it’s jagged timbre

as long as a hand and as tall as a long finger
there’s comfort in it’s jagged timbre
no banks but thorny river banks and building societies
deep section diversion, shrine and a cuppa tea
on the juliet, the wind cries mary jane
jesus christ, socialist, there is no pope in heaven
romeo, no devil below, no hell but earth we know
this exact moment is the only thing happening in your life right now
and it’s a powerful thing to be loved, regardless
regardless of anything you ever have or have not done

the first line refers to the size of my wireless radio, which i was contemplating taking on holiday. i think in the end i just took the ipad for my music and podcast need. i like to always own a battered old wireless though. the current on uses rechargeable aa batteries. the aerial is snapped in half and the battery enclosure is broken and long lost. the only station saved in the presents is radio 4.

i used to listen to radio 4 more or less 24 hours a day. i would leave it on as i slept. then i moved in with a girlfriend about 13 years ago and this was one of the things i had to give up. now i tend to have my noise cancelling headphones on and a podcast on. i don’t even know what i’m listening to right now. turns out it is the financial times ‘economics show’. but really its just some predictable radio friendly voices talking calmly in my ear.

it’s a powerful thing to be the recipient of unconditional love. i speak from experience. i felt deeply unworthy of this love as a teenager. i was only diagnosed as autistic as an adult and i wonder how helpful that information might have been as i struggled all my life to understand myself, all my contradictions and struggles. i’m not 100% per cent convinced it would have been a better story. but it might have kept me out of a few scrapes.

just ruthlessly enforce them

now i’m 40 i can’t work computers or my phone
i don’t make the rules. i just ruthlessly enforce them
at least i no longer leap to the tories’ whim
girl gang, geoluhread mango tango continuum
90s memes are back in favour
things can only get better bet moar dead raverz
first to the pub and the tank lager is off for permanent
but there is no better feeling than voting out the government?

i use to play scrabble with my friend m.l. at tchai ovna in shawlands. its long gone. we would drink tea all evening. surprisingly good buzz from a long night on the oolongs. one evening i got a bit confused and made a foul move on the scrabble. it was a basic and clear error. and m.l. correctly called me out. ‘i don’t make the rules,’ he said, ‘i just ruthlessly enforce them.’ so that stuck with me.

i think it may also have been m.l. that told me that until the discovery of the fruit, an orange, there was no word for the colour orange in english. geoluhread is just an old english combination of yellow and red. please don’t quote me in your english language essay and i am not responsible if you fail.

i always planned on starting a band called ‘moar dead raverz’. let me know if you fancy joining?

locker 91

whenever i can get it i take locker 91
the needle as the razor ice cold like a gun
bounce a buttcheek out the bottom of your beltskirt and i’m shook
but don’t jump, please god don’t jump
overmorrow will come and tomorrow will be yesterday
I am an intellectual and I watch election special (eh?)
rich e. sunak gone with the small sound of a [cough]
neither feared, loved or loathed
a dog that never bit, or barked. just soiled and wet the bed
may he eat out a career, helped out to get ahead
by the mediocrity reapt from our tired ground
which through the veins of parliament abound

hello, it’s july now and we are now into part two: getting there (a brexit prayer). it is really a continuation of part one but it comes with my own acceptance that i don’t really have time to post every day or to make a new song and video every month. so for the next six months my plan is to post new poetry on tuesdays and wednesdays and revisit stuff from part one on fridays.

also today is my album launch so please check it out on apple music, spotify etc.

anyway, this is a fun little bit i think. locker 91 is the locker i like to use at the gym. 1991 is the year my girlfriend was born. its a good number – its a palindrome. i remember being told this in 1991. that the next one would be 2002. a date so ludicrously far in the future that i discredited reports that it would eventually be more than twenty years ago.

we were on a run along the river, me and my girlfriend, and there was a stand off at a bridge. they were trying to talk a suicidal person down. i hope they are ok. i hope they found meaning and purpose in the last twelve months.

then rishi sunak lost the bizarre 4 july election he called. i always felt that rishi was inappropriately seen as a sensible person. perhaps in comparison to truss and johnson. but he was chancellor during the bizarre era of bounce back loan fraud, ppe fraud, and he tried to stimulate the economy by reducing vat on dining out during a pandemic. our polity will not miss his cool helmsmanship.

there are also two references to the godfather in the lines above.