so
we ate the agenda,
watched our hirelings make smoke,
found time to sit back mindful full of dread
of the hectic times ahead:
‘Love is like a bird on the ocean…’
remarked the thin lipped minion
without portfolio as the
light broke overhead
post birthday thaumaturge loves labours added semi detached wrappers to history’s bulky bucket
a bin you find that never gets filled
in plastic night it coughs and splutters
sat scribbling blind in a barebones gutter
memorising lyrics for literate milkmen
on event horizons
everything swims past
truth speaks unto power masterclass
~
abnormal service is exhumed eventually after digging up relics found in history’s bulky bucket so glad to hang around to see
do not try to walk now little mother
soldier on like a good egg
until you can run as far as your legs can carry you
hep cats conspire to inhale incandescent
frankincense & purr
interminable pleasantries
into jasmin lime
…it is well known in curtain corners
hep cats conspire
to inhale exotic teas
frankincense & purr
& malinger simper while milk
cools clots & condenses
in the night sacred rites..
You going now.
Whatever for?
Food? Is it Air?
Smoke? Water? Just downstairs?
–have a break from what
when you ain’t done
jack shit yet?
constipation sir
i’ll have you know
is a fact of military life,
remember how when
the highland clearances
started it was small before it dwindled
to an impertinent trickle
–good old duck in orange sauce
soon gave them light industry …ie
a military industrial complexity
never known beforetimes
facing up to facts ; my god what have i done uninvented the wheel mislaid a chocolate orange ; spilt sump oil on paper; found still life in plaster cast contorted red onion; wearing no knickers show house trial ordeal; Post morteM Queries squirrels (part of a series they say; poor old dearies battle it out hard at war; halcyon daze escapes them; hangs 'em up high in the fatuous sun, no point quibbling over timespace; escape to the as was suntrap shed on sleepy rusty wheels; heliotropic heads turn waltzers ship alight fandango with a gypsy melody; lights on no ones in did you get in the bin and prod the lazy daisies; neither toil nor sow these days; shell shock of the toe I guess; either the way what's new? uncross your legs when I'm talking to you your making the place look tidy & that's quite enough of that they say if you don't use it you lose it so that doesn't matter if you suss you never had it in the first place Listen to me I'm talking to you who shut down the voices they were my only friends I do not have a mobile phone as I am static funny five minutes get over it think about Portsmouth beating a villain don't cross your legs I said as if you were watching telly downstairs day in day out self medicated to the spot or doodling in your picture books and playing with your paintset this is an almighty kick up the ass I am you giving while trying not to cross your legs like I said not to... I arrive in early January. Frustration has been building up in Portsmouth since the brief burst of anticipation that followed Myrtle Swinburne's assumption of the presidency in November. As the months went on and no obvious changes took place, as unemployment failed to fall and the currency swung wildly, the urban areas in particular grew increasingly angry. My mate Marmite, who works for an international organisation in Shiloh, said head riots were predicted before the end of the rainy season. The rainy season ends in April. The city didn’t even make it close. Portsmouth was both bully and victim, cruel and pitiable. He whipped his horses mercilessly, and sometimes his underlings too. He tortured his oxen, knocking them on their heads with an axe he had made specially for that purpose, and roaring with laughter when they bellowed in agony. Sticking frogs with the prong of a fork was another of his pastimes. Domestic servants he disliked were held down and forced to drink beer mixed with jalap and mustard, while others were fed with nothing but water-gruel and mustard for a week. He threw himself on one of his coachmen with such force that he broke the man’s leg. If a child who passed him in the street did not raise his hat, Portsmouth would order him to be slain. When the United Irish rebellion of 1798 raged around his Wexford estates, he wrote to an uncle that his tenants had been appropriately slaughtered and his estate laid to waste. All he seems to have cared about, however, was the impact of the loss of rent on his finances, which he used as an excuse for not helping his uncle out with a gift of money. From an Irish viewpoint, the Portsmouths were archetypal absentee landlords, a phenomenon that would contribute a century or so later to the ousting of that class from its dominant position in the country.
