Ripped

Tights from

     The House of SWP

Ripped on the ex-Christmas tree

     She took another limp

From a packet of deads

     Do that one more time 

Sunshine

     She said she said said she

 

The Fug on the Fringes

The sun

was the colour of piss on chrome, of

marigolds in baskets, marigolds in sinks, of lager

in the last flat roof pub. The riotous fug.

 

Al limped in.

He’d worked in Bloomsbury before the concrete set.

There was a moment where 50% polyester felt like

silk on skin. He was made of XS, but took an XL RL

knock-off in white. Bone buttoned. Billowing.

Bog rolls on string.

 

They’d got their Sunday’s

caught in the zip of the afternoon. Kev of Mancunia was

double cross, had shot people for less and would not

leave it out. Lydia, gave a ‘missed Frank earlier’

out the side of her mouth.

 

I don’t need to miss this place to know that they was there.

I snapped fairies in the willow by me dead mum’s dog,

do you ever notice? Do you

fucking care?

 

Algernon had a

perfect working washer, Ariston, but opted for the coin-op.

Odds on for a mix-up in the undergarments. Meaning

cubicle confinement to pass the export flat, else that

frilly question, he dared be asked.

The lash.

 

He’d arrived

all over The Danish Girl on ITV 3. It made his year.

He’d kipped all through MotD 2, the pub-time sermon,

to be passed on and on and on

and on…

 

A schtum trudge

through dead tree stools, lily mats, lino grass, took a sharp

down the gents. Parfum ’73 hit his working nostril, for the

veil of stench. Eyes to heavens, he royally threw. Home

counties ‘22.

 

He flicked thinning overgrowth, nicked his finger on

safety glass and rouged his lips. Scarf-tied Sue Ryder, tight.

Firm fingered the hole in his memory, to see

if it had a pulse.

 

Borax for the thorax.

Metal coat-hanger ‘tween teeth. Jutting clavicles creased and

wrinkled. Tranquiliser girls came crutch less with glossy dogs

in flaxen highs, all camomile lawn laid and dandy handsome.

Glue that. 

 

 

The fruit machine flashed back.

Fellow nymphs gambolling meadows, were fellow sods

gambling Sky Sports racing. Keynes would’ve had a

good-to-firm field day. Cornflower pens behind ears.

A horse named Ripp Off ran the 2:15.

Livers for the chop.

 

a damn fix, unfair! In all my time recorded,

such power, such grace should not go unrewarded!

 

The vape was opiate.

The insults, appropriate. The expression on Dave’s dog’s

visage. The brawn by the pawn shop. Salute tattoos

on the arms of Ian. All soaks, masquerading

as functioning human beings.

 

Al’s named each that ghastly prick, as the fug of the day

came in again,

thick.

 

Vent-Axia

magnolia fly-stuck where the loose let, let loose. Arse flesh

for the meat raffle. Each nail, each visit, he filed under

breezeblocks in the bogs. He calf-polish spat on his Reebok,

mirrored a young man never aged.

Not ‘alf.

 

Narcissus ivy, window cracked. It wrapped his imagination

like the absinthe advert dress by the dartboard.

It was a story full of holes.

 

Vanessa tolled,

the crowd bemused. Tomorrow, our lonesome fuck, would be

‘same again love’, as both Al and Algernon

all too bastard knew.

 

For Lviv

In West Ukraine, a blue crane

lifts the barley from the guts of the city.

In this accident of geography,

she found the only puddle on the ground

and made one hell of a splash.

Blonde and pleated, tall and static,

a well trod speakers’ corner, she stood.

Her hometown, a Bureau de Change

above a laundry room.

She could not have the patience of the flower seller.

She did not believe in the sound of the sea.

The hurricane from the away end

blew crosses from the hilltops into her psychology,

blew ticks from the reservoir to fuel her residency.

Statuesque, she daily flung her concrete words, ballistic,

against the amassed and fascistic.

To mark the tenth anniversary of her death,

football scarves were laid.

A small boy, all neat and auburn,

offered his historiography:

Fuck your vile corrupt iconography 

Spat and turned into the café, he burst

already old enough to drink 5 star Hararava,

lit up his cigarette and eyeballed

the old patriots in the corner,

who ran off handing their beer money

to the beggar woman in the street.

He bowed toward her stomping ground

and sniped:

Never admit defeat!

 

Roddy in the Betsey

Went to revere Roddy

in the Betsey

In the half-trim half-time power of the

dimming light

Where pints and flights abut

Went to cozen limbo

Set squirreling

in the glower of the wonder hour

before Mischief Night

But the pub was bloody shut

And where I sat

in another

in the cup

Aberdeen could've been

1-0 up

strippen

healer for vice

give dire and squat

you cabling strippen!

dwelt no fan

goad and hew agile jiz

to remand ire

grub the snake move 

oh but stay!

cage your serfs to no.

is onyx strip zoo?

or he lied...

Spoilt Victorian Dwell

 Spoilt Victorian Dwell

the Raumkunst biscuit the upper tiers swell

the sleeveless deport their underwhelm

the Engs regard the slightest duff

and we ain't livin' too well

the Trappists take the monk out themselves 

the Goat kid's all time ever done before 1904

and was never on the form 

this will be our first and everlast

and the scene's an earsplit

blah blag blag four x never end 

and the courtesy's paid and the council tax is paid

and the indifference in the system is flushed down

waylaid decency pissed out at a frequency

that the bend can't take 

and the soil pipe is full of all our mashed swedes

and nobody's making these prescriptions anymore

if I knew then I had to live here

I'd have burnt my own cake

ring the alarm it's the sound of crying

base drum wi' a barrel o' vera nearer

and the tunes are proper shite

on a leathering to pay for paper thin up all night

with all over smite grate up cell block H

it's biscuits no one's dipping in bi-perennial arrest nest

sculpt this say I'll see you pin drop

in the bottom of the loch if monstrous well away

today

was always coming

old castle

the king's gone mad and free again and

vulnerable as wall-chips are we

in these tin pot dwellings

Busted Chad

 Busted Chad

the city to the smalltown to the outskirts

to the poshbit to the outskirts bus I

brings chef's offwhites in a chipfat bag

after a coupleofimports afterwork to a 

frailfaced man with uncertainbeard tothe

Pelicanhotel stop and the banging and the 

bag 'eads won't leavethe poor unstabbed

alone and my privileged solace stops 

between towerpastels and busbeeps and

they's always askin for a fiver more 

and the lift dunt work to the fifteenth floor

and he's off a pensionloan summary, a 

sadeyed triedandtested, all his working,

a patient, a forgiving giver, rattlingpills for

his ticker, a fella who just wants to shut his

own front door.