poetry

Special Offers

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

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.

Anagram man

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

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.

The Pedents’ Re-volt

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Its not eazy being a pedent
correcting others’ mis-takes all daylong
My freinds and me are totally sic
of observing gramma witch has gone wrong.

“Whom are these language offenders”?,
“could it be that I maybe one, to”
Their ignorant; stupid, and careless:
off gramma they have’nt a clue.

They’re speling is sutch an embarrasment
its’ amature, wired, and, abserd,
comprized of neither thought or intelligance,
to a dictionary they should of refered.

Writing down there awkwardly formed sentences,
the participle clauses are left dangling.
just made one less mistake each would have the affect
to dramatically reduce this language mangling.

The Great Famine

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

The day the driver from Ocado
was late with her escargot,
Margot exhibited great bravado.

She had an insight into the plight
of the starving of Africa
as she waited patiently
for her celeriac and paprika.

She could see how
civilizations might fail
through focaccia gone stale
and for want of some kale.

And she thought to herself sadly
of those who sat drably
sipping on the dregs
of last night’s Chablis.

With some charity or other,
she set up a small direct debit
and then stoically rustled up
a smoked haddock rarebit.

Friday the Thirteenth

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

For Keith,
Friday the Thirteenth
held no fear.
He wasn’t superstitious
(or even a little bit stitious),
and didn’t view the day
as particularly suspicious
or with the promise
of the unpropitious.

It was then a black cat
crossed his path,
causing him to step on a crack
which made him stagger
under a ladder,
and shatter a mirror
being carried
by a passing albatross,
who suffered fatal blood loss
from a shard
which flew hard
into its heart.

Keith didn’t think anything of it
until later that day,
at a wine reception,
he found himself trapped
in a conversation
about Jeremy Clarkson.

The Clowns

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Know this: those commuters
causing commotions on locomotions
with their funny fold-up bikes,
the vélo origamists of the vestibule,
are out-of-town clowns.

Their bags do not house laptops
or dossiers of documents,
but wigs and whistles, red noses,
hand-buzzers and balloons,
water-spraying carnations, outsized shoes,
giant toothbrushes, chickens.

Follow them out of the station,
post-disembarkation.
Observe the nearness of their feet
to the saddle as they straddle
their bicycles and comically pedal
through London street puddles,
and peddle their selection
of slapstick services
to city centre circuses.

Beards

Assorted Poems, Selected poems

Beards grew on men’s faces,
inched past belts and braces,
slithered over shoe laces,
spread across floors,
crept under doors,
stretched across streets,
became entwined and entangled
at all kinds of angles
’til the ground disappeared,
drowning in beard.

Oceans got clogged
and mountains hogged
by the hirsuteness
that took rootness
as attempts to halt
the barbate bombardment
proved fruitless.

No glimmers of hope,
no trimmers could cope,
the vanity of humanity’s
destruction impending;
a hairy tale ending.