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.
For two hours she sat,
clutching the ticket
from the machine.
But then,
she’d been waiting
all of her life
to be seen.
Every song on the radio reminds me of you,
I hear Anarchy in the UK and think about the time
you established an anarcho-syndicalist commune and led
a bloody, but ultimately unsuccessful, uprising in Merthyr Tydfil.
Bohemian Rhapsody comes on and I remember
the episodic, integrated, free-flowing work you composed
whilst holidaying in the Czech Republic.
Like A Virgin reminds me of the day
you got your new Virgin Media TiVo box installed
and you touched it for the very first time.
I listen to I Am the Walrus and recall those stupid
bloody Tuesdays when you would sit on a cornflake
in your corporation t-shirt and wait for the van to come.
An Oasis song plays and I think about that wall
you used to have, which was not like any other wall,
the one that used to fill me with wonder and still does today.
Other memories fly to me across the radio waves.
Your strange and wide-ranging CV: a waitress in a cocktail bar,
private dancer, boxer, taxman, joker, thief, lineman for the county.
There was that time you laid your hat and declared it “home”,
and that party we went to with a special atmosphere,
the one when you kissed a girl and then let the dogs out.
It’s no wonder I still think about you;
you and your beautiful, bright, sexy, gypsy,
Betty Davis, brown, green, baby blue eyes.
Every day is a second chance.
And each day is a festering boil you must lance.
Paint the sky and make it yours.
Add this fun task to your long list of chores.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
It helps you pretend that you made it through college.
Be positive and turn your can’ts into cans.
And watch your cans carted off in recycling vans.
What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
It is hard to think of a quote that is wronger.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Except for the fact that hope ends at fourteen.
Life is so much brighter when we focus on what really matters.
That’s assuming your dreams are not already in tatters.
You’re in control. Be the change you wish to see.
You haven’t even got the change for a cup of tea.
A beautiful life begins with a beautiful mind.
In a world full of pain and misery, it’s not so easy to find.
Treat life like a trusted and old faithful friend.
Why not, but SPOILER ALERT: we all die in the end.
Doc Marten boots,
you take me back to my roots,
when you were in cahoots
with both of my foots.
You have style. You have soul
(air cushioned to make you hover),
with optional steel toe-caps
in case there’s a bit of bovver.
Punks, indie kids, construction workers,
have all worn you most effectively,
sure treaders of carpet and concrete
on office and factory floors respectively.
Dependably Manufactured!
Durably Memorable!
Doughtily Multipurposeful!
Diametrical Moccasins!
To me you are the exponent
of the ultimate in utilitarianism.
To persuade me of otherwise
is an act of futilitarianism.
the will to power
a hoover
was not
a Friedrich manoeuvre
he could barely
even muster
a philosophical flick
of a duster
I took the volume to the counter
where the bookseller said to me,
“You do realise, sir, that today
is Buy One Get One Free.”
So I went and chose another book,
and waited patiently in the queue,
but this time he pointed at a sign
which said Three for the Price of Two.
I thought I’d go for something lighter
and so I came back with a thriller.
The bookseller said, “The Impossible Dead!
That means you get to sleep with Cilla.”
His assistant took me by the hand
and led me into the stock room;
we made love against an unsold stack
of biographies of David Hume.
The bookseller had more to say,
when I returned to the shop floor,
“As the 100th person she’s had this year,
here are the keys to the store.”
He took an urgent phone call and said
“It seems that you’re in luck again.
Head Office have told me to tell you
about “Win One Store, Get the Chain.”
And so it went on for days and weeks,
each special offer bigger than the last,
I won shops, businesses, countries, planets,
my empire was boundless and vast.
It wasn’t easy running the universe;
indeed, every spare moment it took.
So busy was I, no matter how hard I tried,
I never got to read my book.
Upon b ing awok n
h found his
k yboard was brok n.
Th ” ” did not work,
it drov him b rs rk,
h f lt lik a j rk.
So h ask d louis .
Sh was ag r to pl as .
Sh was th b ‘s kn s.
Brian felt confused,
his brain out of order,
his reward was a prison,
without need of a warder.
For Pam was an anagram,
a crumpled map with no key
and while desserts often stressed him,
he’d gladly eat her for tea.
Maybe she was married
or had some other admirer?
But still hope’s thin flame resided
in his heart; he desired her.
He was held rapt in a trap
and would think of her hourly.
She was wordy, she was rowdy;
she might come with a dowry.
He felt angered. Enraged.
World-weary. Wired. Weird.
He couldn’t declare his feelings
until his head cleared.
He explored all the angles,
prayed to the angels above;
for he wasn’t filling a novel
but rather falling in love.
It was a love that came together
through the use of receptacles;
for he had his beer goggles on
and she, her rosé-tinted spectacles.
