Month: August 2015

Haiku Horoscopes

ARIES
your attempts to breed
male sheep have unexpected
ramifications

TAURUS
your luck starts to change
when into your life comes a
dark handsome strangler

GEMINI
mercury enters
the charts at number six; you
get it on iTunes

CANCER
you realise that
all horoscopes are nonsense;
feel crabby all week

LEO
your hair turns curly
and you have a surprise hit
with When I Need You

VIRGO
the crowds gasp at your
Cliff Thorburn and Doug Mountjoy
impersonations

LIBRA
you don’t return all
of the letters you borrowed
from the library

SCORPIO
reading horoscopes
in the newspaper, you bump
into a lamppost

SAGITTARIUS
you break with your strict
Sagittarian diet
and eat a Virgo

CAPRICORN
you see Colin Firth
on a bus in Northampton
but don’t talk to him

AQUARIUS
you forget which star
sign you are because you’re not
that interested

PISCES
a nightclub visit
fails when there is no-one to
pick up the pisces

LOVE POEM, WRITTEN IN HASTE

(with Autocorrect turned on)

O what Brave New Worm is this
That holes you, my sweet darting love?
I see you in the stairs that twinkle
In the heavy above.

Your light shins down upon me
and sets my heart on fir.
You stir up my emoticons
And fill me with dessert.

I gazebo upon your lovely Facebook.
Your rainy nose, sweet, unmissable,
The blue-greed eyes like limpet pools,
And your petty mouse, juicy and kissable.

Come with me, Angle of my Dreams,
Hold my ham and journalist into the night
And together lettuce explore the worm,
Over the horizontal and out of sigh.

Selfie Stick

The modern fixation
upon the selfie,
I find not natural,
normal nor healthy.

There’s too much of the me,
the myself and the I,
not enough of the where,
the how or the why.

Selfies are boring;
I would much rather snap
the them and the those,
the what and the that.

Eager stroker of ego.
Photographic spam.
Bedroom or bathroom,
I click therefore I am.

Narcissistic reflections
in camera phone glory;
if a selfie could vote,
it would probably vote Tory.

You Bagged All the Seats

You bagged all the seats
and created a buffer zone
out of all that you own.

For the rest of the carriage,
it was a marriage
of inconvenience.

Your stacked-up stockpiles
forced us into the aisles,
like unwanted children

from your luggage love-in.
You, ignorant of those who queued,
remained sandbagged in solitude.

But maybe this was unfair
and there were good reasons
to have your belongings there.

Perhaps, there was a lack
of space on the rack,
or your knapsack was having a nap.

Or did they house vital information,
which, if in the wrong hands,
might bring down Our Great Nation?

Are you a tropical disease carrier
who, to prevent further cases,
built the Great Big Bag Barrier.

Or are you a crusader
for luggage liberty and equality?
Maybe bags have rights like you and me.

Or perhaps,
it is that
you are simply
a twat.

You are a map

In bed, my fingers trace your contours,
caress the lines from coastal margins,
slide along secluded pathways

and linger in hidden beauty spots,
before a gentle incline leads them
to the peaks of two majestic hillocks

separated by a narrow ravine,
to be followed down, down, until
vegetation arrives as a surprise,

scrub makes way for enchanting forest.
I ready myself to plunge into the interior
but then I am told to turn off the light

and I carefully fold my scale 1:25 000
Ordnance Survey OL4 Map
of The Lake District: North-western area,

including Keswick, Cockermouth & Wigton,
before placing it back in my bedside drawer,
alongside my pipe, nail clippers and loose change.