Blue Rose Code

And When?

Let us be wild and reckless, let us run and laugh alone and sleep as the sun rises, We will rise when it sets. Let us say yes to all we’ve been told love is, let us scream out loud until we yield in relief.

Make true love, counting stars on our backs, Beneath the street lights, beneath the billboards, beneath the bridge across our long gone past and forever-afters.

Let us be new, to blink afresh and dawn with a hunger only for each-other. Let us be everything we always never knew we knew, For we were scared to breathe to break the silence. But we will not.

We will dash the magnum on the bow, portending loving, flowering blooms, Sail for seas uncharted with only how my hand feels in yours, the pulse, the beat of unfolding and folding and unfolding warmth.

We will palpitate, untrammelled verbs of deeds, as yet, undone, We will flee through wasting, fading recounts, past the corpse of our regret, stitching skins of ardour.

And we will know, finally, what these songs mean, these ageless, plaintive, broken memorandums, dilapidated scrapes of sky-rise wond'ring.

And so, despite the social media ire, despite the mainstream media lampooning and, frankly, showing Farage and his mob up at every opportunity, UKIP did quite well in the most recent local and European elections. Not the earthquake, not the triumph that it's being spun as, for different reasons on both sides, but, in truth, they've done pretty well.  I shouldn't need to qualify my blog to those that know me and my politics but, for those that don't, I find UKIP to be nasty, anachronistic, parochial, racist, sexist, illiberal and small-minded. However, do I think that the majority of people who voted for UKIP are bigots and racists? No I don't.

Ever since I can remember, the story of the public's mistrust of Westminster and its disenfranchisement with politics as a whole has been bandied about, trotted out by the media and the notion of tackling that mistrust has been paid lip-service to by politicians of all stripes. However, the main three political parties have been content with that disconnect because it means less accountability for them and the fat kids are left to run the sweet shop. Here's the thing though, it's not only their fault, it's our fault, too. We are complicit, we are lazy, we're comfortable bemoaning our lack of power and that our voice makes not a jot of difference. We're happy to retweet, re-blog, share, put together a biting and pithy one-hundred-and-forty-character protest and mainline the misapprehension that we're actually engaging. Well, let me tell you this, in my humble opinion; grand. Crack on with your social media picketing but without it being married to real action, it's very little more than vainglorious posturing.

For the last week or so, I've watched post after post on social media saying, basically, if you vote UKIP then you're either racist or an idiot. Both may apply to some but, I suspect neither apply to many.

No-one that I know has admitted to me personally that they would vote UKIP (probably because they couldn't abide the ear-bashing) but we have sensible, respectable people out there in the world voting for UKIP. Are we not interested in why?

As far as I can tell, the main reason is that because we feel divorced from politics, we feel that those in Parliament are untouchable and inaccessible. It's mainly run by, white men from elite backgrounds, that came through elite schools and universities, and they couldn't care less about the price of milk or the real grass-roots issues that present today. 

I think those in charge are pretty happy with the status quo. The power of the working (wo)man has suffered a long and drawn out death. Local constituency parties meet every week around us, they offer a real chance to affect change. Should we not take our parties back? Where are the candidates from less affluent backgrounds? Well, why isn't it you?

You don't have to, I just rather think that it should be considered that there IS a chance to get involved should you choose to take it, the next time you're tweeting about the fall of democracy in the x-factor commercial break. 

What I'm trying to get across is that the rump of UKIP voters have voted not for the three main parties because they're scunnered by their nonsense, but calling voters bigots and racists lets the LabConDems off the hook because no-one is scrutinising these broken parties' lacklustre appeal.  The middle of the political spectrum is clogged with the same pallid and self-serving rich men. I have friends from the dark days of the eighties who tell me that radicalism and high minded ideology is what threw my Labour party to the wolves of opposition for four long terms.  I say, people need to be captivated by politics again, like north of the border, people are really talking, mobilising, they are properly engaged. Sadly, they are, currently, only moved by a single issue and hopefully their hunger for engagement will live on past the Referendum. In truth, regardless of my own thoughts on the Scotland's future it truly is a joy to see my country alive with activism. That activism will only happen in the UK with a departure from the shoddy conventional wisdom that Centrism is the answer. It most certainly is not. 

Centrism brought about the crash of the world's finances, Centrism gave us a Labour party that didn't have the courage to challenge the political narrative that it was overspending that broke the UK economy and only austerity is the answer.

