In-Love Doggerel

You're a starship powered on Xanadu nectar;
I'm a pogo stick on coal.
You're a majestic arc of the milky way;
I'm a quark in an unsold cheese roll.
Your eyes launch songbirds and sonnets;
Come fly with me on my crackling comet.

Your hair evokes the erotic scents of perfumed night bazaars;
I exude burning tyres on torched, smashed diesel cars.
Beside you a pulsar is like a sorry matchstick spark;
As I stand in a room of moths,
I'm the dark.

You're the clearest proof if there is a God,
Their image is of your resplendent own;
I'm often asked to be the face promoting payday loans.
As you glide past men how their minds dissolve,
Their eyes kerbcrawl out their face;
I'm all Genghis Khan cologne liberally splashed over exploding beer crates.

Even when you sneeze,
You make this man go weak at the knees.
And if you had dandruff, as you brushed your hair,
Surely it would sparkle like snow through Swiss mountain air?
And that sliver of marmalade left on your cheek,
Reminds me of liquid gold encased in an amber hive of magic bees.
And when you carry rubbish to your bin,
I follow you just so I might fall right in.
Then, as you're unblocking the drain, really rocking those wellies,
I, like a smitten garden gnome, 
Wobble,
And turn to jelly..

Verily, Grace Kelly, may I be your Shelley,
Though you gaze rapturously at a shopping channel on the telly?


  

As Tender As Exploding Teargas Grenades In The Palace Of Skimmed Goats' Milk

An elephants' graveyard of vacuum cleaners - 
Acoustic, unplugged, John Cage. 
A light dust sheen accumulates around their trunks: 
The all-tangled Cro Magnon robot compost heap, 
Slumming in the open-plan tomb of my jazz-gloom basement. 

Another one every year or so I add to their numbers - 
Another perished vacuum, sucked down, down the mouse-musk mire. 
It's all Crimewatch and The Wire. 

Am I The East London Vacuum Cleaner Strangler, 
Or, maybe The Newham One? 

Imagine watching the TV news - the cardboard talking-head "neighbour": 
Yeah, yeah. I saw him in shop once, 
Where he bought milk made with goats. 
I mean, why would someone ever do that..? 
Since then I've never trusted a man that buys goats' milk. 
Skimmed. Goats. Milk. Ho! 

And, he might go on.. 
Well, actually,  
I was quite moved watching the police smash his door in with their uniform legs, 
And throw tear gas grenades nice and tidy in his hallway smaller than mine. 
It makes me feel protected, and powered yes? 
At long last getting value for my Council Tax? Agreed. 
I showed them my Neighbourhood Watch sticker on my front window sill. 
I display a Baby On Board sticker there every day too.
It's good for this country they said.

Forest Gate Mystery Train

I'm on the Forest Gate Mystery Train, 
With my burgled geranium eyes. 
I'm on the Forest Gate Mystery Train, 
Sighing goldfish clock sardine spies. 

Spammed atomic; trolleyed marine, 
Frost-buckled arms glow margarine, 
Slender dolls slalom offside knees, 
Capsules backslide into the stalagmite City. 

Tutankhamen consortia; 
Shoulder-penguins soggy cadge the dappled glimmer, 
Ink-blot floozies aim the infatuation-Derringer: 
Coffee?... Drink? 
And the treacle line thuds floating eurhythmic ghostly tambourines. 

The sly budgies chirp office trash - 
Yammering satellites eclipse; 
Aural chalk lines extradite silhouettes of lips. 
Forest Gate Mystery Train - 
Silence on the soundless amplifies. 
I travel a million underground-air-miles, 
And mermaids cycle the jelly eel sky. 
Mind the gap: you're half woman, I'm half fish - 
So the one and us evolves.. 

Forest Gate Mystery Train - 
Leering, marching men; somnambulist egg brains, 
Millionaires roll higher off ghostly rabbit-hutch plains. 
Win a dream lottery and slap down the deposit, 
In Stratford there's now a launch pad for a bungee-jumping space rocket. 
(It's just by the casino). 
Warp factor none, 
A ready meal for one, 
Microwaveable thoughts blister the bubbling plastic film, 
And the plasmatic Krakatoa infusion fizzles  
a Noah's Ark of arterial gerbils. 

Forest Gate Mystery Train - 
You've got one. 
I've got one. 

