They cried their eyes out
Feeling free.
In a world of usness
they felt such thempathy.
She worked in her lab
making concoctions
to rid them of their own fears
and self-rejection.
But then, she hit the streets
and the authorities hit back
putting anyone in prison
who had her statue in their sack.
It was only years later when troubled soldiers
were fighting for peace
that her memory was dug up
and her life given a new lease.
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.
In the square, people hang out,
while others that live there hang out their underwear.
Rosaries do too and won’t go away, as blasphemous customers eat out
while others, strung out. drink in the square.
In the square, children run amok, mocking parents
who try to shout louder than them with something like ‘You dare!’
While owners, barking up the right or wrong tree, on mortgages and rents
keep their dogs on leashes or not anyway in the square.
Having joined up, seagulls on shore leave squawk easy
while lower ranked birds tweet together on their karaoke.
In the square, the street-lamps will light up and go out there
just like cigarettes and fag-ends in the square.
No-one left alive
thinks they should’ve died.
They grieve everything they leave
having to face they’re a dying race.
But without a trace, they don’t disappear.
They’re just not here.
My flat’s in a small little piazza
where bars and restaurants have made it the ‘in’ place.
There’s a big palm tree surrounded by
windows and shutters and balconies, with pavement stones at its base.
The living room is the best room
‘cos it overlooks the square.
It lets in the outside world; shelves its books, catalogues its records.
tables its hungry mouths, and lies out its legs on its sofa.
Along the long corridor are the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen
with their flings’n’slumbers, piss’n’shits, pots’n’pans.
The cleaning usually gets make-shift done to Sunday morning radio.
Flies may thrive, but the odd incumbent cockroach gets stamped on under the strictest of life-bans.
My flat is where an upside-down key opens a back-to-front door
locking me away from everyone and everything.
My cat waits to be fed and waits for me back home.
We both fall asleep, while night fortune-tellers plot what tomorrow might bring.
New collection just published called ‘Second Guessing.’ It’s up in the menu along with other collections/pages. All poems written this year, and collages so fresh they’re still drying!
Got a lot to learn.
Got bridges to burn.
Got a dream to get away.
Got waking dreams that stay.
Got days that last forever.
Got a life never ever after.
Got medicine under a mattress.
Got a treasure hunt at the chemist’s.
Got a discount on something free.
Got a detox kit for being happy.
Got an escape plan with no exit.
Got a password easier to forget.
Got memory lapses
that bounce back when it counts.
Got a turntable to spin LPs
Got something so cool it might freeze.
Birds gossip about weekend strollers
twittering and ridiculing panting joggers.
Olympic-faced kids whizz round on their tricycles
and monk-faced bellringers meditate on bicycles.
Lesser-spotted warbling hermits get ticked off
by ‘I-Spy’ book-carrying hermit spotters with binocular eyes
while ear-phone music-listening loners chat with mallard ducks
who tilt their heads with my-oh-mys.
Grass grows a millimetre a minute for hallucinogenic cats
and dogs, off their leashes, get a rush of fetching sticks.
Trees play green light, red light statues with the park keeper
as leaves turn brown-yellow-purple psychedelic.
Johnny Minimal
never went over the top.
He only went to war
against unnecessary need.
He kept everything under control
and kept it all bottled in.
A cork in his mouth;
He was a man of very few words.
He gave his love in small doses.
Just enough to keep her going.
He never whispered sweet nothings
‘Cos nothing sugary was sweet to him.
He didn’t believe in pie in the sky.
He didn’t talk of God or Christ.
He led his life accepting death.
He never acknowledged anything more.
Everything would be a close-guarded secret.
Everything he kept close to his chest.
His private life was strictly private.
He never let anything leak.
When he went, only close friends came.
As the coffin closed, it was left unsaid.
Nothing flowery was at his funeral.
What he would have wanted, at least.
She wears purple and pearl
Emerald green; a girl
Who hangs with the world
Wrapped round her neck.
Years after she was born
In her will she’s sworn
Never to compromise or pawn
The weight round her neck.
As the accused play for sympathy
And the victim acts guiltily
Her matchmaker stares critically
At the stones round her neck.
Song written by JDG, guitar and vocal by me (‘3/10, see me’ if school report?)
A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 