Author: Tony Wright

WE’RE ALL FAMOUS NOW

YOUR COFFEE MUGS ARE FAMOUS NOW
WITH A SUPPORTING CAST OF MILK AND SPOONS
AT MULTIPLE SET LOCATIONS
WHERE EVERYTHING IS UNDER ZOOM
OUR DIMPLES ARE ON WIDE SCREENS
AND WE’VE BADGES FOR TOILET TRIPS
EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE’S THOUGHTS
FEELINGS AND WHERE HOPES SIT
THE RED LIGHT IS NEVER OFF
MEMORIES ARE A DATA DISC
YOUR DOCTOR CAN STREAM YOUR COUGH
AND MUM CAN WATCH YOU WHISK
AN EVENING’S MIXING BOWL OF STARDOM
WITH A SPRINKLING OF THE MUNDANE
THERE’S NOTHING LEFT TO FIND OUT
NOW WE’RE ALL CAPSULES OF FAME

Titles of future songs by Alicia Keys

Single & Strong
Lady Of Liberty
Only A Song
Live To See
Head Held High
Mind Over Matter
Run With The Tide
Never Look Back
Look Back And Smile
Keep Growing
President Girl
Love Is Wild
Cloud 9-ty Nine
RevoLOVEtion
Love
Loved
Loving
Lover
Lovers
Lurv
LUV
LUV.U.4.NEVA
Fine By Myself
Good Times Gone
Aching Heart
Splitting Apart
You Are A Dart
Together Again (feat. Swizz Beatz)
?Who ?Why ?When
Breathe And Mend
Chasing Trends (feat. Busta Rhymes)
My Soul’s Den
Love Is Life
Men Are Strife
Heart Carving Knife
Cheater’s Lice

Weeknight drinks.

We mocked the karaoke stars
and then they laughed at us,
before we all danced together
in a drunken, off-pitch fuzz.

Song books and pint glasses
filled our sweaty hands.
An old timer in leather trousers
thought he actually had a band.

Splintering off to train trips home,
alarm clocks began to get set.
A hangover’s route to work
is a journey where energy’s not let.

At projector screens of data,
under an air conditioning’s hum,
began the next set of plans,
to escape the office’s thumb.

Woman Child.

Quieten down and breathe for an hour,
peacefulness offers far greater a power.

For all the noise that you create,
first impressions soon sit second to hate.

Rare glimpses are testament to
the goodness buried somewhere in you.

Push yourself to dig them up.
Lackluster drills holes in a soul’s cup.

Consideration goes a long way
to keep critics and negativity at bay.

Self-absorption will leave you alone,
coating sorrow around each tired bone.

Take the challenge to wake with a smile
instead of turning pessimism’s dial.

A strain at first, contentment is tough
but effort calls complacency’s bluff.

So busy finding faults in the external,
you present yourself a deranged colonel.

Ugly is an abundance of obliviousness
and only a fool considers ignorance bliss.

Politeness is disinterest in a friendly coat.
Save us dry cleaning and rest your throat.

The world is far from being all about you.
Retreat and stop baking our cool.

An agitated mind can soon manifest
to real, infectious physical unrest.

Surrender from the war you create.
Spiritual showers are never too late.

In memory of regular jeans.

I feared it was coming but not this quickly.
Each occasional visit to a high street clothes shop
reminding me of your increasing rarity dug me
further into denial that the end was near.

Manikins that once struck a comfortable, cool pose
now stand with a silent air of suffocation
above shoppers with no choice but to squeeze
down your replacement’s tight, imprisoning legs.

As hiphop heads and the rest of the country that
don’t want to look like Brand or Fielding,
wear breezeless, drainpipe sheaths of restraint,
the world becomes a more conforming, less free place.

The last survivors of your near extinction
sit in the warehouses of premium internet stores
and come with corny movie backstories on handcraft
circa an impossible £400 and £20 import fee a piece.

The buttonless, stained, ripped and shrunk remains
stuffed at the back of my creased wardrobe
wont see much more life beyond December and weave
reminders into my day with each tare, that it is time.