The Positive Self-Hate Miracle Plan

Let's lose weight,
Let's discover the yin and yang of protein and complex carbohydrate.
It's never too late to let your corporeal fat eat cake.
So let's lose weight.
And, then?
Then, let's look inside your cavernous space,
And discover your previously hidden, 
And uniquely transcendent,
And unparagoned, 
Blissful Essence.

Let's go!

Let's lose weight.
Because it's the only way - to lose weight.
Let's deflate your billowing concertina face.
Let's drain away those flabby bingo-arm thighs;
Sight the edacity: I snack, I die.
Chant: For I am Spirit, pure and eternal..For I am Spirit, pure and eternal..
Let's lose weight.

Pain-feast your lingua-nausea mantra;
Really utilise your hidden pneuma matter.
Oh, and,
The flashing lights, the tingling arms?
Mouth striking shapes to burglar alarms?
Perhaps, a smidgen of self harm?
Tremors, blushing, perspiring, shaking, flushing?
That's okay:
If it ain't hurting..
It's a positive thing to focus there your self-hate.

It's not easy to lose weight -
Especially when you refuse to lose weight.
No, we mustn't allow your feckless mentalism to dictate.
Instead,
Appreciate yourself depreciate:
Scale away your inducing corpus,
And irrigate.
Irrigate.

Stare yourself down, reflecting off your plate.
Speed-read all my magazines:
Glean the enlightened screed of my shapely New Age dream;
Allow me to melt away your pizza footprint;
Gracefully fade you to your sculpted meme.

Unsuicide bomb those spare tyres with love.
Vacuum-pack your stomach with tender wires - see above.
Let's lose weight.
And strike your utter repose!

And you'll soon delightedly discover your swooning lover,
And how the sweet mirror shall melt of you!

Be like a sliver of crystal glass;
As svelte as the skin of flowing water;
Skim through the air like a flying saucer;
Writhe your multi-orgasmic tiger,
Deposing ounces, you shall footfall utopia.
Let's lose weight.

You can do it!
..For I am Spirit, pure and eternal..
Let's go!

She Captures Shooting Stars

Her fingertips lifted my limbs.
And all the glowing universe..

The memories - a flash, and a storm,
Shall never wash away the stars.

The bittersweet enchantment,
Redounds her absence present.
And wherever she goes,
She captures shooting stars.

And like two broken rainbows entwined,
A few months only, a lifetime;
This perfume rain, that brook of sky,
Her essence outside time..

A Real Woman Has Had A Baby (A Real Woman Though She's A Princess)

A woman has given birth to a...
A baby!
Let us rejoice!

What a marvel!
But,
What has been going on?
I mean,
A woman has had a baby?
Is this a twenty-first century cutting-edge technology doing right,
Or doing wrong?

The BBC,
CBeebies,
Britain's premier (subscription) MILF porn channels,
All agog, or gagging - depending on the channel.
On the BBC they were gagging,
The (subscription) MILF porn channels, not so much, ironically.
Nicholas Witchell, by name, on triple overtime I bet.
Quite right too, and thank goodness.
On the BBC, nothing else.

A woman has had a baby!
A real woman though she's a princess.

I remember where I was when I first heard the miraculous news:
I was watching the news, but it was nowhere.
I wondered why.
Then, I stopped wondering why:
A woman has had a baby - that's why!
I said no way!
How? A woman....?
But obviously the scientists have this holy grail commanded.

So, the country that gave the world the railways,
Bendy buses,
And self-service tanning salons for only one pound-an-hour, 
Behold, peasants of Albion, and the heathen boundaries beyond, 
This most miraculous of bounties:
A baby - of woman!
Surely more amazing than the pyramids;
Of more import than Syrian skirmishes?
Rejoice! You must!

A woman - a British woman to boot!
Has given birth!
To a..
There's no other way to say this -
A baby!
I can't stop saying it.
Neither can the BBC, and the other responsible media, understandably.

The baby even said its name: George!
My name is George. Just like that!
My name is George, and,
I am a baby - the world's first baby born to a woman;
A real woman though a princess.

For a moment there,
And I'm ashamed to admit this -
I thought it was all propaganda.
But propaganda to what end? I could not fathom.
So it's not propaganda I realised.
Phew! What a relief.

