Tag: Poetry

Critical mass.

Beware the love child of Bruno Mars and Nicole Scherzinger
who’s superpowers could bore you into a Play Doh figurine
sentencing you to a life of regimental choreogra-yawns
should the only cure escape your malleable mind;
a 21st century rarity that many doubt the very existence of,
a Rhianna costume that covers more than a toe’s worth of flesh.

Night in and night in and night in stabbing Twiglets at your face
whilst your arse sits amalgamated to a spongey sofa of crumbs
the one hundred and twenty million percent predictable
fudge of pram babies whaling through contrivance
upon lording scarecrows of bleached teeth and horse tail hair
would thumbprint dependency into your one tone being.

You’d not find that antidote easily beneath Chris Brown’s bed
as deep thirsts for syrupy intakes of meaningless sludge shake
through your dense, airless, squeezed to inconsequence body
that only moves to a corner shop and back as if a puppet
being unstuck and plodded elsewhere to line up silently
fingering through a glossy about the next impeding brain rape.

Beneath the faint, tinny whispers of a freer co-passenger,
across stores to further, non air conditioned, less lit places,
within pages that don’t hatch down the spine
for a hand to burst out of and pull your eyes from their sockets
to point you in the straightest, most generic and plain of paths,
is where the medicine of a dress beyond buttock length lives.

Wash and iron after every outing you dress within it,
sew any rogue threads back into its delicate seams,
store on a hanger so it may rest after a constructive day,
feeling bit by bit, your being not a state of static decay
but an evolving, reforming, mobile, inquisitive organism,
stronger and of more flesh each bold costume outing.

Status Updates

Notes of cocktail glasses
beside rooftop pools
do leave vast impressions
but not the ones you hoped.

As neighbouring as it is
your flat is in Shepherds Bush
about as Holland Park
as Romford’s the East End.

If your holiday is so great
why are you in your hotel
so logged on to work
that you’re basically home?

Any level of coolness
iPad bus journeys hold
get immediately overwritten
as you read the Metro app.

To endlessly talk diets
to anyone who will listen
isn’t really the point
to being vegetarian.

Ascot tux’s look glam
less so on tubes home
tinted by mustard stains
of a late night kebab.

The Royal London

An almighty block of procedure,
as if dropped onto the city’s grid
within a computer simulation,
hides its dusty high cealing corners
and bricks crumbling beneath fresh paint,
with warm baby blue desks
and luxury padded waiting room thrones,
that for all their designer credentials,
can’t outshine the faint visual buzz of history
bouncing between its walls,
ducking and weaving amongst trainee nurses,
junior doctors, stylish coffee hut tables,
a grand clock gone beige with age and a
lift that rattles like it’s trying to spell you its past.

These in a nine.

The drum patterns, in time with checkout tills,
blended with sounds, regular and functional,
buzz out of wall fittings across controlled air
carrying clean rubbery factory scents,
gridded, polished and identical if not for
subtle neat machine tweaks of colour
that one by one, clusters with limp approach,
extend hands at their most worshipful towards,
gently caressing the soft warm paddings,
slowly running laces through caring fingers
in rare gazes of concentration and ore
before back outside, the traffic of attention
cracks apart soft voices with bellows.
An alien surrounded by shopping bags
struggles aboard the bus on which they sit,
transfixed at their plastic clenching palms,
boastfully keying purchase history to the world.

Back then, just over there.

Ashes To Ashes is playing from the other room,
part of a greatest hits affair.
It’s consolidated and cheaper for now,
as I log in to internet banking, again,
not that I’d ever forget the balance, slants,
like I did Reno’s Pizza Place, old Barnet
at the foot of a steep hill until
yesterday’s business trip home sped past
dragging cabin day dreams of old neighbours,
school faces and bus stops, a short itch from
where I am now, five years on from smokey
car park evenings,
the long, slow, dim Saturday checkout shifts,
church spires turned commerce and
distant fields sectioning concrete and sky,
tempting me to spend a day re-tredding history
like I’m seventy and dying, perhaps for belonging,
whilst I’m not, just ticking towards tonight’s plan,
thinking a trip down Mays Lane will have better impact
if I first live further away, entirely forgetful of its bumps.

