Just a quick reminder to those who are unsure or, on
reading this believe I write from experience: my poetry
comes from imagined fiction – I make stuff up – I am
not planning on buying a motorbike or having fights with
my wife (although I am surely ripe for a mid-life crisis)

On a hotel room
An unsteady squint strains at these reeking walls,
Tar-stained from the puffing of road-warrior nightjars
Who drank deep on drams of their superior’s wishes
And tormented their second-best wives
With lies that they both sensed the taste of
On tongues which waggled a tarantella dance around
The sharp bull horns of cheating, his bright fighter’s
Cape of platitudes furling around him as her doubts, fears
Of betrayal stamped the ground and snorted a steamy
Spittle that shook the doors of their marriage.

Another night death-gripping the bedcovers with her
Suspicions. Another knocking his rocks against
Bell-ringing glass and sucking the brown burn
Of bitterness drowning as it washed resentment
From teeth electrified by edge against edge grinding.
He has no reserve of desire to drag
Doing The Right Thing along with him. There are
True selves to find in motorbike trips and
Many destinies thwarted by coming home on
Time and painting the bedroom walls white.

He claims, by example, better use for tomorrow can be made by
Hung-over vikings who arrive red-eyed amongst
The enslaved and clocked and desk-bound.
His warrior clothes strewn with a confetti of
A fixed agenda torn to shreds stuck on
With cock-sure machismo spirit. The gaunt evidence
Written for posterity across the deepening creases
Of his buffalo-tongue face betrays the wear and
Fraying as his identity and purpose bounce away from him
Into the tragic pile of Things He Could Have Done.

We all starin’ at the fender we followin’
lip bit focus from the fella who drives.
Davey ‘im a snooze and he sweatin’ up a storm
the others shift position like they on hot rocks.

Five guys packed in and all packin’,
colors on our backs, full-on inked and all that.
Five guys settin’ on a mission
teach a guy a lesson he’s really gonna get.
Five guys flexing up their muscles;
tonight: click-click bang-bang respect.

So we reach a shady corner
and see ‘im slouchin’ like a drunk.
Waistbands ripple as we pull our metal out
flashes of munitions and pop pop pop;
sloucher hits the deck and his baby-momma drops.
There’s a screamin’ and a wailing’ as we screech away fast
this lesson is a lesson that’s really gonna last.

We whoopin’ and a yellin’ coz we done our bit o biznizz,
9 mil teachers smokin’ up the car.
We’re slappin’ and fist bumpin’ and biggin’ up ourselves
whilst the driver stamps the pedal and he turn his knuckles white.

Five guys start the path to penitentiary
where the tats are tears in the corners of your eyes
but five guys only got one focus
coz five guys happy with their retribution night.

Mission after failed mission of overtightened shirt cloth incomparable to the air-brushing wizardry of a celebrity book of spells; calorie-counted celebrity inspiration, feeling the burn; “one more minute, don’t forget to stretch and warm down”.

A plastic-propped peep into a better life where everyone is shiny and the right machine can make you God’s own barista without even having to watch the accompanying DVD box set.

All on the never never. ’til the never becomes the now.

In a surge of nature versus big business our crude seas wash over us in an endless tide of promises and slicked birds who drown in the failures of our present way of life.

In the background; an urgent pitch to call now and pay nothing for twelve months. A lesson unlearned.

In the foreground; stands a poet working out the best way to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a dog whilst he waits for his toast to turn tan.

So this is what we’ve become.

Beaks shoved forward, scaly necks stretched,
with mouths gaping, snouts snapping with an echoing snip from
the effort of land crawling just to lay their eggs with
eye-scrunching strain in hopeful clutches.

We stood and marveled with our cameras,
all red eye flashes and whooping fingers,
whilst the tide dragged at the night-time shore
trying to peel away stragglers from the pack of
unwary voyeuristic foreigners.

The musical swish of the wind-rattled palm trees,
made the bobbing fishing boats dance, painted in the yellow
ochre of candle lanterns that perched
like watchmen on the bows where it brushed just
enough of their pilots to make them appear like ghosts
dipping into the blackness as they
flicked out their nets
or dragged wicker pots from the stern.