Now,
No longer shall babies be born under toadstools,
Or be couriered by unicorns from fluffy little clouds.
Sad, in a way..
Maybe these traditional baby-delivering practises will be considered old-fashioned before long.
But is this progress?
I think so.
Outside of work, women need a hobby -
This will do.

Maybe, even in our own lifetime,
Women may soon give birth to babies in such Malthusian numbers,
That it will be considered so mundane and ordinary,
A woman doing baby-birthing will no longer occupy the news,
Full Spectrum Dominance style,
The way this baby has since its "conception".
Conception - whatever the hell that might mean..

Let's see how multi-skilled women really are:
Having babies, and multi-skilling at the same time?
Can they do both, and at the same time?
You know, I bet they can.

I need a lawn mower.
Actually, I don't.
But if I did,
I wonder..

Could a woman give birth to a lawn mower?
A baby lawn mower?
Just wondered.
Would that be silly?
I couldn't imagine Nicholas Witchell getting giddy about a woman -
A real woman though a princess -
Having a natural baby lawn mower birth.
Could you?

Nicholas Witchell giving birth to a real baby though,
That's another matter.
I'd gladly pay to see that:
Nicholas Witchell giving birth to a real baby,
Even though he is a princess.

The Bling Of Austerity

The Rachman-like bijou debt-pools:
The temp-tenement bazaar.
And the cats with weight issues slurp slightly less cream,
They don't mind, it makes for the best PR.

This clamouring ring is the bling of austerity.
It's the best kind of enmity therapy.

In the days of yore, proles bore the poll tax.
Now we are enjoined to rejoice the bedroom tax.
So next, shall we explore the clitoris tax too?
Those lazy, pleasure-seeking, ruby-button scroungers..

This clamour is the bling of austerity.
Swing low that sweet bling of austerity.

Hollowed-out high streets "ripe for development";
Kept-empty luxury apartments boast no viewing tenants.
Some students sell sex to help keep down their debts:
Generation Y funded kindly by Generation X.

It's yet another nudge for the bling of austerity.
Moving forward the soft bling of austerity.

Cashless society, cashless hand-me-downs;
There's a place you can go in these food bank boom towns.
This Baby Boomer wonderland:
This home-owning silver sea,
Saves Jerusalem's equity from eternity, maybe.

The pawnbrokers, and the payday loaners -
The Big Society stakeholders:
Chuggers in clover:
Vampire surgeons drip-feed their blood donors.

With their curtains drawn tight and their wide screen TVs,
Their fecklessness - living shamelessly so beyond their means,
Thus, always it's us:
The Hard Working Families.
You know what I mean..?
..Yes:
Stick the rolling pin on the weakest demographic:
The Legions of Schadenfreude target market.
Stand by the demagogue divisions, 
Speed-date consensus conviction,
Your eyes shut so wide, flash-mob ostrich.

This wonderful thing is the bling of austerity.
Let's swoop and glide,
As the chariot wings of austerity
glow.

Meanwhile, In Sweden..

Human resources -
She works in human resources.
Don't tell anyone.

Sometimes I hear those screams from her basement;
Screams like giving birth to a fully grown and functioning dentist.

Then, after the screams,
There's that familiar matryoshka doll silence.

The crooked blood leaks from her sleek harbinger mouth,
As she carries the sleek heavy-duty plastic refuse bags,
One by one,
To cast into the swollen river, biblical.

Later,
The police boats circle, stall, and circle,
As the deathbuoys from Hades bob to the surface.

And,
As she dreams her distilled murmuring slumbers,
A shocked Japanese tourist tries to understand the good policeman manning the cordoned-off bridge,
And what the mystery of the shiny bags,
Thrown by beautiful aitch-ah lady into the seawater, means.

When the beautiful aitch-ah lady comes home,
Bearing a pizza and some wine,
    She whispers:
           Don't ever ask
Never ask -
   I'm fine...

All right then.
She knows my view on the dead-eyed sharks that throb and thrive,
              in, 
the liquidiser planet: Human Resources.

At night,
Sometimes she slips down the stairwell,
To banshee-howl with the cats in the alleyway outside.
The owls never twi-twoo along to the a capella jazz from hell..

I'm not sure what she sees in me either.
You see,
People working in human resources have also been disappearing from this city.
She never asks why I sometimes have a spaced-out look as I walk through the door,
Entrails swinging wildly around my neck.
She just tut-tuts and suggests:
Have a shower if you like -
Your favourite long-life organic lentil soup is defrosting
in the new solar-powered microwave -
You've got time.

