Here We Go Again

 And so here we go again,

Pitting flesh swollen with unshed tears.

You'd think after all these years we'd know

The earlier signs, the first parts to show

The strains. 

But no.

 Our ignorance remains

And where once there was shame

There is pride in the same.

I'm aware in the greater timeline

That this is merely a detour.

That everything anyone has ever fought and died for

Is just footnotes in the fossils.

Can you conceive it to be possible

That all your actions, however ignoble 

Don't mean anything?

Not really.

And we take everything so seriously 

Losing lifetimes to violent fantasy of justice 

But it's just this 

 bloodied blindfolds and broken bliss

Chasing leverets of honour through

Corn fields riddled with mines

And sometimes I think it's all worth it.

As once razed we could rebuild it perfect

And we'd know that we truly deserve it

Because we had suffered to earn it 

I Just Might

 It calls to me at night.

The soothing hush is no match,

for the draw of the same pulse and roar.

It mesmerises with its might.

And I might, (I just might)

slip off down the alley,

bed-robed and barefoot,

pick over obstacles, 

ghostfaced and quiet

to arrive tea in hand to:

the bench on the harbour.

The distant clang of buoys,

the slaps of seductive slop

against darkened hulls.

The water is black and so is my desire to jump;

to swim, my flukes guttering in the moonlight.

Master Frank lolls, experience bestowed 

and impossible to surprise,

but young Sea Pie of Cultra stirs;

once sleeping eyes now peephole wide 

at spying Poseidon’s Daughter.

The water calls to pour down delighted spine,

shivers controlled by a peaceful mind.

Sensation of flying freely sublime.

Expansion of perception and deceptive passage of time.

The sea is all loving, all taking, all giving.

I am it and we are we

but duty calls me back to shore.

My tea is cold.

My cigarette: ashes.

My odious feet and unforgivable legs are numb.

Land sick, land locked, land thrown.

Gravity greedily reclaims my blubbersome, goose pimpled flesh

I stumble home; graceless, ungainly, exhausted.

Guiding unwilling, unnatural limbs up stairs of all things!

But, to bed; satiated, salinated, and sanctified.

 Suffocated

by the solidity 

of the Earth. 

Witness

I am swallowed by my bitterness

and I swallow it

in this fractal frame of failed relationships.

Cynicism soothes my wounded seat on shelf.

I can’t stand going out.

I’d rather sit here by myself.

I’m past all the politics,

all the pitifully petty pecks of poison.

I’ve destroyed some neural pathways -

traumatic mistakes in my past days -

I’m taking small steps to start to fix them.

Small steps are fine, but small talk is a human affliction.

Fill the air with comforting fiction:

soulless banality hosed down and repeated as wisdom

by those who love to speak but have never learned to listen;

giving advice even they don’t believe in.

It’s deceiving

telling everyone you’re

Fine

all the time. It’s not

Honest.

Holding back - substitution of feelings in place of facts.

Illogical reasoning misleads and distracts.

Choreographed outward expression to avoid exposing inner lack

of belonging.

This wrongling has always felt that gap.

When I started reading Phillip K Dick

I felt seen. Something in me clicked and it all made sense.

Let’s just say, for argument’s,

that you understand

how it feels to live life as a grain of sand.

Watch unreactive distracted citizenry

wail and gnash and wring their hands;

apathetically prophetic taking knees 

instead of making stands.

Trembling. Waiting for breath.

And when it comes, the hurricane howl ignites the spite that underlies society.

Sparks to the skies, and hang sobriety!

Times of extremes clouding clarity of conviction.

If we’re all victims, 

Then surely we’re all, too, perpetrators.

Ears filled with these half-baked statements of journalistic tinnitus

pushing the same old them-and-us.

Propaganda pervasive; twas ever thus.

Psychological soundbites and deep cuts.

And as above, so below. 

On a personal level, it’s starting to show.

Look among you! Do you even know

how many are masking? How many know?

For all of the feeling that’s public displayed

how little is shown when the mind’s whirr is stayed?

This adrenaline engine is seemingly binary:

tectonic plate movement rate

or warp times infinity.

