Here are some edited, versions of poems written primarily for performance.

Written as spoken word pieces they are designed to evolve, be adapted, improvised around and to be honed over time. As such they may change when you hear me perform them live. that is kind of the point.

The Poet Beanz The Poet Beanz

two tone at home

For somebody like me growing up and starting to buy records in the late 70s and early 1980’s it is impossible to overstate the importance of the Two Tone Ska Revival here in the UK. The cultural, political and social impact was matched by a personal affinity to a music that felt like our own.

It did not condescend or preach to you. It had that sense of mischief of being on the edge. Even as a preteen it could make you dance and smile and feel the kinship and solidarity that belonging to your own tribe brings you.

Nearly half a century later.

That has never gone away.

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Mento, Calypso and all that Jazz

blew in on a Jamaican breeze

rhythm and blues , and snares that crack

and hips that sway, chords like palm trees

the walking baseline stepped ashore

in Windrush Brogues so patent bright

black heels clicking, on two and four

one white socked foot lifted each night

the corkscrewed hips, the crawl and twist

the punch, the bass, the upbeat bliss,

the offbeat riddims, guitars that glisten

shimmer upstroke ,breathe and listen

then a later generation

moved by that rock steady beat

syncopated dislocation

the Midland maestro's from the street

the English Beat moved more than feet

and Coventry was Special too

Saxa bridging Orange Street

new wave revival, and Punk 'F*ck you'

made to heal tears, soul inflection

full stop ranking beat creation

staccato Stiff and Two Tone at home

British Ska that moved a nation

gangsters never trashed Hotel rooms

wha'happen dancing Jabsco did

three minutes heroes The Selector

too much pressure under the lid

the only invaders were North London

became the Camden Nutty Boys

brethren of the Prince were invited

racist toddlers threw out their toys

we harassed our mothers for Doc Martins

14 holers if we dared

black Harrington's with tartan lining

ad drainpipe jeans, trousers not flared

buzz-cut, ch ch, braces too, Skinhead style not BNP,

tabloid rubbish all the while

Bad Manners Margate by the sea

Jerry,Terry,Gaps and Pauline,

chequerboard that we adored

Yes and flares and Mud and Wombles

all the things that we abhorred

too young for Punk, but liked the naughty,

the Madness then was Absolute

rebels at playtime, ties as peanuts

beaten with canes and kicked with boots

the energy was so infectious,

the dancehall skanking had us hooked

other tribes could not deflect us

too cool for school was how we looked

and still Ska makes me feel alive,

a running man, two stepping madly

a child transported out of time

a Grandad dancing very badly

so thank you Rhoda, Roger, Doug

your body snatching, toasting tongue

Monsieur Barso, El Thommo, Suggs

by now I'm sure it must be love

©ThePoetBeanz.com 2025

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The Poet Beanz The Poet Beanz

synths and cats

There is a venn diagram somewhere in which synthesisers and cats overlap. If you are a cat owning synth player then this is for you.

I have always had a cat (though not presently) and many synths. They do not always mix. Synth key beds are already fluff and dust magnets even without the cute furry Gods trampling all over them.

When they do walk across though it is very funny and I have spent many an hour programming patches or equing mixes etc with a cat either on my lap or somewhere else in the studio.

I created some of the images used in the video for this poem with AI and some with composites. AI curiously can create great cats in all their model and manufactured varieties but is pretty useless when it comes to all the different breeds of synths.

