Call To Arms

Every day I read the news with growing trepidation.

It’s regression on a massive scale. The end of civilisation.

We’re not punishing those that caused this mess with lies, with greed, with ego.

But blaming folk who’ve nothing done and warring with nations we don’t know.

What year is this? Who’s in control? Where is Lady Justice?

She’s bound and gagged in a divan bed. Ransomed for the fame of her captress.

Of equal weight (or so we’re told) to celebrities, diets and twerking.

The blood on her sword is only her own so clearly, this system’s not working.

The children that need us the most,

Tragically fall through the ‘net

And children are taken when good parents seek help and hysterical healthcare objects.

Open your eyes and ignore the damned press! They have profits to make, don’t you see?

Horrors that happen go unreported and affect us – that’s you - and it’s me.

I do not believe it is really so hard to lay aside neighbourly spite

And just keep an eye out, get involved and speak up if something just doesn’t seem right.

Notice the pensioned! They are people too and their stories are going untold.

As we focus on disposable incomes of youth and deny our own growing old.

I don’t have the answers. I’m not the Messiah (or even a naughty boy),

I am just one person, sick of the nonsense and sick of acting coy.

I’m not asking for money, or a signed petition, or change in far flung lands.

I’m saying your community needs you before it ends up in God-knows-whose hands.

Get involved. Take an interest. Speak up! Go out!

Disenfranchisement is dead.

Earnestness is the future!

And without it?

Total extinction instead.

Recipe for Disaster

A handful of sugar.
A penny of salt.
A pinch for your thoughts,
your light and your faults.
A tight squeeze. A light squeeze.
Freshly squeezed orange
and you.
We squeezed into my single bed:
room enough for two.
But only room for one
in my heart and in my head.

20/03/2010 Dear Gio (but not for Gio)

Surrounded by vices as strange as sliced toast
Interacting with many half-living, half-ghost.
Some glowing brightly, some dulled by life's blade,
but everyone wants something from you, I'm afraid.
Some want your body, some want your mind
Some of them only want you to be kind.
The best are the ones who want you to be you
and the ones who just want you to smile.
The ones who will paint you with custard and glue
To away a fun little while.
Who'll help you survive, help you to say no,
teach you things about Glasgow you never would know.
Ride bikes with you, share with you, get you a job.
To share a good joke with, to share with a sob.
To drive one way round Nottingham, eight or nine times (!)
and hypnotise randoms with powers of rhyme.
A gallery cafe, a man in a dress
and all of the time at Paisley Road West.
The long walk home never seemed so long
when walking at five forty-five
And shiny posh bars never seemed so wrong.
You'd rather be seen in a dive.
And if you find these friends my boy, hold them tight.
They're rarer then wormholes, more precious than light
and all of the time that together you'd have
would be sacred, remembered, occasionally mad
but thoroughly lived - and that's the whole point.
In life's murky waters, I urge you: anoint!
Your life may transport you to a Dear Green Place
of culture, catastrophe, darkness and grace
and then, maybe then, you will make friends like these,
my long lost and ever-beloved Weegies.

Mary Poppins

Five - Six - Thirteen

After a glorious production the sun
bows graciously behind the trees on my right
to rapturous vesperturnal applause.
To my left the bats fight their nightly battle
against the ravenous grasp of mortality.
Pheasants overrule the avian debate
ahead of me in the comfort of sakura silhouettes.
I see the detritus of a summer holiday
strewn on uncut grass. Cars. Watering cans.
The bag of wet swimming things I meant to unpack.
Tea steams in the cool air.
Behind me the warmth of love coaxes, calls, caresses my name.

I close the door to outer beauty
and open my heart.

Assorted Notable Texts

Hey Gorgeous! How's it going? I had a word with Pepe Le Pious this eve as he was up to his usual tricks. needless to say he took it like the petulant little tit he is. Do I care? Ha! Do I fuck! X
Ed. 24/8/07

I've had an idea: let's go to Japan by train. London to Cologne is the easy part, sleeper carriage, but Cologne to Moscow is different, difficult. Travelling via Belarus will always be difficult, esp. after the MinskMag expose. Moscow to Vladivostock, the main event is easy! 7 days of North Asian tundra and wilderness and rattling rails! The ferry from the East Russian coast to Japan will be a jape too - chai, seafood, Scrabble. You busy next week?

Robbie. 25/1/07

If the party is finished by then I'll be:
a) Surprised
b) Unhappy and
c) Arrested.
Seumas 27/8/07

I'm happy! My hands are dirty again, my nails with the black inside and I smell badly! Yahoo!

