Black Christmas

Fifty fucking years

this black snow’s fallen

every Christmas.

It fell on my father

and his father before him.

Stepping out

into the grey December light

cold and tired.

Home to a bath

and the warm hearth

of family.

A bond of men

tighter than brothers,

thicker than blood,

darker than midnight.

All gone now,

like d...

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Herod

Mother bears her child

and prays the bright, guiding, light

is not a rocket.

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Broke

I relish the darkness of the night,

Its cloying blackness like a friend

who will not leave you till the end

and walks behind you, out of sight.

The solemn fading of the light

covers the cracks that will not mend.

I relish the darkness of the night,

it’s cloying blackness like a friend.

My life was always fresh and bright,

a silver sixpence, yet to...

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Perhaps…

Perhaps it‘ll be over

when I dare to open eyes

blinded by the centuries

of imperialistic lies.

When the bodies have been buried

underneath their rubble rooms

and the children all lie sleeping

In their bleak nursery tombs.

Perhaps I will be happy

with my name written on a rocket

that makes its way to Syria

in some war monger’s pocket.

For ho...

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Beware! The Man Who Holds The Monkey’s Paw

The wolf is at the door,

dragging your hungry children

across the cobbles of Victorian conditions,

their ribs rat-a-tat-tatting

like a wooden washboard.

In the clinging northern mist

ghosts drift across the streets

before settling into doorways

where no one sees them.

A creature lurches into view,

its frame a mas...

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We Are The Dead

we are the dead

the unrequited love

the words we never said

the dreams we never realised

we are the dead

we are the dead

sat in front of the TV

spending too long in bed

wasting our lives away

we are the dead

we are the dead

arguing among ourselves

never leading being led

to places we don’t want to go

we are the dead

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Don’t Pay The Poets

Don’t pay the poets.

There is no value in words,

we all use them

to some degree

and poets just turn them

into clever rhymes,

meter and verse.

Don’t pay the poets.

For there are no tunes

to back their silly ramblings

and they make us feel

uncomfortable

with their ‘expressions’

and ‘feelings’.

Don’t pay the poets.

Bec...

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On The Slag Heap

Quenching the eternal flame,

the furnaces won’t burn again,

the northern dragons will lay still -

the Government has had its fill.

At its heart a molten core

that will implode and beat no more.

The mill will close, the light will die

and in the dark the ghosts will cry.

The workers will go home to bed

not knowing if their family’s fed

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Black Spire

Dressed in robes of soot
from Merrie City chimneys.
Jet cathedral walls.

Burnt toast by Bread street,
pointing to God in heaven
under Yorkshire skies.

Protects souls inside
from the searing heat of hell.
Charcoal sinners flesh.

Wakefield’s grubby church
sitting atop Westgate’s throne
like a nesting crow.

The centuries turn,
blackening on a slow spit
that domina...

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A Life In The Day

WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
errrrrrrr

SHARE if you have a hamster you love with all your heart who you know will do anything for you

QUENTIN has TAGGED you in his album 'Genital Warts' (51 pictures)
because all your friends want to see the spotted dick of a person they've never met

LIKE
so close to LICK

STATUS UPDATE: my wife's left me
STALKER47: about time m8 - every...

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Dragon’s Nest.

They huff and puff their plumes of heated breath
into an atmosphere already raw.
These earthbound dragons, guarding nests of death,
fighting for dominance with tooth and claw.
Their carbon offspring doze beneath their feet
or bleed out into nuclear decay -
a fair trade for their gifts of light and heat?
Perhaps we will regret that choice one day.

For what is this? A cha...

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Dha Kro’z Ov Al-bi-an

(Tak’n frum ‘Dha Book Ov Kro’z’)

Koww Koww Koww
Wit wich hurd mi ple -
Kum down in hur
sno dres fin’ery.

Koww Koww Koww
“Giv mi vois”, sez I,
“For Kro iz sik ov
ra’ging at gray ski”

Koww Koww Koww
“I wish mi song be hurd,
tune’ful as a
prit’i lit’l burd”
 
“No, No”, sa she
“Nev’ar such a thing -
for u ar blak ov hart -
as blak of wing”

“I se u on ...

