the Tatlock manifesto

car boot find

 

genuine organic nonsense up for grabs

unintelligible art non fungible

tokenised & wrapped in promissories still

wet from the horse trough

 

just a sec Lord Whatsyerface me bunioned feet

scarcely brushed the ground you say this job lot’s worth

twice its weight in cosmic waste no shit it’s more

valuable unboxed

 

tip the lot across the yard we’ll get some mad

keen apprentices on sorting isotopes

from the spent Picassos Warhol prints & owl

Salvador Dalis

 

crypto clues aside how much d’you reckon John

give or take a half-life pack the grafting in

buy ourselves a floating home or camper van

move to the Far East

 

oi you’ve stabbed me right between the shoulder blades

what the Dickens for you dirty rat I’ll tell

Mother think you’re clever well I never dis-

honour among thieves

 

 

strip chess

 

red night

takes

white porn

 

rook pops

up

that’s check

 

your top

please

my turn

 

mate in

eight

moves what

 

no thong

sex

or quits

 

 

the Tatlock manifesto

 

tapioca pud

jam like Kelly’s Eye

not a hand grenade

dropped in yr gruel

 

bloody good you can’t

beat a bit of white

poison just desserts

pardon my frog

 

semolina you’re

waltzing up our street

coronation style

rhubarb & egg

 

custard talking stewed

prunes the stones foretold

who’d be rich from those

coveting loaves

 

beggars never said

they were professised

now I’ll fetch me owl

lollypop stick

 

 

keep this to yourself

 

there's no

telling you

can’t say

 

stick two

blighters down

one hole

 

ten days

pass the time

intact

 

oh folks

do exchange

stuff but

 

neither

pole would make

contact

 

 

husbandry for all

 

some Egyptians worshipped sacred bulls

mummified their cats had bird & dog

headed gods the thieving beetles what’s

that all about

ancient Greeks gave women snakes for hair

Disney raised a mouse to sorcerer’s

app & Goofy what became of him

janitor bore

houyhnhnms & yahoos I dig

held many a convo with my Ben

Jobs he ran away neglected no

not out of food

chickens are another matter love

counts for nowt without their daily grain

eggs will not emerge a fair exchange

always been veg

though I ate my share of Sunday lambs

as a child the gramps a slaughterman

what I’m tryna say is animals

ain’t got no beef

 

 

cheese island

 

cite specific laws

striking robot attitudes

ditch the dreamboat clause

every think is wrong

lyrics root replacement moods

do another song

fix that broken muse

switch to B sharp major chords

see what nothing proves

play the pink notes force

folks to listen there’s the gong

submarine’s on course

land crabs sing along

seascape paintings spot the nudes

losers don’t belong

 

 

skin on drums

 

poets in their sheds

two sheds down the banks

holidaying all

summer the swine

 

wallowing in pure

inspiration full

board & extras kit

washed for a song

 

time of reckoning

pays your money takes

what you fancy eh

grabbed by the tail

 

chances are you’d flog

Auntie Jean as white

traffic just the one

thing to get on

 

play the cherub you

smile & quote a line

Whitman wrote some time

during the war

 

 

sick note

 

caught me out

kafam gone

uptake slow

 

here’s a card

sent in by

God Themselves

 

says I’m owed

fifty leaves

man of means

 

see Me now

bring your watch

chain is all

 

signed in real

bloody ink

msg ends

 

 

Wagner on ice

 

do the Russians dunk

men in yolk before

they’re deployed

or preferring hard

boiled devour them like

salted nuts

downing vodka shots

either way what counts

not the rate

but the cost per day

bed & breakfast lunch

evening meal

ammo clothing boots

casket flag & ten

gun salute

 

 

Peer Gynt & I

 

Armageddon’s neither close at hand

nor afoot it’s as they say the game

never up until Brunhilda’s voice

shatters the ice

while the transit of the Valkeries

cross the Baltic zooming Hitler’s gang

down to the hall of the Mountain King

start of Act Three’s

nowhere near the ending anyroad

fantasies are just like proper life

persons who only exist in time

archetypes free

spirits live forever or at least

resurrection automatically

brings them back as soon as they have gone

off for a Burt

on the other hand who knows with death

fairly common best watch out be true

to oneself neglect heroic try

staying alive

 

 

Orpheus in Squidland

 

how can China change

sides like Eric Blair

claimed to use his real

moniker eh

 

or will Orwell do

trust an Eton man

walking holidays

dressed as a tramp

 

was Tiresias

half as mad to learn

how the others felt

but the Chinese

 

they’re inscrutable

Marco Polo came

home & flogged some tales

porcelain too

 

doesn’t mean a thing

Georgie boy was fly

hedged his bets no way

China is fey

wilderness song

 

given you my word

choice is take or leave it yours

silence the absurd

 

