Poem: 'In The Garden With Peter Green And His Sea-Lion'

 

IN THE GARDEN WITH PETER GREEN 

AND HIS SEA-LION/ 

THE GREEN MANALICHI WITH 

THE TWO-PRONGED CROWN 

(Peter Green was the original guitarist and 

guiding intelligence behind Fleetwood Mac, 

currently rehabilitating mind & music)

 

hic 

“it’s my sea-lion” says Peter Green, 

“my pet sea-lion coming through” 

& he hiccups again 

here in the garden, 

apocalyptic omens ripple 

in crowding shadows, 

here at the still centre of rage, 

all is flat, calm, & 

scoured to bone 

it’s only the dark places 

that suggest endless nights 

boiling with madness 

Blues and acid 

hic 

“sometimes your life 

changes direction” says Peter 

“like a fish” 

& you cross the line, 

a line of fire drawn sweet 

and oversweet, but here, now 

beyond this savage quiet sky, 

on the rim of sanity, I hear 

the sound of galaxies colliding 

in those strange nights of 

paradox and betrayal 

but here in the garden 

the lilac ripples, gently 

creating and destroying 

monstrous shadows 

“sometimes they throw me a fish” 

says Peter Green, “a red herring 

...what is a red herring 

...a dead herring... “ 

& he hiccups again 

hic 

Published in: 

‘TEARS IN THE FENCE no.22: Spring 1999’ 

(UK – March 1999) 

‘BOGG no.71’ (USA/ UK – June 2002) 

Featured online at: 

‘PRESSURE PRESS PRESENTS’ (25 July 2017)  

Collected into: 

‘TWEAK VISION: THE WORD-PLAY 

SOLUTION TO MODERN-ANGST CONFUSION’ 

Alien Buddha Press (USA – March 2018)

Poem: SHELF-LIFE

 

SHELF LIFE 

(For Stephen Singleton 

circa Vice Versa-Neutron Records)

This is 

post-modernist po/ 

etry designed for use in 

hypermarkets, offices, 

telephone answering services, 

air-terminals, in-car systems, 

and pedestrian precincts. 

Functional poetry with 

stylistic malleability, 

angle-poise connotations and 

audio-visual connectivity. 

Conceptual poetry that 

is its own medium, 

modified and attuned to taste. 

This is post-modernist po/ 

etry with the appliance 

of science. 

Ideologically unsound sound 

for limited attention spans. 

Post-modernism is a 

synthesis placed at the 

correct cultural nexus, and has 

interchangeable/ mix and match 

influence components. 

It is shrink-wrapped 

and date-stamped for 

an ideal shelf life 

of three and a half minutes. 

This is post-modernist 

environment-specific poetry 

for subliminal subversion. 

Soundtrack jingles for discord 

imprinted on/ symptoms of 

rapid eye movement. 

Retinal shadow-shows in 

hygienic cellophane packs, 

ready for use. 

This is post-modern po/ 

etry with a disposable 

bio-degradable 

shelf-life 

of the next 

three and a half minutes…

 

Published in: 

‘TEMPUS FUGIT no.8’ (Belgium – December 1988) 

‘WORKING TITLES no.2’ (UK – February 1990) 

plus my collection: 

‘POWER LINES’ 

(Unibird Publications) (UK – October 1988) 

on cassette: 

‘ULISES DOG NR.9’ (C60 Vec Audio) 

(Netherlands – July 1981) 

‘L.P.G no.2’ (UK – July 1981) 

my own cassette: 

‘SLITS IN AEROSOL GREEN’ (Eight Miles Higher) 

(UK – January 1981) 

and on: 

‘DIAL-A-POEM’ telephone service 

(8 August 1980, Liverpool) 

‘G.A.S. POETRY, ART AND MUSIC’ 

edited by Belinda Subraman 

(YouTube, 6 June 2020)

Poem: 'Aquatic Encounters Under The Dark Moons'

 

AQUATIC ENCOUNTERS 

UNDER THE DARK MOONS/ 

GLACIAL BLUE NEUROSIS 

IN THE FRENCH QUARTERS 

Luna blue flares give aquatic guises 

to submerged deserts, 

plastered on light it melts me in delicious numbers. 

