1918 Special

I

Krishna Pandit engineer by trade

worked his way to England bound for France

talent spotted from the ranks was made

driver of tanks

Whippet Quick his rusty chariot

twenty tonnes of steel plus men & guns

half a league about a cigarette

scattering Huns

not that Krishna glorified the work

mountain station air had cooled his veins

steady handed fed on beans & pork

kit-bagged his shame

furthermore the Indian was wise

owl-eyed a sage beyond his years

fellows loved him to extemporise

cocking their ears

bettered English letters by his talk

love thy foes he'd quip but hate their ways

shrapnel struck him as a flock of hawks

battle was praised

*

Ziggy Sarkis laughed a noted wag

cried hurrah for hussars but the horse

saw him first no shame on it to drag

doubt on his arse

never fear an airman's cap might fit

seven thousand feet above the lines

all he'd need for nerves were steel & wits

not to be blind

drunk of course no telling what he thought

over stirrup cups before the up

supping two too many Ziggy bought

Sopwith a pup

oof said he there's only so much string

pull the other Ma if die I must

let it be drowned in a submarine

honest not fussed

but another type of metal box

Ziggy found himself committed to

rudderless no wings a beast on tracks

best she could do

*

Raw could not have drawn the shorter straw

nursemaid to an Hindu & a toff

after crying what a bloody war

took his hat off

joining up from civvy street urgent

schooled on Maxims then in '16 Raw

switched to Vickers quit his regiment

MG the Corps

till the order came again all change

sent to man the loops inside a tank

on a hush job sort of light brigade

devil to thank

not content with that the arms were French

Hotchkisses with belts of metric rounds

fired sideways down along your trench

from over ground

this while doing six or seven knots

cooped inside a lurching metal box

hell on wheels & sweating blood in pots

sooner be fox

II

rich der pickings Allied soldiers wear

lambswool mittens linen under-clothes

fondly sent from homes untouched by war

nothing by halves

ration boxes stuffed with chocolate bars

pork & beef in rounds of purest white

dairy butter spiced with cucumbers

spinsters' delight

sticks of life called Hans or Christian stark

staring stormtroops little more than scare

crows patrol an eerie landscape pick

King George's fare

Kaiser Wilhelm's words irrelevant

marching orders those who understand

Hinderburg or Ludendorf like men

in no-man's land

deafened numb with cold & dumb they keep

hope alive in crater pools & holes

dug beneath the fallen when they sleep

kettle drums roll

but no thought of giving in has stuck

foreign mud beneath their feet is sweet

rich der pickings in zis Belgian muck

theirs no defeat

long as shells & wire spades & mud

don't give out for breakfast schnapps & bread

no surrender dead der Komrades' blood

flows black & red

not for Kaiser love of country God

Death incarnate caught their mood to live

strutting scarecrows trench by trench they plod

open eyelids

through the hail of iron fireflies

peering cooly down their barrels aim

deadly shots at Liberty's allies

GIs the same

bullets counting one for one The Fall

harvests pink-faced youths from Langedoc

Hartlepool and the prairie grain-bowl

hard place to rock

acolytes of anti-Christ survive

crucified on iron crosses rise

grim & bloody faced to fight again

ghouls with a yen

taking fodder groomed by church & state

pimply boys in numbers not too great

here & there they match them to their fate

tying to stakes

lures for Tommy Atkins bait for Jacques

traps to snare the Yankee infantry

charging reckless in open country

into the crack

doom awaits whoever should attack

caught in crossfire skittled by grenades

drowned in mud disguised by clever sacks

murdered in raids

worshippers of doom will win this war

kings of Death have forged an after-life

hung on barbs it jigs in merry gore

triumphant strife

III

training took forever half a twelve

month the plain of Salisbury all churned

up as Private Pandit learned to swerve

brake and reverse

differential failures plagued the work

