Karin at Ejector Seat (a knuckle)

Saved her before I saw her  I saved her from some rough boys on the street  corner of Wardour and Meard, joyous to chance Kissed her on the cheek unasked noticing of her thick chestnut hair so unlike the straggly & prematurely silver-tinged wig of 91

‘Come with me, I’ll take you a place I know’

playing the Soho sophisticate

*** The Ejector Seat Reservation Lounge ***

it had a seat on top of a 30-foot hydraulic pole

operating as an entrance stroke exit

Karin looked apprehensive

‘Go ahead, it’s quite safe’ I encouraged her

She climbed in and asked me what happened next I didn’t know and panicked

‘It must be broken, there’s another entrance’ I said blushing

& took her down the dirty subway beneath Rupert swallowing my discomfort 

I’d never actually been down to *** The Ejector Seat Reservation Lounge *** before - didn’t know what to do

or what buttons to press

Down the p-sub we were silent until

‘Look at these marvellous app-ree-kots’ she said

pointing to a cardboard carpet featuring fruits 

fashioned from gemstones

‘App-ree-kots’ I replied seizing on a weak spot, ‘What are app-ree-kots’ 

she turned her head & muttered some German obscenity

the toothless shaggy pressed one into her hand

‘Only a fiver mate’ directed at the gentleman

who caught sniff of a jelly baby detergent rising

and handed over a reluctant note, dreading

The hours ahead with a rusty nail and a feeble sense of gravy

May 1996

This Isn't What I Wanted

In the stillness of night, headphones embrace
You lie in your bed, lost in your space
Building scenarios, a world of your own
Replaying old moments, where seeds were grown

Conversations linger, words left unsaid
A theatre of thought, where fantasies tread
Imagining love - dancing like pure light
In a realm of your making, and demons take flight

Psychologists mutter of daydreams askew
Maladaptive escapes where the mind wanders through
Vividly painted in colours so bright
A refuge from worries, a fortress of light

The brain's network hums, default mode's call
Imagination ignites - soft soothing thrall
Dopamine flows with each triumph you weave
Yet victories fade, like the dusk as you grieve

For roots run deep, where childhood once played
In loneliness grip, in neglect's cruel shade
When the world felt unsafe, yet you crafted a way
To seize a small haven, where you kept fears at bay

Not laziness no, but a dance of the mind,
Your nervous system seeks solace, entwined
But beware of the lure, when escape feels so sweet
For the thrill of the dream pulls you from the street

So tread with care, in a land of your making
Where imagination breathes, and reality's shaking
Life's waiting out there, beyond dreams' gentle hold
In the warmth of the present, let your story unfold

The Invisible Network

A lot of people
become spies
accidentally.

Throwing huge parties
for tech workers.

"How do you afford this?"

Patrons from all over the world
want to keep up.

Access to information
is what it looks like.

They seemed totally oblivious.

Just really good event planners.

I sat there
completely stupefied;
they didn't realize
the actual reason 'they'
paid them to hang out
with the drunk founders.

To clarify -

Trolley nerd bigwigs
afforded all this.

Picking locks in the
event planning world.

Totally oblivious
at least part-time.

"Who are the patrons?"

Certain rich people +
sneaky guy in a suit who
held the huge wingdings
when eventually some
minions turned spies.

        A lot of
        information -
        years ago -
        accidental -
        logistics -
        stupefied.

Flash Flood

It takes six inches of water
to knock someone off their feet

There was rain in  the forecast
it sprinkled, and then it started
coming down heavy

[Thunder rumbles]

We got word from the ranger....
within moments I was drenched
head to toe

It starts to feel more
and more serious

Is this the danger?

We watched the water
rise and rise
the hair on the back of your neck

Then the water burst over the bank
all right, this is intense

By then, the river
had divided everybody and
the pathway is entirely engulfed

It went from one of the prettiest things
I've ever seen to this just
reddish-brown disgusting mud

If you pull the thread

Then we are not a family, and you are
not the greatest dancer
some clarity is appreciated
amid the evolutionary mismatch

You dive down, deeper
you climb up, higher &
godspeed the immanent unravelling 

Keep snip snipping the loose
ends lest they stray out of your leg
pockets then tumbling, heels
over headache by dérèglement 

Keep the back four in line, rogue
strands, limbs and wires will not
be tolerated even if by smashing
it all into random shards

A once in a century reconstructed, recon-
stituted reconnaissance ghost
is born aus der Asche

