This is one of those poems
without any rhymes,
like the kind you may read
in the Sunday TimesTelegraph.
For the real poet, you see,
rhyme’s deleterious,
when you want to be seen
as poignant and seriousprofound.
Rhyming is childish and trivial;
it smacks of the frivolous.
But I’ll throw in some half-rhymes
of which you may be obliviousignorant.
This is also one of those poems
that ends with a metaphorsimile,
like the silence of writing paper,
untouched in the letter drawer.
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,
were sandbagged in solitude.
Maybe this is all unfair
and there are 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 your bags 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?
Bags have rights like you and me.
Or, on reflection,
perhaps, it is that
you are simply
a twat.
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
(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.
as he left the train,
he remembered to take all
his longing with him.
Here is a poem about someone’s gigantic car which has been left outside of my house for days.
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.
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.
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
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.