Bearing strange fish thru the French quarters 

eyes lisp smoke in throb-runs, 

they spark with delicious guises 

of dark neurosis. 

Luna blue sparks of glacial flame 

melt me in lisping smoke 

bearing strange aquatic numbers, 

dark forms borne thru submerged throb-runs 

in the guise of delicious deserts. 

Fish eyes plastered on blue flame beat 

thru the strange Luna guise 

of the French quarters, 

submerging me in the aquatic neurosis 

of melting deserts. 

Glacial eyes melt in blue 

lisping sparks of Luna smoke, 

bearing delicious neurosis 

thru the aquatic dark of the French quarters 

Published in: 

‘MOCKERSATZ no.1.6’ (USA – June 1986) 

‘SOMETHING FOR NOTHING no.4’ 

(UK – October 1988) 

‘NOVA no.1 (UK – March 1990) 

‘FUR-LINED GHETTOS no.7’ (UK – October 2015) 

and my collection: 

‘POWER LINES’ 

Unibird Publication (UK – October 1988)

Poem: 'A Taste For Butterflies'

 

A TASTE FOR BUTTERFLIES/ 

THE WORLD IS FULL OF MATCHING PAIRS 

I’m thinking of you skinny-dipping in your pool 

airplane lights rippling the reflected stars above 

the big dipper trickling water 

across the northwestern sky, 

cascading stardust into your pool as you bathe 

chasing little bits of stardust across your body 

kissing the starbursts springing over your skin 

I message you this memory, 

for love knows no gravity, 

love has its hemispheres, 

when you read Anaïs Nin 

it leaves unsettling emptiness, 

you paint in your studio 

in mystical languages 

that tease my senses, 

we live in hope 

beyond our means, 

you message intimate photos 

of your body to my laptop… 

we meet for coffee 

with serious amorous intent 

I’m at your tender mercies, 

but you don’t have 

to be too tender, for 

we cut into now, and 

our tomorrow bleeds away, 

then we go to bed together 

you in Seattle 

me in Yorkshire…

Poem: 'Voices/ The Man With The Flexible Conscience'

 

VOICES/ THE MAN 

WITH THE 

FLEXIBLE CONSCIENCE 

the house is old, 

silence falls from the ceiling 

to fill cracked cups, as 

sunseeds seep in neat parcels 

through frost-glass windows 

to collide in soft detonation 

across the sink, 

I am alone… 

from 

somewhere beneath me 

disembodied tentacle voices 

squirm through the walls, 

snakes of syllables and 

crawls of consonants 

meander up the stairwell, 

to echo the light escaping 

beneath a ground-floor door, 

words blend smoothly into 

unevenly painted woodwork and 

slide gently along emulsion walls 

to fall and congeal into pools 

in odd corners of the hallway, 

occasional laughter hastens 

up the stairs, step by step, 

as talk dances and whores 

to disguise its banality, it swings 

euphoric from the light-bulb 

when it discovers a clever phrase, 

taps on the grease-encrusted stove 

to discover its depth, and 

echoes itself from the mirror, 

the house is old, 

I am alone…

Originally published in:

'DURANGO-CORTEZ HERALD'

(USA, July 1975)

Poem: IN THE ABSENCE OF BRYN FORTEY

 

IN THE ABSENCE 

OF BRYN FORTEY 

(1937-2021)

lost days are made up of seasons 

each season a different country, 

evenings become dark now, with shivers of cold, 

steam flows from cafés out over sidewalks where 

passersby button themselves tighter into greatcoats, 

it’s time to incinerate a pile of dreams left over 

from previous seasons on a funeral pyre so that 

bright sparks of flame climb high through cloud 

beyond the sky to lodge in spaces between stars, 

where they can erupt into new constellations 

to confound the compilers of horoscopes 

and confuse those who claim 

to know of seasons to come

Poem: TO LIVE AN UNFILTERED LIFE

 

