My old school's gone, demolished and rebuilt as a much larger school. Blueprints drawn over memory. I run through solid walls where once I took PE. I raise my hand in strange surroundings. I smoke behind bike sheds that have drifted off with the smoke.
I'm the architect of then.
God is in the detail
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Boris has the Delta Blues
Sajid fills such tiny shoes
Priti - it belies her nature
Britain lacks true legislators
Dom's in perfect, wrecking splendour
Now he's coming off his bender
Gove sits silent at the back
Moving forward, spots the crack.
A half-eaten takeaway in a box on a wall goads a portly jogger. A dog-walker is more walker-dog as his poodle doodles along. The paper van arrives (it's surprisingly sturdy.) The news is tossed onto the kerb by a surly driver. Bad news day or Monday blues? I buy one to find out.
Early, heavy rain. Everywhere's a water feature. Tarmac bubbles and glistens as if it recalls being hot. Kerbs shine as drains gargle with an unspeakable mouthwash. I'm behind glass, watching nature create an exhibition of itself, curate itself, the whole museum to myself.
A For Sale signs lies in a garden. Are they selling their lawn? The corner shop beeps me in. No milk today, just a huge space in the cooler where milk was, and will be again. A man buys beer for breakfast. I bet he's out of milk, too. The corner shop beeps me out. I'm dairy free.
I dreamed I was awake and I was lost in stupor's clutch
Am I now still dreaming - are they real the things I touch
Am I wandering aimlessly the valleys of my mind
Or living in the world we feel that we have not defined
The nature of reality
We pick our own normality.
I wake when the gull squawks. Now we're both annoyed. Where's a buzzard when you need one? Britain's Got Talons. I'm still a silhouette in the remaining dark, though I remain positive as a living negative. I hear that distant freight train, rumbling on - sang someone, I bet.
Morning's performing. Birdsong scats around rhythms of a distant, passing train. A red-faced man fails to silently clink wine bottles into a bin. A car's heavy metal gears grind in accompaniment with my teeth. Birdsong scats around the clinks of the man with the clink problem.
There is a moment-all too brief
Between the time stars fade from view
And the light of the morning tide breaks through
There is a moment-all too brief
Where the world changes shift and we can hear
The click of the turn on this imperfect sphere
And we are reset.
Everything was made of rubber when I was a kid. Rubber band balls, rubber footballs, rubber plants, rubber lino, rubber plimsoles, rubber wigwams, rubber guns, rubber swords.
I realise that the 70's was my warm-up decade. I could come to no harm. If I had, I'd have bounced back!
I glide down the lineup of the week
I stop to make small talk with Tuesday
"And what do you do?" I enquire
" I perform after Monday" Tuesday gulps
"Oh, that is interesting" I reply
Wednesday waits with wobbly knees
"And what do you do?" I enquire...
THE LONGEST DAY
All today's the longest day
Tomorrow will be shorter
Daylight will be carried off
By some sort of night porter.
An impalpable mist inhabits my garden as I open my back door to nature's dot-to-dot. Minute droplets of water become trapped insects in fossilised jade, aspic splendour. The sun will eventually reclaim this gift. The inexorable cycle will restart. I wonder at time's vast reach.
Morning's in its Sunday best. An impatient lorry stops and hisses at a red light. A man wears a Hi-Vis vest for dangers unknown. 2 belching, smoking vans diverge at a junction like a tiny Red Arrows display. I reflect upon the corner shop window as an unaccompanied dog trots by.
The morning's sent on rinse and repeat. A fleet of clouds sail past in battleship grey. There's a sheen to the world. The rain's gone over it with a duster and a bottle of Pledge. A lawn of artificial grass fails to fit in, embarrassed to miss the cut. It sucks to be hoovered.
I like The Queen
I've never seen
Her lose her cool on show
But why she rules
With all her jewels
I will never know
Back in time
When families dined
On turnips and drank mead
Her family smashed
And really trashed
Allcomers on their steeds
So if it comes
To family chums
To claim what's their birthright
I'll get my clan
(And my old nan)
And we can have a fight
The winner rules
And gets the jewels
The hardest family standing
Then given time
My family's crime
Will one day seem upstanding.
I've learned the secret to perpetual motion
Drank the KoolAid's conceptual notion
England's engine has Tory controls
May God have mercy on our souls.
Rain. A dry cat sits smug at a window. Overnight, weeds pop up as if grown in a jack-in-a-box. An England and a Scotland flag do silent battle across the border of my road. A sad-looking neighbour with 2 dogs only walks 1, a surprising reminder of life's jack-in-a-box moments.
Pippestrellus pippestrellus
Is the smallest so they tell us
And the Noctule is the largest of the group
They all hang upside down
When they're not flying around
And we even had good uses for their poop.
