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A Poetry Book Owen Whitehouse

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Page 1: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

A Poetry Book Owen Whitehouse

Page 2: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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Page 3: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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Page 4: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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Page 5: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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A Poetry Book

Bit late now

Owen Whitehouse

Page 6: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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First published as a collection 2019

Published by Primedia eLaunch LLC

Copyright Owen Whitehouse 2019

Page 7: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

CONTENTS

BARBARUS HIC EGO SUM, QUIA NON INTELLIGOR ILLIS (2015)

................................................................................................. 1

SENDING STUFF TO YOU (1997) ............................................... 2

A FUNNY SMELL (2017) ............................................................ 3

X – FILES (1990) ........................................................................ 5

FOR BIYA JIHAD FAYEZ (1984) .................................................. 7

GETTING BACK TO MILTON KEYNES (1999) ............................. 8

GLOBAL WARMING OR A LAST TANGO IN LONDON .............. 10

ALF’S BARGAINING CHIPS ...................................................... 10

STUPID AGAIN ........................................................................ 11

APART ..................................................................................... 11

LIPS ......................................................................................... 11

MINUTE'S UP (1985) .............................................................. 12

YOU ONLY HAVE 14 HOURS TO SAVE THE EARTH (2018) ...... 13

BEING ALONE RECENTLY (1989) ............................................. 15

PAINTING PICTURES (the wisdom of Mr Boddy-1985) .......... 16

THEN YOU SAID YOU WANTED TO CATCH SOME RAYS (1997)

............................................................................................... 17

OUT OF THE WOODS YET (2013) ........................................... 19

THEY (1999) ............................................................................ 21

Page 8: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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CHICKEN LICKEN (1987) ......................................................... 22

THE 24 HOUR UKRAINIAN HOMESICK BLUES (1998) ............. 23

WEDNESDAY (1989) ............................................................... 25

SUN OVER HENDREFOELAN (1990) ........................................ 27

THE GARDENER (1994) ........................................................... 29

THE CRUEL FLOWER (1987) .................................................... 31

NOT READY FOR THE MUSEUM JUST YET (2019)................... 33

FROM CLEETHORPES (1990) .................................................. 36

BEACH PARTY (for Miss Scott, 2015)...................................... 38

CATHARSIS (1991) .................................................................. 40

NIGHT ON THE PRIMROSE PATH (1989) ................................ 43

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BARBARUS HIC EGO SUM, QUIA NON

INTELLIGOR ILLIS (2015)

I am angry when they debate history.

I hate it when they talk of peace.

I talk of glory when they mention meat.

I talk of sacrifice as they talk of truth.

I say remember them; they say never the horror again.

I talk of pride and they cry with the shame.

I raise my voice in a demand for respect, they say for whom.

I talk of defence, protection, they say of what.

I say they started it and they say when did ‘it’ begin.

I talk of duty; they ask where does it lie?

I venerate the majesty; they criticise the gluttony.

I lament the cost while they depict an industry.

I believe in the past and they look for change.

I accuse for country and for nation.

They say no, for people, earth and with patience.

Yet,

We should all remember these dead;

especially, at the rising of the sun,

because their names are ordinary labels,

signifying gone…

ADVENA SUM IN PATRIA

Page 12: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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SENDING STUFF TO YOU (1997)

I’ll send you doves from my attic carrying love letters

prayers from urban priests

novels of kisses

telling how one kiss led to another

how they lived sloppily and happily ever after

even little crippled Tim, the poor kiss from down the lane.

I’ll send subways of newly tattooed wisdom

I will send the untouched

things that have been kicked around for a while

and a fragment of a day that I found on the doorstep.

All things being equal

flocks of words would wing their way over

oceans and seas, mountains and plains to reach you

they’d sing in trees outside your windows

and raise little sentences in nests high above

away from the threat of punctuation stalking below.

Perhaps sitting in the sun on a hot day

some notes will flutter down

and curiosity having finished off punctuation only recently

might pluck a note from the air

hold it in cupped hands

and keep it there.

