I paint myself inspired, intense,

dismayed but remain just a fat old man

who can’t get laid

such a contrary slut
bathing myself in the corporate filth
served in styrofoam cups
 

the master of diversion

ooh look
the circus is in town

maybe now is my chance
to pull up and over and run away
with a tired old sawdust queen
sold as seen

amidst this arrid contemplation
...

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I ponder the etiquette of nursing a pint

and whether some might find it impolite

if I made it last just little while longer that I

might watch the rain that crawls on the steamed windows

making broken ghosts of every passer by

each of them eager to avoid

catching the eye of the living and I wonder

which one of them broke winter’s heart such as to make it

so bitter

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Well when I say book I mean a pdf file that is readable on Kinfle, iBooks etc.

If you'd like a copy of my latest missive, Scratch, send me an email with Scratch as the title tp

psands62@yahoo.com

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did I ever say I was “good people”?

some days I miss the hasty shouting

the crack of fist on salted cheekbones

 

better that than the nauseous choice

of considered upholstery or designer phones

never weather appropriate, rather, accident

 

ripped and bleeding, waiting for some other

and days my head will fill with men of war

always in shock yet mostly in awe

 

a...

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An exquisite (ish) corpse experiment conducted over the period of a week, earlier this year, writing unedited what popped into my head admittedly with prior knowledge of the line preceding  but never letting that force me down a certain narrative route

where there are fish you will often find bicycles

(in six days god did what?)

 

sunDAY 1

save the shamen monkey for a cleaner time

...

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consider your condition

consider more the price we paid

consider yet a jacket

lest your broken spine betray your age

while edges yellow, sun buffed,

tar coughed & ready rubbed,

I still allow the nicotinic stain

spread across my fingered thumbs

for every page I turn speaks of

the thousand hands that opened

each leaf and countless eyes that scanned

the edifying ants ...

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formed in v they fly

o’er top o’me

bellies, usually driven snow,

this morning

honey dipped in hiemal morning’s glow

 

til’ falling, scrap and skreel

fo’ morsels discarded

by genteel and boor

for there is no inequity

in commission to cloy the

ever open maw

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riding through the wild ways

the green lays

the driven baize

and blinded

by the rain brilliant

bitumen burnishing

sun strafed degenerate rays

every crested rise

revealed an air superior

gray dicing the mazarine,

slicing the fourteen plus,

between here

and where I should have been

no storied moral here

just a simple trip

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we, the understated,
the lazily represented,
decree that
once the poetry
bends at the knee
in the gilded confines
of SW1
it is another victory
swung the way
of surrender
better, say we,
to be a person of interest
than acquiescent metrist
invited to tea

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I have outgrown both the years

and the clothes

which had my name sewn into them

this doesn’t mean I no longer need help

to figure out who I am

my gloves are no longer twinned

by umbilical wool

but I appreciate you holding my hand

while leading me through this cold weight

I am living in those times

between hats

though if god were bothered to look

h...

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friends of friends and an orgy of mutuality

each one ripe for the fucking until we greedily

eat our own tails

 

I find myself running low on chemistry

 

with so little reaction left inside of me

the water around the plug hole no longer spins,

it only falls

 

architectural wounds

cannot heal beneath this razor’s murderous haste

while the cognisant ...

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this autumn morning

winter’s aperitif

is served on the rocks

shaken and stirring

 

come downpour now

unleash your jotting scribe and

cast the showery runes of fables untried

forge scripts along our droughty lanes

of songs for all that yet remain

or wash away those pages brown,

whelm witness to our temporal sway

 

we’ll listen to the eager eart...

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the rain drums his fingers impatiently
along the length of a blue dusting lung busting puckered roof
and fingers the gaps where once there was glass
wire veined, designed to resist
a boot, a fist a flick of the wristy bone
trebuchet yet now carpeting this concrete nest
of surly youth in a crystal expression of boys
when they are bored
nowhere better then than this Park Drive smo...

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from between the leaves

the shafts fall and draw

a hundred golden atria

shining through

the stained organics

of liquid glass

to the cloistral faithful

swimming beneath

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you’re cold, button up,

batten down the hatched glass

these mean talking ghosts offer

little anonymity to the  marrowfat

of shoulder high memories

 

sister in all but time

an “a star” in the morning

 

yet the many delights,

ours but for the cleansed eyes

and thighs, came as you sounded

memory in your truth’s thunder

 

blackened through evi...

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Some of us are grateful to the NSA. GCHQ and Prism because at least we know somebody is reading what we write

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This is not a begging letter, this is not a plea for validation or soothing words. This is a statement of fact. When I still owned musical instruments and could play a note or too I found it difficult to control. I wanted it to be all encompassing, my raison d'être. In 1999 I realised that I was kidding myself, I was just too ordinary, and that such desire was both unhealthy and damaging and co...

