We Are All Cartoons Now By Joe Hakim

Setting up a trap the immaculate disappointment capped off with regret, things we could have changed or done but didn't. Words and pictures left unchecked - naked like flames combining like fires that burn in the minds of the ones who believe and the ones who don't. The sides are drawn up in the sand and in the streets, and a convincing win costs more than defeat. And now the truth is black and white and read all over the world at the touch of a button, and everyone is right and everyone is wrong, and the questions rattle on and on: why didn't we why couldn't we, and what will happen now? No one knows any more today than they did yesterday and being prepared or being aware wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to what happened and would have happened anyway. All we have is distance and the continued persistence of ideology and conflict and pain and existence.

Copyright © Joe Hakim 2006

Poetry - Saint Patrick's Day By Del Abe Jones.

	The Patron Saint of Ireland Died in the Fifth Century On the seventeenth of March Is that anniversary. That day is during Lent When the Irish celebrate With dance and drink and feast    Read more...

Poetry - I Remember It Well By Jon Stewart

	I met her in Retro No, it was in Mint I said I was loaded You said you were skint! Ah yeah...I remember it well. Said she was from Bransholme Read more...

Poetry - Politics On The Dance-floor By Patrick Henry
	Cuba's dangerous crocodile-shape looms long and slim As a laid girl, a good cigar, or Castro's red regime. A pianist plays Blues out of his back-street door: An instrument from Chicago that'll send no more; Nor glitzy Cadillac cabs that take you for a ride For five bucks anywhere and girls Read more...

Poetry - A Popular Theme By Jane Foster

	For Michael Cassar 1979 - 2000 A popular theme - the good die young, With lips unparted, praise unsung, The ode, the book, the song, the rhyme, The tale of the young man cut down in his prime, The turn of the screw, the whizz of the wheel, The young man dead on a fiver deal. Read more...

Poetry - Picking Up Sluts In Retro By Joe Hakim

Me and me mates were in Retro last night and we met these tarts and we fucked 'em    Read more...

Poetry - Snowball By Jane Foster

	One winter's night, we found a snowball Nestling in someone's front garden. A foot high it was. We decided To steal it, and began to push. It didn't occur to us that it would gather snow, And grow, and prove insurmountable. Read more...

Poetry - Song of Hopeless Love By Maurice Fairfield
	I've got a girl who's mighty sweet Fellows fall down at her feet Still she treats me like a skunk She only loves me when she's drunk. When I call her on the phone (This girl I'd love to call my own) April August June October Read more...

Poetry - All The King's Men By John Winn

It's up to you the public don't decide I'm ready when you're ready and that's no lie I'm waiting for this fairy tale to break Once upon a time has never been so late It's a story worth 6 pence Not really 8 or 10    Read more...

Poetry - Chasing The Current By Stacie Brady

I'm longing for nothing, nobody, nowhere They're probably waiting but I couldn't care There's nothing exciting to brighten my days I guess I'm just set in my old empty ways I'm hoping for hopes of something to do I'm dreaming of dreams that will never come true I guess I'm just lost in a place that I know Read more...

Poetry - Latenight stanzas of Doggerel By Chu Nin

There where two taxi driver types Sandpaper cheeks they bore Stood akimbo unto a sooty subway staircase There walked past a whore Twas their sister they swore She span in the dark drippingness    Read more...

Poetry - Two Coppers In A Subaru By Joe Hakim

Two coppers in a Subaru looking like Shaggy and Scooby-do in the Mystery-Machine. Winding down the window, one of them asks: 'Where you goin' son,    Read more...

Poetry - Sappho, Sophocles, Virgil By Lucy Arnold
	Sit and wonder Men all concerned Not with practicality but bestiality and the little sighs the little sigh of "I, I don't know"    Read more...

Poetry - Talking In Circles By Joe Hakim

The broken spill that came out of you could be viewed as a substitute for the things that we never ended up    Read more...

