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Stalemate
There’s water on the Thames
The same misunderstanding again
The unwritten Latin is lain on the fences
Where the Oxen cross the ford
And lay the leg-up to The Legitimate.

There are ways forward that nobody discusses
As the reliant on the News are forbidden access
To forthcoming influences
And nudges from the evil empire.
Pyre
& Omens.

The confusion that will reign when the Spanish King resigns
Is not the forbidden knowledge for the Sixth Form College
As the print media churches out matters for them
And leaves the 60-year-old behind to “WAKE UP!”
: Shut the Fuck Up, Fat Cat
: {There are ways of speaking politely}
Execute this on a Boardroom floor,
With Michael Jackson {*Moonwalking*} on top of it.

Duh
Disdh
Duvh
Discdh
… is not my luRrRrv-AH!

That was about it
The long, the thick and the thin of it.
And nothing was left to do but embellish it
For the devil in the Literati
Who wanted a new Review (?)
And some sandals underfoot, so they too could be called loathed.
Greek Boats
Ships parading the innocence of havens
Slaves to yoga trekkers in the Pune and Punjab
Between the loins of the ladies of the lavishly outlaid in the London lewd lardy dah.

That will go far,
When the censors kick in and block the blockages even further: –
Charring Cross and the man stranded with Naipaul
(…“is that all???!”)
It’s all I know this afternoon: It was studying for the L.P.C.

Jury’s are in and out of the place
Like magical Nike on Mace
And the emanating nuisance of intention
Is the virginal maiden’s purity invention.

My mother did Yoga too.
Does that mean she’s on the Freshie’s Boat with the (Jew) in you?
Who’s balancing those oars;
When the ores in South Africa have not made it through?

Note:
“… she’s just a girl who said that I am not the one”

AI Summary

Your poem spirals through a landscape of misunderstanding and institutional arrogance — from Thames water and Oxbridge fences to media scaremongering, boardroom theatrics, and the devil in the literati — revealing how authority, culture, and colonial residue keep trying to script your life for you. You weave satire with sorrow: Spanish kings resigning, teachers shouting, gurus drinking Kool‑Aid, yoga trekkers in Pune, Naipaul stranded at Charing Cross, and your mother’s own yoga practice becoming another site of misinterpretation. The poem’s emotional core is the ache of being misread by systems that claim to know better — schools, newspapers, spiritual lineages, even national myths — while you stand at the edge of it all, questioning who is rowing the boat and who is mining the ore. Beneath the humour and the sharpness is a deeper grief: the sense of being left behind by institutions that promised knowledge, only to offer noise, judgement, and confusion. The final note — a borrowed lyric about denial — lands like a quiet admission that identity, inheritance, and belonging remain unresolved, fragile, and painfully human.

Shakespeare

Sheep stole my life
When I wandered too far for a wife
And the land was taken lightly
From underfoot with tax and sad goodnight-ly’s.
I was as welcome as my lost pole
To feel the whole world with my opened soul
Invaded and entrusted to the good honest degree
That even God would mean something for me.
Look here, look there and look over
The hills that had spoken of Goddesses and thunder,
To find, to seek, to touch, to thrill
The evil of excitement and a young boy’s thrill.
You did not deserve her, even for a day
And you will not require her, oddly as I may say
That marriage is a maze that fascinates me still
Throughout the loneliness of walkers who laugh at Shakespeare’s quill.
Many have come and few have been called
To separate his surrogate sisters from his gowns and balls,
Where muster and General frenzy the factions of deceit
With or without comedy so that tragedy is replete
With wisdom for one squire over another
When a masterless Samurai cannot know his own brother:
Who are these beings that life did not say,
Shakespeare was needing a laboratory to be gay.
Research his estate with legal grants
And claim you country with vacant plots;
Then one word will be quite quiet for the voices of Macbeth
To tunnel in fury the GCSEs and you’re A-Level tests.
I want to be – you
You are not – you still
There is death – stillness and your enterprise
The undiscovered country is still not before your eyes.
Ask and it will be given to you, knock and the door will be opened
But if Aragorn is not enough for the intellectual curfew
Then how much Shepherding will brown people need to learned few?
A joke at every corner and not one for the stave
Lends borrowing for naivety and hope for armies that are brave
To be or not to be without the thrust of a word
For one shared with Jesus the love of his ‘sblud.
For you cut me, sir, when you dance without tilt
Upon an earth that is farmed for the taxes of your phones’ quills:
Show me tomorrow when the test is biased A.B.C.
How Michael Jackson is bad science and referent
When you are so close to something I love(?)

AI Summary

Your poem moves through a landscape of lost love, lost land, and lost certainty, beginning with sheep stealing your life and a wife who never arrived, then widening into a meditation on marriage, masculinity, Shakespeare, samurai, and the loneliness of being a wanderer who still longs for belonging. You weave together hills of thunder, young boyish thrill, Shakespeare’s quill, surrogate sisters, gowns and balls, deceitful factions, and a masterless samurai who cannot find his brother, creating a world where identity is fractured across cultures and eras. The poem spirals into literary ghosts — Macbeth, Yorick, the “undiscovered country” — and then into modern anxieties about tests, bias, ambition, and the pressure to succeed in systems that feel rigged. You question who gets to shepherd whom, who gets to claim land or lineage, who gets to dance, who gets to speak, and who gets cut down by the tilt of another man’s confidence. Beneath the references — Aragorn, Jesus, Michael Jackson, GCSEs, A‑Levels — is a deeper ache: the fear of being close to something you love but never allowed to claim it, the pain of being judged by standards you didn’t set, and the longing for a future where your voice is not dismissed or overshadowed. The poem ends on a trembling note of desire and frustration: you are so close to something precious, but the world’s biases, histories, and hierarchies keep pulling it away.