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http://www.lulu.com/shop/paul-sands/scratch/paperback/product-21160352.html?showPreview=true

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Currently compling my second collection of poetry.

It will be available in paperback in the usual places but also as a free pdf file to download and read on your reader of choice

 

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yesterday caught up, panting,

riding the crashed cash of signed association

and mimicked accusations of bleak envy

with several scenes already written

most earning a one star rating

from the hindsight of double scrutiny

 

were that jeopardy a statute of memory

nervous cats might not need to dress to impress

and hide non fictional facts from

the dirty word...

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and thought itself is dread

sometimes

begs to grip a taller hand

while quivering on the clipped

lithium dawn

facedown

 

though now

a vital non mover

playful as a frozen clue

what if friction is as cold

is as still

as hateful hearts?

 

when all out of truth

we used dream ears

throat upon throat

 

nineteen welcomed shadows

...

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with a ruder writing awakened

this executioners mark sat wasted on a girlish pout

once the stupid bodies of the foolish dead

were dragged by the fanned shoes

crooked classics needing no further background checks

 

unbridled is what it is

the empty right hand hugged as tumbled denial

where distance curled your recognised existence

pine tobacco growled a rounde...

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every lamppost begets a graveyard

a thick bottomed slice of burnt offerings

to the insect gods

upon seeing this the blackened birds drop

eating, now,

from a sugared spoon

 

the wind comes from nowhere and just holds me

a manly duality, with a laissez faire sexuality

and when it drops those birds settle on my

fingers and cough for my attention

far too ...

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are we recording?

yes?

with that the withered concierge told me

“we don’t want your type around here

too white”

regardless I made love to a cultural icon

away from the conference table

out of sight of the knowing grins

I made her smile

and as  ziggy played for time with no

reason nor rhyme

there and then I decided to hide this story in a

cavernous...

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the monsters used to live under the bed

now they walk the streets, most often,

with halos around their heads

cold sunbeams stiffen my hyphenated bones

and even singing does nothing

to evaporate the frosted water in my veins

splash my neck

slap my face

I’m sick of talking, I get no satisfaction

from my lower case hate

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quietly, quietly sat a lie
arms outstretched
palms staked to the fierce eye
observing within
as, first, flesh mottles
closer still to see without
while blister
vermilion doubts
one apiece of each
seized mortal engine
dripped of framed wax
placed in a filleted whole
gas pored
for a hungry earth
this is all I wish today
let each word die in a dusty throat
a melt th...

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god said “there’s a bone in my soup”

and spat it out

 

and for many years it crawled

before it learned to stand

 

where it said “I will make you now a fresh bowl,

from my family’s blood”

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seen through the columns of rising smoke

the intention couldn't be clearer

 

while the tattooed roads wear the organic stains

as footholds for a memory of fallen phosphor rain

 

yet more caustic the harvest we reap

from the drone-grown, crone wept bones

even as the stone groves grow over the dead hope of

the pebble eyed children in their dreamless sleep

 

...

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each night I sleep

entwined in the comfortable branches

of a mossy oak

by day I play

among the lissom saplings

and wonder

how far I might still bend

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they lined up

in their smart suits and executive hair

outside the foundation stone

of a nations ruin ready to eulogise

to heap praise upon a legacy

of division

 

the traffic slowed

and the tempers frayed in a burg

where there is never enough

most had left by 8PM

save one expecting maybe

a ghost?

 

returning at the earliest light

most h...

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what crisis?

 

nowadays they have to pinch the ends

of their cigarettes before they cross the threshold

no longer allowed to herd the crumbling swarms

of ash across the gingham veldt

 

outside the window, on the pavement,  lies a bible

and the radio declares their readiness is high

seems like a good night to let the smokers

in and warm around a last ember...

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the sea is rattling bones today

and the wind holds my ears to ransom

for want of a scarf and a hat

 

she is walking on the promenade

and wants no part of the play

 

so I am talking to the man on the pier

with the rods and ask

“what’s your game?“

 

whiting

and if he’s lucky

bass

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the jackdaws bruised the garden today

borrowing sticks, stealing hay

the sticks we can eventually have back they say

once seasoned by the summer’s fray

I tell them they can keep them anyway

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the coldest nights are the quietest

though the litter chatters around my feet

like the arctic teeth of an almost corpse

and the gas settles close to home

glassy in it’s  welcome

 

the trees, taut, still brittle of bone,

clench every desperate sinew

as fleshless fingers on a wintered birch

gnarl a carpal tunnel to the council’s moon

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every curtain will be stolen from

entitlement

each grain of dirt will raise

it’s raucous voice above

and over manners

 

while atoms bond

air will ignite for

blood is fuel enough

as gravity exists

believable in it’s force

 

secure each ideal

under fire from

truthful lies repeated

within freedom’s

monopoly of slaves

 

these d...