Where is the nuance? Where the gradations?

Where are the plateaus and smooth undulations?

Youth speaks in infinites, we speak in finalities.

Counting up daily accounts 

of fatalities.

Powerless but to bear witness 

to all of it.

Self-referential #6

 I am so sick of all of it.

The corruption,  the lies, the statistics. 

I once was able to warn allegorically 

but now I state baldly, in fact; categorically 

That dystopian nightmare has crossed to our waking.

We're inside a hellscape of our own creation.

Cassandra I, scribed. The Mistress of Mince.

High on a hill girt by oceans of ink.

Foretelling it all in bouquets of verse

presented with the flourish of the under-rehearsed.

For now the flourishes will wait.

I'm overwhelmed and overweight 

and spending all my energy 

on the one who means the most to me. 

Hermitage and happiness go hand in hand. 

Watch my tail feather shake as I stick my ostrich head in the ground

It's more important to make memories.

Too late to warn of the future. 

Deeper

 I've been waiting so long.

I said, I've been waiting so long.

But like every man or woman that ever has been, you're running late.

You never call, never phone or write. 

You just don't show up for our date.

No, no.

All I ever wanted, ever wanted 

Was One Good Man.

All I ever wanted, ever wanted

Was a love

That's deeper.

So I met a poet at the Chelsea, he said

"I'll be your Bobby, you can be my Brigitte"

So I lent him my head and he gave me a hand, baby

Get It While You Can. He

Promised me poems. I said, "Catch Me Daddy!

Go read to old ladies instead!" 

Yeah yeah. 

All I ever wanted, ever wanted Was

One good man.

All I ever wanted, ever wanted Was

A love

That's deeper.

I'm just A Woman Left Lonely

Singing in this empty room.

I've gotta Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) to wait

My cigarettes burned out too soon.

So I'm out here walking in the rain

Little Girl Blue with her Ball and Chain.

What Good Can Drinking Do? Oh.

All I ever wanted, ever wanted

Was one good man.

All I ever wanted, ever wanted

Was a love, a love a love, a love

That's deeper, yeah. 

So I found myself a new man.

He's tall and he's thin.

Not much of a looker.

His countenance is grim.

He's only got one outfit, his smile is wide.

No Mercedes Benz, just a horse to ride.

Under this Half Moon it's finally time

To stop my Misery'n. Oh! 

All I ever wanted, ever wanted

Was one good man.

All I ever wanted, ever wanted

Was a love, that's deeper. Yeah.

So this Summertime

I've found my love

I've got one good man!

And he's the Reaper. 

New poem, new song. 

Find it online:  Empire of - Deeper. 

Listen here: https://on.soundcloud.com/pjvTD

Download/stream everywhere now.

A New Direction

 

https://on.soundcloud.com/LR83k

Some of you may have been wondering why I have been quiet recently. 

I have been busily working on a new project, which is starting to come to fruition. 

Above is a link to the first track of my forthcoming album. Check it out and let me know what you think. 

Love always. Xx

After The Storm

 

I never thought the I would side with an aggressor.

“Never let the means unjustify the ends"

But it's hard to have honour suffocating under pressure 

When the enemy of the enemy's temporarily your friend.

12 step. Goose step. Misstep. Fall.

Fatalistic, impotent. 

Flailing fetid firmament. 

Perpetually panic-perched

In fight or flight frozen.

But the show's on.

So it goes on.

Mask in metaphor,  mask in reality.

Putting  on the face of a sunny personality. 

Scars in metaphor, scars in reality.

No more question of my strength or my sanity.

Crossfire massacre of crazed masculinity;

No Man's Land is my permanent vicinity;

With extra helpings of aggression at Christmas,

“for old times’ sake" it's a sentimental sickness.

Threat-making, bear-baiting sarcastic cowardice.

Rage-churning, bridge-burning emotional terrorist. 

Promises vomited into pits of lies, bilious

dismissive, supercilious 

and sneering in your bitterness,  you're hideous.

My defence is the simplest;

nullifying narcissistic assaults on my peacefulness 

by finding you ridiculous.

You're piteous and less than this.