It’s time to spend each morning before leaving the flat
pouring baby oil down my legs to squeeze into
a life of chafing, a constant damp of sweatiness and
surely by the laws of physics, infertility.

It’s time to look like everyone else on this skinny land
who aren’t suited doctors, city bankers or lawyers,
forcefully stuffed into an around the clock reminder
that there is no free will when it comes to fashion.

Then again, there’s always slim-fit chinos.

In the office with Chris.

I’m interviewing a tree for my blog about how it’s turned over a new leaf.

Tomorrow I’m meeting with a wall to talk about its problems. People keep trying to climb all over it.

Can you cover me tomorrow morning? I’m meeting a lamp post’s paving slab. He wants to moan about life in the spotlight.

This evening I’ll be live tweeting from a zebra crossing about its opinion on road safety. It’s not as black and white an issue as you may think.

At lunch I’m meeting with a Royal Mail box. Follow the live stream. It’ll keep you posted.

How’s this title for my interview with a pay phone? ‘The system keeps boxing me in’.

I’ve got a meeting with the stapler. It wants to consolidate projects.

The calculator keeps shouting at me. Apparently things don’t add up.

HR aren’t happy with the way I’ve been treating my keyboard. I’ve done nothing but push its buttons.

My mouse filed a complaint against me. I keep pushing it around.

I’m due a face to face meeting with the Sellotape tomorrow. I’m expecting a sticky situation.

I’m really worried about the scissors’ attitude. They think they’re a cut above the rest.

It’s just one thing after another with that printer.

I can’t work with my compass any longer. He goes around and around the same old thing. Though he does have a point.

I’m in charge of revolutionising the mail room. People say I’m really pushing the envelope.

I found my conversation with the dictionary really confusing. It had to spell everything out for me.

Want to know why the film about Twitter failed? There weren’t enough characters.

I hate chatting to my bin. It’s so full of garbage.

I love my Mac. It really is the Apple of my eye.

I can’t work out where I am with the office window. Sometimes it’s really open and other times so closed.

I’ve been seeing this AC unit. She’s so hot, but then she’ll go all cold on me.

I’m always a bit nervous about how people will take to the blinds. They’re a bit shady.

I was on Google’s social network the other day. It’s got its plusses.

The office lights are usually fine to work with, but sometimes they just switch off.

I was on the internet the other day. It was refreshing.

We interviewed a very confident and ambitious lamp yesterday. It’s got a bright future ahead of it.

When Chris isn’t writing comedy gold, he’s tweeting as @cwelton, which is sometimes comedy gold.

High Street Hangover

A shopkeeper moved up and down the narrow aisle of pots, pans, staplers, feather dusters and doormats. A hungover guy in his late twenties stood before an array of plastic goods and scanned each shelf from left to right, looking very lost.

Frustrated that he couldn’t find what he wanted, the guy looked towards the shopkeeper for attention. He was ignored and walked passed three times until he spoke up.

‘Excuse me. Do you have any, um, dish drainer things?’ he asked. The shopkeeper looked up and down the shelves, then gestured for the guy to follow him around the corner.

‘Oh, no. Sorry, I meant for washing up.’ explained the guy who’d been pointed towards a stack of silver sieves. The shopkeeper looked around a little more and walked the guy around a few other customers to the end of another aisle.

‘Kind of… What I’m after is kept in the kitchen, but it’s got bigger holes in and is longer. It holds your clean dishes.’ said the guy, struggling to describe what he meant as he faced a bargain bucket of colanders. The shopkeeper gave a knowing grin.

Led once more by the shopkeeper, the guy walked to a different section of the shop where his guide turned to face him with a proud, task fulfilling nod towards the top shelf. His neck clicked as he raised his head to take a look up, at a row of big dish washer machine draws.

‘I’m really sorry. I don’t have a dish washer. I clean the dishes and cutlery up myself, then put them on this tray… a stand thing with holes so that the water drips off as they dry. This happens in the kitchen after I’ve cooked and eaten dinner.’ said the guy, gesticulating each point of his description, from a spoon stirring in a saucepan of food to a plate washing motion.