My Familiar

You're so familiar  

I don't even know why 
I acknowledge you 
give you the time of day  

You keep hanging round here 
like a dirty secret
a grubby stain 

Fetid and fated 
addressed to me and only me  

In this way 
it makes me feel so special
makes me feel so chosen  

Deserving of this blessing 
and a curse  

But the trick
as always known
is to wriggle out from over or under
slashing wildly
and huffing furiously  

With peak inelegance
also discarding pajamas
at the bottom of the pool 

A rejection of destiny
a denial of the filthy path  

Every day
you awake
you must choose again  

God it gets so tiring
and God it leads to such exhaustion  

We begin to fall back down the muddy slope 
then it all comes round again

Spatial, not special

Now look, listen, I see time and numbers as a grid
in my mind like that's anything unusual

So now I can identify
as a spatial-sequence synaesthete
add that badge to my achievements?

This has been the process since
playing Snakes and Ladders at Grandma's c. 1970

The numbers 1 to 100 are set out
from bottom left 1-10 then snake
round 11-20 right to left
21-30 L to R, and so on, twisting
round and making mental arithmetic an
exercise in visualised grids

I'm not saying I'm really good at it
although probably better than you

<John Lee Hooker voice> I don't know
        how you all do it, if you don't do it
        and don't you do it like that 

Do you get the picture, yes we see,
it goes up to 100 and then
the whole process starts again and that's
what I mean by the magic number grid

Years, clocks, calendars
all with parallel visual components
I don't know how you jokers
operate if you don't
have a mind map of numbers in some way

Woman flummoxed by contents of pockets

I found a stone in the pocket of my new jeans
like a triple sized and dried chewing gum ball
or shrivelled up wasp nest desert fossil
maybe the shrunken head of King Hamurabi XIV

Not to over-egg

But now thanks so very much to the portal
I see it's <almost certainly> a pumice stone
used in the stone wash jeans process
to give them an aged look and make it softer

'Yeah, in the 80s it was pretty common
to find them in your jeans actually'

Three cheers for the mundane

Conversation Piece 1986 (re: Bowie)

I like to take a walk to ease my troubled mind
Try and figure out what's wrong with me (or you)

Now some people think when listening to me
That I ain't got no education

Well that was a long time ago, and
Never was much of a deep thinker
Not much of a shallow talker

There's no one to talk to these days
And I can't see which way to go
There's so much noise in my head

I live above the chip shop
Owned by the Greek Cypriots
They often call me down
To pay the rent and have a chat

Michael jokes about his broken English
He's much kinder than his wife
When she's gone - 'You want ribs?'

But with all my years of suburban shelter
I can't think of a word to say
Apart from 'Sure'

I can't see the way forward
For all the thunder in my brain
Am I even human?

This life is so full of confusion
If my best friends don't even know me
How can they even be my friends?

They stroll arm in arm down the road
Straight into the frightening city lights

They're rude but right about my face
My murky, shifty, gloomy, lost face
And all my papers lay shredded in the bath

I go to work every day while
My stomach churns and my head aches
And my shadow self is mocking

    You're useless and numb.
    No one will remember you, and
    You can't see the future
    Because there never was one

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So if you're sick and tired
of living with weak urinary flow
Rub this strong spice on your back
Sell your home to Ziggy for cash

Vintage

My fire engine after all
these years still proud and shiny red
but covered in fluff and
glaze of spider web, I

Should gently clean with a tissue
restore my Bedford 1939 to
its original glory, rather than
let it rust in the sun
or shrivel in the cold
polish and protect is our motto

Let's set the wheels
in motion tomorrow

Sitting on a goldmine

She said, I was in this taxi once
real late at night it was
and the driver looked back in his mirror
and with a sort of leer he asked
if it had been a good night for me

I said What do you mean
he said You look like a working girl
        don't worry I've seem them all
       and I'm very broad-minded

I said, Excuse me I've 
          been at an office leaving do

Sorry love, he said, No offence
                             but if you ever
                         want a new career
                     it's clear to me you're
                 sitting on a goldmine

Drone operative, 1999

My sister my sister the magician
spent the first six years of her
premature life in the bathtub
suds ahoop plotting and a planning

She was really quite as normal
as any of the Caterpillar family

That Christmas after dinner, and
this was 1999 after all, with the
family stuffed and slumbered, she
casually sent a drone
aloft equipped with a phone

It beamed back 80 per cent
ginger carpet and bald spots
canine misdemeanours and the
last resting place of her
ballet shoe atop the shed

We hold her in our hearts