TINY WORLD A crystal world came clear to me.
 It was right there, and I could see
 Like a non-believer brought to bear
 Witness to what was finally there.
 Like the infant on discovering youth,
 Or the detective who finds the proof,
 Or an old maid at her spinning wheel
 Unspooling the grim tale reveal.
 Sleep broke through this wall of sense
 Unveiling the tiny world within,
 Containing the immense
 Mountains on each continental shelf,
 Containing vast stores of mineral wealth.
 A colourful world, not black and white,
 Some parts in darkness, others in light.
 With winds that blew strong and breezes mild
 Containing every kind of small animal
 And the Blakean child.Tropical fishes, exotic birds, this was all too much, too much for words.
 So, I called on Satchmo, come blow your horn
 Because this surely deserves praise
 To be heaped upon its actuality.
 Like the swimmer who loves the sea,
 Or the sailor out there on his boat,
 Or the sperm that starts to float
 Through the ovum In the egg crack,
 And so I reeled in and doubled back.
 I saw a Leviathan far from shore,
 Then spied a desert followed by many more.
 I heard voices raised in lamentation,
 A song that sounded forth from every nation.
 I became giddy and felt trepidation,
 like a biblical God at the week’s end of creation.
 Forget the tricksters and the mountebanks,
 For this tiny world I truly must give thanks.
 Tiny, tiny, but oh so clear and so very, very bright.
 My tiny world came to life this night.
 Tiny but rounded, full and perfectly formed.
 Frozen at its poles and, in the middle, warm.
 A tiny globe as in a drop of dew.
 This tiny world was a wonder, true.
 Suspended there in space and time,
 This singular world was surely mine
 So I took it now, gently in hand,
 Like a timer filters a grain of sand.
 A world of mercy, a world of fear.
 I held it close and I wished you were near.
 For the subject of my poem was you.
 I just couldn’t make the words ring true.
 The world that seemed perfect and small,
 Now rolled away till it wasn’t there at all
 It rolled away as I lay in slumber’s arms.
 It rolled away, and so went its charms.
 It rolled away and I could only sigh,
 As only you remained in my mind’s eye.
 You, and the life that you had to endure.
 From that memory I tried to procure
 Some words that could tell the tale of your wounded brain and pallor pale.
 Your existence spent in that house
 Up there on the hill
 Suffering all those torments
 Until you became so very ill. 
 In Altnagelvin at nineteen you died, and
 Oh my brother, how we all cried.
 Someday my words for you
 They may be unfurled,
 But for now they’re elusive,
 Like that tiny world.

NO ARMS FACTORIES IN
 TOTTENHAM Out on the streets, not too chicken to try it.
 Armed assassination in broad daylight
 Sparks off a riot.
 All across the city, the fanning of the flame,
 The huffing, puffing politician
 Distributing blame.
 These monsters like gargoyles, deluded fools.
 We beat ploughshares into swords
 Empowered by military schools.
 A new dawn in Egypt. It’s called the Arab Spring.
 Hail Cameron’s business consortium
 And the dealers he’ll bring.
 Blessed are these peacemakers,
 And among their charms
 Is the fundamental right in a democracy
 For protectors to bear arms.
 Ballistic munitions and the weapons we’ve made
 Are essential components in the balance of trade.
 We pray for war’s end and no more into battle,
 But still we farm tanks and guns
 Like we used to do cattle. There’s a culture of violence involving bullet and gun,
 But there ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.
 There’s a culture of violence involving bullet and gun But there ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.
 There ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.
 There ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham. Back in the city, around N17, 
 The death of Mark Duggan causes a scene. 
 That’s one less rude boy like Johnny Too Bad,
 But death still makes the people angry and sad.
 The rights and wrongs of ruining your home,
 Or making capital from misfortune, it’s best left alone.
 Look and see if you can find the innocent man,
 The certified dealer who produced gun in hand.
 The cold metal, the trigger, the lead that’s within.
 They spell out an end, and it’s a death-headed grin.
 The slaughter of innocents, and the guilty too
 This culture of violence will have me and you.
 The culture of violence, its played out like a game
 And we pixilate it on the screen to cover our shame.
 One day it will be over and our race will be won,
 But there will still be no arms factories in Tottenham. No arms factories in Tottenham.
 There’s a culture of violence involving bullet and gun,
 But there ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.
 There ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.
 There’s a culture of violence involving bullet and gun,
 But there ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.
 There ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham. There ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.
 There ain’t no arms factories in Tottenham.