The shopkeeper lowered his head away from the top shelf of dish washer draws and thought to himself whilst gazing at his feet in a disappointed, rejected manner. After a few seconds he looked up quickly towards the guy with determination in his eyes that suggested he finally knew what was wanted and where in the shop it was.

The guy was now sweating out the previous night’s cocktails, flustered but focused not to waste his day off work being unproductive and ignoring a to-do list of house chores. The shopkeeper  knelt down and stood up holding a large plastic basket of holes, only more suited to carrying laundry with than filing a dinner party’s sink load of cleaned props across.

The shopkeeper and guy looked at each other, both fatigued and smiling at their loss of words and resolve. The shopkeeper gave a warm, apologetic shrug of the shoulders as the guy gave a nod of thanks for his efforts. The guy stepped out into the busy, wet street and headed home to order the drainer online.

Rap dreams.

  • A ten track album by Eminem produced entirely by Kanye West
  • Eminem never mentioning his feelings or daughters again
  • Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean doing a sequel to The Score
  • Wyclef Jean doing a sequel to The Carnival where he doesn’t do overkill Bob Marley impressions
  • Nas hiring El-P to produce an entire twelve track album
  • Killer Mike never rapping on a beat that’s not produced by El-P
  • Aesop Rock making sense
  • Andre 3000 sacking his Hollywood agent and simply rapping
  • Andre 3000 and Big Boi releasing the twelve track Organized Noize album they promised
  • Q-Tip following up The Renaissance
  • Mos Def paying as much attention to set lists and his solo career as he gives tailored suits and hats
  • Rawkus Records relaunching as a fully independent label again
  • Pharoahe Monch releasing an album with no soft beats and gospel background vocals
  • Ludacris realising his potential and not just releasing another album with 43 interludes
  • Dr. Dre creating a secret identity to release his non commercially driven beats so we get to enjoy them
  • Dr. Dre operating as an artist and not a brand so we get to hear and enjoy his actual craft
  • Jehst and MF Doom collaborating on an EP
  • MF Doon and Ghostface Killah releasing their much talked about joint album
  • The Wu Tang Clan releasing a scratchy, simple album of unpolished, raw beats
  • Dr. Dre simply retiring and confirming that Detox won’t happen so journalists can speculate on something else
  • KRS One releasing an album of imaginative tracks rather than how great he is and how long he’s been about
  • Outsidaz reforming for an EP featuring Eminem and Rah Digga
  • Punchline and Wordsworth reuniting for a boom bap comedy album
  • Will.I.Am returning to less chart catering movie soundtracks and solo adventures
  • Jurassic 5 reuniting, if only to tour the world and make it smile
  • Charli 2na releasing an actual solo album rather than collections of collaborations and remixes
  • Plan B forfeiting his record contract and giving it to Task Force
  • Roots Manuva never retiring
  • David Guetta staying the fuck away from anyone’s favourite rapper
  • Someone convincing Busta Rhymes that he isn’t a coke dealing, wife beating gangster but a happy, comical guy
  • Dizee Rascal kissing and making up to release an album over grime beats
  • DMX  giving up crack and burying beaten to death dogs so he can continue releasing wild party jams
  • Erick Sermon releasing a full album of tracks each sampling Marvin Gaye vocals
  • Zach De La Rocha releasing that solo album produced by DJ Shadow, Questlove and El-P

One long Blur, an ode to PR.

I am haunted by Damon Albarn.
My morning newspapers talk of his breakups.
By evenings, reunion tales ring in my ears.
Tours with old bands but without animations
or new animations with old bands
churn on frame after frame of dullness.
Office people as far removed from edginess
as Leona Lewis in the middle of a moon’s crater
wear crusty year old wristbands of shows long gone.
Friends of a friend’s friends at house parties
corner me for eternities, vomiting out words
of misjudged greatness and importance.
At night I dream of God reaching down,
pulling the roof off his house in the country
and snapping all the medieval instruments
so all that’s left for him to do is go for a drink,
find a girl, make babies and leave us all alone.
I am haunted by Damon Albarn.
Please someone, put him away.