I’ll accept a sneeze

cough or whispers overheard

shooting like the breeze

 

but you have a spare

organ play a tune for me

flash your derrière

 

well the answer’s mean

come again there’s nothing there

calling that obscene

 

echoes cut the air

through the empty atmosphere

predators draw near

not seen on radio

long live The Dead

without prejudice

 

Coronation shot

wears the crown with safety pins

rules Britannia smiles & waves

guarded by a gang of skins

headbutts no slaves

 

gave the world a pair of sons

bosom friends get knighthoods lords

ship for loads of extra runs

cricket my words

 

left Diana took his mum’s

part she stooped to clearing mines

till she tripped on one then crumbs

scene of the crime’s

 

muddied called Inspector Morse

even he said stately homes

not my cup of char the curse

too many rooms

 

still the theme of palace wars

playing out on Amazon’s

rival bid to seize the throne’s

par for the cause

 

 

letters of mark

 

whaling ships tie caution to the mast

though their mariners be sick & wet

island hops cross deep-sea waters harm

no one except

submarines in fur or blubber coats

zooming sleepy seals & Moby Dicks

with the swell so high they think it safe

wait till your row

boats turn up & grizzly men harpoons

at the ready stick them while they snooze

then suspend & flense their bodies boil

off the rewards

says a lot about the human cause

burning nature’s finest midnight oil

bright enough to read & write or seal

skin watertight

blokes exploring distant shores before

steaming home to pen adventure books

damn the cheek of authors hang their pink

corpses on hooks

 

 

after the math

 

calling Diane Abbot one

piece of racist scum who’s left

Jesus Christ the Holy Ghost

God on their throne

 

as a priest with 3 i-ds

I’ve been gifted faulty sight

can’t tell grey from black & white

readheads or blondes

 

note my spelling too it’s old

nothing to investigate

there I’d suffer Marilyn’s

company’s all

 

now you know I’m positive

check me out or chuck the same

difference rules she don’t belong

neither do we

 

tryna get your head around

stop it’s only us against

kings & queens & all their gang

ten to the enth

 

 

city bumpkin talk

 

deadcat kills 7 pacifists Jeez the kinder folk you get round here Leonard Cohen cringed in effigy not exactly bunny rabbis but the odd dog collar looks hardly outta place drunken Catholics sober Hindus Lefty Voodooists Decommissioned Idol Worshipers Buddy Satnavs Iconoclasts incense burning sport socks sellers shifty Shiites Sunny Jims owl Proddy puffin-hats plus sundry Non-Denominal Demi-gogs your correspondent Zonk Pifflesquate has spoken off on this in his current affairs broadcasts or giveus News At Thirteen O’clock Mein Herr just some ideas slung together for sponsorship deals on Broadcast Lies notwithstanding identical twits positioned at opposing ends of the political perspective maybe your devil maybe your lord as many uptight dudes declare at 10 to 1 it’s odds-on you bet

dreaming of electric shambles

once upon a woodland dump

fallen robots lay

faulties propped against the stumps

whirring time away

write-offs piled in salvage clumps

blind to night & day

where the toads & crickets jumped

miracles did play

out their endgame beaten chumps

death could never slay

burnt out circuits rusted pumps

short on DNA

 

 

Tinnitus Androidicus

 

see it’s like the background noise

engines make at altitudes

jetting off for paradise

kettle of boils

 

can you hear me Mother no

well perhaps you’re going deaf

too a wound up body clock

wronging of bells

 

Irish over shaken rocks

ocean ripples underground

shoaling drones that duck & dive

thundering bulls

 

meat weighed out in decibels

ninety peaking ninety-five

muffs give no protection keep

taking the pills

 

eh you think it’s funny great

balls of ice vibrating all

day & night for pity’s sake

preying like bills

 

 

death cult quips

 

wasn't Elvis shot

why you’d think they had

just as much to pot

out of him dead

 

reading signs is all

whether Lennon got

karmic justice gets

stuck in me head

 

have a heart they sang

danced about & made

teenagers go wild

jealousy see

 

still the king lives on

Coronation Street

too the walls of tombs

musical nudes

 

what became of them

where they slaves or priests

stars on afterlives

harpies of hip

 

 

Hooey & the Carbon Newts

 

what’s a living force

other than the pulse

of the universe

 

inorganic hey

nothing wrong with Non

Plussed of Milky Way

 

never having loved

doesn’t mean they’re left

off the shelf of life

 

take a lump of rock

from another world

on the mantlepiece

 

tells no time but hell

neither does the clock

till ya winds it up

 

 

the insecticides

 

natural curiosity

was a disaster for the

ant community whose nest

kiddies had found

 

all the gang joined in before

long 11 hundred pins

scrambled up their kecks & screamed

leave us our home

 

still the den was soon exhumed

while its precious hoard of eggs

did as food for greedy hens

so much was learned

 

plus that ants don’t stand a chance

up against determined kids

long the Siege of Anthill reigned

over their games

 

till some Russian soldiers came

rooting through the gangster’s lives

might’ve called it Ants’ Revenge

had they survived

No Offence!

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!