Sculptures in Expanded Polystyrene

Art College
Art and Architecture
Young Turks
Swirling skirts
Gangster’s molls
Christmas dolls
Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac
Christine Perfect's Chicken Shack
Technical College
Engineering and electricity
Young men
Stiff shirts
Girlfriends
Sunday tea
Northern Soul
Otis Redding's Dock of the Bay
Coincide
Cross the divide
Shave the days into nights
Union bars, steel guitars
Youth in spirit
Growing apart, growing together
Amazing Blondell
Principal Edwards Magic Theatre
The textbooks bind
The engineer’s mind
Straight and true and able
Pockets full of logarithmic tables
Thermodynamically stable
Calculating the impedance of cable
Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd
Page and Plant’s Led Zeppelin
Indentured Apprentice
Golden Boy
Time off for good behaviour
Time off for inappropriate attire
Under his skin
Touching nerves so thin
Andy Fair-weather Lowe's Amen Corner
Jimi Hendrix's Experience
Days off for DJ's
Excused
Losing time falling behind
Someone has to fall away
Rising to the top
Completely unable to stop
King Crimson

In the court of the Crimson King
Stevie Wonder's Innervision
Work in figures
Work in words
Work in space
Plastic like plasticine
Sculptures

In Polyethylene paint
David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust
Andy Warhol's New York Dolls
Working out past times
Rationalise fate's own schemes
Dreams and disappointments
Certificates and senior appointments
Work to play
Play engulfed by work
Simply Red
Van the Man
Music lover, worker, poet

 

Virginia in the Cinema

The poet rolled right out of the window
The writers rolled right along the riverbed
The flowers forgot

That they had been given
And the cake could not remember

Being iced twice
Virginia in the half-empty cinema
You mesmerised with your surprise
You kissed her on the lips
We never knew how much you missed her
Now we drive home across the moor
Under starlit skies we surmise
Who was the begotten bard
Understanding never-ending loving
Virginia in Sussex and Surrey
Craving for the faster life
In New York she became
Only the lonely organiser
Friends and lovers and husbands
Tearing hair and wearing thin
Unable to enable or to establish
Sense or source of equilibrium

Your fingers and fags
Ink stain and nicotine
In between the glory and the glamour
The nerves and the never knowing
Wanting to be more than normal
Wanting to walk out and down along
Wearing what
Whatever young girls wear along
In the cafe windows
On the railway platforms
Real people disappear in fear
Why do they stare
Another century, another era
Paperbacks and plays all show
Silver-screen brings you near
We, you, no one will ever never know
The credits roll
Our arms unfold
We scatter your flowers
And pour the nectar deeply

 

Pimps and Tarts, Poets and Writers

Black stockings, spotted skirt

Engaging smile, pretty flirt, dealing dirt
Dollars or dope, just enough rope

To bring her home, she's never alone
Violence in love, her presence she moves

The crescent moon, it can't rise too soon
Black, in black-coffee cafe, jukebox jive

He's so alive it's killing him
His girl works, he shows her the door

He has to score, it's killing him
Shining, silver and gold, everything

He holds, he has sold for his soul
She is escaping from within, mescaline

Frightens her skin, her nerves, quieten
Stronger, the fool took her time

Nearly took her total

She's longing to be strong again
Singing songs, clean and confident

Freedom yet still on the edge

A need to perform, limited reform

Don't want to get at it again
He's doing time, paying his fine

Corrupting society, importing exploitation

Prostituting the situation
In a year, she's still clear, but now he's out

He's roundabout, nothings changed

Still the strange satisfaction

Of manipulation
Of course she falls, no one to call

He holds her tight, says it's alright

You know he cares, he smiles and stares
Fear or love, good god above

God only knows, having been before

Why the need to score

Why go on the game again
A passion for crime, even doing time

Learning new tricks, corrupting young

Hicks, building reputations

Avoiding situations-vacant

Waken in the new black-economy
Talk about arts, poets and tarts
Sculptors, fighters, pimps and writers

 

First Poem of the Day

First poem of the day
Clearer than a Capstan full strength
Meaning seemingly

Endless understanding
That first breath of intellectual inoculation
That first untainted web of words

So so carefully interwoven
Woven more than spoken

Softly lowered and laid to rest
Better than the best of stories

Thoughts broken down

With feelings wide opened
Awoken to our own intrinsic imagination
Blown on the mountains

Of menthol inhalation
Consulate reminders of a nicotine past
Thanks, for the first poem of the day

 

Late Junction (For Verity & Friends)

Good Friday
Liaison de l'amor
The water falls
Spanish guitars slide and strum
Whispered words over
Underscored songbirds in unison
Laying behind the violin
Bassoon behind the moon
Drawn in by the drone
Moments too soon, too soon
Sorrowful strings seep out and over
Timbre of stroking, tapping, canvas
Wandering back out of the forest
Falling into the fearful darkness
Bellows blazing and blowing
The screaming shrieking crow
Into Istanbul
Saxophone’s summer mystery
Chords, carousels, bass trombone
Rhythm section in full blow
Constructing crescendoes
Winding down, in and out
Ethiopia's singing superstar
Behind Bertolt Brecht
Score, scrape, roughen up the surface
Introduce a smooth-blue lead guitar
Crack around the dripping potholes
Stalactite to stalagmite
Steadily increase the heartbeat
Feeling for a following frequency
Drop on top that single bleep
Repeated with mounting irregularity
Going nowhere
Circling for a moment
Redirection fades in from faraway
Scattering out the waves and tones
Driving on at midnight
Fingers tapping on the wheel
Windscreen wipers splash the spray
Locomotion slowly drains away