'Now the winter comes down

                                                              I can't stand the chill
                                           that comes to the streets around Christmas time'
                                                             (Shane MacGowan.)

Feel it closing in , down, the night,

                                                      the words backwards, time wrong,

waiting,

                                                                             wait.
                                                               Pressure on ,brakes off,
                                                         this last is, could be, now,
                                                  the last dregs, the feeling, the base line,

three times fallen,

                                                      pleasure from the fun-lit days,

                                                                   not a drop left,

I found a fourth salvation,

cold setting in, snow on the way,

the Northern Hills

                                                                  the high ground,

typically atypical

                                                                 perished in a doorway

yards from the power.

                                            We talk, we walk , we sleep, we die, in silence.

Why do I write. 'Oh, you may as well ask me why I breathe' (My Arse!) Get a grip!

Anyways, listen, come here to me my little cogito ergo sums, there is nothing to be sure of, but that shouldn't stop you trying. I write things that aren't poetic yet masquerade as pottery. Probably.

And there they are. So what do you do with them? Nothing? Sit back and luxuriate in the soapy waters of your self-contained majestic masturbatory achievement, or send them off in the hope that they will be published, rubber-stamped?

Well, I send them off, not often but now and again. I used to send them in hope bordering on expectation. Now I send them with (almost) certain knowledge that they will be rejected. So why bother? Is it because they will be read, that they will be a straw added to the camels back?
A straw saying something different, a straw showing that there is other writing out there other than beauty and bougainvillea and little known/well known to those in the know, exotic foreign places?
A straw to show that non university non middle-class people have thoughts, something to say, and say it differently? And maybe something will change a little, but hopefully it will stay just as it is. What else would keep me going?!



I live in an art house town


Seven bijou bars
serve cactus canapes on a bed of regret.
We are a lot less racist than we used to be
and the passages at night are quite delightful,
uber moderne graffitti gurus
and a harmless rapper
work on a mission
and a handsome grant.
The river still bleeds to the sea
naked excrement
but the Andy Warhol themed
hole-in-the-wall serves cash
on a bed of no regrets.
This is an arthouse town
the French films
are all un-dubbed into the latest
east coat west speak,
pointy shoes point the way,
the little dogs no longer weep in the street.
Building blocks rock by the docks
with a marine theme,
shipwrecks and redundancies.