POEMS

READING MATERIAL

If there were paper under my heart there would

be writing on it and at last it would be red

like the blood-orange warning of dawn-burst

or nuclear-fall-out-in-reverse-of-dusk, whose

scattered, tattered-knicker clouds conceal

real live U.F.O's, and non-exchangeable

for a bus-ticket when the fiver-river’s gone.

That page, my wage, an underground organ,

with its meta-fictional shorthand and triplicate, 

something like the opposite of a bus ticket,

in taking you on an inward journey forever:

surely it would feel shocked to not be legal tender?

[Silecroft Beach]

THE DAWN

Dawn leaks out, its light slipping

through the dark fingers of the trees.

If I bring this to publication,

it will mean wood.

The woods are a traditional

testing ground in literature.

These days things are wireless.

I might’ve gone right

when I asked Paul

what colour is white?

What is a while?

Is this where the truth

flies or the truth fairy?

In the past, being the witness

from The Lords And The New Creatures

I might’ve been burned at the stake.

When you’re gone we hope

the doors will

open up enough.

Maybe we can

do the new creatures again.

AURORA FLOREALIS REVISITED

Gilly flowers curtsey, not off the sound-map.

To make a flower-press would be womanly.

When our days still ended on cannabis

we would bemoan that flowers were legal.

To the tune of the wind I sink, then swim.

I no longer puff the evil weed these days.

It would be a reward, a kind of dialysis,

that separates the murk from the excellence.

I would need it to balance out my mind,

one homeostatic device for another one.

Now I worry that I am hurried and florid.

I hear an A. E. I. O. U. bird toot its long,

hollow horn out on the A595 and relax.

I hear its wheels go round, that it’s heavy.

*ketamineguitar*

WHICHAM VALLEY AS A SCRATCH ON A CD

If a place is still its own mind,

this one quietly dreams to itself

and falls ever further behind.

No, there is no Tourist sign to tell

how rich in natural and human history

is this valley by the oldest fell.

I heard the church is built on the foundations

of the oldest stone built monastery

in the whole of our fair nation.

Black Combe’s foothill Sea Ness (I also hear)

was once named “Seer Ness” after

the trance of a mystic seer.

Nature’s scales are all diatonic

and from all background static depression

here is her sonic, spiritual tonic.

The beck runs its hand smooth through

an angel’s hair in the garden and

assuages the soul when you’re blue.

On Sunday the posse of motorbikes

comes for the valley’s curves,

the flowing of troughs and spikes.

I could report on more, much more,

but shall just impart that down the beach,

waves still make gentle love to the shore.

THROUGH THE FRAME OF MUSIC

When perceived through the frame of music,

the horizon is a drone,

the apple blossom a dulcimer.

If the apple blossom made a sound

it would be tintinnabulation.

Already the beck’s tumbling

down a mini waterfall

resembles a kettle drum’s metal

petals of silver bliss…

already the trumpet wears

his foreskin on the inside.

Already there is an upturned canoe for a drum.

Already there is a dog for a frontman

and there are poppadom hi-hats

allowed in the raggedy band.

At least when I look through them,

they look really good.

A FROND OF BRACKEN

[with apologies to Brian Patten]

You ask me for a poem.

I offer you a frond of bracken.

You say that’s not good enough.

You’re not buying it.

I say how mood

Is also a bracken frond

Drooping down and

That is why I chose it –

To represent ‘mood’

This mundane Monday morning.

You’re not buying it.

You want something textual.

I say I plucked it from the fell

Which turns in summer

From russet to green

Like an homicidal machine.

I plucked it at random at dawn.

You’re still not buying it.

I seem to remember a time,

Taking the old bramble road

At the Augustan/ Romantic

Crucifix with you

Where a frond

Of bracken

Would do.

GO MY SONGS!

Go my songs into the ballad-murmuring breeze!

Go and be well-equipped with a

toothbrush in your inside pocket!

Go and be not afear’d of the sounds

of the crowded supermarket aisle -

sprinkled as they are with pheramone sprays!

Go disturb the comfortable

and comfort the disturbed.

Go dislodge the algebra from

the brains of mathematicians

and replace it with timeless

ideas transmitted across Time.

Go melt death and attain perfect listening

and not remove the key from life;

go calibrate the key of telepathic grammar;

go walk down the ocular nerve.

Go escape the shape of the paper -

go from me like newborn

spirits of the dead released.

THE HEIGHTENED DREAM ALL OVER

It seems to be a Nintendo innuendo that

her breath a poisonous magic.

Then you’re faced with Hanif Kureishi,

a bit of The Buddha of Suburbia.

The anatomisation of the female

could extend for longer and longer…

her ankles are delicate ornaments of ivory.

You’re also faced with Pinchbeck

whom it would seem, in Breaking

Open The Head, talks of the division

of people into those that like

and those that don’t like mushrooms

as the most ancient division in civilisation.

That’s why I didn’t feel it was a gaff

when I wrote the original, after

poring over a Ted Hughes poem in English

at the same table as fragrant Rachel.

She was never to be my cosmic bride.

PREFACE TO ‘NOTEBOOK’

This text is painstakingly transcribed from defaced bank notes. Some of the bank notes are damaged, illegible, others ‘missing.’ Efforts have been made to order the bank notes but were not always successful. No efforts were made to authorial-fingerprint the voice or psychoanalyse the handwriting. The text is not necessarily a critical indictment of embedded liberal capitalism of whom we are liberal, human subjects and where money, formerly neutral means of exchange, is becoming a flying, white, electrical spark passing through borders of osmotic porosity in the dark. Nor is the text necessarily about an imaginary designer drug called Strictly Free that does exactly what it says on the tin, is and makes you “strictly free” to consume. It is but an open-air poem, comprised of torn and bleeding snapshot-fragments that are given artificial insemination. Inherent in it is a notion that money is an Ode to Death, that a fiver is cheese and onion flavour, that work sets you free.

NOTEBOOK

Il faut que je m’en aille.

Sometimes you’ve just got to hit the road and.

Start learning the basics of a strange, unseen vernacular arrowed down from some lost, mad Godhead within. Pass the fallen road sign saying THINK! in the nettles and the mystery of the single shoe beside the road, in a fast Subaru Impreza with Paul and the gang, the Beatles’ back catalogue tumbling from the speaker, the open window a roaring lion, late birds singing in trees, birds that are intelligent, trees that are our friends, on a smouldering evening in Cambridgeshire, when nothing really matters.

The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. L to the pregnant snorkel + Ossie the dog, he should be sleeping like a log, goes round and round chasing his own tail, only goes upstairs for a trail of Maltesers, nice, round and pale, we’re on the road to Heaven, happiness awaits us there, flutter in the sideways, flutter in the sideways, bring your brief fling with the politics of flight…

Seeing as we can travel backward in time, seeing as we have equalled the speed of light, I thought we could revisit some choice excerpts from my boyhood and beyond.

Teacher rite elephant nite

everything lite lesson love

learn tell everyone Esso orange.

2 MC = E = MC [someone] 1

In the picture of the airport

I can see… a runway,

a cloud, two planes,

a control tower

and the ire ii net.

In our new pogrom there is a Vetacore.

A bomp explodes.

I faded my work.

I have a scar+ that is red and black.

I found a piece of string with a stone on it. I put it round my neck. I saw that the stone could fit into the hole in the wall. It was full of dead skeletons.

He has spines all over him.

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

Hot July brings cooling showers,

straw berries and gilly flowers.

It was 6. 58 and 37 seconds so we all ran as fast as we could towards the sofa.

MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,

MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,

HE'S GOT THREE EYES

AND A BIG FAT NOSE

AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED

WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,

HE ONCE TOOK A PILL

THAT MADE HIM ILL

AND EVER SINCE THEN

HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL.

Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle, bongles has still got the stones.

Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.

Folder graffiti. Normal is boring. Do it later. God made speed to save us, God made hash to help us. The system works quite well. The grass is always long on the Other Side.

The fire-dance dwelled in electric drums

where ecstasy fell soft fathoms to clap

and bells let peace form in blue notes

and peered at deer in the wood and ate of it

and wet let excellence sound out its criticism

and dawn let sting its unsheathed sting

and chloroform in the heart let see

if only Game Over was seen in nights.

The

sun

hanged

himself

from

a

length

of

daisy

chain.

Clocktick clock being clocked off by clocktick.

Clocktick clock not being clocked off by Time.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man might.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man meant.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man met.

Break, bird with the skin of snake.

God rushed into the cold cod quick.

Behold! An evil vision hath flashed before mine eyes!

Barnes has scored a chicken

and wingers are allowed bikes!

Maybe a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes, like The Periodic Table except a swear word in every box, to go at the end?

Even A Duck Gets Big Erections: my mnemonic for the strings of the electric guitar took the same amount of time to conjure as it takes to say, but my mother has changed it now.

Hey, my name is David Bonky,

I’m a knock-kneed hummingbird,

there’s a tear up my jacket.

Over and out, testing testing 123, welcome to my presence and its intensity...

I watch her walk along on the other side of the street.

She parades the black panther’s nonchalant strut.

She wears blue jeans and black leather boots.

She takes some chewing gum out of her bag.

She slides the stick of it out of the pack.

She puts the stick of it into her mouth.

She loves to chew and suck the taste.

She loves to chew and suck the taste.

She puts the packet back in her bag.

She swings the bag about a little bit.

She walks past a little pub long shut.

She might go check out a flower shop.

She loves to chew and to suck the taste.

She enjoys it, chewing and sucking the taste.

I read that Maya means “Goddess of Illusion” in Sanskrit, where Mara, by stunning contrast, is the Buddhist God of Temptation.

A glance

A blink

A fault in the stars

Her mascara slips into pools of black

A chance

A second

of Infinity

She flutters her eyelids

like spring’s first butterfly

The stars awake to notice love

she waits with open arms.

But all is well if I only think

& sigh of the dreams of dusk

Images before I sleep

Dancing, escaping memory

They seem to have no cares at all

They seem to know the name of love

They seem to be my sacred friends

Ancient messengers, waking at night

But I will forget them & never care

About what I saw in love & alive

What? Oh, I guess it’s love

Just us & love Forever...

Sometimes I wish to have no more than a line penned in the margins of a newspaper going:

The light of all that’s good is true

if believing is the dawn of dreams.

Only when the ship is ripped is the sea a she and the water Nirvana-blue as solar spike.

Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.

Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.

Soft

and

loose

like

yellow

pencils

scribbling

dreams

as

they

arrive.

Semen spills like silver water,

under the bridge with the angel’s daughter,

splashing with laughter in a moon-glow chamber.

Don’t escape at night

into a heightened dream

from a dull and longing sleep.

Her breath a poisonous magic.

Sometimes perhaps

down opening quiet

I am drawn down

long and alone and

my friend and my foe

recede into deep sleep

sudden and still

like a dawn behind

a screaming veil

where silence is born

and all that’s loose and tight

and all that’s light is light

like first morning

with no night

and wend my way

so slow to Freedom

and soft Infancy-lunacy

with harp-sure eyes

so I can live

the last poet’s

last poem.

There is joy in things

and smiles not grins like butter

but like butterflies.

My philosophy in a nutshell: sensus praecedit cogitationem. It could be the motto of the LSE’s Philosophy Dpt; but when you write it down, what happens?

Tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.

When I first read the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty - and I can’t stand the suspense,” for some unknown reason it chimed like bells, reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. I even conjured lines to rhyme with it before I knew what it meant like:

[John is dancing with aliens in collective ecstasy].

Blessed may be the end at last,

under the sea,

below the soul,

in the upside-down

Oceans above us

(all that Heaven sends is rain).

V to the knock-kneed hummingbird’s wings… plus, in Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels, E is white; but in my friend Agent G’s musical code, when you detune the guitar strings all the way down, the streetname for E becomes F sharp minor!

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

Signed by everwell, she couldn’t hit it sideways, or maybe a soothsaying Spiderman with the hairgel of Dracula, Atlantis, Aquarius, the 60’s.

Last night it seemed we couldn't sleep but maybe I was dreaming. The world expands inside my hands it's getting heavy. Of all the treasures I could choose I can't seem to decide. Today the shade was washed away where I would hide. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we can fantasise. Last night it seemed we nearly died but maybe I was dreaming. It made me feel sooooooooooooo alive and soooooooo in love. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we can fantasise.

Where once I wandered far and wide 

on a field-file, a file-field, 

a fenceless farm without 

security alarm where all hearts bleed

and all arts breed, now Hell

is very quiet, unadvertised.

McBreastmilk, 

McBreastmilk, 

don’t feed your kids.

Gentle face erasing cream,

smear it in and let it sink

down through the pores of your skin

to erase your deepest down dirt.

O stars the government

that truly speaks for us!

Get an extra kid for free

when you spend 99p.

Freefall 0800 down

your own black hole pupils.

Maybelline you maybe only make-believe

you may be the true mating queen of the hive,

may mad vampires stalk you,

stalking walls walk through

your vagrant dreams.

I see state of head

is more than Head of State.

Monster Munch can

always gobble up your food.

Cancerel can always 

sweeten the stewed-

carfume coffee we sip in 

this liminal afterlounge.

It’s getting cramped

as a tin of beans in here.

In emergency please 

break glass and exit.

Credits at the end of innocence

are falling like numberless lists

of fallen autumn leaves.

Snatched handfuls of light

come to nothing in the dark room.

There must be a use for 

this dust amounting.

There’s nothing like digging 

a meaningless hole as if to cure the 

spiralling lethargy of Hell...

and when I went into the 

woods to bury my soul, 

all the trees knelt down.

O perpetual orgasm of the sun! 

Privation is the mother of imagery.

Prayers, ghosts and 

e-mails chatter on 

the ego-loss breeze.

The chitchat in the solipsistic

kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.

My new, motley fridge magnet

letters contain no question 

mark in the pack but the first

qualification of Modernism

is inquiry and furthermore

wilful ignorance is a sin.

Meanwhile outside the 

fallen Autumn leaves 

are where bears have 

dipped their feet in pots of paint 

and danced across the threshold 

of the paving stones.

Water clears its throat from the tap.

Gunpowder was only invented

for fireworks and a firework

is a champion sperm nosing up

blind to explode bright and wonderful

deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.

The world is a cool, bejewell'd

marble snug in Holy Orbit

suckling on a mother sun.

Supposedly there is soon

to be New Atlantis on the moon.

The cure for cancer 

sustains your heart.

Robbed by a bastard vending machine,

somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper 

to cleanse the doors of perception,

a drunkard attacks a wall

on an otherwise empty street,

a policeman forces himself

to come with a gun.

Hey salesman 

slow down 

with that

fast-food. 

I don't mind

waiting here

for a year. 

Portability still seems the Apotheosis of Form: sometimes I can be walking along on a sunny day when I jump from the jungle to the Arctic to the Sahara. Mutation in consciousness itself, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture-without-motion-bones, like sadness gene and dreaming gland.

It's not impossible to write an anti-poem. Love is not a mechanistic set of rules. Love was once aligned with madness, fever and intoxication. Love became grouped with language not God. Love became a tough word-combination. Love has no ego as everyone knows, and so it goes and so it grows.

I for one think Lucy in the soul with demons may happen to be an actual substance. Travelling south, as I read Rimbaud, a rainbow smashed a railway train window. A baby cannot trip without memories... I remember “every atom ate our eyes.” Our eyes: they are ingrown in the ocean's bellyful of wine, down in the seabed-orchard. There is angelic music inborn in the inner ear; but those whom the Gods wish to drive mad are sent the end of ‘Bike’ in their heads and madness is not something to be Romanticised as a return to Purity.

Impunity seems more what the poet wants. He likes to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds, and is into exploring alternative histories suppressed by the overarching meta-narrative. For plastic surgery of the soul there are libraries. Poetry is the bike riding itself. Monopoly money will get us well, Monopoly money will get us bread, she picks the blue tac off the wall and says “my T-shirt is red”. I put my wounds up on bright flags; I take the angel up the arse. To plug my senses in the mains might engage [!00 %] of my brains.

It’s all about a permanent reactivation of the Glastonbury Festival spirit. John Tucker is taking acid again. Money shags in the dark. Thoughts of one’s greatness only diminish one’s greatness. Skunkfoot is putrid demons excreted through stone. Love an army of fire. Fire needs some incentive to rise up. Shall I touch my heart with a red Bic biro? When all the air in outer space is consumed… The bed in the wood, it was definitely a whore’s, with solar spike I can use the Force, with R2D2 I cleanse my doors, I’m just trying to win my Star Wars. I’m starting to think in five musical parts at once. The Anon Throwaway as a new form could become an alternative currency to rival with money for the role of the real.

Formal education is not for everyone. The yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Giant killers are frozen peas in the microwave. I look into the mirror though I shouldn’t pool my sources. I’m not going to die at the age of twenty seven, watch the dreamtapes on repeat from a golden seat in Heaven.

The heart beats to the rhythm of one. A fiver is surely cheese and onion flavour. Cataclysm is catalyst for the old cat that sat on the map of sound, just because the world is very round. If there were paper under my heart there would be writing on it and it would be art. I might ding it in compressed Space Age seconds.

If you falsify the Nirvana barcode it should have meaning. I can run you through a series of life events in terse precis that meant I arrived at such a culmination.

Well, at seven I helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed storing in writing in the attic here to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world, I was the one to write it. By eight I was the witness from The Lords And The New You Know Who twice. By eleven who knew what was going on? By fifteen I attained the face of stars which may have been scripted in the Bible. By eighteen I forewarned of September 11th in 2000 and wrote the highest-marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%.

After school I recorded an album on binaural earphones, had an effervescent mobile reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang, hosted the Plough alignment for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First despite the onset of mental illness, worked the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen, built the Tower as an instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a cassette tape with a pause where resealed in the reel, and discovered the sheet where pictures (seemingly depicting one of my own song lyrics) grew.

I went through all that without earning 1p. Then as a summary of all of that which I had done, I invented and falsified the Nirvana barcode and in doing so attained visual radio, broadcasting dreams that swirl in digital, purple swathes about the head of the deranged seer...

So you see that it has been fast indeed! That Subaru Impreza! And Time does not pass but evaporate! And things live inside onions of themselves! And galloping water would be a cool thing to say!

I made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Bring bring

bring bring

“Hello?”

Gold member, you're the one,

the one with the heart of gold

Vowels, pure vowels 

Immanuel Kant

will come to thee 

with immanence

You come home smacked up you come

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

boom

boom

boom

boom

boom

how did we get down here from flat-top

wide tunnel cities self driving cars

bears in the moon and liquor and drugs

and whisky baaaaaaaaaaaars

boom shanka, you're the one,

the one with the sonic boom

knickers knickers faster than lightning

skin up fall out of bed

and did those feet

in ancient times

rain down, rain down,

come on raindown

and walk the sun

fatter, hippier, less well connected

always walk the hallways

down to create my own

and in the meantime

and in the meantime

I'll do the monkey bars with my legs

manic depression has enraptured my name

don't know what I want but I just want shame

don't know what I want but I just won't shave

rainy waif, rain always,

lay back and dream

on a rainy waif

now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

oh now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

no more laaaaaaaaaa la's

removal van canes will be turned into furniture

we're thinking of putting Tricky's name on the front sir

you never see me dead near an inch of closure

|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings

“and a record made of sound

goes round and round, conveying

music to the speaker through the stylus,”

says the radio as I turn it on.

Well, although there is no

such thing as the Nirvana barcode

it opens up a discussion about

the Telepathic Walkie Talkie, how

if barcode is rain barcode is phone...

and at least I have

the grace to come

back and say that the

extinction of consciousness

has no monetary value.

It is past dawn

and I see that

that first mobile

phone has gone.

If it makes any difference to you,

my little bro is a genius, who

designed the sheet

where pictures grew

and says <BEE>

might soon ensue

from @ in the international

language alphabet…

he did it for Flora,

subject of many a love poem of mine,

and it turns out

he had her, did her, loved her,

won her, got her,

in time past.

But who kissed who

is playground stuff,

and jealousy is a wasted emotion,

and I am proud

to be my brother’s brother,

and my mother’s son.

I would never begrudge my brother something I would want for myself or my mother either.

WHEN THE BECK TURNS TO ICE CUBES

On our first night up my dad took me out

In the back and asked me what I could hear,

And I did not know, so he showed me the beck,

Showed me the beck to open my ear,

Showed me the beck to open my ear.

/////////////////

We traced its source up the fell one day,

But found only bog and marsh, no fountain,

And the fell itself I should say by the way

Is twelve feet short of being a mountain,

Is twelve feet short of being a mountain.

/////////////

Down as gravity and katabasis require,

Beckwater travels, always choosing the course

Of least resistance, scentless and cold,

Bold to be long, as long as a horse,

Bold to be long, as long as a horse.

//////////

It's laced with ecstasia, the bright, deadly beck

That flows down from the fell’s striated way,

Underlaid with Technicolour unicorn hooves,

Brackish to Blue and dimpling to me,

Brackish to Blue and dimpling to me.

//////////

Prof. Paul Farley would pee in it like a punk,

But I like to stomp in leaking welly boots,

On a trance of green, THC-free stalks,

And let the wet water get in at my roots,

And let the wet water get in at my roots.

//////////

It’s like a long necklace of notes and stones,

Laid over a lucky lady’s milkwhite neck,

And whatever the southerners say of a stream,

It’s also the truth for a bright, northern beck,

It’s also the truth for a bright, northern beck.

//////////

Singing with longkissing sweet-throat BBC birds,

It falls two feet into a sound as sweet

As a kettle drum’s metal petals of silver bliss

That blossom mellifluous on the carnival's street,

That blossom mellifluous on the carnival's street.

//////////

It babbles down into a double-barrelled tunnel,

And disappears for a mile or more underground,

And bubbles up singing in a farmer's field,

For all the world a round map of sound,

For all the world, a round map of sound.

//////////

Optimus Prime leaves once blocked the tunnel

And water leaked in under the back door

To float a massive, abstract archipelago

Of our tasteful vinyl on the black-flagged floor,

Of our tasteful vinyl on the black-flagged floor.

//////////

Poor Ossie the dog was marooned in his basket,

Barking on the store sign for a gone HMV,

And record stores close and folk heroes pass

But the beck still lucid dreams down to the sea,

And by the BBC tears we do mean the sea.

