PHANTOM HAT SYNDROME

It's the cooling down
Of red towers
Heatened by sun flare
In the image I took
With me across
Those Northern distances.

Hard to separate sometimes
The expression from the thought -
Like spearing sunlight on a sword,
A hammer flattening what you saw

...Into words all used up before

But if I cast my line
And accept it cannot catch water
Or if I remember that these words
Are a self-made mirror
Whose image I cannot control

For as I cast my line
So my line casts me

___________________________________
Oldbury,
6th June 2012, 12.45am

UNNAMED THOUGHT

Give me depth in music
Give me directness in words
Give me solidarity in friendships
And foundations for my home

________________________________


Oldbury,
9th June 2012

9 6 & 12

9, 6 and 12 are in my head
 A relationship caused
     But to what effect?
A distance long travelled
     But to what extent?

To go backwards
Jump forwards
To go backwards
Jump forwards
Without a sight of land

9, 6 and 12 spells a strange sort of N
A rigid kind of 2 or maybe sideways Z
It's all in angles of perspective
Of looking backwards at you own head

And to go backwards...

______________________________________
Oldbury,
9th June 2012, 1.15am

(UNTITLED)

Like...
Sailing
Over expressways
On mornings
Of sunlight
Through back-seat smoke
And distant gas towers.

I'm going home this morning.

Or...
Night-service
With its late-shift shadows.
The streetlamps that never sleep.

I'm going home to wake up
                                        in the morning

__________________________________

On a night-bus to Sutton Coldfield,
May 2012

AMONG FRIENDS

Among friends
Tho' we may feel safe
We may also lose our way -
Not noticing the bond
Become a chain
Feeling free to express
What was wiser contained

To grow our way/away?

__________________________


Oldbury,
April 2012

LOSS / FINDING

LOSS

Sudden and sad
The worth that the world
Had
Blown away from me:

Like a kite
     In an unkind breeze
          Like a flower
               On a storm-bound sea

                         All heading over the horizon

________________________________________

FINDING

                   Slowly but sure
          Like the waves that
     Find their way back to shore
And break upon our feet

________________________________________
________________________________________

Number 11 Bus,
Late one Saturday night, January 2012
                

THE MAYBE THAT MEANS NO

And don't try and bluff it,
'Cos everybody knows
Your words are only gestures
To a candle-lit prose
That blows away in the wind.

Who'm I trying to fight
Should anger burn its own worth?
A blackbird spooked
By the turn of the worm
That learned to fight for itself.

And don't put that on me
'Cos I've met this war before
Your sentence lip service
To the notice on the door
That wards away unwanted visitors.

Baby, we both know
Maybe means no.

_____________________________________


Oldbury,
26th February 2012

AN IDEA OF HOW THE WORLD SHOULD BE

Yellow - as in felt-tip sunshine.

But my girl don't wear that colour.

So maybe a rainbow?
Better still -
A spectrum
Of every light and shade
For people to take what they need.

Everyone should have what they need.

___________________________________

Oldbury,
20th April 2012, 1.30am

I DREW...

I drew a roundabout
And watched ambulances
Drive round and round it -
Feet kicking in the back
Frantic clowns opening the doors.

I drew aquaduct
Upon aquaduct
Upon aquaduct evermore
All leaking
They were all leaking

I was trying to start
The car I couldn't drive
To speed me away from
A storm-dark forest engulfing all horizons
Grey cassette chewed in the stereo.

And it was all my own work
(All linear; unshaded)
The mind can be a terrible canvas
When it knows no contour and
Shows all perspectives at once

I drew bare feet
And walked them over stone
Without looking for any direction
Me just turning the signposts
Round and round
Laughing.

I drew vivid motorways
Of endless concrete desperation
And there were no exits
The horizon
Rolling endless grey distance
Out from itself

I drew a collapsed bridge
With rain whipping
The graffiti on its side wall
Beneath which
We dry with sleepless curled

I drew the dark which
Kept me under itself

______________________________________

Oldbury,
1.55am, 17th April 2012

THE POSITIVE SEED WILL

Up here, somewhere
Is where it is,
Amongst the worries
On all those un-updated lists
And pacified fights.
I'm waiting for a chance
To relight the fires
That we lit long ago

Hope the positive seed will
Overcome this someday
Hope the positive seed will
Overcome this someday

But in finding the flame
Will I fly through the smoke
That choked up and broke up
The plans that I made?
And foolishly
What I thought could last
It was only on sand and glass

It was only on sand and glass
It was only on sand and glass
And tho' I tried and I tried
I was washed out and shattered
Tho' I tried and I tried
I was washed out and shattered again

I hope the positive seed will
Overcome this someday
If there's a positive seed, well
I hope it's flowering someday

__________________________________

As-yet unfinished lyrics to a song from forthcoming solo EP,
Developed from a piece of prose written on New Year's Day 2012.

