clean slate

Did the older generation try to fool you
that they know it?
they don't.
Did you kid yourself you'd get it
with experience
You wont
You can't work your problems out
They work you in
In fact going forwards
Only takes you back again.
Don't think your lucky if you start
with a clean slate
it gets dirty
You're Lucky if you start with a full one
at least you're used to it
I'm upset that writing
appears on mine
that was on yours years ago
I didn't know

stop start 1989

Which came first

Your dissatisfaction or my apathy

sitting tuneless and thoughtless

Mulling over the repetition of interruption

What do you want to do?
and it always comes back
to the same thing
He earns the money
so he cant stop
He earns the money
so he wont stop
He earns the money
why should he stop?
why should he stop and be the one to stay at home
to stop and start to never stop and never start again.

The tide

But what if the tide should never turn
And the ocean bed lie bleached beneath the relentless sun
and sad the moon when the sea becomes the sky
and star fish dull and dried hang petrified on a sky of sand

Half a moon and a sunny day

Anna went westwards
when the picture got too bright.
What with all the activation
she hardly had  peace at night.
During the day she homed in on images
Then, at night turned them into the next day.
"I walked into a sleeping tigers cave
And whispered in it's ear before it woke"

farewell Muse

Silently, How silently
Do you allow the muse
To slip away.
It touches every finger
As it leaves
And makes a final blessing
On your forehead.
As your Naive
And ignorant family
Watch on
And wonder why
You choose the way you do.

THE SCREAM (circa 1980)

From the ice down in my feet

I'm going to let out the scream

That has held me together

for a thousand years

From the sickness in my stomach

I'm refusing all food 

until my body is empty of

Each morsel which I ate blindly 

From the tiredness of my mind 

I'm removing the steel pins of rules 

Against which my wild ideas 

Have bruised themselves for another thousand 

From the contortion of my limbs 

I'm going to stretch each fitted joint 

And if my body wants to break 

For the screams sake I'll let it

ICE SLICE

In order to glide and slide smoothly
on a frozen lake
Your surface has to be hard
resistant and preferably of the same material
Otherwise you are like a floating twig
caught midstream by a biting frost
You are like the cracks in the ice
That onlookers see as natures patterns
You are a source of aesthetics
only admirable in terms of the ices' existence
Why not help to thaw the lake?
become a constant ripple,
a source of delight which doesn't linger
and only depends on one initial action...
The stone being thrown.
It has already been thrown - the choice is yours.

Why Words

There will come a day when I
Will no longer have to think about the thoughts
I write
They shan't be pre-meditated or prepared
But in a few words I will express my feelings
With a few vehicles I shall direct
Someone's journey into space.
Thoughts without meditation
Become something other than thoughts
They come from an essence and not from me
I am the vehicle
I began as words
premeditated, prepared and therefore prejudice
And slowly the essence became and I am
No longer necessary.
The essence is the past-word of some other
just as my words are to me
The process never ends and the begining
comes full circle
How do words express themselves?
Instead of being the expression of someoneelse

faceless

To be faceless,
To be numb in the limbs
And be faceless.
To live an emotion
That evokes tears
And to have none.
To provoke a situation
Of anger
And to feel numb
To be careless enough
To push your way
Past the endurance barrier
To be defenceless
-But not.
defence is facelessness
And to be faceless is to need no defence
I say this only because I know it.
I write because my fingers are numb.
I watch from above
And am able to feel
the feelinglessness

SPITE

Never thinking that the night would end alone 

I wait in expectant silence 

To hear your mind turning 

Never thinking that it was still and resting 

I sit here, waiting, imagining it only to be time 

While you watch dreamy pictures of blackness 

I refuse to sleep now 

Knowing you're not being punished 

I shall impose a double agony on myself 

To spite you.

teenage rage

Scream and shout
call it out
spread it over and over
ears in corners
gaping mouths
fists flying
crying
will power - self control
silence forcing thought
down down
Into the muddling splashing stream of mind
drowned in tears, memories, kisses
Lost dead depressed
Empty