twin transmissions see & engines kept

boiling over leaving fumes to lurk

deep in their chests

yet a better life than at the front

playing cards in barrack room or pub

letting conscript soldiers bear the brunt

till the last shove

still the war dragged on in France & five

times had Autumn's chill been hand in glove

when from o'er the Channel there arrived

orders to move

Jerry'd staked his last reserves the bout

really would be over Christmas come

just a frog-marching of the Jackboots

out of Belgium

*

tanks a Brigadier tells Parade

trample down yon wires bridge the holes

eat your very mud while feet of clay

follow in droves

wonder-struck the chappies listen up

one per company each tank will push

Boschie back three thousand yards & stop

so you may rush

bayonets fixed all through the gaps there left

round the blighters up if they will yield

otherwise dispose of them as best

clearing the field

cavalry will then take up the drive

gallop through the breaches you have made

kick what's left of Jerry's rotten hide

into his caves

if this works & with our tanks it must

by tomorrow morning's armistice

half a league of trenches guns & stores

fall unto us

*

blimey if the Hun is packing in

what's the point of staging one last fling

surely keeping casualties to min's

far better thing

orders Sunshine put your faith in me

what's an armistice but three black lights

floating through the stars as you can see

wait for their whites

scared is what I am & petrified

soil my pants a dozen times before

sunrise tanks or no that mud is wide

shrapnel galore

keep your head you sniveling lump of grease

think it's only you who'll cop a load

pray to God or write your Ma a piece

faith in me Toad

holding you to that so help me I'll

shut my trap but here's the awful case

you and only you will have me smile

Death in the face

IV

Whippet Sarkis Raw & Pandit three

men in a tank Death is waiting for

munch their sarnies swill their gin & tea

breakfast at war

zero hour's not till six so while

Captain Ziggy draws on cigarettes

Corporal Raw is snoring whizz-bang whines

like string quartets

Private Pandit shunning drink & smoke

prays a mantra to the fading stars

begging war god Durga to invoke

Venus or Mars

Durga rides as Kali manifest

tiger mounted many-armed & yet

peacefully in face & bearing smiles

comely & mild

fight thy foe she says with love not hate

killing evil purges thee from sin

send them back from whence they came that way

new life begins

Captain Ziggy speaks his mind to him

fading stars snuffed out by creeping light

rise & shine to live their lives again

while those who fight

die forever is it right he asks

killing mothers' sons because they're Huns

they believe their cause be just the fact

is here's the sun

Krishna it's a shame to die but worse

where's the sense in all this killing eh

tell me why we have to fight because

don't wanna play

cheery up my captain load thy gun

here today tomorrow gone & who

cares but those who live to soldier on

life's a rum do

we that kill the sacred water ox

God has doomed there's nothing left a crime

unforgiveable but bide our time

wait for the knocks

all that matters here in hell's the bond

soldiers kill like brothers each for each

swords & guns have waved a magic wand

no gurus teach

double edged the blade of honour cuts

slayed & slayer arm-in-arm alike

live or die it's shooting cocoanuts

sixpence a shy

pick the fallen up & eat 'em prize

cannibals no time to sympathise

fish the sea for sunken treasure or

perish ashore

only we as higher creatures think

better men than us will come anon

human beings should be carry on

if we don't blink

pearls of wisdom Private start her up

there's the signal three black lights above

forward both your engines man the loops

off with our gloves

NitFix

Brand Old Series, Same New Episodes

agitprop troupe 23

during cultural rebellions we

would perform in factories offices

shopping venues public squares & parks

I as stage manager second class

stood responsible for anything

blamed if actors fluffed their given lines

or they took the mickey out of those

inner party lags who called the shots

