A lone man polishes* his car lovingly with big white cloths,
Pausing to reminisce momentarily in his quest for the perfect gloss;
Thunder-thighed girls on suet diets,
The English rose, reality a farm of heifers,
Lurch behind hockey sticks as they chase failed dreams that failed in the dreaming,
All down-to-earth, mundane stuff
That shapes their bodies and thin, urgent calls
Stabbing peremptorily at the bounded world they live in.
A toy-town jeep carries home the smile of a man who stopped smiling,
The pinnacle of his achievement this crowning glory in green,
Hopes lived out, dashed, all coalesced in this one symbol of the estate, the multimillionaire, the cool,
Four wheels and a coat of paint,
Sad, really.
Two teenage girls, thin lips,
Sour minds,
Argue in bric-a-brac thoughts
Over the rights and wrongs of nothings,
Leery-eyed, ready to pounce on the technicalities whilst missing the purpose,
Lives of needles and pins and baloney balancing on the tightrope of social acceptability.
* (bowdlerised)
A dumpling woman says ‘hello’ to the cats, and the trees,
Somehow life lived passed her by,
She was there, she took part, but never noticed,
A teflon spirit that says all the right things,
Felt no impact, had no impact,
Gaudy butterfly seen better days,
Battered wings,
Wanderer alone in the woods of her mind where everything sings,
Off-beam and only odd when you look
Here marches an old lady,
Vera Lynn and memories of war,
Hair fell out when she passed 80,
Kidneys and boiled cabbage,
Carpets damp,
Husband dead,
Children long-gone - but she’s happy,
Stoic in her lot,
The walking stick her friend,
Pausing to genuflect briefly at acquaintances who nod,
Birds fly by,
The sun sings,
Invisible to the naked eye
But my eye’s not naked
A teenager on a buzz board
Craps up and down the road
In a fart of cracking sounds
That echo like ping-shots
Off sullen, browbeaten suburban-semi walls -
Who cares?
Not his Mum, dumb,
Proudly staring, oblivious to social responsibility,
The new breed of flawed womanhood,
Selfish, angry,
Viciously retaliatory.
Three spiky-minded little girls,
Princesses in pink and designer-wear,
Sharp like new nails,
Stab stiletto thoughts round the sunshine of their laughter and smiles,
A camouflage of gloss that’s all too perfect,
Hiding the sneak-thievery of their minds
And eyes aware with calculation,
Modern kids with rights,
The right to be subtly insulting,
The right to be nastily manipulative,
The right to instil fear with lies,
The right to set one crazed, maddened adult against another,
The right to be innocent and never in the wrong,
The right to do as they wish, really,
Playfully,
‘Cos that’s all that matters.
Estate Dad glowers out of the window,
Fortress Prison,
Escaped from the hell-hole to here,
Not quite adjusted,
His kids snapping and snarling in their minds -
Outward pretence is fine but the dog-eat-dog surfaces
In low-grade amorality,
The drifting street thugs coalescing around this low point in acceptability
Where anything goes,
Straight-faced lies,
Manipulation,
Raucous threats and denials,
‘Don’t YOU accuse ME! Or I’ll have my Mum on you!’ -
It must have been bitter where they lived for their hearts are frosted over
And for some the thaw will never come,
Too long, too late,
Twisted out of shape,
Like stunted trees in a cold, cold wind.
It takes a long time to get the horror of a crappy council estate out of your system
Here comes Fred -
Alcohol did for him,
And the wife-beating,
Look in those eyes and you’ll see he always took the easy way,
One of the gang, blowing with the wind -
Strange how it affected him.
Being pals with everyone is pals with no one
And a stranger to yourself,
All alone;
It was the loneliness that crushed him.
Alcohol, wife-beating and going with the gang - he lost his internal strength
Upright and moral,
The Kashmiri family (network, meshwork)
Maintains a dignity and respect (interlaced)
Within its own structure (inward-looking, strong)
That fails to see the outside world (it doesn’t exist)
For anything important (family, family),
A self-referential oasis in the dead-souled gloom (locked-in, solid),
Riding the waves of News like a little boat,
Pretending the Sea isn’t there -
Islands are all right,
But isn’t love turned inwards just selfishness?
A poem about an Asian family that is so turned inwards with its love that it doesn’t value the outside world
Glam Mum walks past and the sadness trails behind her like her child does;
Glam Mum defies age,
Her beauty burnt on her face with the harsh glare of UV,
Her clothes from all the best shops,
Colour-coordinated
Like her face;
Glam Mum divorced and lost her heart
And found it replaced by bitterness
Which doesn’t show,
Not on her;
Her child carries the weight;
Poison like pus wells up from the child’s heart.
How did it happen?
Who knows?
Another child with Rights and Unhappiness,
Twisting every careless word into a knife she harbours and then unsheathes,
Keep your mouth closed before her because she’ll
STRIKE!
You won’t see the blow,
Just feel the after-effects, the rage of stung adults,
The fire of tormented youths.
Glam Mum walks into the distance,
And the child casts a mean glance backwards.
Poem about a divorced woman who dumps her bitterness on her screwed-up child, who in turn takes it out on the rest of the world.
This woman has a drunk for a husband,
Philanderer, two-timer;
Her culture makes it unacceptable not to accept.
Buttoned down, buttoned up,
Under the carpet,
Behind the stairs,
She cries in the night like a cat, no tears,
All her sadness whispered to the moon,
And me - who once was there;
The rage is tiring her, escaped,
Always out of her grasp,
She has no focus to direct it against the man who slab-like
Wobbles his belly along the street
In upright, overwheening pride;
Oh, culture, this is thy shame! 
I hardly knew her, but she came and told me everything - the great brute of a husband parading his pride in two-timing her, and her inability to tell anyone about it
Smiler;
What do we know about Smiler?
She smiles.
As the wind whips her face, she smiles;
As the grim thin thoughts of loneliness curdle her brain, she smiles them away;
Smiler no-mates walks with a mask etched on by torment
Only guessed at,
The dowdy one at school,
The one left out,
The one stabbed with words by the sheep-brained stiletto mob -
Smiler! I catch myself thinking, there’s a beautiful person in there,
Sunshine and smiles and warm cuddles,
The bastards have gone away,
You’re free now! Drop the mask!