I DON'T GOT WHAT EVERYBODY ELSE WANTS

Minutes drag their baggage,
Seconds sit at every table of the clock-face

Minutes dump their baggage
In the memory

I parade my uncertainties
Across the ceiling
Of the sleepless bedroom

________________________________________

Oldbury, April 2012

(UNTITLED)

Where there's art - there's hope
There's a harbour for someone's boat.
Tho' I may tug along
And struggle on
The distance of precept
'Til I find that distance doubling back
'Cos these seas they're never sure

But every sea must have a shore.

Life would be much calmer
If you'd just stop feeling.
They'd never break your heart
If you'd just stop beating.

_____________________________________


Oldbury,
Early hours of 16th April 2012

SATURDAY SERVICE

Whoder thought

Under the seats:

Concrete

Unfocaled drifting

Unvocused moving

Through complex

                         empty

Instrumating nothing

But a lone voice

Conspiralled in a vortex

                             of tiredness

                             and sleep

Lane flat out

                on the bed

Weighting for dreams to sinkin

                                        And I'm done.

_____________________________________

Oldbury
6th April 2012, 1.25am

UNTITLED NIGHT POEM

Language is the handle
On the door
But to what room?
And who paints the walls?

I ran into the street
Shouting
'Who has seen my house?!'

But they were all in
                        their own rooms
And it seems
That their doors
                 all have keys

Secrets dark
In biro-black chambers
Of private horror.

One man in his
Derelict arena
Shouting 'This was my stage!'

________________________

Oldbury, April 2012

THE SANDWELL BRAKES

The smiling face of my assassin?

I laughed 'til I was freaked out

I laughed 'til we were scared

Travel is leaning forward

On the Sandwell brakes -

The hometown waves.

In empty boxes

The homecrowd stays.

The shortcut round the circle?

You cradled me 'til I was crying

You cradled me 'til you were asleep

And travel is leaning forward

On the Sandwell brakes -

Abandoned on embankments

The backs of houses

The homing pigeon astray.

What sparkle 

For the dead water in

Black factory canals?

The cancelled paths

And rust-skip rats

From cracked pipes

(I left the debris in the hedge)

 If you've been listening -

Tell me if I've been repeating myself

I said...

Oldbury, 2nd April 2012.

FAME

A couple of years ago, me and a couple of friends had an occasional short-story competition around a different theme.  The theme of this one was Graham off Jeremy Kyle.

FAME

Beneath a cracked mirrorball, he glowered at the sticky bar his elbows were folded on. This again. It was always the same, they take their glasses off, rub their eyes, look down at the pitch notes, and starting with that little laugh: 'Look. Graham. You know we love you and you're the best at what you do, but...' Always the but. And that fucking little laugh again. 'We just don't see a place in the schedule for "The Graham Show"'. He'd even done the inverted commas. Smug little fuck. He'd bet good money it was him.  He'd found out and had a word. Them and their fucking golf course buddies.

He'd propped up that cunt Kyle for too long now. That wasn't talent or skill, it was just shouting cliches at imbeciles and palming them off on him in a production office so tiny he could smell their stale council house breath. He'd even written to Dr. Phil for advice. No reply. And again it had come to this, Reflex on a Monday night.

This had been their club. The best times were here, back when they’d been a team, taking on the world, before all that head-butt bullshit kicked off. Saturday nights, they owned this place. The amount of tits bursting out of pink PVC dresses he’d signed or licked on that dancefloor or in the smoking area. But not now. He’d ended up out on his own again on Saturday and barely anyone recognised him apart from that 50 year-old with 40-a-day wrinkles round her gob who'd seemed keen enough when he'd bought the champagne but started bleating about a husband and fucked off (He was dreading the next credit card bill). Oh, and some podgy bird with a wonky eye. He’d tried to sign her tit and singed her with his cigar.

Forty-eight hours later and he was here again, on the Cheeky Vimtos. Filth, but he couldn't take the scotch he loved so dearly anymore. Where was the aftercare when he got upset again?

He needed to sort it out. He'd send his demo off. That'd be good revenge. Just him and his acoustic guitar. His song, 'Life's River', about the crazy paths the events of his 52-year existence had hurled him down (Springsteen was an influence). He must remember to get those copies out of the glovebox.

Five people were dancing to 'I've Had The Time of My Life' on the revolving dancefloor, the barmaid was refilling the bottle fridges. He looked out of a window into the empty street and accurately predicted himself three weeks from now, back on the whiskey, being wrestled out the door by three bouncers in a whirlwind of ripped clothes and shattered glass, screaming over and over 'GRAHAM'S ON THE SHOW! GRAHAM'S ON THE SHOW!'