get my drift old chap 'twas quite a blast

anyway to cut the story short

politicians pinch yourselves it’s not

nineteen eighty-four we lost that war

puppets need improvisation skills

scripts with dialogues they write themselves

endings with beginnings also strings

she's a blinder

benchmarked legal code for those abused

clerks supreme court beaks have had their way

with the model-like peeps Hollywood

loves to portray

strut & fret down corridors of law

shouldering the bulk of disbelief

pending rulings on suspender hose

skintight as silk

sex is demonstrated here in court

witnesses swear oaths while crossing legs

jury's back for who's the fairest say

mirrors on walls

blushing sentences are carried out

stretcher-wise la petite mort or worse

ushers closing doors on last appeals

in camera

flesh photographers unfurling red

tape throw cordon-blues round centre-fold

advocates while glamour hands-me down

justice on heels

memo ad Mortem

novichok new player on the block

beats the competition buck for buck

targets people safely in the home

what's norra love

posted through yr letterbox or sprayed

bobbajob from door to door it knocks

conventionals into a cocked hat

what's norra love

let's be honest agents in the field

oughta have some nerve their work cut out

just delivering payloads on spec

what's norra love

overkill reduced to reportage

only damages collateral

neighbours passers-by & nosey cops

what's norra love

single drawback Russian provenance

means increasing import paperwork

still the bottom line's gotta be cost

what's norra love

I Candy Starr

victimised I played the glamour game

looks to kill for got me where I am

sexploited actor & pc star

who requires a second lease of fame

championing the moral myth crusade

talent always rises to the top

never mind my silence on the up

there was no alternative those days

catching eyes with fetching ways was all

anyone could do to land a part

if the competition now demands

damaged goods with attitude stroke balls

ok sex will sell it matters not

how I'm packaged long as folks can see

nothing on beyond the same old plot

memoir of a passerby

someone just not any old you know

whose appearance on the flags reveals

fleeting depths we guessed pedestrians

always possessed

Stendhal once remarked but then again

should we conjure up ephemera

basking innocently by the moon

light of the mind

leave such things alone for there's no use

fleshing out the ghouls of passing forms

with the dead they should cease to exist

soon as they're off

shoot 'em down like other authors cut

all superfluous detail & leave

nothing but the most important things

dangling in sight

vanish passerby your time is up

all we need to know of you a face

snapped in the sidelight of notice then

wiped from the plate

porn & cheese

funerals for the living not the dead

likewise war on evening watershed

stick the butt behind your ear Jed

smokin in bed

take a new position every day

Danish blue goes well on toast they say

as implied on Tuesday who is they
feet's in the way

smoke 'em out then ease the claptrap down

neighbours may complain don't wear a clown

mask the blindfold's healthier & brown

Leicester with frown

camera lights & action hold that pose

creamy cottage flavoured oil of toes

muslin sacks for pillows cheeky nose

thaaaaar she blows

leastways Tolstoy shoulda penned this scrip

Russian gangsters tore him off a strip

search me hearties all aboard her ship

shape bodice rip

a bigger scratch

pinkish dragons of the blue green world

humans face extinction purple nosed

smoking weapons burping flagrantly

into the wind

people your excrescence crusts the globe

like the exoskeletons of Mars

creatures once intelligent but now

ghostly retorts

what will future visitors to Earth

find upon its surface or above

rusting iron shores your graves or bones

left in the sun

debris drifting in the upper air

signals bouncing round Van Allen's belt

Netflix series still replaying old

episodes eh

sit them down to watch a bowl of crunch

can of frothy beer & scratch of arse

what a binge this planet had they'll think

better than ours

Not Again!