//////////

So it laughs to itself, over what we don’t know,

As it makes that tear-clear journey down,

A fountain pen for all to write with – O! -

And sometimes gets so swollen in the rain,

And sometimes gets so swollen in the rain.

//////////

THE FACE OF CALLIOPE

The face of Calliope was a Holy night,

if we don’t take flight

then we’ll seem quite bright.

It doesn’t matter about the plot,

for the plot is grot

and can go to rot.

What matters most in life is love,

if it comes from above

then that is your dove.

We were three gathered in the name,

if you find it a shame

I can take the blame.

BLUES WHILE IT’S RAINING

The war leaks in the head from afar,

speeded by a brand new car.

I can’t work out when it will end,

but it’s no game of let’s pretend.

Tonight the rain is fairly hard:

in rain, in pain, as saith the bard;

and all the way out in the Lakes,

we claim “no nukes is good nukes.”

The rain types on at the window

with fingers frigid, wet, staccato,

then eases off, like war should too,

before the dawn is a wash of blue.

LOOKING THROUGH THE DIMWIT WINDOW

I live between the letters of the word OK

but sometimes escape the shape of the paper.

I look at the dawn now the sky is grey,

think how I’d be no good as a rapper.

It’s true that I don’t know what to do,

yet sometimes conjure a pleasing number.

I do like the phrase “A. I. am I. A.”

because it’s redolent of Julius Caesar,

the moment he says “et tu, Brute”

which I saw long ago when I was a nipper.

I myself could be living in a play

with a name like John F B Tucker.

It could be a mini Shakespearean poem, say,

for which I have to thank my mother and father.

Now I am faced with the Big Glass Day,

I think of sliding through a mirror,

an alchemy of perception, away,

to bring us ever closer to Nature.

THE INADEQUATE TRANSPOSITION

The house-pipes glugging a guilty gulp

from a big, culpable jug of the “ug” of “drug” or

“smuggle” or Ugly Truth Revealed Inside.

The loose, Betfair jingle of shingle

lifted from the big, flat bird-table

when cars arrive in the drive or if they leave.

The singing of the upstairs Tap too;

and the scowl or frown of the downstairs

toilet flushing and its cistern refilling:

I imagine them as a part of a specific song.

I imagine them transposing a specific hit.

I guess that yes, you can get this.

A CANOROUS CHIME

Someone gets in the power shower.

It reminds me I don’t need power.

Flower power is much better.

Writing Flora a long love letter.

You could even call her “flower.”

Down at the bottom of the Tower

I looked up and saw her hair,

it was dangling down everywhere.

I climbed up it into her chamber.

She was locked in by a protector.

He was a tyrant, I was better,

I was the one she wanted as lover.

I took out my sword to free her,

defeated the tyrant, had a breather,

took her by the tiny hand and led her

down the stair, her knight in shining armour.

In the garden we heard some laughter.

It might’ve been the film director

saying this could go on forever,

flowing like an endless river,

but what was needed more than water

was to cut her hair a bit shorter,

so that we did, while a motor

drove past on an unknown hour.

FIELD OBSERVATIONS

Already Radiohead is a field

with a river down the way

where mad children splash and play

unaware of the guilt and the shame

unaware of the praise and the blame

unaware of the end of the game.

Their tender playfulness extends forever

as they splash and play in the water,

moving stones to change its pitch,

not quite minding which is which,

free to do just as they wish,

and on the river bank languish.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

“You have to write one about running

away from the acute ward,” said my father.

“It’s absolutely hilarious.” Well,

on my first escorted walk I legged it,

crossed a field and a busy motorway,

found a trainline, serpentine, followed it

to the station in the town, got on

a train to Scotland. I thought there

would be a different jurisdiction

there, but the cops found me, and

took me back to the border, where

I was taken back to the acute ward.

“It was a sign of your sanity returning,”

said my father, “and hilarious, but

actually rather sad because it meant

you’d now be forever in and out of hospital.”

ANYTHING CAN COME OUT

Anything can come out,

even a talking toilet…

but I hesitate to probe

the artistic side of things

in case it tempts the mental illness.

Instead I sit and contemplate

unheard music hidden in the shrubbery

which is an image from Eliot

whom it seems, in 2001,

was decreed a repressed

homosexual in The Sun.

Even the tree outside the window

can come out as it were

when observed through

the aleatory pattern of

purple germs on the window,

down the bottom of an

evolutionary corridor, for

in Infinity the tarantula

and the cathedral are one.

Even the lightbulb above you

can come out, even the

drip in the shower room.

SYSTEMS

If you should not trust systems for they rule with fear

not love, fear would appear an epiphany of Hell

in the self, love Man’s highest emotion here

where the dream of love meets the oldest fell...

to engender an aesthetic anti-system like the

colours of the vowels in English you can

find pasta, tea, air, hair, water, clothes, that your ordinary

speech is surreal enough to qualify as an open-

air poem – quick get it down, get it down! -

your notes on hyper-vision dissipate in the air!

What wisdom you speak! Like Blake for the modern

ear… you remember when you had brains to spare?

For chatting in philosophy chat rooms all Night!

For writing in a secret, alchemical alphabet or not!

ERASING THE DEBT

My father told me he smuggled fine art,

told me big things way back near the start

of my life and I was surprised – but it didn’t hurt.

He told me he smuggled art o’er the Berlin Wall,

sold his business when the Berlin Wall fell,

told me he donned faux Australian accent

and code name “Blue” – but in time I went

and found out that (as I had suspected)

it was pollen he smuggled. The story he told -

it was to keep his young family protected! -

art was but recourse to euphemism for pollen!

He didn’t charge the Germans for the return

of Russian-plundered, pastoral paintings

but had a pollen farm high in the Moroccan mountains.

My private schooling was funded that way.

Now I’m trying to think of something Romantic to say!

Blue was his nickname, Blue as the sky today,

through which a docile cloud-change migrates -

and he shipped tonnes of pollen to the States!

Now that he’s gone I can, yes, I can impart

what my father really smuggled when he said art:

tonnes of pollen, containing mascara bruise,

peacock feather, velvet flare, butterfly wing, whose

effects make me laugh at Flarf, snooze to News…

inducing tangential-thinking and demotivation,

it’s non-conducive to old-fashioned concentration.

We dreamed we could legalise it, make it free,

use it as currency or to cross the Irish Sea,

but came across the wall, the wall we adorned

instead of breaking down and soon it dawned

on me that like Michael Hofmann I mourned

my father before he even went and died,

which is called proleptic mourning, then he did,

left me remembering him saying “life is one”

under a bleached, wide, tired, madding, English sun.

[reconstructed]

RANDOM ACCESS CO-IMAGINATION

Simon says The River Goyt

might become the Styx in Heaven.

Will says something about who you

think of touching yourself in the shower.

I say maybe all I need is a length,

need is a length of metal chain.

Dave says it’s rude to repeat

the shift of feet down the corridor.

Raymond says let’s have one more

crumble from dad’s pollen.

Jesus sits at the right hand

of the Lord God our Father.

Paul asks wear an emotional

condom before you f**k my mind, man.

Mother says imagination is a

muscle and language a creature.

Hal says I know you spoke

against September 11th in 2000.

Mark knows that I said a clock

is only as fast as a cheetah.

Andy says “I know the chords

to this tune by Bob Dylan.”

Dad said Dylan was religion,

to listen to on Sunday when younger.

Mandy says the main attraction

of drug-taking is the connections

you make with other people -

but I for one will just have butter.

Bex says I'm right it's impossible

to remember a new yellow line.

Mother says I must remember

when I go out to shut the door.

Dexter says I was right that

my dad used to smuggle pollen

and that the art smuggling story

was just an elaborate cover.

Mark says something like there

is no virtue beyond fashion -

or was it no vice I cannot

quite remember anymore.

SMART-TALK ON HEARTBOOK

Up all night working the guy who said he would plug his senses in the mains

incoming voices seem to be Smart-talking

Simon says fragmented for reasons of solidarity with the dispossessed of the world

feeling the Age of Communication = the Age of Alienation I am

making par for the coursework assignment whose hand-in date was decades ago

chivvying words in different orders recalling the machine in Gulliver’s Travels that precedes the computer whom it seems might have destroyed the spirituality of Cabalistic permutation games of heart-purifying nature based on quest not arrival but whom it seems might not

sharing secrets on Facebook as if it were Heartbook

gone mad with internet pranks, you say?

“hey let’s get a condom on Facebook”

can’t upload spittle to philosophy chatroom

can’t pass the gravy over Facebook enough

started out writing a good book but laptop became huge container for storing the sum of all knowledge

thinking the surface area on which I write being infinite the story is now infinite, the content gone endless

still like Gulliver’s Travels and ‘Goodbye Ruby Tuesday’ – goodbye

still think if the windows were washed – every one - I would see nothing, nothing but the white mirrors re-affirming the quiet interior of this solipsistic kitchen of fiction where I write by night furtive in flight with the sprightly hypertext-sniper on Piper At The Gates of Dawn

when I look out of the window at dawn I sometimes see Eden, am like Adam walking in a prelapsarian garden with a bagful of names to scatter freely on things

the ingredients of apple juice might make a found poem called ‘Text Message From An Alien’

seems the internet is to writing as photography was to visual art

seems the on/off switch of the laptop is its clitoris

seems the omnijective interface of random access co-imagination is the new, synchronised word

seems weak, Wikileak tea is writing done by voices

seems the notion of a tele-book is afloat

through the rooms people come and go Smart-talking on magic alphabet radio

when I see the sun in the morning I think it is Holy not just a 2 pence piece

the kettle rises to its silent scream, its steam Ariel returning on Caliban’s chain singing sweet song my one note on hyper-vision this fair dawn

it looks like a good book is on the cards

it looks like Heartbook might’ve fled away with the Smartpoem

it looks like mutation in consciousness, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture without motion bones like sadness gene and dreaming gland and the pollen has gone under Gondwanaland and the ecstasy pill gone under the green hill and we are hiding from The Waste Land in The Waste Land still

was remembering recently the time my friend sent a text saying LIQUID CRYSTAL METH into space, and I was the one underneath it, the one to catch it

think it might be a psycho-technological post-poem pertaining maybe to replace the archaic sense of ‘gay’ gone to apathy, barrage and detachment

reminds me love is a choice of words

was WH Auden that said that not me

I still think love is the hope the heart literally needs in order for it to survive without which it can stop

LONDON FLASHBACK

London is a craven haven for corrupting taste.

Police motorbikes were being chased by the waste.

I spent a year down there after my degree -

even slept rough – but didn’t feel that free.

The riots were lootings: Christmas on earth

didn’t follow on in the town of my birth.

I busked for next to nothing, saw old friends

but abandoned ship – my each adventure tends

to me crawling home, puking, apologising profusely

to inward grace – senses broken loosely -

and now I sit sipping tea at the foot of the fell,

in a large country house not ready to sell.

There’s a beck in the back and we’re agreed

I am even allowed to write of it if I need -

no Poetry Police who have never read any

poetry will stop me, although not for a penny

I have worked for them… and I cast my mind back

to the daughters of London. The Plough and Black

Combe had aligned by the time I went down.

I lived in the East, it was like an undertown.