Someone I’ve been seeing.

She’s a rosy lady with glasses,
usually wrapped in floral dress,
news clenched in a firm hand,
a swinging bag over an arm.

With an air of Jane Austin,
regimental routine announces her,
two seconds short of the train,
perfect platform position each time.

Every morning she boards first,
however early I begin waiting,
too tall to provide eye contact
and quickest to rare empty seats.

I used to stand shooting daggers,
now blunt with resignation,
too proud to respect her order,
not strong enough to admit defeat.

Winnie, downstairs.

My surprise and smile outshone
the eight yet to bud daffs
handed over by a near stranger
who’d taken up a forgotten offer.

She’ll put that soil to good use,
dashing colour onto the mornings
of those passing her pots along
each metal step down to work.

The wild twigs of neglected boxes
border frosted glass, saying lots
of neighbours you wouldn’t get
from a wander inside

though weed free mine might be,
the receipt’s still sat by the fridge;
four quid for a ready grown tray,
a small cost to avoid the stares.

Doctor’s Surgery

You’re hot and snot’s blocked your nose.
Hot to cold shivers dance up each toe.
You have an iPhone but it’s all about the snow.
You’re an hour in and waiting, redefining ‘slow’.

You’re next in line says the girl to all who ask.
Pointlessly, you keep sulking and acting an ass,
sneezing over the counter, explaining you’re ill.
that all you want are a few feel good pills.

You’re finally in and your doctor’s not there.
Instead, medical students are having a fair
of text books and questions you just can’t bare
and want to tare up and throw in the air.

The real doctor enters, observing the rest.
Your patience undergoes yet more tests.
Your ears are blocked, your head’s an ache.
They act as though your symptoms are fake.

‘What do you want us to do?’ asks the guy.
You take a deep sigh and almost cry.
They don’t seem to have the foggiest clue.
‘You’ve gone viral, there’s nothing we can do.’

You’re sent on your way and told to stay warm,
to have lots of rest and you’ll soon reform.
The body’s buzz will calm from the storm
and you’ll soon forget once back to the norm.

But you’ve got little time and don’t want to wait.
This is the age of instancy, soon’s too late.
They sit blankly, up goes your heart rate.
You stage a collapse and they take the bate.

You’re home now, watching TV sludge,
a Lemsip in one hand, chewing warm fudge,
having dropped their pills to make things calm,
a leaflet on hypochondria screwed up in your palm.

Hand shakes and hugs.

Hand shakes and hugs
open trap doors of banter,
the clink of a wine glass or
screech of a pizza slicing.
In jokes isolate a waiter
whilst piano keys bop.
Pepper rains silence on chat
until it sits before more jokes.
The how is she’s, what about’s
and when shall we meet again’s
zap together levels to the same.
A bill, bus and key jingles
wrap it all up until the next beer,
dance, date or breakdown call.

On watching Bright Star

I am trained to bite the tongue of affection’s announcing calls. Sense tells me they’d scare or spoil our smiles beneath these warm songs. Why throw hurdles of language into the foray of simmering chuckles? Surely taming expression to sustain the familiarity of looping comforts is of greater consequence than evoking words that may but fright. Yet as time slides on and our grasps tighten and conversation peals beyond what was thought to be at its most unguarded extent, shelves of sonnets crumble fiercer each time, the rule of favouring silence over what may terminally disrupt this most enjoyable of meetings that so brightly provide content across each dinner table, dance floor, car, sofa and pavement shared, all remarkable yet snagged on the fence of a word I do not climb.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810784/

Aisle drifters.

The silent tangles of shrunken jeans
had her panting beside late night shifts
omitting microscopic details at high speed
as he moved to power off automatic doors.

It wasn’t good enough. It simply wasn’t on,
having bought it but two days prior.
No meat should fall off the bone like that,
refrigerated bargain bucket or not.

Running back and forth the static door,
serving and sliding out isle drifters,
the day’s final restrained sigh
squeezed his top button to chin.

Taps shut it up; that persistent stream
of meandering detail, so minuet, airless,
braised, sliced and bubble wrapped
from her gut to anyone who would hear.

