My Poetry: Playground of the Gods

Death cult story told as truth
Round campfires, and in tomes
One man’s terrorist

Is another’s freedom fighter
Innocent son of seedless birth
Resurrected to save

Us from our greatest sin
Which sits not between our legs

But in holy layered ritualistic truth

That spirit beats flesh forever
We are but kindred spirit
Except for those we’re told to despise

But, if words stolen by Rome,
For vanity and for profit

Turned his image back to flesh,
Stripped book of cover story?
It's naked words held to the light
No God holding whip to slave.
No pulpit words to make us fear

No virgin birth or second coming
Just another mortal body
Born of Mother Earth's androgynous womb
Another servant searching for a way
To justify this spiteful world
Before pleading for freedom
Before her gavel of her glory?

What if cross was stripped of reverence?
Would corn bread still feed
Those hungry for the message?
Would red wine still sate
Those thirsty to sup his blood?
But what of he who casts doubts,
Or hunts for truth outside their spires
Where gnostic knowledge frees the soul
As turns body back into dust.
What of he who searches, but
Lays axe to sacred tree
From which fruit hangs,
Rotted by a false piety
Made bitter through a twisted faith.
Will in rapturous pyre he burn
If he ignores indoctrinated truths?

My POetry: Slower. Happier. Better (Just Say No)

Stood, piss snaking between my shoes
In dark niche, of wheely bin,
Blowing away an old cobweb
Sniffing snow,
From a stranger’s key
When I wonder if its time
To just say No.

23 years of highs and lows,
Chasing hits
In cop soaked streets,
Shady deals in shadier estates,
Rooms stripped bare by seedy habit,
Carpets covered in dirty pins
Bits and bobs of other things,
I wonder if now
I could deal with the hassle.

Petty thefts to pay the man,
Chasing bags and cling-filmed eighths.
I used to think
That this was it
Till I learned to relax,

Swapped the gear for gym wear,
Muscles in places
I used to ache,
Reading books to test the brain
Instead of tomes of abuse and pain.
I wonder if now,
I'm happier with
The pace a little slower.

My Poetry: Hold Gently That Black Spider, Little One

'Where do the reptile eyed go
When the sun comes up?'

asks a girl holding a black spider*

‘They go where white cells clot,’
Said a gossamer boy with webbed eyes.
‘They hide in oak veneered Gothic parlours

Lined with the scabbed carcasses

Of their penniless prey;
Hide where blue-blood* turns green,
Where baying swine
Feed from plates of peasant offal.

‘Where they talk in hushed code,
Where souls turn charcoal
In dirty handshake rooms,
Where wax faces reflect disbelief
In mirrors gilded with the bones
Of forgotten corpses
Of rag and bone men

Who died as they were born
so were laid in pauper graves.”

II

Champagne priests chant

Folded double inside

Green leather backed thrones:
‘We must exorcise dissident-men‡
Pierce their eyes
With scalpel sharp pens,
Sacrifice their tongue

To our dumb Gods

So  they cannot see or speak
Of the horrors hid in glass nests

A thousand feet tall;

Retell the horror of daylight spiders,
Suited thieves in shark toothed boots
Drinking the milk-blood
From scum patinated streets

‘We must snip societal muscle
From societal bone,” they sing

In neither tune nor melody.
“Slice sinew holding flesh to flesh
Divide diseased estates,
Cause homes to haemorrhage love,
Break bonds till brother and brother

Are enemy,
Till their will turns to poison

In their hollowed cheek.
Crush these velvet black ants‡
As they scapper through OUR city.”

III

By Lucifer’s light
The angels shall descend
To save those with sacred tongue texts;
The ants will be burnt
In rusting cauldrons

By alchemists perfecting

Potions and salves to stave off death.
While the spiders dance
Around the pyre

Reciting Crowley’s rhymes

Till their loins explode with fire.
History will be rewritten
In these oak veneered Gothic parlours;
The dissidents will become
Hate figures. Scapegoats.
Demonised.
The reptile eyed

When day arrives

Return to your mother’s oak veneered womb.

So,

Hold gently that black spider,
Little one.

*the establishment/politicians
‡ the poor/working class/unprivileged

My Poetry: She Is My

She is my first beer:
Quenches my thirst,
And eases my wary bones

She is my second beer:
Dulls the edges of the day,
And makes me want more

She is my third beer:
Turns my legs to jelly,
And intoxicates my head

She is my fourth beer:
Making me forget,
And want to dance

She is my fifth beer:
An invitation,
I cannot bear to refuse

She is my whiskey:
Puts a grin on my heart
As she lays me to bed.