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The Song Of The Wandering

In darkness deeper than the mine
where, once, I scraped my fingers to the bone
a silver seam of moonlight
breaks across the boiling blackness
and I let those self same fingers
idly trail in the cold Mediterranean.
I dream of the golden sunlight
left behind in the dust, distress and bullets.

That was then and this is now.
The churning sea, the angry orders
s...

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Once Upon A Time

Pop wagons
rattling and clinking
with their gaudy shades
of potions slopping.

Coal lorries
groaning up the hill
breathing their dragons breath
of carbon dust.

The aged magik
of a ramshackle
cobblers hut
and the clanging of the last.

The shout of
“Rag and Bone”
echoing down
a Monday morning.

Tobacconist 
selling chocolate cigars
to little mimics
of the...

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National Wealth Service?

I do not want to lie under accountants sheets
when my body rattles out its failing beats.
Nor do I want to pay for every brick
on those, sad days, when I am feeling sick.
I do not want the most important thing
to be the amount of money that I bring.
I do not think the currency of health
should be determined by your misers wealth.

I couldn’t care less where the...

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Drowse

When there are no mirrors
I am young again
Sitting in the warming glow
of distant years
The aches and pains
will all be gone tomorrow
The days are long
and never seem to grey.
Parents are in another room
just out of hearing
The T.V has three channels
all black and white
Three meals a day
are sitting on the table
The bonfire smoke
creates the evening dusk.

Another time I...

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Something To Say.

I’ve got something to say about everything -
the bloody Tories and the bloody liberals
and that blood Farage with his bloody racism
and what about the bloody workers
and stop the bloody NHS cuts,
give us all a bloody living wage,
stop the bloody bankers bonuses,
plenty to say about benefits Britain
about the state of the nation,
about the house of lords,
about fracki...

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In The Halls Of The Kingmaker

I touch the rough stone walls,
feeling the room whisper with history.
The open fires cast medieval glows,
while wood smoke threads the tapestries.
Floorboards shiver underfoot,
groaning softly in their dotage
as visitors step gently
in the footsteps of kings.

Up and around
the spiral staircase,
just wide enough
to fit a climbing guest
whose hands
bru...

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Carnations

After the bath
she used to drag
black worms
of coal dust
from the corner
of his eyes.

He has never cried,
though sometimes -
when he thinks back -
for no apparent reason
he finds charcoal
on his cheeks.

He is clean now,
though for many years
every crease and wrinkle
on his angry forehead
was gritted with
carbon hate.

Where once stood
a newsagents
on the corn...

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Lifting The Lid.

dreaming
of Oberon and Titania
on this warm midsummer night

in the empty house
the attic was full of rats
and ablaze with light

stepping carefully
around the marbles
scattered across the floor

on the table
a pack of cards
with jokers and aces missing

a bowl of nuts
a plate of crackers
a drawer of loose screws

the rocking chair
stilled
by sawing off it...

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Dockery Plantation Blues

In a Mississippi graveyard,
as the midnight hour crawls,
sits a young boy and his guitar
wailing tunes at the moon.
He prays his fingers faster
as they dance across the frets,
weeping at his inability
to speak in tongues from the strings.

He is lost in a fugue
of chaotic chords and strumming,
as the Delta Blues pour muddy,
like the churning brown river,
fr...

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Menage A Trois

The creeping half-light
casts unnatural shadows
on a cooling path.

Silver sister moon
bites down hard on the sky king,
silencing bird song.

This, being England,
she does beneath a cloud veil
of shy modesty.

Unbelievers still
raise their eyes to the heavens
in acts of worship.

Magic or science -
or just something poetic
on a spring morning?

When the sun re...

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Wide Is The Gate And Broad Is The Road

A sky bleached like old bones
dug from damp earth on an autumn morning.

The pale sun spits on car roofs in a Northern town
where colours hide behind a sheen of grey.

Tram tracks, like silver trails of slugs,
pacing the slowly walking midnight man.

Something ancient and horrid has left a double-mustard
trail of crumbs for him to follow, but nev...

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Nocnitsa

the woods are dark and tangled
and the moonlight jangles white
along a twisted stony path
that leads away into the nowhere
a howling fills the stillness
overflowing like a scrabble
of beetles on porcelain tiles
in the shadows sits a something
with its head a leather pumpkin
oozing cherry-soda pus
and mewling for its mother
who is stalking just behind you
as you stumble thro...

