A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

With no sound but tiny bells tinkling on an empty platform in the middle of nowhere
and 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 nowhere
and a model train silently moving towards a station there.

6.20 pm.
With no sound but tiny bells tinkling on an empty platform in the middle of nowhere
and quick spontaneous ghosts on a disused railway sprouting up on a stem,
a gothic black dressed made-up comic character stops the tinkling bells by suddenly being there.

After dinner, two play violin
as she dances on a pub table, just hours before her flight.
While she steals an umbrella and gets caught out
he takes off Elvis, Saturday night.

There’s one that quotes comedians verbatim
as 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 twice, then make a get-away.

He walks on Dartmoor.
She falls asleep tipsy in his pyjamas.
While she mixes up REM with The Rolling Stones
they act the goat in one of the town’s cattle bars.

As two shouting-match brothers pull a hired boat the few metres to shore
she confidently quotes A woman must have everything taken from Joni.
One gives him the nickname ‘Think Out Loud.’
while another says he’s talking baloney.

As the mob sludge-hovels home
ex-executioners wash their hands in the clubhouse
while guillotine stray dogs roam.

CATS SCRATCH CATS!
BATS BATTER BATS!
And beer mats get soaked in ale foam.

As the saints come marching in
one has blessed a mouse
while can-can dancers have anointed a tin.

STEAM TRAINS STEAM!
GILT-HEAD BREAM BREAM!
Washed up with a gleam and a bottle of gin.

whoever was led
couldn’t see it coming
the sooth-sayer said
while the tooth-playing journalist got a filling fill-in.

Final fag in my mouth into the battle lines
with everything to prove to myself.
Mustard gas smoke signals leave sky-signs
to read on packets for your health.

I’m whistling a little tune from before the war
hoping I will get to win la guerre.
I dream of being able to snore once more
and wake up to breathe in a lungful of fresh air.

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!