You remember Gonks: foam stuffed cabbage patch dolls born of an oil crisis; Mister Mennish in a way; eminently home-makeable – scissors, clear glue, felts of varied hues & farbs – you got your Gonk! Mine was called Paulus,
after a little gnome who welcomed
all and sundry
to his home.
My Personal Paulus disintegrated
after a vigorous thrashing
in our twin tub.
It always had
a masochistic streak…
Windows windows,
looking inward looking out,
they do not do up and down no more
Could if they had necks,
or long hands and periscopes.
If they were so fortunate,
and with the CCTV linked to the telly
But,
that is not the same as a neck of your own to play with…
Inner scented oriental mood,
smartly shoed,
sucking on a Zube,
watching chicks insinuate.
It is now.
Can you imagine
how good that is?
Go on
Then!
~
You are smoking
Casually
Smoking?
On a street corner in the fifties.
You are wearing a hat.
It is a busy street.
High rise buildings.
People. A city. Night. Warm. Promising.
Am I right?
~
Fancy an omelet
I do.
Fresh green salad.
Sounds good.
Let’s go.
what the heck let’s go again at the witterings good work out for the digiits if nothing else.
Cut those nails, Howard Hughes. I implore you. Simply.
we got two zero one nine big time fult tilt bullshit flying oppressive radio waves goodbye to reason
is Prokofiev taking the piss saying look ma no hands to the conservatory
burning leaves with his true love
bitter sweet body of work to discomfort you in you dotage
– In about half-four?
Eventless so it is for waiting
here is stifling dull
the enervation so immense
it aches her now
each silly little thing phases you again,
envelopes you in wireless waves,
induces permaflop
On waking up, the news app tells me
all Turks rise up from oppressive sheets
and that a
shocking percentage of the obese can bend
their slothful feet in the middle at will
Can badgers bend their feet in the middle at will too?
Make a note of that.
–Why bother?
Pop Up!
each & every time it is written it is read frequently with a view to publishing, thus revealing the lack of output and quality,
symptomatic of the pernicious drivel of the web, dangling out the sort of wealth that distracts from obscene penury.
The allure compels bad writing like
the ticking off to a nuisance child breeds sullen rage, a temper tantrum never aggravated an annoying fly. In this sea of sludgy dross what chance the poor genius who don’t think in code but coneys?
Self-promotion is the answer we are fed and therein lies the rub. For being a shy retiring violet with a gargantuan appetite for blood who never courts controversy or mere attention,
my chances of breaking through to international recognition are all but diddley squat
yet still you write, says Pop Up at last
The sun is beginning to shine and I have a Venezuelan cat-burglar cheesy like a Cheshire Catb getting on the tit; with a little ermine ketchup and sharp scimitar mustard I will be loin-girded to two-face the travails of fast fake days in real time…
so you pretty much write this garbage to dump it on, to let off steam, move the lonely muscle…?
when you put it like I cry
How do you thing that we feel?
Ecstatic
Can of worms t(itLE)
ALL the best
Jokes
(are) were strew(n)
Across
The
Cutting room lino
Shall we now move
Onto
OK
(logically)
Go
(with t h e)
Flo…W
This (!)
iS
iI(?)mp
rot
ant
‘Dolphin! I say, nay say, beseech. What kind of a name is than then?’ Pesk was fuddled. It addressed him.
‘The very thing. Dolphin. Dolphin Phipps. Shoot Phipps is bad enough. Could be Godolphin, mind. Arab horsey typos. Own Dettori. Blue shirts. Abdul O’Himmler. That sorta thing…’
The dull surge of midday twaddle tutted. The too much oft and many times earwigged. The Captain’s Table. Pesk ate gray prawns and got out the book of tides. Pesk’s Quest’s companion volume pocket sized. Found the place anointed:
‘Greely Quay & the Giant Cray & Environs’, page thirty-two marked and read out loud.
