What follows is a whistle-stop tour with a poem from each of my collections since I started writing and illustrating poetry in 1982
- MAHOGANY VERSE 1982
2. STEAMING THROUGH THE RIVER MYTH 1982
3. WINTER HIBERNATION 1983
4. JIGSAW WORLDS AND LINKS 1983
5. A GINFUL OF TONIC 1983
6. PERSONAL ANTHEMS 1984
7. TIMEKEEPING 1989
An Evening Out At The Pub
While mermaids pass by
in fish-net stockings and high-hipped skirts
the part-time poets philosophise.
Look at the jugs on her!
The church is full tonight
as the barmaid serves,
hourly hoping that one day
her knight in shining Telecom shares will take her
away. Some of these missionaries have just met:
some look bored, like daytime people spin-drying
their tears in the launderette.
Meantime, while Henry the Eighth tries
out another chat-up line on Anne Boleyn,
glass-eyed theologians uncork
the top of their heads; and
drink the remains of their thoughts.
8. MY BEDSIT 1992
9. POSTCARD HOME 1996
My ‘Castello’ Flatlet
I’m renting over the rooftops
with a swallow, momentarily, in the living room.
Creepy-crawlies that hide’n’seek hop
and a lizard under the kitchen broom.
I was counting on getting forty winks
instead of counting Sardinian sheep.
My eyes wide open, not a blink,
crayoned in above my cotton-white, pillow-case cheeks.
Meanwhile, you make it in your summer dress
up the backwards four-floor helter-skelter staircase.
The daft dotty bird below’s a pest
and with the landlady it’s the usual cat’n’mouse chase.
For me, there’s a clash of colours; red white’n’blue
or green white’n’red.
Anyway, from the seagull woman’s daily point of view
everything’s black’n’white ; get those squawky city tenants fed.
10. BRITPOP POETRY 1999
Britpop Pop
Watches The Britpop Awards
with his prize Britpop family.
Doesn’t give a thirty-three and a third about music abroad.
The Queen owes him an OBE.
Bedtime lyrics read at night.
Pop Art posters on bedroom walls.
The kids could hum The Kids are Alright
in Townshend clobber before they could crawl.
With his all-time British record collection
wears his heart on an album sleeve.
A variety bill of not living legends;
Lennon and Jones, Ronnie and Steve.
Marries his Twiggy lookalike wife
hot on the heels of the ’66 victory.
Cuts the cake with Bobby Moore souvenir knife.
Goes on honeymoon to his beloved Wembley.
In a Mystery ‘open-top’ Tour double-decker
he bus drives his way round day-trippy Devon.
Up the M6 to his Madchester mecca
record industry Liverpool heaven.
With his Wilson pipe smoking down Carnaby Street
he’s behind the wheel of his beat up psychedelic Rolls.
Walks along to whatever the beat
as long as it’s written by someone like Noel.
Not stuck in the Sixties, he follows the fad;
Costello or Squeeze, Pulp, Weller or Verve.
Gets out and about; he’s no armchair dad.
Everything follows a Kink in the curve.
Apart from Blur, he’s into Blair
and the new swinging Labour Let’s Party Britain.
Celebrates at Trafalgar Square.
Goes to the do at Number 11.
His teenage daughters always look fab
dressed up in Mary Quant miniskirt tights.
Homeward bound in a London cab
just as Big Ben midnight strikes.
On Father’s Day, everyone’s round
for a McCartney singalong-all-in-together.
You don’t get many like him to the pound;
The best Britpop pop that’s ever been ever!
11. CAGLIARI 2000
nuraghe people
in round
cone-shaped
stone towers
they lived
something like
1600 bc
no videolina
no pecorino sardo
no città mercato
no mirto
no club cagliari
no aics
no marina piccola
no ichnusa
no is malloreddus sardus
no il baratto
no l’unione sarda
no cannonau
a bronze age race
of medicine and magic
shepherds and craftsmen
nobles and soldiers
elders and family
against the outside world.
12. ENCLOSURE 2001
Beauty Farm
The flock in their fold
are getting old;
Beer guts undo belly buttons
and tender meat turns to tough mutton.
Firm, milky breasts, drop by drop,
drop, as into the dip,
two-legged sheep, on their last legs, hop.
They bleat and baa
but it won’t get them very far.
Everybody dies.
Don’t pull the wool over your eyes.
