An interview, forthcoming
Through the olive trees, we see
The building of houses from packs of playing cards
Corporate types in trilbies
Once it was ponytails
Now it's team building and razed eyebrows
Consider for a minute, then refrain
Gag
Express
Gagless
Make mention of the sprinters and
Their potential use of family games
From Reigate to Midlothian
There will be risk management
Identify the situation
Anticipate the echoes of stilettoes
Absorb the open plan
Try to cope and
Keep it clean

What was lost in explanation?
Gas no longer kills and we recycle
What harm was done in description?
Over my shoulder, it is now
Fashionable to sit there all day
New tory leaders and old
Have a certain look
Popular or not
Ahead or behind
Schoolies strut unaware that
This is not the place to be seen
Only found
I will move from any table
Any hardback on which i rest
And sit against a wall, a fence at
The edge of a cliff
So long as fashion ceases to be
Over my shoulder

Turning, a time for killing, a time for
Small talk
Both, i really know
One face not here is hazardous
This job is better than the last one
Victorian baking ovens are history
You point, i scorch
This postcode is the same as before
The enlarged womb is strange
When seen from above
My cheeks hang heavy and
Pull on my grey silver lined sockets
A girl in green is easily obscene
See the mother for proof
See the two bin liners in each hand
Watch the solo descent
Join vehicular queues
Only to abandon them once at the front
There is no hidden magic
There is a visible agenda
Inflate and rush, rush
Inflated indeed

I'm sorry
Not service
Slimmer jizos
Rolling back hesitance
I was established nineteen seventy
The aromas of religion and nonsense
The subway sect passes by
The dissection of ring roads
Yawn at indulgence
Wipe away perspiration
Corners of eyes
The president, his reading glasses
I'm so sorry

Such wonderful explosions down there
Beneath the poly-tunnels
While caution ponders over the menu
The Europeans depart
To leave the crippled in the company of
The loose-trousered
The hungover seeking solace in a cold sink
And noisy bloody barristers
Try to love summer
If you can
Try open top tours
Attempt fakin' it
An epic struggle it is
To put your feet up
Drink till we die
Be baffled by bachache
So bad
You can't even bend down
To pick up the pieces

An incident, it is the fifth of
A scratched September morning
I have missed the morning ticket
The afternoon group alas
Is the station for discouragement
Is the stage to be butchered
Five remain unscathed
A blank and a greyish Hatred are my choices today
These were in print and
Imprinted years ago
By Reg, a friend
I intend to return his book to the clinic
They have missed my presence
So they say
So what have i missed?
The introduction of a man who drinks mouthwash?
Gags about oral hygiene?
Newish old faces?
Diabetes?
The injection of stark warnings of death and
Several failures of insulin-giving practice leaves us with
Fears of needles, stories and life-long long nights
You have to or you die
You have to or you die
The corners laugh
Habits contribute and inform this collective
They can't be bothered to cook
Heroin and later on, laughter
Follow the man with a penchant for plaques and
Obscure dangers
Sleep on your own front doorstep
Operate machinery
Cut through lawnmower cables
Twice wouldn't you know it?
Spend your drink lolly on brollies
Use your imagination
Watch the Ashes
Eat jaffa cakes

No need to grin
Le fin Le fin
Patina on the inside
Call me a butterfly
It's a Yank's secret desire
A cavalier's stopped clock
It's you and me
It's whoever and me
Don't ascend the stairs dizzy one
Not yet pet
In pretty shades, with lice
Think once, know twice
Your free step and
Your costly movement
Is eye fodder and
Is body weight
Upon my bony bony back

This is real
For two weeks of the year
This is us now
This is us then
Complexions are never complete
Think of all the shoes
A happy life, creators
Of nocturnal whirring
Letterboxes fluttering
Sleepers talking
And old men heaving
From the pits of stomachs
At six a.m.
A mouthwash at seven
No middle aged anorexics here
Only fashion food and
Attackers' babies in abundance

The following is the imagined way
C for Campari
E for 'Eadache
I will say something like this
Something like this will get a laugh
Nervous feeble comedy, all
Talk and no speak from the boiler man
Then there is the Southport man
The girl with the giggles
The death of an old fl...fl...flame and
The aggressive tidier of days
Ruth and her potted plants
A street festival
Some kanji
A brother who died
Fifty two
Was ill

Solitary, remain
Devoid of plans
Keep a note
Encourage the borrowing of donated books
Find respite
Pick up a copy and read how
His brother's body is one that men find attractive
Our story is one less faded
It belongs to a friend
Repeat the surname, you
Stroke the chin and
Stretch the dewlap
And plan in advance
Deliver it in style
I would like to be
Misspelt and misjudged
Well anyway
My not wish is granted
Avoid
Repeat
Avoid

I have stopped dead
Twenty minutes early
I am spent, in the
Likelihood that no-one will like
Uncle shipyard skeletal pauper
A brilliant line
I have found emptiness
Settle
A bit more chic this
Readiness in the stiffs' quarters
Steady nerves, start
In the middle of an eventual number
Ninth, there are seventeen
For comfort
The mundanity, the essentiality of a head-count
Is for comfort

Remaining
A half eaten lunch
I sit by Sylvia
Read a book of winters
Winter is outside the canteen, from where
Voices and forgettable exchanges
Distract
Would i grasp this juniority anyways?
By a bus-stop
Half way home, where
A summer snowfall lies...this is
Thanks to the half-adolescent half-arsonist...
I am joined by Julie

Notice board
Where and when...JFK
I remember only
The nurse and JSA
We still occupy
Twice the leg room
Width-wise
Our feet point out, one fifty p.m.
Women doctors moving on up
Theirs are trained forward, twelve noon
Sometimes
Even inwards, what time is this?

