Four minutes past late
The long and the short of it…
Cleared out the empties.
Priced up cheapo books for Juul;
Made some fresh coffee;
What’s to do next, Boss?
Review the twelvemonth, Arthur!
The third Afghan War
proved a futile sacrifice
same as the first two
Old top brass eye up the next,
mothers weep for a tearless world,
alcohol poisoning
has doubled, trebled, wobbled
quadrupled…collapsed.
Anything else, Boss?
A hard shoulder to cry on
Last Night of…
extreme dreams,
stark monochrome fluid,
freeway floral wallpaper,
rotting damasks, shillelagh,
almonds and formaldehyde.
White light, white sheet.
Jammin’ Jerusalem
Jute wailing bunnies.
Then,
exhausted from the lie-in:
cobalt clear still sky
flossed with high flying drifts,
orchestras of demi-gods trail
home spent.
We scavenge the tepee for beans,
celebrate love apples with libations of strong coffee,
and weep and fear for the band snakes,
Asian gators, and tigers on the fridge, hiding behind
the fabric conditioner, still ready to pounce on sleepy
Moorhen’s eggs.
Your runnin’ and
your runnin’ and
your runnin’ away
from yourself.
Crashed out from seven to eleven
& so on & so forth all the long night long
Necessarily punctuated by bouts of micturition, coffee
& tap water, insucks on a menthol vape, alpha
Meandering through the channel & guides in search of
Something beyond my control·I am not
Who I was & am what I am·
Winzerschlafenziet or so they call it
In wobbly obscurantist circles:
Crimson sheets barely tell
The tip of the icebreaker
Crashing through pack ice
& all night teleshopping
Even when soaked overnight
In saline and lavender
~
Quite why I am here
For some reason escapes me
(common in a chick of my age
That’s what oft I hear)
Or so the experts, goldfish
And fellow imbeciles explain
I think there is another reason:
Terminal boredom
Which (I am unreliably informed)
Comes from deep down within one
A remark that never fails to
Incite me to outrageous
acts of crochet & fretwork
which I later would mortally regret
If I could only remember what they
Were & consider them worth
Categorising as such—
this also bores me and drives me to fits
of desperation that distract me & that’s
why accidents like people occur…
11.18
No dump!
Where’s my strutting arrogant piranha gone?
Stone crazy bower birds pinch my trinkets.
Harpies pester & rag my innards.
Make a stand for decency!
Go to ‘Sea’ again before the New Tear
Guess I’ll go below
& take a blow
Fake a bow to indifference
Milk the plaudits for what they’re worth
Fifty short of six thousand likes for the year
& not a bean to show for it
But the inner glow…
Dawn skyline silhouette
Centrefold cardboard pop up
charcoal rooftops part
Exposing awesome schism
Giant rocket gone to seed
Oversees gurt grey divide
Totem hides taboo
Purple sprouting broccoli
Also springs to mind
Thing and winnowy
Long bolemic pins
Dangle down half-heartedly
Look stronger than this close up
To meet
face to face
my face and me
to gaze agog
on a sea of me.
A sea
of sudden time
surrounds, breaches,
fills my head from source:
one bright blithe crystal
on the russet titanium floor,
caught in a chance manner,
a blip,
a pulse,
the fading morning bonnet fleets.
Gone as quick as it came,
we chanced a profound sorrow to part
and were gone.
poohsticks gone eleven
lesser spotted orangemen
after their endeavourings
removing crud
from one’s broken footpath
and sublime resurfaced road—
tootled out to sneak a keek in
my little black boxers,
gait of a failed weightlifter,
minus safety belt and talcum powder,
and exaggerated out blasts
of plump me up breath;
Xmas card
from ‘Jason, your devoted milkmaid’.
Blake & the Gilchrists, Palmer the Painter (not the poisoner, or was he?)
Sub-bucolic seditious
portrayals just show the hell of rural life—groan unpleasant land yield up your fish!
Either way
they brought Mad Blake deserved fame·
after all that’s all that matters·
resurfacing·
rediscovery·
readershipwreck·
~
Mad panning meeting:
sludge, silt, plastic beads,
Jock McRock—lapsed mason,
Well bonkers demi-scourge
bristling with bad ideas and good intent,
impresario in the do’s and don’ts of anarchio,
former surgeon to pinocchio— slopes of early
into that good night of sturgeon’s seed
& introverted ptamigan’s
Eggs Benedictine
Compensate for tedium
Pitiful compensation:
Mandelbrot chipolatas spark
Kaleidoscopic twilight…
Gerraway with you!
Prospect of Summer
in the Peak District provides
A pleasing enough distraction
From progressive viola
A Popedream well worth puffing on…
Six o’clock roll trolls droll dread
AA Gill—he Dead
Famous for fifteen minutes
Nothing like Andy Warhol
He’s been dead famous for yonks
A Larkin moment!
Brass rubbing in Matlock Bath
If it’s not been pinched by oiks
In Purple Brothel Creepers
Hanging round coffee houses
Contemplating patricide
No good to man or beast
If the truth be known
Such wondrous feasting!
make intransigence
give way to transformation
ghostly dead grey days dissemble
autonomous motion pictures
inanimate manikins
submit to buff lamination
& stringent English Mustard
Cool moon and Venus,
thick tar bipolar cable
stands in for a horizon,
shutter your left eye
frame it all in one clean
elongated myopic square
careful to include
insignificant details-
bare rowan twigs,
fragile mildew gilded boughs,
beatified by sun,
bronzed as clean new gold.
(midwinter berries perish
in robust spring storms,
eaten by cold doves,
or down drains
flapping about
like sink spiders floundering
in numinous U-bends
under sinks
all over the world).
Grimbeau 