To the invisible boy

His fringe is too long for him to see.
He lives in a cluttered flat.
In a sea of windows.
The flat is so full of belongings and bulk buys and boxed electricals and broken electricals and cleaning buckets and TV aerials that all that is left are the doors and corridors.
The fishes are his favourite.
Whiskery, prehistoric fish-tank fiends.
Fins fan like lamp post ads in the wind.

The people sweating in the sweat shop.
Red and thin from other people's dirty work.
Look slow and beautiful amongst rich cloth, through the curly grill.
The steam from the iron's chugg, chugg, chuggs is the old steam train.
It all hangs in the mist of a dream, waking him up.

He stretches and wriggles, immediately alert.
Wide eyed.
Charged as fine wire.
Spinning with desire.
Looking for the bogey man in the cloakroom.
Stepping through the kitchen to see what they're doing in the sink.
Find the discarded plane wing.
Negotiate the books.
Learn how to swim.

Blue with tiers.
Octagonal spheres.
Oily rainbows orbit the edge of his camera's lens.
Like photo fairies they pitter patter on my optical lens.

Blue as a prairie sky.
Cloudless and unreal.
Above an old oak tree.
And the bottom of a row boat reflected on water as calm as zen.

The end of the world is in a field in Suffolk.
At its edge is frozen earth.
A field of thick squat green leaves.
Ridged in fist sized clods.
The air is wet.
And smells of bonfire.
Trees emerge and disappear.
A barn owl is swallowed from flight.
A white, fog filled, world muffled and blind.
Huddled figures pick through the new land.
Life searching out life in deadening land.

Courage mon ami
Courage at the OK choral.
The big cajones are out for a bit of bare back.
Roll up roll up.
The stage's been set, just needs lighting.
Step up to the plate, take the bull by the horns.
This one was born fighting.

Tag-team tongues lick.

From fuggy to frozen in 20 minutes,
Hot dream scorched blood,
thins to winter ice.
Then the powders and the creams
Smoothed and preened.
Preparation for full beam.
Tipping on heels
into a cab like King's Cross's First Queen.
Black legs gazelle strut and swish in grey wool.
Arms akimbo all 6 foot, stripiness and eyes on fire.
Resigning reality for reddening love-dells.

At sixteen he ran away with the May day circus.
At fourteen,
He'd seen the spinning lights,
Saloing in the night.
Heard distant shrieks.
He'd pressed his nose to cold glass.
Peered across wind-split fields to watch his future at play.

His room was the warmest in the farm house.
The top room where cobwebs collected corn dust.
And toy soldiers ruled play.
He loved his mum's floury arms
His father's hairy nose and wellies.
But he wanted to stop swinging in trees
He wanted to fly the trapeze.

In a trance he packed himself up.
He took a toothbrush, three pairs of pants and a sandwich.
What else do you need for circus life?
They give you a caravan, a costume and a job.
He could wash his pants when he needed more.

Walking straight and tall to his mum was more difficult than he'd dreamt.
He knelt and told her he'd be back one day.

Diary Tightrope.

Walking through my diary.
Turning page to page.
I bumped into premeditation.
and ran from impromptu.
Heaven's forbid anything should happen that hadn't been planned.

Walking through the perennial jungle.
Delving under overgrown months.
Cutting down desolate days.
Hobbling freedom for foretold futures.
Reducing potential to prescription:
dentist,
doctor,
dinner,
dates
and diary drab.

It came to me that I was better off without my diary.

The orphanage idled in the crucifiying heat.
Children melted into their iron cots.
Wet-eyes lolling behind the bars.
The nuns were kind.
They filmed the children - for posterity.
Much later a projector showed frames of
children blinking in a smudgy run of '60s Cine colour.
The nuns sent images of round-eyed tots to the red tops.
But kindness couldn't take away poverty or save posterity.
Didn't pay for the food or the clothes or the trips to a new home.

Outside a three legged dog spun circles in the dust.
A paper kite flapped in the rooftops.
And the dirty river heaved its mass from bank to bank.
The cries from the floating market could be heard
rattling down lean-to alleyways;
Knocking on the doors of lazybed merchants.

A row boat slimed with river grease
Slipped to dock.
From it stepped two Christian folk.
Full of piety and good intentions.
They took the baby.
Said they'd love it and bring it up Christian.
The baby mewled for its nun.
Pawing at its new mum.
All the way back.
Across many seas and countries.
To a new home.
With Christian folk.
Who meant well but didn't do well.
Not well at all.

