Monday 24 August 2015

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   

Thursday 20 August 2015

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.]



Wednesday 19 August 2015

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. 

Tuesday 18 August 2015

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...