I am having a new relationship
with kerbs:
Dropped kerbs tempt me towards
their supplicant slopes,
But the blind man’s rivet-rough slabs
(found at crossings and corners),
Do so very little for me:
Making my stiff-shuffle uneasy.
I take the longer route to avoid
steep challenges these days.

Two old ladies (loud) in the reading room,
Giggled, un-muffled, in the cold-bulb gloom.
Compared their tablets, one from the son,
One from her husband, “But can’t turn him on!”

A nearby woman huffed, and shut her book,
She muttered, stood up, and gave them a look.
So, ‘The Web For Beginners Course’ began,
With a short speech, from a very short man:

“Welcome to this course: designed to get
You all surfing the World Wide Web.
Make sure you both have plenty of power.
This session will last (he clock-watched) an hour.”

Within five minutes one of them had found
A site.. men and women stripped, gagged and bound.
Ten minutes passed then lady number two
Clicked on Breast-Dot-Fest (it was rather crude).

‘Is this porn?’ asked old lady number one,
‘If it is, then it doesn’t look much fun.’
The old ladies’ web search widened some more,
The very short man slipped out the side door.

Get to the dentist,
you have nothing to lose,
just a few teeth,
and the ability to chew.

The lady in the mask,
poking your molars,
has studied dentistry,
for millions of hours.

Trust her, listen,
she says quite loudly:
‘You’re eating less sweets’,
and your Mum beams proudly..

Ugh..

..Mum exposes her dentures,
teeth she keeps in a glass,
next to the bed,
along with other spare parts:

(You can trust your parents
to let you down,
their teeth are terrible,
some are grey-brown.)

Mum smiles wide,
the dentist spots the mush,
breakfast leftovers,
which Mum failed to brush.

Has anyone noticed,
you won’t get a pension?
A promise Osborne
fails to mention:

But no need to worry
’bout the old man:
Retired, he’ll onshore
his own pension plan.

Lengthened pain, off the easy-measure,
searing hot-rods, new displeasure,
found in both hands, and stiffened wrist,
holding tight – cruel-spiked insist.

A constant enemy, without a doubt,
clawing within, more than out:
No drug-fuel fix of medication,
You almost embrace life’s abjuration.

Add the bloody tremored-creep,
nervous, shaken, rattled to sleep;
burrowed, nudging, shuffling-fears,
disturb, unsweet, dreaming-seers.

Sleep reminded you: ‘Do not rest,
wake up,’ it said, beneath bad breath,
coursing through your earthworm-veins,
and taunting with: ‘Get a grip again!’

Without diagnosis your body was cruel,
quaking, shaking, playing the fool:
Then, re-labelled, as ‘progressiveness’,
You knew much more, but understood less.

They shuffled past –
an occasion-group –
men blacked out
in mourning suits

Fashioned Ray Bans
reflect bright sun
They hide red-eyed
from us living ones

This – their procession
onto a wake
It’s their last time
they will undertake

a gathering with
one laid-to-sleep
This sunny day when
they darkly weep

E080919

I blamed Einstein –
that raspberry-blower –
when I found out
that for not much longer

my enjoy of movement
within his theories –
my own quantum-guess –
is now full of queries

[Einstein Brain
+ Loss of Movement]
(could) = cure –
or some improvement

Gather those minds
with higher degrees
fund more research
to save us
Please

I stand away from you,
Not beside you,
Along Europe’s southerly
Mirrored view.

Families shoved off,
Hull-huddled, in fear:
Life jackets, loose-strapped,
By a profiteer.

Twenty-hours out,
And spewed vomit is rife;
You pray this will end
In a better life.

There is no one God,
Of any one faith,
Who will guide this craft
To any one place.

Your loved son is gone,
Drowned, surf-rolled ashore,
His body washed-up,
He travels no more.

When we look to blame
For these boat-choked seas,
It is we who create
This misery.

Old friend, you are now aged fifty-two,
a wonderful place to embrace the view:
A whole (long) year ahead of me,
For just a month (in honesty):

Reflect, briefly, time’s ‘whinged-chariot’,
or accept this life, our winged-allot:
Life in the fifties, with God in sight,
We men weigh-up, stand, and fight:

Cruel dictat, of gravity and beer,
will loosen belts, off hips, I fear:
But as we strive, to put food on the plate,
we should recall what made us ‘great’:

Interest and passions – kept us awake,
intrigues and fashions – were our mistakes;
cars and fags, blowing cash on brands,
looking for life, in beer-gripped hands:

The future halted at thirty-something?
Our past-present once, so-comforting:
Now we live, no long-gone mistakes,
the future unfixed, we shall still be great.

Each daily verse
takes an hour of my life:

Posted poems,
tax-receipted time.

This one is brief,
but like any return,

Counts out time,
in this life-burnt.

The allure of a street bench
is my latest ‘must’;
Firm, and free,
on these places I trust.

Sat, not yielding,
slapped on the skin;
Who needs S&M
when you’ve Parkinson’s?

one executes a child
in a Moscow flat

one shoots at kids
in tear gas attacks

one scatters bombs
over Syria

one sucks black-gold
from Nigeria

one screams abuse
in the face of another

one stabs the eyes
of his lover

one human can’t take
all the blame

one is the one
who is never named

 

The return walk, hobbled together,
From the speech therapist’s advice,
Should encourage me to avoid The Alma,
And other throat-burn-delights.

A short climb up Framfield Road,
Past Old Ale’s 4% call;
My dignity would still remain,
If I had just the one pint pulled ?

Breathing the roadside fumes,
Will surely do for me before a pint?
Or am I pouring distractions,
from the assure of medical advice ?

I am reduced by Austerity’s ardour,
Having lent a fiver to the wife;
There is no cash-point en-route,
So I will forgo that poisonous pint.

“Simplify,
then add lightness”*,
a code we could
all adopt,
when bringing up
our kids,
now their innocence
is lost:

Screen-time,
swiped tablets,
distract
by smart-fix,
these children,
this generation,
here,
experience-missed.