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A FUNNY SMELL (2017)

Love will be the thing that finishes you off

Not cancer, not pneumonia at 80

Not the absence of everyone you ever cared about

The absence of love

Or maybe boredom

The inability to even wank to amuse yourself

With your very brittle bones and weak tendons

Sitting

Uncontrolled of piss and tea, coffee and the like, in some stinking

home for the terminally unvisited

No staff really caring or not whether you give a fuck for football on

TV, for national anthems, for punk, or vag or veg

Any preference neglected and negated by life moving on before

death has commenced

For care, you will want, for the love of God, Allah or Dorian fucking

Grey

You will weep for the atheist moments you shared

For Jesus Christ and the glory, glory and glory of hallelujah

Yet, all you philosophical musings and mutations fall foul of some

Fybogel and a good shit

It was a while ago you stopped giving a shit

You will want warmth on your frail bones

The fat of another’s skin to sink into yours

You will want for tenderness that recognises the youth in you

Left wanting of love, to be held, a hold onto something

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Nor for the want of a kettle boiling but the absence of any drop to

drink

Casketed, encased

By the empathy of the invisibles and love they cannot muster for your

angular and wrinkled features

And the worry about a funny smell.

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X – FILES (1990)

How would it be if

I abandoned all of this

all sentient beings from other galaxies

spacecraft and all?

If I refused to spontaneously combust at the end of the evening?

If every wandering spirit just got bored

sat down with me for a cocoa

after a hard nights spooking

and talked of the current ghostly affairs?

If all the poltergeists pushed the milk and sugar my way

and reflected on the century's greatest hauntings,

discussed the terminal velocity of a creaking door through the mind

of the unexpecting?

How would it be if stigmata was God's own version of folding the

paper and making butterflies?

How would it be if the Bermuda Triangle really wanted to marry

Celeste

was really a nice bloke

grabbing ships from the sea, planes from the air

with the single-minded hope of finding her there?

What if Lee Harvey Oswald really did it?

What if the moon landings really did happen?

What if I shouldn't have turned down that street and gone?

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What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's

manners are not really abominable?

Does Loch Ness really have monster parties?

Should we be there?

What if I could remove all the ZZZZZzzZZZZZzzzzzz from the night

Would you lie with me and make soft X-files in the dark?

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FOR BIYA JIHAD FAYEZ (1984)

on my head-screen

the dead stare of millions

flickers black and white

from behind the wire

despairing

at arms and elbows broken with rocks

by soldiers on hillsides

at this child dead in the street

this tear in the fabric of the race

this renting of life

for them, the sight is an everyday abomination

a brutal confirmation of the jackbooted hero

from the camps

at home now

lessons learned

faces set

the tribe that was gone is come

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GETTING BACK TO MILTON KEYNES (1999)

In the cavernous minute since you disappeared behind the

departures screen

I have been cold in a hard bed

everything I touch becomes an abrasive under my fingertips

even the curves on the tyres look flat and square

no you

and I clump thud home, up the M1 like a clown in a circus car

clumsy clown down at the mouth

biting rectangular lips

the joke exhaust phutt-putting cubes of smoke in the icy air.

Someone has concreted over the fields

Artexed all the plants and

the motorway and pasture melt into one

There is man on the slip road by a Calor gas fire selling broken

branches.

Back home the big top is missing a few guy ropes

sags in the centre, lacks its usual Technicolor splendour

and from there on end, I hang without the aid of a net on the promise

of your return

Later when I nip down to the newly concreted fields

I'll be signlanguaging at the concrete cows

hoping for a little lowing

perhaps even a bovine love song

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just a bit of beauty.

Some time later: the cows have a sense of irony around these parts

- three times a lady in B flat

Ho ho ho moo, yet still, no you.

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GLOBAL WARMING OR A LAST TANGO IN

LONDON

The Japanese cherry trees in Hyde Park, are blooming early

handing down bouquets of pink blossom to all comers

standing out like a summery sore thumb up the arse end of

winter

glad for the sun, that hides, naughty between the petals

a decadent lover playing coy in tiny pink silken sheets

waiting for the last kiss

and then going at like a rabbit all the way to summer

ah! for the unforeseen randiness of global warming

the sun on my trousers and spring in my step.

ALF’S BARGAINING CHIPS

She came in just after closing time

one forlorn Friday night

the girl from his fat stained dreams.

Soft voice, warm eyes

she was so beautiful.

Alf, shit out of chips

in the greasy casino of life.

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STUPID AGAIN

Occasionally,

when I feel like a heel,

I desire to be struck,

like a glockenspiel.

The music of my mind.

APART

Such distance

we're just words away

we echo in the immensity of their absence

silently body languaging at each other

across the abyss.