TO LIVE AN

UNFILTERED LIFE

she bleeds from the eyes 

in the painting on the hotel wall 

a trickle of pigment stain 

smears her cheek and neck, 

through bleeding eyes she watches 

the sketch perfectly aligned 

on the opposite wall 

of the sleeping girl 

with blue butterfly hair, 

they watch each other 

across the hotel room 

where illicit lovers snatch 

moments of fleeting paradise, 

married one-time lovers 

now sleep back-to-back, 

lonely travellers jerk-off to 

internet porn, drunks throw up, 

junkies take pharmaceutical trips, 

suicides weep into the night and 

the sad Polish maid dreams of Kraków, 

she bleeds from the eyes 

in the painting on the hotel wall, 

watched by the sleeping girl 

with blue butterfly hair 

Featured online at: 

‘MEDUSA’S KITCHEN’ 

(13 November 2019)

Poem: 'ALL THE SPACE BETWEEN'

 

ALL THE SPACE BETWEEN/ 

A PART, AND YET APART 

on Mars the trees grow red

and cast a rose glow, 

through Martian twilights 

I feel you squirm inside my mind, 

and know you are close, 

on Mars the grass grows red 

and whispers secrets 

in the thin breeze, 

it tells me you are close, 

on Mars the moons are red 

and cast scarlet shadows that 

hint the contours of your face, 

in silence there is music 

in separation there is touch 

where there is you 

is where I choose to reside 

on Mars the constellations 

flit like fireflies 

to tell me you are here, 

I taste the storms roar in your mouth 

I taste your breath in my nostrils 

the map of your blood is in my veins 

your heartbeat is the pulse 

that moves the stars…

Poem: 'A Battered Beat Guru: For Dave Cunliffe'

 

A BATTERED BEAT GURU 

FOR DAVE CUNLIFFE 

(4 January 1941-16 April 2021)

and Dave said, sometimes 

on evenings such as this 

you end up reading your poems 

in the back-room of a pub 

to four drunks and a dog 

but every human mind 

contains a thousand spirits 

so even though it seems 

you’re reading to few 

you have an audience 

of multitudes… 

Featured online at: 

‘STRIDE MAGAZINE’ 

(21 April 2019)

Poem: 'IN PENNY LANE THERE IS A BARBER SHAVING CUSTOMERS'

 

IN PENNY LANE 

THERE IS A BARBER 

SHAVING CUSTOMERS… 

(visiting Liverpool, July 2014)

 

I wasn’t here 

this never happened 

rumours of a distant war 

once resented, now embedded 

once blood-raw, now no more, 

an endless autopsy, a history tour 

a heritage trail, a legacy project, 

when it all comes down to this 

laminated into a tourist map 

a twist in a leisure industry 

frozen reconstructions of 

memory-distort on pause 

in a national misTrust, 

no stylus bites play-in, 

days blur on the flip-side, 

it was light, it was dark 

this sad escapology 

eradicates every scratch, 

yet I’m here on Mathew St 

where once it happened, 

just six decades too late 

squint ears to catch echoes 

of screams on the screen 

see these walking dead, 

this never happened 

I wasn’t here, 

I’m still trapped 

somewhere in this photo… 

Collected into: 

‘TWEAK VISION: THE WORD-PLAY SOLUTION 

TO MODERN-ANGST CONFUSION’ 

Alien Buddha Press (USA – March 2018)

Poem: 'ARBORIA'

 

ARBORIA 

trees retain 

habits of mystery 

in the rooted spaces 

and arcades between, 

all trees connect, time 

is meaningless to trees, 

we came down from trees 

at time’s beginning, 

perhaps we return 

to trees at life’s end, 

our souls come adrift 

on breeze to seed 

and hatch anew 

from acorns

Poem: A CANOPY OF STARS

A CANOPY OF STARS 

this is a curious year
who knows how it will end?
every year is a curious year
no-one ever knows how they will end,
this will be a pivotal year of change
every year is a turning point into new strangeness,
after this year, nothing will ever be the same,
every year shifts lives into new shapes,
this is a chance for new beginnings,
we can change for the better,
we always could, we still can,
my melancholy returns,
this time it has goose-bumps

