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!

this ain't cricket

The Hotspur/Wizard

 

I

 

when we lived over the arse end of Lambeth Walk that’s me my brother Chris & poor Westy above us dwelt a French onion seller the real deal every morning bar Sunday the geezer donned cape & beret boarded the owl pushbike & pedaled down Embankment to New Covent Garden where he bought his strings of golden Spanish balls then crossed the river into the narrow curving streets & mews of Pimlico or Kensington & Chelsea to flog them off to well-heeled patrons of the culinary arts he & his boyfriend a carpenter or plumber I forget which went on occupying the top flat long after we’d moved on to Camberwell the final remaining terrace of Lambeth Walk site of the 1930s dancehall craze had been condemned decades before but should have been preserved a travesty the whole area the demesne of the Black Prince latterly Charley Windsor’s that couple hung on there till the bulldozers moved in we had an argument one time about music Iggy Pop’s The Passenger Remote Control by the Clash or Elvis Costello Watching The Detectives it was far too loud the year Punk came of age 1978 even so we were inconsiderate little shits while the Frenchman & the English guy were showing their age a tad thankfully we were reconciled somehow & after that had friendly chats on the narrow staircase behind the boarded up paintshop on the ground-floor you accessed the flats above from Sellon Mews via a hole in the wall door in the backyard oh now I remember how we became friends Chris & Westy shared the large rear bedroom which had a shocking damp patch so we swallowed our pride & asked the couple if we could climb through their kitchen window onto the roof of the room to clear the gutter out a hairy operation & only partially successful because the drop into the backyard below was fifteen maybe twenty foot & me with vertigo so afterwards we started chatting now & then & once I asked them why they chose to live in London wasn’t Paris friendlier & supposedly more tolerant don’t forget back in the 70s gays were picked on night & day by stupid cops & other thugs who thought themselves duty bound to beat up any folks they didn’t understand when the guy said something I’ve heard several times from French people never mind the exile of Oscar Wilde in gay nineties Paris or the Jazz Age in fact the UK was good because the people didn’t care what went on behind closed doors so long as you kept yourself to yourself in public which strikes me now as true of most places but then again how the hell should I know

 

 

II

 

the 10 40 Machine performs ten billion sums in forty seconds only it’s less a calculator than a code syphon whose human operators Gül Redmond and Deuce Kaplan are agents of the WPO that’s the World Peace Organisation who can access all kindsa data sources like the UN World Bank Internet Europol private phone calls & the top ten multinational corps plus various dark net communities & constantly analyse such risks to world peace as day & night the machine monitors a googleplex of texts & images from all four corners & many dives or holes pinpointing individuals groups & zones that pose risks once alerted Redmond & Kaplan go into action setting up the 10 40 to catch the prime movers usually red handed state or private actors bent on causing havoc I pitch my treatment of a pilot episode to the Acme Media Corp along with theme tune & outlines for Series One to Four only to find the exact same idea has come up endless times so it’s get thee back in the queue buster don’t you think greater minds than yours have been working on this half their miserable lives so go home sonny stick your headphones & kettle on cool out on Schubert or Mahler you sad faced schmuck & leave serious entertainment to your elders & betters oh puck

 

III

 

if you would have your cake & eat it note the use of anaesthesia in this procedure a tot of the craythur seldom goes awry but wary of slapping one’s forehead comes with risks of its own ahem the operation itself couldn’t be simpler yet for many the first step is neither rosy nor a reflex action therefore in such cases recourse to remedial therapies can yield results remember you are not sowing oats wild or otherwise but taking part in an exchange perhaps the oldest human activity on the planet steady as she goes me lad & by the way should it be a purse of coin and not a folder of notes the same applies whether it’s reaching into a handbag or the pocket of your jeans matters little be bold & generous to thyself employ both hands if you have them and never take your eyes off the job it’s the start that determines the finish as much as how you follow through now don’t be coy though having said that neither brash nor offhand flashing the cash is only obscene in the eyes of the jealous or those who covert others’ take your time be decisive open sesame needn’t pass your lips smooth rather than slick movements will keep attention to a minimum don’t empty the contents it’s better to be short at first than overpay perhaps the seller will be happy with less when they see the colour as it were of your dough count under the breath hold the receptacle firmly while dispensing the loot & above all try not to cry or make other tell-tale noises while the exchange is under way these are the conventions observed in public how you behave at home is your own affair but during the handover there will be a moment’s pause when neither side is in complete possession either of the goods services or payment legally & aesthetically it must be so enjoy

 

 

IV

 

when I was 9ish there was Peter Grimes at our school the Wild Man of Afghanistan he was not but sorta played togga barefoot & we were like The Leftovers who no one had chosen for their teams so the dozen or so of us still kicking our heels at the end of the picking would have the most fantastic knockabout games no teachers to ref with Peter Grimes when he got the ball running towards the goal with a native cry and no one could stop him short of a foul tackle which never occurred to us complete young gentlemen only playing for the hell of it couldn’t bring a fellow down in his joy cos everyone had their moments in our games so Grimes & his little brother came to school one day in moulded plastic shoes the like of which I’d never seen and wouldn’t see again until decades later when I came to Turkey they were almost toy shoes never could they pass for real lace ups but despite that had the impression of brogues with fake eyes for laces knots and the tip of a tongue peeking out the top so at break times we’d play footie with a tennis ball in the yard and because we were only five or six kids it’s be goalie-stick or goalie-in-and-out but this day Peter Grimes said he couldn’t play on account of the shoes which wouldn’t take the punishment moaned their dad would be angry if they came home with them already worn out after one day and I was cut to the quick in a second suddenly perceived the whole poverty trap syndrome because Pete and his brother came from a poor family everyone knew that because their clothes were never quite new or smart and they had free school meals but I could see how their dad had forked out on these plastic shoes presumably because they couldn’t afford real shoes but they would soon fall apart anyway leaving them back where they started so we joined in a big game of Al Alley-O and still Peter Grimes was gingerly taking care not to scuff the uppers or skid on the thin soles of his plastic shoes and it’s really odd because for a moment I wished I was poor I suppose I was jealous of the sympathy I felt for him kids really are screwed up creatures always trying to get a handle on what’s going down

No Bones!