But Smiler is too scared, and the bastards have won,
The shallow-eyed suburban wretches who retched out the vomit of their minds on this poor girl -
I wish all of them to hell.
Smiler the Strong One,
Smiler the Thoughtful One,
Smiler who can’t, won’t let go.
A young woman who always smiled, no matter what, as she walked the streets, a smile etched permanently into her face
Three youths, brothers;
Their father was too rich,
Spent all his time loving money, not his kids -
Had the car for show,
Wore nice clothes,
Looked up to, a pillar of the sheep-like community,
Who ‘baaaad’ their approval
And can’t understand why his sons are so baaaad.
Three brothers who went downhill, taking drugs and all the rest of it, caused by their father’s focus on money, never being at home
This woman is busy, busy, busy,
Work is HER ethic -
The harder you work, the happier you are,
Thoughts went out of the window a long time ago
Once she’d found a rock to cling to.
Her certainty makes life easy,
Though she slips and slides and slithers.
Somehow, however, she always ends up atop her rock,
Proclaiming to the world how right she is,
How right she was all along.
A short poem about a self-righteous woman who was never wrong - ever - and who maintained this self-image by being technically very precise about the words she’d used, slipping and sliding and slithering
Here comes Christine -
A professional Christian, she glad-hands me,
Smiles in warmth and splendour,
Asks after my children, my wife,
Laughs and exclaims, ‘The world is full of Joy!
Are you saved?’
Of course.
I nod.
‘Come and see me sometimes!’ she says,
And I nod again -
‘Thursday at 2?’ I ask. ‘I’m free then.’
In slow-motion her face freezes,
Her eyes die,
The muscles round her jaw gasp for air.
‘Or maybe 5?’
She nods and stammers incoherently,
Just for a microsecond,
Her mind casting round for ways to escape.
I didn’t hear the excuses,
Too amused by the action in front of me -
She blossoms up flowers without substance,
Petals evanescent as they’re born,
Words and pictures that camouflage her retreat
Quite nicely, thank you.
Who would know?
Just me,
I see.
Abrahem.
Abrahem came here looking for Hope,
Found only Despair.
Abrahem spends his days scavenging off bits of work that float his way;
Too often fleeced, he bobs along in the undercurrent of society,
Not visible unless you look,
Slowly drowning in a torture more sweet than any by Saddam (Bastard!) Hussein.
Abrahem lost his wife and baby son,
Killed by a bomb;
A gas attack on the Kurds.
For two years he wasn’t quite sane.
Stuck between two rival guerilla armies he joined one,
Fled when his mind came back and he saw how amorally it was run;
Abrahem, poor Abrahem!
Russia, Greece and Spain,
Days on a train,
The winter cold and crooks along the way,
He survived it all to land in the UK,
A land of drear not cheer
And a deluded leader with a career plan of WAR!
He wasn’t made welcome.
Filled with the retchings of the crapoids
The blank-eyed population buried their heads in work
And looked on with hostility.
Laws, and the tightening of laws, and the tightening again,
Slowly, like a noose,
Pumping out his breath,
Bit by bit, Abrahem, died - inside;
Fire dimming,
Life ebbing,
Integrity corroded where no man can stand the hidden insults,
Hidden contempt,
The withholding of work and rights -
The English Way,
The sad, sad English Way,
The Selfish Way,
The Pretend-it’s-not-happening way,
The sad, sad English losers’ way.
Abrahem died one night, but his corpse still walks the streets,
As we English scurry home.
Abrahem was an asylum-seeker that I knew and the loveliest guy you could ever meet, worn down by the mean-spirited laws of our country.
This is Rachel,
Lives in a house of chaos -
Unhappiness is her way of life.
She walks the streets in the rain bedraggled,
No coat,
Hair lank and the smile of laughter died in her eyes.
No one looks after her.
Crisps and pop pile up in the kitchen,
Cheap abundance in a household of smells;
The T.V glowers darkly,
The lights are off,
A fug surrounds this focus of insularity
In Mum and Dad’s dank sweat-filled world.
Poor Rachel -
Thief,
Smoker,
Truant,
Liar -
She could have been a Star.
But Mum has young children and no ambition,
Dad likes to veg.out,
And between them there’s not enough attention.
Derek
Flipped out.
A life of loneliness,
The pressure from religion,
A screaming intensity of excitement and activity
(Over nothing)
Followed by a decline into sadness and despair
(Of nothing) -
Too cruel to say he’s gone,
But he went.
Derek
High
And Derek
Low
Blossomed in defeat,
The flower and shell opening,
The world carved up before him -
All was open, for those who knew.
But openness doesn’t get you a job,
Won’t help you find a girlfriend -
The fragility and tenderness of the underside exposed
Does nothing in this world
Without
Stability.
Derek.
Was it chemicals in his brain?
Did he really go insane?
Or was the ‘flip’ a bigger version of our daily lives
When we too jump and jerk around in surprise
At what Life throws our way?
Derek had to stay in a
Home.
Well - that was the end of a life short-lived,
The roll-ups, the baccy, the clothes slightly tacky -
No, I can’t go on.
Derek
Lived,
But now the world was different, at least for him,
And I looked In and On.
A poem about a manic-depressive (bipolar disorder) who then had a nervous breakdown. And like many people who have nervous breakdowns, he became very open - too much so, because such openness and vulnerability gets you nowhere in our world.
And all I could do was watch.
Elvis.
Yes, Elvis!
You walk the street in your army surplus camouflage gear
And all that holds you to Hope is a Name.
Not any name -
But Elvis.
Now this is the strange thing, Elvis,
That actually you’re not the only Elvis,
But one of many the same,
A little lost, a little confused,
No home, yet,
And dreams and ambitions beyond your reality.
And so you find a name to cling to.
I have respect for you,
But a cautious respect,
Because the volcano of instability that is YOU
Hides behind the Man’s name
Ready to nail me with a fist
When the Man has gone.
And he goes when you’re questioned too deeply,
When you feel threatened,
When the ego behind the mask can no longer hold the heavy weight
Of Pretend
Poor Elvis.
Many years ago I came into contact with at least two young men who called themselves Elvis, and they were lost and confused fantasists giving themselves a little ego boost with their nickname. Nice enough guys, until you scratched the surface and put them under a little pressure.
Here’s a safe middle-class life.
Her aspirations were good,
Her Hopes clear and mundane,
Her children smart,
The home well looked after -
But something was amiss.