I am the carapace that weathers every storm.

I'm the arrow-struck, 4ft thick, besieged fortress wall.

I am Horatio standing on the bridge.

I'm a nanny-goat protecting her kid.

You are a buzzing gnat,

A toxic stinking sewer r*t,

A remnant of an era that

is over and I won't go back.

I've lost count of the times you've tried to inspire suicide 

But my success is measured in the things I have survived

and every time I smile I know I'm breaking free of your control.

My laughter is the fanfare at the rebirth of my soul.

I am stronger now that I'm free.

I am seizing liberty 

My choices are my own (inside constraints of living)

My future is unwritten.

It's only just beginning 

And my life's my own, 

My life's MY OWN. 

(In case anyone was wondering,  we don't use the word R A T in this country. It brings terrible misfortune.)

I Write To Still My Inside Songs

 

I write to still my inside songs.

But words escape, they flutter fecklessly away.

I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

Verbal tics have possessed me lifelong.
The disguises are displaying exponential decay.
I write to still my inside songs,

to shackle them with cursive ink where they belong;
expression of ignorant impression of air from within clay.
I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

The context is lost and meter and meaning are both wrong
But phrases form perfume and colour my spiritual bouquet.
I write to still my inside songs.

And sometimes they're dripping with venom and vengeance from forked prong
But I never claimed to be Virtue in any morality play.
I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

It's the battle to wrestle harpy squawk into birdsong
Sit and scribe, instead of say.
I write to still my inside songs.
I grit my teeth and bite my tongue. 

Pedestals

Heed the mob with scythe and sickle,
Burning torches, glassy eyes.
Adoration false and fickle.
Come to cut her down to size.
They invested, they projected,
Told her she could have it all.
And when she did the unexpected
Gleeful forced her graceless fall.
Bind her hands and cut her tongue out.
Mock her struggle to survive.
Hobble her with heartfelt hatred
Sharpen up your spiteful knives.
Parcel out her flesh as pound cakes
Pass around her hacked off hair.
Memorise her worst mistakes.
Burden her with cross to bear.
Be careful when you are beholden.
Flatterers are always liars.
Don't believe your hype or fanbase.
Pedestals are funeral pyres.

Uncomfortable Crown

Stand 6ft back and deliver.
Stand 6ft back motherfucker.
Keep your distance, kill the virus.
We're united as divided.
Stay 6ft back motherfucker!

Hands on flesh and dripping lips
Are distant memories.
Finger tips
are gloved; and inside
red and raw
from soap and scrubbing.
Dry and sore.
Visors fogged with rancid breath.
Dehydration's safest bet.
Under aprons nervous sweat
trickles, tickles.
Don't stop yet.
If not service then you're worthless
and essential's redefined.
It's the year of perfect vision.
See the world through unslept eyes.
Safety now is in division.
Mass graves dug attest this fact.
The way it was was never normal.
That bridge is ash.
There's no way back.

The Belle of Bulgham Bay

This verdant,  windswept spit of land
Ringed around with golden sands
Tended by MecLir 's right hand
Where magic makes its final stand.
Curlews cries,
Enormous skies,
Phynodderree in poor disguise
Mooinger veggey in Elfin Glen
Preserved til now from way back when.
Cashtal yn Ard, the sacred ground,
Silkies surfing at The Sound.

The lady I'd like to discuss with you now
has been cruelly misnamed as a sea cow,
by sailors sloshed on rationed rum
I'm not sure how else this siren would become
such a lumberous beast. She's more the sea sparra.
She is the Belle of Bulgham Bay, the beautiful Ben Varrey.

Now, memories made
when families play
In millpond waves
on sunny days
Often come at hidden cost,
I mean, how many earrings have you lost?
How many individual socks,
How many flip, but no more flop?

When you've baked your brain you know you can't trust it,
Distracted by sand in your toes and your gusset,
You picked up the spade, you picked up the bucket,
But you always leave something behind.