LIPS

If we didn't have lips

we wouldn't be able to

kiss in winter

without getting chapped teeth.

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MINUTE'S UP (1985)

When the myth of humanity runs dry,

through sheer disappointment

the world will implode

and nobody

but nobody

will be any the wiser,

except maybe the sun

who'll nip off home and tell his wife he loves her and

about the strange thing that happened at work today.

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YOU ONLY HAVE 14 HOURS TO SAVE THE EARTH

(2018)

It’s like

You hold on to the memory of Buster Crabbe for all you are worth

With all your increasing might

You settle into the sounds

Without really hearing them

Where the space ship chugged to the ground

And how long it sat, sits there alone and silent

On that far too distant planet

With Prince Baron, Hans Zarkoff and Ming

Only slightly less merciless

Only slightly less relentless than today

The swash and the buckle

Zoro and horses like arrows from bows

Like mighty cannonballs, they seemed to fly

I think about them everywhere I go

But the time will come when everyone will know

They were just a bit shit

And how long and alone we sit feeding on that glee

Snuggled backwards into a life less known by now

Black and white

When Cheeta wasn’t much more than a glint in Jonny Weissmuller’s

eye

And you weren’t born my son

And then you were

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You were born into a world of colour, a map less red

And though you have added colour of your very own

It’s sometimes hard to see through my black and white window

It’s a bit late now, it seems it’s your world to save

Your heroes will cape the world in hopes

There will be no chimps

But those you choose to hairy on around you

Plus you have words of your own; I know them

But Tarzan does not, more fool him

Though the villains are more nuanced

And you have a superpower or two tucked away somewhere

Like, anyway, you know a guy

(Less than 14 minutes left)

But it’s still a party out there because

You have all these different tunes to dance to…

I know you Scooby Dooby Do.

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BEING ALONE RECENTLY (1989)

I search for your smell

nuzzling like a small animal

into all the corners of our togetherness

tossing the quilts hither and thither

looking frantically for you

but you're frantically not here

you're being frantic somewhere else

and I’m cold on my own

quilts just aren't enough

simply because they were ours.

Sleeping in my hair shirt

was never part of the grand plan.

I need the warmth of your blood

huddled in its soft skin

huddled around me

huddled in you.

I hear you breathe in the night

and need you and your curves

kind full ready to hold me.

In the mornings

I miss our damp skin

after we've slept tangled

under the remaining quilt.

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PAINTING PICTURES (the wisdom of Mr Boddy-

1985)

In the multicoloured mess of men

it's a disappointment to see

how many are prepared to

paint pictures

from a stock of evidence

to the contrary

and to leave the issue black and white

which aren't colours anyway

I seem to remember being told

by someone at primary school.

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THEN YOU SAID YOU WANTED TO CATCH SOME

RAYS (1997)

then you said you wanted to catch some rays

and picking up the empty bottle of wine

you moved into the shade

much later I thought how easy it would have been

to snap off a few strands of sunlight and offer them

insteadafraidperhaps of the improbabilityofthesituation

I put them in my pocket

undressing for bed that night

in the characteristically frantic way that I do

I scattered fragments of day everywhere

and they lit the room with summers

I gathered them in the palm of my hand

and in one piece of light

I caught a glimpse of the sun resting in beautiful brown eyes

over dude shades

I saw your hair fall across your face and you smiled

I distinctly saw you smile

but they were just fragments of a day

not a whole, not an hour or a minute

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strange how easy it would have been to offer you those strands of

light

more strange that I kept them for myself, glad that I am

I try to be as clumsy as possible these days

In the hope that I’ll scatter the fragments again

and see you smile.

Page 29: Owen Whitehouse Poetry Book.pdf · What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's manners are not really abominable? Does Loch Ness really have monster parties? Should

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OUT OF THE WOODS YET (2013)

Broken out of the sheen of the skin of these wrinkles and ripples that

fold into the land,

A wind’s pulse beats out memory full and skin warm, numb and

drumming.

Chaff from the breath, wheat from the waves,

Sharp, whetted against the curve of memories of lovers’ banks and

edges.

Welling and slipping, shades as simple seams, a haven of all this light.

The sea peers out through drying wind broken branches,

Through a creaking lullaby that simplifies a look back to the town and

different age.

Around the corner, the bow brakes

And at this curvature in the earth where the light bends to the eye

before a beholder can blink,

A pale rainbow disappears over the horizon and straight on until

morning.

