it figures

 it figures

ten past eight 

the siren - quite faint

like highway patrol 

ten four

route sixty six

why for

am I telling you this

at seventy one

i don’t do why for s

any more

fifteen minutes 

past eight

enough i say

it’s a typo

it’s all a bloody type O

 pounced

by the back hedge

watching you

 watching the cat

watching a rat

scream

penclawdd

 penclawdd - and the

sloughing of a snake-black night

broken boats with mud-arsed sailors

foot-printed down a sworn-drawn breath

estuarine slither-e-slither the delta worms

the sloped-shadowed masts of the mudders

goose-stepped gulls / urchin-crunch-shrined 

rag-wormed slime-warm and the long-slow

riding of a tide’s bottom-splat until 

the the tabernacle bell summons

what! is it muddy sunday already?

cataract

cataract 

every corpuscle in my blood

a poem

every neurone

a new line

every molecule

cadence 

every breath

turns a new page

every quantum 

a stop

every photon

a colon

the peristalsis of

every opus corpus

is semi comatose

between the book covers

every day’s end is 

every day’s beginning

of a poem

that will flow in the blood

of a sigh

or in a grimace 

of despair

i just love that 

don’t you

grit

 grit

every raindrop forms around a spec of dust‬

‪every pearl around a grain of sand‬

‪life is the stones in your shoe‬

‪heaven a bowl of warm water‬

‪remembering the pain‬

‪in a time of peace‬

we stride forth

enchanting

 enchanting

perched on the confluence of city and wildness

built of warm stone words and whorls of worlds 

slow gone‬ out with the tide that will return

to lift the boats and walk with the herons 

and tourists lost in carried words

the half understanding of the looking

around each corner’s corner gated

in an aged boathouse with a ghost

from new york 

so?

 looking back 

you see who you were

not who you are

looking forward 

you see who you might be

not who you will be

he’s gone doolally tup

 he’s gone doolally tup 

he’s drunk too much

  he’s got the d d DTs

he’s gone doolally tup 

he’s toxic like

  shaking ‘n shivering 

gone doolally tup 

you’ve done it now

  you’ve gone to far

he’s gone doolally tup 

they took him in

  they sectioned him

he’d gone doolally tup 

but he’s quieter now

  he’s coming out

then he went doolally tup 

they injected him

  the four male nurses

they went doolally tup 

its was supper time

  his time for bed

now don’t go doolally tup 

well there it is

   my sorry tale

i’ve gone doolally tup 

LISTEN UP

  NOW LISTEN UP

i’ve gone doolally tup 

i’ve gone doolally tup

how it says

 how it says

lay upon the music of the dawn

the cat snuggle 

on the circling of the day

the way the lavender bobs

the clouds just

float across the tea

and me asleep along a line or two

float waiting for a bite again 

from the one that got away

go warn

 he is

he is ian isn’t he

ian he is i am telling thee

it’s he 

it’s ian see

the way he is strolling see

the way it’s he

here in cleethorpes

fancy

asking he if it’s he

likely he is or

like he might

not be he

but thee ask he

go warn

ian 

go warn go warn

grade britain

 ‘they’

stepped over the gibbering

shocked masses of

anguish

laughing it off

on their way to the university of soft knocks

privialed to be privileged 

hoi polloi be a good boy

here’s a stick

fetch

good boy good boy

there’s a good girl

now then now then

sit!

follow my lead

now that [A] you say

now that [A] you say‬

 

‪stands for‬

‪Assassination‬

‪  the grade extinction‬

‪the degradation of the‬

‪  non-event horizon‬

‪  the singularly unfair‬

‪career ring into‬

‪  the clearing out‬

‪of the termite mounds‬

‪ the get back where ‬

‪theEE‬

‪belong‬

‪and for Algorithm ‬

‪of course ‬

‪repeat‬ 

autumn

 ‪summer‬

‪trying on all the fashions‬

‪until it settles for russet red‬

‪and walks out without paying ‬

‪a second thought‬

‪other than will it go with white‬

‪for the new year’s ball‬

super a market

 ‪super a market‬

and - as always - the freshest poem is at the back‬

‪not too soft or too hard‬

‪not too thick or thin skinned‬

‪well past its sell-by date‬

‪the buy one only get one offer‬

‪that is your reading of the shelf‬

‪next to the checkout‬

‪time is running out without paying‬

‪alarm!!‬

he says‬

‪he says‬

‪this moon-drawn breath‬

‪domed on an estuary ‬

‪  halted he would say ‬

‪haunted and stopped‬

‪the shadows conjure ‬

‪indecision in the darkening ‬

‪lights come on‬

‪in fairyside ‬

‪and still it holds‬

 

Impressed here‬

 Impressed here‬

‪the words are the sound‬

‪this i’ve found‬

‪imprinted imprinted‬

‪unlimited‬

‪the wheel‬

‪surreal ‬

‪round and round‬

‪impressive sound‬

‪oil and ink‬

‪n ink and oil‬

‪and so it goes‬

‪and so it goes‬

‪and so it goes‬

‪it prints evermore ‬

The school of hard knocks

 A lesson in the school of hard knocks‬

‪Life ( IS ) unfair‬

‪It shouldn’t be‬

‪It needn’t be‬

‪But is ( IS‬ )

‪If we ever ‘sort it’ then‬

‪Hey up‬!

‪Along comes death‬

personification

personification 

poetry wishes to be a person‬

‪to be heard‬

‪to be seen‬

‪for what it is

for what it isn’t ‬

‪for that is what it is‬

dear john

oh dear john 

cold that gets colder gets colder‬

‪that never warms with time‬

‪like the expansion of the universe‬

‪that goes on and on and on‬

‪love forever never ends‬

‪cold gruel was once a hot pot‬

‪tears were once a smile‬

‪again‬

‪a ‘for dear john guzlowski’ poem

chemistry

chemistry 

triplumbic tetroxide 

you’re making me frown

you stood and you watched as

my precipitate came down

vanadium pentoxide

you have converted me too

catalysed the reaction

made SO3 from SO2

potassium permanganate 

your oxygen demand

has turned my fingers purple

as i started to titrate

with an indicator’s hand

or black with silver nitrate 

or acid red and alkaline blue

so turn off the Bunsen 

the H2S generator too

there’s nothing left to do son

the assays are over for you 

switch off the extractor

the double distiller H2O

the muffle furnace a factor

across the linoleum floor 

dim the lights for the night shift

as the works hums a lullaby or two

the chemistry a rich gift

i’ll leave it here with you

beached

beached

the sea speaks with the shrieks of children

and gulls raucous upon icecream cornets 

folding blues into whites 

into the coves of waves running

like the roars of caved trumpets

heralding the unpicking of the sky’s bobbin

across screaming seams torn with a knife’s horizon

that i spy from a deckchair striped in snooze

feet upped hatted and as red as

a raspberry sorbet melting

drunk of the sun’s plum breath

eyes like piss holes in the sand

salt-hidden as an X in a pirates dream

a parody of shiver me timbers jim lad

and so i am 

fast asleep 

in the deep end

buried under warm sand

midday heat

parenthesised by crows

in summer sitting

it never rains

‪touch it - and it is gone‬

‪what is it you said‬

‪tell me again‬

‪when it rains‬

‪again‬