A receipt penetrated the slit of her purse
documenting detail and date,
each shopping trolley’s wheel scratching
the little amiability a refund retained.

Reaching for volume controls she battled
the noise of an empty home,
photo frames of catalogue cut outs and
telephone books of call center care.

There, he stuffed the security safe,
beeping alarms, looking to the moon,
reversing through car park gates,
padlocking to some, a world.

Mobile muse.

See me in Brussels for a day or two
once the papers are shuffled and
stamped.

We’ll drink and laugh as we did those
first weeks, tip toeing around our
smiles, studies.

As you point to meat, I’ll blush for veg’
beneath a waiter’s bemused gaze,
whilst the city’s neon buzzes.

We’ll stumble, shout or snore.

Apologies for how disturbed you’ll roll
when I wake up first and nudge.

Forks of yawns and mugs of daylight
will set us over map folds for a
miniature weeing boy, pretence.

Boxes ticked, we’ll secretly think the
other isn’t as good a dancer.
We’ll both be equally as bad.

To London, we’ll tap and scroll.
Another photo set to escape into,
more distractions to plot.

Farewell, Britain.

You have treated me kind.

I have appreciated your health service,

enjoyed adventures on your buses, tubes,

watched my little cousins be schooled

and felt that your leader cares.

I hope The Big Society works out for you.

Send a postcard when you find out what it is!

…if post offices still exist, your roads don’t crumble
and you actually find out what it is.

See you in five years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKFTtYx2OHc

For Baby Phoebe, on a wet Saturday morning in Plymouth.

Lucy the lamb was sitting on a hill.
‘Baah, I’m starting to feel ill’ she said to Jill,
so they went to the farm house for a bite to eat.
‘Baah, I’m tired. Get me off my feet!’
So, Jill took Lucy to sit on a pile of hay
and they slept and slept for most of the day.
Come evening, Lucy said ‘I’m too tired to sleep’.
‘Well’ said Jill, ‘blame your feet.’
So they went to the pigs sty to find some mud
and stomped Lucy’s feet in with an almighty thud.
‘Farmer Joe will go spare at this mucky mess.
He wanted your wool for his wife’s new dress!’
‘Oh no!’ cried Lucy. ‘We better go in to town.’
Off they went shopping though Jill did thrown.
‘Have you got this in an eight?’ asked Lucy
but the cashier said ‘…no!’ rather goosely.
Lucy and Jill arrived back at the farm.
It rained and rained but Jill stayed calm
for the dirt was washed from Lucy’s feet
and they were both now tired and started to sleep.

Penguin Shuffles

Three dimensional television’s back in, again,
though the perfectly paced snow falling all around
streets evacuated by breakfast news broadcasts
provides all the layered magic of a widescreen
without the plastic, pay per pair glasses
disposed into a bin of stale popcorn, chewed straws,
the final gummy bear that proved one too many
and ticket stubs on a Sunday afternoon’s expense.

Even the waiters are consumed with weather talk
as a stomach rumbles to another story; no buses,
a baby to get home to, slow trade, slush and grit.
Though there’s moaning about the groaning,
national hysteria captures all sooner or later,
sitting even the most determined and resolute
media sceptic onto their warm sofa at last,
in front of around the clock travel updates;
a sucking vortex zapping panic into a diary’s plan.

The morning walk pins a tramp’s bundle of blankets
across people’s iced through heart strings.
‘I haven’t seen him sleeping around here before. Oh,
how terrible it must be like that in this awful cold.’
though that same guy’s been on that corner
way before second interviews and first days,
all the rat racers forming one loud blizzard of business
so no single unit has the air to take note, squeeze
in the sight and flick chewing gum change to a cup.

Taps, rings, yawns and shuffles close another day,
the few who made it switching computer for TV screen.
Comedic portrayals of every day life in synthetic universes
created by upper class writers of working class slang script
leak across living rooms to melted microwave meals
steaming the stained pillows beneath their plates,
right up to the zoned out minds each story cycle rots
to mute, as desired, those pictures of paper piles
or meeting room murmurs from an evening’s day dream.