13. CAGLIARI II 2002
act of supremacy
as defender of the faith
you might lose it
if that great undoer
disillusion with yourself
gets on top of you;
break off all relations
make yourself head
take no shit from no-one
dissolution of the monasteries
14. JOHNNY MINIMAL 2003
15. BIRTHDAY RETURNS 2004
My Most Memorable Memory Blank
What happened, at the time, is what I’ve been told.
Who remembers anything before five years old?
First, as a suckling, on a diet of milk.
Then, as a toddler, with a totter and tilt.
I’d gurgle and gargle, dribble and fart.
Wet my bed, as you do at the start.
Behind Mum’s back, mix up and make
A kitchen carpet infantile cake.
A small step for me when I started to walk.
Leaps and bounds when I started to talk.
Into my stride, the patter was slow
as I made Pu-tu-pe-tee of A cup of tea in my baby lingo.
Meantime, Sarah came out as a new entry
Gran staying behind to child-mind me;
New Year’s Day ’66.
Can’t say whether I was jealous or thrilled to bits.
Anyway, I’ve since seen her baptism snaps
One double-exposed, her carefully wrapped.
Though the camera had long since come of age
looked more like the 1860s on that album page!
It might be a con, those guests in a circle,
but that photo of me, sat on my tricycle,
I recollect like I really recall.
But two years old, I can’t be sure.
Like a lost weekend, suffering amnesia
but nothing to do with boozing or beer.
I was a dummy, being breast-fed.
A teetotaller, out of my head.
Intoxicated, a world of difference.
Not knowing better, I had my parents.
Surrounded by crayons, I drew a blank.
How I survived, they’re who to thank.
16. SEE IF YOU LIKE IT 2004
17. NEWS POEMS 2006
News at One
People have too much on their mind
to mind, or care about others and their daily grind.
I, for one, am like the many.
Watching people as if on telly.
I go about my business every day.
Flicking channels, restlessly at play.
A little commercial of myself the others ignore
with their remote controls. All a bore.
People wonder who their friends are
and no wonder they have so few, out so far.
The modern world has got so small
it’s hard to see anyone with a soul at all.
I, myself, worry ‘bout me.
Out on a limb, my leg up a tree.
The environmentalists could pull me up.
No roots at all, a sap and a sup.
18. PSYCHEDELICATE 2006
Sunday Rainday
Couples under umbrellas
do a three-legged race
as I watch the raindrops
hurl themselves at photo-finish pace.
Stuck indoors, out of
self-imposed exile,
I march my prisoners out
from their brain cells, single file.
Lamp-posts are lighthouses
for car navigators, behind the wheel
as windscreen wipers
lash out to keep everything on an even keel.
When I finish this fag
I think I’ll get a video out I haven’t seen yet.
A quiet night in, resting my bones
while the rest of the world gets wet.
19. END OF AN ERA 2006
20. SOMETIME BETWEEN NOW AND AGAIN 2009
Afterwards and After all
Yet another one on the record player;
All those songs I wrote, by other people, for you.
Between us, nothing shallow, every year another layer.
It comes back, in my back catalogue, as good as new.
If this clock doesn’t stop, I’ll be going to bed late.
All my little selves I’ve wined and dined!
Anyone who’s anyone would say they had a chance to decide their fate
But might admit they missed it and ended up on rewind.
So, that little C90 cassette from 1978 is pulled out.
All those Radio One songs I recorded, cutting off the DJ.
As long as I live, I’ll probably never remember what last night was all about.
But afterwards, and after all, last Tuesday was always a great day.
21. BRING IT ON 2009
Weekend Away In Weymouth
Seagulls have always been good friends.
They’ve always been around, that much is clear.
Where the sea starts and the land ends.
From the front to the pier.
Now, it takes too long to explain
unless it’s a punchline or a quip.
Repeat myself again and again
with a swift one or a cheeky sip.
But let’s get back to the point.
Something I’m adverse to or tend to ignore.
I take it upon myself to anoint
anyone with a beak, or webbed feet, or who happens to soar.
22. SIDE 1 2011
Blur – London
Ordering his full English breakfast
mixed grill
fish ‘n’ chips
bangers ‘n’ mash near Traitors’ Gate
he makes faces into his b ‘n’ b
greasy spoon
local chippy
ale-house knife
but as he digs in and egg-yokes
H.P. sauces
salt ‘n’ vinegars
gravy-pours his plate
Out Eamonns Sir Francis Walsingham; “This is
“This was
“This could be
“This would be your life!”
23. SIDE 2 2012
24. PANDORA’S MUSICAL LETTER MATCH THEATRE GOGGLE BRAIN BOX OFFICE 2013
Disarming
What do I know about what you are thinking?