“One is instantly struck by the sheer drab of the hillside graveyard as one descends the gradient to Greely Quay after the wily serpentine from Dead Dog Strand. Sitting as it does on the crest of the Daphne’s headland, it seems to mock to shame the bay below as it whispers to the sea “here’s a few poor beggars that your fishies did not gobble up you shite stream!” And, indeed the headstones did tales of souls retrieved from perilous, quirk bedevilled waters: Michael Murtagh, lost off the Vestal Hemispheric, found skulking like a bailiff in Dundown Cove February 14th 1962; Peter Teaser, mauled by the trawler Strawberry Flan, Regurge Sound 28th October, 1989…
‘Hold up! That was my cousin’s sweetheart, Peety.’ The Dolphin man broke in, ‘what’s that gnarly yoke your reading from, my friendio?’
‘My Uncle’s Diary’ said Peck slowly, not looking up.
‘Why are you telling it out loud?’ said the Dolphin man coming across.
‘To find you Mr. Mullins. To find you. My quarry.’
…
‘You had me going there, Dolphus.’ Perks sighed as they rowed out. ‘I thought you were Pinkerton’s sub-con knobbler…’
Loud came not the stern reply
The cove was mill pond smooth that callow eve. The two men laughed too loud for easy air. Water lapped hollow slurps in the inlet. How far out is safe to row, both mulled hard. Still meant ill, sounds carry gurgles, echoes travel light, stealthy, sock tread, slurred.
—Spruce your caboose with the neck of a goose! Said Mullins gone incongrous, brandishing his cutlass striking a now or never Fairbanks pose.
Music bathed the comely ether. Seagulls squawked of piteous deliverance . A sacrifice most Tuesdays if I feed the shumbunkin corn flakes daily, a hag cockled snagged by gin slings.
—Said seabass emerged its mammy’s lug, two full moons late, a guttersnipe once told us on the haunted promenade, left lug mind the right as if were grommet bunged. No exit, clearly posted so, neon flashes migrained, AC wired buttermilk…
—From sinister portals, indeed. Churned that one over down the years, and thus concluded, ‘Hi, tis I, chance of sip of your sup?’ Beggar off big brute, I’ll have yer goats fur…’
—Guts for gators, probed a scoop nose. Who he? One or tother so. Why it matters not. Time for the Klaxon hoot? Angelus
Klaxon Hooted. A bottle rocked up. The message read:
All their life was regulated not by lordly laws, crass statutes, or dry crust rules, but according to their free spirit will and pleasure. They rose from bed as they pleased, and how they drank, ate, worked, and slept when the fancy seized them. Nobody woke them mind; nobody compelled them either to eat or to drink, or to do anything else whatever. So it was that Gargantua Snood had established it. In their rules there was only one telltale clause:
DO WHAT YOU WILL
because people who are free, well-born, well-bred, and easy in honest company have a natural spur and instinct which drives them to virtuous deeds and deflects them from vice; and this they called honour. When these same men are depressed and enslaved by vile constraint and subjection, they use this noble quality which once impelled them freely towards virtue, to throw off and break this yoke of slavery. For we always strive after things forbidden and covet what is denied us.[20]:159
—Book twenty! Blimey there’s a tome. Mullins was flummoxed. Perks lingered over it, identifying Rabelais, but why now of all times. It was, he concluded, for diplomatic purposes, a red herring.
—It’s nothing. Let’s go home.
~
Some sort of sick kick from it. Must be. Perverse. Inaudible mutters, more than a mere mime. Stop. Crank it again.
Whassat he said, marzipan muel. More bloody pop-ups, start of the day, the sec I go near it, starts pushing you round, near dare and down the stair. Magic pen. Screens are for tourists, juss look at ArseboK. Ulterior motives, but I diverge. Indian summer of the Tory Party. Dangerfield did it for the Libs. Farewell Georgiana, brief encounters with bliss in the grounds of a country pile. You know I met Lloyd George? Yes me father told me when I was knee high to. Stop.
Dint of it I ask you. that was eerily early the mist was. Turd stone from the sun. Judd blink & youd mishit. Bollox to Bognor. South of a bog. Stands it up for reason? Process of elimination, my weird Watson. Je never said that. I know. Know. Know. kNow. Comma. Odd the things that float. Waters off Clyne for egg proffers darn good stretch of the leggings.
