A Poem in a Single Line (iv)

Patterns and waves are all we’ve ever been.

A Poem in a Single Line (iii)

Divert your gaze from what was never there.

A Poem in a Single Line (ii)

The things you seek? Inside you all along.

A Poem in a Single Line (i)

Words cannot think and poets only dream.

Peak

I sometimes wonder how much more ridiculous

this life could get. Perhaps we’ve reached the peak of

absurdity already and I didn’t

notice. Is someone, somewhere, terrified

of toothpaste? Has the world of fashion finally

caved in and made a range called Emperor’s Clothes?

Did Spain elect a pomegranate for

its new Prime Minister? Has the Pope

declared himself to be an octopus?

I do not follow telly, so I wouldn’t know.

‘Hello, and welcome to Mindless TV.

Today we ask, “Is arson valid as

an artform?” and meet the man who says

that setting fire to other people’s houses

prevented him from following a life

of crime. We hear about a woman suing

her mum and dad for giving her a balanced

childhood. The alienation caused has been

disastrous to her mental health, she claims.

But first, it’s competition time, where you’ve

a chance to win The Royal Albert Hall.

Simply complete this sentence: “Life is worthless

because…” and tweet it on our twitter feed.

The most banal reply will win this marvellous,

iconic building, if hasn’t been

stolen, that is. And now, because it’s Daffodil

Remembrance Day, we have a moment’s silence to

remember all the daffodils who lost

their lives in conflicts old and new; and not

just daffodils, but every flowering species

who never found their way back home from war.

It’s over to Samantha now, who has the weather.

Samantha…’ Where is anyone supposed

to keep the weather? In their hands? Their pockets?

And have these people never heard of windows?

What effect do you think you have upon

this world? You watch your television and

the bad things vanish; post your eighty-seventh

denunciation of the Trump online

and suddenly he’s not a fool; preoccupy

yourself with things you can’t control, and waste

your life. There is no point to life, if all

you do is point. We’re all ridiculous.

We’re all the world and everything that’s in it,

and everything has long since been a game to show off

how perfect we all are. Don’t fool yourself.

The past person left the building long ago,

forgot to turn the lights out, and booby-trapped

existence. We’ve been paying for it ever since.

What do I mean? Really? It doesn’t matter.

Escapes

The sky in my mind escapes

and overlays itself

onto the breezy sky

of a spring day.

It has become a grey-black, mind sky,

and the neighbours are not amused.

Where did that come from?

their faces say in unison,

as they turn in all directions.

It could be mistaken

as a depression metaphor,

so I think of a tropical sunset,

all oranges and reds, with silhouettes of palm trees

and a flock of awkwardly flying flamingos –

because who can picture an accurately flying,

silhouetted flamingo,

let alone a whole flock of them?

Like so many things, this, too, escapes my mind,

hiding the grey black.

I laugh at the incongruity of my tropical, evening sky

on the edge of a British city in April,

at two o’clock in the afternoon.

The graceless flamingos captivate the neighbours,

and I silently recite a poem about conversations.

The spring sky returns,

and all the neighbours start talking at once.

I retreat to the quiet of my house,

and think of a clear night sky.

When I awake,

the Milky Way is on the ceiling,

on the walls,

on the floor.

I sit in my rocking chair on the outer spiral:

silent, still, invisible;

more impossibly out of proportion

than I have ever been.

Forgiveness

Morrissey is having a conversation with Jesus

and doing all of the talking.

It’s the form and context of the exchange which matters,

rather than the words themselves.

Jesus is a bit flummoxed by the Mancunian accent

and the fact that Morrissey appears to be

better with words than he is.

‘Jesus, you should shave,’ says Morrissey,

but Jesus doesn’t get the joke.

‘The beard's good, no?’ he says.

Morrissey forgives Jesus.

Always Do What a Poet Asks You to Do

I’ve heard it said

that you should bear in mind an audience

when you write a poem.

I’ve never done this.

I did just recently read through

a really obscure poem of mine.

And there the audience are,

sitting several rows deep in my cerebellum,

each holding up a score-card,

but with words, not numbers:

‘Bored’, ‘Angry’, ‘Confused’, ‘WTF?!’, ‘Seriously?’, etc.,

which they show to each other

while shouting obscenities.

With a speed which even I find impressive,

they screw the words up,

and pelt the stage with them.

I replace this cantankerous rabble

with an audience of Ferguses.

‘I think I speak for all of us,’ says one,

‘when I say that you are the most Fergus poet

that we’ve ever encountered,’

and they erupt into spontaneous applause.

Watch It Pass

We televise the future in our heads

watching our slow collapse,

a bubble-wrapped catastrophe. Disintegration minted

by shadows, grief, imagination, anger,

misplaced like lizards on a plastic sunbed.

This screen eclipses the entire sky.

Down with Biscuits Anyway

Everyone else is entertaining themselves

with phone calls or card games,

and so I resolve to write a poem

about how much I hate biscuits –

simply for existing.

O! biscuit… I start,

before the gears in my pencil

grind to a leaden halt.

I am in the living room –

because I’m middle class –

but the sun is shining,

and I feel that I ought to engage in something

more edifying,

like going on a bike ride

down a leafy country lane,

or kicking the heads off some daffodils,

because it’s that time of year,

and, also, because there aren’t that many people

out and about today,

and I think that perhaps this time

I might stand a chance of getting away with it.