[*Colin Chapman:  Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman CBE (19 May 1928– 16 December 1982) was an influential English design engineer, inventor, and builder in the automotive industry, and founder of Lotus Cars.
Full Wikipedia here ]

The gun’s stock, lifted, too long,
Putting the cold trigger beyond;
Still, he adjusted, feet, hands, gait;
Finding the gun’s balanced weight.

Targets – a propped-tile in white,
Two tossed bottles, and a down pipe;
Easily in range, he shot, low-missed;
Long-sight dropped by trigger-pull twist.

***

February’s dull flatness, a planing-wind,
Lifted my past, and Dad, again;
Reluctant to share lone-hunt-time away,
With a cold-chattered boy, as I did today.

I lifted Dad’s shotgun, with safety flicked,
To my shoulder’s larger, better fit:
Over-under, aimed at the silent-drey;
I, too, missed my target that day.

I sit still,
tight-supped:
Some-come-thoughts,
double-cupped:

Palm-charmed by
insights’ hands,
whistled-to,
out-of-beat bands;

asked of you:
Be my crime?
Bedstead in,
undressed-rhyme:

Table-sat,
hid-thighs touched,
Fingers-crossed,
is that enough?

Now? I have no need for sleep!
I kid myself: struggling to reap
Sunlight’s low-wan humour;
avoiding then, dark room suture.

You asked me to stop reading (in bed):
‘Monologue’ would be better said;
The subject, not my voice, too trying:
So to myself, in well-spoken silence.

Twelve hours lain, three of sleep,
My long standby, a low power cheat;
I wake to re-design, across my life,
You may struggle to be the same wife.

The tearoom,
time-marooned,
in petal-chintz-fits:
Present is passed over,
on gloss-cloth prints;
like manners, poured,
tabled and staffed,
attention to these fittings,
dragged from our past.
Beverages long-brewed,
under knitted hats,
to be tipped, loose-leafed,
by the tea-bagged class.

Today, it finally hit me as I headed home, ache-lagged.
But, as a child I was called ‘Bell-fast’:
A short-lived nickname on the long walk to school,
because my stride got me there in record time:
One ‘The Guinness Book of..’ never cared about.

There was a hedge-thatched ditch,
a slow shallow run of ore-orange silt,
along part of that route to and from school,
(‘before the motorway was built’)
I would not get sucked in, I was walking too fast.

Except one day, rare-slowed, I pulled a fossil from the stream:
A heavy stone, shaped as if a pear, but halved, sliced clean,
stamped with an ancient leaf, it seemed.
Lifted from that school-route ditch,
I wondered then, ‘why me’, with that find;
as I shuffle now, I wonder ‘why me’, again.

The call is made to
‘Clean for the Queen’,
in celebration of
her majestic gleam:

I think I’ll rinse
my republican-mouth,
floss my teeth,
then spit royally out.

My disease-tease game of sorts,
I muster, as written-down thoughts,

Composed crude lines,
Re-versed at night,

Sometimes cry, truly, in delight.
Such stretched out, screen-tapped,

Half-laugh, rhymes,
Knocked off, quick-crossed,

(De)composing lines:
I can do piss-poor-poetry,

I also scan badly:
as you can see.

A week gone, with only texts
to connect with you:
Floating wishes
along the Indian Ganges.
I chose your shampoo,
lathered before your arrival;
shower-boxed, you returned,
in my touch:
Foam-smell, brought you back,
on my fingers, off that longed-trip,
I was no longer alone.
Cubic-fixed.

Facebook, overnight, post-bagged snarl:
She, swimsuit-sat, on dolphin, ‘so cruel’:

Held it from water, until it drowned;
we sucked-dry its soul, re-tweeted around.

More concerned cries, over the death of a thing:
As kids ‘cross la Manche, wait, suffocating.

Jungle slow-cleared, raked-over soil,
lost, infected youth, truth’s grey voile.

Les enfants want lives, to make it across,
but may drown in the camps, more un-figured loss.

When war-blown minors are once given hope,
they too will suck life, from freedom’s throat.

This day: not one child will be dragged from hell,
instead we will shame ‘the fish-riding girl’.

Once sleep, mitigated,
lowed-sickness extremes,
under lax-lain flow,
relief in night-noosed dreams;

where no fixed stiffness,
or crumbling fatigue:
Dreams, what vagary,
my succoured-relief.

Last night, more vivid,
I filmed delusion’s play,
but, for the first time,
that being, slept away;

Ill-drugged and screams,
now robbed dreams-eased,
with slumber’s infection,
twilight, day-tripped, diseased:

In my sleep, inanimate,
free-frame falsely engaged:
Now in dreams, shuffled,
nightly caged.

WORK:
Is not a foul device:
Accept its place,
And live a deeper life:

A BOY:
Angry, imperfect-fool:
help re-design,
he’ll cease being so cruel:

LIFE:
Absorbs every effort:
Return its fear,
give much more back to it.

LOVE:
A re-whispering-host:
It comes to you,
When all else is long-lost.

Beware West Park’s
red-brick drain,

It sits half-burrowed,
seemingly in vain:

Only last week
it swallowed a whole toddler,

The child was rescued,
by a kagouled dog-walker.

Why return, look back,
At that Gulag hut?
Where my sixth form time
was mock-dragged:
On the clock’s face, hands-free, writ:
‘Time is a bourgeois concept’.

The sneer-reduced tutor,
*Name redacted*
With his flat-footed red boots:
An intellectual bully,
Who brought nothing – to us,
‘The Brains Trust’:

His sarcastic, re-parried, thrusts.
My parents asked him:
‘What’s the use of politics,
as a subject choice?’
He joked (unread): ‘Michael could be
a trade unionist, or Labour MP’:

He took them in: so for that act,
this, my decades-reply to
*redact*:
For his staff-room laugh, at simple folk,
Stabbing my parents, slipped cruel joke,
Brief writ now, in my late bourgeois-times,
Look-back, exhale, my knifed-rhyme.

