England, England (draft/unfinished)

 

Class distinctions in England have always been a matter of higher feeling than national honour, the matter of a feverish but very private debate. 

Evelyn Waugh

Painted pink from pole to pole 

the oubliette Drop City 

boardroom stilts accidental vistas 

shuttering on The Boom’s last word

ideas for a footbridge abiding Glencores

greenwashing & the final Fatal Tree

is made from copper-nickel alloy

bling encased for sheer profligacy, 

enclaves glottalling Long gelded

estuary unfencibles

for king’s head 

to keep the land inviolate

the yob-ends natter

plant life cubic grey

& over-reach of imperium

in open lapwing 

wet asphalt as it beautifies out 

all the quiet zones 

from faces on the job search 

for a hope bigger than a boxed in visage

you bend to gapping stars 

that rime goes opaque in

air of ruckling counterpanes 

to rent-off this mortised rim 

the city allies

peels away under Leadenhall

antiquated think-tanks welch

a Union Jack on piled biscuit tins,  

from Cherry-Garden a last sigh of

mobbed lettings nothing much 

left now but a saturnalia bough 

as high as uninhabitable 

zoned backward 

& The London Plan 

where are my eyes  

bending the secret parts of us

faces turned grey ‘no-fault’ evictions 

under section 21  

‘I just want my property back’, 

on this laissez-faire 

bonfire night opportunity area digs 

itself rond-points; overwork death

in royal parks surviving 

a tortured lie link by link 

jerked star-draught bewitching 

the stimulus lament, 

pale white ash 

around this husked 

perimeter of wework 

mystagogy Aviation house 

the of downdraught 

a horizon keysteps from

cotched bramble heads

still gripping the lamina 

of sinecures 

reading what little legal entitlement 

of this unleavened cake we have,

squeezing the plughole  

pauperism soliloquy 

you have been forgotten 

In a One Nation Britain

washed hollow lob

rentiers breathe shrill

over a culture of dependency 

shitflickers & the phenomenon of humanisation –  

nightfall ambuscade

tangled in the rigging 

of it is widely flown ownership 

a stand-alone flag 

shielding acrid vexillum 

morphology made concrete

they stand forming now 

all the while my heart undoes

nap-pods in the dark vertical gardens 

remember County Hall scoured to Shrekworld 

remember countermanding last minute 

memos remember the viewing corridors 

& its rare indivisible Lightshard

bilging over capital

panorama risoed until a dim flicker

 a termination of hope 

hybrid glass hill-edged,

jack-spiked brownfields again.  

Zuirch 2016 extended (draft/unfinished)

 

A most insatiable covetousness, divided that among themselves with which all the rest might have been well supplied, are far from that happiness that is enjoyed among the Utopians; for the use as well as the desire of money being extinguished. 

Thomas More 

Zurich behind a rust packet 

my cacodylic eye spent 

collapsed turbulent 

tectonics of bumps, 

kidney shaped abscesses

curling black lids fading shells

exploding firebox all screws 

& bolts dead 227 figures 

meant for Linz Entartete 

Tyrol locks Germania 

in a thousand springs 

on Bahnhofstrasse 

unconditional Basic Income

scolded Schlaraffenland 

underneath the light there is always

intervening on the ground 

the pie-tree

so filched another rent-rising 

to clear pales & dapple-greys 

all but rain 

between the buildings & 

you settle wet wrapt’d churning 

this sodden silent aperture

on tumuli Blancpain 

ditch of frogs 

little accelerators 

new virtues waking harborage 

of masseuse chairs in Hauptbahnhof 

are actual police hidden between 

proxy codes wire to wire 

the noises it makes

living the pissed out communiques

as doctrine or filigree the finest truffles 

from Kernzone 

are buried in Heimplatz 

guarded by probers

secrets wrapped 

in amice rust 

& muted song 

the bedsporned cultus of medicine 

is cruel paste trespassing 

my reuptakes & 

so I go again 

into this suffering city. 

'The Blessings of Tony Blair' (draft/unfinished 23/11/23)

Another hone on taste,

parades red fusses 

& the monks poise

professional managerial class

is dayblue turning trite

manifestos out logheads

but I can’t read at the Ability Grouping table

remember the future society 

logarithmic falling levity 

all things big & bright

you can see friendships ruck

in this gelded hellscape,

raked on consignments nubbed

like an estate child's

cursed leaven the kinder noughties

phishing out hallowed light

against you & eyes watched

broken piling the last stars paled

by an invisible hand

'The Blessings of Tony Blair'.

