Real Writing Read online

Real Writing

  Stanski

  Copyright©2017 Stanski

  Discover other titles by Stanski

  Crawling Distance

  In Decline

  The Night Jasmine

  Elephant Small Vol 1

  Elephant Small Vol 2

  Elephant Small Vol 3

  Elephant Small Vol 4

  Elephant Small Vol 5

  Elephant Small Vol 6

  Cover photo © Stanski

  Real Writing

  Contents

  1. Real Writing

  2. Halfway To Southport

  3. Dad Dancing In The UK

  4. Wake Up…! And Smell The Cider

  5. Cunts

  6. Last Gasp

  7. Condemned

  8. Isan Chill

  9. No More

  10. What Are You Like

  11. Smartarses

  12. Pros & Cons Of Witch Hunting

  13. (((SFX)))

  14. Non Existent

  15. Penultimate

  16. Thousands And Thousands

  17. กินข้าวหรือยัง…/ Did You Eat Yet?

  18. Ego

  About the Author

  1. Real Writing

  Biscuit biting

  Tater blighting

  Shakespeare Citing

  Kung Fu fighting

  Chinese kiting

  Birthday knighting

  Christmas lighting

  Wrong ‘un righting

  Friday nighting

  Second sighting

  Outhouse shiting

  Hand-eye sleighting

  Heathen smiting

  Facial spiting

  Getting right in

  Squeezing tight in

  None exciting

  Or delighting

  As a night in

  Real writing

  2. Halfway To Southport

  Halfway to Southport from Oxford Road

  On an upload primed for second-class carriage

  No ballast attached to a carefree passage

  Just sanctuary; self-assured Refuge

  From that overboard, crude and huge stiffy

  A bit ‘iffy’. Coming straight in the mouth

  Of innocent (till proved guilty) babes from east and south

  Hard to swallow is that phallus at the Palace

  If you’re no sucker for clocks, so hard-on the eye

  Erect in effect, and if correct it’s a sure

  Fire no blanks bet that we’re all dead set

  To alight at Salford Fire Station

  Creations… Exposed to the light of day

  As witnessed from a Varsity Viewpoint

  By the unhinged Crescent of a Moonshine stare

  Or the noontime glare of a sun-kissed highway

  Trending to the left, for maximum effect

  Or am I viewing it, doing it my way?

  Because, for real, I feel we’re about to… er… Peel

  To the less than up-beat, off-beat plod

  Of Oh My God! Not, Bolton’s finest?

  Who wonder why Wanderers walked away

  From the hallowed turf of Burnden Park, in the dark

  And, oh so mysterious scandal

  But not one these boys couldn’t handle

  With their very first strike, a bit like

  What they did with that wall in Wigan

  Or does ‘Wallgate’ refer to something else?

  And… No lies… The guys… Who ate all the pies

  By the by, that’s why we can but surmise… We’re

  Halfway to Southport… And we’re going west, and

  The rest of the route is tainted (love)

  Painted with Scouse… Debated in-house

  In da house… House of Commons… Of Lords a-leaping

  All dancing, all singing ‘Come on youse…

  Blues youse Reds… Youse electoral boundaries

  Sounds to me (like) it’s partly Political (like)

  (Like) Heartily critical, of Lancashire/Merseyside

  Stirred wide to the left, no sugar in mine

  I like my Councils like I like my tabloids

  Highlighted in Red, devoid of all things Tory

  But back to the story, we’ve stopped behind

  Wigan pier which appears to the untrained eye

  To indicate strongly or at least imply

  The end of one imaginary line

  No sign of the sea… A sign of the times!

  Or those impatient tides that wait for no man!

  Or, to be correct politically

  No Person, whatever the gender

  Agenda, timetable, schedule or routine

  Past, present or future… You know what I mean…

  That goes around and around… And comes

  Around again, and again… Time and again

  Which all only goes to prove that… ‘This…

  (mere one hundred and eighty four years)

  ‘… is the (true) age of the train’ Yes it is!

  And, oh, more yet, before I forget

  It’s already 23:15

  And so it would seem… No download by the sea

  At least not this side of Midnight’s broken dreams

  Besides, the seaside’s out of our reach

  The beach is retreating beyond our grasp

  Perhaps, at last, we see the sea for tea tomorrow

  What joy, what sorrow as we patiently await

  (It’s official now… It’s the train that’s late…!)

  And we’re still only Halfway to Southport…

  3. Dad Dancing In The UK

  Right…!

  Now…!

  *55555

  *เก่า งาย ตาย ช้า

  Floating voters confuse the Exit Polls

  Just as abstentions mock the Electoral Rolls

  And first past the post is the Democratic way

  While the losers knew it was not to be their day

  Do you swing… to Left or right most

  As you cast your vote

  And know the winners will be outnumbered

  By those who don’t?