These tiny trinkets, swallowed by tide,
Make for glorious mermaid finds,
Out at Maughold she's a cave that's filled with wondrous things.
Buttons, brooches, bonnets, buckles; the bounty high tide brings.
She's got spectacles and hearing aids, dentures and toupees
But these oh so personal items are not lost, in fact they're saved.
In the Curiosities of Terra Firma Museum they are all exhibits.
And it's helping to explain some eccentric human habits.
Creatures come from distant oceans to educate themselves
on the ways of the grotesque flesh folk. Entrance costs two shells.
The Belle of Bulgham Bay is rightly proud of her collection
But she keeps a secret stash of her special selections.
In here she keeps the sandals, flip flops,
Workmen's boot, verruca socks,
Toe rings in particular are impossible to resist.
You see, the Belle of Bulgham Bay is a foot fetishist.
It all began when she was young,
Angsty, teenaged, spotty.
She saw a flip flop floating by,
A bit unbleached and grotty.
The imprints of the toes were clear
On polystyrene foam,
Stroked the ridges, mesmerised.
She felt her heart unfold.

So on this verdant windswept spit of land, &
When walking barefoot on the sand
Domt be surprised if a clammy white hand
Reaches out
AND GRABS YOU!!

Collectors

Some people collect stamps.
Some people collect coins.
Some people make air fix models so well
You can barely see the joins.

Some people collect conquests.
Some people collect scars.
Some people collect experiences
during which they see stars.

I've got a new collection,
and not through conscious act.
It's been kind of foisted on me and
I'd rather give it back.
I'll put it in an album,
Neat, protected, labelled, proud
private slice of all the lives
that used to be around.
Past tense.
You see it's all the funeral cards
with photos and songs and poems.
It's hard
to watch the collection grow.
I have no control
over this.
It's not like pokemon cards or vintage picture discs.
They're all limited editions,
all one off works of art.
All threads in one rich tapestry
of which we're just one part.
And the pattern that they weave glistens
Crystallised in wisdom.
Passed through timely advice
and an ear willing to listen.
It's not like I can display it.
For flat living it's highly compatible.
For the major part of it,
It's completely intangible.
The cards are merely a symbol:
A trinket in place of a jewel.
One hydrogen atom representing
Each universe of you.
So I'll put them in an album,
neat, protected,  labelled,  proud
and share them with the enthusiasm
of the traction engine crowd.

Some people collect conquests.
Some people collect scars.
Some people collect experiences
during which they see stars.

Some people collect stamps.
Some people collect coins.
Some people make air fix models so well
You can barely see the joins. 

Not to quote Jurassic Park, but -

My dear fellow jugglers 

in the Cirque du Suburbia,
you may think your home impervious
to encroaching adult themes.
But “Nature always finds a way”
and they’re going to learn it all some day
but it’s probably better in some ways than by some other means.

You’ll all be aware of the endless oughts
that contort and constrict
instinctive care.
Single modern motherhood is
a carousel
tersely tethered with knots.
Will nots and spill nots
and hope nots and choke nots
and try nots and cry nots
and eat nots and teach nots.
The most strangulatory
of these tangles is
expose not
meaning: Protect your child from the darkness of this world
and teach them the strength of enlightenment.

The entitlement of access to the hive mind
-by necessity a skill they must learn,
‘cause coding is the future –
shoots my determined obsolescence right in the maternals.
So to detract from external influence
I knew what to do.

We’d get
a pet.

Landlord clause: no fur or paws
no electricity eating heated enclosures,
no live food, no rodents,
no hooves, smooth or cloven.
From amidst this messy mesh
a loophole
I sagely extracted.
No one had said anything
about marine arachnids.

Fishtank purchased, live plants in
filter on and the process begins.
Background danios Spotty and Stripey
soar and chase and are occasionally fighty
but mostly work as extras in the theatre of the tank.
We even had a red-shirt! For his sacrifice we thank him.
In true tradition we set the stage; when he died the first act was over.
Two long months we’d had to wait for the alga bloom to cover
enough of the surfaces to act as a rider
for our new stars: The undersea spiders!
Or shrimp. As they’re also called
or as some people say, “You mean PET PRAWNS?!”

Yes.
is the answer.