________________________________________

Sutton Coldfield, August 2010

(For Trish Keenan)

Inside the mind -
To where dawn thoughts occuring
Inside the shell -
Is where the ocean's roaring

There is the strongest urge to run
Across the sand, into the deep
There is a stranger flame that burns
Across the sky, into a dream

But when you left this room
It didn't look right
And I opened my window
To look for the light
And the morning said
We were taking flight
I scattered my wishes
From a very great height

But my dreams awake, but never arise

AT THE FIRST BIRD'S SINGING

Thoughts running away
Like the rainyday bus
You've just missed

I let you down
Like last week's party balloon:
Slowly,
But it made you feel
Ever much smaller

Innocent/Naive
First birds sing
In the dark.

I wear black to bed
In case my dreams don't wake up.
I wear life
Like a lightbulb left on overnight
Sometimes...

Beyond the curtain - it's getting light
Beyond the pale - it's getting dark

Without the wherewithal to row this vessel
I'll have to hope my sorryness'll
Bring you back to love from hate
Bring you to the time that waits

Beyond the nest - the leaves are green
Beyond the thought - the leaves are read

My heart skips a beat
Everytime I realise
Drops its stick
Everytime I realise you.

___________________________________

Early hours of 8th March 2012,
Oldbury.

NYTMARES

Woke in the
Night
Sweating
Violent dreams
Of
Distressing animals
Of my second
Nature

Woke in the
Case of the
Re-opened curtains
Shedding
Light like tears
Creeping
Dreamtone
Ajar

Woke in
Alarm
Believing
Irreality
In the
Split
Of a second
In the skating
Where
We swam

The dark-bright waters
Of
Abstract crystal

____________________________

6.45am, 2/3/12
Oldbury

UNUSED BLUEBEAT ARKESTRA BIOG No.2

"ARK!" HAROLD ANGEL SINGS

Harold Angel woke up boldly and jumped out of bed.  The sun was growing stronger every day and he felt glad of it.  "They were the first unsigned band to play at both the HMV Institute and The Birmingham Ballroom!" he hummed to himself, taking off his nightcap and folding it neatly on the still-warm pillow.

The first thing Harold liked to do on mornings such as this was open his bedroom window and take in a deep breath of the fresh air.  Today was the first morning he'd felt like doing that in weeks.  As he turned the handle and pushed the slightly condensated window open, the noise of traffic grew slightly louder and the day leapt in at him like an eager child.  "Formed in 2009, they are a 7-piece with a plethora of varied influences.  They create tunes which combine strong melodies with danceable rhythms in a style that is very much their own" it seemed to say to Harold, as the sun caressed his face.

Five minutes later and Harold was stood naked in his small but ample kitchen.  The smell of toast in the toaster mingled with the smell of the fresh laundry which had been drying overnight on a clothes horse near the door.  Harold had turned the radio on and although the signal wasn't that great round here (especially, for some reason, when Harold went near the fridge) the music was audible enough to enjoy.  "Who needs absolutions with medications like these?" asked the 'rapper' over a hip-hop-esque beat.

"www.reverbnation.com/thebluebeatarkestra" thought Harold with a smile, as the toast popped up.

____________________________________________________

Kitchen table, Oldbury, 13th January 2012

UNUSED BLUEBEAT ARKESTRA BIOG No.1

A stormy night in the forgotten backstreets filthy post-industrial Birmingham.  A lone figure, head down, his chin nuzzled into a threadbare scarf, hands thrust deep into the pockets of a flimsy old overcoat.  The pockets are filled with a debris of old receipts, tobacco from the few loose fags he keeps in there.  In the nearby gutter he spots of a ragged piece of paper.  No longer caring what anyone thinks of him, he makes no secret of bending down into the grime of the gutter to retrieve it.  Unfolding the slimy and slightly torn leaf, he finds it to be a flier for a concert held some weeks ago.  The name at the bottom of the bill catches his eye, it's slightly obscured at one end by mud and the end of the name appears to have disappeared in being ripped:  E BLUEBEAT ARKEST.

'My God' mutters the figure, wiping drips of rain from his three-week old stubble and dashing them away to his side.  He looks up from the flier and wonders whether to keep it, throw it or hold it close.  His bloodshot eyes begin to well up and the nicotine-stained fingers which hold the flier start to shake.

The rain is beginning to hammer down so hard that it's bouncing back up off the street.  Through the gloom however, he discerns another figure coming towards him on the other side of the street.  He has no idea who it is, or why they too are out in such perilous and biting weather.  He doesn't care either, circumstances have become long past that.  Clenching his fist so that the flier is scrunched up within it, he trusts that the old, weary legs still have it in them.

