Winston's bunions

 

what’s the score

 

tell you Watt the narrator’s either a schmuck stuck in the mud of their own construction sight or a confidence trickster tryna prove their vision ain’t just a version of everyone else’s but whichever the route they take both are only groping their way through clouds of obfuscation to add a detail or a twist in the plot to coin a hack-eyed phrase as though the world and its events were a length of owl rope they hand you instead of some scuttling excrescence across the surface of a globe but so much for abstract concepts butter in the hands of our story-teller or fibber as we are meant to say their lies lying on some other plain or leaving on a would-be plane and there we have the alternative to mud perhaps that other feller still the queer ’un takes an uphill position where soil has gathered above the water table so shrubs may take root at any time of year & to which oxen haul themselves yonder to stretch in the shade watching the world go by à la Deus Nobis Haec Otia Fecit ho-ho or You’ll Never Walk Alone Mate take your pick we mean the detached view which can still be partial of course but is not determined by internal dogmas or leashed you sniff my drift quagmired & sinking in titanic or rather Lusitanian struggle with the inevitable scuppered from their launch like an actor in an Agatha Christie play hired to say the same darn lines over & over yet somehow expected to bring them to life or what have you with little nods or winks cesuras modulations of tone ironies & sarcasms not chasms troughs or gulfs no nothing a stage manager would spot & sack them on the spot for even half way through their scene just itsy-bitsy porkers you may get away with now & then or here’s the biggie telling the truth as though it were something you just made up & which of course you would never dare so no one can accuse you of getting away with murder as rich folks do for God’s sake now ain’t that a fact

 

 

tramp-o-war

 

Rusty making smoke from burning wet

coal her gunwales dipped below the swell

listing somewhat on the starboard beam

target in range

 

slowly as she goes at periscope

depth the low-down skipper squawking fire

one a specious metal shark unleashed

runs for the kill

 

till amidship plume of white

water signals piercing

screams of men thrown out of bunks

Hamburgers cheer

 

then the rowing boats no time

snaps the Jerry protocol

bids them stop & save some souls

heartless his watch

 

from the engine warmth of ship

to a heaving freezing sea

sailors dreams are turned around

nightmares come real

 

 

obituary

 

the death has been announced of one who as a youngster stuck their thumb in the yawning gap between the sexually active female and a celibate Dick Van Dyke though over a hundred years old the sole Dutch hero had stoked away from fame & the advances of admirers plus detractors to live in a remote North Sea fishing community where they spent their twilight decades appraising better lobster pots and refusing to talk to the Daily Mole while violently repudiating an autobiography written at the height of their notoriety which had earned them the approbation of celebrated feminists and chauvinists alike with the exception of Mavin Gutteridge the Antipodean soap star whose common law partner they soon became before transgendering multiple times to author a book of explicit nursery rhymes Boy Next Door that did so much to confuse & sharpen a generation of sex hungry weight watchers & post modern porridge refusenicks but that later went on to revive the wise fish monger’s better half at the harbour talking Sense & Nonsense trope & by whom was predeceased by nearly half a century yep folks it’s that long since they appeared in West End pantomime alongside you know who & Watt they are survived by seven surly bairns twenty-three sunny Jack & Jills plus retirement home for catdog waifs & strays

 

 

The Force is yours Darlin

 

leave them cops to us

Babe just give the word

you were raped the truth

ripped from your breast

 

get complete revenge

have their balls removed

for a trifling fee

guilt without proof

 

gaol’s too good their legs

broken homes turned out

faces scarred & bank

balances swiped

 

no embarrassing

court proceedings just

word of mouth’s enough

fast & discreet

 

call today your first

consultation’s free

guaranteed results

turn on The Force

 

 

the arse about face

 

Book TwatterGram Instant Rants & Google  Whathaveyou talking monkeys typing bootleg Hamlets when you’ve got gorillas gibbons baboons & Hobbits stuck on their eyesore behinds plus chimpanzees lemurs & Pooh Bears this means you Lahs swilling mugs of decaff OJ to knock out howsyerfathers in hobnail boots am I being racist speciesist or just downright rude to all & sundry so what gerralife go to Speakers’ Corner owlster recite your own doggerel at full blast in the shower whisper sweet nothings to nobodies on the tube leave notes on bus seats asking strangers to mind their own fucken business to whom it don’t concern should be your gambit when craving attention how long you been practicing eh with all this guff it’s like the splatt of zits in the mirror the scream of spermatoza going down the plug hole rubbernecks crooning ooooh look at meeeee

 