Now. After about a month a strange thing appeared,
at first no bigger than a poppy seed
then as it grew I came to realize
there was more than one stowaway snail inside.
Gio was delighted, I was concerned
about intercrustacean diplomatic relations
but they co-existed peacefully and the purpose was perfectly served.

Until the day these mucilaginous interlopers, now numbering four or five
decided to stage a three-day-three-way-sex-show. Live.
Right at the front of the tank they were!
“Mummy, what are they doing?” “Errrrrrr..
I think they’re making babies, Gio.”
“But there’s three of them!” “Yes, I know…
oh I can’t explain it, they’re snails, I’m not sure-
hey, who’s that in the castle with his face out the door?
Is it Blackfish? Has he made friends with the shrimp?
He’s the first fish to spend time in there I think.”

This happy distracting friendship warmed both of our hearts
and we smiled as Blackfish spent more time in the dark
and the shrimp brought him food and he slowly grew fatter
but everything was lovely and nothing else mattered.
The snails population in the background grew and grew.
We lost count when they got past 22.

One morning I was woken by Gio screaming “Mummy!
The shrimp have got Blackfish and they’re opeing his tummy!”
I raced in and slack-jaw gawped. The violence was alarming.
But more than this; the realization that shrimp understand farming.
Two Medium Shrimp held Corpsefish still, while Big Shrimp did the slashing
and then they gathered round and gorged themselves. Gio, big-eyed watched the action.

More generations of snails came. Then more and more and more
until the monopod population was a problem we couldn’t ignore.
We had to get rid of all of them. We couldn’t leave even an egg.
They eaten us out of live plants. We’d had to get fake ones instead!
It took the final solution. We gave the tank a deep clean.
And boiled the snails in the gravel. And murdered their babies with steam.

Then rebuilt the tank from the ground up and so far, it seems to go well.
It’s more like an eight-year-old’s fish tank and less like the circles of hell.

I think it’s fair to say, in this case
my attempts at parenting were a little displaced
by “Nature, red in tooth and claw”
or, transparent in the case of the shrimp’s grinding maw.

I tried to protect my son from his curiosity and an internet search engine,
but accidently introduced him to orgies, murder, evisceration
and ethnic cleansing.

DOROTHIA

Ladies and Gentlemen,
I'd like you to meet my friend.
Her name is DOROTHIA,
She lives risks and sets trends.
Her Diabetes is type 2,
through diet self-inflicted.
She's Obese, technically morbidly so
and Reclusive - isolation addicted.
She's Older now, she draws a pension,
loves her tobacco, Hedges and Benson.
She's Hypertensive,
is doing something about it,
but her Inactivity gives
her anxiety no outlet,
so Alcohol is where she turns.
And this is how DOROTHIA learned
all the risks factors for developing dementia.
After diagnosis, here is the message she sent ya:

"All of these causes are within your control,
act now and make changes.
Grow heathily old"


                                                                                                 

All of the above are the controllable risk factors available to avoid developing dementia.

Just a piece of information. I'm not lecturing.
 I wrote it to help me remember for day-job purposes.

While you're here though, please consider becoming a Dementia Friend. This requires nothing more of you other than you than to read some information, watch some videos and apply the awareness you gain to your life. It can make a huge difference to people's lives.

Go here to learn more and become a Dementia Friend.

Thanks. Xxxx

Yule Be Back

A portal opened in my lounge

sometime in mid-November.

A velvet wrinkle overlapped and

time’s quilt was oddly angled.

Up went the tree!

Up went the lights!

The glorious windows

dressed in party clothes.

Stair rods and banisters

festoons and fragrances

that speak of feasts and warming spices.

Inviting glows and cosy stories

by torchlight.

Outside

conker battles finalise into

en of season skirmishes.

Guys succumbed to elemental distress

and the stench of rotting pumpkin corpses

rang from the town in

jubilant and guttural rowdy shouts

as cold breath caught in

over confident throats.

As a penalty for this

badly ironed chronological coverlet

a fine was set

and the time was taken back.

With bated breath in stasis

the presents waited.

The house waited.

In the missing time a place was found for everything

and having no time to dally in,

everything went to its place.

Reset for rambunctious rabble’s return.