Poetry - Ego Inoculation No 1 By Joe Hakim

Strip the year away and throw it on the shit heap of memory, take a step back from the cult of your own personality. Look at you now - see how your ego has grown,    Read more...

Poetry - Them And Us By Del Abe Jones.

	Now they want to Google us Where will all this snooping end? Remember stories of Big Brother? Well, he's lurking 'round the bend. They tap our phones when they want Though they could work within the law    Read more...

Poetry - Rosa Lee Parks By Patrick Henry
	Rosa Lee Parks, calm Rosa Lee, Cotton seamstress of Montgomery, Caught the wrong bus at the right time to be Driven into race history. Mr White Guy craved her bus seat place, But she sat tight on her black ass. Read more...

Poetry - Chavalanche by Lee Cassanell

	R'Kid and me went round for tea At Nannas house She don't get out Except to bet on horses Me Grandad smokes a thousand cigs And sucks the juice from filter tips He's eighty nine    Read more...

Poetry - Someone Else's Songs By Michelle Dee
	The kids are all popping pills, turning mountains in to mole hills. For a while they smile, high on a trip through the night keep going until light. Sucking up coke with a blood stained note. So... Read more...

Poetry - Hulling It By Nicholas Long

	I love Hull, one letter from Hell. Hell-hole Hull, the bottom of the boat, arse- end of England. When you visit, you scrape the bottom. I love saying the word Hull. Out loud. It has as much resonance as a tin bath. Not barth, the southern way. It makes me smile to say its name. Read more...

Poetry - Just One More Coalminers Daughter By Del Abe Jones.

	Another Coalminer's Daughter (and Son) Has Heart and Soul beneath the Ground With Tears and Hopes and Prayers That their lost Daddies will be Found. Hoping for some great Miracle Not only Found, but Safe and Well    Read more...

Poetry - City Sky By Katherine Horrex
	Star sky tastes so blue cake good Such a sweetmeat backdrop Against charnel decay And ominous concrete blocks. Sky scrapers are aptly named Tearing chunks out of it, Read more...

Poetry - Files and Patience By Sue Hardy

	"The system has failed serves but a few" Shuffled aside. Labelled as 'loss'. Go through the motions end up as dross. Paperwork done Dotted and Teed, Read more...

Poetry - The Man From No. 8 By Shep

	Upon this action less land he leads A full life of content ideals He eats from his house delivered meals And upon the essence of the desperate seeds Through self installed monotony He chooses the path full of prints Read more...

Poetry - Shadow on the Porch By Patrick Henry
	A figure sitting on the front porch sets a portrait Of the Deep South vitally as a sweet song At Sundown: Old Rocking Chair to Skylark and Stardust blends the mood. The one jarring note being this one's not sleeping but stone dead. Twelve days since wild Katrina stormed in this house, Read more...

Poetry - Oh Jesus by Lee Cassanell

	I was working in a cotton field It could have been an office block Sat tapping keys and digging weeds To pay for my true lovers plot When all at once I heard a shot My colleague blew his head right off    Read more...

Poetry - Ophelia By Lucy Arnold
	As a daughter of the inner city circus, I find sleep too quiet. I lie beneath the same wasted sky that moans and breaks in two, the same sky as the night before. It watched me lose consciousness upon my bedroom floor. In silence it watched you too.    Read more...

Poetry - (I Ain't No) Corporate Cocksucker By Nicholas Boldock
	Someone chained me to a desk and handed me a phone They gave me a pile of invoices and left me on me own Me arse looked like me elbow cos I didn't have a clue By the time it got to five o'clock the air was fucking blue It took me just a week to bring the company to its knees But I somehow got away with it cos nobody knew it was me Read more...

Poetry - Shark! By Steve Rudd
	There's water on the road And even more under the bridge; So much so we cannot go Exactly where we wanted, As the sharks, they come full circle Their fattened fins full tilt Read more...