In all the tumult of her success,
The welter of her friends,
The slow progress to status,
There was a shadow concealing a flaw
That cracked her bliss.
It was never her fault.
Never was -
Never would be.
Someone was Always To Blame
Elsewhere.
Best to ignore it then,
These Other People And Their Problems.
You wouldn’t have thought it,
No, honestly,
Not to look at her,
But how can you communicate when You’re Always In The Wrong?
A very balanced person, but with a deep flaw - everything was someone else’s fault. After a while it becomes impossible to maintain a relationship.
I smile.
Sweetheart is friendly with everyone,
But it’s a sacharine insecurity
That drips me in honey and flowers,
And after a while the sweetness is too rich
And I yearn to get away.
Frightened of offending anyone,
Sweetheart yearns to be loved
And walks the extra mile a dozen times every minute;
Aah!
She was there when I needed her,
And my gratitude is deeper than her well of caresses …
But don’t come too close.
A poem about a woman who needed to be loved and was over-the-top friendly with everyone
Rage was her compressed Drive,
But a rage kept well-hidden,
Propelled her through the ranks to junior level,
Where her aspirations set their sights on the Top.
To get there would be a struggle,
But she was determined -
You would all struggle with her,
Due to her.
Ah, the delights of the Middle Manager!
The political wheeler-dealing,
The arbitrary commands,
The total ignorance of personal interaction,
The selfishness, duplicity and arrogance that marks out the craven wannabee
Chasing her Destiny.
And then she had a child.
Returned to normal.
Mellowed out, chilled out, hit the real world
Running
Smack
Into her.
I recommend that all bosses should bring up a four-year old single-handed for a year.
We’ve all met the shitty 30-something boss, hypnotised by cultural values, desperate to be a ’success.’
And then their biological clock ends up with them having a child, and the blinkers are removed from their eyes. And though the first year or so goes smoothly with childcare and grandma’s help, by the time their child’s a toddler and they’ve separated from their partner they’re bringing their child up on their own.
Estate-rough,
REAL rough,
And I mean rough,
A scraggly briar by the roadside -
This is an estate that throws them fertile in the air,
Watches them landing,
Like popcorn in a pan hurled out of their hot home -
Something inside must tell them to attempt escape,
But half of them fall back in,
Missing family and easy, lowest-common normality.
Oh, rough!
This fishwife tears her tongue out and beats it against your wall just to get in,
Brazen in the cadging of fags,
Bringing up two children like semi-feral wolves
Hunting through your clothes and drawers -
Oh, rough!
Best mates with everyone instantly,
No parenting skills,
Pass the blame and pass the buck,
She’ll give permission to her children to stone your windows
If you don’t bend her way
And pretend to give a f***.
Frequently you get families fleeing the roughest estates, determined to bring their kids up in a better environment. (And perhaps 30% of the time there’s something on the estate that they miss, and they return there - perhaps cameraderie? )
Mr. and Mrs. Weasel
Drip down the road like slugs and oil,
Buttery and flowers,
He with the sharp eyes and no morals,
She with the loose jowels and sliding talk
Impossible to pin down.
Their house is nice;
Their car is nice;
Their friends are whoever’s useful.
Mr. and Mrs. Weasel -
Also known as the Slipperies -
Have modest jobs and minor authority
They exercise with as much dignity
As a King and Queen.
Woe betide the revolution!
They’ll tick your names off as you go for execution!
A slithery couple, buttery and oily, transparent to absolutely everyone though they didn’t realise it.
Oh, the grief has drained her face and all her energy,
Walks without a smile down the long road towards oblivion,
Her cares are no-cares, for what does she care?
All’s gone;
All lost in the wind,
The wild,wild wind that sweeps them all away
Like leaves on a breeze
Towards the mountain that is Home.
All gone, and just the remainder left behind,
Scudding along.
You’d walk in her shoes but they’re cold,
And so you smile and avert your eyes hastily.
Her oblivion, so yearned for,
Contrasts sharply with your desire for life.
A grief-stricken woman existing day to day
This man is a ghost;
I’ve seen him from my past -
The claustrophobic carpets, war-time music, teak-veneered furniture,
Gas fire always on;
A snug little home,
A hell-hole for a rat to gnaw on plump kittens.
Don’t take a bath, he’ll peek round the door!
The psychological warfare begins in the morning,
The casual undermining, the pleading, the criticism,
Then continues in the evening -
Chocolates, your favourite music,
He treats you well, this damp little man.
A motorbike accident crippled his balls, apparently;
He can’t get it up.
Three times in a row his hot water bottle bursts,
Three nights he inveigles himself into my bed and tries it on;
I finally twig, and I’m GONE.
‘Oh yes,’ his colleague says casually, ‘Ah!’
Thanks, mate.
I suspect most people have been in a scenario where someone’s tried to take advantage of them s**ually.
This guy was pleasantness personified to my parents when I was looking for a first place to lodge, but soon showed his true colours. A very manipulative character, undermining with criticism, wheedling and whining to put pressure on, making a conspicuous effort to be ‘nice’ by sharing chocolates, then applying more pressure with a guilt trip, trying to break down my barriers.
Creepy.
Being dumb and young it wasn’t until it was blatantly obvious that I finally figured out what he was up to.
As I left I had a conversation with his work colleague in the workshop below the house.
And what threw me was this guy’s deliberate attempt not to see what was going on - presumably because it would have caused too many problems.
Screams; and more screams;
The thin life of the young mother perambulates towards me
In chaos and smacks and shouts,
Not one person but three,
Because she lost her identity;
Recovers it in an instant as we pass,
Remembers who she is, what she is,
The dreams she had,
The personality that encased and expressed her;
We exchange pleasantries,
She drops down the facade like steel shutters masking her despair,
Projects cheerfulness,
Expresses pride in her kids, rolls her eyes,
Carries on;
Not one but three,
And the wind sings their tune backwards,
‘Three into one don’t go,
But we try,
My God we try!’
Three into one don’t go,
And in the distance she pushes on.
I’ve been a housedad looking after a toddler, and I’ve been there when the young Mum has walked by, ceasing to exist.
Here come the hard kids,
A slovenly gang on the way down -
So much status at school!
But no one told them that school’s an illusion,
That out in the real world no one gives a damn,
That the power-swagger and the gob,
The lead-weight resistance and the bullying count for nothing.