I drifted and loafed and smoked too much.

A Londoner by birth, I still am one as such -

but no longer hang with the cutting edge crowd -

I guess they wander lonely inside the cloud!

And no I didn’t pull when I was on holiday,

except a gay experience, though I walked away...

and soon had a dream bigger than a dream,

for which the gnomic nomenclature is “drum,”

characterised by cosmic freedom, bounding

in circles in space. Already daggers of lightning

in the storm were part of a God Simulation;

and I woke feeling cleansed, with re-aligned perception.

Still, back to the sticks, I came by rattling train

unsure if I will ever make it down there again.

CUMULO-NIMBUS HAIR

The powers that be could be clouds,

passing by on their sky-blue roads…

today they are sparse and moving East,

not too slowly, and not too fast.

It’s warm outside for Autumn time.

As a child I thought Autumn Optimus Prime -

that Transformer from the kids’ cartoon.

I still think there’s something in

the personification – a triumphant sense -

for Prime is the sum of all difference

connected – that Sigma where everything meets;

and Autumn is likewise a God in Keats.

But speaking of weather only shows I am

amicable as a person. The strawberry jam,

meanwhile, has all run out on scones;

and so as if to blunt, yellow crayons

I return to art at the foot of the fell,

where it might all be “signed by everwell”

but isn’t, for that may be too untrue,

and just for something, anything to do!

If clouds were really in charge above

they’d look down on the world of love

and legalise soft, Moroccan pollen

and make all kinds of English education

the same high standard and free

and as they passed towards the sea,

cancel cuts to benefits and to the tax

on the rich…. they’d encourage sex

instead of war, and keep the room

temperature in the months of gloom

above a certain level for people over

a certain age for free with all their power -

and all their power would still pass,

as we lay out on the back lawn’s grass

and watched them go, wearing ripped genes

adorned with peace and anarchy signs,

and DM boots on the red brick road,

away to dump their wet, rainy load...

with this idea of State I quite agree;

but it would be an Impracticable Democracy!

SONG FOR JAMES

James is amazing -

he is my brother -

when we were blazing -

we stole off our mother -

names are for crazing -

engage with the other -

when we were younger -

love was the answer -

Games are for lazing -

saith the author -

when we grow up

we’ll each be a soldier -

dames are for sharing

with one another -

those who must keep them

are soon to learn better -

frames are for breaking -

as saith the nutter -

and when we break out

our love is together…

aims are for reaching -

for further and further -

and love’s not for breaching -

and so it’s not over.

POINTLESS ACTIVITY

Now that University is long out

I wonder what it is I am to do.

Now that I know, say, The Great

Gatsby is an infradiegetic heterotopia

pertaining to panchronic and

panoramic overview, like

a chronotope turned euchronia,

or else a word-world gone

polysemic with the multifarious

possibilities of hermeneutic autonomy

through whom the esemplastic has fled

away with the quadlibetical -

now that I know the lesson

of post-structuralism is twofold,

meaning a) the condition of being

a text can extend to any object,

any quotidian ephemera and b)

the condition of being a language

unto itself can extend to any

text – I wonder what it is I am

to do. My father, after his PPE degree,

under Karl Popper at the LSE, learning

of things like falsifiability and

of P1 to TT to EE to P2, well,

he turned back to Winnie the Pooh.

PURPLE

Voices also told me to write of the

colour purple. In Steiner homes for autists,

rational but socially inept, the corners

of the rooms are round and purple

because it's less threatening than the geometry

of rightangled corners. My room

turned out a little like that when,

as my dying father lay in the attic,

my screen bloomed a numinous purple

light daubing the walls until the

bedroom, an anagram of boredom,

seemed like a featherlite love poem shop:

a little girl's lava lamp of a room!

Sometimes the seeping foxglove aura

vacillated back and forth between

purple and its normal screen light,

refusing to settle for any long period of time.

My bro said I'd caught some virus;

the computer programmer down the pub

just said dying, and he was right,

for by the time Blue passed away,

Blue being the art-smuggling codename

dad used in his shady occupation,

the computer broke down. R.I.P. data-tree,

and farewell luminous dark of half Denmark!

Now all I can think to say on purple

is this: I would put it in my mouth.

And I would chew on it like a cow

grazes on grass, mulchy and blind.

And I would ingurgitate it fully

not spit it out like a child his dummy.

I would taste it like her name. It's

the colour of mystery and sex and

saudade and longing and shame. And

it's the colour we associate with depth.

When I first looked at the colours of the vowels

I noticed the presence of its absence,

as if you'd expect it there because

it's the colour of deep things.

VISION

“Look Fufie I can fee feep.”

‘Garden’ is the password to my imaginary world.

There is a catflap on the radio there. Sunlight forms a golden pool on the closed eyelids of the fool as he lays out on the garden’s lawn. When he opens his eyes he sees cloud-forms floating by outside but the rest of this no, not-so-special-perception is gone.

Something about being a Starvationist.

Something about Autumn as Optimus Prime.

Still there is no such thing as Time.

Optimus Prime is a time when wasps leave fag-burns in the apples, apples with toe-nails embedded in their cores, and the air has a plaintive, melancholic, wistful, elegiac note and tone… it’s when the leaves start to fall down.

Down in London we only had a postage stamp garden. I used to sit out there with my brother and observe ants on the blades of grass. I would ask myself if I too were but an ant unto some higher God.

I remember having a love of hammers, also sticks. My brother and I played light sabres with sticks. It used to drive our nanny mad.

When we were down in the London house, sometimes dad and mum would take us out, maybe to the planetarium which filled me with wonder, or to the Natural History Museum. I loved to see the great whale in the Natural History Museum and imagine all the plankton he ate. The tone of mind of natural science was savoury as cheddar, not sweet.

When we were up north there was a sense of being free-range. John Barnes was my favourite football player, the reason to go outside and kick a ball against the wall. I had a Barnes poster on my bedroom wall. If we were listening to a match on the radio and Barnes’s name popped up I would awaken with a jolt and get excited.

At a young age I learned all the capitals of the world and knew them better than I now know even at the age of 43 in 2025.

I can also pinpoint my first coming to awareness, which is my earliest memory, the same: we were on holiday in a chalet at a place called Brockwood Hall in Whicham Valley because we’d come up north to do something to the house which was being rented out at the time; and I found not one but two plastic yellow submarines in a Cornflakes box. My mum said “you like ‘Yellow Submarine’ don’t you John?” to which I responded YES and just like that clicked on. Though I could understand my mum I couldn’t quite understand my dad. His speech was like microphone static, and I realised I would have to start trying hard to understand what he meant.

I think that day I was allowed only one plastic yellow submarine and sailed it through the air with my hand on a dank, dullshine day outside the chalet.

A LOT

When the psychedelic treasure chest of dreams

is opened, perfumed sunset will streak

like water colour across the canvas-sky

and will be beautiful even if there is no-

one to look at it, so we need someone

who can open that psychedelic treasure

chest of dreams and release whatever

may be inside it, be it brand new or ancient.

BREAKFAST MADE BY MY FATHER

Breakfast today was two fried eggs, sunny side up,

on toast left to cool slightly so the yellow butter

didn’t break the surface, with a pink-rimmed cup

containing black coffee with a lump of brown sugar,

plus streaky bacon turned in the dark-blue AGA

and dipped in red sauce, all on a new, milk-white

plate with green rim, which, when eating was over,

and I was quench’d and sated, feeling alright,

I left to soak in soapy bubbles in the kitchen sink.

I belched quite crudely then, which was my food

popping up to say ‘hello,’ and drank of my drink,

the coffee from its pot, coffee which can be renewed,

and, grateful for plenitude, felt somewhat satisfied,

and took my leisure to the beautiful world outside.

CHOCOLATE DOG

I

MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,

MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,

HE'S GOT THREE EYES

AND A BIG FAT NOSE

AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED

WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,

HE ONCE TOOK A PILL

THAT MADE HIM ILL

AND EVER SINCE THEN

HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL.

II

MY DOG HAS LOST SOME WEIGHT,

MY DOG IS MY ONLY MATE, 

HE’S GOT FIVE HANDS 

AND A FURRY BUM 

AND DREAMS OF BISEXUAL

CHEWING-GUM,

HE ONCE HAD A CUP 

OF SWEET TEA TO SUP 

AND EVER SINCE THEN 

HE’S NOT DONE THE WASHING UP…

III

MY DOG GETS IN MY BED,

MY DOG GETS IN MY HEAD,

IT’S LIKE HE REQUIRES

LONG GUIDED TOURS 

IN A COLD MUSEUM 

FULL OF DINOSAURS, 

WHEN I FEED HIM TEA

HE BECOMES HAPPY 

AND THEN FOR A WHOLE, WHITE WHILE 

HE DOESN’T THINK OF ME. 

IV

MY DOG HAS BEEN LET OUT,

MY DOG DOESN’T MESS ABOUT,

HE LIFTS HIS BACK LEG

BY THE CUT DOWN TREE

AND STANDS AROUND 

HAVING A NICE LONG WEE, 

THEN COMES BACK IN

LIKE THERE IS NO SIN 

AND LOOKS FOR TASTY TREATS 

IN THE HEAVING KITCHEN BIN. 

V

MY DOG LIES ON THE FLOOR,

MY DOG IS LICKING HIS PAW, 

I’M SURE HE’D LOVE 

SOME MORE FOOD TO EAT, 

AND I’M SURE HE’D PREFER

A NICE MEATY TREAT 

TO THE PASTA DISH 

THAT’S MY MOTHER’S WISH 

AND HE ALSO HAS A TASTE 

FOR DELICIOUS BUTTERED FISH. 

VI

MY DOG IS VERY DEAR, 

MY DOG IS ALWAYS NEAR, 

HE FOLLOWS ME AROUND

WHEREVER I MAY GO

IN FACT YOU COULD SAY

HE’S MY NEW SHADOW,

HE ONCE GOT ABUSED

AND IS NOW CONFUSED 

AND EVER SINCE THEN 

HIS CRIMES HAVE BEEN EXCUSED. 

VII

MY DOG LIES ON HIS SIDE, 

MY DOG IS A PLACE TO HIDE, 

NOW HE BARKS AT ME

FOR SOME MORE SWEET TEA 

AND I MIGHT OBLIGE 

QUITE IMMINENTLY

BUT BEFORE I DO

I SHOULD IMPART TO YOU 

THAT IT ALWAYS MAKES HIM NEED

TO MAKE THE CARPET A LOO. 

VIII

MY DOG IS HIGHLY BRIGHT, 

MY DOG LIKES TO TRAVEL LIGHT, 

NOW HE LICKS HIS LIPS 

FOR HE’S HAD HIS TEA, 

AND FOR HIM IT WOULD SEEM 

THAT THE WATER’S FREE, 

HE LOVES ME TRUE 

WHICH IS MORE THAN YOU 

IN CRUFTS AS IT IS IN THE BLACK 

ANGEL’S DEATH SONG TOO. 

IX

MY DOG IS SPOILED AS HELL, 

MY DOG IS ALLOWED TO SMELL, 

AND HE BARKS AND BARKS

WHEN HE WANTS MORE TEA

AND HE ALWAYS GETS

WHAT HE WANTS FROM ME, 

HE’S GOT A TEA BOWL, 

IN THE LITTLE HOLE 

OF OUR BEDROOM HERE

WHERE I INTERROGATE MY SOUL. 

