Selected poems

Clarkson Apologist

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Reader, please beware
of the Clarkson apologist.

Here’s how you can find out
if you’ve got one in your midst.

He’s the kind of man who says
global warming does not exist.

Defends his golf club’s ban on women
then claims he’s not sexist.

He illustrates homosexuality
through the limpness of a wrist.

Still talks about the two world wars
and then clenches his right fist.

Bemoans the bloody immigrants
of which his England now consists.

Every night he drives home
his terrain response Range Rover pissed.

I could go on
but I’m sure you get the gist.

First They Came

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

First they came for the origamists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not an origamist.

Then they came for the sports shop assistants
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a sports shop assistant.

Then they came for the Mexican entymologists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Mexican entymologist.

Then they came for the Michael Jackson impersonators
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Michael Jackson impersonator.

Then they came for the recycling
And I did not speak out
Because it was the right day for the recycling to be taken.

Then they came for Katie Hopkins
And I did not speak out
But merely pointed at the cupboard in which she was hiding.

Then they came for the mime artists
And I did not speak out
Because I was a mime artist.

Then they came for me
But my mum spoke out
And told them to go away.

a forest, which grew

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

a trail of parsnips along the floor
was all it took to lure
the sons out of their caravan door

where mumford was, i wasn’t sure

bundling the sons out of my van,
i planted them in tubs of manure,
watered them daily,
played them the banjo
and ukulele,
and watched them grow
in the golden glow
of a late summer afternoon

gazed upon the long limbs
lazing up to an incipient moon,
the entangled bramble of beards immune
to the unforgiving snip
of the shears that prune

mighty sons of mumford,
fifty feet high,
stretching up into the pale night sky

How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

I would rather
eat Quavers that are six week’s stale,
blow dry the hair of Gareth Bale,
listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail,
than read one page of the Daily Mail.

If I were bored
in a waiting room in Perivale,
on a twelve hour trip on British rail
or a world circumnavigational sail,
I would not read the Daily Mail.

I would happily read
the complete works of Peter Mayle,
the autobiography of Dan Quayle,
selected scripts from Emmerdale,
but I couldn’t ever read the Daily Mail.

Far better to
stand outside in a storm of hail,
be blown out to sea in a powerful gale
then swallowed by a humpback whale
than have to read the Daily Mail.

Even if
I were blind
and it was the only thing
in Braille,
I still would not read
the Daily Mail.

The Occidental Tourist

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

A mistimed side-step and I was in amongst the cagoules,
clipboards and backpacks, too late to back-track,
too hubristic to hack my way through the touristic horde

which tsunamies me around two Oxford colleges,
the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera, pitches me
in and out the Pitt-Rivers before we wattle and daub

our way to Stratford-upon-Avon for much ado about
bardic-related birthplaces and Monday-matinéed monologues,
striking north to viking lands of here be minsters and

castles and dungeons and museums and botanical
gardens and monuments and Edinburgh cobbled passageways
and walking tours and bus tours and ghost tours and

coach rides and airports and aeroplanes and twelve-hour
flights and unfamiliar landscapes and customs and I end up
spending the next twenty years of my life as a rice farmer

in the Ishikari Subprefecture of Hokkaido in Japan.

The Procession

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

And so the nation looks on proudly
as the Royal Baby makes her majestic way along the Royal Birth Canal,
proceeds gracefully under that famous Pubic Arch,
through which the gallant Prince George of Cambridge so recently passed,
and there we get a glimpse, for the very first time,
of the Royal Fetal Head
as it appears out of the Royal Vaginal Orifice
and this historic crowning
of the new Fetal Princess.

And here is the Royal Baby
in all her stately splendour
followed by this marvellous cavalcade
of the Royal Umblical Cord
and Royal Afterbirth,
and what a splendid membranous vascular organ
that really is.

Make Poetry Not War

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Leaders of the world,
stop your fighting.
Invest your time
in poetry writing.

Enough of all those
military manoeuvres,
concentrate on
more literary oeuvres.

Think about the planet,
when you plan
to drop a bomb upon it,
pause, ponder, then pen a sonnet.

Or if there’s somebody
who doesn’t like u,
appease them with
a humble haiku.

Let words be your weapons,
Metaphors your missiles.
Search out strident stanzas.
Ditch your Trident planzas.

Write a peace poem about a pipe,
an olive branch, a dove.
Take a ticket to Tender Town,
aboard the quatrain of love.

Life: A Record

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Polyvinyl chloride disc
with modulated spiral groove,
you’re up to scratch,
you’re prone to snap,
your pop’s crackle makes me move.

You turn the tables,
you’re fragile, an uncalculated risk.
I love you thirty-three and a third more times
than any compact disc
(and forty-five times more
than a download
from an online store).

Digital is clinical,
cuts the air like a surgeon’s knife,
but vinyl has the touch, the feel,
and surface noise of life.