Set in concrete from too much practice, their mean and angry faces are losing it,
Uncertainty like a glimmer creeping in -
You can see it in their eyes,
The slowly dawning surprise,
The future fading, no jobs, no hope, no money;
And all they have left to cling to is their yobbery.
Factory-doomed, if they’re lucky,
The group will split in ones and twos over the coming years
As reality settles home,
And this one marries, this one moves house,
This one attempts escape and this one dies;
But for now, chunky and forlorn in their base certainty
They pose in their washed-out clothes outside the school gates
And try and recapture their authority.
A poem about the gang of kids you see hanging around the school gate at dinnertime or after school - kids who have left, who were once the hard kids, but now find that reality is catching up with them as they cling to their low-grade certainties
Jobsworth -
A small life went wrong.
Somewhere, behind those angry eyes,
There must have been dreams,
But the dreams have all gone.
Now you make people’s lives a misery,
Treading the tram-line rules,
Treating as a weapon your little knowledge on a small thing.
It’s an excuse to let the hatred out.
You escalate with as much skill as a fisherman playing a fish,
Luring into the dark weeds of deeper, more formidable rules
Your naive prey.
There’s always the hope, then, that you’ll catch a Big One
At the end of your mean-lived day.
This verse was inspired by a bank worker who’d clearly decided that I was asking for too much, and took great delight in making everything as difficult as possible. I could see in her eyes where we were heading, so kept my annoyance factor just below the level where she could pounce.
Maybe that makes me a jobsworth
He looks so cool, so full of life -
The flushed cheeks, the manly swagger,
Bonhomie exuding from his pores, like his sweat;
But he has a secret - quite a few.
Divorced,
A drunk,
A philanderer,
His qualifications false,
He leans his weight on those around him
And sucks out their force.
The last one you’d expect,
Vampire-man drains ideas, sympathy, emotions,
And leaves everyone feeling faint in his path.
Based on a character who was a complete fake and who literally left people feeling drained after they’d met him.
He pushed - and then he pushed again -
And when he could no longer push he pushed some more.
He had it all - for a moment.
But the moment didn’t last,
And was just the transition before the balls began to fall.
Juggling his life, desperate for success,
Karate-man had the glamour,
The car,
The bird,
The big house,
Money,
Affairs -
Status.
His health went first.
Kidneys, I believe,
But who cares?
It made no difference,
It all began to crumble away.
Built on fast talk and illusions,
In a pseudo-world of deals and regulations,
He played the game like it was a game to be played,
Divorced from reality.
The pornography of business-speak seduced him:
He didn’t realise it was just that,
Fantastical delusion.
When he went down he fought like he thought all good businessmen should -
High drama, an exploding engine, a big crash.
Last I heard of him he was in a nursing home,
Body smashed.
But who knows?
You can’t live your life from the outside, like the world says you should -
You live it from the inside, and the reality you create reflects YOU!
Actually - that’s what he did.
A businessman who seemingly had it all but who’s life turned into a car crash as he chased the illusion of success.
Here’s warmth unremarkable,
A lifetime of struggle cheerily overcome,
Three kids, an alcoholic husband, divorce,
The day-to-day miracle of kept integrity
Forging through life
Whilst all around fall.
It’s a privilege to meet you,
A privilege to see the lamp held and to follow the light,
To be in the same arc.
Not many walk this way in the night,
And the lights are few;
I trust your sight.
A wonderful woman overcoming all problems through cheery resolution, keeping her integrity and her warmth. One in a million.
She carries her strength in her bitterness,
Overdrawn on love;
The projection of all that’s outside through her voice and attitude
Is her Triumph.
Being strong, however, comes from within,
And burning the flame with a view to the Outside
Starves the Within of oxygen;
Her great pretence devours her.
Where’s all that strength now?
Cancer invaded her bones;
The wish to be Strong to the outside world
Sapped her vitality.
I still live;
She’s dead;
And her great dream, to be carried through by force of will
And determination
Died with her.
Pretend not; be as you are; fail, and worry not;
The future can’t be forced.
This poem describes a tense, stressed-out, driven woman, an over-achiever who lived her life according to the values of the outside world and who was going to achieve her dream through sheer willpower.
But life doesn’t work like that; willpower has its place, but you also need skill, subtlety and lightness to go with it.
An illusion of beauty;
Youth’s gone;
You’ve got the clothes and some glamour,
Not quite mutton, certainly not lamb,
But there’s no discipline and the body’s turned to fat -
Headscarf off, smart car,
This is Identity held to Money,
But somehow the two don’t mix.
A few years at most and then you’ll be bored;
Perhaps an affair,
Perhaps a job -
Or sadness and despair.
Late 30’s, youth disappearing, plenty of money which she uses to buy her Identity. But the smart car isn’t really her, and the money isn’t really valued, and soon enough she’s going to get bored with the pretence and move on to something else.
Loneliness creaks her bones through their life;
From the very well of her being she drinks up her despair,
Surrounded by the shadows of vitality
In their children, their cars, their clothes -
No man will have her now as she echoes on the landscape,
A faint shout too dried up to care.
But she cares.
The shades are welcoming her in,
The door’s around the corner, a little open -
But still, she’s a woman, she’s alive.
Husk-breath escapes her thoughts,
Her soul shivers as it’s beckoned,
The vestiges of the long dance prey on her mind.
There’s a yearning,
A call to the soul of the wild,
To very life itself, faint and distant,
Melancholic but insistent,
Before she says goodbye.
A lonely old woman who’s chosen to seclude herself from life. But even as she fades away surrounded by vitality that barely touches her she yearns for life and remembers her femininity.
An army man, and gruff;
Seeks refuge in a bottle;
A man’s man, and tough;
Always on his mettle:
This is a man with a thousand faces from the army,
Hammered out on the conveyor belt of responsibility, courage, Rules -
Thought is allowed, but stays mundane,
Solves problems within limits, but never strays beyond those limits:
There’s morality and integrity in spades, bravery in the face of the enemy,
Courage beyond courage -
But he’s running away inside.
From what?
Demons, for sure, that drove him here,
Yet without those demons he’d be nothing.
What can you do?
His path’s set -
Change the man and destroy the man:
Strong and on guard he forges unwaveringly through life,
Gripping tight to his certainty.