Antisocial Media We live in an illusion where nothing is real And you only think you might know just how you feel. Is there a place where we all can be free? Somewhere, that is, apart from virtual reality. Twitter, Facebook and AskFM Nowadays, you can live most of your life through them. You don’t have to go out. You can stay at home Where you can get to befriend everyone While remaining totally alone. All those faces in those endless rooms. The inspectors, the wallflowers and the rubber-faced goons. 
 All that fakery and I hope that you are well. Fuck every one of them, may they all rot in hell. You can stay at home Where you can get to befriend everyone While remaining totally alone. Twitter, Facebook and AskFM, Nowadays you can live most of your life through them. You don’t have to go out. You can stay at home Where you can get to befriend everyone While remaining totally alone. Totally alone.

ROMAN TOTALE'S DEATH SONG A sudden zoom back to that hotel room,
 Tanked up talking jive. It’s 1985,
 Just outside Rotterdam with the fall man.
 He was our guide to getting pie-eyed and totally fried
 As we broke on through to the other side.
 Last summer, I thought about him and I just cried.
 And then today, they said that Mark had gone and died.
 Krishnan told the news of Smithy stuck in tragic blues
 With no way to lose his drinking shoes
 Or his speeding views.
 But it’s a sure bet that not everything is set by
 Blokes on the news, the bourgeoise crews
 Who stumble and sweat over the prole art threat.
 Because scorched on the ground is the 
 Mighty, mighty sound that got into you all.
 And that was The Fall.
 It’s left right here. That much is clear.
 Or maybe event tangled, because a lot of his words, well, They came out mangled.
 But it was all there. The Pope growing a pair.
 Lovecraft in his lair.
 Getting drug sick with Philip K Dick.
 Spinning the latest scam with the Edinburgh man.
 He made a whole new fable just as soon as he was able
 Out of Kraut rock and things.
 Like a bat without wings.
 A blister on the strings.
 Synths sounding broken as something fearful was awoken
 In a swamp of the mind, set to leave it all behind.
 Going speeding on a train, clean out of his brain,
 Burning the psychedelic flame like
 Blake meeting Rigsby in the back of a van,
 Buzzing on a can with a line of snort and this or that cohort.
 This was a man with a crazy art plan
 Both before and after the ban.
 A new place in hell was one he knew so well,
 Getting off its face, this nation’s saving grace.
 There was plays and books, all screwy-eyed broken looks,
 From agony that looked dental
 As he engaged in something mental.
 Like a character out of Milton or a thing that was wilting
 This demon boss touted the cost and paradise lost.
 It didn’t need updating,
 Dancing in the light like a cut price Satan.
 King without crown. Kentucky death going down.
 Gun out for hire. Leonard’s bird on the wire.
 Flying close to the fire Lucifer over Lancashire.
 His cardboard cut-outs of a city riven
 Collage the way we were living.
 The book you were given as you went towards the door.
 He had ideas galore,
 Saw strange things in the woods,
 Relived Angus Wilson’s Anglo Saxon attitudes.
 Interned spirits were set free.
 He wasn’t looking to agree.
 Took much more than the Mick, an addled autodidactic.
 Back in 79 at the Harp,
 Nostrils were scorched with something sharp.
 There was repetition in the music
 And he was never going to loose it, yeah.
 Down through the days of the Lion and the Bear,
 Performing in a wheelchair
 So we got more than our share of a blitzed-out soul
 Heading his kicker conspiracy goal.
 The echoes of cracked laughter,
 The smell of the morning after.
 There were seven sorts of ruin in the magic he was doing.
 The bell took it’s toll for Danny on a role,
 Gene Vincent in leather relentless as northern weather,
 Bitter like beer and anything else that’s in here.
 Fighting through the sham making rainbows out of jam,
 Doing more than most folks can
 With their time here on this earth.
 Driven by the dearth and the paucity of thought
 About how truths are brought and sold,
 Never doing what he was told.
 Mining primitive gold in a Mancunian island state
 Where it’s all marked up on the slate mate.