Hit anything now. you could always put a light on blindfold. Break up this bliss when something’s amiss. Stay in touch. Of course or perhapsy.
Sure you’re a lang aukd time lone sun. Down tto the cardboard. In mere wheeze dan won. Get gone with you. juss being sillier. Look Ma no hands left! And various other bits to boot. Attstops inbetwean. Love comes in shirts. Buy one get one knee. Death on the High Street. Peepul turn wahey. Selfies with my new friend Dr. Dear-Dept.
Lokk wow it trndz. So now lingo bingo gets born. A gnu renascence occludes.
Broke through the ice. Just slipped out. Popped. Automatically. Reports dismissed on superficial coffe grounds. Wrong water fonts. Matter of dulce et decorum. Costume & Pack Ice Frobisher. Methodolology. Sjould be a Church of it upped. On. Ward. Armies argue over refs. Wrong type of earrings. Lackings of the daisical dEpartntt. Not future innit. Means mean ends. Conveyancing. Todays lesson a reading from the Book of Herman Two Sticks. Drumroll. Bugger Bognor. Famous lasts. Me or the wallpaper beyond my means sod under other sod. Blessems. Ashtrays to ashtrays. Divil first by a nose. Heaven’s Above put down. Fetlock snap. Juss bending down to pick up a pea. Pop! That’s your lot pal. Here’s some teeth to gnash while wailing.
A bum’s tear it was, a caskful of stares, cleaved, spigotted, deerstalkered, up for the rout, no soft feelings you understand, throbbing nasal duct, precursor of girly weeps, matinee idol what fell from Grace. & herself a married wannabe. Book of Life lies. Untouched on yonder coffee table. Walnut inlaid, caryatids. Lot of time input, hobbies. Tender acts of wooden love. Down memory lame. See who that is coming up. Bugger me the bishop. Late of Bath and Wells. Jaunty little mancub. Tells frequent tells of pewstuff. Ups and downs. Exercise really. Stiffs turn left on the way out. That’s you told, milad. Conscripted belligerent over traces kicks. Bit off more than is proven chewable. Gumshield orange peel. Never failed me yet. Charming ickle mancub. No sado of a doubt about it. dribbling desert wine in the naval cavity. Fortify the under fours. Whatever gets you through the night Kris. Mantle of moi dreams bladder wracked by marbles…
A load of dross.
Might brighten up.
Why can’t people be more self-sufficient. Less clingy
Abreaction city daybreak megalopolis: nostalgic be bop hangover, muzzy hood. Leggy.
Lurid memories time, scratching around for wine and beer
watching the clock for relief:
hair loss glances, no known cure, pellucid glimpses, hairy bacon
hollow laughs downstairs; fades in, shades out; short fuse, uproar,
tantrums, grumps, demands, frustration, crash, oblivion.
Oh, what fun we had!
Unmemorable back pages best forgotten.
Dry alcove, Holy bush, smoke less fuel, nine to five.
Louis Armstrong, top Toot of the Wook.
Big Six unearthed in vintage esky
Lodger worth a dodge, sober and industrious, plausibly installed, has come home early to be touched:
worm quest, jauntier, shrapnel seed money, six squid a snip,
full of toe curl tales of the loving dead, and the dying I say.
Necessary & unnecessary evils considered sufficient thereof, bad seed diaspora, always a few spoil it for the dunny
First loves end in slender benders. Lifestyle lycanthropes.
Live and lament at your lesion.
Look at the small print bug eyes. detail in the devil. The emotions make easy scapegoats. Shelf fulfilling prophecies past sell by.
errant seed-drill, knave, cad, bounder. Only the lonely need apply
Circling before swooping yow saw her, watchful, gliding, waiting,
stumble and fall, writhe, twitch, shudder and stop.
Go now.
Dive and perch,
peck and gnaw,
pull and gorge:
To Victor count despoils,
red tooth, red claw,
crunch and munch.
Veganburger
Grimbeau 