| Ennui Friday (Sonnet)
 after Montale
 
 Immobilized by a dull heat,
 a faint sky over Talacre,
 the high haze so oddly Sussex
 to a wisping in the far blue,
 I am hit by a young terror
 at being unable to start
 again, a Villa there costly
 with my generation, former
 now barricaded from London,
 the expansive brutal in charge.
 So lost, The Battle of Britain
 with such grotesquerie at large.
 Our invaders have sent housing
 to a price beyond bold scheming.
 
 July 4th
 
 The Party Faithful
 two of them embraced
 
 The worst nightmare imaginable :
 the sound of The Party talking
 with noising like a door slamming,
 or a grinding on wood scraping
 or even worse, rough and ready
 and perpetually unsteady.
 A lot of them have a big mouth,
 they, barbarians in the south
 so fond of giving one an earful.
 Do many keep a big Teddy ?
 
 Fitzjohn's NW3 (3) Sonnet
 
 Super beautiful the decor
 but rezidenz, horror, horror,
 not one a modernist artist ;
 live in spiritual squalor
 in a Seventies' condo block,
 bordering on an office block
 not at all leaf Hampstead. Tres triste !
 Does anyone play Garage rock ?
 to Gin and tonic with ice-lock.
 They dare praise Mansion Avenue
 and lie ; a swimming pond, the view.
 Or bucket of Pimms, for a mist.
 Who is wearing a Party frock ?
 Passing by, we cannot but mock.
 
 July 5th  pace a concern in Holland
 
 Lyric Time  after Stevens
 
 Fast cumulus cloud, Monday morning
 heading south-west, giant yet low
 over the Camden Valley, blue
 sky intermittent alluring,
 for your departure instantly
 as if for Fuerteventura,
 and a somewhere out of this world
 does capture ; I think of Key West,
 meditating on what is best
 and when, quite free, I was last there.
 
 Lull Extrapolae
 
 Do I worship infinitude ?
 the diurnal not to intrude
 on carriageway, and the camber
 to sand and a sea-lit vista,
 
 personae gone infinity
 leaving a bleak chamber behind,
 and such love-making had to end
 for want of a grounding sanity.
 
 *
 It began at Southend-on-Sea
 and gazing The Wharf, Canary
 and a precognition of her.
 
 Cf  line art series 'Lull' (1997)
 CT July 7th/ 22nd (the triplet)
 
 Complaints By Jane H.
 
 You, an extrapolator bore !
 could never thrill me to the core.
 Christopher : you ploughed on, stopped not
 having no talent for chit-chat.
 You ought to put yourself about !
 In Berlin, we photographed, sure,
 that our in memoriam.
 Our generation was not glam
 We, both good at smelling a rat.
 Dolce vita in Tuscany...
 
 Joke For Jane (MOW)
 
 The one thing AI cannot do
 is sample the best Vineyard Cru.
 We went searching for Jurancon
 wine, thought to be near Aquitaine.
 You were an expert on Chablis
 with opened for wine-tasting bliss,
 the cloth on my pine table, blue.
 Always in the right, always knew !
 
 July 7th/23rd
 
 Trop Sotto Voce (1972)
 
 Last Tango In Paris, un film
 elegant. Pour Elle, pas de Gym.
 Maria, Marlon engage'
 pour Generation Absurd.
 Some script, difficult to be heard.
 Great pausing, without a hand-held
 disrupting slow time her and him.
 Firm Maria did not look trim.
 Paris ran poignant, desole'.
 
 Insulting The Nation
 
 Refusing to speak the language
 in hysterical badinage.
 Like Lenin, wearing camouflage
 working on causing great damage.
 
 Cote D'Azur Wealth
 
 After sipping your breakfast gin,
 you roll away the tarpaulin
 wanting to swim like a dolphin
 and her bikini, wafer thin
 so provoking for morning sin.
 Who, edgy, is going to win ?
 Is your Carrara made of tin ?
 The porno mags go in the bin.
 Will she ever wear camp satin ?
 
 July 8th/23rd
 
 Proscribe As Terrorist Org.
 
 Jeremy Corbyn, Sultana.
 Not one of them Albionista.
 Is M15 in a dither ?
 They broke The Trotsky palaver.
 
