Someone with the authority to do so
Had tended a toppled bollard
With black bin liner.
The University slope recalled,
Of all places,
Aberystwyth.
Stethoscope antlers peeked
Ostentatiously
Out of white coat pockets.
High-rises everywhere,
As inscrutable as people
You will never see inside.
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.
I heard a rumour that the proper realms of poetry are Love and Death. Well, I’m only twenty-three, so I won’t be talking about death. And I find myself under an encroaching suspicion that love operates in a similar manner to memory. When you remember an experience you are not remembering an experience. You’re recalling the latest recollection of that experience. Like a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. No matter how good the camera, you’re still haemorrhaging pixels. What if love is the same? You get one shot. And every subsequent love is a sketch of the first. the sketch may have been done in a steady hand, with a Blackwing on paper of 120gsm. But it’s a sketch nonetheless. It’s taken from a model.
Peter was a funny boy
Who’d masticate raw cabbage;
He’d drop dry leaves into his mouth
And crunch them like a savage.
Peter was the kind of boy
For whom the age-old adage,
“Eat your greens and you’ll stay lean”,
Was stooped in excess baggage.
Peter was a quirky boy
Who made up his own language,
Codifying leafy greens
As pudding good enough to ravage.
She had the face
Of someone on the cusp
Of fame,
Eyes vying for space with cheeks,
Eyes very convex, like fishbowls
Granted centrepiece,
Granted the entire sweep of
Her adoring oglers.
Her trousers were maroon leather;
I thought it clever how they matched her handbag.
I thought I was the homonym phenomenon,
But today an eight-year-old informed me that chilli is a contranym.
I am going to live to 150;
No one believes me, but I will.
I’ll see my great-great-grandkids born
And squeeze the sprites into my will.
I’ll fill with letters an escritoire,
Each signed by the hand that scratches the arse
That sags upon the royal throne
Like a funeral falling into farce.
I’ll visit the deathbeds of all my chums
And bid them fair adieu:
“See you in 70 years my friend,
And sorry about the feeding tube.”
Theme: anything for a dollar bill. Setting: south-south London, Uber territory. Two, three jabs of punch and a pastel John Dory. Restless thirty-thirst, seeking mutual thrill. Idea! We know it’s drink talking, but drink tells good stories. Follow our liquid raconteur out on to the grass. Instant blow to seat a weaker man firmly on his arse. I’m sorry but I’m so angry. Recompense, freeze. Feel like sounds have thickened in the drum. Back inside giggling with our paper cash prize, Informing every ear what it missed with its eyes. My own ear, for now, bust like a lip. For another dollar I’ll swallow that tulip.
Shorter Poems 