When I woke up and saw you gone

A dark and dampened room
cries for a life
A paper justifies the existence of that day
The weight of emptiness brings a table to its knees
and I to mine
My abuse tears the silence and knowing of that room
I weep and crack the void,
My stage has finally collapsed
it's foundations eaten away by my confidence
An actor with no lines
His absence has faded my script
I am left to ache inside, alone

half light

In the half light of a half moon
The man stood half naked
Undecided and faltering, he stood near
To tears with the uncertainty of the present moment.
Dressed in jeans and ladies shoes
He kissed the air and looked into space

His feet planted firmly on the ground

His mind open wide, - eyes rolling

Hands swaying gently by his side

He rocked viciously with the rhythm of the grass

"My body is fluid, I am without life"

LOSS (2/2/75)

Perhaps they may get mislaid! 

It's like losing your only child 

Because it's part of you It needed all your strength and emotion to be born 

And once breathing, written 

You watch it develop and grow in the reading 

Although it's the same and still is, as it was 

When you gave that final scream 

As all your pent up misery gushed forward and left your body empty 

And your mind light If that should be lost, 

The rest of my life would search to recall and always create and re-create what was seen only for the time it look to be born. 

I'll always feel, when seeing others, that 

Mine was the original 

But lost, and therefore , to you, untrue.

Oh baby

Varnish peels form the bathroom door
And friends become unstable
Radion appears on the kitchen sink
And co co pops come to the table
Monster mooses squat the fridge
And the bin is full with Nappy
And the thing that makes us buy all this
Is supposed to make us happy.
Oh baby Oh Baby
it's all because of you

An armful

I know it is an irresistible temptation To load as much of your discomfort on The friend who loves you most With every load you take to others You return with aching arms But every time you come to me I stretch out and carry half, half-way. I shall always do that when I'm with you But when I can no longer Then to you I shall be like all the rest And so will you

Pass it on

Come to the point where time is money
You've stood me up so
you owe me Honey
past the stage when the smile
comes natural
Must be provoked
By something factual
Something substantial
No more potential hits
If you want to come to me
SHOW ME YOUR BITS
If you want to come to me
I must see it in your eyes
If you want to come to me
Bring a surprise
If you want to come to me
Come unaccompanied
come armed
come weighed down
with promise

DOUBLE

I've found your double and he don't know its me 

He's going to show me 

What you wouldn't let me see 

I've found your double 

He's as cute as can be 

You'll have to work hard If you still want me  

You make me feel like I'm the one at a loss 

I make you feel like like you're the boss 

 I found your double 

He doesn't talk mean 

He says where he's going and shows where's been 

I've found your double 

I'm coming clean 

He's the cutest thing I've ever seen

SPIRIT CHILD

30.9.94

There is no tune that I can play 

Which can take the pain away 

My Spirit Child has flown this day and left me for another world  

There is no food I can prepare 

To nourish love and tender care 

My Spirit Child's no longer there S

he's left me for another world 

 There are no promises that I can make 

To hold together what's at stake 

My Spirit Child has made the break and left me for another world 

 Call from the world of reason 

Call from the land of trust 

Set down the weapons of treason and cry 

For the child that is lost.

HISTORY

In the course of History there is very little change over what seems normal and what seems strange. 

To the stranger with the woman

She's a pot of contradiction 

How she operates primarily like a heroine out of fiction She's fickle, she's feckless and she can't be trusted 

But the truth of the attraction is, 

That she's as hot as mustard. 

To the woman with the stranger he's a welcome relief From the vision of decay of her original belief 

He's tall he's firm, he's identical to the man she left at home. 

But she's tired of all the picking and has gone after another bone.

GLACIER

Sliding down a glacier see the mirrored wall

I'll have to forget the casket If I hope to live at all. 

I Wave my arms profusely 

To proclaim my plight 

I take a look behind me 

Three hundred more in flight. 

I look across the tread ways 

So few smiling faces. 

Heads bowed to the wind, hair greyed by the cold, Thinking of far away places . 

Oh for the joy of falling 

Once the trip has been made 

Bouncing from pillar to post 

Without chance of being saved. 

Someone holds a hook out 

It's looking terribly sharp. 

If I want it I must stick my foot out 

And pray to the man with the harp. 