Click ‘Watch the Video’ to watch and listen

or click ‘Read More’ to read the poem

Moggies on moogs

Kitties on Korgs

Scratching claws across sliders

Paws on keyboards

TB 303s tabbies

Raving it up

British Short Hairs

On Behringers

Tweaking Res and cutt off

Playing M1s and Oberheims

Squelching and growling

Siamese on Sequential Circuits

Yamaha's yowling

Rexs from Cornwall

and rexs from Devon

Tinkling E Pianos

Sat atop DX7s

Pussies on Prophets

Gingers on Jen's

Cs80 Maine Coons

Tom Cats on Pitch bends

Clavia Nord

Roland and Novation

Ensoniq, Kawaii quacking

Catty clicking notation

In 1981

Dave Smith gave us MIDI

Near eastern wildcat

Prophet of polyphony

Now felis catus

Are all over the world

Splaying out over keybeds

Like cables unfurled

Stretching Abyssinians

Playing Jean Meaow Jarre

Bengal Brian Enos

Sphinxs beeping Vince Clarke

Random riffs from Black Cats

Sound just like Depeche Mode

Burmese cats switch on Bach

For Wendy Carlos at home

Clockwork Orange tom Tron

Eerie Circona The Shining

Transforming metamorphosis

With what she was designing

Feline frequency mod

Gorgio Moroder

Vangelis, Kraftwerk

Cats tweaking controllers

Hissing feral white noise

Lovely Purring sustain

Fluffy Persian resonance

Manx cut off decay

Teeth like a saw tooth

Arched triangle back

Cat on a hot tin roof

Square wave step down racks

Stalk like a sine wave

Oscillating warm purr

Additive synthipuss

Harmonics with fur

Cleaning faces with paws

ADSR tweaking

Felines and Fairlights

Cats chirping and speaking

In league with nerd Humans

Walk on flats and sharps

Cacophonous Orchestral

Manouvers in the Dark

I love cats and synths

So diverse and eclectic

A tiny mewman tubeway army

Our feline friends electric

Something to stroke

Whilst sat in your lap

A producer like Kate

Even moved like a cat

A bird in the hand

Is worth two in the bush

can't resist new synths

Geddy bass pedal Rush

Like the nonplussed look

At a bowl full of food

Even if I can't move

For all the synths in the room

I am about as likely

To keep synth free pledges

As cats are to give up

Batting objects off edges

But where would we be without cats

Without synths

Like a dance with no discos

And statues without plinths

Imagine a world

without ribbons and knobs

No tangerine dreams

No cute furry gods

With fluff in the keyboard

Paw prints on the keys

My mate once had a synth

That was Jumping with Fleas

It's a small price to pay

For a lifetime of love

One without the other?

Just can't get enough

© The Pet Beanz 2025

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POEMS TO COME

  • The Rainbow Road Not Taken

    I make no apologies for interpolating Ellen Glasgow’s ‘The Freeman’ (1902), William Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ (1807) and The Beatles ‘In my life’ (1965) all within a poem about the emotional resonance of characters and worlds created within computer games.

    While John Lennon was clearly thinking of lost friends like Stuart Sutcliffe and Wordsworth was musing on the ability of nature to inspire humanity, I am inspired by the ability of stories about humanity (even within non-human protagonists) inside videogame worlds to elicit as much, if not more visceral and emotional responses as great cinema or literature can. There are now friends I am sad to say, that I have spent many joyous hours with, sat around a console, for whom it has now been game over for many years.

    Like Glasgow’s hero, Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman, Mafia 3’s Lincoln Clay and Mario himself, are all towering examples of people unwilling to accept bondage and limitations, or to know their place, confronting their oppressors and determined to bring justice to bear.

    In Robert Frosts 1916 ‘The Road not taken’ a fairytale decision is mused upon with about as much solemnity as that felt by people of my age when playing an Ian Livingstone ‘Choose your own adventure’ book. Frost himself said “I am never more serious than when I am joking”

    Some people think games are simply about a digital characters life and death. I can assure you it is much more important than that.

  • TWIT

    The idea for TWIT occurred to me whilst having to absorb yet another episode of Fireman Sam which my youngest (who was about two years old at the time) was obsessed with. It features a character called 'Norman Price' who could test the patience of saints.

    Most of the fires in Ponty Pandy can be traced back to Norman. I usually perform the main body of the poem in an approximation of his whiny annoying voice. (Somebody recently asked me 'why the Alexi Sayle voice?' which I was quietly pleased about.)

    Obviously the whole poem is inspired by John Copper Clarke's TW*T and my even worse approximation of his voice bookends the live performances of TWIT. There is no lifting of lines though. No complete lines from the original, only the spirit in tribute I hope to a legend. The challenge lay in trying to keep it both profanity free but acerbic and I hope fun. I love to perform it.

