Total Recall - Post Nine

CHRISTMAS NIGHT 1993
It was Christmas night about fifteen years ago I didn’t shout help.
I didn’t have a phone heating water or electric in that squat.
It was flummin’ freezing that night just like it is right now ice and snow.
The last candle had died and I had no matches left to make a fire.
I pulled the newsprint blanket over my head and tried to get some kip.
But there was no sleep to be had that night in that old ramshackle gaff.

The rats and roaches put paid to that and then there was one massive crash.
I looked through the crack in the boarded up window, it was just some drunks.
They were kicking empty crates on their way home from the rub-a-dub-dub.
Smashing them against the steel shuttered shop fronts on the parade outside.
They staggered on shouting and swearing and soon they were out of my view.

As I watched another character came by, a Rastafarian.
A blanket over his left arm and clutching a brick in his right hand.
Without a second glance old Dreadlocks dashed the padlock off the shutter.
Rolling the freezing cold steel cover up to reveal a plate glass door.

Like a bull at a gate he charged with the blanket placed over his head.
Leaving a Rastafarian shaped hole in what used to be the door.
Just a few seconds later, he came skipping out onto the cold street.
He was carrying a heavy blanket, full of cigarettes and booze.
He had already disappeared out of sight when the alarm went off.
MSC301208

From my Moss Side collection and originally published here on SweetTalkingGuy in 2008.

Total Recall - Post Eight

WINO’S BENCH

Dying in this melting pot of my little bit of bohemia.

The wino’s bench sits in all weathers inviting confessions all day.

They say, sixty-six languages are spoken in this neck of the woods.

By the same token the Jam-patios, unintelligible to all.

Except for to, some followers of the Ethiopian guru.

But like Dreadlocks once said, that that’s the way things should be after the fall.

Since the tower of Babel and hanging baskets of Babylon fell.

And we all fall, there is no escape and it is not will I? But, when?

And Jin Singh walks past with his brown-paper suitcase spilling out his smalls.

I knew it would rain, he complains as he hurries by the wino’s bench.

And they are in fine form today and out in force and speaking nonsense.

The bottles and cans empty and broken like the men who drank them dry.

And cold old Irish Pete hugs his shillelagh like there’s no tomorrow.

And slowly he downs the last drop from the miniature for the third time.

Across the street outside the corner shop even the currency talks.

They take Euros, dollars and cents, Zloty and Roubles for crack cocaine.

And young bodies change hands for ten pounds for ten minutes, dead or alive.

The Somalian’s have got their own café now and their own dealers.

They only speak Arabic to your face and perfect English at home.

Like everybody else, they want your money not your conversation.

Even the barber invites you to speak Hebrew; it’s all Greek to me.

Such and such a sort of double Dutch but those that speak Urdu still do!

And at the Delhi-deli they leave out the old veg for the wino’s.

But the alkies don’t eat unless they go to the soup kitchen at night.

Winter is coming fast this glorious Indian summer can’t last.

MSC210908

From my Moss Side Collection and originally posted here on my STG Bloggage in 2008.

Total Recall - Post Seven

ONCE-UPON-A-TIME
Dip your bread in the primordial soup
Soon it will etre multiplie par dix
Parboil and add sea salt to recipe
Re-season, squash vegetables and dip.

Amino acids, cells, much unseen... more...
More or less the building blocks that made us
Used to be something quite different once...
Once-upon-a-time, that right Amigo?

Perhaps, nobody really knows the law
Lawton Moor, Wythenshawe, reality?
Really, they burnt the chairs to keep warm once
One night in nineteen-fifty-three, perhaps.

Incredible that's all there is to it
Itching to slurp it down - insatiable.
14052011

ONCE-UPON-A-TIME (REVEALED)
Parboil and add sea salt to recipe
Really? they burnt the chairs to keep warm once
Incredible! that's all there is to it
More or less the building blocks that made us
One night in nineteen-fifty-three, perhaps
Re-season, squash vegetables and dip
Dip your bread in the primordial soup
Itching to slurp it down - insatiable
Amino acids, cells, much unseen... more...
Lawton Moor, Wythenshawe, reality?

Soon it will etre multiplie par dix
Once-upon-a-time, that right Amigo?
Used to be something quite different once...
Perhaps, nobody really knows the law.
14052011/a

Total Recall - Post Six

St. Aubins Village Jersey.

CONFESSION
The last time I went to church was in my teens,
blue jeans, sweet dreams, cool themes.
Only, there was this one sin I needed to get off my chest, one thing!
I thought that God missed me all these years but he couldn’t see me for sin.
That’s what the priest at St Aubins told me anyhow, when I told him.
It was the summer of seventy-four, we spent it on the beach there.
And another five round the corner at St Brelades, The Golden Sands.
Is there anything else you can tell me, have you touched your naughty thing?
Maybe you’ve touched a girl, got her into trouble, you will burn in hell!
I said no, there’s nothing else, just give me my penance and let me go.
Very well, say three Our Fathers, two Hail Mary’s and a Glory be…
I thanked the Irish Priest and prayed that he and his god could not see me.
RWP#4-091207

The above was written in 2007 and originally posted here. (There's a picture of the church too.)

Dream - Six

LOVE OF LIFE
if i have to explain simplicity
something is wrong it's too complicated
kiss me shock me like electricity

if i have to explain simplicity
love of life is my university
still missing you but glad that we dated

if i have to explain simplicity
something is wrong it's too complicated
05042012

Total Recall - Post Five

Piccadilly-Pick-pocket! 
This piece was originally posted on my SweetTalking Guy blog

ASSAULT + FLATTERY.
Daisy Dippy
on the 'dilly
kissed my lips
and touched
my willy
must've thought that
I was silly.
When she said
she liked
Big Ben!
I didn't know
she meant
my ten...
quid that
she slid
into her pocket
that she dipped
from my
sky rocket!
AS1393

Glossary
Dippy, Dip = pick-pocket
'dilly = Piccadilly
Big Ben = rhyming slang for ten
quid = £1 English money (slang.)
dipped = stole, pickpocketed
sky rocket = pocket
Have you read my poem Polyamourosity yet?