Tag: writer

Adults Who Ride Scooters

The most beautiful woman he’d seen,

Dead or alive

(Or, at the very least, top five).

From the wheel of his Cooper

He wanted to toot her,

To evoke winged Cupid

And have the blind boy shoot her.

He needed her like new tenants

Need a wireless router,

Would gladly be neutered

To denude her of couture-

One problem.

This goddess, this starlet,

Companion of his future,

Was a grown-ass adult,

Riding a scooter.

A Love Story

He was a baker,

She was gluten-free,

By all accounts

Their love

Was never meant to be.

 

Each day the baker

Felt keenly her lack;

Why, in God’s name,

Did he

Love a coeliac?

 

But then the baker,

Sick of being glum,

Baked a new bread

Of brown rice flour

And xanthan gum.

 

She bought the whole loaf,

Dispelling his woes,

And ate it unbuttered

(Being, as she was,

Averse to lactose).

 

But now the milkman,

Ostensibly coy,

Makes his own play,

Stocking,

I hear, ten pints of soy.

Some Things I Like About You

Some things I like about you:

I like that in the past 

We’ve probably crossed paths 

And can laugh about that now.

I like that you’ve roved 

To the other side of the globe 

But build your Hadrian’s Wall

At Newcastle.

I like that you don’t stroll 

Without a definite goal 

In whose direction to direct your sole.

I like that you compare it to skiing.

I like that I smile before seeing 

You, and all the way through.

I like that you look like Oona Chaplin.

I like grappling with you on destiny 

And knowing you’ll get the best of me.

I like that your eyes dilate with late light

I like 

But to like more would be treason:

I call them Shorter Poems for a reason.

Time & Space

Fetch me ten persons aged eighty,

Would you please?

They can be marathon-runners

Or sufferers, wracked by disease,

They can be grandparents (or great-grandparents)

Or the last of their line,

They can be lucid, and sharp,

Or not quite of their mind.

No matter. Go, and fetch me ten,

Then line ’em up like a conga,

Then measure the line; it won’t be longer,

I don’t think, than a few metres

(Maybe more for a wheelchair or zimmer);

But that distance will be equal

To the distance we’ve strayed

Away in time

From the Fifth Crusade.

My Origin Story

Let me tell you my origin story.

Roll back your stone imagination

And grant access to this: a true Rory

Myth, the keystone to my creation.

We must toddle through time back eighteen years,

Before making swift haste to Whipsnade Zoo;

A peacock stalks my younger self, rearing

Its gross blue throat, pouncing as if to screw.

All was flurry! All was feathers! But worst

Those dozen eyes, fixed in the plumage like dyes!

My Dad roughed the bird, but young me was cursed:

A child I fell, ornithophobic I rise.

Last year, at length, I conquered the pigeon;

Perhaps, one day, I’ll manage the chicken.