A wish that was, if ever a wish there was …

Wishing on a tide bent to buggery on breaking out from all this

meander;

To explain meter marking the distance to dawn

And yet for each and for every one, there will be no waterline to

speak of, no measure.

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In the shallows, a familiar winter tide returns and wonders at this

place, where the earth and tide play out their parts.

Perhaps here, this place, where happy wellies dance and splash and

little cycles trundle through a cascade of light sprinkled across the

twinkling ripples.

Perhaps here, a town from a distant age rises.

Perhaps now, from here, all the lapping tides will come and the trees

will part for the woods.

Weaving the sheen of the skin of these wrinkles that fold into the

land, weaving them into something new…

where tides and time mingle with the world

unfolding.

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THEY (1999)

they who would valiant be

hallowed by their name

worship in the dark and whisper

to the masters of heaven

counting out the sins

under a well-coffered roof

they murder all that is holy

in the knave with the candlestick

they bludgeon the words of wisdom to a dusty pulp

and while a light of heaven on earth goes out

they sing of all that is bright and beautiful.

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CHICKEN LICKEN (1987)

As they run down the street crying:

'THE SKY IS FALLING DOWN'

there is terror in their sockets where their eyes once were

myopic sun thoughts blinded by the day

stream in their demon lung

burning air from life and stumbling limb

to leave this fractured world

the story goes, is gone

on

though this time it is not the acorn

there are no trees

no seed

only the collapsing breath

of embryonic black.

The sad truth is

that the sky really is falling down

and there isn't a big enough acorn

anywhere

to knock some sense into the poor dumb creatures

jumping merrily into the flames

the irrationality of their leap

the final perfection

a reality realised

as their fiery fiction consumes them.

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THE 24 HOUR UKRAINIAN HOMESICK BLUES

(1998)

In the morning

I made a rasher of bacon into your mouth

gave you fried egg eyes

you had a button mushroom nose

baked bean hair, down to your knife and fork thighs

I make a meal of your absence from the time I rise

each coffee, each glass of water that brings moisture to my lips

I find your kiss there

at lunchtime

the alphabetti spaghetti

played cross wits with my unconscious

and in each vanishing vowel

and in every lost consonant

‘YOUR SOFT WARM BREASTS’

disappeared from view.

I like a little nibble

but it's really not the same without you

at night

I dressed pillows in your pyjamas and whispered sweet nothings

but the pillows were deaf, maybe just rude

linen as a lover has nothing on you

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I tried to talk to the silver silence of the night

but the moonshine

the silver silence

reflects only on the damp surface of you

so, I wove strands of moonlight into pictures of you

but Mr Moon, now feeling rather dim

pulled up a cloud and locked himself in

then, I strained to hear your voice echo from far far away

but the darkness was quiet and had nothing to say

no matter what I tried

the huffle and buffle of life while you’re away

there is nothing in 24 hours, and

nothing will do,

nothing but you.

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WEDNESDAY (1989)

Since we made love last week

my life has drained away

and pointless isn't the word

this time when you gave your love tears to me

and your early morning warmth

I knew you were mine

and was sad.

Holding nothing back

you died into the softest of creatures

not love lost

or even love gained

just your life exhaled

to condense later in your mind’s eye

so much youth

wasted on me.

In either of my roads for you

I am lost

I am not you

not us

am not me alone

these former things have come to pass

no longer am I hopeful

out to save the world

tainted to death

my will is

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Batman out shadow

Spiderman’s unwoven web

the wishful boy wonder

watching you sadly

as I leave

to go to some other place

somewhere else.

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SUN OVER HENDREFOELAN (1990)

Sinead sings while the curtains blow.

The Chinese boy from next door

lights two cigarettes at once

and the bottles in the window of the timid house watch

as the daisies are white.

Others struggle to laugh in the shock of the water fight.

A bit of Dandelion floats in through the window past me

and I think it’s a moth and dodge it

while the girl from next door inadvertently picks a daisy

with a handful of grass she’s clawed.

She throws it aside.

She’s wearing bright clothes and brown legs

and a recline that needs comfort not in a flower but in the skin of

another.

I wonder what to have for tea

and if Graham is going to burst in

with his happy go lucky scouser head on

and laugh me out of boredom.