press the message

Dieu et Mon Droit

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing; - S.F. Smith

what exactly did the Yanks rebel

for the price of tea the use of forks

why they stabbed us in the neck of course

Braddock's awful death meant squat to folks

who from upping sticks to cross the pond

staked their pensions on the other side

don't the history hucksters have it so

Woolfe dislodged Montcalm by gall not guts

more redcoats were killed by Injuns than

Minutemen George had no right to tax

States who never voted 'gainst the French

as if Louis would have charged 'em less

aye your rebel's cause is ever just

righteousness has always triumphed rich

picking how they turned a blessèd cheek

sang God Save The King in other words

pertinence

must we listen only while that hot

head whose ticker tape of lies & half

truths regales & moves a ship of fools

better the Yanks we've heard nattering

far across the stark Atlantic night

where the strains of Melville's hammock strung

bowsprit wide on copperplated ark

trawl indifferent seas for poetry

'longside Whitman's craft & Longfellow's

Ginsberg Kerouac all have remarked

somewhat deeply the star spangled main

stripes unfurling from a rising moon

tongued in silver their Pacific lines

light a flarepath to the shores of Mars

deus ex machina

what if Job appointed someone whose

god was like that sleuth's on every night

rides a mean old bike the meddlesome

priest known as Brown

lets him choose whose sins are innocent

plus he's working for the bloody crown

not above breaking laws on the sly

nobody knows

audience excepted country town

constant scene of murders everything

goes though Brown's unfazed like where he's from

ain't no birds sing

btw if anyone should call

one of these nights say I'm fishing off

Hinkley Point for tadpoles what's the score

quite had enough

Britain seeks a hero at this time

batgirl hatcheck wallah no one's fussed

tortured soul or crook whose only crime

claims to be right

Never Say You Weren't!

Binary Dyslexia

You know I'm not that kind of doctor; so, at the age of sixty-two, is this a disease I have just invented for myself? How does it go? Well, whenever there are three or four objects - five at a pinch - I can learn 'em - that is, distinguish one from another. Like if a magician comes on stage with an apple, an orange, a pear, a large lemon and an unripe peach, and starts juggling them - the mage is also a juggler, btw - and when one of the pieces of fruit, suddenly while they're being juggled, turns into another orange, and there are two oranges juggling about, I'll remember which of the others has gone and go, like, “Oh, that's clever. Very clever, indeed. What's happened to the apple?” Yessir, I can manage a plate of fruit...

...as well as anyone; I'm just trying to establish a credible base line here, the average quota of Shredded Wheat. Three, four, even five points of reference are all doable in the everyday course of affairs. And also like most folk, I can push the boundaries, if I put my mind to it. I've never been on a TV gameshow, but if I ever had to remember: the toaster, manicure set, matching his'n'her beach towels, upright vacuum cleaner, guide to the round towers of Ireland, oven glove, a garden fork, signed and framed photograph of Idris Elba, the volleyball ball and Rubric's Prism as they passed, one-by-one, in front of me on the old conveyor belt, I'd probably manage seven or eight out of ten, perhaps all of them with the ghost of Brucie helping me out. One less than three, though, is where I start to have serious problems.

Well, not all that serious. My brother recently had a tumour - about the size of a small Manhattan – removed from his brain. I found him as his bed was being wheeled back onto the ward... and, I'm sure you can picture the state of him, he was pretty groggy. But he knew me alright, gave me that faint, Calamity Jane smile of his. No recognition problems then. I stood down after an hour, returning later on, when I asked if he'd had any other visitors in the afternoon. Yes, of course, he said. Who? Oh, you know, he said... but the names wouldn't come. There had definitely been one or two, besides his wife and myself. I gingerly posed a likely moniker. No, not him. Then another. Nor her. It was, you know... Yeah, no probs. I get you, Man. Sorry to put you under pressure. I'll turn out the lamp now and stop pulling the old Gestapo routine. We talked of other things. But later, in the evening, back from the hosp, I ask his old lady who visited my brother while I was away? It was only the most obvious one, his oldest, best drinking friend & partner in crime. I guess my bro' pretty much knew who the visitor had been, must have been, just couldn't manage the name. The proper noun. Christ, that's a big owl thingie, isn't it, when the name of your best man won't come out of your blasted gob? Though it's not actually what I'm on about here. Binary Dyslexia ain't no surgical thing, just positing the comparative.

No, I gotta problem with the number two. Do I turn left here, or make a right? Does this terminal take the red wire or the black? How d'you spell the Cagey One, discreet or discrete? Is it the 80 bus or the 82 for my brother's flat? Now, I've just come back from Liverpool, where he's doing fine (touch wood), so the bus numbers are pretty fresh in my mind. The 80 is for Catherine St and the 82 is for Aigburth Rd. But, say I go back in a coupla months to check on him and I'm standing in Hanover St (in town) having just alighted from the airport coach and headed for Toxteth not the Dingle... which is it, the 80 or 82? I'll be standing there racking my brains while one or other of the buses goes past and blowed if I can work it out.