I’ve met a few ex-army men in my time. They go through the conveyor belt and come out the other side strong and certain within their limits, but there are often a lot of demons inside. And when you leave the army, and the certainty’s gone, the bottle often beckons.
A Dragon’s Curse;
Treasure revealed as turds,
Clouds as fag-smoke settled on the walls,
The mountains broken buildings.
And now you beg.
Star-dust before your eyes and the emptiness that was
Filled now with the dread of loss of Nothing that you had;
For the Dragon’s breath is a curse that expands into emptiness
But leaves a gaping void more dreadful than the hollowness of before.
You bleed -
There’s proof of that.
The destructive power of drugs filling a spiritual void and the ache to fill that void. It’s often the most sensitive or the most hurt who become addicts to alcohol or drugs.
Ice wouldn’t melt in her mouth;
Her eyes full of calculation,
Buried behind a smile
And a beautiful body,
Ice Queen has it all weighed up -
But something’s gone wrong.
Quick!
Time’s running out!
Find a man!
She hunts through the pack,
Shuffles the cards,
Finds one that’s dumb.
Not too bright, not too aware,
He sleepwalks to her tits and curving finger,
Fascinated by her face and figure,
Seeing warmth and laughter
Where all others hear ice-crystals shatter.
There’s a mundane life ahead of you now, my son;
You’ll work for her baubles,
Be shaped by her foibles,
Drown in her desires, which won’t be fires.
Ahh!
Enjoy her cold warmth for a while,
Imagine you’ve found The One.
There’s no escape;
She’s far too clever,
The future’s mapped out,
The trap’s been sprung.
The ice-queen is a cold, cold fish who has everything - the looks, the brains, the social skills - but who lacks warmth and finds (in her 30s) that she hasn’t children, that she hasn’t a long-term relationship, and who very deliberately then picks her way through the available men before deciding on one poor sap.
No shadow, but a shadow,
Her dream consumed and left
A husk of humanity,
All warmth gone in the ticking clock
That marked her progress
Towards The Dream.
Ah! The Dream!
Movement dies in the pursuit of emptiness,
And all that’s left is a shell
Containing selfishness.
Abandoned to the street, her kids snuck and stumped
In feral loneliness
And the wild in their eyes
Set their course for life.
One life:
Four lives fucked:
The dream withered and died.
This woman was cold and one-dimensional in the pursuit of her dream; but her dream died, and she’s now a shadow of her former self.
Everyone has to have a dream, but you need to pursue the right dream for the right reasons, and you have to remain part of life (being completely self-centred is easy) otherwise there’s no internal growth.
Sandra.
Sandra lives in a world of make-believe,
Sucks all around her into a vortex of uncertainty -
But it’s uncertainty without boundaries,
Not clear-cut,
Greys upon greys, shades into shades,
Where the sun becomes the moon with the lightest touch
And a mundane life transmogrifies into drama -
Too much!
A dawning awareness creeps into the lives of the shadow-pawns
She plays with as much skill as a Master,
Taken for a ride,
Inside Out,
Upside Down,
Worlds in collision,
Chaos and confusion.
It Can’t Be!
It Was!
Heads hit brick walls
And for a while the planet forgets to sing.
But there’s recovery -
For her, maybe, if she plays the game right -
And Life Will Go On,
Though shock and amazement have tilted the Earth off its beam
Permanently for some.
Sandra was a fantasist with a genuine psychological disorder, presenting herself as normal but with a life seemingly touched by high drama.
Slowly those around who trusted her began to realise what was going on, though for some it permanently changed how they approached others.
Let’s do the hippy-hippy shake!
Cold mountain streams,
Mist in the morning,
The sea crashing on a thunderous shore,
Rain, and sun, and a dead turtle on the beach;
A mulberry tree, a well,
A fire, fresh fish -
Who could want more?
Out in the distance there’s always a horizon,
Always a new camp,
Always a future;
And a willing soul, trudging up stony paths,
Living life to the full.
Hey! I salute you!
But when the journey’s done,
Where do you return?
Exploration is its own illusion,
And the seas and the clouds offer no solution,
Only a partial redress of what was never a mistake,
Questioned confusion.
Sit in the pine forests,
Listen to the drums,
Have the eagle land beside you;
You’ll find no answers until your heart’s ready,
And your heart could have been ready at home.
But hey! Why worry!
This is your journey,
And may the ice-cream and smiles of your life light up all those around you.
This poem is about young people going off round the world to change themselves.
But you don’t need to go round the world to change yourself, and the trip’s usually spiritual stasis anyway, because genuine change only happens when your heart’s ready. And because there’s no ‘end’, how can you return to a starting point?
Still, there’s nothing wrong with asking questions and looking
This woman has a hard face turning sour,
Too much power,
Too easy a life,
Too used to getting her own way.
Look in those eyes and die -
The façade is strong when it needs to be,
Full of cheer and vitality,
But the spirit’s Wrong,
Turned to selfishness and brittle intolerance.
She’ll squash you with a thumb,
Put you down with cold oblivion,
Trample your existence with contempt
As she basks in the dancing light
And for the moment is One.
Good to see you fall,
Crashing like a child on a spoilt day out,
It surprised us all
How your strength was but an illusion.
Very strong people with lots of energy, brains and social skills can be surprisingly brittle, since they’ve never had to struggle much.
Another sharp girl plus degree -
Bubbly, full of life,
She has it all, the looks, the glamour (yawn),
Knows how to present herself,
What to say, when to say,
Ohh, Miss Purr-fection,
What a confection,
Right Direction,
Delectation!
Hmmm.
Big Question.
Where do they all end up?
How come they aren’t all
Nobel prize-winning
Stratospheric rocket skimming
Solo Atlantic swimming
Mind-stretching vision dreaming
Effervescent wheeler-dealing
Complicated conflict-healing
Big Hitterssss?!
There’s a certain template that some young women fit themselves into - the beautiful, bubbly, bright young thing Going Places (yawn).
So how come they never do seem to go places?
Rupert has a soul trapped within a bubbled body,
All wobbly and loose,
Disjointed and fractious in the commanding,
A legion of signals misheard
Whilst the commander sits in the ivory tower in despair,
Distant from it all
And the world running madly around.
Through his telescope Rupert spies on life,
Getting it all wrong sometimes,
Not making sense of it,
And other times sending his spirit to the heart of the matter.