X

MY DOG HAS SEVENTY WORDS,

MY DOG IS AS CLEVER AS THE BIRDS,

HE CAN HEAL THE SOUL 

WITH UNCOMPLICATED LOVE

WHEN YOU’RE CRASHING DOWN 

FROM A PERMANENT DOVE,

AND THE BOOK WITH SMELL

IS HIS WORD AS WELL 

THOUGH IT SMELLS OF HER 

LIKE A FLOWER STRAIGHT FROM HELL.

XI

MY DOG WANTS A BOWL OF TEA,

MY DOG COMES NAGGING ME,

BUT WHAT HE DOESN’T KNOW

IS THE SUGAR’S RUN OUT,

AND HE’S NOT EXACTLY

GOING TO LIKE IT WITHOUT,

THIS COULD BE A CHANCE 

IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRANCE

TO RENOUNCE THE BAD HABIT 

AND MAKE THIS INTO A STANCE. 

XII

MY DOG IS RATHER WEIRD,

MY DOG HAS A TEA-STAINED BEARD, 

HE GOES OFF PADDING 

TO THE ROOM NEXT DOOR 

TO HUNT FOR MUM’S FOOD

AND MORE AND MANY MORE 

AND HE GOBBLES HER PUD

AND IT TASTES QUITE GOOD

IT’S STRAWBERRIES AND ICE CREAM 

BECAUSE HE THINKS HE SHOULD.

XIII

MY DOG EMITS A LITTLE MOAN, 

MY DOG EMITS A LITTLE GROAN, 

AND HE FOLLOWS ME OUT 

WHEN I GO FOR A SMOKE 

BECAUSE HE WANTS SOME TEA 

FROM THE GENEROUS BLOKE

BUT I MUST BE STRONG 

AND WRITE ANOTHER SONG 

WITHOUT CAVING IN TO HIM 

BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE WRONG.  

XIV

MY DOG WILL NAG TONIGHT,

HE’LL WANT TO FEEL ALRIGHT,

TO SUP SWEET TEA 

FROM THE BEDROOM BOWL

AS I SIT AND WRITE FAST 

AND TEND TO MY SOUL, 

BUT I’LL TRY AND REFRAIN 

THOUGH IT MIGHT MEAN PAIN 

FOR MY POOR OLD DOG, 

RECEIVED UP IN HIS BRAIN. 

XV

MY DOG HAS GOT WET FEET, 

MY DOG ISN’T BEING DISCRETE,

HE COMES PADDING IN 

FROM THE GARDEN WHERE 

HE SUPS ON DELICIOUS 

AND SENTIENT AIR 

AND IT RAINS AND RAINS

SO HE LEAVES BLACK STAINS

AND HE’LL NEVER PLUG 

HIS SENSES IN THE MAINS. 

XVI

MY DOG KEEPS LOOKING AT ME,

MY DOG IS NOW SUPPING TEA, 

THERE’S ALWAYS A CUP 

IN MY DOING HAND 

EVER SINCE I LEFT 

MY LAST ROCK N ROLL BAND, 

IN MONOPOLY JAIL 

WHERE TIME IS A SNAIL

THERE’S NOTHING ELSE TO DO,

TO STOP LOVE GOING STALE. 

XVII

MY DOG DOESN’T THANK ME AT ALL,

MY DOG THINKS I’M LANKY AND TALL,

HE’S A DESPERATE DOG

WITH A VERY SWEET TOOTH

AND PREFERS CANDY-COATING 

TO THE NAKED TRUTH, 

HE’LL BE DREAMING SOON, 

UNDER NEATH THE MOON, 

OF A FOUNTAIN OF SWEET TEA

SPRUNG INSIDE THE NOON. 

XVIII

MY DOG HAS A COLLAR ON, 

MY DOG IS NOT CALLED JOHN, 

BUT APART FROM THAT 

MY DOG IS TRULY FREE

AND TO BE FAIR TO HIM 

HE’S ALWAYS THERE FOR ME, 

HE’S A REALLY CLASS ACT

AND AS A MATTER OF FACT 

HE CIRCUMNAVIGATES MY ILLNESS

WITH IMPECCABLE EXTANT TACT. 

XIX

MY DOG BELONGS TO JAMES,

MY DOG SHOULDN’T COME TO NAMES,

NOW QUENCHED AND SATED

HE LIES ON THE FLOOR 

AND PRAYS IN HIS STOMACH 

FOR A LITTLE BIT MORE, 

JAMES COMES IN TO SAY 

TO ME “ARE YOU OKAY?”

AND OF COURSE I RESPOND 

I’M FEELING ALRIGHT TODAY. 

XX

MY DOG IS LEFT BEHIND,

MY DOG IS NEARLY BLIND, 

QUITE SOON HE WILL DIE, 

LIE DOWN IN GREEN GRASS

AND WATCH AS THE POWERS 

THAT BE COME TO PASS, 

AND SMILE AND DREAM

AND THEN IT WILL SEEM

MY DOG HAS ALREADY HAD

HIS FINAL BOWL OF CREAM. 

XXI

MY DOG DRINKS FROM THE BOG,

MY DOG IS A VERY STRANGE DOG,

HE DRIPS AND DRIPS

ON THE TOILET FLOOR, 

AND MAKES IT WET

BECAUSE OF HIS FUR, 

I THINK HE’D RATHER SEE

A CUP OF SWEET TEA

BUT HE’S NOT DUE ONE OF THOSE 

UNTIL HE HAS ANOTHER WEE. 

XXII

MY DOG HAS JUST WOKEN ME UP,

MY DOG WANTS TEA TO SUP,

HE BARKS AND BARKS 

UNTIL HE GETS HIS WAY 

AND TO BE FAIR I SHOULDN’T SLEEP 

THROUGH THE TRANSIENT DAY, 

AND JUST BEFORE I AWOKE, 

AND THIS IS NO JOKE

I WAS DREAMING OF HIM, 

AND NOW I CAN GO FOR A SMOKE. 

XXIII

MY DOG HAS QUIETENED DOWN,

MY DOG THINKS DEATH A CLOWN, 

HE’S GOT WHAT HE WANTS

FOR BUT HALF AN HOUR, 

TO HIM IT’S LIKE THE MAIDEN 

TRAPPED IN THE TOWER, 

WHEN I FEED HIM TEA, 

HE BARKS FULL OF GLEE, 

AND THEN WE CAN ALL LIVE SO

MERRILY MERRILY MERRILY. 

XXIV

MY DOG LIES ON THE FLOOR,

MY DOG CRIES OUT FOR MORE, 

SO I FEED HIM SOME TEA

IN HIS FAVOURITE BOWL

BUT THE SUGAR IS ROTTING 

MY TEETH AND MY SOUL, 

AND I WANT TO GIVE UP,

AND LIFT THE F.A. CUP 

FULL OF SWEET CHAMPAGNE 

AND HAVE A PROPER SUP. 

XXV

MY DOG IS TRYING TO BE SICK,

MY DOG IS NOT A GARDEN BRICK,

HE LIES ON THE FLOOR

STRETCHING OUT AS HE PLEASES,

AND MY MOTHER IN ANOTHER 

ROOM, WELL, SHE SNEEZES,

AND MY DOG IS RENEWED 

AND I AM BUT THE DUDE 

AND I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED 

IF MY LIFE’S WORK IS ESCHEWED. 

XXVI

MY DOG HAS ALL SHUT UP,

MY DOG ISN’T NAGGING FOR A CUP 

HE WILL WET THE BED 

IF I FEED HIM SOME TEA 

SO IT’S NOT A GOOD IDEA 

IF IT’S DOWN TO ME 

TO TAKE HIM OUTSIDE 

WHEN HE LIES BY MY SIDE 

AND SO BY THE NEW HOUSE RULES

HE’S GOING TO HAVE TO ABIDE.

XXVII

MY DOG HAS GONE TO SLEEP,

MY DOG HAS SUNK TO THE DEEP,

WHAT HE’S DREAMING OF 

I JUST DON’T KNOW 

INJECTING SMACK IN THE 

UNIVERSAL MIND WITH SNOW

HE’S A VERY GOOD BOY 

AND HE’S NOT A TOY 

AND HE FILLS THE HEART 

WITH A PLEASING BIT OF JOY. 

XXVIII

MY DOG LIES ON MY BED,

MY DOG IS NOT ALCHEMICAL LEAD,

BUT HE SEEMS TO BE SLEEPING 

LIKE LENNON’S LOG 

AND A DOG IS A DOG 

IS A DOG IS A DOG,

AND I’VE WEANED HIM OFF TEA,

AND THE TERRIBLE GLEE 

THAT HE FEELS ABOUT THAT 

SO I SEEM TO HAVE SET HIM FREE.

XXIX

MY DOG WAKES IN THE NIGHT,

MY DOG BLINKS IN THE LIGHT,

AND HE PADS OUT THE DOOR 

TO THE LANDING WHERE 

THERE’S A PILE OF TOWELS 

AT THE TOP OF THE STAIR 

AND HE STARTS TO BARK 

IN THIS HOUR OF DARK 

OUTSIDE MY MATE’S ROOM 

PREFIGURING THE SONG OF THE LARK.

XXX

MY DOG NEEDS TO EAT SOMETHING,

MY DOG IS THE OPPOSITE OF BLING,

SO HE LEADS ME DOWNSTAIRS 

TO THE CUPBOARD WITH THE SNACKS

AND I FEED HIM SOME TREATS

AND WE’VE STILL GOT STACKS,

NOW WE’RE BACK IN MY ROOM,

AT THE FOOT OF BLACK COMBE,

WHERE THE DAY HAS LARGELY BEEN 

A DAY OF MONASTIC GLOOM.

XXXI

MY DOG IS WHINGING FOR MORE,

MY DOG KNOWS I’M WEAK TO THE CORE,

FOR HOWEVER MANY TIMES 

I RESOLVE TO NOT FEED 

THE DOG SWEET TEA 

I SUCCUMB TO HIS GREED, 

AS I HAVE DONE TONIGHT,

WHILE I SIT HERE AND WRITE, 

AND TRY TO MAKE IT SEEM 

FOREVER TRUE AND QUITE. 

XXXII

MY DOG LIVES IN DOG TIME,

MY DOG’S NOT THE GODFATHER OF GRIME,

HE NEVER SAID A CLOCK 

IS ONLY AS FAST AS A CHEETAH,

NOR EVER GOT DRUNK 

ON COLD WIFEBEATER, 

BUT HE’S LEARNING TRUST,

WHICH SEEMS A MUST, 

IN THIS FAR-OUT GALAXY 

OF SEEMINGLY ENDLESS DUST.

XXXIII

MY DOG IS WHITE AND GREY,

MY DOG IS HERE TO STAY, 

AND IF I. T MIGHT STAND 

FOR INSTANT TRAVEL TOO

IT COULD BE THE WAY 

I USED TO TRY AND BREAK THROUGH,

BUT MY DOG JUST LIES DOWN,

THREE MILES FROM TOWN, 

AT THE FOOT OF THE OLDEST FELL 

WHERE THE BRACKEN IS STILL BROWN. 