The Uncomfortables of Emale Zilo

dim the views

outcast

 

all the gang had turned

up as cyber girls

’cept for me

did I miss the bus

was a Horror film

stalking us

Ida joined the ranks

given half a chance

been a team

player worn the zinc

skirt & Perspex tops

strut for strut

but for Bodysnatch

you can write me off

not my cup

 

 

advantage Boris

 

can't be serious

can they McEnroe

you should know

 

shown my age ID

cards’ve hit the deck

flipping heck

 

let me get my breath

back been twice before

where’s the door

 

okey dokey mates

just remember this

held me whisht

 

published I’ll be damned

no predictions mind

not that kind

 

 

the tolerance

 

Elton Busker passed

off as one of us their kids

born with DNA

rolling out along

Sunset Boulevard no cat

catcalled Alien

trouble was although

Busker couldn’t tie their shoes

wouldn't ask for help

when they dressed in tan

brogues & ran for copters with

dangling laces tripped

up & sprang a leak

Prussian blue now here’s the thing

no one raised a word

 

 

The Great American Navel

 

check out my

belly button fluff

ball & ring

cycle gay

Gatsby gazer Nick

Caraway

stuck his thumb

up me jump Award

ain’t she cute

 

solid gum

linseed oiled to go

trouble is

no one knows

how the heck I won

what a swizz

 

 

plots for sale

 

holes throughout your dramas Bill

still you wrote on till the better end

sending villains to their fate

 

or the candy-coated takes

waving pairs of wayward lovers home

Romeo & Juliet

 

that’s a gap you couldn’t plug

dug yourself a blackie there till king

pins came on & stopped the fight

 

was it simpler in those times

lining up your outcomes by the crowd’s

loud applause or louder hoots

 

so you served them brutish short

order lives & when their blood was hot

pots of sack or sacks of warts

 

hoisting Shylock by the purse

cursing Richard’s spine before his mind

winding Hamlet up with dirt

 

 

temp ops

 

does an empire ruled

by emancipated serfs

former eunuchs ex

concubines & owl

whippersnappers on the rake

write its own decline

 

Gibbon might agree

sailing past Byzantium

on the passage home

 

this democracy

gofers moonlighting as prime

ministers like time

served masonic priests

then repairing to the bar

gambling den or stage

 

 

on their honours

 

when his Uncle Dicky got blown up

Charley hardly played the victim kept

shtum at least in public meaning one

buttons one’s lip

 

like his ma she met McGuinness shook

hands the man was IRA & smiled

just remember that but by the bye

knighthoods are suck

 

first you find a cause to plug invest

millions then the bow & scraping work

while your mates begin to take the mick

lordships are worse

 

better find a frog to kiss their slime

does at least wear off in time but pomp

circumstance & all that royal bull

dyes in the wool

 

clothing wise at least Elizabeth

had an eye for colour knew her hats

won’t catch me in tights & garter straight

jeans or it’s quits

 

 

Clueless on 4

 

who’d have killed the cat

suspects many but the sole

motive was it laughs

 

harvest moon appears

broken walls in silhouette

case the murder scene

 

call Inspector Horse

star of stage & telescreen

nemesis of clowns

 

where’s the evidence

aftermath of dirty jokes

wafting on the breeze

 

put the house lights up

guilty parties to your feet

sniggerers stay put

 

 

language language

 

when uncanny can

study history inside out

then we’ll all give in

 

sneer at prizes shun

scholarships & study low

level politics

 

everybody’s prof

Higgins doesn’t know your stuff

meaning be thyself

 

talking someone who

reading stories gets the words

stuck between their gums

 

sounds of distant lands

homesteads burning villages

children on the run

 

 

eh ay

 

IT does not compute

artificial intel hell

Robbie’s in a spin

 

set to auto cute

cue domestic violins

undercurrent mode

 

know them by their sons

upstairs downstairs twinkle toes

carpet sweeper drills

 

beat them at their own

game of cheese in überalls

call EXTERMINATE

 

then unplug their balls

sitting at the drawing board

draw a ticket wait

 

 

no half leagues please

 

send the light brigade

on with heavy tanks

panzergrenadier

guards the lot

 

call it Crimean War

Two & beat them red

white what have you black

Russians back

 

back from whence they came

spluttered Hastings man

on a morning train

up to town

 

he was red of face

other folk turned pale

one young chap looked quite

sick with fright

 

some delinquent teens

giggled though as Dad’s

Army spoke who knows

what they thought

 

 

fairy tale life

 

while their giddy aunt

lost a leg at Putingrad

cousin Pat stayed home

wrote apprenticeship

apps for daft graffiti drones

then attempted but

didn’t run amok

finished university

volunteered to house

homeless Pekinese

married twice divorced the horse

bolted door to door

bunion seller groans

half their ancestors have spawned

princess kissing toads

no holds!