I consider lighting a fire

underneath the next-door neighbour’s car.

He spends far too much time washing it

(Don’t be ridiculous – you can’t wash a car!

my inner car-averse self comments,

in a manner which he believes to be most witty)

and I feel that there’s a lesson to be learned there,

somehow,

but that’s where my putative insight ends.

Rather like this poem,

which was supposed to be about biscuits –

or, rather, my hatred of their existence –

but which somehow isn’t really

about anything much at all.

The Language of Trees

The trees communicate in semaphore,

and whispers loud enough for decibels.

They speak as one and spend their days and nights

in stop-start conversations, where obsessions

about the wind and seasons dominate

their talk. Today, they are as happy as

a group of trees could be, excited by

the spring that’s just arriving. Here we are

again, the branches whisper. Look: our leaves

are back. Last week, we all were winter-naked,

but now we’ve made the sky turn green. It seems

like silence, but it isn’t if you listen.

A forest is a life-raft for the mind,

a vessel to go sailing in from time

to time. We are the trees, the leaves, the fallen

branches and twigs, the forest floor: all one.

Rain

The sky dispensing rain. Rain which asks questions

of the wind. Rain too late for my friend’s funeral.

Singing in the rain while dancing in the rain and laughing

at people who sing and dance in the rain.

If time could be paused on that Monday morning,

there would be rain for all time. Rain

which punches above its weight. Rain which

quotes Shakespeare but doesn’t understand

any of the words. Windswept, mysterious rain.

Irrational rain. Rain that cut its teeth on

a mountainside. The impossibility of being rain.

Rain which no one saw coming. Rain which

engineered a situation of plausible deniability.

The rain which fell because it jumped. Rain

which was never meant to be rain. Rain which

turned itself into poetry. Last Thursday,

it rained, sort of. Minuscule rain. The raging

ocean which lost its way and became

a downpour, and everyone ran out into the street

saying, ‘Hallelujah!’ Rain as punctuation.

Intellectual rain. Pretentious rain.

Rain with a philosophical bent. Pop rain.

Serious rain. Hardworking rain.

The rain which became invisible when it

played hide and seek. The rain which made

the first rainbow, somewhere unimaginably

distant from here in both time and space.

Petulant rain. Inadmissible rain. Rain

which was illegible to the other rain. Rain

with an indefinite article, just to confuse

non-native speakers. Non-rhyming rain.

Christian rain. Rain which became

dogmatic on its way to the supermarket.

The wild and reckless rain of an impulsive

thunderstorm, which didn’t pause to consider

the consequences of its drenching.

Could you point me in the direction of the

nearest rain? Rain which has no voice.

Rain which is always arguing with the

pavement. Rain which refuses to

stop raining once it’s begun. Rain

which hates similes. Basket-case rain.

Collapsible rain. Distraught rain.

Best ever rain ever.

Unless (iv)

Please refrain from smoking –

unless you’re a fire.

Unless (iii)

Dance like there’s no one looking –

unless someone actually is looking.

Unless (ii)

Do not feed the ducks –

unless you are their mother.

Unless (i)

Do not stand too close to the fire –

unless you are a marshmallow.

Deliver Us From, Part One

Lord, deliver us from all evil,

and syntax,

and pedants with slightly above average sized egos,

and, while you’re at it,

deliver us from the bad guys,

and the bent cops,

and the scary people who are bigger than us

and who know how to fire a machine-gun accurately

while under pressure,

and deliver us from the past, the present, and the future,

but especially the first one

because that’s where all of our problems started,

and deliver us from all of the obvious things,

which barely need mentioning at all

(should I mention them anyway,

at least some of them,

just to give you an idea,

in case your widely reported omniscience

turns out to be wide of the mark?)

okay, so, also, deliver us from

TV, the internet, money, processed food, America,

the world and everything that’s in it,

including, above all else, ourselves.

That’ll do for starters.

Night Questions

A question looks beyond itself and finds

a small, grey parcel wrapped inside itself.

I looked inside, and all I found was all

I saw. I laid my hand upon time’s surface.

Which way was up? Is forwards always best?

I built a house of questions. Locked the doors.

There is no inside now, I laughed. Once foolish,

twice foolish, three times – still it’s foolish as.

I came back to the present moment darkly.

Even a light won’t work in here. I switch

my torch on but it doesn’t seem

to work. It’s only when we die, we wake.

It’s shush – don’t be afraid to live! I hear.

I carry on with words but want to sleep;

consider nothing as the day slips past.

We Are Possessed by Foolishness

The problem with humanity

(oh, here we go!)

is that we’re so fucking hot-headed

(you see what I mean?).

Wouldn’t it be better if we attempted to live our lives

peaceably, calmly,

instead of doing what we do best,

all of the time:

putting other people under the microscope,

so that we can say, gleefully,

‘Look! A fault! For shame!

Hang on a sec,

let me just magnify it so you can see…’

The next time you see someone with a peashooter,

remember the forty-seven peashooters

which you keep hidden about your person,

at all times.

The next time you see someone aim a peashooter,

remember what happened

when you fired that rocket-launcher

from your attic.

The next time,

and the time after that,

and the time after that,

and the time after that.

The opposite of infinite regress:

ad infinitum.

What’s that you say?

Sort my own shit out?

Yeah, I was totally talking to myself

(didn’t realise you were listening).

You know what they say about bloody eavesdroppers?

Now,

what did I just say?