Sounds Like a Poem

Schemies waive the working world

And dance on poverty’s plight

Police put cameras in the lift cars

Sounds like a poem that I would write

Dawn raids drown in dub house disco

Eyes dilated from drugs and fright

Children playing in cool oblivion

Like everything’s alright

Rainwater runs down classroom windows

Streaks that bathe in the late sunlight

Young mums gather on sharp street corners

Tear away dogs that bite

Weather worn men with BetFred pens

Tense up as the racing pack takes flight

Laundromat ladies swimming in bedsheets

Washing everything white

Gun-metal beams announce the moon

To silhouette gangs just out of sight

Briskly building walls of shadow

From coconut shafts of light

Trailer park kids mark skills with skids

In the dreadnought deep of Saturday night

Catcalls ricochet through the subways

Shrill graffiti

Urban might

Everyone nods

They know my name

I’m shaping up safe and sound and tight

Few now quiz my fading accent

Nobody picks a fight

All these souls will line the pews

Of the precinct church that sleeps tonight

Nine hours hence we’ll sing low hymns

And ancient wisdoms cite

Market stalls will line the streets

With colours and smells of pure delight

Kids run slalom through the boxes

Everyone here’s polite

Media hacks will call our town

In a bid to hurt and disunite

It never works

It makes us stronger

Sounds like a poem that I should write

When the English Summer Rolls In

Once each year

The sun breaks clear

Of the cloud that clutters our skies

Great British leisure

Is a belt of high pressure

Make hay where the warm front lies!

Hear the field-birds singing

Hear the church bells ringing

As the cricket ball pitches in spin

Watch the fern trees swaying

See the children playing

When the English summer rolls in

Neighbours gather over hedges

Lovers make pledges

Gamblers win

It’s a heat-haze dope

Like a tangible hope

When the English summer rolls in

Dogs chase buses

A policeman fusses

You can see his patience wear thin

Park life’s a bustle

Icecream vans hustle

When the English summer rolls in

Families clamour

For seaside glamour

Let promenade strolls begin!

Watch the marching bands

While milling on the sands

When the English summer rolls in

Blink and you’ll miss it

No time to elicit

Long plans for a season of sin

You can see for miles

When the weatherman smiles

When the English summer rolls in

You couldn't fair better

My word, to the letter

Than be lost to the populous din

Of a country house glen

With my fellow countrymen

When the English summer rolls in

Palestinian Children

or “Tears of The Galilee”

from Rhyme Without Reason by Gary Knapton

How many night-sky stars shine out in hope that this might cease ?

How much closer are we to the prize of living in peace ?

How many people still believe once wars have taken their tolls ?

Thousands of innocent people maimed and dying by the Dead Sea Scrolls

How many walls go tumbling when the bombs fall from above ?

How many dreams are crumbling through the eye of a storm of love ?

How many mouths shot silent ?

How many eyes to see ?

Palestinian children share your tears of the Galilee

How long we been neighbours ?

Yet how little do we care ?

Focused on our differences

Yet blind to the path we share

So many Mosques and Temples

Don’t you find it odd

That we would sooner kill each other than share in the fruits of God ?

Can’t we take a new approach ?

How can it hurt to try ?

How much possibility hangs low in the Jericho sky ?

Suicide bombers and soldiers

Are robbing us of our namesake

How many more miles sleepwalking before we are blown awake ?

How many houses tumble when we bomb our cities in hate ?

How many more lives crumble by the old Jerusalem gate ?

How many hearts fall silent ?

Why can’t anyone see ?

Palestinian children share your tears of the Galilee

PLO and Hamas mask enemies from within

Rocket shells on the Golan Heights

Another bombardment din

Every innocent loses

Jews and Arabs alike

All our brothers and sisters

Fear death from the next airstrike

Human beings are vulnerable

Human beings are fools

Too many men with power not love are making money and rules

Meanwhile back in Disneyland we parody the Burlesque stall

While they starve and suffer in the shade of a Berlin-esque wall

How much more pain rumbles ?

People cannot breathe

How the wealthy grumble from the towers of Tel Aviv

All the world is guilty in its quest for a Holy grail

Deaf to the lesson loud and clear from a nearby Crucifix nail

Open Your Eyes; or "your mathematical chance"

a poem by me from a collection entitled Rhyme-Scheme Lizards

when he died

when told she loved you

how did you feel inside ?

walking along with the inexplicable

running from the quiz you hide

science is cool

but science can’t help

your unprogrammable search

building, testing new hypotheses

grew too big for it’s church

nights are thickets

sun-spun coteries

rife with dreams to enhance

the neural crux of sleeping reverie

your true manifest stance

days are tickets

you’re His lottery

life is a numbers dance

the sum total of hours, minutes, seconds

your mathematical chance

venetia burney says

nothing will change when everything changes

nothing is certain

i know

you’re off chasing new horizons

i pretend to lie low

you went zoom past mars and jupiter

knowing what we can’t see

my head’s visiting darker galaxies

i’m discovering me

did you say hi to titan and phoebe

on your saturn monsoons ?

did you make friends with hip


neptunians

dancing all over their moons ?

take my hand and let me come with you

show me the magic of space

you’re my star


i'll be your satellite

orbiting all of your grace

let’s spin out on anti-gravity

i have planetary needs

take a world each and meet in the middle

hubble knows where this leads

me on hydra

you on kerberos

where do you think we’ll go ?

halfway up a range of liquid mountains

covered in nitrogen snow

Not Like Rain

Perched here above life


Looking out on the fake majestic game


Manchester's pride and shame

I think bigger

And learn now a wider version of my world

How all interactions tilt into a grand design

Newly angled

Everything disentangled yet bound up

Not hopelessly bound up

Rather, hopefully intertwined

The shapes, curves and colours

Musically aligned

And for my ears

A power drill, three sirens, two cat calls,

That dense fascinating symphony of

A hundred car tyres rolling on tarmac

The robotic beep stutter of a vehicle reversing

The bustle of a million lives moving out

Dispersing

Factory sounds, school kids, the whirl flutter of a passing helicopter

Fragile bursts of song and spontaneous joy-strapped laughter cut short

At once shrill and drowning under new sounds ever after

And a thousand un-named dancing things

All meshed into a new collective and sent up to me

On arrival, so charged by urban fervour 


You could cut through with a knife

That distant radio of life

Was that Colin knocking on my door or oil men fracking thirty miles off ?

Long-wave sounds ricochet the subtlest of echoes

In this way I decipher the provenance of audio

And the night rain

Falling through the air in deep sweeping sighs

Not the sound of rain landing

But the hurl of its descent through the skies

Shy of contact

Unfettered and pure

Free as a bird

Not like rain you ever heard

the BIG sky blue

Know your script when the curtain raises

Find the keys to your cage

Announce your fine provincial talents

Onto the global stage

Bin your confines

Torch your bias

Rise above the crowd

Engineer the confidence to think and feel aloud

Smile like love and dance the night away

Follow what you don’t know

Yesterday’s theme is "Where You’ve Been"

Today it's "Where You’ll Go"

Unravel yourself to the world around you

Travel the big sky blue

Shape your own experiences

Shake the place up new

Scorch your heart in desire’s bonfire

Kiss the morning dew

Make good your vow to live your life

Make your dreams come true

Laugh like drains and shred the evidence

Wash the old slate clean

Drown the diatribe with your merriments

Beckon a fate unseen

Never get lost in the new paranoia

That colours these PC times

Cross your heart you’re one like no other

Now go out and cross lines