Claudio. 11/02/08

I've typed and then discarded at least 3 variations on the frustrated, emotional, lonely, bored theme & for all the fancy word play and poetic license not one conveyed exactly what I wanted to say, which is, for fuck's sake, someone kidnap me with care and dump me in the unpredictable so my day can start.

Robbie. 14/4/07

So why am I telling you all this? Cause you remind me of Dave. And it fucking scares the fucking shit out of me. And I want you to know that if you just want a joke and a laugh, or a shoulder to cry on, or someone to go dancing with, I'm always here, and you're never alone. I really hope you're laughing at me 'cause I sound like a drunken fool. see you soon.

Dan. 21/01/07

The situation: I'm sitting in an end-up shopping trolley @ a flat party above the Halt Bar, Woodlands Road. 60-70 people thru the door. New LPO organised seated dancing to Manu Chao. Guth, Matt, Louise, been & gone. Stranded, sea of steamers. now simply just in that trolley.
Robbie. 18/2/7

AQA estimates that you could live for around 6 months if all you had was an infinite supply of bluebottles. You'd need to eat a lot of them, though.

AQA (63336) 10/08/07

Glasgow... Saturday morning... people walking to nowhere with proper mind deep in other million places but not here. Glasgow Saturday morning people walking wasted looking for reality. Glasgow Saturday morning... I'm fucking tired.

Claudio. 15/03/08

Did you get a birthing pool? you desreved a short labour. I'm out tonight but you can totally phone me tomorrow, anytime. Glad there were no stiches. Please use birth control for now on. Seriously. my love to you all. Pervert.

Lorraine. 07/03/09

The point being, of course, that the beautiful messages that mean so much to us in these times are only as memorable as the life of your mobile. We don't send cards, love letters, telegrams even. It's such a tragedy.

To all of the above contributors: I love you all.

So Spoke My Lover's Ghost

Kiss me love and let me die,
No backward glance, no tearful eye
No longing or lingering last embrace
No staring blankly into space
Forget my love, my laugh, my touch,
New memories are made as such.
Recall not my lustful sighs
Find joy between new nymphet’s thighs.
Think not of how I sleeping breathe,
For lonely nights bring no reprieve
And as I sadly watch you grieve
My heart breaks. And burns. And bleeds.

No Apologies

My heart belongs to another,
My body another still.
Some things I cannot explain to you dear
And other things I never will.
My life is my life and
Your wants are your wants:
The pair will rarely agree.
So please stop trying to take me to bed,
Pure sex is just not for me.
I require a further connection of minds,
Of rhythms, of values, of life.
I’m not just another ridiculous girl,
I’m the woman all men want as wife.
How dare you think me so accessible?
I’m shrouded in love and surrounded by walls
And all your attempts with be no good at all.
I’ll gift you with nothing but memory’s recall
Of a want unfulfilled
And a woman strong willed
And beautiful, gifted and tall.

Open Skies

I’ve tried to explain this rootless of times
but all come befuddled like passions of crimes
and all I convey seems like paranoia
when all it is really is negative joy. A
simple expression of gutfelt pure feeling
seems hollow and somehow devoid of true meaning.
You see with this gift of your love and your trust
you left my iron-clad heart out to rust.
Invincible I marauded through days
giving no thought to next week, tomorrow a haze.
Entirely reckless and feckless – just living.
What happened just happened. What didn’t, just didn’t.
I hate you for all that you force me to feel.
I have to make plans now, be cautious and deal
with mundanous housework and bills and the fear
that one day I’ll wake up and you won’t be here.
I’m so terrified of the day that will come
when the imperfect duo of us will be one
broken automaton, loverless lover,
with no one to run to, to hide and take cover.
No sanctuary, haven or reason to be
the people we both urge the other to be.
Soul-image, my animus, all I adore:
you make me feel vulnerable, need I say more?
I hate that I love you. Our crazy dynamic
leaves me open to loneliness, heartbreak and panic
and yet I can’t help it. For all of my fear
I want what scares me. Does this statement seem mere
-ly a flimsical knock-off, a gesture at most,
a wine-driven-10-to-12-red-faced-man’s boast?
It’s not, I assure you. It’s all I can give.
You are my reason to wake up. To live.
And all that I have and all that I do
it’s all just a heart-unbroke tribute to you.
Your patience, your actions, your strength and just you
make me fear for the future. Question: just who
would open themselves to a lifetime of this
uncomfortable happiness, blinkerless bliss?
The me you created with that first kiss:
This misgiving Mrs from misanthrope Miss.