XXXIV

MY DOG IS USED TO TREATS,

MY DOG HAS A WORLD WITH NO STREETS,

AND THE GARDEN IS HIS 

ECO-TOILET OUT THERE, 

IT’S GONDWANALAND-GREEN, 

FULL OF FRESH, COUNTRY AIR,

SOME ONE MILE FROM THE SEA

WITHOUT A TRACE OF ENNUI 

WHICH SEEMS TO ONE AND ALL 

A PRIVILEGED PLACE TO BE. 

XXXV

MY DOG HAS CURLED UP AGAIN, 

MY DOG MIGHT LEAVE THE MATTRESS A STAIN,

BUT IT’S THE PRICE YOU PAY,

FOR ALLOWING HIM NICE THINGS,

LIKE POOR FLORA WOULD REQUIRE 

A NEST AND DIAMOND RINGS,

WHICH I CANNOT PROVIDE, 

AND I STILL HAVE TO HIDE 

WHAT MY CONSCIENCE REALLY MAKES 

OF THE IDEAL COSMIC BRIDE. 

XXXVI

MY DOG HAS GRANTED ME PEACE,

MY DOG IS A MIDNIGHT RELEASE, 

IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHETHER LUCY 

IN THE SOUL WITH DEMONS 

EVEN HAPPENS TO BE 

AN ACTUAL SUBSTANCE, 

THEN MY DOG CAN HEAL, 

IN THE HEART OF THE REAL, 

WHEN NOTHING MAKES SENSE 

AND YOU’VE GROWN TOO NUMB TO FEEL. 

XXXVII

MY DOG IS LYING QUITE STILL, 

MY DOG’S NOT GONE UNDER THE HILL, 

IF HE’S A SYMBOL OF SOMETHING 

IT COULD BE GRAVITY,

HUMOUR OR KATABASIS, 

BUT HE SEEMS REAL TO ME, 

WHEN THEY SHAVE HIS FUR

LIKE MY OLD DRUG-SLUR

HE LOOKS LIKE A CARTOON 

AND MY BROTHER WOULD CONCUR. 

XXXVIII

MY DOG HAS HAD TO GRAPPLE,

MY DOG IS LIKE CEZANNE’S APPLE,

HE DOESN’T FLOAT ON 

THE ARTIFICE OF ORGANIC 

EMOTIONS THROUGH 

SOUNDS THAT ARE SYNTHETIC 

BUT THE MUSIC I PLAY 

SOMETIMES TAKES HIM AWAY 

FROM THE SITTING ROOM TO

A FURTHER, BRIGHTER DAY. 

XXXIX

MY DOG IS A BEAUTIFUL MOOD, 

MY DOG HELPS HIMSELF TO THE FOOD,

HE STARTED LIFE WHEN I 

WAS BUT SEVEN AND FOUND 

AN OBJECT BROWN AND 

PERFUMED AND ROUND 

AND COULD NOT TELL 

AT THE FOOT OF THE FELL 

WHAT ON EARTH IT WAS  

AND WROTE OF IT AS WELL. 

XL

MY DOG SEEMS ALL I NEED,

MY DOG HAS NOT YET WEED, 

HE’S IN A PLACID MOOD

AND HE COULD BE A WAY 

OF GETTING CLOSER TO NATURE 

AS THEY USED TO SAY 

OF TED HUGHES TOO

AND WHEN I’M FEELING BLUE 

WRITING ABOUT MY DOG 

IS ALL I REALLY NEED TO DO. 

XLI 

MY DOG WON’T TRY TOO HARD, 

MY DOG GETS NO VALENTINE CARD, 

BUT HE SEEMS TO BE FREE 

EVEN WHEN I MANOEUVRE 

OVER TIMES THAT ARE HARD

AND TURN ON THE HOOVER, 

HE’S ASLEEP RIGHT NOW 

UNDERNEATH THE PLOUGH 

WHERE THIS ANAGRAM OF BOREDOM 

KEEPS ME AWAKE SOMEHOW. 

XLII

MY DOG DREAMS OF A BONE,

MY DOG MEANS I AM NOT ALONE,

I CAN’T BEAR TO THINK 

OF WHAT LIFE WILL BE LIKE 

WHEN HE LIVES NO MORE 

FOR YOU CAN’T WALK A BIKE, 

AND I’M TRAVELLING BY TEXT,

AND I AM FEELING VEXED, 

AND I AM WONDERING WHAT 

ON EARTH WILL HAPPEN NEXT. 

XLIII

MY DOG HE LIKES TO PANT,

MY DOG’S NOT A HIEROPHANT, 

THOUGH I HEARD THE WORD ‘DOG’ 

COMES FROM A FAR-FETCHED STAR, 

AND HE WON’T BE UNDERSTOOD 

UNTIL THE SELF-DRIVING CAR, 

STILL THE CITY WON’T SLEEP 

IN THE HOURS WE KEEP 

UNTIL THE NEW DAY DAWNS 

AND THE MOBILE STARTS TO BLEEP.

XLIV 

MY DOG CAN MAKE ME LAUGH,

MY DOG HAS NO AUTOGRAPH,

I COULD SOON FALSIFY 

THE NIRVANA BARCODE, 

BUT I’D PREFER TO WRITE

A RATHER CANINE ODE,

IT MIGHT SPELL SUCCESS, 

IN A ROOM THAT’S A MESS, 

OUT HERE IN CUMBRIA 

WHICH IS SEMI-WILDERNESS. 

XLV

MY DOG IS LICKING HIS FUR,

MY DOG IS NOT LIKELY TO PURR, 

AND WE’RE STUCK IN A ROOM 

WITH A NEW KIND OF VIEW,

LEFT TO DO WHATEVER 

WE ARE LEFT HERE TO DO, 

IT’S DEFINITELY TIME FOR BED 

AS MY MOTHER HAS SAID 

AND I STILL BELIEVE MONOPOLY MONEY 

SHOULD WORK ON WINE AND BREAD.

XLVI 

MY DOG IS WHINGING AGAIN,

MY DOG IS ALMOST ARCANE,

BEFORE THE RUBBISH WENT CANCEROUS 

I CUT MY DOG LOOSE, 

TO SIMPLIFY AND BE FAIR, 

AND WRITE SOMETHING OF USE,

AND STRETCH MY BOYHOOD THING,

AND MAKE TO FREELY SING 

IN THE MODE OF THE BARDIC CHILD 

WHO STILL KNOWS A THING.

XLVII

MY DOG HAS A WET, BLACK NOSE,

MY DOG DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO METAMORPHOSE,

SO HE’S MASTERED FORM, 

BUT HE MIGHT MOVE ON,

TO CHAOS WHEN ALL 

THE FORMALITY IS DONE, 

FOR HE’S SEEN THE LIGHT, 

AND IT’S EVER SO BRIGHT, 

ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S HELD 

WITHIN THE DARKEST NIGHT. 

XLVIII

MY DOG BARKS AT THE VOICES,

MY DOG GIVES THE DOCTORS FEW CHOICES,

WHEN HE LIES ON HIS BACK 

HE IS SURRENDERING IN TRUST, 

AND HE THINKS HE’S THE MASCOT 

OF THE FOOD-CHAIN UPPER CRUST, 

WE’VE RESCUED HIM HERE,

AT THE HOME OF THE SEER, 

WHERE SOUL-FOOD REALLY DOES 

AMOUNT TO LOCAL BEER. 

XLIX

MY DOG IS ASLEEP ONCE MORE,

MY DOG IS NOT AGAINST THE LAW, 

HE LIES ON THE BED 

IN A COMFORTABLE POSITION,

AND CHALLENGES ME WITH 

ALL MY LONG ERUDITION,

THERE’S A GLOW IN THE EAST,

AND I’LL GO TO THE FEAST 

KNOWING THAT LIKE HIM 

I AM BUT ANOTHER BEAST. 

L

MY DOG GOES BOUNCING AROUND, 

MY DOG KNOWS SPRING WILL ABOUND,

AND RENEW THE EARTH 

WITH HER GILLY FLOWERS, 

LIKE THE USELESS PROOF 

OF A THOUSAND HOURS, 

IT’S A NEW DAY HERE, 

AND IT BRINGS ME CHEER, 

TO HAVE MY DOG BY MY SIDE 

ALWAYS AND EVER NEAR. 

LI

MY DOG TURNED OUT A NUTTER,

MY DOG WON’T EAT BREAD AND BUTTER, 

WITH WHAT HE EATS 

HE’S GETTING FAT

AND DREAMS OF CHASING 

THE NEIGHBOUR’S CAT, 

IN HIS BASKET HE LIES 

NOT WEARING A DISGUISE 

AND STARES THE DAY AHEAD 

DIRECTLY IN THE EYES. 

LII 

MY DOG HAS A VITAL SPARK,

MY DOG ALWAYS STARTS TO BARK,

WHEN I’M HEADING UPSTAIRS 

WITH A CUP OF HOT TEA, 

FULL OF WILD, EXCITABLE, 

AND LAWLESS ENERGY, 

HE LOVES ME SO MUCH,

AND MY LITTLE CRUTCH 

SO TOGETHER WE GROW OLD 

AND NOT QUITE OUT OF TOUCH.

LIII

MY DOG LOVES SOLID GROUND, 

MY DOG RUNS ROUND AND ROUND,

HE DRIFTS LIKE A SPLIFF 

ALL THE WAY OUT TO SEA

WHEN HE LIES AND DREAMS 

OF A CUP OF SWEET TEA, 

HE’S A JUMP, HE’S A LEAP,

HE’S FALLING ASLEEP 

AND HE’LL NEVER MAKE

THE ANGELS COME TO WEEP. 

LIV

MY DOG IS TRAINED TO SIT, 

MY DOG IS GOOD AT IT,

WHEN HE WANTS A SNACK

I MAKE HIM SIT DOWN, 

BECAUSE I AM THE BOSS 

OF THIS NERVOUS UNDERTOWN, 

I THINK HE HAD IT HARD 

IN SOMEONE ELSE’S YARD

AND IT’S STILL HIS INSTINCT NOW 

TO PUT UP A DEFENSIVE GUARD. 

LV

MY DOG HAS A BRILLIANT NOSE,

MY DOG HAS WORDS LIKE THE CROWS, 

HE EXPLORES THE WORLD 

THROUGH HIS OPEN MOUTH, 

AND HEARS VERY KEENLY 

E-MAILS FROM THE SOUTH, 

HE’S FOND OF THIS SPOT, 

AND LIKES WHAT HE’S GOT,

AND HAS RESIGNED HIMSELF 

TO WHATEVER SEEMS HIS LOT. 

LVI

MY DOG DOESN’T WEAR ANY PANTS,

MY DOG IS DEVELOPING A STANCE, 

HE BELIEVES THAT <BEE>

MIGHT COME AFTER @

IN THE INTERNATIONAL

LANGUAGE ALPHABET,

THEN A SQUIGGLY LINE

AND TO MAKE THINGS SHINE 

INFINITY SYMBOL IS NEXT 

AS WE DREAM OF FREEDOM’S WINE. 