For music and pictures and stories and tea.

For dinosaurs and Harryhausen, Nick Cave and walks by the sea.

Longing for the normal passage of time.

Smooth, wrinkle.

The house waits.

Tired

I’m tired.
I’m tired of hearing lies.
Refutations, clarifications, retractions and denials.
The rules of sophistry are easily learned
abuses of guided perception are Pulitzers earned.
As a self confessed sapiosexual
I find this twisted corruption of the intellectual
leaves me cold.
Shoulders hunched against the hurricane of unsure states,
of choices between hate and hate,
of divisiveness inevitable
among a population overwrought in apathy.
They didn’t seem to care about Operation Yewtree.
There is no outcry at the end of democracy.

The more salient among you will say
“But Georgia, It was always an illusion!”
Your silent acceptance betrays deafening collusion.

If populism is the enemy
we are elevating the judiciary
above the will of mass humanity
instead of innovating with prudency
and making the paradigm work for everybody.

Name-calling and
hundred-and-forty character sound-bites
have reduced debate
to bar-room fights.
One sneers
and the other reaches for a pool cue.
And it’s you, yes you
trafficking in this nonsense.
Demonizing both sides
occupying the mock-moral high ground peace-pretence.
The military complex is undeniable maths.
This crossroad of history only leads to mine-filled paths.

I’m tired.
I’m tired of insincerity dressed in emojis.
Of public mourning for countries
we didn’t want to bomb in the first place,
of choices between hate and hate.
I’m tired.
End time prophesies seem inaccurate.
They missed the flood of inverted facts
or turgid turmoil, social inertia,
interventions in justices by various churches.
Don’t we all want to live?
To have enough to survive and to give?
To be happy and share,
to give thanks and give care
to the weak?
The goals we seek are the same.

I’m tired.
I’m tired of seeing the same mistakes
the same choices between hate and hate
peddled as the only options.
Where has the future gone?
Huxley, Dick, Burgess and Brooker
Tellers, time-travellers, prophets and spooks are
following the echoes into the chamber.
Amplifying, demystifying, warning of the dangers.
I’ve come to value them more than the news
as shreds of my repaired fraying faith come unglued.
And differences between the actual and the absurd
become blurred.

I’m tired.

Camping

In this canvas-shanty-holiday town,

you'll hear strange sounds when the sun goes down

and played out families are tucked up tight

in polyester slug-suits in the still of the night.

At half past three

you need to pee

in insomnia regretting that last coffee.

Your tent mate is oblivious;

they've been snoring for two hours

while you slithered up and down the slope

with great rustling sounds.

The decision made, you try to rise

and sit up with a plan.

But your elbow's caught inside your zip

and it pulls you down again.

The zip is caught! You can't get out!

Your bladder twitches a threat.

You cursing, muttering free your legs

which immediately don goose flesh.

Pull on shoes, wrong foot, wrong way

laces tied as long as they'll stay

and with screwed up face and finger tip

try to open the front door zip.

The slower you go, the louder it is.

You think “Fuck it!” and try to go quick;

The zip is caught! You can't get out!

The whole tent gives a wobble

and you burst into the porch of sorts

in a breathless, blundering bundle.

Picking past the other homes

newly acute awareness

of whispered squabbles, saucy moans

and farts confidently careless.

As eyes adjust you realise the toilets are worryingly distant

and like Lara Croft with lasers you must cross the guy rope alarm system.

You wheel and tiptoe, duck and hop

knowing you'll pee yourself if you stop.

Nearly there but then your heel catches and pulls out a peg.

You freeze and hear blamey whispers coming from inside that tent.

“That' the fifth time! I said not to camp here!”

“Fine, you can come on your own next year!”

Run away! Preserve yourself and reach the portaloos.

They'll be equally grubby, no matter which one you choose

and finding one with toilet paper's a great thing to behold.

You lock the door and sit but the toilet seat is cold.

The relief is blessed beautiful. You dress again with leisure.

And water free hand cleaner is a modern camping pleasure.

Confident, collected now you begin the return trip

and trip's the operative word as over the same peg you slip.