We watch a Swedish detective..
He's striding towards a caravan in the middle of a field by the motorway.
And you can tell even his coffee has a hangover and needs a couple of aspirin..

He opens the door,
There's no-one inside.
So he takes a look around.
Close up: photos and newspaper clippings -
They're all dead!
Dead! except...except for her..
A realisation - boom!
His face twitches: she's next!
He tears off that photo as tyres screech outside:
It's him, the bastard!
He stumbles.
A Saab Estate careers toward the motorway.
Norway!
He's going to fucking Norway!
It's only twenty minutes..!
Now the detective runs, stumbling across the field,
Screaming to a colleague down the phone...

Cut to..
Woman.
Her phone rings.
She looks at the phone,
But she needs to open this special-delivery parcel.
What's in this parcel?
She's puzzled.
She looks at the phone again.
She looks at the parcel.

A pulsating bass arises..
The detective screams again, stranded in the field,
Wild-eyed, desperate.
He closes his eyes.
The sounds of the motorway fade -
Just his heavy breathing now - full volume.
Heartbeats. 
Stop.
Cut to black.

The Smile Sink

I'm a clinical psychologist, 
Specialising in narcissism within hyperspace, 
Where it's all about the first-person narrative: 
Where the photographer is the sitter; 
Where the smirking cat points at their litter.. 

                      and, Flash! 

Gong! 

The preemptive future-proof memory cache:

The show and tell.

But am I here,  

Where my asymmetric self-portraits hatch? 

Is the view only real through the unsleeping lens? 

Is anxiousness the motor of this super-saturated-self? 

Is our interior long and gone chained inside the always-on Panopticon? 

                   The contra-flow confluence - 
Everyone a million points of light. 
Most walk the glass-click-down in stop-gap time, 
Dappled in the shimmering gloom, skin-tight. 
Flex with the nearest vat of wine. 
Yeah, see, I'm looking fine.. 

You could delete that one, though, 
And..that one. 
I'll delete one too if you.. 

Remind me: how the hell am I again? 
How old am I? 
I wonder: how old should I be - here? 

The performer steals themselves for the cage. 
Tag the sage. 
Disconnect to share and engage - 
It's the only way. 
Watch the you-and-them. 
Everyone with earphones on. 
And all the eyes peel down the sounds leaking silence. 

            eat say day date data dated rate 
                     careful addictive sizzle 
                frazzled  

The Smile Sink - 
Don't blink. 
There's a lot to study in the meta of me-think. 
In the liminal smog pools the dawn patrols subject their objects - 
Take the tamarind hit from the gloaming ersatz. 

I'm a clinical psychologist, 
Specialising in narcissism within hyperspace, 
Where the photographer is the sitter. 
You can follow me on Twitter. 

A Benday Dot Haiku Zephyr Adrift Over An Empty Beach During An Eclipse

   0000000000000000000000000000

 0 .... ............. ..

.............. 0000       .... ...................... . .      

... . ................... , 

                                                                                 
o0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000                              

Is Now A Good Time?

Is now a good time?

No?
Oh, so,
How about     dot    dot    now?
Or  dot        dot dot       dot
Now?

Well, that's three,
Now.
Any of them any good to go?
Any of them on the moment?

You say you like the second now?
Okay then.
So turn your watch back twenty seconds,
And we can be right there, again,
In that second, now, any second now.
dot dot   
   dot
Let's enjoy the full detail and texture,
Right now.

               in between the raindrops the rainbow hides

Oh, no..no..
Of course I don't mind.
I have time - 
And time..

Ready?
Any second now then..
And..here we go -
In your own time..

dot
          dot

Hmmm,
Yes, you're right,
This particular now feels...thud...so light.
How now I notice how did I never notice it passed me by,
Now I notice it passed me by?

..It's so silvery!

How it drifts, abandoned, by the sky,
Like a falling blue butterfly,
Tossed on the honeycomb stream,
Yet, the deep-sea slopes in dream.

Here now,
You are here, are here,
The feel - so soft and gossamer;
An mmmnness - nothing heavy;
A heavenly lightness deep.

Yes,
This now is a good time,
In between the raindrops, here.

.                .                .

Unmatch Dot Com

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But,
Luckily,
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with one of those embarrassing silences,
When your partner asks:
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Because,
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Love is..
Whatever..