LVII

MY DOG’S NOT GAY BUT STRAIGHT,

MY DOG PISSES ON THE GATE,

IN ANY FUTURE STATE 

THERE SHOULD BE ROOM 

FOR THE NATURAL WORLD 

AT THE FOOT OF BLACK COMBE, 

SO MY DOG CAN WALK 

WHILE THE TWO OF US TALK 

ABOUT THE TIME WE BOTH GOT HIGH 

OFF A NEUTRAL GREEN STALK. 

LVIII

MY DOG HAS BECOME A PROOF, 

MY DOG HASN’T BEEN ON THE ROOF,

HE’S A SYMBOL OF WHEN 

WE FLIPPED THE PARADIGM, 

AND LEFT THE NEW WORLD 

IN A DIFFERENT TIME,

AND WE’VE BOLTED THE DOOR,

BECAUSE OF THE LAW, 

AND WE DON’T WANT TO INDUCE 

THE BOASTING OF THE BORE. 

LIX

MY DOG GETS FED BY JAMES,

MY DOG LIKES PLAYING GAMES,

BUT HE GETS NOTHING SWEET 

FROM MY BROTHER ONLY 

TREATS THAT HE NEEDS 

TO STOP FEELING LONELY,

LIKE MEAT-BASED FOOD, 

WHICH IS SOMETIMES SPEWED

ON THE CARPET IN A PATCH 

OF VOMIT ACIDIC AND CRUDE. 

LX

MY DOG RAN OFF TO THE FARM, 

MY DOG NEVER WISHED ANYONE ANY HARM, 

AND THE NEIGHBOUR OUT WALKING 

FOUND HIM SNIFFING ABOUT 

AND BROUGHT HIM BACK HERE,

WHERE OUR LOVE IS DEVOUT,

AND OUT HERE IT’S NO LIE,

BENEATH AN INFINITE SKY

YOU ALWAYS ACKNOWLEDGE THE STRANGER 

WHOM YOU ARE PASSING BY.

LXI

MY DOG WEED ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR,

MY DOG SAID FLORA WAS A WHORE,

SO HE GOT LOCKED OUT 

IN THE GARDEN UNTIL 

HE CHANGED HIS MIND,

AND HE’D BE OUT THERE STILL 

IF HE HADN’T APOLOGISED,

FOR I HAVE SURMISED 

FLORA’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

OVER WHOM I HAVE AGONISED. 

LXII

MY DOG SHOULD ABJURE SWEET THINGS,

MY DOG DOESN’T KNOW OF MY WINGS,

IF A FLOWER PRESS ENDING 

ON HOMEGROWN CANNABIS 

COULD STILL SEEM TO = 

SOME KIND OF DIALYSIS 

A LOVE POEM HOPING TO 

IMPRESS FLORA, WHO 

IS THE MATING QUEEN IN THE FLESH 

COULD = MORE A MOTOR TOO. 

LXIII

MY DOG GOES ROUND THE SUN,

MY DOG MAKES MY WRITING FUN,

HE’S A DOOR-STOPPER TOME 

THAT’S WAITING TO HAPPEN,

AND WOULDN’T IT BE POLLEN 

IF BARNES HAS SCORED A CHICKEN, 

FULL OF PEACOCK FEATHER, 

FULL OF VELVET FLARE,

FULL OF MASCARA BRUISE

AND BUTTERFLY WING DEBONAIR?

LXIV

MY DOG IS LICKING HIS LEG,

MY DOG WAS JUST ABOUT TO BEG,

HE WAS LOOKING AT ME 

WITH THOSE WATERY EYES, 

AS I DREAMED OF A MAST 

UNDER NEW BLUE SKIES, 

BUT I PAID NO ATTENTION 

TO HIS BRIEF INTERVENTION 

SO HE TURNED BACK TO HIS BASKET 

WHICH MEANS HE’S NO INVENTION.

LXV

MY DOG HEARS FILM MUSIC TOO, 

MY DOG HEARS IT COMING THROUGH

FROM MY BROTHER’S ROOM 

ALL TRIUMPHANT AND GRAND, 

WAY BETTER THAN ANY 

PAST ROCK N ROLL BAND, 

IT REMINDS OF THE PRESENT, 

IT SOUNDS QUITE PLEASANT, 

AND IT PENETRATES IS-NESS 

WHILE MY DOG DREAMS OF A PHEASANT. 

LXVI

MY DOG CAN SEEM QUITE FUNNY,

MY DOG CAN’T WRITE ON MONEY,

BUT HE’D MAKE IT TO THE TOILET 

IF I FED HIM NO TEA, 

FOR HE KNOWS THE GARDEN 

IS THE PLACE TO PEE,

SO HE IS NOT WRONG, 

JUST SINGING ALONG, 

TO THE TUNE I PLAY FOR HIM, 

WHICH THEY CALL THE MAD DOG SONG.  

LXVII

MY DOG’S BEEN FED AGAIN,

MY DOG DOESN’T NEED TO LICK RAIN,

SO I SHOULDN’T HAVE LET 

THE CAT OUT THE BAG 

AND PUT MY WOUNDS 

UP ON A BRIGHT FLAG, 

FOR LOOKING BACK I SEE 

THAT IN ORDER TO BE FREE 

I SHOULD’VE BURIED MY SECRETS

NOT DONE OPEN HEART SURGERY. 

LXVIII 

MY DOG’S ONCE MORE UPSTAIRS, 

MY DOG’S NOT GOT MANY CARES,

AND THE HOUSE IS FILLED 

WITH ADULTS CRYING, 

LOVERS TORN IN TWO,

ACCUSATIONS OF LYING, 

AND I MUST CONFESS 

THOUGH I STILL LIKE JESS,

WHEN SINGLE IS MY JINGLE, 

I MIGHT’VE FOUND HAPPINESS. 

LXIX

MY DOG HAD MEANING WHEN 

MY DOG STARTED LIFE, BACK THEN, 

AND TO SEPARATE THE POLLEN 

I FOUND FROM ITS NAME 

MIGHT NOT JUST BE 

A SEVEN YEAR OLD’S GAME,

BUT THINGS HAVE BEEN WEIRD 

SINCE WHEN IT APPEARED 

THAT MY EARLY LINGO FLOWED 

IN WAYS MOST UNAFEAR’D.

LXX

MY DOG DAWNS ON ME AGAIN,

MY DOG WITH SUGAR ON HIS BRAIN, 

HE’S A LOVELY DOG

AND THE SWITCH IS THROWN,

AND THE MAGIC RAFT

WENT OFF ALL ALONE, 

TO THE STORY SEAS

WHERE WE GATHER AS WE PLEASE 

UPON OUR MOTHER’S BED

AS SHE READS US MORE STORIES.

LXXI

MY DOG JUST CAN’T CONFUTE HER,

MY DOG IS MY DIRT-COMPUTER, 

AND SOME VOICES ARE SADISTS

BUT OTHERS ARE FRIENDS, 

AND WE STILL DON’T KNOW 

HOW THE STORY ENDS, 

BUT I’LL TAKE IT SLOW 

AND GO WITH THE FLOW 

BECAUSE I HAVE COME DOWN 

TO THE PATCHWORK QUILT BELOW. 

LXXII

MY DOG HAS BEEN PUT DOWN,

MY DOG WAS A FURRY CLOWN,

HE BIT A LITTLE CHILD

ALL TENDER AND MILD

AND SO WAS DEEMED

TO BE A BIT TOO WILD

NOW THE DOG’S NO MORE,

THERE’S ASH INSTEAD OF PAW,

AND WE’LL TRY NOT TO SPILL

THE BOX UPON THE FLOOR.

TRADING ANGEL AFFIRMATIONS

What do you do

with a literary failure

what do you do

with a literary failure

what do you do

with a literary failure

early in the morning?

Woke up this morning

feeling so bad

felt like a pig

had shat in my head

He-Man’s out to get me

that’s the way it seems

people always let you down

so do those that die

for no hamburger heaven

draw the same as those

that shape 9/ 11?

and don’t forget a rose

would smell as sweet

if it were but called

barmy as the army of

Michael Vaughan, m’ Lord,

Michael Vaughan, Michael

Vaughan m’ Lord,

Michael Vaughan, Michael

Vaughan, m’ Lord,

Michael Vaughan

yeah yeah yeah you’re

in the broken army

now broken army

well it’s a one for the money,

money for the blow,

blow to get hairy now

go cat go but don’t you

silence my cosmic Muse

do they know it’s

my 40^th birthday

tomorrow at all?

Lean in your tits

when I’m sitting in Kutz

with my hair everywhere

like a malting scarecrow

chicken korma police

arrest this man

he talks in curry

to be very blunt

Aphex acid isn’t flaccid

ecstasia so much

to answer for

my childhood won’t smile,

my childhood won’t smile,

but I’m gonna be big

feeeeeeeeed the

biiiiiiiiiiirds

let them know

it’s my birthday tomorrow

God save the queen

we mean it man

her Hitler hairdo

is making me feel ill

and we have crashed

her party everybody

must get stoned

close your eyes

make it a better place

for you and for me

and the entire human race

suicide is dangerous

it brings on many changes

liquid donkey

liquid donkey

tra la la la la la la

I am the Almighty Cornholio

and I bring you water

water when you touch me

water when you

hold me tight

poetry it’s over

poetry away

poetry or not

as the case may be

somewhere over the

fractured acid-rainbow

Baxter the dog flies

teenage mutant

ganja turtles heroes

in a halfshell

Turtle Power!

||||.

INVINCIBLE LOVERS

I’ll tell you how strange and wild

With wanton promise comes she

On an unknown hour

Like an uninvited guest

You’ve somehow brought to bed.

All night we’d

Sit and think of history

As if it hadn’t passed,

The great wars and the ancient peoples

And all the silly fears.

We’d think of how much we’ve changed

And how much we’ve remained the same.

We’d think of moments of mine

We somehow shared and how I longed to live

In circling illumination of all those moments,

Fragments gone.

And softly I wished

To expand history back into the past

And never to move again an inch forwards.

And to run through the memory of Time,

Ancient, timeless galleries.

Often we’d sit and think of speaking

Or retiring to bed or even sleeping.

Always we’d realise we never had

Time enough to waste or spend.

So we gloried in ourselves

Like invincible lovers,

Always boundless in new being.

And if I seldom spoke in sad regret,

She would turn and smile

As if to boldly offer

‘Come take my hand,

And we’ll wander across no-man’s land.'

[1997]

SUNSET TO THE WEST

I was swimming in the Irish Sea

at sunset with my mother,

watched from the stony beach

by my poor, dying father

when I realised

my place is in life is lowly.

I was languishing

in salty expiation as a

laughter of seagulls flew past

wearing shark mask replicas

when I realised

my place in life is lowly.

I turned my body away

from the beach towards

the peach-stone of

a black hole, being slowly

sucked into the sea’s

watercress hives and drowned

and realised my place in life is lowly… and

the setting sun is bought and sold

and silting gold, leaking

out in all directions

like MC squared =

A SUMMARY OF THE MATHS

The encrypted node in the boyhood work was that if the Gravity between earth and moon is instant and therefore enough to break Light-speed a clock is still only as fast as a cheetah.

I see now that it was possibly government scientists who, for the sake of long storage, when the idea of the net needed storing in writing, got me to begin encrypting that with a text called

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

and to continue with a second text called

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

“but then again who knows.”