  Do you really give a toss at all?

  Whose Bills are passed into UK law?

  Hung Parliament

  Coalition beckons

  Weak leadership follows

  Cameron’s sloppy seconds

  This is politics in the UK

  A Third World Country in the making

  Initiated by Thatcher in the 80’s

  Perpetuated by our own uneducated offspring

  While us ‘Dads’ continue to dance

  Because bad old habits refuse to die

  The clue was when The Wall came down

  Y’know, 25 years ago

  Hinting that our Socialist Ideals

  Had outlived their usefulness

  Proportional Representation

  A figment of our own imagination

  Just like the Party we continue to attend

  That has no Labour force left to represent

  We’re becoming a Developing Nation

  The sun has set on the Empire’s Pink

  Coalition Government

  Call Centre Economy

  Philosophies replacing Unum Deo

  Seven languages more widely spoken

  Than our own Native British tongue

  Who are these Left-wing Socialists?

  Where is New Labour now?

  Political Process has run its course

  Conception… Lifetime… DEMISE!

  You must have read the words of The Little Red Book

  The Communist Manifesto

  The much repeated script of a Monty Python sketch

  A process is a process is…
time to let go…

  Don’t blame it on Margaret Thatcher

  Don’t blame it on The Roaring Tories

  Don’t blame it on your own apathy

  Blame it on the Boogie-woogie Dads Dance

  *55555- IN THAI IS HA HA HA HA HA

  *เก่า งาย ตาย ช้า - GAE GNAI DAI SHAR – OLD TOO QUICK, DYING TOO SLOWLY

  4. Wake Up…! And Smell The Cider

  What would you do if, one day

  you woke up and thought it was

  judging by your wallet, say

  Nineteen Seventy Seven

  And you were forced to survive

  On Seventy Quid a week

  How could you possibly keep

  up your Mortgage repayments

  On your luxury address

  You may have to consider

  quitting your expensive home

  and taking up residence

  inside impossibly cheap

  and yet, improbably strong

  bottles of, implausibly, white

  cider, which makes you forget

  the daily discomfort of

  incurable hangovers

  and other trivial things

  like, of course, what day it is…

  5. Cunts

  I used to think I was such a clever cunt

  because i knew quite a lot of the answers

  to quite a lot of rhetorical questions

  until i realised what a bunch of cunts

  these politicians were

  and not one of them as clever as i was

  despite Eaton/Oxbridge

  Rhetorical questions were responded to with

  rhetorical answers!

  What’s all that about, then?

  No longer would I attempt to imitate

  the complex, well-rehearsed writhing motions of

  Members of Parliament

  under the intense and sustained pressure of

  Public Scrutiny

  Contradictions of terms; oxymoronic

  their manipulation of spoken gestures

  with a sinister oral dexterity

  that covers the lies our ears refuse to hear

  our eyes refuse to see

  but our open arms accept without question

  because it’s so ‘special’, our ‘relationship’

  with our colonial, erstwhile counterparts

  just across the Pond

  Intimate, infinite

  Is it or isn’t it?

  Cemented during our last term in Office

  Lasting as long as it suits our purposes

  But if all else fails… Blame the Opposition!

  And I used to think I was a clever cunt…

  6. Last Gasp

  Gave up smoking years ago

  Still, I’m waiting patiently

  For that blue and black pick-up

  that comes around ‘every fortnight’

  with its load of tobacco

  ‘home-grown on south-facing slopes

  of the Phu Khao mountain range’

  At least that’s what they tell me

  in the beer bars in Non Sang

  And me; I’ve never been one

  to turn away a bargain

  or spurn a special offer

  look a gift horse in the mouth

  So I’ll continue to wait

  for that blue and black pick-up

  with its reasonably priced

  stock of home-grown tobacco

  freshly harvested and cut

  and dried on south-facing slopes

  of the Phu Khao mountain range

  Even if it’s another

  Fortnight they keep me waiting

  I’ll get me my tobacco

  At ten baht per hundred grammes

  Or eighty baht per kilo

  Including rolling papers…

  That’s what I call a bargain

  Even though I quit smoking

  In September 2010

  Me, I’m not the kind of guy

  to turn away a bargain

  miss an opportunity

  or spurn a special offer

  look a gift-horse in the mouth

  Think of the money I’ll save

  by not buying ready rolled

  and the local businesses

  my custom will benefit

  on the Phu Khao mountain range…

  Waiting patiently although

  I stopped smoking years ago

  7. Condemned

  What’s it like to be Sentenced

  Life condensed to a Statement

  That’s Sentence literally…

  Subject, Object, Verb, Full Stop

  Or metaphorically…

  Subject; as in Citizen

  Object; of their ridicule

  Verb; to frustrate, or wind-up

  Full Stop. The End. Period.