CHRISTMAS Did you all have a nice Christmas? Yeah? Yeah? I didn’t.
 I didn’t eat turkey, and I didn’t eat geese.
 I gave them both up for the working class obese.
 Have you seen them?
 They hang around in stairwells and they smoke fags,
 And in the army they call them the Catterick Slags.
 I was staying in a town with a fucking awful smell
 Like the BNP and the EDL.
 Got a friend named Jim.
 They spat on his face because of the colour of his skin.
 Out the back of that pub there’s CCTV,
 You know, that prying eye for those too dumb to see.
 Two young lovers went there to pitch and woe
 And the fuckers in the pub turned it into a big screen show.
 What can you do? What can you say?
 This is England in the present day
 And some vile peasant sickness that won’t go away.
 This is the home of those I love
 And they say nothing feels better than blood on blood.
 But the things going on here, they made me feel awful queer,
 So I took my feelings down to the weir.
 Now the river comes fast just around the bend
 And water over rocks have always been my friend.
 It was there behind the hedge back in 47,
 I was just kid, but we were living close to heaven.
 The words came now like a toxic shock
 As I think back to the garden and the house behind the rock.
 Ah, it was just a moment, a glimpse into time,
 Back with mummy and daddy when everything was fine.
 There’s some other things you don’t need to know
 So let’s forget about them now and go on with the show.
 Then tell me,
 How the fuck did you let this happen?
 It’s like some kid that you’re always slapping.
 That stuff that goes on inside your mind,
 Is it suffering of the human kind?
 Do you remember days among daisies,
 Nights out with the crazies,
 A time when the world was new
 And a future waiting there for you?
 Is that all over? Party ended?
 Has your past life been defriended?
 Its like you’ve been holding so long
 Since you’ve come out of the nest
 To something buried deep in your chest.
 And your weight and your nature
 They scorn timeless treasure
 And this feeling of lack, it will bring you right back
 To a small nowhere town
 Where the only road goes down.

AN ALTERNATIVE ULSTER 2018 There’s an alternative Ulster where there’s no security force.
 A place without Arlene’s, RHI or Gerry’s twitter discourse.
 There’s an alternative Ulster where the music is sweet.
 They pogo away the days there because
 Walden’s heaven is under their feet.
 There’s the alternative Ulster of Terri and my brother Jake,
 The love you take being equal to the love you make.
 An alternative Ulster of sundry elations
 Where we came together and felt good vibrations.
 We would pogo till our feet got tired,
 Then go down to Dublin and get totally wired,
 Roar for them songs until our throats got sore,
 And then cry out for more, more, more.
 Characters they were, to soak up these bands.
 Merve the Perve, Tara Winter and the late Freddie Hans.
 Trouble sailed round every corner
 And we were tied to the masts.
 I feared bumping into those guys from The Outcasts.
 In the backstreets of the empty city
 There’s voices that still moan
 Like the wingeing fucker
 Attempting to call up Protex up on the phone.
 The hangouts, the drug dens,
 The greasy spoons, and that bar,
 Not to mention the lifts we cadged in my dad’s car.
 The eternal search for every sort of living thrill.
 The music kept on rolling down through the years
 Though it couldn’t conquer death or banish all fears.
 The loss and the illnesses that come with time.
 Sins thought to be yours turned out to be mine.
 That was history, and those are the ways.
 Grey was mixed with gold in those old days.
 But that’s alright, and here’s the last line,
 An alternative must be waiting. Now is the time.
 They stoked punk fires on the Cregagh estate
 Where Alwyn’s Private World lay in wait.
 On Stracham Green in July they fanned up the flames.
 Across the road came Geordie, he played football games.
 He was a warrior in a shirt of green,
 The best alternative Ulster we’d ever seen.
 There was mushrooms growing. Magic from the ground.
 Terri played the new tunes and the 60s psychedelic sounds.
 Nothing peculiar, and nothing so strange,
 Like Arthur Lee making that change.
 Staying forever plus one more day.
 And in 77 we also gave it up for Mr Marvin Gaye.
 The music kept on rolling down through the years
 Though it couldn’t conquer death or banish all fears.
 The loss and the illnesses that come with time.
 Sins thought to be yours turned out to be mine.
 That was history, and those are the ways.
 Grey was mixed with gold in those old days.
 But that’s alright, and here’s the last line,
 An alternative must be waiting.
 Now is the time.

