My Genius Book

From a collection by me entitled "Secrets and Lies"


It started out as nothing more than a business trip up north

My client ran a warehouse in a down-beat Humberside wharf

The railroads were erratic so I gave me plenty of time

‘Twas on that stop-start train journey 


I found my narrative rhyme

I disembarked in freezing fog and checked into my room

“One God-forsaken evening - I’ll be back home not too soon”

Or so I thought

The power failed

The curse of a gale-force storm

‘Twas in those hours of sightless pitch

My genius book got born

You know the rest

The media hype

You’ve many times heard my name

I’m hanging with J.K.Rowling

I’m on Newsnight

Drenched in fame

The money rolls in

The film-rights spin

Now Hollywood caught my hook

And everyone keeps asking me

“How on earth d’ya write that book ?!”

I tell them owt

“I’ve planned it years”

“‘Twas inspired by my Mum”

“I saw a gap in the market”

“It’s a gift from my unborn son”

When faced with stupid questions as a literary debutant

Rupert Murdoch’s voice pipes up;

“Just give them what they want!”

I bought my pile in the home counties

Complete with a crochet lawn

And wash rooms for the media

Who camp by the gates ‘til dawn

The lifestyle’s swell

I wish to God they’d all leave me alone

Yet everyone the world over

Is analysing my tome

The folly of man lies in his search for meaning where there’s none

We’re going after answers when the questions are all wrong

They created this mess

I couldn’t care less

I’m far from the maddening clique

Invention's capability is fuelling my mystique

Of course, they’ll never know the truth

Because it’s mine to hold

My secret and I got married

And together we’ll grow old

I wrought my power in the witching hour

‘Tis when the words took form

‘Twas on that lonely winter’s night

My genius book got born

Four Walks; or "Home off the Range"

(an Autumnal stroll across Whalley Range)

from a collection entitled Spit Mancunia by me

Wending across the Range

Through low-rise affluent suburbia

Against a proud-perched distant horizon under full-blown Autumn skies

A calm and steady afternoon full of deep colour contrasts

And fifty foot long shadows (including mine) rise up

With such potent ease that for a while I forget my troubles

And bask in the glory of hope

The glove of now

Real tidy piles adorn the park-end of Seymour Grove

Did you know ?

I’d never noticed prior

You can drive all year down here on the way to Chorlton

Countless Saturday mornings have I gone through the gears on the way to breakfast at the Beech Road Cafe

Yet it takes four walks for the detailed data to arrive

Double sized semi’s with huge rear gardens

Wide avenues of ancient beech and elm

Well appointed

Security-annointed mansion houses

Generously proportioned

Comely drums

Four walks for the truths that never hid to get known

Everything is flat for miles

Like Sussex west of Hove or the Fens

This plus the deep blue light and surprise November warmth

Lend an honourable perspective to even the drabbest of rows

And walking of course

Meeting the town on foot, as she intended, is the only real entrance to make

For God’s sake!

That old brewery-looking complex down Tennis Street

What was that ?

It’s clearly long silent yet I wouldn’t knock it down

In it’s own right it stokes and cooks the pan-fried frisson of this part of town

The humble cottage terraces stack neatly up to it - lean knowingly into it - for shelter

At the cost of light

Still standing, it explains the criss-cross nature of the streets

How everything once fanned out from where industry meets

Suggestive of how once again it might

I love waking across the Range

At this time of year, it’s more sincere here than anyway I can think of

And it’s peaceful

Deep green and dappled wide angular leaf-strewn boulevards dance and sway for mile upon mile

Then come up sharp against Trafford’s inner-city delightful dish of variance

The Baltic foodstore “Riga” with a Polish aisle

And the demolished GMP pile

On Boyer Street

Leaving just the police chapel standing exposed

It’s eight windows questioning - eye-brows forever raised

Caught out

Formerly facing just an inner quad

Now, the last man standing

The cart shawn of it’s horse

Ridiculous

Like the folly of a great house

Chatsworth or Knole

Except here - opposite the Legion and Hollywood Bowl

Back over the red bridge into Salford

The jolted knowing thrill of that instantly-over journey still rings through me

And I’ve learnt more about where I am living

The hidden depths of Whalley

And how car drivers never look or change

Back home now

Just off the Range

Waterland World; or I'm Alive

a poem from a collection entitled "Spit Mancunia" by Gary Knapton

Battle-scar fresh from war-time belligerence

Clinking the colonial toast

Faith moves mountains

They're moving Manchester!*

Carrying her over to the coast

The crazy gang populace

Here in Cottonopolis

Never trod softly on dreams

Brash-brawn autonomous

Re; the eponymous

Ripping up the land to smithereens

A back-break strive

To be lucky being alive

Liverpool took a goodbye bow

Everything just beckoned

They were here this second

They were living all of their dreams now

Many men smiled at the long-sewn promise

That their shovels, picks and barrows unfurled

In a time gone by

On a canvas of dry

They were digging out a waterland world

Having wasted many years

Paying Merseyside dockers

Dancing gaily to a prisoner’s song

Free at a canter

Hear the Ship Canal mantra

If you know the words, sing along…..

