Motorway Poem

I was under no illusions as we escaped the city

Watching the night and lost in the wisps of live music.

I thought of the Jetstream of the 60’s dream

A concrete moment in 1967 that cracked by December

When flats grew cold and the hippies froze

Then the dream deferred leapt into the sordid 90’s

When cockroach parliamentarians were as drunk as Withnail

And I saw the final remnants of peace and love in

The cocaine afterglow of cool Britannia

With flags plastered on champagne skin

And close fitting ribcages. I snapped from my remembrances

And naïve theorizing as the motorway lights blinded me

And I grasped my knees in fear thinking

‘Oh god’ but father began to harmonize as I considered

The majesty and mechanics of Nick Drakes right hand

Whispering William Blake innocence in the haze of Jane in autumn.

No need for obsolete baroque impersonations

The fashions of a company bleed into the rebellion

Streaming through the veins of psychedelic teens

Who wear bellbottom jeans to compensate for lack of personality

Could I borrow something as simple as a cigarette?

A line of code or a coda in the delicate prayer of jazz?

Or can I weave words into days, hours into ribbons,

Dresses into snow. Sudden stops. Can’t see

The traffic cones five feet in front of me

Sudden burst, could cold thought

Be any cheaper in city brains?

False nihilism, dust on wooden floors

A disease tended to with ennui

And nobody stops to care.

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Churches

I took tea in the drawing room with Countess Butterfink

And her incessant ramblings really made me think,

“Do you know why churches come to a point…” she said,

I suggested that it could point the way for the newly dead,

She laughed and said “no, I beg your pardon,

Steeples represent the thorns in Gods precious garden.”

I knew then she was insane. I nodded and sipped my tea

And replied “well, my dear, it seems to me

That the world is then surely full of pricks.”

Assassin in Training

Go for the throat and tear it out,

Do it quick or else they’ll shout.

Then stab the heart and twist and turn

Watch them plead, watch them squirm.

Watch the light drain from their eyes

Listen to their muffled cries,

Their blood flows free and crimson and cold,

Just not on the carpet, you’ve been told.

 

“Yes Grandma” I said.

Two Haiku

I would like to paint

Though I can’t find the strength

To handle the brush.

 

I could make movies,

Films breathe life into dreams –

But mine stay hidden.

Cabin

I want to be the guy in the white shirt

Black tie, spewing nonsense bullshit

From my Cabin somewhere in the woods,

From a transistor radio with a screw loose.

I would set free insults both obscure and wild,

And watch the birds close the sun for the day.

My fans would be rabid, I wouldn’t trust them.

I would discuss history, executions, and martyrs,

Folk songs too. I’d play my own home recordings

From my solid white tape. I would spy on Jupiter,

Watch its rings and learn of its medicines.

My long shotgun (‘Rusty’) will rest at peace by the door.

The moon will be my spotlight and I will be happy.

Family

Hollow eyes from the child who wouldn’t quit.

Mother communicates conservative ideals

And father fires his atomic anger after dinner.

There is no church but the nature of humanity,

And you find that in the ones who make you.

A Ramble

I left behind the smoking wreckage,

Walked away from that old fire.

Oh I caught my whale alright

That was a product of my sight,

I can fake the chills in the night

Though I have never been there.

I can feel the sand on a shore

That I have never been too,

And conjure up a false emotion

Strong like a blue star.

I had a hit, or two, and sadness comes

When you realise you are not the only one.

That is not the case, however you may believe,

We are all whippets on the track

Chasing the political game

Wrapped in torchlight, melted candles

Restaurants with smiles and fake smiles,

A shiny car, belief in your fingers,

Simple breezes in thinning hair.

I am not one of their associates

I am not a corporation

But I am not an outsider like Odysseus,

I am not an open and tumultuous wave,

I will never be a Spaniard resting at midday.

Yet I can come close

In a summation approximately 12 lines long,

A parable, God I need a parable,

A world captured, it is Gabriel.

Prose 1

Climbing over fences, taking chances to see a sunset that is pleasurable to the eye. It’s been a long day but for the faintest reason I can’t remember any of it. I had ice cream, vanilla, crazy. Wow what an hour I can see buffalo in the corner of my eye and that lazy tune that has been in my head since Tuesday will just not go away. I want it to let up so I can feel a different vibe but that beat keeps rising. It’s some Indian thing. After I see the world I think I should get some rice for my dinner… I’m hungry and I want to feel like I own a lot of things, so there you go rice it is. I meander to the little bohemian quarter where the chilli and rice restaurant stays open late. Fashionable couples in gowns and shoes discuss grandma and super market prices. Hmmmm. A lovely French painting hangs on the wall I must ask the waiter who the painter was, if he was sad or happy or full of strong ale. I like to think He had a lot of roses in his garden. The waiter waited upon me and I got some £8 rice. Well it costs a lot to have the nicest things. I have a hole in my jazz influenced shoe. It was cheap, I brought it for next to anything. The rice was nice, it really took the weight off my shoulders. I couldn’t wait to swim through the stars and sleep in my own bed.

Grumpy Haiku

Danny and Arin
The gamiest grumps you know
Pay your rent Burgie!

Sonic 06, Ech!
Red plant! Purple plant! Blue plant!
It’s snowing on Mt. Fuji.

The Pope

Aye two bonny men in the humble sun

Sat, sunken suits crumpled with remnants of rum.

Called out the pope on all good deeds

And swore to expose his evil seed.

Then the copper cracking youthful skulls

Cursed the yelping squawking gulls,

Then came across the bonny men lying in the street

An’ tried to drag them to their drunken feet.

“What’s this about the pope?” he asks with Italian infliction

A flame of the inferno in his post-Dante diction

A curse in the cadence and spite in the tone.

They said “We are travellers so far from home,

We bathed in the ether offered by your drink

And by midnight we started to think:

The strangest theories we’d never known

About the goings on over the skies of Rome!”

The Copper was befuddled, confused, an’ red

Strange conspiracies began to fill his head,

“You drunken men blaspheme against the Pope?”

They said “No” but then again “we hope,

For what we hear is unspeakable and wild

About what the pope would do to a child.”

The copper drew back, spewed bile and fell

But what they believed they forgot to tell,

“Silly fucker feinted before he knew our cause,

We are here to prove the Pope is Santa Clause!”