Rupert lives to survive,
Breathes to live,
But in his breathing there’s desperation,
For what is life without the living?
No life, for sure;
And so he concentrates on the breathing,
Letting sunshine in - but not too much,
It’s unforgiving
And will destroy him as surely as a butterfly trapped in a cage.
Can anyone let Rupert out?
Can anyone hear him shout?
He keeps his shouting to a minimum;
Hope rustles the leaves and wakes the dead,
But Hope has a future, and Dreams,
And Rupert has None …
This is a poem about a disabled person. Sometimes he totally misjudges situations, sometimes he’s very perceptive. He hasn’t a life; he merely exists; and some days he has to focus on the moment just to get through it all. He lets in a little joy, but not too much because that would lead to despair, and keeps a tight lid on his emotions.
This poem is about an individual, not a group of people. I met Rupert years and years ago.
You wouldn’t want to be Eric -
Oh no.
Eric was a policeman once, suffered a stroke;
His wife tried, but couldn’t cope,
And one day Eric arrived in hospital, covered in burns.
Look in her eyes now, and see the hurt,.
He stays quiet,
Says not a word,
But he must have known
It wasn’t the water-bottle that burst.
It’s all to unforgiving.,
One-way,
No way,
Hearts shattered,
And now Eric sits in a chair, dribbling.
The visits are infrequent;
The children rarely come;
The geriatric ward is long,
And there’s a clock, silently ticking.
i was an utterly crap student nurse on a ‘geriatric’ ward once. This guy had had a stroke and been released from the ward to be looked after by his wife, but she couldn’t cope. For a start he was a huge bloke. One day he arrived back in the ward covered in burns, because his water bottle had ‘burst’ - but we all knew that she’d poured scalding water over him to get him back into hospital (from the pattern and nature of the burns). And the sad thing was that he must have known too, but said nothing.
A not untypical scenario, where the carer (usually the wife) manufactured an excuse to get the husband back into hospital.
Kamal has an itch that niggles and gnaws,
An urge like a beast that whimpers and snores
And will leap to its feet with the angriest roars
And inflames and detains and begs with its claws,
King of the flaws,
Get down on all fours,
Opening doors,
Thoughts without pause,
The mind at its wars -
Kamal has an eye that roves and caresses
The girls’ long tresses,
Removes their dresses,
Kisses and presses,
Kamal is driven by a permanent mission,
He hasn’t got permission,
He doesn’t want confusion,
He only likes the fusion,
Love is an illusion,
Convenient conclusion -
But his missus isn’t pleased
At the spilling of the seeds
And his life soon goes awry
After she’s had her good cry
And now he’s on his own
With just a mobile phone
And the heat has left his bones
And all those groans and moans -
Came to Nothing
We’ve all met the over-se*ed guy who claims it’s best to keep life simple and not tell the wife about what he gets up to, and (conveniently) that love is just an illusion anyway.
And then one day she leaves him and his se*ual itch has diminished, and he’s lonely and on his own and what was it all for?
Crawling ambition,
Delayed by religion;
Any shows concern by draping his eyes in platitudes
And soft-focussed care,
Mirroring (as he’s been told) your every move
(Creepy!)
And echoing your words in a long non-judgemental session.
Andy deserves to be hit;
He’s carefully crafted, this shit;
Hides from himself himself.
And piously works towards heaven.
We’ve all met somebody like Andy, who’s been on a course to teach the Politically Correct way to counsel people (mirroring phrases and non-verbal gestures) and who puts on a façade of deep care and concern.
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of such counselling you’ll know that your reaction is to want to hit the creepy buggers (as soon as you’ve figured out what they’re up to, which only takes a few seconds).
But Andy is religious, and so has to be careful and hide his ambition as he piously walks through life.
Life is in the detail,
And the detail’s known;
Sharp to a molecule on a feather,
Gary’s knowledge is perfect,
And the world explained with precision.
Don’t argue!
He’s always right -
But living sapped him,
Knocked him out,
Threw him off his certainty,
And he left the fight, head ringing.
In the abyss where logic refuses to go,
Where hurt and pain can’t be measured,
Gary found himself wanting.
It’s all right; he’s calm; he doesn’t understand;
Humble towards the future now,
He’s left the past, haunting.
There’s a very logical sort of young man who knows everything about everything, who’s gone through school and college excelling, but who finds that the realities of life are totally different - the job that depends on contacts or social skills and is always out of reach, the relationships that never get off the ground, the certainties that carry no weight with others.
Such people face up to their failings with seeming equanimity, using logic to explain everything, but deep down they don’t grasp where they’ve gone wrong, and they don’t like looking at the pain of their past.
Her life is thin; no depth;
Somehow doesn’t connect:
Flows smoothly, without warmth -
She does her duties, knows the rules,
Knows precisely where ‘Right’ falls
But lacks a strategy.
Oh, the career’s planned, and the kids;
The new-build house with the kitchen just-so,
And the expensive car in the drive -
But there’s no meaning;
Fake feeling:
She’s concealing what she knows.
The mirror hangs on the wall,
The lights are on,
Perfume scents the air -
But she’s not there.
There’s a type of woman who knows all the social rules, who knows how you’re meant to live your life, who’s planned the kids and the house and all the rest of it - but underneath there’s no depth of feeling. She’s hiding from herself an inner knowledge because she refused to explore, to question, when she was younger.
General Smooch,
Trimmed grey hair,
Piercing eyes (yawn)
Stands at the podium looking wise (sigh),
Talks with deep authority (yeah …)
About the Impossible that they WILL achieve (snicker)
To an audience of - well.
One.
Hi.
It’s me.
And how long have you been here?
It’s raining.
I see.
You know, feller,
If you took that silly hat and uniform off you’d just be -?
What?
A senior sales manager?
An executive in Big Corp PLC?
Of course you have to play the game,
Bulling it up,
Creating the fake aura of power -
I know that.
We both do.
Stand easy.
But really - let’s cut to the chase - you haven’t a clue.
Do you?
No, not really.
You do very well in the practical stuff,
The fighting of wars according to manuals,
The leadership of men by the book,
The presentations in big tents to the world’s media
(Relax, you weren’t THAT bad),
But I think you’re out of your depth.
I do.
It’s not coming from the heart.
There’s no passion.
It’s just a job,
And the morality of Smart Bombs, Dumb President has outfoxed you.