We evolve strategies for this kinda thing. When we are teenagers, a great array of mnemonic devices helps us out in the examination halls of life. Our minds are nimble and not-fussed, there is no shame because we don't forget stuff like best friends' names or where to put apostrophes. Our very fingers & thumbs remember them for us. But as we age, little mistakes become fossilised, some perceptions thicken up and turn slushy in the deep freeze of time, eventually growing into icebergs that undermine our cherished unsinkables. So we are caught out like fools on gameshows or This Is Your Life: husbands who don't seem to know which side of the bed they sleep on, wives who swear to God they have never visited the town where they first fell in love.

Of course, some of this is straight denial. A lifetime spent trying to forget inconvenient facts catches up with us. These are the billion brain cells we have strangled with regret and embarrassment, or shot down with alcohol or Nembutal. Now they resurface with dumbo smiles, the elephant in the bedroom that always forgets.

Anyhow, I'm not looking for company on this one, I only needed one disease to call my own. But, then again, I wonder if anybody else recognises this? Back in the Yuke - this time with a hire car - I've just pulled out of the EasyWheels parking lot and there's a kinda lane that snakes round the arse end of the airport before it turns into an ordinary suburban road. This gives me a few moments to distinguish between windscreen wiper and indicator. Then there comes the shock of binary: looming at the end of the lane is a roundabout. Actually, not a big roundabout; just one that drains off the sudden surges in airline traffic they get and avoids the need for lights. But there is terror in it for me as I approach the simple turn. Left or right? Which is which, for god's sake? My hands clutch the wheel, knuckles gleaming white with fear. I search for hints on the road itself, but there are no other vehicles. Looking down at the tarmac, white lines are shooting underneath the bonnet... I have gravitated into the centre. In the closing moments I do a quick calculation. I'm at the wheel on the right... shouldn't be driving on this side, then... so hang a left?

Once I really took the wrong choice and drove for half a mo into some oncoming cars. Thankfully, it wasn't a public road, just the entrance to a holiday camp at Ainsdale (for Southport). The guard at the gate sussed me straight off, Guess who's been driving abroad? Where've you been, eh? Turkey? That'll explain it.

Here's another angle. My father was colour blind, couldn't tell the diff between red and green. He'd be changing a plug and would say, Eh, Son, which of these wires is red? Colour blindness musta been a widespread problem because sometime in the Sixties, they changed the earth wire to green and white stripes. But that was no Binary Dyslexia. Dad had no difficulty remembering that red or brown was live, blue or black was neutral and that green was earth. Funny how with AC current, live and neutral are interchangeable, anyway; but Dad would never have connected positive to negative - unlike me. I almost blew up a car battery last July. Nowadays even the terms give me a headache. Surely neutral sounds like it should be earth? The way they keep changing the goal posts should keep me on my toes. But it don't.

What d'you do with a door labelled Push or Pull? I have no difficulty in Blighty because the English words were drilled into me at a horrid school. But even in a country where I've lived for decades, being confronted with the words for Push and Pull still causes me to pause momentarily as I run them through the translation engine of my poor old brain. Yes, Binary Dyslexia is an infection of the learning process. I hate having to learn two new alternatives, like the way a tap has been plumbed in: which way d'you turn it for hot or cold? Or the way light switches are wired. Back home, you always flick a switch Down for On. But don't expect Down to mean On anywhere else in the world. At first I thought this was simple incompetence. As with plumbing, Hot taps were always on the Right, Cold to the Left, therefore if you have a single tap with a swivel lever, flipping it Right should still mean Hot and Left should be Cold. Right? Wrong! Sometimes, of course, it is incompetence: you flip the top right because it has a red spot on that side, then groan as the water grows colder and colder. But as often as not, Left means Hot to the local squires. So it is with electricity, Down is Off. Oh, except in the bedroom. Sometimes, you gotta learn everything anew.