Twang! With owl wide eyes you scurry,

ducking, wheeling, tiptoeing in hurry.

The saucy moans you heard before

have progressed to throaty groans of “more”

and their unfortunate head torch shadow display

is giving delight to some, but others dismay.

You pass by and observe all this

but after five minutes, something's amiss.

Where did we put the tent again?

I'm sure it was here. I remember when

we pitched up. That seagull flag,

the leilandii trees, that plastic bag.

Oh look. It's starting to rain.

Didn't bring a coat of course, the noise it would have made

would have been a rustle too far.

Oh God, looks like I've walked right past

it. It's all the way back there.

Stumble, trip, grab the zip.

Slippy fingered wrestle with it.

The zip is caught! You can't get in!

Over in the next tent a stirring begins.

You've woken their kids and they've started to fight

An angry bellow rings out through the night

followed by a man's voice, shrilly;

“I've told you before not not stand on my willy!”

Back in your bag, the rain sounds heavier

but only liquid sunshine falls on the British Riviera.

And fresh air sleep is fuller

you wake feeling so refreshed

and sleeping under canvas for sciatica is best.

So when the sun comes up we'll cook sausages and bacon

And smile like we heard nothing of the other campsite's patrons.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

If you like the theatre,

or going to live shows

there's a whole cast of characters

who to you are quite well known.

I'm not sure if they're real

or some sort of rent-a-crowd

but where ever there's a view to obscure

you'll find them gathered round.

It doesn't matter if you book seats

or turn up hours previous

to guarantee your front row view.

They're cunning and they're devious.

First up in this parade of pains

is the Giant Head-Geared Horror.

Whether hat or hair it doesn't matter;

its mass is a thing of wonder.

You crane to the left,

you strain to the right

attempt to secure

uninterrupted sight

of all the stagely treads afoot.

You finally find the best place to look

and now the 3 rows behind you's view's hidden.

As you hear them all shift you're a bit guilt ridden.

What you don't realise in your angsty little quest

is that now you've taken the entire armrest.

“That ignorant bloody space invader”

is how you'll be remembered.

But this about-to-be-a-bad neighbour

is of an individual standard.

He's invading space on the other side!

He got quite claustro when he tried

to avoid to being touched or crowded or crushed.

Now it's becoming apparent he's the Great Unwashed.

The stench started as just a whiff

the woman on the end wasn't sure so she sniffed.

It made her eyes sting and her nose hairs burn.

She gagged and the woman in front of her turned

and over glasses chastised a “hush!

You're ruining it for the rest of us!”

Gagging woman sees her chance

and joins the crowd at the front to dance.

And just as she's found a great view of the feature

enter the Four Legged Staggering Crab-Like Creature.

United at the shoulder, mutually supportive

but with feet and legs at war with each other,

attempts to walk are abortive.

Everyone they stumble into spills their drinks in shock

but from their own never-empty glasses they don't waste a single drop.

Another multi-organismed beast

makes incremental attacks and never retreats.

It's starts in on your peripherals,

usually embodied by a group of girls

who over time push their way into the space

that previously was taken by your arms, or your face.

They never tie their hair up

and it all goes in your mouth

when you try to light your cigarette,

then try to put it out.

Their bloody hair's on fire!

They use so much spray and mousse.

You put up with it for so long but in the end it's just no use.

You sidle to the sidelines and go for a quick wee.

At one point one of those girls ended up sitting on your knee!

Upon returning to the scrum,

sweaty, dancing, joyful.

Your space has been taken by a man

wearing a coat half-duvet, half-hairball.

A firm-fan-favourite song begins

the surge forth irresistible

and you fall forward into him.

As least when you land it's comfortable.

His po-faced wife or girlfriend is leaning over the railings

looking bored and slightly offended by these audio assailants.

I don't know why she came along,

it's not like it was free.

I think her space would be better taken by

a fan. You know, like me.

Upon closer inspection, you recognise these two.

They're the one's that annoyed you earlier

by pushing in the queue.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't cricket

But you 'd never say anything,

you're far too British.

And besides, you've been waiting a third of your life

for this very gig, for this show tonight.