So you retreat.
That’s what you do.
Step through the motions,
Play the General game,
A bit of fancy dress.
No shame.
Would I come to you for great insights?
Would you?
Come on!
You’re as clueless as the next man,
But your pretence is deeper
And you’re the more dangerous for that.
Ah, well.
Sales didn’t involve so much death, did it?
Adieu.
We’ve all seen the Generals in the big Press Briefing tent, nervously preparing to face the media. This poem imagines coming across one such General making a solo presentation at the side of the road. But what are these Generals? Middle-aged men who chose a career a long time ago, a career that could just as easily have been in Sales, and they build up a façade of authority and wisdom when really - let’s be realistic - they’re just in fancy dress, following the commands of some gibbering idiot leader.
Would YOU ask one of them for some great insights into life?
Thought not.
Me neither.
What brings you here, surrounded by rogues?
I’ve seen you in your monstrosity on T.V.,
Consuming your people’s hearts;
The palaces built of bone-ash,
The fountains spewing blood,
The children dancing in bile.
What makes you travel so far from your home?
Your purpose is lost in destruction,
Your face is set to the cold,
You walk in grim friendship with death
All alone.
Forgive me for asking, but why bother?
How many Golden Peacocks can one man eat,
How many pairs of shoes one woman wear?
You live your life through terror, but it’s just as easy to share.
Ah! The country slides into oblivion,
Your wife buys up half of Paris,
You sell the land to no-men with no-souls
Who support you with their guns.
How did you do it?
How did the dross and the scum,
The small-spirits and the no-hopers
End up in power,
And where will they be once you’ve gone?
Drifting back into their small towns with masks over their invisible faces,
Pretending to themselves they did nothing wrong.
Stumble by, then, with your anger and your thugs,
Your ego-trip, your paranoia, your fake victimhood,
Tell the world how you’re protecting your people,
How your country needs someone strong -
Poor child, lost in a sea of confusion,
Trapped in the body of a man,
Out of your depth and vicious,
Doing the worst you can.
This verse is about a dictator taking one of his regular trips abroad, surrounded by thugs, as his wife spends the country’s money and the nation goes to ruin.
Catherine has the body of a ghost;
Her diet’s wrong,
Her face is white,
She sows loss and confusion
As a temporary solution
To the imbalance she feels in her soul.
Poor girl.
Imagine, then, if Catherine knew
What the heck to do;
Slowly, over the years, she’d kick those fears,
Get a glow in her cheeks,
Think before she speaks,
Find a worthwhile goal.
Yep.
The delights of Qi
Flowing where it’s meant to be.
Easy.
(Relatively).
This poem is based on contact with a white-faced, vampirish woman who somehow sucks the vitality out of others and sows discord.
A changed diet and breathing exercises would probably make a profound difference.
This Charley has a silver tongue,
And the morals of an eel;
Legalistic pedantry coats his lies in sugar,
But there’s spice, and a knife;
Cross him at your peril.
Through the voyage of his ambition
Stands one thing tall,
Himself,
Straight in a crooked world;
He’s the very Devil.
The years go by; High Office calls;
History casts him in a favoured light;
Those who can hold back their spite;
Plaudits are won, gravitas restored;
Everyone forgets that Charley’s flawed.
Poem about a politician who sees himself as upright, with the means justifying the end. Eventually he reaches high office, where it’s convenient to forget his flaws.
Rita lives in a cave,
Hollowed out of her own soul;
In the darkness she cries,
But no one hears her.
Movement becomes inaction, and inaction becomes a lead weight;
Sometimes The End seems her only Fate.
Living each day, without Hope,
Rita would long lovingly for Life,
If she could remember what longing was.
Here’s stasis; here’s life on a point of Now;
Here’s despair that nothing ever changes.
This poem is about the heavy weight of depression, suicidal thoughts and living only in the moment, because it’s impossible to see ahead and to hope.
Do you see those stars?
Each one is a person, and here we are
In our untold millions.
God made our lives;
And each life runs its course and then is done,
All dues totted up before the One;
Why worry?
Live tall; stay strong;
Listen to the Right, ignore the Wrong;
Fight to keep your gaze upon the Sun:
The Future’s always Truth, where you belong.
This woman spoke unvarnished truth;
Rough-hewn, strong, she put the world to rights,
Crusaded and appealed,
Would never yield,
Slept easy in her bed at nights.
But Truth’s an easy friend when light,
When other hold a burdened weight;
She found she had a different fight
When Truth was sent her way by Fate.
There - in her soul - the War began;
Power fought Pride, and Status won;
Her integrity was gone.
Time slipped by; Truth changed its face;
She realised to her disgrace that she had bought a lie.
No matter; the damage done,
Her essence torn through to the bone,
It wasn’t Truth she couldn’t bear
But what the mirror showed was there.
In this poem one of those righteous crusaders for Truth is given a little power and suddenly finds that pride and status control her more than her desire for Truth.
Easy enough to be righteous when it’s others that hold the reins of power. A year or two later she realises - publicly and bitterly - that she made the wrong decision and that she’s been lied to. But her anger doesn’t come from the lie; although she doesn’t realise it, it comes from what she’s seen of herself.
All alone you sit in a room,
Held to the ticking of a clock,
Memories paraded.
Sun strikes the dust.
Downstairs, children call and mew;
Life is faded.
A lone fly marks time,
The years begin their dance again,
Your foot moves.
Sunshine and smiles burst in upon your life
Behind the impassive face,
As each memory receives a warm embrace.
This is a poem about an old woman stuck in a room with her memories
Ah, student-boy!
Sunglasses and cool,
He walks with the easy lope of the uninitiated
Dope,
Future mapped out, career planned,
Eyes on the greasy pole.
Someone foolish will give him a job on outrageous pay,
Fast-track him through management,
And still our hero will complain,
His lack of life-skills and wisdom no barrier
To the executive chair
And the greased-back hair.
Can’t understand it, myself;
From school through here to the job in one long blinkered crawl,
Producing an educated fool.
The arrogance of students, huh? No life-experience, no skills, just a piece of paper and expectations way beyond their reality.
