I did not tell Death where I lived –
But he has found me all the same.
I hear his knock upon my door
And the calling of my name.
My Snapchat settings kept him out.
On Instagram I blocked him.
Facebook friend requests were spurned –
Yet still he keeps on knocking.
A court injunction freshly filed,
But still I sit in fear.
Oh, my mistake. It is not Death –
I think my pizza’s here.
Telegrams in their thousands,
hearts of loved ones sink.
All that wasted paper,
all that wasted ink.
We stand in stoic silence,
peering through perspex panels
for the bus with our number on it.
All shelters in time are visited
and we, waiting, occupy ourselves
with a thousand tiny distractions
until we see it nose slowly
around the corner, and greet it,
not with welcome surprise
but with wretched relief
and, as we feel the press of coins
in clammy palms, we wonder
whether this is a poem
about buses and bus shelters at all
or, rather, one about life and death
because that’s the kind of thing
that poets write about
and we climb aboard anyway
as it is warm inside
and this one has free wi-fi.
Do not go, lentil, into that good pie
Lest it should burn not bake upon the tray,
Rage, rage against the oven turned too high.
Soybeans and chickpeas may also die
For the pulses quicken upon their way,
Do not go, lentil, into that good pie.
The pastry turns crisp and black as the night
And the scarred legumes turn to darkened grey,
Rage, rage against the oven turned too high.
And so we, like pies, when the end draws nigh,
Have charcoaled remains grieved, too, in a way,
Do not go, lentil, into that good pie.
No, do not go, lentil, into that good pie.
Rage, rage against the oven turned too high.
When I’m gone
from this world
let them say:
“He never quite managed
to seize the day.
He fought but failed
to keep shyness at bay.
He was unlikely to star
in Fifty Shades of Grey.
But he could stack
a dishwasher
in an efficient way.”
It was Ruth’s own fault,
to tell you the truth;
she smoked like a chimney
and then fell off the roof.
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
