Music

Blitzkrieg Top

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

When I put on my Ramones tee-shirt,
with its presidential seal of rebellion,
I can almost smell the revolution

in the air.

I like to wear it everywhere:
down the match or shopping mall,
on the golf course, in the gym, or

in Costa

where I sometimes sit and watch the
protest marches go past the window,
whilst sipping on my frappuccino.

All roads lead

to Ramones; you will see our breed
on every street, pushing strollers,
iPhoned jogging rock n’ rollers,

defiant

in cottoned nonconformity, a giant
army of tee-shirted mayhem makers
(once we’ve read the Sunday papers).

Hey ho, let’s go.

Pretty Things

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

They spent the day swapping
stardust-sprinkled stories

of classroom rebel rebels
and rescued car journeys,

eye-shadowed evenings
of first gigs and girlfriends,

best gigs and boyfriends,
fan letters insanely penned,

awkward teenage oddities,
faces and phases and changes,

moon landings, all-time lows,
serendipity in far-off places,

the loneliness of Lazarus,
and the golden years of families,

fame, fashion, fancies, dances,
all the fanatically-vinyled panoplies,

tall, true tales of we-can-be-heroes,
for Planet Earth was blue

and there was nothing else
they could do.

Duffle Coat

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Your band
was a one song wonder.
Don’t know whether
you made another.

Got made
NME single of the week.
It put the bubble
in my squeak

and the snap
and crackle in my pop.
Twelve weeks solid
I did not stop

playing it.
The jingle-jangles
softened
the awkward angles

of what it’s like
to be fifteen.
I kept the sleeve
pristine,

wore a duffle coat
all that summer.
I hear you became
a plumber.

Lift Music

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

If I were called in
to construct
a soundtrack for my life,
I should make use
of muzak.

Each song indistinct,
immemorable,
and entirely
without consequence,

as it fills out the silence

between floors

until
the door
opens
for me.

a forest, which grew

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

a trail of parsnips along the floor
was all it took to lure
the sons out of their caravan door

where mumford was, i wasn’t sure

bundling the sons out of my van,
i planted them in tubs of manure,
watered them daily,
played them the banjo
and ukulele,
and watched them grow
in the golden glow
of a late summer afternoon

gazed upon the long limbs
lazing up to an incipient moon,
the entangled bramble of beards immune
to the unforgiving snip
of the shears that prune

mighty sons of mumford,
fifty feet high,
stretching up into the pale night sky

Life: A Record

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Polyvinyl 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.