My Poetry: How Long Before We’re Wearing Stars On Our Pyjamas

I

The real oppressors of your freedom
Are not wearing jackboots
Hijabs or stars on pyjamas.
They don’t bare arms on jihadi TV.
They don’t wear uniforms.
They don’t wear dog collars.
They don’t speak in foreign tongues.
They don’t cross borders.
They do not wait in hoodies
At the end of your street.
They don’t wear angry faces.
They will not be your friend.
They do not live in your house.
They are not the latest knife crime stats.
They do not listen to Rap.

They’ll be wearing suits
Matched with secret ties.
They will wave false flags.
They will steal your freedom
In the name of protection
While you skim social media.
They will be the face
Of faceless corporations.
They will engineer forced migration.
They will create borders
By which YOU are told to judge people.
They will fracture society.
They will manufacture fear.
They will not be ‘voted’ in.
They will not stand for democracy.
They will be the establishment.

II

The disease of business elite
Infects Westminister with greed
Party neutral donors

Wine, dined and 69ed
On luxury yachts
So moneyed vultures can pick
At bones of asset-stripped nation.
Common’s benches lobby
For free-trade dream.
In side-room deals
Corporate whores dodge tax
Compliance bought with a nod and a wink
And a six-figure membership
To a company’s board.

Unions vilified in the press,
Castrated in the Commons
By neck-tie terrorists
Conducting ‘collateral damage’
To single mum housing estates.
Screwing Proles further

In their poverty hole:
Give us slogans telling us
‘We’ve never had it so good’
But we’re still fucking slaves
As far as I can tell,
Bull-whip and yoke swapped
For social media anxiety
Oppressed obsessed with eastern patsy’s
While unelected law makers erode rights.
Food-banks feed first world hunger
While fat cats suckle cream
From a nation’s wizened breast

III

Drug company CEO
Withholds cancer cure
For another fist full of dollars.
Cash strapped hospitals

Buy into postcode lottery,
It could be YOU who stays
The rest left to pick a God and prey.

Oil tanker spills black gold

Into crystal blue waters

Marine life destroyed
Conglomerate shrugs

Trying to protect bottom line.
Paid off congress publically tuts
At another sea disaster,

Then pockets back-hander.

My POetry: I Rehearse Your Death

I re-read the lines of the poem
They are not particularly sad
Or good,
But I imagine the words spilling,

Like tears, from my lips
As I say goodbye.

I do this often, even when
The words aren't special,
The meaning unpure,
The setting uninspiring.
Still I search for the text

To understand what you meant to me.

Which might explain how I feel
As you lay before me
Skin stiffening like cooling wax
In silk lined pine box.
I do this because...

Because one day
It will not be a rehearsal

On commute back home.
Preparation so when
The call comes

I will still be able to breathe.

Blunt sword that carves
A piece of my happiness
From my mouth, 

My cheek, my day

With a stranger’s soft musing.

I re-read the lines of the poem
And think, I will call
You again soon enough
Just to make sure you're alright
While I still can.

My Poetry: The First Fist Flies

When silent blue lights arrived
On forgotten council estate,
I was still crying,
Don't know who called it
Or how long I'd been
In the arms of a neighbour

The clocks had stopped,
IT lay stillborn limp
As the uniforms bound it carefully
Before moving IT
From foot of stair to ward.
You went with IT,
Which confused me more
Than why we didn’t leave.

IT began with shouting
You retaliated in kind.
Then the first fist flew.

Twisted from the blow
The second crunched
Your bone, clean as a crack,
Screams silenced the house.
Screams silenced the house

You bounced from couch
To wall, fist slammed
You to floor, then dragged
You up for more,
Click of kick to nose
Thud of punch to gut
I don't recall the blood.

Time’s not dulled the feeling
Pit of stomach ache,
Like leaning over building
Wondering if jumping
Would hurt— as much as not.
Remember the feeling,
Struck sob dumb in kitchen
Rooted to where I stood
Hugging doorframe to that room,
Old enough to know
Too young to understand

Then the horror stopped

Your punch drunk toes
Moved up the stairs
To wash away evidence
Of another afternoon beating,
But IT followed you there
Like a jackal sensing a kill

I can still hear blunt booms
Like distant battery of guns
As IT fell down each stair.
Then explosive silence
As we waited for the ambulance,
Me hoping IT was dead.