I once ate skate off an old piece of slate
Was served chips in some weird boxing shoes
Displeased with my peas in a terrible state
I struggled to eat with corkscrews
I don't find these changes the height of luxury
Next time I'll bring my own plate and cutlery
A thirsty drain swallows a river of rain. Flowers bow their heads in deference to a deluge. A tiny rumble of thunder in the distance. A trumblance? Clouds jostle for airtime. A man unused to origami folds a newspaper into a soggy hat. I can smell the green returning to the land.
A crow arches inky wings across languid air, writing in a lost language. Much like the filled rolls at the corner shop, this is as fresh as today will be. Inspiration turns to perspiration for a portly jogger who seems to have bitten off more than he can phew. Wish I read crow.
Uneven pavements lie waiting for the trips they won't take. Bedroom windows pushed out into the street beg for air. A very old man in a blazer and tie reminds us of what we often forget. Two cats face off - feline gunslingers. A breeze plays brief snippets of its greatest hits.
Next doors pregnant cat pauses on pregnant paws. I'll be smitten with them kittens. A discarded iced lolly stick recalls a time it was once cool. A worm lies around litter (*squirms and positions apply). Two men awkwardly fist bump their welcome and miss. They pretend to box.
A half-eaten Chinese takeaway sits on a not very great wall. A cat's eyes interrogate me. The sun holds its breath and makes a wish upon itself for another day. An England flag, flutterless from a window, is frankly flagging as a flag. The papers are in and I turn into a rustler.
This early world exists of nothing but birdsong. I stretch adding my own yawn chorus. My back that shouldn't click, clicks. A car backfires. A barking dog fires back. The world exists of birdsong, yawning, clicking, firing, and barking. The kettle that should click, clicks.
I do not suit a wetsuit
They go up to your chin
It's a big fail, for this beached whale
That Greenpeace chuck back in.
Nobody is at the bus stop. So it won't. The door to the corner shop is propped open, airing its corners. A man in an England shirt carries groans, cheers, and hopes upon his back. A shirtless scaffolder lifts large loads of alliteration. A man arrives at the bus stop. So it will.
Two birds in a dogfight over my garden. My dog unimpressed. A man runs by, late for something. Time is just ahead of him, smiling devilishly. A distant car horn beeps angrily at a distant road hog. The sound of a siren makes me briefly pause and worry for someone I'll never meet.
Time is a big train
It's all steam and stack
It speeds it remains
Upon memory's track
It's fast and it's slow
It stops at nowhere
We all get a go
We all go somewhere.
A couple so engrossed in each other walk into an overhanging hedge and laugh. A cat stares. A For Sale sign is leaving home, it's now a Sold sign. A single beep from a car horn indicates next door should be outside with his kit. He runs out with toast. Life's millpond ripples.
A man stumbles up a kerb and starts running, powered by embarrassment. A woman sniffs and dabs her eyes. Hayfever, Monday, or more? Two crows fight viciously over a squashed hedgehog. I ultimately lose the urge not to call them prickly. A woman sneezes. I smile. Life's millpond.
I must confess I did not know
of Britain's oldest door,
this small recess, this oak regressed,
now written into lore.
The men who've walked this way before,
such tales they told or kept,
as mighty swords did rap the door
for secrets it has wept.
I peek from behind my curtain and catch a neighbour doing the same. We both mime dusting. A cat sashays home along a kerb, hunting relaxation. A trampoline stands forlorn in a garden, its tiny bouncers fast asleep. I catch another curtain twitch. I prepare my fake duster...
Eggy soldiers decorated yellow
Many stories animated echoes
From times that grandad was himself a boy
Where his grandad would teach bookshelves of joy.
A man talks wildly to himself. No phone or earpiece. Sadness and I eavesdrop. Rumbles from a distant train track grow louder as I concentrate. As do memories. A lad's sighs arrives on time with the sigh of a buses air brake. Blips and sonic ripples from today's millpond.
A man walks past my window wearing a big coat. He'll carry that home. A cyclist dresses like he's in the Tour De France but wobbles like a jelly. A van drives slowly up our street, taking speed bumps like a lazy surfer waiting for the Big One. Ripples of life on today's millpond.
Life is our own epic poem
Our paradise lost odyssey
Forging a path without knowing
Who laughs at divine comedy.
Will Gilgamesh wash away sins
As Prometheus show us his trick
Ying and Yang are identical twins
We're the old tales we help the world tick.
I carved our names upon a tree
At school that meant eternity
You saw your name and scratched it out
I added Jane's, that made you pout
You scratched out mine and added Terry's
Knowing we were adversaries
Terry thumped me, asked out Jane
Last I heard they lived in Spain
buyer beware
it's sold as seen
i do not care
for weakened beans
I'll now unpack
my box of tea
I'll not go back
to meek coffee
my doctor said
it's time to change
in heart and head
I did feel strange
so mugs of tea
and plenty more
my decaf spree
was such a bore
I think the birds know
The birds think the grass knows
The sun always knows
We move in that end-of-term way
Laziness lounges around
Touting relaxation
The birds contemplate shade
The grass is released from the effort of growing
I look for the sunny part of everywhere
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