supermarket

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

in the supermarket of her love life,
she rummaged in the rubble of reduced items,
looking for something edible,
if perhaps not entirely credible

later,
in the bagging area of her bed,
she found the unexpected item of Fred

After the Fall

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

After he fell off the wall and it became clear
That all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put him together again,
He was taken home.

His wife looked at him.
He wasn’t like the egg she used to know.
He was cracked and broken
And wouldn’t come out of his shell.
That’s the end of my love life,
Thought Mrs Humpty Dumpty,
No more rumpty-pumpty.

Body Language

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Doug considered himself an expert
in reading Denise’s body language.

He made a study of her
and identified three main patterns of behaviour:

1) the way in which upon seeing him
she would dart into a nearby hedgerow

2) the way in which she would clamp her hands
tightly to her ears and close her eyes whenever he talked

3) the way in which, when once his hand lightly brushed hers,
she looked enquiringly into his eyes and then applied
an elbow to his ribs and a toe-cap to his shins

Doug understood
the unspoken intentions
hidden beneath the actions.

It was clear that she was desperately in love with him.

onion

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

when Jane described Clarence
as being like an onion,
he was thrilled to think
she saw him as multi-layered,
with such a lot going on
beneath the surface that
only after much peeling
would the revealing
of the real Clarence
become apparent

and so, later,
he was disappointed
to hear that she was referring
to his purple-red, papery skin
and the fact
that he would
occasionally emit
a volatile gas
that would bring tears
to her eyes

black friday

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

few knew what lay in store
that Friday

it started (as such things always do)
with the haberdashers
where reckless price slashers
offered ten per cent off
cerise beading trimming
and soon the place
was full to brimming

as the prices lowered
the tension rose
resulting in a bloodied nose
by the children’s clothes

over in winter wear,
a couple of kerfufflers
turned to scufflers
over discounted mufflers
and there was more fighting
amongst the table lighting
as a shopper got lamped
and then put in the shade

there was carnage in the cardigans,
burnings in home furnishings,
a fracas near the nail lacquer
and a murderous mascara massacre

into luggage leaked mustard gas
and the worst case scenario
came to pass

thirty-five shoppers malled to death
who lost their lives in the fray,
the casualties of consumption
to be remembered on Black Friday

Kilimanjaro

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

the night Greg
summoned up the courage
to deliver his carefully prepared speech
to Sandra,
he was nervous,
declaring that he would
climb the deepest oceans
and swim the highest mountains
to be at her side

when Sandra laughed at him
and pointed out his mistake,
Greg fled and did not leave
his bedroom for ten days

the next time he saw her
Sandra was seeing Steve Glover
whom she subsequently was to marry

six years later, though,
Greg was to have the last laugh
when he became the first man
to swim breaststroke
across Mount Kilimanjaro

The Perils of Reading

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

we sought other delights
as Wuthering Heights
had really started to bore us
but my Penguin Classic
went all Jurassic
when Emily Brontesaurus

scissors

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

returning to his old school,
Roy vanquished
childhood warnings
by running up and down
the corridor
with scissors in his hand
and, so doing, liberated himself
from the burden
of conformity

he did this for twenty-six seconds
before the tiger got him