The Darkening Green (draft/unfinished)

 Every direction has its attendant devil and their safaris weren't conducted on the bosses' time. For what they were hunting is certainly never tame. And, for the poor, is usually illegal. 

Thomas McGrath 

Under orbitals single rung 

London’s tourtière 

little pieces blessed Muggletonians 

found in bright reams 

crossing onto black tarmac 

& songing each tilted

for ears dispatch crowned out over 

the last jarring expansion jolt 

this peculiar English heresy 

fulminated against the law 

diamond grinding in the mulberry 

weeping for Paddingtons Speight, 

the area where a body hanged 

for six days pervades eaves

in my memory ornate terracotta ridges 

British Transport Police 

the buzz of the office 

& towers steep slate, 

its four-hipped from below

a straggling place 

to sit on burning metal corrugations

teeth on bars on ledges 

for a sundown leadenness 

which London Stone 

privately owned publicly rended 

you can sit on what withered 

green timber of pub yokes 

what dotty oak & thin staves 

flat hoops rolled over bluebells, 

poppies & lupins of meum & tuum 

I stand on a very narrow ledge 

of typhoon Butterfly World, 

safeguarding insects 

to commit the pogo

out of necessity under orchard boughs

falling to its dapple grey sky 

built to canalise a bad country 

When will it turn? to good splendor 

when will the price of it

come down? on Old Kent Road 

not dissected to rind out

broadbacked in a circle

of merged plastics.

Mark Stone/Mark Flash AKA Mark Kennedy as a School-Girl, 2022

 

35cm x 45cm

Oil on Expensive European Canvas

Mark Kennedy was an undercover police officer who used the name Mark Stone in his infiltrations of the climate protest movement and was known as 'Flash' to campaigners. He was exposed as a police officer in October 2010 and in January 2011 after wide media coverage he went public with his story in a Mail on Sunday interview.

Code Judiciaire & God on a Donkey (draft)

 Code Judiciaire

Monarchical law needs arrow slit

the Crusades in bare stone caves 

crenellated white  

narrow cast-iron galleries 

rising in tiers troglodytes 

vaulted tunnels the freedom panorama

one of God's creatures

ragged over stone instead of brick 

star shaped King Pest cross-plained

in the forest of plastic receipts 

while cabbage civilisation exists 

under Atomium vast marshes of dog shit? 

at night under numbstands 

a cestus of starres from Inspector's Lodge

beautiful as a safe by means of pipes 

the Quartermaster Carceral city, 

small theatres of tortures dotted with wheels, 

gibbets, gallows & pillories;

The European Councils 

soulless eurocrates seek to introduce 

a standard European bottle 

holding a miserable 70 centiliters, 

robbing life of charm 

& subjecting it to the economic man

gone French in BeerWorld, 

curry leicht scharf paired 

to Ultra-Luxe more six grain Flemings

& I’ll live forever

off the eldest child, Leopold 

Heer copse to sunn blonde 

this rich Alpha Global City 

frenulum pressed to lintel 

LA PRISON=SUCE MA TEUB

God on a Donkey 

Filet d’Anvers in brown paper bag

the Carrefour cost petrifies the hand

nevermind show me Manneken Pis 

beheaded in the garden pond 

blanket weeds dissolve 

to lake green ketje chains 

in the heart Passementerie buttons, 

blue silk lampas, embellished in silver 

& golden thread 

the white gloves pressed strange 

hybrid shrine 

where cultural memory is housed

flowers in a jug on a city street

unstolen the pillar unbitten Avenue Louise,

the trouble with the underclass is 

to kiss the ring of the door 

remembering plebiscites 

from castrum to didaem Châteaus 

hanging you out a window, 

like a privy over a ditch 

remembering The European Federation 

the Bomzhes to the Polyarchies 

remembering wool meadows Endland after

EU umbrellas staked in façades 

like bitter tithes Tourist traps 

this rapid transport system 

is plastic fresh its wrapper hidden 

in the columns the Hill of Tears, 

running down inside corner pavilions, 

down inside Louis XV-style 

bluestone doorways money into water

all the while dendrochronological big ladle 

takes the Stoofvlees to my mouth

adopting Batavian ears, 

for no one keeps old customs 

like a peasant.