MichaelAitken

Windows

The law of windows
The windows law
Competing with the chimney
Competing with the door

According to law
Windows beckons
You must shut down
In 60 seconds

Bye-bye birdie
Cry birdie cry
Bye-bye birdie
Fly birdie fly

The law of windows
In the 21st century
There’s no escape from windows
We’ll never be free

The claw of windows
Through the window you see
The Tau of windows
What’s that on skull hill
Another conviction
Another crucifixion

On every street corner
The windows law shop
Go there in the morning
Report the whole lot

The windows police
Are pouring through the window
Into your living room
The windows police
Have taken over
The whole world

All they need is a window
chasing a burglar
through the window
in and out the houses
We all fall down

Fly birdie fly
From window land
Off into nowhere
With only jungle and sand

Oh that land of windows
Of that windows land
Where the glazing doesn’t protect you
From the wind

She loves me, she loves me not

No help for him
He has to start again
Let’s sit and watch him
Struggle up that hill

This is his punishment
For having those differences
In his personality
For his skinny legs and glasses

The teacher hated him too
And punishes him every chance he got
For his buck teeth
For not wearing shoes

She loves me
She loves me not
He’s a have
He’s a have not

Equality
between the sexes
Mutual supportiveness

Acceptance
Of gender differences
Without advantage

She loves me
She loves me not
He’s a have
He’s a have not

I woke up this morning
Under a bush
Blood and paw prints everywhere

She loves me
She loves me not
He’s a have
He’s a have not

Painting: The Two Brothers

tiredness

Me and my new born brother 1961

I was about ten years old when my brother was born in 1961. I was glad to have a brother of course but the difference in years meant we never really got to talk to each other much. Here in this picture I have the expression of tiredness shyness, and happiness as I was given my baby brother to hold for the first time. We went on to have completely different lives.

The Bromley Times

My body sucked of energy
Feeling both hot and icy
That’s exhaustion
From the distribution
Of the Bromley Times
On the High Street
Of Orpington

Turning into a gas giant
My gravity unreliant
As I swooned like a drunk
Crying Bromley Times
It’s free
Take one
For Pity’s sake
Take one from me

I should have ate my breakfast
I wondered if I’d last the day
Before my corpse was dragged away
Crying Bromley Times
A free newspaper
Yes it’s free
You must take one, or two, or three

I heard the Orpington songbird
Loudly singing
In the garden of a mansion
A really swinging
Bird of mystery
I painted it with colours
Yellow and black
But I only heard its music
Coming from the back
Of the trees, the thick green leaves

The Orpington songbird
Sang without a word
The most gorgeous song
I’ve ever heard
It was a myth, a mystery
Natures Proms
Hidden by trees
Just about brought me
To my knees
I felt like crying

But I continued walking on my way
To my next pitch
Somehwhat bewitched
To collect from driver Leon
Three more bundles
Of the Bromley Times

Troops of passengers
From the Orpington train
Marched by me
Down into the lane
To the Memorial
It was all so
Temporeal

Please take
The Bomley Times
From me
You’ll do me a favour
It’s really free
Really, really free
Baby

As the sun was going down
I had a hundred
Still to go round
But the Station Approach
Was empty

My best friend
Couldn’t give them away
We got on a bus
To save the day
By distributing them
At the bus station
But lost our way
With piles of Bromley Times
In our arms

In an empty shopping centre
We tried our best to dismember
The Bromley Times
We left its legs in The Premier Inn
Its arms in the Salon
But its main trunk
We wedged into a bin
With a much relieved but hidden grin
For a strange man was looking on

And that was the end
Of the Bromley Times
A free newspaper
That so many had to labour
All the day long
On the streets of Orpington
Alas it was hard
To give them away
Not even for a song
Next stop maybe
Prison

Aspect of wisdom

The law was not broken
It was easily mended
The law breaker bounced
Down to the floor