So you put up and shut up,

choose the obstruction least offensive

and if you can learn to live with it

be an audience attentive.

So if by some lucky twist of fate your eye line's unimpeded,

you're comfortable and the toilet queue's non-existent when you need it,

check you aren't just pushing in or obscuring others' view.

Because you might be unaware that the annoying bastard's you. 

Anti-Shanty

We all sing the songs of souls lost at sea

and preserve in musical amber memories.

But what of the land-bound in fishermen’s towns,

Now the fish are all dead and the industry’s down?

These boatmen more solid on liquid than land

on coal-littered beach front at sunset they stand.

Watch while their mistress is tossing her waves.

Greying and gloomy. She resents what she gave.

Now she casts off the covenant and keeps all the catch

and the sails in the harbour are folded or slack.

Lobster pots line up, empty in the sun,

while their salted-faced owner silently burn.

For it’s pints they are downing

to tribute the drowning

of another in whiskey not sea.

For they know where they’re going,

it’s their own path he’s showing

a way out of their own misery.

The swallows that flit through the cherry blossom trees

know the sea demands her tithe ev’ry fifteen years.

She lowers the pressure and hitches her skirt.

Swishing them wildly unbuttons her shirt,

booming with laughter she rolls on the shore

and demands that more businesses pay her, and more.

Her revenge for her rape is undeniable and savage

for hell hath no fury like an ecosystem ravaged

The touch of the hull on her skin is well met

but behind these caresses is an anchor of debt.

She gives life and takes life; some later, some soon

changeable as wind direction, reliable as moon.

People flocked to pay homage in sunny days gone by

but they’ve mostly stopped coming since the monkeys learned to fly

and now the town relies on hand outs and the landing stage is closed

and they’ve paved over history with a red brick road.

The people left land locked pay their dues in installments

of barometric infirmity and camphor-based liniment.

Crippled by ozone and scattered by squall.

They yearn when they hear the Wind Maidens call.

It’s a lifetime of hardship and internal fights

when the wind’s from the West and the bells ring at night.

But the Goddess takes all, every bit in the end.

Either swallows with love, or starves and contends.

And if

you ask if in this contract they willingly took part

They’d say

They’d give it all again. Body, soul and heart.

Lyrical Living

So I’ve been to all these gigs

and listened to the bands

and heard how nobody understands

the loss they feel,

the heartbreak, the pain.

It’s the same old story Sam,

sing it again.

I’ve heard all the fills, like

“Oh, baby, yeah”

Did you run out of words to fill that space there?

Am I getting old?

Or just getting pickier?

Or perhaps, with experience, cynical and bitterer?

It’s just that all this monotonous crap

as about as profound as clickbait video soundtrack.

Calculatedly sentimental,

as irrelevant as Blockbuster video rental

to the age we are living in and the way I experience

emotional ambush and unspoken inference.

Blandy McBlanderson.

Selected generic

when we lives in such interesting times.

LED screens on with lightshows mesmeric

to distract from the mundane straight rhyme.

That’s not to say I don’t love it.

Dancing is pure bliss.

Eyes-closed-bass-pounding-through-my-chest-my-arms-a-twist.

Exchange of energies intense,

connection of rhythm and chord and cadence.

Dance for sorrow.

Dance for rage.

Dance for anxiety.

Dance for tomorrow

belongs to those that can see it coming.

Dance because knowing what’s going to happen isn’t always a blessing.

Dance when you feel powerless. In

some small way you’ll feel better.

And whether you know it or not

the shot of joy I feel,

knees buckling after a night on the tiles

is the same depth of smile

I get

from poetry.

And so, although I seem

ungrateful

I’m really not.

I’ve had a summer of music never to be forgot.

And from my depths, thank you

for you’ve all heartily moved me.

It’s just that if I’m honest

I’d rather be at poetry.

                                                                                                                    

This was one of my entries for the Manx Lit Fest Poetry Slam this year. One young man mistook my friend for me. He asked her at the interval what her problem with modern music was. To him, I say two things: 1) Wrong tall dark-haired girl. and 2) You've totally missed the point of the poem. 

Much love. X