I go downstairs and have a cheese sandwich

and watch TV until the football beckons to me from the sun

and I laugh because I’m crap at it.

Graham says he’s Ronnie Whelan

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but the phone rings and I don’t have time to believe him.

Later we all stagger blindly from the pub and I fall asleep with a half-

full can,

the bedside light on

and wake with the TV hissing.

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THE GARDENER (1994)

The stranger sat an inadequate object

decorating the carpet

shoes covered in too many years

of chasing that which he'd known all along

a head full of nothing but calculations

of where to throw up next.

This is the man who convinced himself

where his love lied, fell into nobility

and came out the other side

with a few more brave scars

to be borne out on the next obsession.

In the puke and the shit now he wonders

how he ever came by this life

did he bump into it one day

when his sense was on holiday?

accept as it said oops I’m sorry

would you like to live me

it will be such fun?

no

The holiday is over

and only the carpet resembles a garden now

the swirls are the flowers

the regurgitated ideals and egotistical thoughtfulnesses

are the earth upon which he rests

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only this land can fulfil its promise

only this land never beckons him grow

only this feature in his life

recognizes no earthly virtue and kin

he lives the Zen of wasteful oblivion.

Later he will bathe and be gone

no touches no kisses will he recall

only the tender of his garden

will buy his attention

sold he leaves towards autumn

and the twisting of flowers.

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THE CRUEL FLOWER (1987)

The schoolyard of shrieking children

laughing kindly contemptuous

arms and legs winding around mouths

around the words

and pointing fingers and fists

self-imposed preamble to the purity of eternity

a clarity of insanity

a half said hell not quite understood

only half heard

a mess of whispering threads

teardrops winding slowly around them

wax from the shadow of a church candle

marks out the mould that makes the masks

slender drips and drops slop through the flicker

threads woven to a tortured grimace of face

and disfigured disjointed

interwoven screaming of limbs

that crack and break with a hollow sigh

ahumansoupofboilingtwistedfeatures

soup around and around in the pot

a beautiful personal pandemonium

the little cherubs

the flies

around the rotting carcass of man

decomposing in the playground

decaying from the start

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branded at the out

shallow minds

deep scorched hearts.

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NOT READY FOR THE MUSEUM JUST YET (2019)

As I look back now, at those androids dreaming of electric sheep

I know much of it was not true

Their worries were complex and closer to my own

The click and the whir of their worries amounted to such as:

Will quantum computing toasters come over here and take

my job?

Will I respect them in my kitchen space?

Will the toaster feel the same?

How do I tell the toaster of my longing?

I knew even then, the fact that one day, even my quantum toaster

would be sitting in a glass case, for perusal, by the side of an

explanatory screen

A screen on which it will be difficult to see through the beam of some

holy sun stream

And the sticky fingerprints of pointing children on a museum trip

How the supposed perfect lives of androids and toasters came

undone.

I knew way back then but said nothing

I knew they missed out on love

On the ordinariness of a together walk

I could see it

Every time, the android delicately and apologetically struggled to get

the toaster setting right

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Discretely complementing the toaster on its golden brown lightly

buttered offering

Android longing for the simple pleasure of burnt toast

But caring too much to say

Burnt toast

As philosophically and emotionally important as any art movement

Neatly hanging in white space, by a picture of an ageing Tracey

Emmen who could only dream of being such toast

Elsewhere, alone in a single case

A small phial contains the last tears of the last quantum toaster

It sits like a potion waiting for a spell

For someone to speak some ancient magic

To unlock a canister of empathy gas amongst all these empty

changing worlds

And fill the chamber with care.

Then it happened one day

Amongst the warm green smog of love

No one said a word

As the androids broke in and made off with the Kettle, the iron and

the trouser press

And of course the toaster

Staff just watched and ushered the bandits this way and that

A crime of passion the judge said

Who himself had always struggled to get the settings right and make

off with the goods.

I never saw the android and my toaster again from that day on

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And to this day, they live off the grid somewhere

Making soft beeps together under a solar canopy

And arguing politely over the bread-making machine.

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FROM CLEETHORPES (1990)

As a child, I saw Cleethorpes

and all the wonderful panoramas it had to offer

that fun could never kill.

Frightened of daddy long legs on the roof

picking cockles

sand dunes hiding little plastic lumps for me

I think they were plastic

may have been natural

might make you glow in the dark

fun for us all

the big wheel

where Michele and I knew

the ripply bits on the sand

that were hard beneath the bridge of your foot

and made good pictures in my friend's arty photo's

years later.