“There’s nothing I want

There’s no piece missing

There’s no race I never could run

I’ve Mancunian cotton

I’m alive

I’ve gone and gotten all of my dreams in one”

Years later I stand

On the verge of water

That genuflects out of my sight

And the seagulls twist

Over rain-cloud mist

On melodious blue canal light

Know freedom’s never treason

And it’s never out of season

Did the corners of your dreams get curled ?

Big shout going out

To the land-locked city

That dug itself a waterland world

There's nothing I want

There's no piece missing

There's no race I never could run


I'm spoilt dead rotten


I'm alive


I've gone and gotten all of my dreams in one



*to let the sea flow in, twenty thousand Irishmen moved fifty two million tonnes of land

The Khaldan Legacies

from a collection by me entitled "Erudite Lessons in Rhyme"

 Al Zawahiri and bin Laden

Smiles adorn their dust blown faces

Exiled from the House of Saud and driven from Khartoum at paces

Come to rest where they know best and where their doctrines cannot falter

Cleansing tainted love 

Authentic as the High Priest at the altar

Muslim genocide unravelled from the Balkans to Algiers

Christian Serbs, the French, the British, stooge incumbents shed no tears 

Egypt kowtows at Camp David, Kashmir is a UK illness

Israel is theft in progress 

Jihad breaks the desert stillness

  

Persian oil wealth amplifies how Pakistan just isn’t working

Post-colonial secular Islam stinks of governmental shirking

Lashkar--e-Toebi have an answer for the wayward masses 

Other stories are unfolding west through Khyber’s mountain passes

  

Communists, who rule by proxy, suffocate Kabul for years

Likewise in Uzbekistan where Karimov mows down his peers 

Kurds rebel for sovereign status. Turkic and Tajik’s alike

Further east, in Singapore, Khalim bin Jaffar takes the mic'

Yemen unifies but later civil war becomes the present

Ahmadinejad excites at building up a Shia crescent 

Hamas stands in Palestine while Hezbollah joins in and fights 

Damascus doesn’t bat an eyelid. It wants back the Golan heights

Indonesians flock to Peshawar eager to become “the martyr” 

Motivated by the democratic outbreak in Jakarta 

Emiratis and Cairoans curse the high-rise urban spaces

Concepts dear to muslims beget puzzlement on western faces

Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood looks quite naïve in ‘56

It’s modern day successor ditches name calling for stones and sticks 

The MAK, the IMU, GSPC. So many causes 

All across Arabia are fighters bound by local clauses

  

Yemen, Jordan, Syria  Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran,

The fallen Balkan states of Yugoslavia, Uzbekistan,

The Chechyan rebels, Georgia, all the coast states of the Caspian Sea 

The 9/11 pilot-breeding eastern isles of UAE

The Red Sea west coast

Not just Egypt and Sudan but Eritrea

Mogadishu’s Council Of Islamic Courts exacting fear 

Ethiopia fights Somalia. Further north the British bases 

Infect and contaminate The Land Of The Two Holy Places

Many thousands pass through Khaldan, preaching the Qur’an’s Sword Verses

Jihadi’s who hatch a plan sit frowning at their empty purses

Way behind the frontlines lurk the men with training and finances

Venomous evokers of dark impulses and many chances

Western states respond in kind 

The Afghan skyline’s sapphire blues

Are darkened with a droning mass of Chinooks and B-52’s 

And Khaldan camp and Al Farooq are blown back into desert sand

Thus burnishing eternally a pan-global Al Qaeda brand

  

The legacy of Khaldan is a shadow that is falling long

We thought bin Laden ran an orchestrated set

But we were wrong

Al Qaeda is a currency

Al Qaeda is a sense of worth

To energize fragmented hoards of angry men all over earth

It’s not a group

It’s not a man

It isn't based on want or hate 

It's not about revenge

It is a higher pure exalted state 

The Arab-Afghan bases are now yesterday

What comes is stronger

All the tunnels that we thought we faced are twisted, darker, longer

Al Zawahiri and bin Laden 

Smiles adorn their dust blown faces 

Allahu Akbar

God is great

The Hijra is reversed at paces

Common enemies are found

Revive the Umma

It’s your duty 

How God's love is sweeter than the spice islands of eastern beauty!