Good grief, Alleluiah. Praise be to God! 

They call out in their terror 

It's a far simpler cry than having a try and catching a glimpse in the mirror.

The end

And so to the end
where each is like the last
for pressure of more to come
we see only what we have done
and not what yet is meant to be
of holy ways we recognise the path
and must resist the waiting at the gate
for every moment spent in no mans land
is lost for all who living be
when thinking of the end
we should encompass what has now
become and ever more shall be
Amen.

my castle cave

As I skip from room to room
entrails floundering, flaying
trying to pick the relevant
trying to expose the damned
As I alternate between
my high cloud castle
and my impenetrable cave
I wonder what the difference is
why in one I "see" I "Understand"
I feel the knowledge and can relax
why in the other, like some
starved black hole of consciousness
my ideas come teeming
from my curls tickling to my toes
They migrate to the cracks in the floorboards
and seep into the cellar below
each time i open the door and stand in
that quadruple aspect
I take a gasp and know,
I am in the wrong house,
there's nothing to be done.

SMUG

Is it more than once that I've sat outside waiting watching another mans world? 

Criticizing, comparing and thanking something for the wonders of my world? 

Isn't it more than once that I've pitied? 

It would be easier for them to be like me, 

I have such a thorough objective and fantastic outlook Sometimes I loose my patience with them 

They film their eyes with prejudices and subjective ideas 

Sometimes its not good to push them too far 

Once one foot is out of the mud the rest of the body whimpers at the comparison poor animals! 

How they sit in corners looking so thoughtful phew! maybe they even imagine that they are observing me criticizing comparing and thanking something for the wonders of their world!

the clamour

The clamour from the dream world
as souls struggle for the morning space.
the work catchers snatch it
they cant be seen for dust
the groaners who no longer remember why but just remember MUST
The moaners who miss it
again! they bemoan the consequence
the shriekers whose dreams are so vivid
they believe themselves to be there
and call for their prizes
but none are forthcoming
only their prophecies come true
that the rich get richer
and the poor just wake
to eat and sleep
doesn't it make you want to scream

Jack frost

I've Seen what your garden looked like
Before you built the wall
It got nipped in the bud by jack frost
And never grew at all

I've seen what you look like

with your clothes off

Why can't you leave it at that
Why must you wear those belts and things
That clinking clanking tat?

Where's the guy I met last week
I've been seeing an impostor
Who is the guardian of your gate?
I think he is a monster

Who is the guy with the spikes in his head
And the blades so rude at his shoes?
Is this your representative?
He's not the guy I'd choose

That you don't care

I didn't tell you what
You wanted to hear,
You didn't notice that
I was near
I didn't see what
was written in you eyes
We didn't say
"What a surprise"

Now you've gone wandering
over the hills
I've started taking ominous pills

You've gone out searching
For what isn't there
I've gone off thinking
That you don't care
That you don't care

But you said that I said
that that went and this didn't
I thought that you'd said
that that was forbidden

So I've missed the hot seat again
It just passed me by
I thought I had to look for
the green in your eye
I thought you didn't like me
What a surprise, what a surprise

shut the door

I suggested that the door close behind me
With a gentle shove
I leftmany passages behind the lock
They stare at me through one way glass
I only see myself in the mirror
To me they are like an interlude
In a dream
They are only suggestions in my mind
Maybe they knock and want to come out
Or worse still
To take me back in
Better that the door stand ajar
maybe this is just an interlude to that
Why does there have to be a door
Why a question?
Why a why?
Because it makes you think you think.

artist

Give me room,
Give me space,
I'm artistic
Don't look at my paper
Don't look at my face
I'm at work

Don't bug me
Don't bore me
I am fragile
You try to label
Then try to store
But I'm changing

Who gives a shit about Artists
Who cares if they are or they are not
The only reason for announcement
is to make sure you're secure of a grant

Just because they put pen to paper
Because we allot them as "they"
Some Tycoon with paper and pushing
Makes us believe what they say

So Stand by with your green stuff and vinyl
Come put your gold letters on me
my message for all parting admirers
"I wrote this song making the tea"