Month: July 2015

Please Take This Hand In Yours

Assorted Poems, Some poems

Please take this hand in yours
and hold it tight,
then bury it in the garden
in the dead of night.

His other body parts,
I will put in the ground,
when it’s peaceful and quiet
and there is no-one around.

Lines Written Upon Arriving At A Holiday Cottage And Discovering The Lack Of Reliable Wi-Fi

Assorted Poems, Some poems

slow burning days drag by
as the smouldering fag ends of hours
turn themselves to ash

second-hand jigsaws
sleep smugly on dusty shelves,
uncontrite at their incompleteness,

next to a well-thumbed
Robert Harris and the fortnight
stretches like old laddered tights

evenings drab with scrabble
and the death rattle of yahtzee dice
provide no substitute

for videos of piano-playing cats
instagram selfies, status updates
and Lionel Richie memes

instead this, the buffering
and the suffering and the shutters
which rattle in the wind

The Importance of the Oxford Comma

Assorted Poems, Some poems

Owing to ambiguities caused by its omission,
the Oxford comma became the subject of a petition
raised by serious serialists desperate to ensure
its use was to be mandated in lists of three or more.

Signatures flooded in from across all of society;
never had they expected to see such variety.
Who would have thought that those in favour
would have had such a diverse, democratic flavour?

There were the investment bankers,
the robbers and thieves,
as well as C-list celebrities,
the needy and mildly-diseased.

There were the footballers,
clowns and less mentally able,
alongside the poets,
unemployed and emotionally unstable.

There was Michael Gove,
a drug fiend and a trafficker of human organs,
and, of course, the sexual deviants,
Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan.

Such was the range of names
that the list did constitute.
Oh, not to forget the Queen,
a well-known madam and a prostitute.

Exclamation Mark!

Assorted Poems, Some poems

Mark was his name!
He would shout and proclaim!

Every sentence he wrote
would end just the same!

He would assert! He would blurt!
He would ejaculate and spurt!
Each line was a screamer!
A gasper! A slammer! A shrieker!
A literary loudspeaker!!!

Frankly, it all began to needle and nark!
Why did no one think to question Mark?

Read My Lips

Assorted Poems, Some poems

I don’t need a lover
who’s a looker,
just someone who knows
the shortlist
for this year’s Booker,

with an insightful view on
Doris Lessing or Ian McEwan,
being satanically well-versed
in Salman Rushdie,
and would find it cushty
to share pillow talk
about the work of A.S. Byatt.

Yes, that would be a riot.

I could never judge a lover
by her cover,
be swayed by make-up
or a fancy hair do;
I’d much rather her be intimate
with À la recherche du temps perdu.

To be clear, I’m not talking
Fifty Shades of Grey here,
but finding someone
who knows their way around
the complete works of Shakespeare.

I would rip out my heart
and write her name upon it
if she can recite to me
his eighteenth sonnet.

So don’t give me eyes
to get lost in;
I’d rather have a heated debate
about Jane Austen.

I don’t care if she talks
in a Donald Duck voice,
if, together, we can thumb
through the stories of Joyce,

nor will we ever feel
an unbridgeable gulf
if neither of us are afraid
of Virginia Woolf.

You see, one thing I’ve learnt
as I’ve got older
is that literature
lights up love
and makes it smoulder

and that beauty
is in the eye
of the book holder.

Whither the spoons?

Assorted Poems, Some poems

Whither the spoons
in my cutlery drawer?
Of spoons it is empty
but it used to hold four.

I checked the dishwasher,
and I scoured the floor
(then scoured it again,
just to be sure).

Whither the spoons
in my cutlery drawer?
Of knives and forks,
I have plenty in store.

But what use is a knife
except as a saw?
And what good is a fork
except as a claw?

Whither the spoons
in my cutlery drawer?
For scooping and stirring,
it’s the spoon I adore.

And should one day you look
at the shallow-bowled moon,
ponder the poet who perished
for want of a spoon.

Lapse

Assorted Poems, Some poems

Housework got neglected,
dirty dishes stacked,
because people
had cats
who sat
on their laps.

Careers were stalled,
all plans got scrapped,
because people
had cats
who sat
on their laps.

Whole cities crumbled,
economies collapsed,
because people
had cats
who sat
on their laps.

Aliens invaded,
Earth got attacked,
while the people
with the cats
who sat
on their laps,
just sat there
with the cats
who sat
on their laps.