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Don't mind me...

 I'm just putting some poems together for my trip to the Beehive tonight....

.....

 Triangular Trade

occasionally I will shake my tambourine
crying sisters and brothers repent
repent the day of judgement
was last tuesday
and now we are all damned

but mainly I avoid angels except on utube
and live a quiet life of contented
drunken joy

sometimes I help others and sometimes
when asked directions
I deliberately send them in a circle
so they can shake their fist
through the help the aged window

but mainly I don't do that
as selfies annoy me
almost as much as other people's faces

I'm changeable you see
aren't we all
well you not so much

I draw the line at meths and weak lager
preferring the middle ground

though if I am feeling extravagant I will drink dutch gin
distilled by the desperate
each stone bottle contains a suicide note
and when corked
the factory throws them into the sea
without regard for profit
      then mermaids collect them
      taking care not to break their nails
      and deliver them to remote scottish islands on winter nights
      when half mad scotsmen put them in boxes
      and send them south to tangiers for distribution

the gin is terrible

but like the henna smoked by teenagers
it's the thrill that makes it worth it
and the license it gives

you do have to be off your head to pay for a bottle

but the blurred words of desperation
and the knowledge that creatures real and mythical
have died to bring you poor pleasure
makes it worth the need to top up on shiraz
if you want to feel anything at all

.....

 Trombone Voluntary

On blue days, when the sun breaks the clouds,
I like to take my lunch by the courthouse.
You might call it a fetish. I crunch crisps
and criminally profile the coming and going.

What really draws me though, is the statue
at the centre of the square to Delius.
Every time I promise to listen to his music
and every time I never do. Instead, having eaten,

I circle the bronze leaves, with the green
and amber glass, and marvel at the beauty
of art; of art in a city without much -
even Sir Henry Irving died to get out.

I'm never sure if you are allowed to touch
civic displays. There's no red rope. I want to -
I want to - to contrast the heat and light,
find imprints of the sculptors fingers,

embrace the shadows of the stained glass
on the shit strewn slabs. But - I don't -
instead I jab it gently, so that if a court official
challenges me, I will say, "just seeing if it is bronze".

Today I am disturbed. At the mouth sized stage
of my second sandwich, a girl sits down,
on my bench; next to me. I at one end,
hand in crisp bag, sandwich hovering.

She takes the guitar from it's case, and
for no reason that I can see, begins to play
the Adagio, Concierto de Aranjuez No 2,
I know this because it was on an advert

and I liked it so much I bought the CD.
Not being the rude sort, I set my lunch aside,
and listen. All the while admiring,
and appreciating, Amber Hiscott anew.

She played the whole thing perfectly.
I thanked her, and said she should try busking.
"Fuck Leeds", she said.

....

 suffer little children

it is always the slightly gritty scrape of clarkes shoes on stone
    mixed with the lingered perfume of candle wax and brasso
    and a subtle hint of incense from the high church vicar
         long departed
         to tend richer flocks in greener pastures
which strikes me upon return

at school christmas service we would squeeze into dark wooden pews
    nudging ever eastwards
    to chalk the elbow of the unlucky outsider
    on the damp whitewashed walls
and sing into our sleeves of sock laundering shepherds
    or the magi following the star by bus and taxi
                                                         and on scooter
                                                         bibbing his hooter

later I gathered from a church poster
    attempting to lure my return
    that god is in the smiles of the happy children
but in this church with the vicar and sir
    unamused by boys singing no-A no-B n-C noel
we learned not to mock the headless saints
    but to fill the holes in which their crumbly bodies stood
    with respectful song
at the price of the slipper or the cane

.....

 deafened, we scan the sky for breakage.
what lies seen and unseen between us
is behind,
forgotten, only in the now beneath
the tin roof of this moment will be remembered.
dragging you back, from the village,
which idles, in the fold of the horizon -
seen through cascading rain
we see those possibilities -
seen and unseen - rejected, taken,
carried in the bulb you fed me
and the promise of you - seen and unseen.

.....

 apronstrings

over-boiled summer has gasped
    autumnal dampened dust
    early winter rain
    joins muddy hands
                              for baking day

           washed to the elbows
                                  more more
                                  use the whole bag
that's enough
smacked hand
                                  draws flour faces

beneath the cairn of currants
     the scales
          rusted catching
     imperially
     await solemn jury duty

                                    mrs cotters jam
or dollied mrs laynes lemon curd
     line up
with homepride
                         echo margarine
                               cheery
                               bero booklet
                               (cherry always optional)

pastry brush bristles smelled of sour milk