THE BASS THE DRUM THE TREBLE Rising from the country, the shanties and the towns,
 The bass, the drum, the treble,
 That’s how the world goes round.
 It came out of Kingston, Africa as well,
 Fragrant pillowed heaven carved from the bones of hell.
 Behold the fearsome slave ship with shackles in its galley.
 In two hundred years’ time
 That manacled man’s descendant will be a scally.
 All across the nation, treble, bass and drum,
 They’ll play it down in Hastings, Liverpool and Brum.
 People unchained, united, living free as one,
 Rejoicing in the evening and in the midday sun.
 Barry the Razor, The Barber and Money in my Pocket
 And Johnny Clarke.
 This music brings the sunshine
 And lights the way up in the dark.
 Roast fish and cornbread and a sweet lamb’s breath,
 Natty, never getting weary,
 And Bob Marley still cheating death.
 Think of all the giants in the studio or on the mic.
 Peter Tosh, the running man, Lee Perry on his bike.
 And for every weary traveller in the whole wide universe,
 Get aboard the Glory Train and don’t forget to bring the Night Nurse.
 The guitar of Ranglin
 And the trombone of the Drummond Don,
 This music stretches on forever and it never will be gone.
 All this sonic wonder, from native talent and electric junk.
 Inspiration to the Zeppelin rock star and the upstart punk,
 Came on like a hurricane and still there blows a storm
 Of a little island music that redefined the norm.
 Just take The Upsetter and King Tubby’s own creations
 Forging new frontiers with Rastaman vibrations.
 Marcia Griffith looking fine. She feels like jumping,
 And Johnny Osborne starts a new dance craze
 When he gets that water pumping.
 These are the songs we’ll play again and again.
 See also Dillinger’s
 I Got Cocaine Running Around my Brain,
 I Got Cocaine Running Around my Brain.
 Or the weapon that comes with the One Love
 Marley Smallaxe
 Still cutting the big tree down from up above.

WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG A force of nature, up against the odds,
 Conjures magic fire down from the Gods.
 The dreams and fixers beyond the ship of state.
 They get to be the Captain, the Frigger and the First Mate.
 Off to sail with the wild ones and taste salt on the tongue.
 They do it when they’re old
 Llike they did when they were young.
 When they were young dreams lit up the sky.
 They got to spin the gold, take wing from home and fly.
 They got to live beyond the thoughts of mortal man,
 To do what they weren’t told to do
 And forge a star-crossed plan.
 Now, the mountains crumble and palaces turn to dust
 There is virtually nothing in this fake world that you can trust.
 The radio no longer plays its love-blessed peaceful ode.
 The transmission’s been interrupted
 Because they lost the sacred code.
 The end, it is approaching and it gets louder every hour.
 There’s something fearful coming
 And you can feel its terrible power.
 It sounds through the wind as it blows across the land.
 You don’t need Billy Yates to tell you
 The second coming is at hand.
 But the song of hope still plays and its melody is sung,
 And it sounds just as sweet as it did when they were young.
 When they were young, those were golden days.
 The sky was full of rainbow to block out the damp and greys,
 The nights went on forever
 And you could float far out into space.
 You could get to be the champion
 And the winner of the race.
 When they were young, a force of nature,
 Up against the odds
 Conjures magic fire down from the Gods.
 Dreamers and fixers beyond the ship of state
 Get to be the Captain, the Frigger and the First Mate.
 Off to sail with the wild ones and taste salt on the tongue.
 To do it when they’re old like they did when they were young.
 When they were young.
 When they were young.

BREXIT BLUES The future’s here. Let me mark your card.
 They’re gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard.
 Vegetables will be rotting in the fields
 They’ll be shortages in the health service, and at our meals.
 Movement, it won’t come for free,
 And the butter will melt before we get to tea.
 The Shropshire lad and the Wilmslow lass
 Will find they’ve come to a sorry pass.
 Cheap travel, it won’t be accessible, and that’s not fair.
 But you can say goodbye to Ryan Air.
 The future’s here. Let me mark your card
 We’re gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard. They’ll lose subsidies in various manners
 As our new shock troops unleash their banners.
 A nation sold to David, Boris and Liam
 Will experience a spiralling ceaseless dream
 Of love, hope, talent and open hearts.
 Lions drawn by donkeys will be put behind the carts.
 We’ll see Nigel grinning in his stall
 Counting his big MEP pension
 While the rest of us get bugger all.
 Stagnation and despond will be everywhere,
 Like we will have a fucking care.
 The future’s here. Let me mark your card.
 We’re gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard. Britons do as Britons can.
 That’s every woman and every man.
 We enjoy the damp and the winter chill
 And the exertion of our own free will.
 Forty eight bows to fifty two,
 That’s better known as the will of the people to you.
 You’ll only get to see the light when there’s been a crack.
 So rejoice, because we’ve got our country back.
 Oranges don’t grow on St Stephen’s Green,
 And Arlene’s fuel bill is not to be seen.
 Dodds, McManus, all those useless clowns
 Lording it up as their country drowns.
 But rejoice, fill yourselves with glee,
 Mrs May found the money tree.
 The economy tanks, the firms go bust. Rejoice because in Boris and Michael,
 David and Liam we trust.
 The future’s here. Let me mark your card.
 They’re gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard.
 Gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard. Vegetables will be rotting in the fields
 They’ll be shortages in the health service, and at our meals.
 Movement, it won’t come for free,
 And the butter will melt before we get to tea.
 The Shropshire lad and the Wilmslow lass
 Will find they’ve come to a sorry pass.
 Cheap travel, it won’t be accessible, and that’s not fair.
 But you can say goodbye to Ryan Air.
 The future’s here. Let me mark your card.
 We’re gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard.
 Gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard.
 They’re gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard.
 Gambling on England’s future
 Down in Ireland’s graveyard.

