he spoiled
his ballot paper
gave it treats,
bought it sweets,
mooned around
and doted
and, in the process,
became hopelessly de-voted
Selected poems
How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail
Assorted Poems, Selected poemsI 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 poemsA 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 poemsAnd 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 poemsLeaders 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 poemsPolyvinyl 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.
The Waiting Room
Assorted Poems, Selected poemsFor two hours she sat,
clutching the ticket
from the machine.
But then,
she’d been waiting
all of her life
to be seen.
Every Song on the Radio Reminds Me of You
Assorted Poems, Selected poemsEvery song on the radio reminds me of you,
I hear Anarchy in the UK and think about the time
you established an anarcho-syndicalist commune and led
a bloody, but ultimately unsuccessful, uprising in Merthyr Tydfil.
Bohemian Rhapsody comes on and I remember
the episodic, integrated, free-flowing work you composed
whilst holidaying in the Czech Republic.
Like A Virgin reminds me of the day
you got your new Virgin Media TiVo box installed
and you touched it for the very first time.
I listen to I Am the Walrus and recall those stupid
bloody Tuesdays when you would sit on a cornflake
in your corporation t-shirt and wait for the van to come.
An Oasis song plays and I think about that wall
you used to have, which was not like any other wall,
the one that used to fill me with wonder and still does today.
Other memories fly to me across the radio waves.
Your strange and wide-ranging CV: a waitress in a cocktail bar,
private dancer, boxer, taxman, joker, thief, lineman for the county.
There was that time you laid your hat and declared it “home”,
and that party we went to with a special atmosphere,
the one when you kissed a girl and then let the dogs out.
It’s no wonder I still think about you;
you and your beautiful, bright, sexy, gypsy,
Betty Davis, brown, green, baby blue eyes.
“Life is an Inspirational Quote.”
Assorted Poems, Selected poemsEvery day is a second chance.
And each day is a festering boil you must lance.
Paint the sky and make it yours.
Add this fun task to your long list of chores.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
It helps you pretend that you made it through college.
Be positive and turn your can’ts into cans.
And watch your cans carted off in recycling vans.
What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
It is hard to think of a quote that is wronger.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Except for the fact that hope ends at fourteen.
Life is so much brighter when we focus on what really matters.
That’s assuming your dreams are not already in tatters.
You’re in control. Be the change you wish to see.
You haven’t even got the change for a cup of tea.
A beautiful life begins with a beautiful mind.
In a world full of pain and misery, it’s not so easy to find.
Treat life like a trusted and old faithful friend.
Why not, but SPOILER ALERT: we all die in the end.
CARPE DMs
Assorted Poems, Selected poemsDoc Marten boots,
you take me back to my roots,
when you were in cahoots
with both of my foots.
You have style. You have soul
(air cushioned to make you hover),
with optional steel toe-caps
in case there’s a bit of bovver.
Punks, indie kids, construction workers,
have all worn you most effectively,
sure treaders of carpet and concrete
on office and factory floors respectively.
Dependably Manufactured!
Durably Memorable!
Doughtily Multipurposeful!
Diametrical Moccasins!
To me you are the exponent
of the ultimate in utilitarianism.
To persuade me of otherwise
is an act of futilitarianism.