 

sacred pork

 

name the culprits eh

office holders or

those aware of them

biting their tongues

 

whistle blowers god

help their flesh & bones

traitors yea but so

what is their crime

 

fact or fiction first

guilty stories lies

spoken straight of face

black painted lace

 

there before our eyes

still we go believe

some folks can’t be wrong

even exposed

 

evil never crossed

minds of sculpted ice

liquid virtues jokes

chiseled in stone

 

 

tabs for the keeping

 

an empty shopping bag full of receipts I was going to light the fire with only we don’t do that too often now burning has become taboo pity ’cos I’d collected quite a few bits of combustible tat still the kids ain’t home no more except at Christmas & even then it’s not the same well nothing lasts as the saying goes & yet I can never bring myself to believe in absolutely nowt how can there be such a negative thing though it’s true when you’re gone you’re gone your atoms may hang around an aeon or so but your consciousness is straight off in a puff of white smoke such a waste & look at all the merchandise I’ve spirited away since I got this bag yeah it’s true we consume a lot of nonsense are persuaded to part with hard earned stash for so little worth OK there are fleeting moments of pleasure unwrapping fresh packs of imported choice or novel foods & soap but scanning the contents on a label can be dismaying when half the stuff you’ve bought’s been made with dodgy additives & extra this or thats what I like’s a true bargain something I want on barter or everyday items from abroad to fill the cultural stroke commercial gap yes one way or another this shopping bag’s seen its share of use & offset half its weight in CO₂ ’cept for all the sweat & hot air generated in the process nothing like a having a good owl whinge at the bus stop is there Mr Hoskins & I’m sure your Sandy will do fine stacking shelves at Carrefour we’ve all been there in one way or another it’s a case of start at the very beginning as I’ve often sung in the shower donchya know

 

 

Westminster sunset

 

bully-coddles from the back

benches blindly stroking necks

kick me hardly often works

miracle cures

 

let them bounders stir the crows

no such thing as evil just

lower forms of laissé-faire

beautiful warts

 

fortunes made on nods & winks

deaf the horse & blinkered its

mouth a font of fruitful lies

googly balls

 

called the cops to hand themselves

in they knew what sense it made

clawing knighthoods from the jaws

amnesty wars

 

onward soldiers with our deaths

shall ye build a better world

fit for cowards creeps & turds

hip hip the whores

 

 

horizons good & low

 

two or three times now I’ve woken in the wee wee hours by the drip drip dripping of rain from the eaves but when I rise at 7am and squint through the curtains there comes no flash of silver in the cold grey theft of dawn but what precocious scraps of rain that stumbled down overnight have long dried the street looks as parched as my throat after mouth breathing through fretful attempts at sleep I feel no excitement for the day ahead which is unlike me & shameful when you take the children into account there’s no right of indifference or dismay at the climate I have chosen in so far as there’s much choice in anything in this life or that willful beast as I am no I made my bed and lay on it ignore this torrent of clichés free of any compulsion other than my own laziness & desire to settle somewhere not just anywhere of course but here where the weather looked so promising the long days of Spring & vibrant Summer nights the enduring warmth of Autumn & Winters cold admittedly sometimes bitterly so but often mild here in the northwest and in the past what buckets of rain we had between the seasons weeks of it until the ground was oozing our well leaking I had to lay a pipe to drain it & stop the chickens from drowning dug it in with my bare hands now I’m sure the water table below the plot has dropped by several fathoms & all this talk of climate change how will the kids cope with so much evidence before their very eyes & global warming if not exactly on the curriculum the weather speaks of it the fickle & inconstant weather now more obdurate than ever it won’t relent it hardly rains & when it does you needn’t take your hat & coat the very opposite of what I’m used to wonder what it’s like back home when this is home from home & everywhere about the same according to some blinkered & pessimistic fools no folks what have we got against them the rotten shower give & take is all we ought to say to get us through the night but what a blinkered attitude with the curtains opened wide at last no fear

 

 

unsatisfying allegories

 

Victor Slogan writes

life’s bewildering

issues can’t be worked

out on the brain

 

work & marriage which

hobby horse to ride

politics or church

both if there’s time

 

plus the gift of free

will the choices curse

seek the doctor or

sleep with the nurse

 

problems when they’re halved

writhe like conger eels

twice as much the corpse

stealing the hearse

 

nope reality’s

matter over mind

up a gumtree with no

paddle to curse

 

 

echoes

 

were the Romans right to kick the Jews out of Israel of course not posterity hardly theirs to worry about but remember the righteous slaughter at Jericho when the walls came tumbling down & will they call it anti-Semitic discussing the fact but what is fact when all we know’s the Bible which is merely fable by another name the title deeds to Palestine not carved in stone but written in blood promised like so much bilk & money by one of umpteen thousand gods each of whom the sole pretender to some heavenly throne in whose imagination eh but do the maths Professor Wittgenstein six million wrongs don’t make a single right

no bull!