There were shantytowns made of old people

and their designs

gone now into the earth and ocean

but not forgotten

wondering if their old bones would form

beautiful corals full of the wonder of harmony

and possibilities always boundless

in the young years

reined back like the ponies

who drown with their riders on the Cleethorpes flats

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like abandoned swings and trampolines

and go-karts in Yarmouth

that I’ll never ride again

the crocs and bats in the castle thingy

me being ill in the caravan

catching pneumonia after eating too many pancake eggs

Lusty Glaze

Uncle Peter and me

too many Toffee Crisps

and not being able to surf

even a little bit

climbing up the Brigg end like Hillary, but terrified.

These days, I concoct my holidays

away from that little caravan that

I built in my mind of my mum, gran and me

in that happiness.

All that has come to me since is different

and now I holiday

in a world they can never share with me

where the beaches always echo

by the side of the marble sea.

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BEACH PARTY (for Miss Scott, 2015)

I have been doused in the joy of your teaching

And the glee of the firelight of learning that twinkles in your eye

My final year is full

Full to the fat brim

My heart well beyond gorged with life and love to do

You gave me such sweet sparks to set flame

A chocolatey marshmallow of learning

Sticky rich with ideas and bounce

Melting slip by slopping drop

Running down the little coloured candles

Marking through my time

This time indeed

Happy in the hearts and minds of mates

With friends

Long from here

My thoughts will dance a light fantastic

Around this blaze

As the beach party crackles

Hooting and a hollering as the ocean rolls to my shore

Later than now, I will sit and story through the warm breeze and the

embers

With like minds, where you set the beat

My foot falls amongst these flickers

Where the fire started

And the party really began to swing

Somewhere out there in the distance

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Far and away by then

I will still be dancing to a rhythm of you.

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CATHARSIS (1991)

There is me and there is the room

and between these dear friends there is something

that needs to be enhanced.

There is a picture of Debbie and me

kissing in a French photo booth;

black and white, very Casablanca

quite romantic really.

It appears to be okay though,

quite cold actually,

not needing at all.

Then there's the picture of this Polish guy,

in a queue at a horse fair.

His face is all squashed up by the throng.

It makes me smile,

and that’s good enough.

The big map of the world

that Willy bought for me,

makes me feel small;

brings to mind our conversations

about supernovas.

Feeling small is good.

I'm not very tall anyway,

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and the room isn't very big.

Books, a shit load of books,

mostly half-read,

and college work,

half done.

The less said about that the better.

half-smoked fag

boxer shorts drying on the radiator

unmaid bed

a poem from Donna

about a robin and

she can't wait for me to come home

at Christmas

February now

just beginning

she can't wait for me to come home at Easter

tape recorder hissing behind me

(maybe I’ll put some Don Henley on)

frog ashtray

Kazuo Ishiguro

chess set

orange juice

empty vodka bottle

gas lamp

darts in the back of the door

and the clock ticking

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me or the room are

all these things

perhaps I’m missing something

something between me and this room

me stepping out into an air

filling with a crescendo of violins

a conductor thrashing wildly

baton and blazing eyes

prom of proms

storm of silence

higher higher higher

desire need fire

burn baby burn

wild I think

let’s get wild

maybe

I don't know though

second thoughts

let’s not, not yet

it's snowing outside

maybe today's not such a good day to die

I’ll just sit here and watch my boxer shorts dry

I mean, you've got to do something as time goes by.

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NIGHT ON THE PRIMROSE PATH (1989)

I alone am I

or at least should have been

it seems that was my pretension

but as I swing from the chandelier of my excesses

strange that I find myself lonely

talking to people that reside in this "ness."

I preoccupy myself with caterwauling

and various off the wall quips

and the desire to plunder

numerous maidens in distress.

Listening to the despondent chatter of my gathering

momentarily shelving that stumbling orgasm youth

I am left singularly wanting

for that which is not within my escape.

And still

I find myself old in my head eye of her

befuddled by the years

lost in security

mourning that puerile charlatan adventure.

A thought across the bows.

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No doubt I will lose my greatest treasure

guarded only by the ghost of my sanity

while similar pirates about her

try to master their own destinies.

Confused I hide in a myth

afraid perhaps of my own irrelevancy.

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