Splashing through the huge puddles created by litter-blocked drains, he begins to run towards this other figure.  Intensity rises within him as he sees the figure put their head down and begin a counter-charge straight at him.  He knows it's now or never.

'SEVEN!' he cries.

Something he vaguely remembers as elation fights through years of cynicism and disappointment to rise within him as he hears the reply on the wind

'TRIGONOMETRY!'

__________________

RAINDOLE DRESSING GOWN

Take down your battered St. George, kid

Your racist uncle

He got decked in the hall

By your new step-dad

We sat in the bus-stop

With the dagger swagger dickhead

With a table-knife down his trousers

One Daysaver morning

And the wasteland still slowly rotting…

________________________________

January 2012

DON'T JUMP

Reaching for the ledge,

Holding onto the edge of the mattress.

Conscious of being held in dreams

_________________________________

Late 2011

ARSENIC ANGEL

Angelectic –

She drove me to the morning

Carried me to the morning

She defective deceptive

Who’ll turn on detective

Apoplectic/Angelectic

Pull the word apart

And dissect it

Tear the scenery up

And direct it

______________________

December 2011

THE END OF GAME

THE END OF GAME

Don’t take my pauses for full-stops

I’ve walked this way before

Years ago…

Don’t take my shyness for cold

I’ve sat before this radiator

Years ago…

Your arms the cradle,

The bough unbroken

This no more the world of stamps and goods yards,

Home phones or negatives

I could you tell you all too quickly

In phonetic poetry

Warm the cup

We’ll lift ourselves out of this

Take the stock

We’ll float ourselves above this

This trust the wisdom
The confession unneeded

 - Won’t you take my nodding as rhythm?

The tiger leaps in paper frieze –

The graphic gives date

The walk gives fearling

_______________________________________

Late 2011

(UNTITLED)

(UNTITLED)

I was shouted down –

Locked out and humiliated

I was smoked out –

Laughed at and intimidated

These feelings aren’t real, are they?

They’ll pass like the train

Which in dreams I’m forever running for

Forever missing

I was passed up –

Broke down and misunderstood

I was cast off –

Out-foxed and forgot about

This is false attention-seeking surely?

As invalid as the ticket

I presented on the train I just about made

Forever never there

_______________________________________

Written on a bus, late 2011

OLD LANGLEY SIGHS

OLD LANGLEY SIGHS

Three fake Santas on stolen bikes,

The scene the amateur drama workshop

Tried to ignore.

Should they need a ghost train,

Look no further than

The dark brigade

Hitting the accelerator

On approach to Platform 1.

The wrong side of the tracks is all that’s left

And coldly there lonely fishermen they

Throw lines from the stumps of old factories

__________________________________________

December 2011

GRACE & DIGNITY

GRACE & DIGNITY

Let me carry out this sentence with grace

Tend the land under your feet

Do the work in your eyes

Play with the words in your hands.

If I should be burdened

Let me hold it with dignity

Hold it together.

And I shall show this love in deed.

Let me scour this broken wasteland uninterrupted

Applaud such a young feat

Show my working to your y and x

Keep the certainties un-played

Only when the mirror is clean

Will I see behind me

Let not another’s thought decide/define me

I have the right to write.

Keep me lost in my work

In such harrowed times.

Let us grow closer

Where the tracks divide

Should old interference be forgot.

(De-centred dissenter in my descent)

So fast the tunnel –

The hill in decline

The poets of white noise

Get deeper in mind

Stolen from my own reference library

Lay like snow on the ground

                                               I too drift.

__________________________________________

December 2011 

HANG ON IN THERE

HANG ON IN THERE

I write this in the bathroom
Waiting for the water to run.
Another day on the slide,
Another day off I can do without
I heard a voice say -

'Hang on in there'

Another application,
Another day unqualified.
The man on the tele he said
'There's work out there',
It must be me who's lazy
I try tell myself to

Hang on in there

I need my freedom, but the rent needs paying
Those who say otherwise got the money to say it!
They tell me stop dreaming, but I'm wide awake
And there's music to be made.

Another night in,
Waiting for the call to come,
I check my phone all the while -
The charger's old
I had to fix it up with sellotape -
I hope it lasts out.

Hang on in there

Short of paper
I wrote this on the back of my CV -
I've been reading it a lot lately -
Ten years of work
That don't define me at all.
My girl tells me to

Hang on in there

Hang on in there.
___________________________________

This is a song I wrote sat in the bathroom one morning last summer, sat with me guitar whilst running a bath.  The title's nicked from a soul song I was into at the time and the music was inspired by John Martyn.  Sometimes you don't have to invent anything with lyrics, just write the truth melodically.  When I went busking in Walsall, this was the first tune I played.