Centrism gave us private utility providers and rail companies that fleece the customer, pushing more and more families to the breadline, and Centrism gave us a Labour party that demonises welfare claimants, and will not fight for working families.

Centrism gave us three fat parties, scared to put the positive case for immigration. Three parties that will not talk about the fact that in thirty years time, the UK will be the biggest and oldest population in the EU, and without young, immigrant workers, we won't be able to afford pensions.

There's a muckle bright day

that's swaggered through my bedroom curtains 

and sat his fat arse in the middle of my room. 

I've been jolted from my pithy slumber, without ceremony

by my dogs and that day conspiring 

to have me rub my eyes 

and laugh with each toss of a ragged ball. 

So awake I am

and the sky 

underwritten by a ribbed-white cloudy carapace

rolls up its long sleeved blue 

tucks the morning moon in his top pocket  

Barking, wee Napoleon

the maddened stubby instigator 

bellicose and battle-worn

his line drawn in the hand.

    That poor little man,

the leader of my wave

cracking a chapped hieroglyphic

a message to the marigold.

"Guardians of a pristine after tea-time

I am sick from the mild, green, fairy-poison

lo, come on, I will don your handsome rubber gauntlet"

Mr flat-capped, all faced like a gavel

with your well crafted, top-lipped dash of gravitas

A mannered chap, clad in plaid, a dad, indeed a grandad

a sober gait replaced the long gone days of ribald gaiety

Supping from a baby cup

blacker than between the stars

espress-oh dear, fizzing with a bow-tied rim of casual brown. 

Chin on palm, tips on cheeks

eyes a-glaring, horns a-blaring 

I am alone here, they are, indeed, somewhere else.

  And she, with her shining, lacquered lips, ready poised and purposeful

well, her stop-start staccato bravado

arms aloft to show she is awake, she is here

Thundering, the glam-garland toddler

the chuckling, ruddy rollercoaster

traversing the table legs and shouting the odds.

Leaden clumping, stumpy stamping peachy buttercup,

have you heard the news, she indicated,

let me tell you, I can't quite tell you yet.

Swept away, decorated in her pram,

dreams, thumb-sucking and sleep laden

The buzz of rail beneath the orange carriage, waltzing o'er South London

at Wapping the tunnel roars our approach but yawns us through to Shadwell

eight jaws slackening, sixteen eyes closing, the windows clickety-clacketing.

Screwfaced resignation, worn well clean pressed troos,

Saturday heavy hearts pumped full of dread for the razor start 

contended baby dreams.

And still the scent of misadventure, last night clung to the skin

tapping silent drums, the gurning solo reveller, to Camden returns

Lay your hands, one potato, two

The long march in the morn, shoulder to face

Forty little sort of squares

ring around a diamond shape

mustard socks kick out of the tired brown moccasins

  The undulating murmurs of the mother-to-daughter chatter

bobbing afloat with a requirement not to be still and not to be quiet

I will say no more

  So a peppy salutation from a thumbnail suit 

and tall tales told out of turn in the lock of a shift's clock

Please read the article above. 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers his Autumn statement today amid much gloom, a gloom, may I add, much of THIS Government's making. MORE THAN 5000 PEOPLE SLEPT ROUGH ON LONDON'S STREETS LAST NIGHT. THE UK IS THE EIGHTH RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. As the snow falls this morning in, what is still, the financial capital of the world it makes me sick to the pit of my stomach that the direction of the Government's cuts is focussed mainly on lower middle income families.

'Where The Westlin' Winds Do Carry Me' Out on the road and here I go again, just like I promised I would not.

You say you know me well but I've tried to tell you, dearest heart, that with a blue moon on the rise. 

I will wipe my brow in the auburn, malted glow, and I'm always going to go where the Westlin' winds do carry me, 

I've tried to prove I could be good in my heart but I'm always going to go where they carry me away. 

I hear you cry just like you believed in me, like you promised that you would,

I've been howling at the moon, I've been breaking myself in two, it's all I've ever known.

I will wipe my brow in the auburn, malted glow, and I'm always going to go where the Westlin' winds do carry me, 

I've tried to prove I could be good in my heart but I'm always going to go where they carry me away. 

My cruel heart, oh my, all she wanted was to love me.

My cruel heart, oh my, you leave me broken, lost and lonely. 

My cruel heart, oh my, you leave me fumbling with disaster. 

I build it up just to break it down again, my cruel heart,  oh my.