Choose the no room, wait
And avoid contact successfully, throw...
Until a glance at the baldy
Falkirk's finest is tapping his fingers
Scraping scratchy denim
A trembling leg too strong, it
Arouses my curiosity
I conceal it well enough
I want to see what a man like this looks like
I want to see what a man looks like, like this
Without him seeing me
I fail
Nervous as time
Deafening
'Orrible
Underneath a faded draggle-tailed shirt and sticking to
An airtight jacket, the newest
Entrant makes it women three, men three
A variety of medications and comprehensive
Addictions enter the patter
Scottish roots take root and conversation spreads
Remain tight-lipped
The programme consists of soup, fruit
Pass on the soup, sit in isolation
I am uncomfortable eating in public
Even here i will not devour the apple

Staten Island swaggerman is back
It don't wash within the
Fifteen mile radius of St. Helens
Think Prince from Wigan...
Know it's Friday...
Casual should be banned
The uniform is best
When on display is
Zoo
York
Pregnancy in pink...please
An ineptly hidden black thong
Apparel that looked better in the catalogue
I will tie and i will collar it
Every day of the week
Something something ninety five
On a black cheap black shirt
Now a four on sky blue
Open the red eye and turn it around
Donna's alright
Paul i'm not sure
And JP, well...
But Dominic i will never forgive

Kidneys clock on and off in
This pink silent factory, then
Sweet dreams of minerals
Abound and then
Europe informs us
Its centres are close by
I can
Listen to starlings for hours
A fragment of one particular song
Is the Laurel and Hardy theme...
Dera dera dera dera
derara derara

A sharper diary
Entry reads like a weeping sore
School playgrounds all sound alike at playtime
Stems lean at thirty degrees, a
Terrified flower cowers in ornate surroundings
Seven persons whisper
And listen to whispers they do
Until all murmering rises with rising numbers
The loudest whisper vanishes
I leave
All the eye contact one could possibly wish for
Has been made
A newer room beckons, encourages abusive behaviour
This is no spice market
Only rotting English herbs
Dry out here
By the cleanest of hands
By the most radical of minds

The alternative goodbye
The letters of reflection
Suppliers of protein roll up
Double park and swallow the news
Permeate and frown and
Down the last juniper fuse
Hands on head, knuckles cradle sockets
A journalistic eye
A genuine smile
An artistic hand
A disappearance
A toe-end in the groin

Hardly proud
Cinder feller
Bradford gives some mint comfort
While i wait
A lesbian success story echoes
Around the hiss of a fountain
And no-one keeps to the left
Life is slower-paced here
Yet no tile is quite clean
The procession by-passes this and so
The alliance is starved
When at last she speaks
Pinnae become pricked
Will chandeliers ever come to mean as much?
We will own them
We will disconnect them
We will get our grandfathers to repair them
We will live long life

Crumbs
I belong to yesterday
Today i perspire
Koine and two more demerara sugars
Another belly, another hazard of meat
Royal
So many useless words
Continue to insult me
The security guard who knows me
Behaves like a buk buk and beggars belief
There are stifled yawns from the
Athletic wet roc yellow belly
The passport-holder makes me nervous
So the pages descend to level of table top
The oriental, tooth-picking...right
The courteous hand that shields...left
A red bucket on wet roc and a
Hand that sifts through ornamental bark chippings
Does it search for moisture?
Or does the dryness have the uppishness?

It's a fact, cream and apple
Unneccessary bricks, work
And the usual sweat
Another familiar face, but
One who respects space
It is needed
I like the wireless
But yet another Tupac opinion in ink
Is taking the biscotti
I am your stepping stone
Vanessa the ventilator...will
You ignite the box
With the possessors of flags?
Or will you cling to
Your family and other strangers?

