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Saturday 14 May 2022

When The Whites Of Your Eyes

When the whites of your eyes
Don't see the light of day too often
Then my friend it's time to call a halt
Yes when every waking moment
Bequeaths some form of escape
The time is nigh to seek gestalt
Each cringe of skin
Each sudden jitter
Listen
Listen good
Time to change
So how do you go, where to look
The answer is screaming
But it is within
And no more lies will help you
Begin
Of course the biggest most damaging lie

Is to oneself
But also the most easy

Until self respect returns
Clutch not onto straws
Unless to hold them in your hands
And gaze real hard
Mean something
So stare beyond the bricks and mortar
Focus your attention

On the most minuscule

Be not afraid of being misunderstood

Or of misunderstanding
Slowly now, real slow, take all of your time
Soon, soon the thinking will begin
Take a thought and write it down
Pluck another, as they race across
Your myriad of disconnections
Now mix the thoughts with pen on paper
In words, in pictures
And as you draw, as the ink flows
From those thousand instantaneous hits

Inside your head
Remember

No conception this from stimulant
No alcoholic haze, nor nicotine dullness
Just you and you
Move on, move on, still smooth, still slow
Reach your tips of toes, beyond the body
Stretch out, to your very extremities
Turn on the music, listen, listen
To just one heartbeat
Amongst those hundred thousand

Collisions of sound
Take a colour and rub it rich
Deep into the canvas
A life in layers
Layers of golden crimson
Now pick up the silk
Soft, so so softly, stroke between
Your fingers and your thighs
This is you and only you
Alive to tactile sensory sensation
Stimulated within, within, by you
Step now, step forward, step back
Twist your toes and smile
Learn to say to say control
You may feel, if you wish
A little pleased with progress
But progress one moment only
Knowing full well this house of cards
Is not yet ready to turn to stone
So stop, stop now, and work hard
To recollect
Remember that very instant, when
You did not, would not, could not, say no
Folding, falling

For fictitious, viscous, 'freedom'
If, if only
Avoid if only
Build a test to test temptation
All the while fondling silk

And feeling good
Each and every once you see temptation

Eating at your core
Work, work with pen and paper

Work with thoughts and thoughts
Now decide, in the full light of day
And the full light of your being

Your reason, your rationale, for living
Escape if you wish
But escape to nothing
Nothing more than the oxygen 

The oxygen of you and you
Stroke the marble, marvel at the texture
Mould the ball, within your palm
Say soft words, say them slowly
Sometimes take time to contemplate
Two thoughts

Intertwined with a common bond
Molecules in mesh
Upon this creation add your idea
Try to weave your way inside
This composite, stable

Living, breathing structure
Feel, feel not for a parting
But a solid bond, a point of high energy
Waiting for your fusion
This is friendship
Here the lies are gone, and to enter
Your first pass, is with truth to yourself
Friendship is a form of magic
Conjured from the craziest calculations
Open your arms embrace, smile…

Enter




 

Friday 13 May 2022

Aye Lad We’re Watching Coronation Street

Aye lad we’re watching Coronation street
N'today on t’phone

To that Manchester lass
A sort of broad vocal happy laugh
Filled the air and filled the moment
Void of anything except innocence
Happy asking directions to deepest Devon
Aye lad, you see it’s the simple things
Simple and complete communication
Keeping speaking souls sanguine
Lately we’ve been forgetting
Later perhaps regretting
But, sometimes not even that




 

Thursday 12 May 2022

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




 

Wednesday 11 May 2022

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




 

Tuesday 10 May 2022

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