Dear Nanny,
You taught me so
very much – like
the fact that the plebs
are far too rough –
‘..Only to be touched
during buggery ..
and then wear a rubber
to avoid disease..’
My dark heart is decorated
like our attic room –
where you taught me love –
Oh! I miss your bosom
Now I have buggered
all of the prols –
with eloquent speeches
off my fountain pen’s furl –
I have time enough left –
and plenty of spunk –
to replenish our love
and become as one
Your loving ‘son’
Jac-Jac x
Some things are more important
than ability..
that line a would-be band leader penned
when pinned in by the curtain-drswn
suburbs of – perhaps – outer London –
or from behind striped drapes of Oldham?
Such calls followed the loss of real music
to MTV’s cathode-fixing rays
and her pure love of riffable looks –
so much so that artists succumbed
to that two quid call in WANTED –
in the NME – and more for
‘Smiths, Commotions ..
and or Pet Shop Boys ..’
yet unfound by any other bands –
They needed a bassist – smiling
whilst the drummer they required
would not be seen – just sitting
I tipped myself into half of an escape
to sit alone on the in-laws’ stairs –
tilted there by my uneven troubles
from imbalances set by disconnections
I was taking myself off my thumped legs
and away from my sucks of short-fix air –
which set me to stand for a brief parade
among partly-heard party conversations
of drunk relatives – spiked by marriage vows –
loosened by the briefest of infidelities –
those with a younger man whose wife stood up
to beauty’s allure – she was there for measure
I put up too – with the racist uncle’s drunk ideas
for less than five minutes – not quite a cure –
but enough to get me to stand up again
and to leave him staring at an empty step
Audio HERE
First an eye-crash –
that was the quick blindness
which I slammed into –
it enveloped me under
a tugged-at gallows hood
as I ferried our slumped
kids through their unsettled fears
of the dark – a risen thing
with the hour’s rainfall
which spat – then gobbed
across the lane’s shifts –
springing like shone frogs –
a slimy tide of refraction
down the switch – on and off –
of the unintended chicane –
set by claws of branches
and lumpen road kill
in that true – truest black –
I drove under the storm
that had redacted all colour
from my high beam view
of the tongue-wet road –
that horror film palette
of some evil and of some good –
in stretched marks to bends –
in white lines which warned
of the too-tightness
of that last slip away camber
(A nod to @tonyhoags_LPS)
I am – I think – also wounded into speech –
by limped-off difficulties – by disconnections
away from my pages – I admit my ply of lines
of instant fixes – of weaved words into verse
My tipping point – there by daylight – re-set
after dull errors and other such mistakes
it is my NHS-wrap of lightly cast plaster
to mend – gripping – my snap-bone moment –
or – the tip of talcum on to sweated flesh
I am no more hiding from the heated fallout
of my dull errors – those bombed mistakes –
my day-to-day words are just housekeeping
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache
bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt
Did Wittgenstein mean –
‘The limits of my language
mean the limits of my world’ –
or – in other translated words –
‘the limits of my language
stand for the limits of my world’ –
and then later he then stated –
‘the limits of my language
are the limits of my mind –
All I know is
what I have words for’
It’s not the same pull or heave
as it was in my rowed youth –
no – this is chalk-and-flint stuff
below fast streams and run-offs
I am far removed from the flow
of the Thames through London
I now dig at the Ouse’s history
of dead poets and burning barrels
where no old boys or public schools
oversteer on her narrow channel
We aim to somehow fly
with the feather of our honest oars –
in a boat designed for work –
not built for pots or snobbery
You are a part of hustle porn
having once taken the dark oath
in a silent swearing-in
You surrender to twenty-hour days
missing every sunset in the week
You are schlepping overnight – there
imbibed upon their dripped breasts –
be they Yahoo’s or Spotify’s squeeze
in their rule of the way to work
You are pressed against the deadlines
with your suckled infant face
You dreamt of electric sheep
grazing on forever-rain rooftops
because you fell asleep reading
a novel – because you cannot sleep
Because your eyes are glued wide
open – because
You suffer hustle porn
There’s a fishing boat off Galway –
it bears
your maiden name
The fisherman don’t know you –
yet –
but will
by close of day –
you were mounted on my stemhead
your bared breasts fixed my course
I sailed with you
and your fishermen
through rages
and dark squalls
They don’t throw parties
like we did –
no sleepovers in puddles
of puke and-or-piss –
or found shagging bareback
their best mate’s lover
They don’t sink pure vodkas
for breakfast –
no acid – nothing dropped
without a full appraisal –
googling its providence
Unlike their bad parents –
who took to partying too hard
with only the letter E to look up –
They don’t throw up like we did