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i.(the entrance lobby)

continue
take five, not to tradition, yet die to keep poor, poor kitty strimming
fragmented , as perhaps are, rosebuds that fall in the manner which
sweat tracks roll, dammed, oiled but not waived, by a picture without words

I would be yourself, centred, and shoes should share my nylon net
musk mined in imaginary time and black, yellow, black deep, I thi...

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rag my workaday clothes on the hobo tree

the messianic alien has descended once more

from the canyons of manhattan to remind all

and sundry just what we’ve been missing

more avuncular, maybe?, than those times before

but lay down the prayer beads and rosary

a wonderful day has arrived

(available on vinyl, download and cd)

less vanguard of the wired new wierd

...

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today's mash-up: free(ish) association a line spat out every hour in couplets that are not allowed to quite rhyme, all nonsense of course

save the monkey for a cleaner time
a warm snow, maybe, where the cookies die
so busy waiting for the next day
I could’ve missed it when it finally came
through the giggling walls
plaited in a garden that promised more
while a titanium hip may...

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innards laid out, divined,

bloodless cold tripe

that cast insight on the plight of

who?  

these maladroit

broadcasts naught

but considered shite

a drama of the here and now

in as many acts

as you can swallow

just breathless gasping

in the vacuum-packed plastic

of this necrotic head

that tonight bleeds a deviant intramural

spring wash along...

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all selling, or telling

forgot about the gelling together

of aught that matters

 

till we tipped past the point

of diminished returns to ruminate

instead on what a rich man earns

 

and caponised the germ

of all that once promised

in a swinish lust to fill our own pockets

 

gave a child faced strangler

the keys to the bank

to share the gold...

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the escarpments may crumble

while feeding the sea of glass, brick and bone

 

but they sing their story in 4:4(million) time

a slow lament for man dethroned

 

though in a blinked centennial reunion

of stolen, moulded, kiln begat marl

 

a rolled orbicular, boiled and burnished delivery

lies offered for Cornelia’s resurrective art

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beggared on this taunted key

eyes, long emptied stark hollows of jaundice,

no longer reflect the encirclement of youthful steel

 

and, thus cowered beneath such plumb altiloquence,

she finds herself now wimpled in a creeping green

where her walls bleed a jealous neglect

 

fish flaked the façade of dandruff drips

her autumnal fall into sorry stupor where

g...

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served by the slice  

this body, cut through in the redesign for a different life,

whistles a frayed remembrance leaving naught but remnants

when falling for the suicidal hiatus of a tethered tale

 

in these days, of the child’s exultation, sing your song

as a lyrical dog chases damsons and damsels and the first and

furriest flavour the dustiest corpse of trees; dark...

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consoled within the remote comfort of those

doubtful girls and these older ones who,

having shed their curls, are happy to bare their whole

never mind their soul, I’m damn sure

this would be as close to a felony fuck

as you could ever know

and given my luck the house would

fall around my ears at the very first touch of that baiting floss

screw the metaphysical

...

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from now to then and back again

in time; to see

all promise of epiphany roll down between

the cracks that hold you in

such favoured light

 

your pictures beg to be inhaled

their snapped relief

and Dietrich air of futures trapped in avenues

of silvered shadows deftly

drawn of umber hued schönheit

 

© Paul Sands 2013

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do you remember
those nights
we placed hooks in our eyes?

waiting in our sleep
to catch the darting lies
that swam inside our heads

do you remember
those nights?

we should have walked
the chrome stacked streets
that rolled like silver eels

where stub ends sailed on tarry keels
in that vanishing space between
the night clubs gaudy hush
and necessities capi...

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the trickle down poetics

coiffed, varnished, double dipped,

lay waste the oubliette of empathy

 

no balm, no salve

shall expel the foreign body that

thorns it’s path in the digital red apnoea

of each choked fallen promise

as they steal your desecrated breath

 

your lips are still moving

 

your lips are still moving even

as your face turns blue

...

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they promised us "no rain" but

here we are

at the aptly named Water Lane

where the trees, be-whiskered of finger,

stroke their leaf free, would be, chins

bemused by roots once dry and thin now

fat and drunk

 

so let’s begin

 

we passed a fox

we passed a hound

but then a somewhat grisly mound

mechanically rendered

and from that point south ...

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