NOON DOGS AT THE HEAVENLY SOCIAL:

I listen to your noise, you hide your eyes, I know you’re looking,
people around us ‘clicking’, breathing, sneezing. You spread papers,
take up space, stake your claim. What do you want? What do you need?
Am I invisible? The Tipster shuffles, flips ‘Bids to trouser St Jude’
right out in front of me & I don’t know what I means but I’m hooked,
just lying there on the table, begging for it.
Can you believe it?!

(K)

YOUNG GOTHS GATHER AT THE COFFEE & JAZZ:

Longchain stickman laughing, leaning on a coffee, dressed in Black.

“Oh Yeah”

At the side of a road where metal moves fast & cruel, everything’s
a little more expensive. Blow your horn of dust, the past reaches out,
perfect honey, don’t crack, tongues of the old folk click & clack,
couples letting time slip away, nothing better to do, casting
shadows at the original drive-through, red chalk heart on a Blackboard
wall. I watch you shelter, take a drag, look around t check, make that
jazz-cool face, fingers in twos, pink stick squeeze, squinting
into the sun as a saxophone bellows reaches up from the dark,
leviathan, love struck on heat are you feeling it? In the wind,
in the sun, are you listening? Drawn to it’s dusk, it’s dawn,
basement Blue notes, hunched over the horn, smoke curls from between
the fingers, lips part, inhale, cool on the corner watching the Goths.

(K)

PAYING FOR THE PAST:

Kick the ball, turn the wheel, pay the price, turn the corner,
send the message, answer the call, ‘think’, don’t speak,
write it down, keep it to yourself, keep it cool, drink the drink,
relax, kick back, get your head on, press ‘play’.

(K)

THE SHOCK OF MORNING SMELLS SUNRISE:

Halfmoon hung in infinite Blue unloaded, warning light on,
reversing, cursing behind the wheel, animals jump into my grill,
chasing the back of a blacktop snake to a seat alone on a 5am train,
best head, best shirt, best mouth, best foot forward, clutching a
ticket for a westbound plane, praying to be let back in or am I
paying for the past again.

Stiff between the ears

(K)

SWEET STUFF DOES THE TRICK:

Mott the Hoople play ‘All the Young Dudes’, Dave & Iggy do Berlin,
watching Jim do his thing on Youtube till 5:00am, can’t sleep in
the comedown from the gig when I used to get wasted on Vodka &
blood red, now my head is racing, but feeling good, clean as a
surfer hanging ten, shot out the pipe, in the dark, eyes on the
light, drawn by the energy of that late night crowd transmitted
intravenous, the open mouth of another big Black stage receives,
kick-drum dances on the breath of another early morning just
before the sun, it’s all ours, kings & queens, silent waking with
my brother dripping sweat between the trucks backed up to loading
docks, heavy armoured cases, men with bloody knuckles, tattoos, nod
& smile, heavy rubber wheels, names of faces & places stencilled to
their sides the boxes carrying the scares of a life in permanent
transit.

(K)

PRIMAVERA#2, PORTO:

Mashed, trashed, shaking, vibrating oscillating, agitated,
aggravated, irritated, disconnected, assailed by smiles &
good intentions. Hit me with that sugar mint, deliver me
oh Lord! Im sonically dyslexic, lost the power of speech &
language, alien tongue, fingers like twigs, every question
an invasion, too complicated, kindness is violent & nothing
is right.
“I want to smash it up, I want to break it down, I want a
wall of tears to wash away”
I’m in orbit around that isolation, no ‘solution’, don’t
look at me, I got it bad, don’t want to bring you down,
keep away, need to re-connect with laughter, wash the dishes,
take the bins out, clean the cups at a meeting of minds so
similar they’d grin & cheer in recognition of this rabid feeling
& call it by it’s name so I’d know exactly where & who I am,
sail straight & clean again, reunited with the moment in the moment,
exactly where I am, calling for help, you send it, something’s
happening, pass the pancakes & syrup, I think I’m coming down,
kiss the ground, happy to be here.

(K)

WELCOME TO THE SKY-HOLE:

Swerved the stress of an early ride through the crush
of the roulette wheel on the M25, slipping sweetly round
the rim of London to cruise the mal of a satellite sky-hole
for pre-packed supermarket dinners smuggled back into the
sealed unit of a tired hotel room like scavengers. Feet up
on the bed, plastic forks & bottled waters, zoning out to a
giant flat-screen with the colour cranked high as a council
tv, breathing airconditioned wind through bunged-up sleep,
to wake more tired than when I closed my eyes. The nice lady
at reception offered me free wi-fi if I signed up for a hotel
card when I complained about the cost of logging-on, so I
reach out to you courtesy of another corporation soaking me up
into it’s system like a blotting paper stain. Looking forward
to gathering with the brotherhood of groove for the jump into
the sky again, praying for a gentle time for these bones tuned
for dancing long after their sell-by date expired, put my faith
in the kick-drum & my brother’s skill in giving it good orderly
direction, enough energy in that first hit to transform this
ragged body into something approaching human.

(K)

TO BE ANIMAL:

Took the sugar, now wants more
(Of course!)
He’s sucker for the candy-floss

(K)

WHEN A VEGETABLE’S A FRUIT CALL IT BY IT’S NAME:

Saw my good friend John, up form the southern hemisphere
to put things right. He’s got the glue to bring fractured
tribes together, friends long gone bitter when they used to
make poetry & fabulous things that made me believe you could
sell your art & still have integrity, the first of their kind
I ever met. I was raised believing that money for commissioned
art was a dirty thing until I met the disparate bunch John brought
together at the end of the 80’s, end of everything, beginning of
the next thing that was so much better. I’d only ever hung around
with the fine art crowd, a proud tribe who believed they knew stuff
others never could, levitating on their own importance, then I meet
this tribe in London, brought together out’ve a collective
who-knows-what, but John knew exactly what he was doing, what
connected us & he was the glue until he flew south & it got bitter,
sad, lost it’s vision, when it used to see right through the
bullshit. People who’s art I believed in & still do, if only they
would drop their guard & break through the walls they’ve erected
between them. Life, it’s too short. I got no time to do half the
things I want to do, let alone throw time away. I want to see
that tribe back together, sparking & jousting, watching each other’s
backs & giving freely to each other the way they used to, but this
time in the knowledge that there is so little time left, that we
have to make it count.

(K)

WHERE I AM:

Full English down the sea front, a number 4, pot of Black,
no milk, park up, Ferrari cap cruising past, checkin’ out
the girls sipping Cokes with ice & Lemon.
“You want beans with that?”
“And thick sliced White”
“Pot for two or one?”
“One” – just me, alone but not alone.

Tide’s out, sand bars showing, Rossi’s ice cream, dressed in White,
no queues weekdays, sit back in the sun, shades on, lean into
White plastic curves, soak it all up, the words are on their way,
Red sail cuts the blue horizon.

Little Walter sings “My Babe”

(K)