IN THE TIME OF 

THE STAR QUEENS 

 (from an idea by Steve Sneyd) 

when the last of
the Star Queens died
they drew seven suns
into tight orbit,
one for each century
of her rule,
then ignite them
into beacon pyres to
illuminate the galaxy and
across a million light-years
so other universes
can also marvel…

we, exiles on the
shores of this ice moon,
watch our sun flare
into bright nova,
and pledge a revenge
that will reach across
that same eternity…


Featured online at:
‘SFPA: SCIENCE FICTION &
FANTASY POETRY ASSOCIATION’ (28 June 2017)

Poem: 'ESCAPE FROM QUASAR 7'

ESCAPE FROM QUASAR 7: 

IT’S NO FUN TO BE A DHARMA 

BUM IN YORKSHIRE ‘86 

A girl in a denim jacket,
orange flame crawling her temples,
sits opposite me in the Fast Food alcove.
Eats chips with a plastic fork
from a polystyrene tray.
She dips her head and moans
just audibly above the ambient soundtrack,
hands cupping her face,
and as she leans back
I see her marble-white eyes
are spidered with fissures.
Her eyes are hatching,
are eggs cracking open
with squirming violent
gouges of colour inside.
Then, first one butterfly,
then several
slip quivering from
the splintering sockets,
vermillion, magenta, turquoise,
emerald, purple, maroon,
until two torrents of gaudy wings
erupt from her face in shimmering tides
to fill the alcove and spill
into the area beyond.
Customers look away, embarrassed,
read Kindles and iPads more intently,
eat a little faster,
while she bleeds her beauty around them,
her face and shoulders lose definition,
their outline trembles until,
with nothing left to give,
she crumples into a deflated thing,
opposite me in the Fast Food alcove…

And
as no-one is watching,
I lean over and
sneak three chips
from her tray




Published in:
‘ESPECIALLY YELLOW no.4’ (UK – February 1985)
‘SMOKE no.25’ (UK – March 1987)
‘OPEN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS no.6’ (USA – June 1989)
‘THE THIRD ALTERNATIVE no.1’ (UK – January 1994)
And in collection:
‘POWER LINES’ (UK – Unibird Publications – October 1988)

Poem: 'AND THEN THE SUN ROSE LAST MIDNIGHT'

AND THEN THE SUN 

ROSE LAST MIDNIGHT/ 

LOVE HAS GRAVITY 

lint-white face
smears

sat in La Rambla
watching
street theatre

he fingers her
into slow whiteness
descending her arms
gloving each finger
in turn

the silence
is vast, this
time in Barcelona
we don’t even see
Sagrada Familia
but sit in the
Placa Catalunya
feeding pigeons
where even shadows
hide in shadow,
waking
echoes to life

sat in La Rambla,
her legs smudging
to clay whiteness,
she becomes a statue
as we also turn
to gradual stone

even love,
it seems,
has gravity

Poem: 'The Shortest Light Years'

THE SHORTEST LIGHT YEARS 

she wears a hijab with a
sparkly Merry Xmas jumper…

there’s everything anyone
could conceivably want to chew
at Borough Market, Lebanese,
French, Thai, Caribbean, Polish,
you walk through inhaling
appetising spices from every
culture of world-cooking…
& the June 2017 vehicle-ram
terrorist attack was here too…
across Westminster Bridge they
sit x-legged below the Big Ben tower
playing find-the-lady, taking £20 notes
that reveal only disappointment
with eastern-European shrugs
in speed-sharp misdirection jive
& the March 2017 Hyundai 4x4
attack injures eleven here too…
I’m from the north, possibly Nordic DNA,
Norman, Celtic, Pict, Gaelic… who knows,
England has always been refuge for
migrants, from pogroms, intolerance,
famine, warfare, always sanctuary,
from Windrush, Syria and Sudan, from
the old empire, with the new urgencies
…from Borough Market we cross
London Bridge where Japanese tourists
snatch iPad photos of Southwark Cathedral
& the November 2019 stabbing-attack
was here too… resisted to death,
we mourn, curse stupidity, and resume,
London does what it always does
London continues

where she wears a hijab with
a sparkly Merry Xmas jumper…

Poem: 'AFTERMATH/ UNIVERSE OF BABEL'