‘Rigidity’, no comforting,
a stiff-backed word:
To be strapped thickly,
under pain’s tight cord.

Magnet-heave off,
against Newton’s guess,
Lifting my heel,
is a fight against.

Gravity and time:
Could be Einstein wrong?
There are dark matters
Within Parkinson’s.

Disintegration developed
on common estates,
Funded by corporal,
spatial, distastes.

To relieve us, mere-public,
of rights of way,
To put in place sponsored,
landscapes-laid:

No slight-reference
to old share of lands,
A Digger would bury
his face in his hands.

Return me the right
to wander across,
The Fields of London,
without a toss.

Binner – wheeled to departure gates –
an offensive act booking those flights –
Hug-locked – brow-racked – scorching fears –
final-flighted and drops of scare-fared tears –
One-way ticketed for one of the few –
to meet the Swiss doctor who will do

Binner reduced – when failing to hang –
takes assurance when death’s bell rang –
Last supped-meal – over pressed white cloth –
as closest friends quit the disciplined voice –
swallowed wine sipped over swallowed tears –
Binner consumes all their fears

The clinic – managed – comfortable – slow –
would allow him – on the last turn a no –
laws – even there – need proof of intent –
a questioning to reckon if death is meant –
Our last lain bed is not often chosen –
its use – not usually the thing we know –

Binner to Debbie – in planned dub-voice –
clarity in this – one last act – one choice

then

Gone from the clinic – pushed solid-boxed –
Remnants of his self – rolled coroner-locked

What we leave behind never remains –
What we seek to leave is minimal pain –
Difficulty in death is not for the dying –
That awkward state is for those left crying –
Should we leave wakes of tear-run floods
for those we lived with by spilling our blood?

Bravery is found in the judgement of others –
a strained heart broke by his out-living mother
Autumn pulls Binner down with its fall –
he pre-supposed well cheating winter’s hard call

---

How to Die: Simon’s Choice: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b070jm26 via @bbciplayer

---

“thank you @MikeBellWrites for a beautiful poem about the remarkable Simon Binner https://t.co/xPHhP8ybuK@Minnow_Films#simonschoice “

— Rowan Deacon (@RowanDeacon) February 13, 2016

---

E150119

Here – simple logic:
‘Scarcity ramps up value’,
Bloated fact-fed silos
have indexed everything:

Codified swiped-access
to quick-loaded menus,
Thus placed in our loose grip,
now, almost, anything.

A ‘Great Crash’ will delete,
no [Search] to tell us:
Then corrupted hard drives,
fast forward to ignorance;

Provide typefaced book-truth,
for all your young children:
Command they read well,
Reduce Ctrl-c and cursors.

Lewes will lose its Post Office,
Consigned to closure already,
In its place will be a new shop
Selling string, with a latte.

A brief beize, over-slated, evening,
Of eight ball pool, but none sinking:
‘My eyes not in,’ a lame excuse;
So the next pint is put to use:

I need that ale-tippled judgement,
To relieve me from re-worked rent:
Traces of the paid-day’s designs,
In CAD-fagged furrows, sunk brow-lines.

Five decades worth of quick-inked pens,
Aligned to re-drafted dull drawings;
To delete my damn commissions,
I pot daily-versed-admissions.

Our neighbours’ kids, aged about three,
Both hit a high ball, ‘Pitch it!’ (Yankees).
We used to bowl spinners, on the same grass;
‘Home runs’, their small aim, a swipe so hard.
I prefer to time my boycotted sessions,
To take me to tea, with no umpires questioned:
‘Parkinson’s Rule’ never allows a fair draw:
Let’s aim for a long game, so I can bat on some more;
In a few good summers, ten at least,
I’ll have taught those kids to pitch on the crease.

All the better for knowing his inspiration, i.e. the title characters. https://t.co/yCYbvhBsK8

— Clay Harris (@mudlarklives) February 13, 2016

 

Stood, dined,
out-imbued:
Now sink-aligned,
pant-dropped-nude:

My struggle is
In the un-lain bed.
Difficulties arise,
with sleep’s extent.

Can I realise,
All that I desire?
Or will I pass out,
With sleep-drug’s mire?

Pitch side, under-elevens,
Boot-thumped passes.

Parental respect,
But still low-thrown profanities:

As the other team force
too much possession,

Ours heads drop,
home strikes-again lessen.

Coach-croaked instructions,
fall on cold ears,

And the cross-wind
forces losing tears.

Tommy Robinson –
what a ‘pure’ knob
racism fisted-him
a nice hard cock

ENL suffered
Pegida’s scream –
his last-vote’s-breath
a shallow-beached dream

There so little hope
for any one’s vote –
if none of us manage
to embrace last-hopes

My decision is minimal
with where I live –
but my vote is the one thing
I can ever re-give

My grandfather – a ‘conchie’
but I would not too –
instead an infantryman
whose headstone was due

A three-pinted stagger home,
Drunk (slightly), diseased (mainly);

Fish dinner, paper-wrapped,
Bottled comfort, polythene-stretched.

Back to the new place, still on loan.
Red wine, braced, a chink-reminder

To book our hangover, in advance.
Sodium glow on the twitten ahead,

Re-introduced trip hazards:
My evening bagged with bellied-bounty.

I cannot explain this
shuffled-off impasse
I fail to define it:
A sloth’s-worth grind,
re-exhausted,
down-town route,
and then, breakfasted,
but slow-up, finished off (again).

Still only fifty-one (I think),
here’s the rub:
I struggle more uphill,
gradient-grabbed:
Racked, wake-tired,
this foot-journeyed track;
Give me inner strength,
please, to make it back.

Lord Lucan, legally, ‘presumed dead’,
Is what the bookies will have read:
Rip-up old long-suspended bets,
Odds-off these shores, without regret.