 What does a Sultana taste like ?
 Has she ever got on her bike ?
 
 July 9th/24th
 
 Bonds Day Of Judgement
 
 Destroyed by a left-wing poison,
 Albion. The Day Of Reckoning.
 Did it all begin with Bevan ?
 The country must lose four million,
 imprison for higher treason,
 never to recite The Nicene.
 Is there Bond Default in heaven ?
 The tumbling began at seven...
 what of, dice ? Or, robbing Peter
 to pay Paul, never the neater.
 One is reminded of Russia
 and a reneging on The Tsar.
 
 The Madness Of Boris J.
 
 Study of Le Corbusier
 is de rigeur for The Tower
 Block planner, yet your free-for-all
 let developer anarchy
 
 run riot, with nothing to stall
 the visual atrocity.
 West of St Jude, a cement Block
 far off ; a spiritual shock.
 *
 A pigeon fled into The Church.
 I read Montale, in the lurch.
 They, a plague on infinity :
 I lost a purer rhapsody.
 
 July 10th/24th
 
 Fatigue Paradox
 
 Too lazy to build anything,
 they wonder why there is no housing
 to random in, and play Pleasure
 the computer game. Ape leisure.
 Most have to be extradited
 to protect from the living dead.
 Some stagger, street-wise, infected
 barely conscious of anything.
 Not even of Gospel chanting.
 
 Still No Government
 
 I could do their work an hour
 a day in my Studio, making cuts
 and doing away with The Trots.
 I would hire, fill pick-up trucks.
 
 Spaniards Fields (NW)
 
 You have your Mansion, and a Lake
 with an Alsation at the Gate.
 But where the twenty-something, nice
 beauty, to plate you Gin on ice ?
 
 Full Service (Sonnet)
 after Visconti
 
 Such a Barnet extravaganza
 and you have to hand it to her.
 You can drive to Highgate Station,
 fend The City AI ration...
 
 Once you have wealth, you want her stealth
 and not to be jamming in filth.
 Is this text getting out of hand ?
 What did happen in Turners Wood ?
 
 Bring on the BBQ, a slew...
 and garlic brimming in her stew.
 Sound of agitated laughter...
 Who is raping a guest daughter ?
 
 After line twelve, the twelfth hour
 of The Leopard, all on fire.
 
 July 10th/26th  film 1963; the long Dance
 
 No Chance
 
 Suddenly, empty words linger
 if at all, not as graffiti
 or entering a megaphone
 leaving the handy telephone
 
 and you wonder at the point
 of crafting protest, so unheard
 though not, you may reflect, unseen
 our presenting what could have been.
 
 ( This was meant for ending July
 with so much wrong, but time does fly ).
 
 July 11th/28th
 
 Extra ! News Extra !
 
 The Nation sad, incoherent
 lost in a flat-vowel ferment,
 infantile, beyond ludicrous
 and generally quite clueless.
 
 July 14th
 
 Lingua Franca
 
 Does Trump speak West Country English ?
 Part Scotland ; the Plymouth Brethren.
 Stentorian, has gravity.
 
 July 16th
 
 The Westphalian Speech (Sonnet)
 
 Mertz can speak a better Anglo
 than Starmer, vowel expressive
 and delivering for NATO.
 
 V. Putin wanted to detach
 Germany, forgetting the batch-
 raping at the end of the match.
 
 Or, dare I say Brandenburg March.
 Montgomery liked sounding arch.
 He kept their arms in easy reach.
 
 Putin craves a Crimean beach.
 Is that more than Ukraine can give ?
 What of the Byzantine halo ?
 
 Russia lost badly at Marian
 Mariupol : did not say hello.
 
 Joke Crimean
 
 Since when was a spread parasol
 cover from a drone aerosol ?
 
 July 18th/28th
 
 AI Hubris (Sonnet)
 
 Data Centres need energy
 and cooling water, for knowing
 little under a strawberry
 moon, to keep lunacy flowing
 as partial people eat a bit.
 Economic growth is a killer.
 Rather than build a new
 warren to hold the infected,
 better to birth the infected.
 
