THE EGG NOG SONG

I like egg
You like nog
Together we like eggnog

courtesy of Charles Cameron Berry

MY BELLY SERIOUSLY

WIPE THE LENS

REST ROOM

My elder brother turned one year old the day I was born. I don’t remember much about anything then, but later I remember his brown straight hair that was nothing like mine. Mine was golden and curly. I was chubby. He was lean. We were inseparable because I clung to his constantly newfound knowledge like a leech. When he started school we stopped being so close. My mum and dad said that I became difficult around then. They used to lock me in the toilet so that my rages could peter out against the woodchip. I guess that it was for the best. The bathroom hadn’t been decorated since we moved in. When they redid it in purple and all plush I just didn’t have it in me to break things. “You could live in that privy!” my mum’s friend Edith used to marvel...   

SNOBBERY v YOBBERY

SNOBBERY and yes YOBBERY

Or time in the UK

0-10

1970-1980

My only memories are incidences of stress/conflict

And accidental self-inflicted injury

Falling over and what not

Silently tackled by a brother

For a joke, the trippist monk

Slapped drunk by a fatherly cuff and getting locked

Being accident prone was a curse

They could blame it on my calamity

When I had teeth

Breasts were replaced by bottles

I dimly recall -  and they have been

Interchanged ever since

10-20

1980-1990

School and failure

it was all about cornflakes, 

tying ties 

making friends 

girls

fights

thievery

and spending time with like minded criminals 

in their rooms with smoke

and mirrors and

then flights and girls and booze 

and in the middle of the girls there was a girl with love

and there was a baby..

or two…

20-30

1990-2000

Shitty jobs

Fatherhood 

Football

The leaving of the North by any means possible

Or necessary 

We can make a life down south by the sea

She said 

Selling to my shell like 

We made a go of it 

Or you did
Didn't we?

30-40

2000-2010

Divorce and its aftermath 

The cleaving of the cleft 

Needing wisdom from the internal bereft 

Guilt wrung but not wanting to pretend 
To be ignorant of ancestors' ignorance

Sorry loves 

It’s for the best

He has to go

Working for the Royal Mail on the South Coast

Drowning in self 

Drowning in post 

Not thinking I’m thunk yet 

Not thinking 
I'm thunk

…

RIDDLE ME THIS

WHO AM I?

Some call me gentile

Some call me infidel

Some call me gadjo

Some call me gaijin
Some call me ting

Some call me monkey

Some call me honky

Some call me gadgie

Some call me scum

Others called me pig

Mother called me son

Sons called me father

Father calls less often

Now I'm in the jig

BROOKLYN PICNIC

I look at the back of your head

And wind blown hair

In front of the trees

On a sunny day in Brooklyn

And you say

It’s greasy today

I haven’t washed it

We eat shrimp that sweats

With wine white in iced

Packs of plastic

And you talk

Into your phone

And enjoy a day out

At last on grass

Then we cycle back

On the thankless track

That new Jacks built

To sweets in your flat

Apartment

And hours of love

In the face of days without it

DARK NIGHT - BRIGHT DAY

short film

here

                 




Johnny Cashback spotted in the 'crowd' at 6:18.

CHARONDELIER

JIMMY'S CLIFF

The sea is no less inviting today

Seen here from this blue and terrible height

It beckons with white flicks or silver

In flight - flecks of never, undetermined

To wish for the depths seems ridiculous

But dizziness affects more than the feet

A fool’s dancing head on a beach full of

Clouds out of reach is forever ending

EVEN SONG

Lead me to the berries

For I have only bones

They use me like a floozy

They smoke me to the foam

They bleed me wet and juicy

They try to clip my wings

Yet I fly all day

Raw with luck

And still the syrinx sings

Lead me to the berries

MUSH ROOM

Another year relaxes in its embers

We gather for our farewell

Through the months cuckoos have called

You have not heard, I wouldn’t know

Leaves fell off branches, regardless

In the evening sun on a Bandon hill

Still at this familiar hole

I try to think of your face

Taste the earth in the air

Your intake of breath is what I remember

That preoccupied, sucking - yeah!

Peculiar to this parish as you were

We can’t confuse you with mother

You are absent-bodied no more

We came here together apart thirty years

We carried each other once a piece

Me a slapped kid, you in the urn

We shared your winey meals in between

Those blood red beef stews we loved

Stocked full of juice and mushrooms

This is all we had though, moments at dinner

Dirt chewed today is spat tomorrow

My thoughts slip away leaving you

Under mouldering heaps

I head towards laundry and tea

As the moon balls out above the church

All proud through the grasping branches

DON'T LISTEN TO THISTEN

My wife to me then said
I'm tired are you coming to bed
By the glint in her eye
I decided that I
Would rather sleep with a sharp knife instead

from the Murder Limericks by A.C.Murphy, DipLit, Inside Forward, etc... 


 In the way of apology I have this lovely picture that I took some months ago just to offset the awfulness of the whole thing...

Nightly Open Mic Poetry in New York City

Nightly Open MIC Poetry in New York City: I have been searching for venues in Manhattan that put on open Mic nights for poets....

BIG BROTHER

WHY BABY SHOWERS ARE IMPORTANT......

WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING I SAW SOMEONE IN MY TROUSERS. AN ELEPHANT IN MY PYJAMAS. SOME WOMAN UP MY TREE TRUNK!!!!