Like the Need You Call Love

or: The Lost & Found - from a collection by me entitled “Cry Me A River”

Something simple

Real old-fashioned

Something quaint and un-broke

Something turbo-boost impassioned

Some fires ready to stoke 

Like the lust that I called chemistry

Like my angels above

Like the teeth of my defenestry

Like the need I call love

I say “safe” for insecurity

My desires fuel greed

I play trust but I get surety

I say “love” to mean need 

All the crimes of my mendacity!

I never heeded my foe

I call sated “half-capacity”

I don't know I don't know

Like the urge I try to satisfy

All the pleasures I yearn

Like the beauty I go blindly by

Dim-lit lessons I learn

Like the world my head goes living in

Houses that I call home

Like my brain - the TV or

The computer that I call “phone”

Like the dream world that I patronise

Like the gift-horse I missed

The escape hatch when I fantasise 

Like the first time we kissed

Like the ache when I curl up at night

Like the distance I go

Like the loneliness of morning light

Like the Devil I know

Like old cares that I don’t care about

Like I’m really not here

Like the screams that I don't dare let out

Like I’m scared of the fear

Like the glimmer in my changing eyes

Like my heart re-aligned

Like places my soul could demonise

Like the darkness I find


I feign strength to mask my impotence

I never counted the cost

I lose hope with every incident

Turn the lights out

I'm lost

Like my box-fresh new identity 

Like the path that I choose

Wipe the debts of my indemnity

Now I’ve nothing to lose

Like my eyes are open once again

Like emerging from sea

Like recalling why I’m valuable

Like re-finding the key

Like the honour of a bird released

Like discovering sun

Like my soul got newly un-deceased

All of my dreams in one

Like my safe-haven came back to me

Like my purpose returned

Like the cruel boss left the factory

Like my problems got burned

Like the vision of my periphery

Came back into my reach

Like my game of soul midwifery

Taught me something to teach

Like a smile re-learnt my face again

Like my angels are near

Like I’m back in time and space again

Like I’ve nothing to fear

Like I’m informed and engaged again

Like I’m back in the game

Like I’ll never be encaged again

Like an end to all pain

Like the heat of appetite

Reflecting over my thirst

Like my hand of friendship out

To all the things I do worst

Like the sparkle in the morning light

Like beauty with no end

Like the distant farewell call of

Hankerings I transcend

Like the laughter I call “happiness”

Like the game I call “life”

I see pain as a short-term problem

I see goodness as rife

I say “hope” to mean the future, now

I say “no” to mean no

I learnt trust 

I know my heart’s alive

Life’s a race

I say “Go!”

Like a baby joyful in surprise

Like I’m back on the ground

Like places my soul could harmonise

Light the torches

I'm found

The Birth of Invention

or “I Have An Idea”, from a collection called Semantic Dissonance; or "The Echelon Rink", by me.

Out of nothing

Pure as a giddy thing

Innocent bullet from a gun

Over the moon at my old idiom 

Join me on the midnight run

I have an idea

There’s everything to fear

It might be a really bad shout

It might be the worst world ever constructed

All may never work out

It don’t really matter if the art I splatter

Never got easy on the eye

I matter higher

And my heart’s on fire

Like I’m newly afraid to die

I have an idea

It’s gotten real near

It’s taking my breathe so I choke

It’s banging on the stair like the ghost of Marley

Hanging in the air like smoke

It’s the sum totality 

Of my personality

Worn on my sleeve like love

Hell-fire bent on

Narrative momentum

Passing through my body from above

Word midwifery

Skimming the periphery

Pinning where the mother-dream lies

Brimming with the flakes of my conception

Swimming in my blue-lake eyes

Artist venom is

Rounding on your enemies

Everything I feel goes down

Onto this page

All manifest rage

All the times they've stolen my crown

That which is dear to me

All who are near to me

Printed forever in reams 

Everything renewable

That I thought do-able

Pulling from sleep like dreams


Non-complicity

Is my electricity

No permission required

Your dull brain got over-time

When your synapses got fired

I have an idea

My car

I steer

What journeys might I contrive ?

I’ll take her through the gears

And all my peers

Can tell me how they think I drive

Everything poetic is charged

Magnetic

And the words fly together like geese

Gaggling clever one cold October

Airborne into one piece

Show me a better cause

Judge me in metaphors

Did I make a clenched ham-fist ?

Darting like a school in the deep Atlantic ?

Sinking like a morning mist ?

I have an idea

Right now

Right here

I'm taking all your poems uptown

Never get stuck trying think something up

Just scribble and get something down

Nocturnal Acoustics; or, "Doing the M-Five-O"

from a collection i wrote called Spit Mancunia

tall trees bristle like the needles of a thistle

to the dance of the waterline breeze

late swans paddle and the smaller birds straddle

bits of jetsam in the lee-ward quays

the dainty clip-clop and the dense hollow din

of the well-heeled leaving their cars

stifled by the shriek of a courting couple

under billions of summer night stars

the audio conundrum of the nearby city

plays percussion so deep and infused

with sounds that are pliable

(if unidentifiable)

the way new crowds are enthused 

flux and density

the rhythm of propensity

introduce her beating heart

the slow chuckle whirr of the inlet risers

lungs of the high-rise art

there can be no equivalent

she’s ambient

ambivalent

she’s tempting you to close your eyes

she’s the muskadoon echo of a long train running

down the mastery of cunning disguise

something otherly

big older brotherly

peels away from my ears

the harmony of still things

life without buildings

cry-baby ship canal tears

are saltwater vials 

on the weather-worn smiles

of a long dead cotton-eye Joe

no words can seal

the clarity i feel

right here in the M Five-O