Spring - Part 2 (2015)

It’s raining again

Somewhere between a spit and the tears of a cry

Like chatting to a hose-mouthed consonant basher

You know the type

Can’t pull out an “F” without rinsing the bowls of your eye-sockets in saliva

The Town Crier-cum-scuba diver


A bowel for a vowel and a gallstone's worth of hen-pecked adjectives


Dousing down your soul with his phlegm-flecked invectives

The wind is blowing again

Its back is up but the gusts are short not long

Somewhere between a status update and a re-tweet

Later those gusts will be drawn out rants

facebook arguments

YouTube chants

Evenings are getting longer again

Somewhere between a twitch and a smile


Slow and nervous as melting ice

Not overnight but gradual as flows of estuary water

Where mother welcomes daughter

At first lovingly - then as vice

The sky is bluer again

Somewhere between a skip and a jig

More Electric and Cyan than Oxford and Cobalt

A shallow playful baby blue

Hopeful as romance

Soon she’ll be tonight’s anthemic dance



To read Spring - Part 1 (2010) please copy and paste the link

http://bit.ly/1M5bzx0

First Second

At school we learnt French as our first second language

Seriously. The 'first second". 

English was our first tongue and everything else was called a “second”

French. Then German. And then Spanish for some though not me.

Nowadays people don’t talk this way

Remember climbing the stairs to Montmartre and slurping snail soup in Chez Antoin after getting lost on the Right Bank ?

I was skeptical at first but loved it instantly

“Why skeptical ?” you asked

That made me laugh

Who needs reasons ?

We ran around the eighteenth arrondissement from Rue de Clignancourt to Rue Caulaincourt

Like teenagers

I was chasing you and you were laughing in huge repetitive whoops like you were falling

We talked ‘til the sun rose up every night all week

The curved bowl of the city's horizon over your shoulder

Glowing red where she meets the sky

Acquiescing in the heat of our attraction

Back home somehow people had guessed

About us

And the story goes that we fell in love in Paris

Even though its not true

You knew already how my world first span when we passed in the street and our eyes caught up close

Outside our building

You coming in

Me going out

How I loved you from the off

How I started learning you from the first second

Some People

In remembrance of Christopher Jonathan McCandless 1968-1992 as epitomised in Into The Wild

Some people feel like they don't deserve love

When it comes they walk away quietly

Trying to close the doors to the past

Yet in doing so they open them wider


Winters can be cold

Some people's insurance is to try and always live

At the cheap end of the sun


Knowing they'll be misunderstood

Some people try not to be found

They are just trying to find themselves


When you forgive

You love

And when you love

God's light shines on  you


Some people don't know that happiness is real when shared

How To Play Football

There are three types of shot on goal;

The bad ones

Where you are thinking of the outcome,

The good ones

Where you are thinking of the task at hand,

And the fantastic ones

Where you’re not thinking

Anything at all

When your mind is empty you are complete

Running on the pure ambition of ancient intuition

You are resigned

All that you can be is aligned

You will project yourself out

High on the arc of destiny

You will devour all obstacles in your path

By virtue of an arrogant refusal to see them

You will be them

Now

Nothing without could ever question you whole

Goal!

There is a Fog Descending

from Life Without Buildings by Gary Knapton

There is a night fog sailing in

Old Lady from the coast


There is a blanket covering


The town I love the most

The boulevard lights sit drowning

In the low-slung venomous pitch

There is a fog descending

Our silent ship-lane witch

A kiss from the deep Atlantic

This eye-less thickening skin

No sea-bound lights flash frantic

No life can possibly win

Yond muted maritime monster

Fat-fingering at my glass

There is a fog descending

No god can make it pass

There is a harbour invasion

A visceral viscous stew

It eats your eyes in quick surprise

And nibbles your ear-lobes too

There is a night fog sailing in

And taking all of my town

There is a fog descending

Omnipotent ominous gown

No knife can ever cut through her

No fire can smoke her out

No warrant could remove her

No noise can swallow her shout

She cries of a lonely winter

She flouts her desolate need

There is a fog descending

Scattering the blind-mans seed

There is a curtain falling

A volatile vision ghost

The glint of lines and angles

Is the food she loves the most

There is a cloak that smothers us

There is a mist that seethes

There is a fog across the bay

How elegantly she weaves

No spirit on high can shift her

No man can reason her being

No force of nature can lift her

No takers ever got seen

Long tongues slow-licking my doleful soul

And drinking my inward screams

There is a fog descending

All over my love-lit dreams

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