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.

a mouthfull of blood

hazy jane mountain range and a mouthful of blood
the chip shop salt and vinegar on the edge of the breeze
decline is the consequence of a millennium without conquest
bring all ye visigoths, only the sack of london can save us now
sometimes perspective illuminates

this is an excerpt from my may 2024 stanza, ‘the sack of london.’

its 4 july and the 249th anniversary of the american revolution. and it seems to be winding down. we associate america with freedom but its useful to remember that it was founded as a white supremicist slave state. it has a horrendous history of violence and imprisons more of its citizens than almost any other country. it is also the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against civilians. now, almost a quarter of a millennium in, the constitution is being stretched to breaking point – a nation divided between two similar but intransigently opposed blocs. and the republican arm seem intend on establishing some sort of achristian theocracy.

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.

have you tried the toblerone, insolent infant?

have you tried the toblerone, insolent infant?
it’s cheap if you can afford a lot of it
i have a theory identic twins in tandem
are set at random on their paths
different, but the same

and that’s the end of part one! i think i enjoyed it . it’s been a lot of work. i’m tired. i hope it resonates with someone out there in the ether.

i’m going to do something a bit different for second half of the year. tune in from tomorrow for more poetry in ‘the love epochal part two: getting there (a brexit prayer)’.

ditched blade draped bed and became bin overladen

ditched blade draped bed and became bin overladen
something about ikea bed linen
i watch a boring football match in communion with a centimillion europeans
all good souls forgive each other

i tend to associate ikea with car sickness and lots of milk chocolate, for this was my childhood experience. there is an ikea ten minutes from my flat now, but when i was a child the nearest one was a four hour drive away. and i do not travel well.

but anyway, i understand a lot of people associate ikea with meatballs, which reminds me of my recent holiday in italy with my girlfriend and another couple and their baby.

we went for lunch to a lovely farmhouse one afternoon, sikalindi it was called. the host was a cheerful and enthusiastic woman who had given up her career in milan to come home and make a success of the family farm. and she loved the baby, who she called ‘polpette’ or, ‘little meat-a ball-a,’ in classically italian english. check it out if you are ever in southern puglia.

champagne dog run sling factory tour bonnie umbrella

champagne dog run sling factory tour bonnie umbrella
honestly right now i feel ok about myself,
grateful for what ive been given and have achieved in my four decades so far
maybe i’m ready to start reading novels again
found the partick co-op for a just poetic society
if things are going to change anyway, they may as well change for the better

i have been reading novels again. i spent a long time in the non-fiction wilderness. since 2022 i had a series of medical events. i lost weight, got misdiagnosed, brushed up against mortality. went through some big life events. the events in my life were disorientating and confusing. i didn’t have the mental bandwidth to care about the characters in novels.

so i spent a couple of years going down rabbit holes: nutrition, health, psychotherapy, ptsd, autism, music theory.

thankfully, i seem to be about back to normal. i’m just about to start sally rooney’s latest, and i just finished klara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro.

the next poem will be called the gilet years

the next poem will be called the gilet years
sugar rush stroll, the last of my 30s, then back to the wall
more nippon, this time kitchen, with an ambassadorial element
i’m 40 tomorrow and honestly everything hurts, throbs, stings or is otherwise stiff

well that was a year ago. so now i’m 41. and i’ve been working on the gilet years for six months. and its nearly finished!

i had been out for japanese food with my good friend and collaborator, r.l., and he was telling me about his new job, which was like his old one, but with a more ‘ambassadorial element’. all poets are also thieves, so i wrote that down immediately.

as i write today, i can honestly say that pretty much everything hurts, throbs, stings or is otherwise stiff. but i do have doms from trying a new type of squat in the gym and a sore shoulder from lifting a weight that was too heavy for me. there have been long lithe periods in my middle age. i remain fit and healthy, and i am grateful for that.

were there lots of you? well that’s a posse

were there lots of you? well that’s a posse
honestly i’m just trying to live the most wasted, safe life
antediluvian nipponese amble celebrants and another two bunnies

i’m so unsure about the bunnies and their place on the superstition/beauty in number/deistic force spectrum.

on the way to our holiday in italy the other month, my girlfriend forgot her passport. that’s bad luck. but it was good luck that we had time to circle back in the taxi and collect it. and i suppose it was good luck we could afford to do that.

then arriving at the airport, there were two bunnies frolocking. oh no! i thought. two bunnies having been established to be a bad omen, i think. but luckily we saw the third bunny nearby. crisis averted. and we had a lovely holiday with our friends and their little meat ball. i’ll explain the meatball next week.