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 …
Continue reading “The Smiths – I’d Risk My Driving License For You”
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 …
Continue reading “Remembering a couple on a train back in ‘86 leaving 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 …
‘Outlaw Blues’ plays on the radioAs I think to myself: when is the stage-coach to Paradise?Outside, the drifter is obviously alone.Others, too, have had desires denied.Hand me my whisky. Pour me my moonshine.The hotel lovers, half unclothed.The poker-game gambler down to a dime.Saddle my horse. The saloon has just closed.
With no sound but tiny bells tinkling on an empty platform in the middle of nowhereand a model train silently moving towards a station there,the only waiting passenger listens to tiny bells tinkling on an empty platform in the middle of nowhereand a model train silently moving towards a station there. 6.20 pm.With no sound …
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 …
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 …
Final fag in my mouth into the battle lineswith everything to prove to myself.Mustard gas smoke signals leave sky-signsto read on packets for your health. I’m whistling a little tune from before the warhoping I will get to win la guerre.I dream of being able to snore once moreand wake up to breathe in a …
They cried their eyes outFeeling free.In a world of usnessthey felt such thempathy. She worked in her labmaking concoctionsto rid them of their own fearsand self-rejection. But then, she hit the streetsand the authorities hit backputting anyone in prisonwho had her statue in their sack. It was only years later when troubled soldierswere fighting for …
There’s the sea, the sky, the land, and space.There’s standing still, crawling, walking, running, and sprinting with pace.There’s the past, present, future, and eternity.There’s a lovey-dovey heart scratched out on a bench with u4me.
A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 