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Dexteram Patris

Uncomfortable
seeing him that way,
and she,
ever supportive,
gently touching
his arm
for reassurance

but there is a failing,
something not the same,
although in looks
we are so similar.

The Prodigal returns
and sees his father,
straight of back
and stern of countenance,
falling to pieces.

The once proud frame -
busted

and she,
as beautiful as always,
...

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Gatekeeper

All seeing eyes
Guardian of the gate,
Sat atop
the stairway of skins.
Sewn together
with satyr hair.
Counting the days,
ticking them off
in a parchment book
with a pen on a string
twined with spider thread.

Sits in the sunlight
and watches the workers
to-ing and fro-ing
like ants on a hill
with their own little tasks,
while he has no legs,
just sits in a chair
wei...

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Is It Warm In Here?

Is it warm in here, or is it me?
I used to live inland
and couldn’t see the sea,
now the salty brine
is up above my knees.
Is it warm in here, or is it me?

Is it warm in here, or is it you?
Polar bears are sunbathing.
Penguins don’t know what to do
because all the ice has gone
along with the igloos.
is it warm in here, or is it you?

Is it warm in here, or is ...

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Mama…

One staring eye,
the other blinks
like a beetle
crossing a marble.
Porcelain face,
flushed with rouge
and crimson
painted lips.

Hole in the wall
in the boarded up attic
of a Victorian townhouse.
Long forgotten,
until the mortar
crumbled around
the remains
of her dolls.

Dresses of lace
embroidered by spiders
with gossamer threads
and sprinkled with dust,
decay and c...

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Saint Valentine’s Day Mascara

She cried when I forgot.
She cried when I remembered,
her tears like silver arrows
to my heart,
her eyes black-lined with sorrow.

The ink, barely dried,
smudged with liquid joy.
A big wet splash on the ‘o’
turning ‘love’ into ‘live’
and crowning my name
like a liquid tiara
for a princess
in a cruel land.

Granting wishes
like kisses.
So I wished s...

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Eviction

They were young
and cowering in an alley,
fearful for the future,
as sirens screeched
around them.

The sky a molten white
of churning clouds.

Everyone running,
colliding, jostling,
trying to be anywhere
but here.

She turned to him
with moist eyes
and lips the colour
of arterial blood.

When he tilted
her chin upwards
her gaze never left
the yellowing smoke
unt...

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Redemption

The black soul of a sinner,
in a numbing amphetamine haze,
listens to the screech of bats
and considers his end of days.
Sitting in the suicide dark
in Marion County, Tennessee,
he has followed the stumbling ghosts
of the Chickamauga Cherokee.
He listens to the whispering water
tempting him in that cave
where he thinks no one will find him
to lay flowers on his grave.

Y...

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Broken Doll

Today was much like any other day -
I got up early, ate some bread,
drank milk from a chipped glass
and stared out of the broken window.

You let me play with a doll,
ragged like the future,
and when I got bored
you put it back in the cupboard.

There were words I didn’t understand -
but I already knew that words were lies
because you looked away from my eyes
when you p...

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Art Attack.

Kalashnikovs spit deadly hate
Upon the streets of grey Paris.
An art attack, the deadly fate.
Je prie pour eux - Je suis Charlie.

A sketch of these disturbing times,
twelve martyrs die for liberty.
The clanging of Notre Dames chimes.
Je prie pour eux - Je suis Charlie.

Bullets of hate will not erase
the sable brush strokes of the free,
dripping red on these bloody days...

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Cronos (The Reaper)

I wait round corners where the air is still,
in darkened alleys wet with winter snow,
the places only fools and dreamers go.
You will not see me, but will feel my chill
on exposed places where the ice will spill
and with each prickle you will surely know
that, soon, the ancient blizzard wind will blow
and bring the reaper with it for the kill.
For I am called from so...

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Resolution #9

A cascade of sparks
exploding in the blackness
of a revellers sky
like bright tears.

Crying for the homeless
sat where the light
doesn’t fall,
under archways,
behind garages,
in cardboard boxes.

Damp and cold
while a flaming wheel
greets the crescent moon
as it circles.
A metaphor
of the turning year.

Out with the old and needy,
in with the bright young thin...

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