AFTERMATH/ 

UNIVERSE OF BABEL 

give me this chair
where the sunset light falls,
give me loud guitars
in my earbuds,
give me new poems,
give me the soft warmth
of this woman’s skin

to live extremes
crushes the world,
we burn and maim,
leave victims in
bitterness and pain,
I’m beyond that,
don’t need that any more
don’t want to hurt,
or be hurt

give me this ouzo,
this music,
give me this chair
in the corner
where sunset light falls,
give me this
moment of peace

Poem: 'STONE TOWN'

STONE TOWN 

in stone town
you’re shown your place
in a security of knowing,
this is the way we do things
we have always done things this way
there can be no other way,
in this town we fit together

in flesh town
we are free to choose
we invent our own path or
reinvent new ones in amusing games
we grow together, or fall apart
on whim, are inclusive or not
depending on the colour of the day
or the scent of the breeze
in this town we are individuals

in art town
they say, before you can read
first you must know words,
before you can sing
first you must learn to listen,
poems are compacted language
that inflates in your head,
reverse-time snapshots
from which energies glow,
but before you love
you must first be loved

I stand at the crossroads
wearing a comic hat of puzzlement,
people glance, throw sharp stones,
 some mutter of madness,
but give me time, eventually
I’ll decide where I belong,
eventually I will decide…



'Stone Town' is now on the
'IT: INTERNATIONAL TIMES' site,
with thanks to Atlanta Wiggs
for her beautiful artwork,
at http://internationaltimes.it/stone-town/

Poem: 'ANOTHER LANGUAGE FOR LIGHT'

ANOTHER LANGUAGE 

FOR LIGHT 

(notes from the Greek Diaries: 

August-September 2004)

catamaran out from Marmaris
ignites wake of spilt jewels, as
Greek TV-Soap endlessly spools
on-screen above the Bar

Rodos town,
an abrupt sunset,
night tinged with day in the
jittery animation of bats

local coach through to Lindos,
speaking in pauses,
separated by breaths,
here, only time extends
without end

an ant ascends
the curve of your breast,
flicking it away,
my fingers continue
its climb

a million white pebbles
mosaic our courtyard,
each one a breath,
each one a life,
monastic arches, ancient beams,
a wall of photos, a silver laptop,
a circular bowl of grapes

pleasurable navigations
give shape to
chance meanders,
which we enchant
across the night
with poems

an ant threads
your triangulation of hair,
flicking it away,
my tongue completes
its journey

a cockerel crows,
a cat sleeps away
day-heat, lean beneath
cerise bougainvillaea
until
slow ferry
to Symi cleaves
new stories…



Published in:
'MINOTAUR no.49'
(USA - February 2008)

Poem: 'HERITAGE'

HERITAGE 

old men with white beards 

stand on podiums, pontificating, 

pay attention, we can benefit from 

their wealth of life-experience 

and accumulated learning, 

old white men with beards 

lecture interminably, listen, 

we are fortunate they deign 

to gift us with their wisdom, 

tell us how to think and behave 

old white men with white beards and 

portly waistlines, poets, professors 

curators and clerics, novelists, 

critics, politicians and historians 

pause for power-point punchline 

punctuation and dramatic effect 

as we hang on their every word, 

these venerable old custodians of 

whiskery white male cultural values 

fixed ideas, intractable philosophies 

and academic elitism 

…everything we reject 

and don’t need to learn, 

listen, 

I’ll tell you how to dance in sunshine

Also featured online at:
‘IT: INTERNATIONAL TIMES’
(24 August 2019)
http://internationaltimes.it/heritage/