Keep your Facebook-tier truisms
And cringe inducing ‘poems’;
My fear is once I’m dead that
You’ll engrave on my stone:
here lies Ruaridh
he touched life’s
depths
he should remember
going forward
to come back up for breath.
***
My poems are strawberry handkerchiefs
(That means their proof is ocular);
But instapoets are fake deep
Like backwards binoculars.
My blue suede shoes
Are a size too small,
As are these lines.
Women with funny hair
And raised voices?
Here’s what you need:
Another white male
To explain things:
“Besides, shouldn’t it be
Equalism? Now that’s a moniker
I could be behind.”
“Why can’t you be satisfied with better
Than then?” “You know, I heard a
Woman on Radio Ten,
Admitting biological discrepancy
Into vogue again.”
“This women’s day stuff
Just feels a bit anti-men.”
Two gentlemen — this, at least,
We can confirm, that they are gentlemen —
Confer beneath the projector.
Whether they are here to critique,
Or come off-peak, like Tuesday noon,
Or bought out all two-sixteen seats
To secure themselves exclusive views,
We cannot say.
I only fear they come here for me,
To watch peel from my sweaty legs
The Batman pyjamas, to hear me,
In thought, curse the thermostat,
Which I am too tired to rise
And turn clockwise.
She has an hourglass body.
By which I mean,
That the last few grains of sand are sinking into the lower atrium.
I resent the term push up; it’s
Press up.
I press myself to the carpet with
Inhale.
I hold the contraction, until
Up. Three.
I like to pretend, on my
Way up,
That my breath assists with
The lift,
As if I were a hovercraft,
Exhaust-
ing through the nostrils, escaping
Trace smells,
Like footprints, or my best friend’s
Vomit.
He raised his wine,
Just to lower it twice as far:
A half-arsed toast.
The window scene Swung full into view:
Five other guests, who of the botched
Behest, were ignorant. The culprit had
Burrowed his eyes into a stain,
Whilst his failure snapped his neck at
90º.
He looked silly between the laughing bottles,
Like skinny jeans and gel amidst four
Women in corporate noir.
The kind of faux pas
To make a man say
“I am just going outside and may be some time.”
He turned
and lost four years.
Panicked, turned
Back
Only to find the same scene,
A decade on.
He pivots
Now,
Toeing each patch,
Foot-sniffing the precise
Degree.
Meanwhile, wrinkles
Profound, and hairs
Wrinkle like leaves.
Every night a different thought:
I ought to write them down.
But to my consternation
I frown, like a clown
Unlaughed, and lose all
Motivation to arrange.
Surround
The rumours, when they began, were
Sound.
Gratuitous in-wall speakers, every room
(Even the bathroom,
So a piss was no respite).
In fact, the architect had seen fit
To affix one device within the
Basin. It’s bass vexed the pool, and
Growled lemony spittle across
My new white jumper.
I’d flip flop back to the hallway
And curse,
Because I had to buy a new white jumper.
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