The Smiths – I’d Risk My Driving License For You

This poem was written for a collection I did 2010/11 with poems written inspired by groups and singers I love as if they’d written the poem or lyrics. Remembered this poem because of Andy Rourke’s passing this weekend, fact he was only 59 like me, and the photo was taken in a cemetery in honour …

Remembering a couple on a train back in ‘86 leaving London

Sat on a train, a young womanputs her arm round his shoulder.Sat close they are unitedon a station that heads for Nostalgia. Others when they can give lovelook and feel like an animal in a zooand when they finally realise they want tomight not have the opportunity to. In poetry, you can deceivebut things get …

First Days in London

Tiny eyes watch with miniature retina.London seems huge, makes each face minute.Small humans breathe inconsiderable air.Dwarfed lungs. This slender window. Most of this is new: a place of extremes.A life of a person too microscopic to be noticed.Deliberate buildings and spontaneous streets.Meticulous entrepreneurs disguising their witch-doctor faces. Unfamiliar days made up of dilated hours.An iris …

London

Ordering his full English breakfastmixed grillfish ‘n’ chipsbangers ‘n’ mash near Traitors’ Gate, he makes faces into his b ‘n’ bgreasy spoonlocal chippyale-house knife but as he digs in and egg-yokesH.P. Saucessalt ‘n’ vinegarsgravy-pours his plate, Out Eamonns Sir Francis Walsingham: “This is“This was“This could be“This would be your life!”

YESories and NOments

After dinner, two play violinas she dances on a pub table, just hours before her flight.While she steals an umbrella and gets caught outhe takes off Elvis, Saturday night. There’s one that quotes comedians verbatimas another cries her karaoke eyes out, having her lyrical say.As one of them eats spag.bol at 4 a.m.two water-pistol pedestrians …

Treasonably Good

As the mob sludge-hovels homeex-executioners wash their hands in the clubhousewhile guillotine stray dogs roam. CATS SCRATCH CATS!BATS BATTER BATS!And beer mats get soaked in ale foam. As the saints come marching inone has blessed a mousewhile can-can dancers have anointed a tin. STEAM TRAINS STEAM!GILT-HEAD BREAM BREAM!Washed up with a gleam and a bottle …