There are just so many of them
And they all have ideas.
Do you know how I’ve scraped and trawled
For a tuft
A tuft
That hasn’t been trodden, retrodden,
Rucked over by sixteen-pairs of aluminium studded boots?
But now I think I’ve got it —
Just in time, too.
And I tell you:
One unplucked wisp of green
Is worth a mudded life
In sullied nails.
Do you ever worry
That you haven’t quite got it?
That your mailman span and
Dropped on cobbles,
Hastening to deliver your memo?
That, come to think of it,
Your memo’s still pocketed
In his neon-orange jacket
(Which he was entombed with, having died on the job)?
Of course,
You can’t RSVP to that
Which was never received.
Perhaps, sooner or later, in due course,
A gravedigger will exhume the
Good-body-good-mind-effective-relax-efficient-grind-
Memo,
And slip it
Into your expectant claw.
“No, no, there’s nothing left here.”
My arms, I crossed them.
I’d been cheated.
I was ready for spite, salted spite.
“No, no, there’s nothing left here.”
In the chest: deflation.
I’d been stirring the brew into
The early hours, when you might as well
Be a dream.
“No, no, there’s nothing left here.”
I span, saw, and knew it to be true —
There was nothing left here.
The red bow-tie,
The eyes, unblinking,
The insistent boot tap
Upon the Walmart floor.
He bleats, placid,
Like a toymaker’s demonstration,
Or a hologram
Beamed from another world.
Beneath the leafy eaves,
We three:
Me, hayfever-free,
He,
And he,
Within the lee
Of a weeping tree.
We sip its tears
For fear our laughter
Will disturb the day;
And swallow its sighs
To better disguise
The reckless mirth in all we say.
The kind of swine
To round 9.5
Down to 9.
We met a guy outside Oxford station,
Whose accent, by my guesstimation,
Synched cockney and northern Australian.
From behind his grill he wore a permagrin,
Vending a limited menu therein
(With the odd translation in Mandarin).
When, at length, I enquired about these
Infrequent Hanzi, he replied, “If you please,
They reconcile my commercial needs.
If all were translated, people might see
My humble grill as an outlet Chinese;
So to preserve my name as a barbecue,
I determined only to gloss the most select few.
But, because I orientally spell some,
My clients from China feel always welcome.”
Unsure what else I might feasibly say,
I nodded,
“Understandable, have a nice day.”
Some readers prefer their
Verse with gilding,
Others gelded,
Others spilt crudely
Like that thing that Shell did.
I just want mine
Bittersweet
(Like the The Verve song)
And to go the extra —
If not mile —
Then furlong.
Pathetic.
Effort? From Entz?
That “theme” was (obvs)
Never going
To get past college —
And now my birthday
Bop is cancelled.
I strolled from Wandsworth to Ealing,
Sipping upon a Darjeeling;
Coffee, I think,
Is an inferior drink,
Which I can never taste the appeal in.
Shorter Poems 