A world away from this evening; the toes that
joyed at the sucking of sand dampened by the
warm foam of a receding sea curl now into the
unfriendly nylon pile of evening news and TV dramas,
readying for sleep before the chill of
tomorrow’s commute and office politics of
the punch in punch out, don’t-be-late
warning-mornings and the school runs
amongst the young mums parking heedlessly.

Funny how we’re all just turtles on turtle beach.

To the sound of screaming,
turns the eyes and the ears of the ordinary
agape in horror at the desperation of a jumper
as he splashes through the glass
fixing a final flickering gaze on tear-welling faces who,
with tightened lips let pass a whimper “oh no, oh no oh no”.
The rain of rock crashes chase away trivial reality,
the lattes, the must-do meetings,
the synchronization of calendars
in a kerosene flash; thanks to religious brutality.
There, urgent amongst the
surging clouds are those in
black turned gray. Gold-hatted
knights who shout for your own good.
Scared like the brokers,
fathers like the chairmen,
rushing like the insurers
but they choose to run the other way.

I often pause to think of others.
Like the couple on Beak Street I saw leaning
in against the March wind, pinching
still-fitting 1970′s smeary gabardine
mackintoshes around them like over-stuffed
sausage casings.

He; gaunt and with that sunken on-the-way
from this life look, she; rotund and
waddling with cheap home perm flattened
under a clear plastic penny market rain
hood whilst her free hand drags a
shopping trolley between them both like
an unruly and unwilling square tartan-coated pet.

She chose to wear those opaque tan tights
and they are so cliche, aren’t they,
with her seen-better-days blue brogue comfortable shoes
which shuffle shuffle and scuff along
next to the groceries and the gray nearly-ghost.

He looks like a man who has resolved to
hang on a day longer if he can, for her
sake, or for someone’s sake if not hers.
I’m sure it’s not for his.

His gaping-mouthed breath, like it
must sound loud enough to startle although
the bus window and the rattle of empty seats
mask it from me, sucks his cheeks in and out
with the effort and I see his eyes scrunch
up unseen as he keeps up her pace which he taps
out with a walking stick, stomp, stomp,
stomp like he is grinding out cigarette butts
with every step.

To where and why do they walk so painfully
in this bouncing rain?  What are their
names?  Is this yesterday’s sour wine of
relationships I see through the dragon puff
of diesel exhaust or a glorious culmination?
Or perhaps mainly their reality, unpoetic and
unremarkable except to someone like me who
often pauses to think of others.

Liquid solid flows with the puff, ochre stripes washed
grey with the powdering of divinity. The lines of his thoughts
across his brow, deep and drifting, running over to wash the beckoning
fingers of smoke’s fate, launching to drift on torrid
currents of time and fickle happenings, thrown back and
forth further and far from the loud “haaaaa” of the exhale.

Their prose and statuary, towering in their microscopic
magnificance amongst the whisps of their fleeting existence
unseen by those who did not look for them, breathed in to
be a part of those who did not make them; even those who
did not pause to question or care if they were likely to exist.

If, at that moment He should clap his hands or
spin to attend to some other diversion they might
scatter in the draught. It’s a fact; you can’t unscatter
smoke.

He’s got that blankie still. Rotted with the
drool of comfort years and glazed with some
real sweaty summers. Snuggles it close as ever.
An anchor in the squally seas of change.
Creaks those cranky joints together with
a huge Kirky-boy sigh and thumps himself
into the cloth with squeezed-together eyes.
I swear he used to smile.

Now he just rumbles on that blankie, day and night
with those wobbly-paw half-yelps of him
chasing down sleep sheep or some night rabbits.
Or he just guards at that bottom window and sighs
through his nose at the disappointments. Waiting.
Early days he’d point the flop from his ears,
whiskers shivering, and bob his head like Ali if he heard
a car coming up the road. It’s knocked the shine out of
his eyes, all that fruitless checking and weaving.

Now all Kirk’s got left is the stare-and-stare, glassy eyed,
into the distance. Not a flicker except a blink to wet those
big brown pleading pools. But he hasn’t given up even though I’ve
explained it all to him until we’ve both had enough and
wack down by your couch. I’ve written to everyone else
and told them, cancelled things, notified, crossed the T’s,
but, I just don’t know what to say to Kirk.
Kirk’s the problem.