Bingham, Lucan’s sniffy son,
Could claim a house-sat Lordly sum:
Was it worth his killing-off,
To gain a seat with fellow toffs?

The Seventh’s bloody final-foray,
A stained rumour, via, grey Calais?
Deck-stood, stiff moustache-lipped Lord,
Ferried by friends to his last abroad?

Uckfield, his final Sussex embrace,
Then drove out to headlines of disgrace:
Was he honourable, on Newhaven’s quay,
Or was she, regretfully, ‘just a nanny’?

Can I speak, now, for England?
(With the mild-righteous-bigots).
I offer my shaking hand,
Will my words make you drop it?

The Daily Mail, font-large-loudly,
Upper-cased, Albion-proudly;
My senses report old fears,
That one day no one will hear.

Middle class, Middle Europe,
We are all re-washed ashore:
We bled before, war-tore lives,
Fail with fresh jingo-writ lies.

Forty-nine dead on the southern coast,
Washed up on the beach, at a high cost;

After paying a man, masked in lies.
As the boat shifts, so the hull divides:

A wave-cracked craft cannot hold them all;
Life’s last voice is a mother’s screamed call.

In Turkey, child labour weaves your coats,
(Syrian kids who survived the boats):

They ‘come to invade’ your whitewashed life,
Your back is cloaked by a lost child’s strife.

Westerners live, without compromise,
Easterners will die, for our whitened lies.

We look back
[short-distanced]
to our piled-brick place
once-removed – down-sized/
We former residents –

a re-settled family
from that home we sold/
They will be embraced
by a haunting’s enfold –

I met it –
not face-to-face –
stair-cased –
landed – hour late

I sat, aged thirteen,
Between stages,
Shepperton Studios:
Burning my fingers,
I mastered heat-shrinking,
As flared-roadies,
rolled fags,
and without thinking,
laughed, doubled-up,
jokes about sex;
Beyond my experience,
I shrank the next.

Muddied,
dog-run,
leaking:
Now sat
engine-cold,
diesel heavy-heart;
our Landie,
possibly,
the greenest car.

It is a low church,
without sober prayer,
rough years, sixty-plus,
blinded Sky-high stare:

Unaltered transfix,
upon sports, by God,
matched-crucifixion,
across the green sod.

They tip their flat pints,
on last sure-winners,
each sup a delay,
to home-cooked dinners:

Stood tall-table straight,
with concentric rings,
beer becomes central,
at last order’s rings.

Called, I entered
‘The Departure Lounge’
renamed, a rare-shared joke,
for that downstairs room;
here my father sobbed
with cancer’s slow burn.

Sat upright, explaining a dream,
for the first time in our lives,
(me, twenty-something,
then, no reader of such things),
with his simple review:
‘I saw my mother,’ he explained.

Nan had passed on ten years before.
‘She said.. everything is easy, there is no difficulty..’
In that moment, with his head-held,
Dad licensed me to cry before my kids,
to find comfort in dreams,
and to speak with the dead.

Met, in ill-fitting suits,
Best man-made bad speeches;
‘It’s all about the bride’:
Slurs and white-dress-hitches.

Relatives move-tortured,
across the first-danced floor;
Loose-tied, high-drunken, ensembles,
knocking back more, more, more!

Bitter-pill hangover honeymoon,
over seven-ish burnt days;
Their love sobers slowly
after the wedding’s farcical play.

Enough, enough,
Enough of this cough:
Someone, someone,
Tell it to cough-off.

I digitally-met
my nephew’s child,

Facebook framed,
both bed-curled:

Dark-haired and browed,
Two family traits,

He holds her in love,
her protectorate.

Lowed head, herd-burrowed,
to subterranean trip:
Down, slowed escalator-drop,
to queued platform crypt.

Commuted life sentence,
branded as ‘Mind the gap’:
Squeezed rush-hour day’s flush,
shoved aboard, standing-trapped.

On coloured, stiff spaghetti,
fooled cartography:
Tube-mapped London, visited,
cheats on geography.

But, the Underground
still performs, as planned, as meant:
Commonality,
the funnelled requirement.

Living roughly, on Diamond Road,
Middle England, Middlesbrough,
Where slapped doors, painted red,
Mark you out, for the foul-demurrer.

Hateful stones, from the offended street,
Clatter, and threaten, your short time here:
Life seekers’ homes, being on their feet,
Families unfixed, always thrown to fear.

Fresh red paint, bought in a deal,
‘Happened’ to mark-out the transitory.
I think of painted doors, before the kill,
That being the daub, in old Germany.

Andy Dog has died.
Some Bizzare (sic)
art worked-hard:
Pen-stroked, sweet-bird,
has now passed.

Settled last
in Windowsill Bay:
Eighteen-Jan,
pens put away.

ANDREW JOHNSON / ANDY DOG – 6/1/59 – 18/1/16

Greased up sky hooks: 
I stood nervous, plan-wrought;
local endeavour 
on hired-in winches:
Two ratcheted wires, 
stretched hard, tremor-taut;
traction, sweat-steaming, 
in scaff-rolled inches.

Sunday elbowed,
across two properties,
to a final sleeper-laid
place (as planned):
I thank all the friends 
who moved to achieve,
that five-metered shift
where my shed now stands.

Tea drunk hot, our toast
to slow-completion,
Of success,
with only minor complaints:
A few inflamed backs,
odd-blistered lesions.
Thank you neighbours,
whom I upgrade to saints.

Another ninety year old’s birthday soon,
A decade short of a card from the Queen:

Mrs Windsor, in her state-aided room,
Mis-rules her memory, un-throned, unseen.

The square root of ninety, now her empire,
With common dominion, three floors below.

Her self-labelled walking-frame is required,
For any walkabout, on which she goes.

