love

Alexa, What Is There to Know about Love?

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Alexa, what is there to know about love?
What is there to know about love?
A glove is a garment that covers the hand
for protection from the cold or dirt and –

Alexa, how does a human heart work?
How does a human heart work?
Blood is first received in the right atrium via
two veins, the vena cava superior and inferior –

Alexa, where do we go to when we die?
Where do we go to when we die?
Activating Google Maps. Completed activation.
Would you like to start from your current location?

Alexa, what does it mean to be alone?
What does it mean to be alone?
It is the silence left by words unsaid,
the cold expanse of half a bed.
It is the endless stretching of the hours,
the needless tending of plastic flowers.
It is an echo unanswered in a cave,
the fateful ping of the microwave.
It is the fraying of a worn shirt cuff,
and the howl – Stop, Alexa. That’s enough.

She’s Opted Out of Me

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

She’s unsubscribed from all my lists.
She tells me I will not be missed.
She’d only joined when she was pissed.
She’s opted out of me.

She’s updated all her preferences.
She’s removed me from her references.
She can’t see what my relevance is.
She’s opted out of me.

She says that she is sick of me.
She claims she wants some privacy.
I’ve opted into misery
Now she’s opted out of me.

ee cummings attempts online banking

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Now enter a password.
i carry your heart with me

Password too long. Please try again.
i carry your ear with me

Spaces are not allowed. Please try again.
icarryyourearwithme

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ICarryYourEarWithMe

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1CarryY0urEarWithMe

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1CarryY0ur👂🏻WithMe

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AbCd1234&!%

Out of the Rain

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

We ran down the high street and into the pub,
as we cheated the rain that fell from above,
dodging the puddles that had formed on the floor.
Such a beautiful day for a nuclear war.

You draped your wet coat on the back of your chair,
We emptied our drinks. The rain dripped from your hair.
A Guinness. A whiskey. Then I went back for more.
What a beautiful day for a nuclear war.

We talked. Pop songs. First pets. Favourite film stars.
We flicked pistachio shells into a jar.
You tried not to yawn. You must have thought me a bore.
It was a beautiful day for a nuclear war.

The days have changed now but I keep that one apart.
I carry it with me, tattooed on my heart.
The Guinness. Your wet hair. The dress that that you wore.
Such a beautiful day for a nuclear war.

Remembrance Of Things Pasta

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

She blew her fusilli,
my pretty penne,

when she found me watching
daytime tagliatelle.

Je ne spaghetti rien,
I responded in song,

but she did not linguini
for long,

just walked out
without further retort:

a hard lesson to be tortellini,
orzo I thought.

And so here I am
on my macaroni

and now my days
feel cannelloni.

Love in the Time of Cauliflower

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Please marrow me, my beloved sweetpea,
so that we may beetroot to our hearts.
Lettuce have the courgette of our convictions
and our love elevated to Great Artichoke.

Don’t leek me feeling this way, my dear,
such lofty asparagus can’t be ignored.
I am a prisoner, trapped in your celery;
Don’t make me go back to the drawing broad beans.

We all carry emotional cabbage:
love is chard and not inconsequential,
but may our passion be uncucumbered
so that we reach our true potato.

Oh, how your onions make my head spinach,
reduce me to mushrooms, broccoli, defenceless.
Only you can salsify my desire,
and I, in turnip, will radish you senseless.

love poem, inadvertently written with auto-carrot switched on

The Flowers of the Garage Forecourt

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Budding lovers beware
of the Flowers of the Garage Forecourt;
they are not for courting.

Love will not blossom
with the Flowers of the Garage Forecourt,
these blundering bouquets

of cellophaned sadness:
the slip-road roses and tarmacked tulips,
petrol pump peonies

and crushed-dream chrysanthemums.
All those dahlias of desperation.
The I-forgot-you forget-me-nots.

Please know this, would-be customers
of the Flowers of the Garage Forecourt:
romance wilts with a lack of forethought.

Artist’s Impression

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Channel-flicking on the television,
a sudden flicker of recognition,

and there you are, lighting up the screen.
You’ve not changed much, it seems.

The selfsame eyes of grey flint,
those touchpaper lips,

that shocking blaze
of hair. It’s as if the days

lit by time’s slow-burnt passage
are reduced to ashes.

An old flame, charcoaled
back to life by the controlled

hand of a police sketch artist.
I see you’re still up to your old tricks,

wanted, as you are, for questioning
in connection with

a spate of arson attacks
in the vicinity of Matlock Bath.

Poem, revised draft

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

I had to write this poem again.
I left the first draft on the train
and now it doesn’t look the same.

The original was a paean to Love,
to Truth, to Beauty. It soared above
the everyday and all that stuff.

It would have healed estranged lovers’ rifts,
stilled the sands on which time shifts
and stopped the world before it drifts

further into quagmired crisis,
ended famine, toppled ISIS.
Employed ingenious literary devices.

I tried my hardest to recall
its words and rhymes, the rise and fall
of the carefully cadenced crawl

through the English language.
But it caused me pain and anguish
for there was little I could salvage.

It certainly didn’t end with a line like this.