasp and understand in 20 years time when we no longer remember or care.
Things thaw.
Unhappy clowns paint on new faces. Joan’s advisors always offer the same advice GET A NEW FACE. Clown cars fall part after driving them for two metres.
No one wants to insure clown cars. It’s a loss leader.
The graffiti is illegible, scribbled lines, spiderweb mess. The lines make it look like the wall has veins. (It doesn’t. I’ve checked for a pulse).
their generational motto will be WE DIDNT KNOW WHAT WE WERE DOING!
feeble excuses will not be tolerated write that a hundred times
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