my wife thinks more of me
my son thinks more of me
my mum thinks less of me

i never had any truck with mantras
the devil on my shoulder outran them

but sometimes i do think if others love me, maybe …

it is not easy to stand in the face of this
to let them know that every bullet will miss
the target it thinks it hits
and when the kingdom appears to be in bits
we must let them know that within a single heart
is the stuff of gods, waiting to become art
and that the material world is a weak tether
and in the spirit of creation we come together

as-salamu alaykum
shalom aleichem
pax vobiscum
live long and prosper
om shanti, shanti, shanti

gardened in gethsemane
feet bound for england’s green and pleasant
blood in the cup
the feminised man
with his violent wounds
some see him mirroring the first woman
who ate a symbol
and drowned her sisters
at least according to the priests

sin brought by womankind
and erased by a man
who is held in the blood
and eaten in daily bread
only man consumed
unlike all the women
swallowed by the church

in his name
so many things
a straw man for monsters
he is buried and rises
like the ball of fire in the sky
old things cast anew
freedom that tastes like subjugation

in a moment held
inner lifetime felled
the cages that we weld
how conquer is spelled

i am reflection of captor
i am a convincing actor
not sure what i did to attract her
sex and money were a factor

that cramped position
is an idiot’s artifice
one i never occupied

reportage from within
the wreckage
as i butterfly out of caterpillar
is different

my family needs support
i work to provide
and the art inside
keeps me alive

i am not part time
i am writing even in stillness
a chair is a chair
even if no one sits on it

as a grandkid
until replacement

for money and sex
until the cash ran dry

for my words
until the rest crumbled

but the failure is yours
and i took time to see
that i needed someone
good enough for me

i was handled
mishandled

and only my mother’s trauma counts
there are jokes for me
bag full of broken parts
put back together with no idea

i was
and am

you are something brighter
something pure
and i have dammed the hurt in me
to keep you in sunshine

my nose is out of your business
my fingers are in my own pies
and the man that constantly tries
to tell home truths is dishing out lies
instead of saying worked for me
he wants to say it works for everyone

you have faith in it, that’s not for me
i didn’t come here saying what you got for me?
i came here just to come here
didn’t say you could beat the drum here
didn’t say you could chew off my ear
i don’t think i any longer want you here

sometimes i’m a cheap date
profound as an electronic fart
pooping out some pop art

sometimes you’re warhole
sometimes an arsehole
sometimes you have soul

so perhaps i can satisfy
those who say poems rhyme
and those who say they don’t

i’m no kind of stickler for form
though i can write that way
if i want
i am trying to pour heart
and head into it

coming with a particular template
some readers are blind to any beauty
if i don’t do my duty
to whatever poetry authority they
hold to be true

i just ask, what does the poetry do?

your misery is notching up
you have sharp edged things
that you keep for just such moments
and you fling them
and then you watch

the moment where you watch
shows your detachment
shows that no matter the passion you claim
you are existing outside the flame
pouring on fuel, not exactly the fool

we all have a moment before
those footsteps across the floor
they are not unchoreographed
every time you have laughed
or cried, there was a first draft

is abuse
a compound word
made from abnormal use
or am i just being obtuse?
too smart for my own good always

i was never tuned in
so didn’t know i was getting
above my station
you would spin me back in
deep into the prison mentality

look what i have built from love now
and i learned it myself
by being how i decided to be
and if you can’t see
that, then i am not the one who is blind

you can find inspiration
in a coffee cup
in an ashtray
in a workday

being plain ordinary
being so bored in this
being a turned off head
it’s all to be read

it’s all to be written
and you just haven’t been bitten
yet, so aren’t smitten yet
it’s a feeling you have to get

you are carving up the earth
you are sharing out the cake
another’s pain provokes some mirth
you are hollow, your facade is fake

you move through the world
into which you have hurled
the miserable billions you despise
you look no one in the eyes

the achievements stolen from others
the monstrosities assigned to others
the ignorance of everything you have done
empty rhetoric about all you have won

it grates again
strange fruit burst on the pavement
in the heat and in the snow
the rot behind everything starts to grow

to act like you’re a mathematician
when you’re a fucking politician
to forge excuses from superstition
in the face of facts to maintain a position

the monsters do not see you
the monsters do not care
the monsters shall not free you
it’s as if you are not there

i don’t want to make it easy for shitty people
they’re being shitty and they keep all
the things i want to do from occurring
and you act like the lines are blurring

the lines are drawn in the sand
and they have been out of hand
for a long time; let the punishment fit the crime
and stop acting like i’m

the problem
when i’m not
and you so easily forgot
that i stood for you when you went against them

starlings churn the skies
on your mind’s eye horizon
trying to be a fixed viewpoint
with a broken viewfinder

canted framing
which will right itself
it will write itself
the broken narrative