Others followed jumping
And bumping
But the law
Stayed true to the score

The law is good
The law is wise
It scratches its fleas
It confiscates knives

Such a law
Has never been seen before

A law with some muscle
The strength of a bicep
It discards the foolish
And looks out for the sidestep
Of the one with the lawbreaking saw

If you feel you must
Try it out for yourself
Wear a mask
So you will not be seen
Then proceed to bounce up and down
On the legal trampoline

The law was not scratched
The law was not bruised
It prevented the innocent
From something appalling
With a safety net hung all around
To stop them all from falling

And with a good pair of eyes
It sees with a vision that’s wise

And like the old time copper
Who whacks you with a wroth
And says
you’ve learned your lesson
Now be off
And don’t let me catch you
Doing it again

The Hapless Client

The criminal attorney
Punctuates the talk
With a yawn
While with a piece of verbal chalk
His client babbles on
Until the dawn

Sitting solid in his thought
He sees thru the privet
To his client
Who acts distraught as a caged civet
With a bloodied paw

Suddenly he scrapes down the protective screen
Of panic over some law
And staring thru the hedge he asks
Because it is his task
To understand much more
Than the ravings of the maniac
Who knocked upon his door

Needing his guiding hand
To steer him across the no-man’s land
But this he needs to know
How far involved in this fealty
Is he innocent or guilty
Or of how the two can merge

His client talks of a broken home
And how he’s always been alone
How he suffered scrapes and trials
That covers the years and goes on for miles
But his question now is getting through
That his client truly never knew
What he was getting in to
Or what to he is to do

I thought I’d finished

I thought I’d finished writing poems
That I’d emptied out my heart
And come to my end

But the heart is not dead and as I write
It seems to be filling up again
With new things to say

Pull me yet another pint
As I look for another song
Entering the bar in another life

So that is it, I do not die
And blood like fiery petrol
Fills up my old tin can of a heart

I‘ve seen so much and heard of much more
And what I haven’t seen could be waiting
Further down the road to be embraced

Yet in my heart I embrace so much
And you will always be there
Sifting through the past to look for the future

Seaweed man

He was 14 years old
He carried seaweed over his shoulders
As he waded onto land

“Look at me,
I’m the Seaweed Man”

Some of the slimy green stuff
Began to slip
His mother
Packed it back around his shoulders

She evidently liked him
As the Seaweed Man

As I sat on the bench
Next to you
Facing the noisy drumming waves
A sudden change came over me

And I became
A Seaweed Man

Trying to frighten my sisters
Absorbed by the latest world news
Written in the sand

The Amber Light

When you die
Keep your own copyright
Do not sell it
To wayward a spirit for pottage

And God will keep it on file
In category C
Meaning
The last chance saloon

Waiting at the amber light
To drive off
Into life
Or death

The teddy boy, the rocker, the skinhead and the Punk

For many years
I believed the status quo
Until I saw
Their marble pedestals

The teddy boy
The rocker
The skin head and the punk

Where do they fit in?

Fear cooked alive
When caught
Is easily divided up
Like a jellied eel

The Teddy boy
The Rocker
The Skinhead and the Punk
Where do they fit in?

It’s not like living in America
America is like babel
When it had one language
And no borders

I always wanted to draw
On graph paper
I believed it would make my drawings
More accurate

But instead
It imprisoned me
And took my pencil away

The Teddy boy
The Rocker
The Skinhead and the Punk
Where do they fit in?

Commercials
Have erupted like measles
Like an orthodox religion
From a fitted kitchen

Sunlight is string
Moonlight is gilt edge
Starlight is wrapping paper
The heart shines like a solar panel

And the antibodies
Of society
Are busy with a camera crew
Creating facsimiles

Of the Teddy boy
The Rocker
The Skin Head and the Punk

The fish tank
Cannot get bigger
But the fish
Can fight to the death

Love
Has been manufactured
Like tin foil
So that people forget

The Teddy boy
The Rocker
The skin head and the punk

And where do I belong
Nowhere
I stay at my post
Like one of the ghosts

Of the Teddy boy
The rocker
The kin Head and the Punk

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