Her new home.
From her window.
In the room she shared with the other adoptee.
She watched leaves falling from the trees.
She grew taller and taller.
And as soon as she could she left the family.

Gym Days

Blonde hair in a brittle bun.
Face caked with make up.
Legs streaked with 'fake bake'.
Box tight in black shorts and a pink zip top.
Trainer socks sparkle Daz white.
Each and every stroke fresh as virgin plastic.
Neat as a pin.
What goes on in her head?
Does she do geometry as she pumps iron?
Or does she think about the boy she's yet to meet?
What are you thinking?

Boy obsessing on his reflection.
Merging with a glass vision.
He pulls back his short sleeves and flexes his muscles.
Watching them pop.
He stretches his calves - too meaty to be lean.
A teenage illusion.
Watching him, watching others to catch them watching.

She's a little boss eyed.
Her tiny pearl earrings are real.
She's got a small roll round her tiny middle
Which she's sweating into submission.
Intelligence lurks between the ipod screwed to her ears.
Another fifteen minutes and she can go home to the kids.

Immutable.
I am one.
A law.
An absolute.
Untested and uncontested.
An unholy religion.
Supple and shifting.
I am one.
One rose:
A hundred petals.
One cloud:
A thousand drops
One word:
means untold thousands.
One love:
One in a million.
I am one.
One idea.
Based on another thousand.

It is not so much about the artist.
But his art.
He can be self-obsessed,
sleep with thirteen year old girls
And think he's god.
As long as his colours work.
His chilly bedlam will thaw.
He'll rise above his chosen path.
And his crazy heart.
And exist as a man in art.

It is a game of numbers.
A universal language based on 0 - vigintillion.
Days, a matter of hours.
When your numbers up - it's up.

The nearest star to the sun.
At the speed of light.
Time,
The Universe,
A Moeibius strip,
death....
a bottomless pit.

Numbers begin and end ad infinitum.
Everything came from nothing and through it all we see 'love'/0.
Nothing came from everything and through it all we see 'love all'.

A frozen hole in the back of the head.
Gaping and aching.
Booby-trapped and matched for each awakening.
This time or next time.
It might be fine.
It's not abating.
It's always breaking.

The odd day it ducks and dives.
Weaving away like Delilah's bucket.
Pretending to pretend.
Covering up in case it offends,
Heaven forfend.
It should offend.

Keep it safe for christ sake.
It knows not what it do - this great big hole in want of glue.
It tries and tries.
But widens and widens like legs on ice.
Or split clothing pegs.
It could mean you are dead.
Or just misled.

The longest kiss in the World lasted 417 hours.
That is over 17 days.
No one can kiss that long?
Without breathing or sleeping?
Kissing stops being fun when you can't breathe.

Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher were married for 84 years.
That is the longest marriage in the World.
That is 30 thousand and 66 days.
Not that long when you think about.
They married in 1924.
The interwar years.
Before Aids, before we went to the moon.

The longest war in the world lasted longer than any of these things.
It lasted 335 years.
between the Netherlands and Scilly.
But no-one got killed, luckily.

Ode to Music

What's with all this affrettando?
Let's take it a little adagio.
Why always allegro?
Too much agitati.
Get with the dolcissimo
A touch of the Tempo primos.
Suits the patetico.
Lusingando, caressingly.
Gives a sense of brio.
Con anima, con anima.
Teneramento, tenramento.
For those of us with nobilmento.
Those of us who will not pass silently.
But martello the hours and the tempo.

Forests

The home and
throne.

The beginning,
and the edge.

Whispering,
haloed leaves in a sun struck Autumn tree.

Countries built from parts,
human parts and political papers...
Vietnam: an emerald land, salted pineapple on a stick and men racing engines on prayers and strategically placed elastic bands.
Afghanistan: dusty hems, the chorus of Euphrates bullrush in the desert wind and roadblocks.
USA: home of the hardboiled detective, the talent of positivity and the lick of tongue over gleaming teeth.
Russia: Duchas in birdfull woods, vast expanses of empty land, scurvy, downtown bars and long limbed girls.
A country cannot be a sum of these small parts.
But they are.
The child's eye view.
The watchful neighbourly shrew.
Human threads knotted into life.

Countries built from parts,
no journalistic comment, no political spin...
images, words and imagination.
Vietnam: a series of black and white shots of dark-eyed shock.
Afghanistan: a jigsaw of unrest, tribes and numbers dead.
USA: big meals, sit coms and religious zeal.
Russia: muscly, singing presidents, fur coats and ice.
A country cannot be a sum of these small parts.
But they are.
The news story.
The wiki leak.
Lines of integrity blurring usefulnesss and uselessness...
Trying to be perfect.
Achieving passable.
With perfect parts.