Drunk - but not drunk -
You’ve reached a state of bliss
Beyond despair
Where no feeling’s gone
Because there are no feelings -
The body a clammy shell that jerks and twists,
Fingers misshapen, blackened, crushed and bleeding,
No Jesus Christ You
Though you echo his name
Incomprehensibly,
Uncomprehendingly,
But surely Jesus would have reached out a hand and touched more than the few coins you gathered up
Before walking
Lurching
If that is what it is
Towards the cans of Special Brew -
Your heart was soft once, still is,
Though it’s hardened now to oblivion;
For you it began with the death of a loved one,
Despair set in,
The drink started,
The job was lost -
That easy.
There’s no reaching you now,
Your journey’s almost completed.
Adieu.
Adieu.
A down-and-out, drunk into oblivion, escaping too many painful problems, close to death - the cold night, the corpse in the morning.
I’ve seen this girl;
Rages in her sleep,
Life bitter dropped her
And now she runs,
Too loud, too scared -
Failure is her ground,
Nowhere to fall,
No heights achieved,
A young child,
Boyfriend locked up -
The madness of drugs took her for a whirl,
The sordid soiled misery slept inside her head,
There’s been no escape.
Now she ‘manages’,
Stick-thin, teeth all bad,
On the grim estate.
Iv’e come across these poor souls, desperately poor background, low expectations, get sucked into dugs, struggling to stay away from drugs - loud, brash, hurting, and inside their heads that’s all they know and expect.
Ah! This man I know,
He had it all,
Still has,
But it’s lost its meaning.
What are you doing walking?
There’s a surfeit of shadows across your face
But your suit’s all smart -
What’s going on?
You tasted wealth and success,
Untold status -
I don’t understand.
Something wells up inside
And you try and push it down -
Only your eyes give the game away,
Raw and hunted.
What’s gone wrong?
Rich but lost, facing an internal crisis.
Corporate Man.
The thin lips, steely gaze,
The climbing ability and fencing skills,
Two-faced,
Kiss up, kick down,
Kick ass all around -
A poison in the soul of the Earth.
Corporate Man knows about responsibility -
He read it in a book -
And mouths the platitudes continuously;
But Corporate Man is a monster,
Blinkered, one-dimensional, certain in his uncertainty
(Which doesn’t exist)
Always with his eye on the main chance
And the fat wad in the back pocket.
You’d employ this man if you needed a machine.
We’ve all met the scheming corporate monster who fences with his / her mind and words and scuttles up the greasy pole.
They put up a solid, politically correct facade of uncertainty, of doubt, of thinking, whereas actually all they can focus on is ’success’ as measured by the wallet.
Smart kid, cool,
Toilet-brush hair and a mean smile
Hiding thin words and weakly jabbing needle thoughts -
This is a Nothing loud in his espousal of Right and Wrong -
WRONG to wear those shoes,
WRONG to drive that car,
RIGHT to have that hairstyle,
RIGHT to own that gadget.
Cool kid, Empty kid, Nothing kid,
Doomed for a life of chasing the breeze
Wherever it blows,
The smart car, the Executive House
(Box)
On a grimy new-build estate,
The Divorce,
The pub or social club,
The empty life leading nowhere …
The street-smart, cool kid who knows EXACTLY what’s Right and what’s Wrong and who’s doomed to chase fashion and emptiness and conformity to the ultimate Executive House on a newbuild estate …
Ah, cold!
She lives her life in boxes,
Puts on a new hat to suit the clime -
Mother at home, shark at work,
Snake when she needs to be.
There’s no purpose to her existence,
Apart from money -
The glam clothes, the car, the house:
She wriggles and crawls to the top,
Then sits there, an empty, compliant face
Full of mean authority and fake bonhomie.
She’ll stab you in the back for nothing,
Go with the Big Man’s crowd,
Turn your words upon you and kill you with her contempt.
An easy game to play, corroding her from the inside:
She talks at times as if she understands,
But never makes the connection.
How do you deal with such raw greed?
It’s her intelligence that hides it,
And she’s far too skilled ….
There’s a type of woman with intelligence and a mean mind, unthinking, taking what authority and power she can, kiss up, kick down, sitting behind her desk mouthing the words of self-awareness but with nothing going on inside ….
So here you lie.
Before a wall.
You could be anyone’s child,
But you were one man’s child,
So young!
Shot.
I apologise.
It wasn’t for this you came here.
I apologise again, since no one else will.
Dream.
Ah, it’s a dream!
When the insane take control they lose it all,
Playing out their illness on a stage, as if anyone cares,
Slippery words and good lighting their only meaning,
Burying their feeling,
Timid beyond belief in their dogma and steel.
You’ve got a young face
In your scream of agony -
So which ‘Great Nation’ did this to you?
Boxed in, trodden on;
Your captors imagine themselves humane,
Conjure up great delusions to justify their means,
Take comfort in their mother’s-milk Arcadia:
A land of guns,
Obscene wealth,
Plummeting health,
Where the poor get poorer.
You pay the price, then, for their reality-check:
The weakness of the dirt-poor makes the dirt-poor stronger.
When you have nothing, you have nothing to fear;
Ideas become your weapon,
And what greater idea is there than that of God?
So now it’s God against God;
The poor God,
The rich God,
Chosen Few against Chosen Few.
Whose side were you on?
I shiver.
Insanity against insanity, Warlords and Big Corps,
A dirty war without morality,
The thieves and crooks in high palaces
Slugging it out with the crooks in alleyways -
Selfishness and greed the new terror.
I saw a photo of some seventeen year old being tortured in a shipping container in Afghanistan by US troops imposing the technically insane George Bush’s new world order.
And what did it come down to? Halliburton and general thievery on the rich side against madness on the poor side. Selfishness and greed on both sides was the pragmatic force driving terror.
I see a stream of men,
And the sky is dark and the years are long;
But softly they sing of Hope,
Which is the boundary between reality and dreams;
I see a river of women,
And through the evil of despair
They cling to the God of love
And wish for heaven;
I see the boiling clouds of war
And the leering face of destruction,
And the human spirit reduced to its essence,
Quivering in the raw sunlight of pain and rejection;
I see the Moment,
And the fear,
And the dance with no end that must be stopped for the Now
And the Moment turned towards creation;
I see the human heart,
And the heart is strong,
But the battle’s with ourselves
And the battle’s not begun.
Towards the sun, then,
Until the dawn,
And everything to play for,
And nothing’s yet been won.
(This poem probably has about 100 verses so it'll take a while to post them all)