The children visit, briefly, in a blue moon,
With unsubtle, quick-wrist clock-watching:

Charlie Windsor’s the worst, her first heirloom,
All she’s to will him, her love of Elvis, her King.

Hear now my diurnal ritual,
Rhyme-rammed verse,
freely posted to all:
Vibrated-hyphenated set words,
Each one’s telling,
moves me slow forward.

End-of-day’s reversed writ-shift,
Looking back
and writing of it,
Wherever that place may be,
Now, inner stings
the last thing I feel:

Disconnects my illness,
by odd scan;
Each poke of thumb on screen, held in hand,
Exercise booked,
the re-tapping note:
I am what you read, a daily poet.

Finitude
– the place you need find on earth,
in every breath,
from your fixed date of birth:

But what if you’re told
your fixed date of death?
For valid opinion?
Ask the blade-necked thief.

Should you be thinking,
as a condemned man?
You are kneeling
on the same shifting-sand.

How hard is it to live,
without waiting,
Engaged in your (own)
moment of making:

Satisfied with your time
of well-being,
Finitude:
– when you are truly seeing.

Thirty nine percent
of Tory MPs,
Currently rent-out
second properties:
They’ll ‘sink estates’
sunken into the ground,
More voters to be
private-landlord bound.

It is the thing we make our parents do,
Or do to them: mortal-shuffle-moves,
To sheltered, or ‘down-sized’ flats:
We clear out all the past they had:
Lined-times on shelves, in towered attic-stacks,
Life’s trophies-won, ‘just dust-magnets’.

We slow-pack our home, one we filled over time,
Finding the ‘stuff’, which is ‘yours’ or ‘mine’;
Quick black-bagged, high street dropped,
To the worthy-option of charity shops:
Except for an item, saved without words,
Donating that toy would really hurt.

In thirty years, our life-reduction planned,
When we are being down-size manned,
By our children, and their loved-ones too,
They will wring their hands, as we now do:
That plastic teapot they’ll find in the loft:
today’s poured memories of time we’d lost.

The truth we believe is the truth we read:
Web-feeds, Facebook, Twitter, the Beeb.

Channelled-veracity, from Sky and Dave,
Immunity claimed for low-thought waves.

Drivelling truth soaks into our heads,
Performing gross acts as we sleep in our beds:

Sub-conscious toss of diatribes,
Demands unanswered, dream-thrown lies.

I can offer you trade of fists, or stats,
Neither will convince us, we have all the facts.

No, I am not ill,
I have a disease.
Give me time.

I am just
working out
the differences.

Their prince was washed-up*
blue-dead on a shore
Our prince was dressed in
quilt-coat against frore

Each to inherit
a lop-sided crown
One with dominion
one laid out on ground

Parentage traced back
both to migrant shifts
One poor prince noble
one plush prince adrift

The meek shall ne’er
gain this boundaried land
The enthroned will rule
with their blue-washed hands

*https://mikebellwritesblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/written-on-sunday/

You will know you’re truly old
when all dear friends are dead

I am citing Clive James –
quoted –
often misread

I will not be defined ‘old’
when my step forward is short
promenading with shuffles –
reduced stride –
slow-walk

You may presume I’m old
when my flat-repeat of words
are ‘politely’ ignored

Then I’m misheard – my verse

No –
I will never be old –
re-define your count of time

I will breathe in youth’s warm air
and avoid stiffened rhyme

---

E100119

Crosses fashioned
from wreckage re-found
in Lampedusa’s graveyard
of boats by Francisco Tuccio –

a carpenter –
put him up there
as a craftsman – tool-qualified
and long-suffering – calloused –
like Christ’s cheated step-dad

Taker of drift-timber remnants –
tide-piles of northerly-aimed hope boats
Finding ingrained sunk lives –
salt-scoured – gasoline fouled –
sea stunk – their drowning suffered
in holy relics

Muscat: We’re .. building a cemetery
(in).. our Mediterranean Sea –
a Maltese PM
tried to carve his own response
to migrant drownings –
This thing is broken… needs to be fixed

Tuccio – unelected – mends hope –
crosses of suffering
for all drowned –
he offers wave-crucified
ship timbers
shaped to buoy migrant survivors

 

E221018
E090819

I am, no more, Superman:
Still, ill-ease, grounded;
You, fill-eyed, douse me: land-locked.

Home, to a greeting child, wrist-wrapped, dog-bit:
Then travel (fast) to an M.I. unit.
The waiting room, a car-crash, filled stiff chairs,
In charge: the triage nurse’s contused stares.

I fill out, biro, an NHS form:
Photocopied boxes ticked, facts informed.
Overhead, thirty inches of TV :
Patients dosed-down with free reality:

‘Loose Women’ (giggling about men in sheds),
Here the nursing staff avoid blocking beds.
My child is soon repaired, by a gowned saint,
The punctures cleaned, with dabbed iodine paint.

Heading back home, child slung and bandaged-tight,
Proud of our small country doing us right:
Him: ‘In America that’ve cost lots!’,
Me: ‘In the UK it’ll soon be lost’.

Uckfield lines The Uck,
Gravied-seethe of farm run-off;
Not yet poo-pipe high.

Corrugated boxes:
brown-wound, tape-thread,
(but, still, our move,
is a whole
month ahead);

This life:
shoved into one room:
cardboard-packed,
all slid-in, piled-up,
unequally stacked.

A cache,
of paper-piled histories,
reveals in unboxed
loft-discoveries:

A bag of creased letters,
now read-behoved,
you looked again,
and left, briefly,
re-moved.

Our first frost this winter was late,
stealing every colour
long after Christmas –
ageing nature is Santa silver,
but too tardy for the kids’
seasonal wonder,

and it cursed (instead)
those un-readied gardeners
caught sleeping
as the mild winter dipped
back into its old ways as

when the Thames was locked
under a hard beauty for weeks –
when even their huddles of fires
could not melt
that frost.