The split was not even but asymmetrical like one was on and one was off. It was like spotting the flaw in Einstein. It was like saying if you write Einstein backwards it implies the breaking of light speed. It was even like saying if we invent a time machine that can equal light speed we can only go back in time because the future hasn’t happened yet.

At some point, after the Einsteinian bit, and when I had had the vision of what I called “the ire ii net” myself, a + sign was put in for the F of ‘scarf’ in the line

“I have a scar+ that is red and black.”

Then there was a discussion of the struggle between ‘Good and Evil’ in a piece where

“I woke up at 1 o. clock.”

In other words the first person pronoun and the time 1 o’clock were being contrasted.

It is not clear if the splitting of the two books happened next, for the number two in the sequence, but I think so. In terms of the number three, there was also my maths book where in among the numbers you find a three line poem going

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

To read it all you’d only need to go and get a copy of what by now I know helped invent the net but which at the time of publication I did not know helped invent the net. It’s called The Sunset Child. People have said the best one in it is called ‘My Dad.’

The counting continued. 4, 5, 6, 7. Then when I got to be the age of 11, I received the mark up the underside. It isn’t red and black, nor the new colour as such. It’s what I mean when I say “I’m fine.”

And the non-white nurse in A and E last time I took an O. D. said “you looked twintone when you needed to pee. We would deem it that you have re-invented the human form.”

FLAGRANT RAPSCALLION

I

Apple blossom cheek

breath of wine

plates or confetti

he sips on disturbed

Nile insect

spaghetti

II

While that may be the ABC of aesthetics,

what I’m getting at is that

if a flower-press ending on cannabis

could = a dialysis a love poem

only hoping to impress poor Flora = a motor.

III

If I could sip from your eyes I would

and taste your name. Eyes of

deep undersea green, we
would skinny dip and fish

in them, drag out numberplates,

mangled car doors, crumbs.

The pretext is yours

and it is also my mum’s.

IV

If this were a fairy story

there’d be no happy ending.

No sumptuous consummation

will wait for the poet

at the end of a plot.

I think of a chain of music from star to star,

but therein am starting

to quote my old self again.

V

I’ve already lost my father

who was an international art smuggler

nicknamed Blue or so he said -

though once upon a time

I thought art was recourse

to euphemism for pollen.

The people from the future,

they don’t want his business to end.

VI

It’s good when the daffs come out in spring,

like yellow trumpets, broadcasting

their excellent news.

Excellent News was the ideal

in my New Beat youth, b/t/w/.

I was nomadic in those days.

VII

Before the daffs come out,

we have snowdrops like

pure, white flames

in the heart for love.

The long, dark tunnel

of winter awaits us now.

VIII

I sip tea, I sip tea,

unsweetened it’s

enough for me.

I’ve got a lot of washing up to do.

I tried to meditate today.

Come.

It’s good to get the washing

up done, because it is good

to make a clean space

for yourself before

you write – mess leaks in

to the brain when

you are in a messy room.

Now it’s done I can make a sandwich -

cheese, ham, lettuce, on special brown bread…

it has no added sugar unlike white.

At the moment I am leaving

the washing up to dry, but

soon will put it all away.

Then I can say “hey,

I pulled my weight today.”

So that I do, and that’s true…

I do a little bit more at my screen,

getting pithy about Place and Nature

then go outside to collect wood.

Sometimes I look at Nature and see

invisible sheet music flowing right to left.

If you like I’ll mention some scattered perceptions of the Lakes.

The fell from town,

when you’re driving towards it,

seems a great, slumbering

diplodocus, come

to fat and die by

the Irish Sea; but

nearer the foot

you can see it is

more Buddha levitating.

And when you mention

the slow ascent

up flat, gradual paths

I think more of a bullet

to the top of a telegraph pole

or even the kettle, rising

to its silent scream,

its steam Ariel returning

on Caliban’s chain.

Floating in the quiet

of a weightless dawn,

the buzzard is the crux

of the flux of time,

and all of Creation

his dark machine.

There are benefits living here, like

once I encountered a rare, red kite,

which sat resting on a fence post, waiting

for me like a warning or a reward.

Sometimes Nature is custodial;

and at other times, frightening, otherworldly…

in me, Nature is a great art exhibition,

but it can also be an immunity to Reason.

Some think of the future a lot,

and how there should still be

a place for Nature in that future,

to go exploring just to look at trees,

which like crows, dogs and

horses are Man’s friends.

Nature is the true architecture of State, at least unto some, while others would take a less staid and Conservative attitude.

Here we find mood as bracken frond.

We find dry stone walls creeping

in to the writing even of city folk, visiting.

I think writing about the Lakes could be the refinement of a drug called “Strictly Free.” I think the Beautometer would be a good invention for fell walkers. I sometimes think of Heaven as a pile of statistics when I ascend the fell – that I will one day find out the exact number of steps I have taken up it and whether I held the record.

The powers that be could be clouds

rowing overhead on their sky blue roads.

And everything in Nature is only semi-state: even the fell is mutable on a long enough timeline.

Well, nothing has changed to the map

apart from the wind-farm beyond the lap

of the tide, revolving its Mercedez Benz arms

to make electricity for the farms -

and also the cafe down the beach -

since Norman Nicholson neglected to preach. -

Changes to the place have been the net,

global warming let’s not forget,

the advent of the mobile phone

and increased opportunities for vice in town.

But who needs vice when literature is intoxicant enough?

Here, we find the beck is a fountain pen.

I sometimes stand by the beck, listening in.

(Dr. Bob says only those with their feet firmly planted can fly.)

I would be wearing my wellies, listening

to its most mellifluous applause,

the way she falls two feet

into a sound as sweet

as a kettle drum’s

metal petals of

silver bliss that

blossom on a carnival’s street.

Literature from the city is of alienation,

literature of rootedness repetitive,

and the city is the intellectual breeding station,

but countrylife closer how we ought live.

I

The reason my new work is not Anon is that I believe a writer has a right to a name otherwise an Exclusion of the Individual Machine can close ranks against you.

The earliest-written English poems, however, are attributed to Anon, the earliest recorded line being:

“Well-wrought this wall: Weirds broke it.”

Weirds could be weather-systems.

Combining the fact that the earliest subject is ruin’d architecture and the earliest recipe known to man is for beer, as discovered by monks, could make a poem’s definition “a statue of alcohol.”

The A595 is the main road connecting

the nuclear sub factory in Barrow and

Sellafield up the coast. On Sunday

the posse of motorbikes come

to this bucolic valley because the road

has something in the golden sector #

to do with its bends, its elegant curvature.

I went walking up the rearside of the fell,

and some one or two hundred yards in,

up the path and away from the A595,

encountered a rare, red kite

with dawn-charred chest, resting

on the fence-post, waiting

for me like a warning or reward…

II

Here from this seat now

I look about the kitchen, painted

a plush, Mediterranean coral,

at the indomitable things on the walls,

the notice board of cork,

the dead telly wearing

mother’s funeral hat,

the calendar with local photos,

the chart depicting the plants of the

Meadows, the clock, my sister’s art…

It’s a country farmhouse kitchen

with an AGA, where most of the cooking

is home-made, not from packets.

We have no neighbourhood or amenities

and country life can be quite dull,

but recently I felt elated

for capturing a partial alignment

of the Plough and oldest fell

on my new Smartphone.

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,

NHS for Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons,

H20 for hypothalamus tattoo,

ESA for extra sensory allowance

but I for one still don’t really know

if Lucy even happens to be an actual substance.

III

It’s a myth that countryfolk are stupid

just because the rhythm of life is slower.

The region is an actual religion.

It’s why my dad didn’t take too kindly to racism.

I was amazed the kite didn’t fly away,

as I stood there gazing upon it.

It’s as close to a bird of prey

as I have ever got out in the wild.

Apparently, the Vikings named the hills and the Celts named the valleys… this should be easy to remember because you can picture a Viking being able to see the mountains from the sea as they travel across; and the Celts likewise lived in among the valleys so it would be natural they named them.

Obviate not titivate, sate

your quest for meat and fling

to your bright ring, your

peerless orbit, your wheel

of hunting, out-stretch

wings to be engorged on air’s

ranting, rock-strong

sockets braced against crushing,

uprushing rivers and sail.

Eventually, it did fly away,

but not until I made the decision

to continue my walk, to leave

the moment, the spot where I stood.

Seeing its wings unfold,

seeing it fly away, I took a left

up the rear side of the fell, following

the path beside the beck

and – still not knowing

what the bird was, only storing

an image of it in my brain -

reached the cairn at the top.

Down

down

down

down

down

deep

blue

below

“eh up,

mate,”

says my

mate

and is

it safe

to say

hello?

When I got down again,

and back to my home on

this side of the fell, I

looked the bird up in a book,

and found it was a red kite.

For some reason I thought

I had found the golden eagle…

there was a rumour that a pair of them

had moved into the area.

So I was actually disappointed

to find the bird was a rare, red kite,

which it certainly, judging

by the book of birds, was.

That afternoon, I got a phonecall

from my ex gf on my mobile.

I told her: “I’ve just seen a rare bird.”

I also told her I had given up cannabis;

asked her if she still smoked;

but what she said and what she was doing

when she said it, I shall not say.

Simon says the River Goyt

might become the Styx in Heaven.

I say the rhythm of the River Goyt

beats blood to my head like a cold muscle.

The word ‘goyt’ might actually be Celtic thought-patterns meeting Anglo-Saxon vowel-sounds.

Back then I liked music by people such as: Boards of Canada, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Autechre. I also still liked some guitar music by people like Hella and Shellac, and my favourite act of all were Radiohead, ever since they filled the hole left behind by Nirvana. All of it was better to listen to when high.

Dr. Robert says: “the brain actually releases cannabinoids naturally for moments of signification like reaching the top of a mountain. If you flood your brain with cannabinoids un-naturally, meaning and signification become aleatory, a mess. There is suddenly meaning at any point of intersection in the crazy palimpsest of memory.”

Kurt Cobain sings:

“my heart is broke,

but I have some glue,

help me inhale,

I’ll mend it with you,

we’ll float around,

hang out on clouds,

then we’ll come down,

have a hangover.”

I

Now we’re just enjoying the peace on a calm, autumnal Sunday. It’s a time for expanding your threshold of Negative Capability… I am also taking care of my mother, who injured her arm on holiday. It’s her birthday today, so I gave her a book, and like every other day made her a fire and made her a morning coffee.

We need to get some new Vape juice

because there is only one bottle left.

Tesco is going to be closed for a few weeks

after today so we should stock up.

Apparently they are going

to redo the fruit and veg section

so that the fruit and veg is stored

in a series of closed compartments.

Now for the E as I try and summon up a purpose for this. It is healing, of the self and the soul of the world. It is truce between old friends fallen out like fools. It is air for the tortured soul to breathe. It is an experiment into more advanced modes of being.

II

Sensation precedes thought in art,

chain is made from same as key,

waves make gentle

love to the shore,

homework tonight is

to remember your dreams,

and this we know,

there is no ‘we,’

I am the third person

immaculate, free…

you know the routine

by now, the score,

and more and many more,

but let’s not dwell

on school-made things

when outside birds

sing with their wings

and freedom flies

and freedom flows

and the music never stops.