Of course I know but I’m not going to say.
I can’t even find the words to explain why the whole thing is going to sink.
It’s rather disarming when you know war is at hand but war ships are being kept at bay.
25. FRAME OF MIND/IN MY NATURE 2013
This Donkey
This donkey is laden with good and bad charms.
This donkey is laden with joy and woe.
This donkey is laden with flowers and arms.
This donkey is laden with things to catch and to throw.
This donkey has one heart and one love.
This donkey has books and books of revelation.
This donkey has four hooves and two hands to glove.
This donkey has blank pages and words for citation.
This donkey carries simple stuff and paraphernalia.
This donkey carries light loads and those to keel under to.
This donkey carries personal effects and objects of mass failure.
This donkey carries clouds and those to steal thunder to.
This donkey walks on the sand.
This donkey walks up a hill.
This donkey walks with no brand.
This donkey walks just until.
26. ABSTRACT 2014
The Point
All fairly pointless now.
Quite rightly in decline with a backwards wow.
Patience has run out so quickly one might even say couldn’t wait.
Friends are the ones who don’t say ‘alright mate?’.
Got to the point a pencil might even draw blood on the page.
Figures walk down the fat cat walk on a book-keeper’s wage.
A lot of music I listen to is by people either dying or dead.
One cant grumble as the manic depressive, in a moment of weakness, said.
27. THE GRAND NATIONAL 2014
Elizabeth Tayor
Photogenic from the first shot of the starter’s pistol
to the backstretch, this much-fancied filly
Usually breezes in, having won on the bridle.
Even so, there’s always a paparazzi photo-finish frenzy.
Getting the red carpet treatment, her jockey’s silks sport a Hollywood star
as she parades in the paddock with a sure thing SP.
As a homebred frontrunner, she’s the most national velvety by far.
One to watch; she always gets the trip, and is rarely out of the money.
28. RETRO AHEAD 2014
Retro Intro(spective)
Going to bed thankful today won’t be coming back again,
it’s that bewitching hour when the midnight stars put a spell on your way back when,
as cat-owners all over the world owe everything they own to their world of cats:
be they castles, mansions, two-up two-downs with garden, or simple bedsit flats.
Is it me or is there some kind of pause button that keeps things on hold
as the inevitable passing of what you thought you might do makes you feel a little bit cold?
Or is it just I’m going to bed thankful today won’t be coming back again
cursing that bewitching hour when the midnight stars put a spell on my way back when?
We’ve all heard about the human condition, and collected our own private data,
with some believing a great computer in the sky might be storing it all up to reveal something later.
But, in the meantime, it’s that bewitching hour when the midnight stars put a spell on your way back when
when, to not lose patience with yourself, you have to count to ten.
So, not much more to add; no place for quick quips or jovial banter here.
Words on their wheels skid and screech as verses on the page veer,
with me going to bed thankful today won’t be coming back again.
“There once was a chap who turned on the tap to brush his paper teeth with a quill pen”
29. SEASONS AND SEADAUGHTERS 2015
Aviary Mystery
One of the bizarrest unsolved mysteries
was the disappearance or theft of birds from one of the country’s biggest aviaries.
That morning, baffled staff couldn’t work out how, overnight,
hundreds of exotic specimens had simply vanished or taken flight.
The cages were empty but all of them closed.
No sign of disturbance, or feathers at all, as police constables nosed.
As hours turned to days, and days into weeks,
the press soon dubbed the case ‘The Silence of the Beaks.’
Now, years later, staff have long since moved on to new posts,
as the aviary stays eerily silent, perched on the hill, with its fly-by-night ghosts.
30. MOONSVILLE 2016
Back To My Arrogant Immortal Self
A bleak week of weakness
feeling dead and on my own
in pyjamas as my Sunday best
and wondering what will become of my flesh and bone
I’m back to my arrogant immortal self
where I open my lungs to the city’s sunny ray summer breeze grime
walk with David Jack the Lad Baudelaire stealth
and kick old leather 50s footballs back to where they came from; not my time.
31. A NONSENSE UNIVERSE 2016
32. ELECTRIC ECLECTIC 2016
33. SEASONS AND SEADAUGHTERS II 2018
Good Day
If you were me, what would you be? Would you be recounting?
Lying on the carpet with my box of scrap-metal matchbox cars,
Counting blocks and abacus beads for counting
that never did me much good later on in bars.