“Hard-working people”,
If uttered once more,
By any MP,
Turning facts athwart,

Will ‘raise my hackles’
And ‘Jangle my nerves’:
This new cliche age,
Is what we deserve?

Our sober-worked state,
Knocked back by right-drunk,
“Hard-working people”,
Are left to be sunk.

[For Clair May, On Our Wedding Anniversary 31st December 2015]

This gone decade, avowed, witnessed, signed,
your white dress, my suit, hung, long-aligned.

Our large shared-bed (often slept-distrait),
is spirit-levelled by deep dream-spates.

Write those pledges (our private conceits):
Words on pillows and cotton-rich sheets.

Marriage slept in a bed of our choice,
Our vows renewed in our sleep-shared voice.

I’m Tootles the Taxi,
I’ll give you a ride,
Just log on to Uber
Then jump inside.

Just watch the app,
You’ll see how unfair,
Profits no object,
Do I bleedin’ care?

She sat, side-on,
Unnoticed, except chat,
Mobile to head,
Hidden by hat:

‘Yes, that’s right,’
Her one-sided talk.
‘She doesn’t recall
her fall, on the walk.’

The cubicle, walled-in,
Compression of soul,
Her phone call’s distance
Puts Dementia on hold.

The Sun: what a very
Dangerous thing,
A burning, cynical,
Reprint of spin:

Ever-twisting the ‘facts’,
Even those disproved,
This is the paper
Which stated ‘The Truth’.

Mackenzie’s front page,
Laid by editor’s hand,
Lies, damn lies,
On every news stand.

---

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/10/hillsborough-inquest-police-admit-sun-report-fans-looted-corpses-false

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/how-the-suns-truth-about-hillsborough-unravelled

UCKFIELD LOCAL NATURE RESERVES – 2 LEWES LOCAL NATURE RESERVES – 1
UCKFIELD WAITROSE – 1 LEWES WAITROSE – 1
LEWES INDEPENDENT BUTCHERS – 2 UCKFIELD INDEPENDENT BUTCHERS – 3
UCKFIELD GREENS DIY – 1 LEWES B&Q – 1 (HOME WIN)
LEWES AWARD-WINNING CINEMA – 0 UCKFIELD AWARD-WINNING CINEMA – 1
UCKFIELD FREE PARKING SPACES – 60 LEWES FREE PARKING SPACES – 4
LEWES RIVER OUSE – 1 UCKFIELD RIVER UCK – 1
LEWES TRAFFIC WARDENS – 12 UCKFIELD TRAFFIC WARDENS – 0 (AWAY WIN – POLICING INDIFFERENCE)
LEWES COSTAS – 4 UCKFIELD COSTAS – 3 (AWAY WIN)
UCKFIELD RECENT FLOOD – 1 LEWES RECENT FLOOD – 1
LEWES OVER-DEVELOPMENT PLANS – 1 UCKFIELD OVER-DEVELOPMENT PLANS – 1
UCKFIELD FM ON-AIR DAYS – 365 LEWES ROCKET FM ON-AIR DAYS – 30
LEWES BYPASS NOISE POLLUTION – 48DB UCKFIELD BYPASS NOISE POLLUTION – 12DB (AWAY WIN)
LEWES CHRISTMAS LIGHTS – 0 UCKFIELD CHRISTMAS LIGHTS – 56

She/he has to plot
a re-measured half-life
Side-step a wish-flat world
Navigate every strife

She/he ensures sleep is taken –
re-fills the gaps
She/he has to micro-manage
each low-kerbed trap

Such misrules were never
rung as their wedding vows
A shaken hand – still with her/him
No one else

 

E080919

I will sit kitchen-stooled,
until just before five,
having jolt-woken at two,
(eyes sleep-slump, too wide).

At these, irregular,
single-digit typed hours,
I dawn-patrol,
gliding, with low-level powers.

Our dog, bed-dead, sleeps
through my keyed low-chatter clicks,
as I tap my life out in,
sequential-stroked hits.

Daily poems, built up,
is my concise crossword:
Lined arguments with gods,
my solution – verb-blurred.

I’m no longer
easily fixed,
The Superglue drugs
do not hold.

When walking I’ll stumble,
sick-kicked,
But inside my head
I am not old.

This stiffness: a gift
I would rather return.,
These tremors,
Bad habits, I wish to unlearn.

My wife will command me:
‘Mike, move upright’,
Without her this evening,
I tilt to the night.

I don’t have her near,
My kind carer and friend,
Her absence is noticed,
Because I now bend.

Should I refrain
From Parkinson’s re-right,
Or can she forgive me
For bending tonight?

So the slow-flow
Of the Sussex Ouse,
Is gently drowned
By our discharged loos.

Our need to pee, poo, wipe,
And to flush,
Is plugging the Ouse’s
Natural rush,

Killing the fish,
That we cannot eat,
Poisons swirl,
As we drop the seat.

---

Guardian article here

Uckfield is flooding,
a slow-risen tide,
not left on The Uck’s
surge-measure pipe.

Currents flood twittens,
pavements, and paths,
fouling by dog ‘Messis’,
but no dog-drop red card.

Stomach-churned-twirls,
often bluebottle-fed,
To be foot-stepped, trod-in,
and then deep-carpeted:

Land mines to be cleared,
by the rain, or unpaid,
but ’til the flood’s gone,
we’ll continue to wade.

Steep steps off the platform,
On a re-railed trip,
A lad lifts my bag:
My sudden short-stair blip,
Is unstepped-signage
Of now being infirm;
These journeys
my stick informs.

I once held doors wide,
For the fading greyed-few,
I am now a member
Of the stick-crazed crew:
Entrance and exit,
No longer shoulder-shoved,
Now cared for by strangers,
In dignified love.

To acre-wide halls, in Birmingham’s inner guts,
With ring-roaded shorn verges, of yard-placed shrubs:
I am here for a busman’s brief holiday:
Booth-trooped through Hall 3, for my youngest’s game play.