 We need many a machine gun.
 Revolution can be such fun,
 aiming for purification
 so that we can sit in the sun.
 Ginger adored her currant bun.
 
 Kibbutz Gadot (Again)
 
 Beautiful women, danger
 there from an emerging stranger,
 the Disco shut for the summer.
 There was longing in the anger.
 
 Churchill Wrong
 
 Fort Singapore, and Malaya
 far more important than Stalin :
 The Spitfire Supermarine
 not to take on the 'Nip' terror.
 
 July 19th/30th
 
 St Silas, She Was
 
 crystal clear as the Credo Cantor,
 her cut glass vox high accenting ;
 not for Coronation canting
 in a void, for lack of fervour
 and a Faith public comporting
 to save Saxe-Coburg Gotha.
 
 I need not refer to Windsor.
 The Gloria : Latin singing
 better here, than in Westminster.
 
 July 20th
 
 Going To The E-Bike
 
 Her Wimbledon-white tennis dress
 to bronzed, ripple powerful thigh
 beguiling for Monday morning.
 Flouncy, ravishing, dare may I.
 
 She, leaning, and wondering why
 yet pale to inner distress.
 Could we talk of the Doubles,
 lying back after a long sigh ?
 
 Devotee of the coming task,
 there was nothing that I could ask.
 
 Born To Catastrophe
 a Birth Sonnet
 
 Dateline : little more than ten years
 off the long Fall of Singapore,
 my being born under canvas
 in a British Military
 Field Hospital, in North West
 Malaya, my mother cursing
 ' white flag ' General Percival
 and we, bent on recovering
 from defeat and ignominy,
 with a great Battleship
 and her Cruiser, under water
 home to fish and growing coral.
 The Admiral, in his dead end
 gurgling water at the second.
 
 Obit Note The Admiral
 
 He made it his choice to go down
 with his Ship, her Cruiser first down.
 Do we see him in his agony ?
 or, forbidden territory.
 He signalled late for air cover
 which he knew, as he went under.
 
 He, Sir Tom Phillips
 
 How dare a text play the voyeur ?
 Malaya, for tin, and rubber.
 I cocktail Singapore sling
 to make me think I am winning.
 
 drowned Dec 10th 1941
 source book Malaya 1941 The Fall
 of a Fighting Empire Sir Andrew
 Gilchrist (1992) and Joan Albums
 July 21st/August 1st 2025
 
 Churchill The Bungler
 from a source
 
 Arming up the Stalin monster,
 rather than fight for Malaya.
 Who sent out a chinless wonder ?
 
 The Admiral drowned with his Ship
 unable to give Japan the slip,
 proving Ironside to be right.
 
 The choice was Empire, or might.
 All Germany really wanted
 was Ukraine, and Stalin vaunted
 
 after The Polish Corridor
 that is, and a wanting a war
 in which we would lose Singapore.
 
 Thus ends line twelve. Was there a deal ?
 For Japan, Roosevelt cut the oil.
 
 Churchill Counterclaim
 
 It was Cairo or Singapore
 and for both, we could not do more ;
 that is the dilemma he saw,
 therein, though, a logical flaw.
 He could not see war in the raw.
 Ralph saw him as a blithering
 idiot, a cigar commanding.
 The Battle of the Atlantic
 in the background, no less epic.
 
 July 21st/August 4th
 
 Grounds For A Coup
 from Homeguard (1940)
 
 A vast failure of leadership,
 against the minority snip
 and the punitive measure
 to guard the Albion structure.
 We grew in a homage to Rome
 and built the Classical a home.
 Africa, and Arabia
 cannot appear as the major...
 we have much from India.
 A Division from Calcutta ?
 They tend to speak the best English
 educated above rubbish.
 
 Le Deluge
 
 Point of vulnerability :
 Autumn pay round, zero to three.
 Or Index-linked Gilt misery.
 
 Seeing a pram, chant : why bother ?
 born to a land full of horror
 funding incremental squalor.
 
 July 25th/August 4th
 
 The Weather Breaking
 
 Wearing a thick scarf, late July
 incident that can make you cry.
 A turgid sea, so hard to ply.
 
 July 28th
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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