A little worse for wear sights at 6 last night.
Stumbling suits with wonky party hats,
Wandering wide-eyed from bus stop to bus stop.
Dribbling drivel into the mince pies.
Trying to retain professionalism whilst descending into annihilation.
Christmas zombies - whacked out from seasonal jollity.
Michael got off with someone he shouldn't have.
And Lucy got out something she shouldn't.
Christmas carnage.
With party hats....

Cyberspace is....
Where all the money is,
And the love.
A load of servers housed in desert warehouses with Google written on them.
A perfect illustration of how humans humanise without logic or reason.
Where wars are made and won.
It is a jolly electric family divorced from reality.
I am not sure how different real life is from cyberspace.
It has all the same characteristics.
'Cyperspace is from space
and Life is from, where?
Venus?'

Fools' Paradise

No dark night of the soul.
No black dog.
Not even a grey squirral.
It's not rocket science
or GCSE chemistry.
It's love.

Love is a rainbow.
A night on the train.
A hand brushing away the rain.
No cloudy skies.
Not a never-ending day.

It's love.
I love you.
And you love me.
You said so.
It's ditto.

Last night I had a dream.
Then in the hour caught between
I saw a poem.
It drifted by.
I wanted to write it down
because I knew it'd drown.
It drowned.
It had water in it.
Something to do with drops in a flood.
And floods turning into drops.

Patterns in the numbers.
In the curves and the lines.
In the words and the faces.
Patterns, patterns everywhere. Antennae winking at links to make.
Joining up the disjointed.
Netting the miscellaneous.
Putting full-stops in. Making endings and neat breaks.
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Nothing comes from Something

The well is full.
A veritable over spilling.
But it's dry.
Whisps of poetic tumble weed drift.
And sick eyes look on.
Nothing comes from nothing.
But it can also come from something.
Cluttered cupboard of cross words.
Shouting in the dark.
Mute in the face of an overwhelming maelstorm.
Muted by the mulch.
Lost in the static of a word-filled brain.
Without a single poetic drain.

Ideas ran circles.
Hair flowing, bodies whorling.
Climbing the walls.
Fingers and toes instinctively clinging to the holes.
Leaping from bridge to bridge.
Starfished against empty blue.
Clawing for precedence.
The best clung.
Broadening and building in incubation.
Mattoid - idiot and genius two-fold.
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Exhaustion drained the bones and made it hard to see.
A taxi cab ride through icebound streets.
Home to where the heart can breathe.
To where the gaps are filled with family.
And happiness is pizza and flat fizz.
And forgetting in a run of oneliners.
And hot dreams.
And waking pleased to find a clear and present morning.
What the heart foresaw.
The mind gave parentheses.
The day and people let lie with ease.

Leaving,
he turned and took one last look.
What's next?
Beef stew...
A job in advertising or
Project managering.
More time with people.
No more danger money.
Working out where I want to be.
Knowing that I am not here.
I am an ex this and an ex that.
Always an amateur...
In what's next.
It's all new.
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Milk

It looks so pretty.
More sparkle than Monroe.
It is untouched for this first dawn hour.
I didn't hear it fall, I normally do.
They said it was coming last Monday.
I remember last year's lot. And a time 50 years ago.
Last year I slipped and smacked my hip - that took a gingery few months to heal.
50 years ago I slid down the main road on a tray we'd got on our wedding day.
I am watching my breath making haloes,
The breath from last night slides down the window into icey pools.
The last of the milk went on Weetabix.
And my fingerless gloves need fingers.
My daughter brought me padded boots last Christmas but they've got no grip.
So I am contemplating wellies.
The pavement's everest.
Domestic salt can grit the first two steps.
I'll leave the heater burning.
Doris next door says not to.
But I don't want to get into the cold from the cold.
I've been head of a family took part in Dday now I forget my name and spend the morning working upto getting the milk.
I have a blueveined nose, hairy ears and nostrils and strange crusty spots of skin that don't go away with scrubbing.
If anyone had told me that this was getting old I think I would have tried harded when I was young, maybe.

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Life is a language without subtitles.
It's the oily yellow of a boiled yoke,
and a hair's breadth crack on a dish.
It is the first cry and the last breath.
It is all the Summer's and Winter's inbetween.
It is the jagged tear and the smiling eye.
Life is a dance to a hidden rhythm,
It's new songs pelted out to an old tune.