Do or diet

Caution to the wind,
Hob Nob shoveler,
crumbs will wind
into tile crust.

Old Boys Doing Better Than That

Alumni association hit by a googly: head is a bit of a cider old boy, swapping charlie

with his woodbine - morning after sharing cigs, burping -

escaping vapour steeped in whatever gunk is left

when saliva evaporates and gets caught in mouth droops.

Little by little

Too many periodicals,
would rather be the unaware affected 
trickle-downed and not be frumpily tracing its lineage,
hearing thought monetised  
before it splits off and multiplies -
- but the beach hotel, on a cliff eroding would sooner flop into the sea
before wonder comes and 
shows us all up in the face of wonder.

Should be done

Projecting projected adulthood,
pre-empting thin air and what we think we've plotted on charts.
Tinfoil ejection blown out of the fighter jet,
spoiling around the service ceiling,
the instinct to be burning the yoghurt pot to find its original form,
skinning,
cling film for the adult to creep about without a youth to dull.

Utility shelved, I'm tired of myself anyway,
could just as well be tired because I dittoed. 

Gravy train

Gift or graft, the ability to reason with incredible good fortune is lost
to the crisp packet heap and is slumped into a morass of help
and sandwiches, Berocca, hangover cures,
grimaces and absent favours, half-baked, lost into the dampness.

The curtains, starched stiff, a ruler edge of light -
do I hit and hope, stick the fork in anyway,
or should the mussel of the morning be discarded?

Kein problem

Blitz ice,
doorsteps, flat screens so lush and monolithic and facing heaven,
deep upending slates, and looking down into them
none can see what's got into them.
Deep and rich and lush Ferragamo party slides,
doorsteps from chocolate adverts,
deep and rich and dangerous,
blocks more solid than the mason could have known,
denser than what we think we knew before we started.

Bottling

Glue drying up, Post-Its, their curling corners,
autumn inside.
Tumbled basket fodder of to-do did-not.

I can't stop sighing, my exclamation points are less saccharine,
less a safety net for me and my strangers,
less a sweet stage fog around agitation.
They're breaking up the down-path,
the banality of evil gliding into 
incompetent, formless fear.

The banality of self-regard,
me before lunch, parting myself out and so locked onto to myself;
the jaws of a stupid barrelling dog, tongue trailing eye white of a mess,
more human than I, in its terror, its anger and its release.

A dog's dinner of this,
it's made.

Popeye's Island

Stones chipping away,

scratching the surface of the future

knock-out dropping back on us.

Shoving the dung up a hill

over foundation remains, past orange groves

over the rim then

we and it flop down into the cove,

catch a Popeye show on our own

and gasp at dodgem debris

and the child circling around cogs, tubes and springs,

his circles consistent

or perhaps enlarging around ours decreasing.

Tranmere

Candle wishes blown out for 18 years,
and finally the realisation
that the planets are a spirit level and
the bubble is equidistant  
and there is no need for graft.

In a car, parked somewhere in Tranmere
surrounded by joy
and so delighted by the prospect of joining
and so unable to sit in support of joy,
so unable to sit.

BhS

I'll get to use the price tag gun

when I finally ask,

asking is rough for several reasons

curt inflection for which I exercise little control

begetting a curt response

or how I perceive it

first job

making my reality

total unreality

optimise the shop floor space,

no-one can hear you scream,

so where's the coat hanger pile,

how should I be buried beneath it?

Kenny G

The disco body of my father;

pre-disco, godmade for disco.

Disco time, then disco frown.

Disco tantrum,

then New Romantic paunch.

My wallet packs weight,

I'm hooked to expired bank card designs,

so she's sandwiched in there, between Lloyds

and Nationwide and National Insurance.

Half the time, when I'm daring someone

to learn that I learned from disco tantrums,

I'm having a hard time with fashion I love it I hate I love it

can't middle it.

My wallet packs weight and I'm so sick

of being sick of waiting 

for loose fit

to come and take me away

from having to think

about cutting up my cards

loose fit

come spare me

from my trap beat paunch.

Boss II

Shit floating on a lake, always.
Always
having to find myself
thinking about
somebody
doing that to
and being all that
on a lake.

Lunch Gimmick

Lunch launched I lurch for the Tipp-Ex;
"Please don't throw my lunch off the main hall balcony,
my mum puts Müller Corners in there."
I meditate until the Tipp-Ex dries on the bag,
forget I meditated.

Everything dilates,
becomes set on the scuffle.

New Stand South Stand

I last stood in the South Stand which last stood 13 years ago.
I've never thought about taking you there and now that I do 
we are skimming the terrace like stones
and singing Scarborough Fair 
whilst performing a singularly impossible task,
that is finding a decent view of both goals.
This really is impossible since the stadium has filled so quickly.

In truth, I'd avoid the supporter's pub like the plague and stand alone,
and the stadium would not fill quickly, if at all.
Half an hour's wages spaffed on a programme.
Chairman setting himself an impossible task,
manager setting the team an impossible task.
Piss drying on the inside of my trouser leg,
pissing, an impossible task.

My impossible task to perform for you,
not that you have asked for it,
is to describe how Cutter's Choice mingles with Bovril
and just hangs there.
A brown cloud,
Wader's crosses will never get too out of shape,
or float too high to test the limit of this operational ceiling,
that and the gathering storm clouds.

I'll never ask you to be infused in Bovril steam
or to make me a football shirt without a seam or needlework,
they are unreasonable tasks.

Completed cycle

Periodically, I'd get to deliver a pizza to a flat on the chine and glumly transacted, fiddling with the car keys, I'd slowly turn my back on the sea.

Periodically, it would get warm enough to shove some trunks and a bottle full of frozen water into a bag, and I'd quickly turn my back on the land.

Pushing out to France, before I turned up towards the sky to pretend I was the only person out there, the view would cycle; beach, inflatables, pier, changing rooms, amusements, funicular, cliff, chine, flats. Cycle to a point - after flats, sky, then inverted horizon, then scum, then seagull feathers, the sea and then I best blow hard out of my nose. So the sky is the logical conclusion to this sad isolating activity that takes me away from the lithe bodies of foreign language students and the wonky dinner bells of their chatter. The sky is the end, but before the end, flats. 

It has always bothered me not knowing what went on before the end, what went on in the flats.

So my brother, now is in one of those flats, with a lobby that from the outside, half my life ago, hinted at a glamour and decadence that I elevated into cabaret - easy to with the assumption of denial. And now, being shown its dead space, its propensity towards dishing out carpet burns to the unruly. Up the lift and flatmates concerned, towels bunched up on the window sills, pissing rain slapping the panes silly, no mods for mould, a grey blackening cartoon paint accident on the carpet and the glass is definitely going to blow in, hectic mate, bloody awful.

Next morning. I'm awake, looking out over the cliff, cycle complete, wilfully trapped in the grey eye.

Fun with language

"….I'm over the moon for the lads today, they worked really hard and hopefully we can kick on from there."

I'm embarrassed when you won't meet and quite possibly you're embarrassed you didn't kick on.

But I love it when we meet because your language didn't kick on and your "guff", the direct reference to smell, was not that but a word, but it was millions of parents emptying their mowers into the compost heap, unimaginable death brought upon blades of grass and millions of children once again thinking back, weeping at the smell of it, but it was not that; you are the ghost of lingual past and your talk reminds me.