I look closely at graphic whites
You look closely at graphic whites
I look closely at graphic whites
You look closely at graphic whites
I look closely at graphic whites
You look closely at graphic whites
I look closer at graphic whites
And you choke

Extra specials, county dullard
Cloudy night, breaking new
Breaking luck...and stuck
Avian new, acid old
You looking at me, Stella's cold
China's protestors, such a rarity
Quizgo gismo, another day...no food
Good nutrition is here, fatso millionaire
A ballcock, or is it pinball?
C'mon Paul...c'mon Paul

And then your head is lowered
But straight ahead you are facing
Blue eyes pierce so fierce
They have to be blue
Hands shake and hands shake
You move to your left
We sway to our right
For what greater seraphic sight?
Who regulates your practice?
Who keeps your noise down?
An investor in people
A cyclist in Cuba
A working environment where
Endurance takes endurance
You strut to your right
I fall to my left
The biker's still inept

Private
The most automatic of doors
Is not sticky this day
A mere forty eight hours after seeing
The bloated baguette...a white
Fragile sponge, rejected
Perhaps only for now
Not such a bad thing
Given some of the bulge
That indulges these doors
In dance
I float
I float...forget
The treasurers of Liverpool
This clammy day is mine
And mine alone

Debbie, an old face
A new face, i wish
Renaissance, a city towers above it
But i don't buy it
My purchase is the connection
With a bench-hogger
Sit in the centre
And look tramp
No-one will touch you
Only eyes avert...the carrier bags help
And lift maintenance is essential
It helps me to be here
Toxteth on a knife-edge, i wish
But i don't think so
And Debbie
Still legal tender
And Debbie
And Debbie

It starts with the Father, the cards and the gifts
It is timidity in a true verse
He looks to the corner where frame meets lens
Keeps watch over the left shoulder
Should the Mother
Nurture instead all subjects taboo
Death of course
And sex naturally
But who'd have guessed Family?

I was thinking big when
I saw the Angel
The investor
Miniature speed keepers were bookmarks
They were insight
They were boost
They were thriving contract
Storage expertise took the iniative
And sacrificed the dukedom
The nomadic stood aside
And wept

You are now leaving, so mind if i sit here
From string we move to steel and Tyneside
Strathclyde, anywhere but this side
Here is Victoria
Here is mixed
Steel is very bloody jolly though and the
Scandinavian cover versions are rather enjoyable
Amidst introductions, new friends...maybe
All my life...maybe
I've been looking...maybe
For a Father...maybe

A mirrored dusk
A mirrored dawn
Where is Parker, the brilliant
Parker?
It's been four, no five months
It's been eighty years
Of eating bizzare salads
The speaker wipes his/her forehead
Spectacles now removed
By fingers not long finished with their business
With their own nails
This is rank goodwill
This is eye-balling with berks
This is The Best Of Life
Are we ready to scrap
For the first time since
Tennis courts of aggregate
Since the wild pink builders
Took their breaks
And took them out on us

Loiter, cough and slump
The suited one
The one who notices
Short distance, focus on short distance
A page, a fabulous ripped one
The distant dual travellator
Falsely promises migraine
This blood has been good to me
But too clean
It's time for the strong man
To commence shift work
To operate and end his days
In a frail van

Christ, he's fallen
Below the height of a soapbox
Your Christ, not mine
Mine is less defined
I read miniature stories of the Saints
But i'm terrible with names
One's a martyr
One's from Hungary i think
I'm content with poppies
They are shy and retiring
Despite appearances
Tatami this is not...
Unquenched and deprived of the solar
This gristle
This epidermal blackspot
Brownspot
Nosunspot
Where i stand, above
The height of a soapbox
With aphony

Withered voices lowered at breakfast
Unnatural volumes for loud types
And turbine
Did Courtney come back?
Of course
As did her sad voice into the mind
Replayed and dismayed
That was then...
For now i reflect on past job searches
Driving the van for charity
My lungs are finished too
It doesn't matter and it's not important
How many more times will the screens be re-positioned?
It's a blind audience and one that cannot see
It is vital only to the man
With the pen, the mobile and the instructions
And those who want a piece of him
A chunk of his muscle matter

Like-minded Spaniards
The midriff-bearing convention
Pupils too tired to widen
Their knowledge
Inches inch everywhere
Even in metric times
Walker...talker
No-one here is beartiful
No-one knows happniess
But at least we are out
Or at least some of us
Is out
That shows intellgience

Cleave to th'escalator
Up down
Taller than
And looking down on
The highest veiniest leaves
It's not every day you see that
Pussycat
Bald pate
Vertical brushes housed in pots
Would mimic bottles of cheap foil and wine
If they were here now
Plan-viewed
Through fostered struts
Same buggered faces
Skewed and squinting
In the white light
Same forlorn backsides
No hunches here...the nutrition is good
It's green
It's a dream

Even today
Through the hum of working respiratory, the
Waft of office perfume
And the above-average use of stairs...
Well-wishers still remark
On the novelty of food, unremarkable and
Transparent in film
The competition is different
The course though, unchanged
The bringers of flowers are
The wanting-to-belong syndicate...
An indication of shyness
From the carriers of buffets
They will always remain in dialogue
Alice's leaving-do
Will see to that

You, blue
Face on watch
Big stomach poutso
Legs astride
But legs astride a nothing space
Your questioning look, your cappuccino
Froth, behemoth
Beer belly
Smelly smelly
Five pounds curled around landscape
Your digits are too chubby
Hubby hubby...come home
To curl it any tighter for rings and things
I pause...see an
Alan Bennet lookalike
Hardly
Not in this clean place