FOUR CORNERS Four corners mark out the world.
 Four corners with a face on every one.
 Four corners at the rising of the sun.
 Four corners, this is how it’s done. Privacy invaded. Into mummy’s arms,
 Welcome to the world and its so-called charms.
 Hear, John, Paul, George and Ringo play.
 See, sun, stars, moon and a brand new day.
 Feel, Belfast, Lisburn, Ballyholme and Bangor.
 Taste, boredom, apathy, nowhere and anger.
 Four corners, sun, sea, sand and swimming kecks.
 Thinking, writing, publishing and banking cheques. Four corners in land, heart, mind and air.
 Those four corners that mark out everywhere.
 Four corners, compliance and control,
 Daily toil and sweet jelly roll Four corners, as on the numbers a rolled dice exposes,
 Representing space, time, fear and snow-frosted roses.
 From each corner a horseman of the apocalypse.
 Pestilence, famine, war and driver’s whips. Four corners for the strong, the weak,
 The impetuous and the wary.
 Four corners at chai time, Memphis,
 Clarksdale and Tucumcari. Four corners of the world where we go to meet.
 The first was in that bar down on Basin Street,
 Then in Leicester Square with Lucky Pete
 Holding two grand at the end of the day.
 Grabbing bedposts during an earthquake in LA.
 Four corners, cast them into the future,
 And locate the type of quadrant that would suit yer. Four corners, earth, wind, fire and water.
 Ghost, prophet, devil, and his daughter.
 Four corners, light, truth, love and a peaceful heart.
 Those are the foundations and now we can start.

NO EXCUSE FOR POETRY There’s no excuse for poetry.
 At least that’s what I’ve learned.
 From your rhymes and imagery this word worm has turned
 On concentrating experience and stretching it into the line
 On giving the random coherence and framing words
 So that they chime. There’s no excuse for poetry,
 And that is a natural fact.
 It’s like that album by ATV where the image has cracked.
 Stop it. We don’t need it. It’s really so much guff.
 If you look around any bookshop
 You’ll find plenty of the stuff. You’ll never make a Shakespeare
 And you ain’t no Ogden Nash. Your words, they’re just garbage
 That should be dumped out with the trash.
 Your insights are puerile and nobody wants to know
 About your past life and its challenges
 And how you loved her so, You loved her so, you loved her so, you love her so. But there’s something fearful rising,
 Deep in the heart of man.
 It’s best to get it out there. Is that really your plan?
 Do you think it makes a difference
 As the jackboots smash the face?
 That it’s more than an impotent excretion
 From a flailing human race? Look. There’s no excuse for poetry.
 Flann O’Brien said this, so it’s true.
 There’s no excuse for your writing,
 So you’d best find something else to do.
 If you’re so sensitive and caring, why not become a nurse?
 Consider waiting or kitchen work and give up on the verse.
 I know, its not too serious
 And you’re only trying to bring cheer,
 But you really shouldn’t bother.
 You should just get your arse into gear. Find a road that’s long and winding
 Where you can bury the thoughts that you keep finding.
 If you have a limerick or a riddle, set them on the griddle.
 Take the sonnet and the ballad
 And turn them into verbal salad. And do it all with full contrition,
 Because there is a lot of ammunition
 In the doggerel you keep dishing.
 Free of useless baggage, your journey now can start
 To the realisation that you had nothing,
 Ever, worthwhile to impart. Stand up straight. Walk the highway,
 Right into the dead of night.
 And don’t bother writing a poem about it.
 It is bound to be shite.