What I'm really on about, though, is the anxiety. As an Englishman (that's a type of Brit) I have a great fear of looking like a fool. I just screw the cap on a water bottle and then hold it to my mouth. Cringe. The overture appears to end, and I'm the first on my feet to applaud. The conductor has not put her baton down. Shrivel up. In Turkey, it's the day you offer your neighbours desserts, so a young woman appears at the door with a tray of bowls. I take the whole flipping tray. Scottie...

But though I have coined the term, I don't believe I'm the only one suffering from Binary Dyslexia; and even on my worst days, when I have it real bad, I don't believe I have the world's worse case at all. At least, I still know what's right and what's wrong, still have some sense of good and evil, still recognise the difference between a cringe and a smarm, between a truth and a falsehood.

Here's a twist. You don't got the worst form of this disease if you know you have it. That is extra weird, because it means the very worst sufferers suffer nothing at all: it's those around them that get all the consequences. The carriers of Binary Dyslexia have no problem calling a spade a shovel, to them there is no difference between black and not white. They live in true monochrome and their world is an idyllic film noir in which they permanently play Bogart and Bacall. The folks around them drop like ninepins, and the world goes to hell in a bucket, but so what? They get all the benefits of rolling a two-sided dice with none of the anxieties. Heads they win, tails you lose.

No, the world's worst case of Binary Dyslexia is not exclusively anyone's, it belong to us all. We all know who's got it, even those of us who put him where he is. In fact, we can say say his illness is a collective phenomena we are all complicit in. Nowadays, who can tell Left from Right, right from wrong, plain wrong from Gee, that's rich? A Great Beast has slouched into view and is giving birth before our very eyes.

So what's the anti-dote, eh? What can we do to get this topsy-turvy world back onto its feet and set it toddling off again on the true learning curve?

It's like I said to my poor sib – who's a fighter - forget that neuro-surgeon's words, he don't know squat. You gotta rebuild your connections, get new synapses sparking & open up new channels. Even the doc admitted little baby brain cells are born every second. You gotta make conscious decisions, one after the other, reprogramme your mind, learn the whole darn show again from the start. Amnesia ain't a blind grope in the dark, no fumbling for pussy backstage or you'll get your hand bitten off. It's straight on into the cold clear light of perestroika, with riot police charging through the park. It's a new dawn breaking, red sky blaring, plenty of warning, and keeping your eyes on the ball.

more flat earth

flat foot?

An Archie Locost

Pretentious Photo

Caption Contest

flat beer?

paralytic games

people send off the clowns if you please

had enough of spectacles these wise

eyes ain't seen seen much glory referees

look at their dives

politics should learn 2 things from sport

skill & stamina outweigh the pricks

lucky breaks don't count so much as more

training less tricks

secondly enforce the ban on dope

no performance is enhanced by words

slurred to mean another thing the trope

song's for the birds

having got that off my chest it's mad

let me tell you being president

beats all other fairground rides I've had

here's what I meant

winning out against the toughest odds

coming first instead of feeling last

being king in every field at once

that's all I ask

flat food?

 guilt trap

flies supposed to drop in heat like this

toddlers on their hols get more relaxed

every morning swob them by the doz

stabbed in the backs

house no name for fly my home not sweet

death to those who think they've found their manse

pay with life the one-way entrance fee

all for a dance

hospitality's an idle lark

those who can't respect my rule are out

sorry chums I'm normally far less dark

put that light out

chortling in the face of charity

pumkin god on plonk I squash your bums

anywhere just ain't the place to be

off with your thumbs

sod the karma let my spirit die

throttle it at death don't let me off

tell me when my time is up to fly

you've had enough

flat in Waterloo?

weewee3

little Montenegro Gatsby's gong

donor musta smarted when the Don

shoved their leader Markovich aside

who's on whose side

now it seems a third world war could break

out on Montenegro's sole account

all for one & one for all as stakes

thanks for the shout

Gatsby btw as president

Jordan Baker ok Sec of State

old Wolfshiem running a great defence

Daisy on skates

with the likes of Montenegro though

John you've gotta call the other's shots

no alliance can rely on just

its teeny tots

if we gonna go to war or not

atom bombs novichok all that stuff

gotta spook these neo commie plots

time to get tough

flat earth

never flat!