Left Behind

for AO

During a brief online exchange

with a friend and fellow poet

whose courage as a writer

far exceeds my own

I use one of the few weapons

at my disposal:

some smartarse knowledge of other poets

and the things they may have written

Paul Valéry once wrote I write,

authoritatively,

poems are never finished

only abandoned

which opens up the possibility

for me to bring the conversation

down to my level

where I feel more comfortable

A quote I quip

which I thought worked better with ‘homework’

but, you know, twenty-plus years of teaching

can do that to a man

Which is one of the reasons why,

I now realise,

when his  extraordinary images

withstand

my daft playthings

will have been forgotten

like the silent laughter

of my long dead audiences   

Tone Deaf Sonnet 1

I shake in his lives.

When can you see the life –

not short, nor long, nor eternal, but fair?

Summer’s gold is dimmed.

Men shall fade and you can brag all of this,

or rough the summer’s fair complexion.

Eyes shall breathe in.

Every so often your darling gives his untrimmed possession to eternal 

   chance.

Compare that sometime date to time lines; to grow as a day buds.

Do temperate summer winds wander by this long shade of you?

Or shall you lease, and owe, and sometime lose?

May shines too hot and more, of course, from nature’s fair eye.

You are a lovely changing heaven.

And so, too, his death declines you.

The Lawnmower Party Manifesto (Unfinished due to lack of)

The Economy

‘Nobody really understands economics’

·         Taxes – We’ll double taxes for people who talk about cars and rugby;

·         Deficit – We’ll reduce the deficit by making it smaller (like this – deficit);

·         Debt – We’ll send the debt into outer space;

·         Banks – All bankers to be sacked and re-employed as food bank volunteers, while all food bank volunteers are to be re-employed as bankers – the poor will have a fight on their hands but at least the banking system will be the envy of no-one.

Education

‘Education is what happens when you’ve completed your education’

·         Close down all schools and convert them to giant playrooms;

·         We’ll abolish tuition fees and replace them with Cafe Nero vouchers;

·         All faith schools to be turned into assault courses;

·         All English universities to be moved to Scotland.

Health

‘You’re alright so long as you have your health, and a few other things, obviously’

·         We’ll introduce a ban on the smoking ban;

·         We’ll hide the NHS underwater.

[This 'Manifesto' was supposed to go out before the Generally Depressing Election, but didn't, because it wasn't finished, due to reasons. I didn't realise that I had written it until I stumbled across it this morning. That happens when I peer into the folders of my computer.]

The Unimportance of Words

The question which I’d like to ask is, ‘Who

could trust you now?’ You vandalised the truth;

devalued honesty with weasel quotes

not worth the paper they were printed on.

O! foul new world that has such liars in it.

You thought that this was - what? - acceptable

behaviour from a man who preaches virtue?  

Here, take this gun and do the decent thing. 

A Prediction

‘When I am old, I will wear purple!’

– A Warning, Jenny Joseph

When I am old, I will degenerate.

My joints will moan and bitch, and getting out

of bed will be a trial. All those years

of healthy eating, going to the pool,

and cycling to work will so have been

in vain. You can’t hold back the foetid tide

of geriatric decay. Sixty isn’t

the new forty, despite the narcissistic

delusions harboured by arse-brained journalists.

Mealtimes will be a bowl of pills: there won’t

be room for any real food. The day’s

greatest adventure? Making it as far as

the television room, where, slumped in front

of Netflix, sleep will interrupt the narratives.

The melancholy strains of afternoon

will kill my spirit further, when I see

that yet another day has somehow slipped my

grasp. I’ll wonder how I ever got so old

so fast. The night will bring its old regrets,

and sleep will be my practice for the grave.

Did someone call my name? No? Never mind.

When I am old, I will die...