Wednesday 29 February 2012

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.
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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.