Wrist-wrapped with Day Passes; and my fourth child shines,
This, his Nirvana, a gold (Minecraft-ed) shrine.
‘Do you see their addiction?’ I ask a dad,
Stood too in solemn duty, his face spend-sagged.

From across the hall , a shrill-scream, voiced en-masse:
A Minecraft gamer is iphone-snapped,
His soul is hired out in selfies as thanks,
His signature a contract for our cash in his bank.

We return to the show, with my stick-clicked walk,
My youngest beside me; more game-playing talk.
His love of this, my complained hall-hell,
Is the reminder to me that all is well.

This we will succumb to, for our kids’ delight,
(Pleasure is best supped when served up right).
The childhood I lost, before the web’s weave,
Is no longer the one I wish to retrieve.

Our stop-go drive across London’s blocked sprawls,
Was a late night re-circling of ‘my round’:
A pumped-pint history of spilt-bitter fools,
I reviewed that compendium, new-found*.

My tale: a tatty, once-thumbed A to Z,
Of bars, en-route, where I sipped-up my youth.
I dozed, again, asleep in strangers’ beds:
Drunk kisses, sour love, then alarm-sobered truth.

Vest-men lay white lines, on jigsaw tarmac:
Their no-go queue, our no sat-nav rat-run,
Past my re-let home, no more doubling-back:
Suburbia’s last road map of all undone.

*amend advised by @Lloyd_Cole 15-12-15

Our Uckfield Town Council,
is to spend a wee-bit more,
£3,000 on four, ‘pay-for’,
loo lockable-doors:
used two times a day,
on average,
to refund what’s lent;
A 20p dropped:
payback may take
two thousand spends:
Say, two thousand days
to own 4 more lockable bogs:
But trashed in hours:
please invest in bins
for spent dogs.

Now, moment-loaded, thumb-high filmed trailers:
instant shared, liked, quick barbarity-flicks.

Promoted by smart phone-captured gaolers:
Death by You Tube: a madman’s knife-thrown tricks.

Another blockbuster, two minutes short,
set in your town:

Scene One: a blood-streaked street.

Frame-dragged across channels: a slow death caught:
Lad, stabbed, lies so still, watched, as viewers tweet.

The sepia tone of November has gone –
wrote Harry Smith – aged ninety-one –

seeing worn-out – blood-red – poppies as lies –
pinned politic medals on cut-back lives

Dignity – for the aged – the infirm and unwell
should not be hacked so this state can sell

the last shards of a now-curtailed reward –
gained fair in blood – in post-war accord

Death-won promises of a better world –
Instead they insist such respect is culled

On Harry Smith’s lapel no poppy was worn –
For him the Old Wars were still to be won

---

E 281118

I am a General Practitioner,
working through my impatient lists,
queued for me, praying for miracles,
the waiting room (where hope still exists).

I prescribe for common complaints,
but how can I comprehend,
what their listed illnesses feel like:
To their sick-state should I now descend?

The memory-miniature woman,
sitting silently opposite me:
widower (without recent recall),
I am gone from her immediately.

Every new minute is quite foreign,
whilst her past is a vast unlocked house:
dementia devalues this moment:
a flaming disease we never douse.

A small cough-racked child is then offered,
held in vein-traced maternal embrace:
I’ve no idea which is the patient,
I shall drown in my shallow disgrace.

Me, infected, queue-sickened, instead?
I wouldn’t want to suffer their plight:
to live without cures (our common curse),
but to die, tormented, isn’t right.

At school, a rough painting
of my father, in green:
His shotgun, an accurate detail,
hung arm-broke,
With empty breech, unloaded,
exposed, gun-oil-clean.
He shift-slept: even through
my demanding brush-stroke.

In my paints he towered
over a fictional ditch:
At an earlier age
I’d mastered the pen flow,
Of flood-cut riverbanks:
grass-tufted shallow cliffs.
Mr (Welsh) Williams enthused:
‘get it into the show’.

I forgot the competition,
in Addlestone:
I was told, later,
I won: first in the contest:
They’d called my name,
but I was drawing at home:
Fighting for my sibling place,
and coming third-best.

We four squared the fields,
measuring the flat-topped hedges,
Of briared histories,
with a quart of different scales:
A brace of busmans’ holidays;
we ploughed our city trades of measurements.

But the ungrazed clump-suck of meadow,
brought us both back from town,
And to talk of easelled-landscapes.
Ahead, as usual, the others, a decade behind,
avoid such muddied reflections,
puddle-stuck below.

At this indoor hour, with these paints,
to draw that sunset December-march:
A survey of possible Roman villa,
outlying farmhouses converted with other currencies,
The Ripe red brick long-dead slaughterhouse,
and a paced friendship – best not set-aside.

I love the place name: ‘Teddington’,
It raps a tapping off my tongue.
Urban-suburbia resides,
Above the rises of river tides:
Just tidal bores in house prices.
So sits deed-rich: benefices*.

[*ben•e•fice
(ˈbɛn ə fɪs) n., v. -ficed, -fic•ing. n.1. a position or post granted to an ecclesiastic
that guarantees a fixed amount of property or income.
2. the revenue itself.
3. the equivalent of a fief in the early Middle Ages.]

In this (revisited) moment my eyelids are caustic,
stung-rubbed corneas, awake, weighted-down,
by an utter exhaustion,
(which sleep, these days, fails to cure).

I, drug-succumbed, to such high views,
from unclouded dream-peaks:
then wading, unaided, each half-flooded
unmapped valley of sleep:

where such side-effected,
vast dreams, broadcast through the night,
to my disconnected self:
every time, more real, when I can move, like old.

But flat rigidity, offered, again, at 5am,
is a sluggard-waking, on misty un-rolled downs,
off the sleep-state – providing no more shelter,
from exposure, to my forever-reigning pain.