Today, I thought to myself as I was happily driving along
how great life is and how thinking otherwise is, well, wrong.
The weather hadn’t made up its mind, a little sun, a little grey.
just like when I’ve not been able to make up mine, with forecasts for the day.
So, back home and ranking favourite songs
while listening to the radio,
I’m scribbling down something as a mental note to not forget;
Try not to get wound up and try not to get low.
This is an out-of-the-blue diary entry (when keeping one does its bit).
If you’re not guilty of reading it, I shouldn’t be strung up for writing it.
34. NOT SO MUCH AS AN INKLING 2018
Turning the Tiny Tables
I got an effigy of you
tied to a doll’s house chair.
I put in big wide eyes
to give you a fearful stare.
I stuck duct tape to your mouth
so you can’t lie through your teeth.
No-one could hear you anyway
in this miniature farmhouse on my toy velvet green heath.
There’s just a dim gaslight
flickering on the plywood walls to cast your silhouette and shadow.
You can only nod or shake
as I spend hours explaining what’s what and what you owe.
The game will soon end
and will it have been worth it?
I’ll be taken away by blue acrylic-painted policemen
in their silly siren cars to be tried by a judge made of plastic.
35. MINUTES FROM A MIND-READERS’ ANNUAL MEETING/FALLING ASLEEP AT A SEANCE 2019
When someone was saved
The winter sea set the tone.
What you mimed and what I thought.
Those names on a headstone.
When word-snares had our tongues caught.
I miss you. Every now and then.
Mistime an emotion without a cue.
But when we meet again
I wonder why I didn’t miss you.
Nailed clock faces twirl expressionless,
looking out to sea from cliffs;
Waves of NOs washing up a shipwrecked YES.
Ever seen so many stiffs?
When you have to get somewhere.
When you have to be someone.
When you should have axed a chair.
When you should have lifted a tonne.
36. SECRET SQUIRRELS 2019
Stratford Upon Avon
Behind the scenes, nothing’s ready yet.
I’m hammering my brain cells into place.
Gathering my thoughts together, putting up the set;
Hoping I might say something intelligent to someone’s face.
Swans and Canada geese act like paparazzi
vying for their best shot at VIP breadcrumbs.
But don’t let my words take away their beauty.
My bit-part players are the idiots and the playing-dumbs.
Today, I went to Stratford upon Avon. But not for Shakespeare.
Just to be here.
To get on a train. To be sat on the grass at a bandstand listening to a band.
To think about what might come. And…
37. CHRISTMAS GOTHIC CRACKER 2019
38. TALES OF ISOLATION 2020
Film Set Extras/The New Normal
The streets are empty when a blink ago were full.
The buses running with no passengers are just the ticket for wasting fuel.
The beggars have nobody to beg to
or have a two-metre vaudevillian wooden arm out if they do.
The local drunk shouts out to walled-in deaf ears
You’ll die of the virus! I’ll die of alcoholism! as he holds his bottle of beer.
Supermarkets are still open to shoppers in their cellophane masks
who weigh themselves on the scales and stick the prices on their arse.
Dogs are a new leash of life to get out the house for a stroll
as owners, tongues hanging out, jump with excitement as police patrol.
You can’t go out unless absolutely necessary or you might be in the doghouse
as helicopters above make sure anyone below looks like a mouse.
Statistics is the new board game and quiz show everyone’s glued to on their sets
as hospitals have stress shooting off the graphs in their attempts to offset
the sad, inevitable truth that people, cut off from their loved ones, are dying
and funerals can’t even be had for any god’s want of trying.
39. BLINKING WHAT? 2020
Photo Finish First Kiss
It was a photo finish
for who had started the kiss first.
She claimed her lips had moved in
before his had even got going.
He said it had all been too fast
but thought he’d played a decisive part.
The stewards were called in
and came to their conclusion:
She’d nicked it by a split second
but that both had been in full collusion.
40. LITMUS TEST 2021
John the Dodge
Ducking, diving, bobbing, weaving
every day is a slalom course.
Wakes up and jumps out the window without leaving
as his alarm clock goes off in secret morse.
There’s no flies on him as he rots.
He peers out in fear from flower pots.
Picks a few positive no’s from his nose
and plants them wearing bogie green clothes.
Love, love, love, hate, hate, hate.
He sits on the fence and crashes though a gate.
Crawls though the garden in camouflage.
Keeps his head down while at large.
Injects himself with his latest meds.
Zigzags around ambulances and hospital beds.
Has a giant car exhaust pipe breathing down his neck.
