A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

I’m a bit tearful thinking of it
but had some wine and that puts me in touch with what I’m feeling.
When my heart and head collide and fit.
Sorry, yes, it’s embarrassing.

Tough as nails I’m gonna drive it home.
Laying on the floor I’m ready to give in.
Writers everywhere have their favourite illiterate reader riddled with sin.
Tips for everyone serving a glassful of tonic with a nothing of gin.

This is the heart of the matter
as a matter of the heart:
I’m full of fear about the future today
and the future is full of fear that I’ve stayed up too late to not let tomorrow have its say.

Today was World Kissing Day.
We kissed all day.
You put me in a good mood and me you.
This poem isn’t about anyone but you.

Made a guess at hearing the plane you were on leaving across the sea overhead
as I looked up from my balcony breadcrust
with your home emptied of your books,
and clothes, as my books gather dust
and wardrobe hangs like lead,
moth-eaten with wanderlust.

I guess you’re halfway done with here
and halfway done with there
as, like you say, ™it doesn’t feel like home”
like someone who needs space from what’s coming and what’s gone.

Every explorer needs an evening sat on the sofa.
Every malcontent needs a laugh.
Every day needs adventure.
Every squeaky clean pop star needs a bath.
Everyone waiting for something.
Some have the wherewithal to force it.
Some join the circus wearing their lucky ring
as others stay put and frame their face in a photofit.

As your imageinary plane overhead
flew away, way away today
all this came to mind
as brain cells keep thoughts under lock and key by self-imposed aviation design

When fearing curses dominate verses
and pure coincidence leads to waking dreams of waving friends ignoring passing hearses
with odds in favour of things going well
and mouthless spirits gagged from spinning their dark spell,
that little voice in your head
asks ‘But am I that jinxed to be voodoo chicken led?’

When going mad and being reckless
with bottles pouring out their medicine poisonous
joining in the drinking and daring yourself to dive
in at the deep end of red water as you burp out speaking speech bubbles live
that little voice in your head
eggs you on to repeat what you just foolishly said.

When quiet and deaf to tut tuts.
When as sure of yourself as a self-contained saint.
When talking to yourself with no ifs or buts.
When no negative thoughts can taint
feelings of doubt
that little voice in your head
whispers assurances like a newlywed.

That little voice in your head
is your saviour and your executioner.
The one that plays on your better and worse judgement
and your amateur schizophrenia.
The one you call little but which sometimes booms and clangs like heavy lead
as you sleep off your days
as light as your primary school snores of felt Zs.

(from ‘Ventriloquist Dummy Voice-Overs’, photo from graffiti in Cagliari)

As social media mimic philosophers
write ‘life’s not a rehearsal’
which extras put a like for, while doing
the same thing every day eternal
flash car deep thinkers
wear fashionable hundred dollar bill suits,
and second hand beggar cat walkers
rub together coppers like perfect poverty beauts.

Meanwhile, hairdressers, famed for
idle chat shop talk,
go on strike deep in thought,
as their sitting waiting mirror-gazing customers
mull over their greying hair experience
they might have swept away to nought.

Aging over thinkers turning sixty
wonder how the years went by so quickly
while those living life to the full
don’t have time to think and act the fool.

The sea turned to turquoise from grey.
When my memory lapsed, I remembered what I was here for.
The rain fell like a rainbow that had missed out on people who couldn’t stay.
People who were in
as you knocked
but who hid behind their door.

All those excuses to keep horizons in the distance behind lenses double-thick.
Smoking behind the bike sheds.
Authority’s gonna come down on you like a ton of bricks.
You never went for it 100% and your tongue’s gonna chop off your empty heads.

Day dream out the window.
Watch birds perch on trees.
See sums mathematically disappear
and photographic figures historically freeze.

Watch your parents come back to life
and days miraculously dawn.
See your diary mundanely return
to the day you were born.

Watch glasses drink up bar tenders
pouring down their throat benders.
See calendars for decades to come
and chew predictions like weather forecast gum.

As bad kids get told off for telling it as it is
and good teachers tell them off for making it show biz,
day dream out the window
and muck about making up a god that might last ‘til tomorrow.

Happy new year to everyone dear
whose names belong to your alphabet song:
To A and H, J and K, B and C, D and E,G,P, T and V.
F and L, M and N, S, and X and Z, W,Q,and U, R,I,Y and O.
Play them on your own pirate station radio.

Start the next 365 days with good intentions
and peace pixel resolutions:
No more missiles. No more missing files.
No more money mad Machiavellians.
No more limp lessons to learn lessons.

Now, come on, holy brand names
and vote can-stuffing X canvassing psychos,
behave and put a lid on it.
Let’s listen to our pirate radios and sing together a bit.

Happy new year me hearties!
A new year sets sail round a flat world.
Maybe this one will end in treaties
lasting forever with hand grenades left rusting unhurled.

Poem written on 1st January 2024

This was the first poem I wrote for a new collection I’ve been working on since the summer and now completed called ‘Ventriloquist Dummy Voice-Overs.’ I have just posted ‘The Cotton Club’ from this collection.

I have been writing more than posting for these last few months but will post a few from this new collection based on the theme of voices. Read ‘La formula dell’orrizonte’ by Roberta Castoldi if you can. Inspired me wanting to write a collection based on a theme.

Dummy
My voice chords have taken a vow of silence.
My mouth moves. My tongue hits my teeth.
Lack of sound makes sense.
My lips look like a red wreath.

Too much enthusiasm doesn’t seem to work.
Too much keeping distance leaves me bereft.
I sit waiting for someone to make me talk.
In the meantime, my neck turns left to right and right to left.