  But before I was sentenced…

  I was already Condemned…

  …Many suns and moons ago

  in a separate lifetime

  a Relative Dimension

  Alternate Reality

  or Parallel Universe

  spawned by Quantum Mechanics

  When I was made redundant

  in more senses than just one

  Lost my home, my family

  as well as my livelihood

  Instead of me becoming

  a scrounger, a parasite

  I took my hard-earned savings -

  which I could easily blow

  on sex, drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

  in the space of a few months

  in the United Kingdom

  to where my money lasted

  the best part of fifteen years

  Austerity in action

  years before the Credit Crunch

  and it didn’t even cost

  her majesty’s government

  a solitary penny

  On my return to Blighty

  I wasn’t expecting the…

  But then, nobody expects

  The Spanish Inquisition…!

  No way José… career arse

  was going to strip search me

  hold me indefinitely

  for or against my free will

  without charge, explanation

  although he flexed his muscles

  in his best British ‘accent’

  with the accent on ‘accent’

  ‘I may if I wanna to’

  I caused him some confusion

  name not native Inglesi…

  Apparently I wasn’t

  really quite foreign enough

  to qualify for arrest

  followed by deportation

  enforced repatriation

  in the country of my birth

  which happened to be… England

  That threw him right off the scent…

  But, then again, I wasn’t

  exactly British enough

  which my name so clearly proved

  Despite EU credentials

  which couldn’t be disputed

  I couldn’t merely pass ‘GO’

  and collect two hundred pounds

  each week from my bank account

  claim my Housing Benefit

  and live the life of Riley

  Quarantine awaited me

  (not Quentin Tarantino)

  Six months of uncertainty

  like some suspect rabid dog

  until, at last, I was deemed

  aptly assimilated

  and posed no further risk of

  leaving the country again

  on the money I could save

  from seventy quid a week

  I’d lost my identity

  and my nationality

  Not sure where it happened, but

  the beginning of the end

  of my staunch naïveté

  and trust in Human Nature

  must have occurred while flying

  over airspace away from

&nbs
p; the Greenwich meridian

  significantly longer

  than a fortnight away from

  the United Kingdom of

  Great Britain, Northern Ireland

  also spent a lot of time explaining that they hadn’t

  just been released from prison

  which only serves to prove

  suspicions, accusations

  spoken in body language

  By the way, did I mention

  That before being sentenced

  I’d already been condemned

  8. Isan Chill

  Wilder than a wet weekend in Wythenshawe

  Warmer than a night beside the fire

  Beer Chang to rival Boddies, Hydes, or Joseph Holt

  Satisfaction guaranteed to match desire

  But there ain’t no snow in Non Sang

  While the banter runs smooth, like a cool, cool breeze

  And there ain’t no frost in Kuddu

  Where the welcome’s warm and its aim, to please

  No there ain’t no ice in Hua Kua City

  Village Isan chillout… 85 degrees

  No up-country white-outs, avalanches, blizzards

  Jangwat, Tambon, Amphoe, Moo Ban never freeze

  But when winter strikes in Nongbualamphu

  Open-air live bands are on the agenda

  Then you’ll really think you’re back home in Manchester

  ‘Cos it’s the coolest gig since Hacienda

  9. No More

  I ain’t taking no more of them negatives

  No, I ain’t taking none of them negs no more

  Without them negs, I’m minus nothing

  And you ain’t taking nothing from me no more

  I ain’t going to no more nowheres

  No, no nowhere don’t mean nothing to me no more

  Ain’t no nowheres I ain’t never not going

  Nowhere ain’t going nowhere; not now, not then, not no more

  I ain’t talking to no more nobodys

  Nobody don’t know nothing I ain’t not forgot no more

  No, no, no I ain’t messing with no more no marks

  No way, no how I .ain’t nobody I ain’t gonna know no more

  I ain’t doing no more of them nothings

  Ain’t nothing I ain’t doing that ain’t nothing no more

  No, no, no, no more nothings ain’t never no bad thing

  And nothing ain’t never not getting done no more

  I ain’t saying no more of them nevers

  No, no, no, no, no Never saying never no more

  Never ain’t no time, no sooner, no later

  No better for no-one who ain’t waiting no more

  Yes! I’m positively charged

  Yes, yes I’m absolutely sure

  Yes, yes, yes certain as can be

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. Please give me more

  But… and there’s always a ‘but’, isn’t there?

  Don’t give me no more take-aways

  Don’t want no subtractions no more

  Don’t give me none of them withdrawal symptoms

  Ain’t no-one, nothing, never, nowhere knows No Less ain’t No More

  10. What Are You Like

  Attitude, dude…