Dreams of killing it with a massive woodpecker peck.
41. POP CATCHY (2022)
Boulevard Way
A pauper can’t let the penny drop.
It’s dark with the lights out when things stop.
Nobody has anything worth moaning about.
Everybody shows something to cover it up
in a vicious invisible circle on boulevard way
while struggling on to the next street and the next day.
42. THAT MAGIC CALL? 2022
That Magic Call?
Once out of childhood in one piece
put your seaside face in a 1D cut out body
with a seagull-sand-donkey-ride memory
to give adult life a new lease.
Be hopeful, cross your fingers.
Tie them in knots trying too hard.
Turn over a new leaf. Turn over a card.
The game of lightweight luck always lingers.
You’re gonna make it, just behind the door,
just round the corner, just a matter of time.
Meanwhile believe in yourself especially on wine.
The phone rings. That magic call?
43. END OF AN ERA II 2022
Bangers’n’mash with gravitas, please
Ever since the little black n white TV set
was flickering in the corner of my carpeted playground
and through all the people I have and haven’t met
things have been going round and round and round.
Some people go on about what their life isn’t or is
some don’t go on about anything, some about what it could be,
some actually live it with or without showbiz
and some find the lives of others more interesting and ‘nothing like me.’
Whatever may be the secret to finding out what’s for you
it should come as no surprise it only drops with eaves
and you’re lucky if it comes with ease.
So have a few pints, point at the menu
and slur ‘Bangers’n’mash with gravitas, please.’
44. XMAS SPECIAL 2022
A Football
A football’s not just round.
It’s square in a square of fans.
Rectangular in a block of flats.
A long oblong like the rows in stands.
A football’s a cup of silver and gold.
A football’s surrounded by sleet and sun.
A football’s muddy.
A football’s a rough diamond.
A football’s stuffed with money.
Stories from home and away, here and there.
Eyes crying every type of tear
from over the moon joy to sick as a parrot despair.
A football divides and unites.
It’s a battle and a chemical bond.
A football isn’t just for Xmas.
It’s for life and probably beyond.
45. SECOND GUESSING 2023
Mannequin Street
Cracks on walls
bring fears that buildings will come crumbling down
with cries of Everyone out right now
‘cos of no foundations underground.
I gotta run for my life
leaving my life behind.
as dead screen stage guitarists destroy their guitar
in a rock n roll grind.
No one reacts.
Nothing is shocking enough.
A shopping street of mannequins stare out over rubble
as kids play football with what’s left of their stuff.
46. VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY VOICE-OVERS 2023
The Cotton Club
All the greatest there
from Billie to Dizzie
to Fats and Nat
to Ethel and Count Basie.
The chosen few there all ears
for jazz in its golden age.
Smoke veering with voices
and music crackling from an old vinyl stage.
But this isn’t about that
or those undisputed cool cats.
It’s not so upbeat
with clicking fingers or tapping feet.
This Cotton Club is different
where ears are kept in a cotton wool box.
A museum of air waves
where voices waft off.
When people don’t really listen.
When they can’t fix their hearing aid while it’s going wrong.
When it’s easier to circle round
and drown out words with a gong.
But this isn’t really even about that.
It’s about what happened this eve not long ago.
When cotton wool gets in ears
to float off thereafter as cotton cloud egos blow.
How we apologizingly admit it afterwards
and finally listen to what the other thought the other would or should know.
Better to voice it in time
with unplugged ears to get to some kind of clarity.
So back to the real Cotton Club
where in a dark smoky somewhere something might appear clearly.
So I’m especially wondering now
what this is really about.
Maybe it’s about cottoning on to songs they sing
and thinking it’ll all get simplistically sorted out.
Or maybe it’s about me
or maybe it’s about you
or maybe it’s about our own Cotton Club
and precious things kept in cotton wool.
47. IMAGINARY WORLD 2024
Tricks of the Mind
Plate-spinners spin tales.
Jugglers juggle coincidence destinies.
Acrobats do tumbles and cartwheels
while banging against skull cavities.
What people said and what they did
gets distorted in a hall of mirrors
as escapologist brain cells
vanish and disappear.
Trapeze artists in high-low mood swings.
Clowns doing slap stick comedy routines.
Dwarves playing pranks round and round in rings
as magicians cast spells to magic away and free lions and horses and childhood dreams.
As tricks of the mind cloud fuzzy senses
big top heads get lost
in thick theatrical smoke that billows and tent-denses
while thought lines get telepathically crossed.
A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 