  • NITS NITS NITS

    If you are a parent, a nursery worker, school teacher or pediatric nurse then you will be familiar with the unspoken Hammer House of Horror that is a plague of nit laying headlice.

    Nobody talks about it as though it were somehow connected to bad personal hygiene or a dirty and untidy house. Go through the poem with a fine comb and see if you can spot the Bauhaus lyric and get through the entire thing without scratching your head.

  • THE FILTH JUDGE AND JURY

    On the 1st of December 1976 Broadcaster William Grundy interviewed The Sex Pistols. Grundy proceded to ambush them, setting himself up as both Judge and Jury for a scene he had no time for, and did not understand. Grundy even admitted later that he had set out "to prove that these louts were a foul-mouthed set of yobs. And that is what I did prove"

    Steve Jones though was not the first person to say ‘F*ck’ on British TV. Irish Playwright Brendan Behan achieved the remarkable twin feat of being the first man seen under the influence on British television and the first person to say “F*ck” on the same show, during a live interview on BBC’s Panorama on June 18, 1956.

  • IT POISONS EVERYTHING

    I am not sure if I am an anti-theist rather than just an atheist, but there are times when looking at the irrational , ignorant, tribal divisive violence religion still seems to inspire, that make me quite sure I am much more aligned with such a position than the ‘edging my bets style’ of agnosticism that I adopted in my late teens after a horrendous childhood in a Christian cult.

  • AND THE NIGHT

    This is one of my oldest poems written at a time when walking at night was both a meditative and necessary act. It is as much about the auditory landscape as the visual and of course is a metaphor for the end of our own short time on this planet. The photograph is my own and part of a long scale project about cities after dark.

  • UNDER THE WAVE

    “You can see it everywhere”.

    In just six years time Katsushika Hokusai’s spectacular swell will have loomed large over Japanese art for 200 years. It is the most mass produced image in art history and so predictably has been dismissed by many inside and out of art criticism, as though it’s accessibility and enduring appeal were somehow inverse indicators of it’s significance.

    Love it or hate it, it is not going anywhere soon and so here are some words on what it means to me

  • M.I.C

    On the 5th September 1981 a group of Welsh women, a group called ‘Women for Life on Earth’ arrived outside RAF Greenham Common to protest the Governments plans to site American Nuclear Cruise Missiles there and changed history.

  • EAT YOUR GREENS

    This is the poem with which I open most after hours sets. It is an opportunity to pay tribute to poets past and present on the screen behind me and loosen up those vocal chords. Will it work out of context and written down as text? I am not sure but you can decide yourself when it arrives here.

  • Clothed in Garments Soft

    The joys and challenges of fostering when you are neuro divergent.

  • I HID MY PLANS ON POST-IT NOTES

    Daydreaming at work when you are in a factory, warehouse, building site or office repeating mundane mind numbing tasks is something most of us have done. This is a poem about never giving up on your dreams. Your never too old ...even at 50.

    If you are In a cult,religion,marriage,job,contract,band and you don't want to be you can always put on women’s clothes and do the hoovering.

    Do you ever feel like Indiana Jones with a giant bolder behind you or that you are stuck in a trash compactor like Luke, Princess Leia, Chewy and Han solo in Star Wars?Be like Steve McQueen.


    It's never too late
    To escape

  • TREES (You are the Bees Knees)

    A poem about Trees.

  • Know a city by it's people

    An ode to Plymouth through the sculptures and statues on her streets. Monuments, artefacts and plaques that pay tribute to citizens, visitors, moments and events that have helped shaped the city.

  • HANDS

    A poem about hands

  • Boots and Cats and Council Flats

    Beauty within Brutalism and the urban on walks within my home city built the shapes and sounds within this poem

  • Those were the Greys my friend

    What would you do if Aliens visited you? What would you ask them? How do you rhyme extra terrestrial? Why was Mary Hopkins the first release on the Beatles Apple label?