We are now committing six easy jets,
uncounted souls into cold desert-deaths:

Then we’ll agree a bloodied bag-exchange:
More re-dress rehearsals of flag-tagged pains:

Led by the strong-armed (sell-munitions’ squeeze).
Again lobbied “Ayes..” said our lame MPs.

Did we bomb Ireland, strafe the terrorists?
No: we shook those Fenians’ angry fists.

For peace at home send a tame diplomat:
But for offshore battles, we’ll bomb you flat.

From a still, unpacked,
house you see,
the scruffy, leaf-free
‘Pigeon Tree’,

where fat, half-collared
birds slow-roost,
singing thick-throated,
chorused boasts:

Birds watch us
plucked pre-retirees,
also guests in our
rest home trees.

We both stood then,
storm-sheltered, unlashed,
under bent lime trees.

But then whipped,
and wind-weltered;
A roar of timber-roll seas.

Breaking
green waves
almost crash:

A canopied
high-tide surged,
And a final,

blustered thrash:
this winded-walk,
washed and purged.

---

 

I own this hour of each day,
(part of my family is settled above),
and I tap-tap away,
in the kitchen’s dumb-hum.

No pant and pad of dog,
no mis-tuned song,
this busy home in a sleep.

With early ticks,
the glassed darkness,
leaves the weather outside,

I am alone,
circling the earth,
it seems,
taking an astronaut’s ride.

Shale gas is seeping,
it’s ‘sure’ to give us wealth:

Getting high on fracked-off fumes,
improves the National Health.

‘We are all in it together’,
but the land below our parks,

also belongs to Cuadrilla,
who’ll eventually frack your arse.

Poetry is good for us,
It makes us happy,
Our babies loved hearing it,
Wrapped in a nappy.

Poetry’s our underwear,
We don’t like to flash:
We know if it gets dirty,
We think it quite rash.

“Poetry should rhyme!”,
“Follow the written-down rules!”
Life doesn’t,
So why bother?

No, that is too cruel.

Me and Morrissey,
we wear our shirts undone:
my family berates me,
a louche of a man:

No wonder Mozza lives
a ‘celibate life’,
still, I don’t mind living
with my buttoned-up wife.

A blue moon: I won’t rise
From my unsettled-bed:
This Parkinson’s ‘thing’ on me,
Wishing me dead.

The rest of the month,
Each morning is cracked,
By my working ethic.
I could be ‘sacked’.

But I create alone,
In a stove-stoked shed:
Drawing the world,
Out of my head.

The Parkinson’s ‘thing’,
Lifts in these times:
So I submit more
To long-designed lines.

Poets sits stiffly along the backbench,
Sniffing the cartoonists’ pen-and-ink stench:
(They who complain in quick composition,
Sitting in permanent opposition).

The cartoonists will vote, no scan-tripped whip,
No party lies, or correct-politics,
(My own caricatures, and sketchy past,
Never got close to Mr. Steve Bell’s blast).

Now my rhyme-voice tries to draw out a line,
Which if pitched too loudly sounds like a whine.
The drawn-cast satire: single-frame cartoons,
I fish daily, with my lines of lampoons.

Saudis are now
a ‘priority market’,
For our bowed state,
that’ll ne’er complain of it:
al-Nimr… al-Marhoon..
boys in their teens,
Arrested, now bowed,
to the Saudi regime.

A bloody beheading,
as we mete our trade,
Our blindfolds won’t blunt
the sterling-silver blade.
Thirty-six percent
of Saudi shopping for war,
Is supplied by our country:
this oiled-up whore.

With these circumstances comes the good life:
Now looked after by my beautiful wife.
Nurse, administrator, worker, (lover),
cleaner, carer, listener, (mother).
Zero hours pay for twenty-four more,
I’m indebted to her – My guarantor.

Why am I writing
so much poetry?
Over half of it’s crap
(I do agree) –

But it seems to spread
like this slow disease –
The one shaking me down
onto my knees –

This condition’s a bugger –
that’s for sure –
I hope for your sake
they soon find a cure

---

E151118

I read the metaphor
‘perfect storm’,
No sight of George Clooney,
instead it’s Osborne.

Rolling in westward
(on a fast-rising tide),
Affronts of austerity:
no one can ride.

The truth is unwritten,
Fleet-leaked no more,
paper-faced liars
print facts we adore:

Celebrity shame,
to ministered-spin,
the people in charge
are the ones who’ll win.

So we roll over again,
to claim a jackpot,
no fair-share of prizes
will be our lot.

The rich earn the most,
with state benefits,
theirs the return
of less-taxing remits.

The fire stations burn,
no libraries renew,
the NHS bled dry,
sold to a few.

Today’s papers feed
our subjugation,
this land will become
yesterday’s nation.

Fish-wrapped, on Friday,
in previous news,
this is Fleet Street
editing our views.

It was a path from another time,
your enquiry made of an ant-marched line.
Crossing the equally-engineered trails,
we both avoided the unearthed rails.

You, eldest boy, chatting alongside,
on the rough-route, where Ruti had cried.
Your uncle asleep in this blown-thin soil.
Alone in this god-land, an empty black voile.

The gate sounded out metallic complaints,
I showed you the place where your uncle waits.
Our talk is subdued by the hand-carved curves,
our name cries out over foreign words.

I build walls
move buildings
align chairs –

I dig valleys
plant forests
hang clouds –

I re-align the sun
raise sea levels
make cruel deserts –

I command
the movement
of  my low-resolution
people

---

E161118

We will now stand scared,
because of you:
Cursing Europe’s
unlocked sea-view.

You crossed ‘our’ sea
in hull-huddled fear,
life-jacket-strapped
by a profiteer.

Twenty-hours out,
and vomit was rife,
you prayed this ended
with a better life.

There is no god,
of any one faith,
who guided your craft,
to any one place.

Your loved son was drowned,
soft-washed ashore,
his body stiff,
he travels no more.

When we look to blame,
for these boat-choked seas,
it’s we who create
your miseries.