A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

He cut himself off.
Didn’t answer the phone.
When the doorbell went
He wasn’t at home.

He simply switched off
Sat Anon.
In a dark depression
Kinda turning him on.

A man going down
For a very long time.
Not behind bars
But a put-on smile.

No-one else knew
Of his inner other.
A bust of himself.
His own Big Brother.

She felt down and out of it.
Looking out from her look-out post.
Everybody, everywhere:
Some far-off fifteenth-century ghost.

Guests would swear her eyes had moved.
Her portrait face, hung on the wall.
Behind the canvas, keeping still
Out of sight, she’d eavesdrop all.

She wasn’t happy and she knew it.
Happiness she’d never known.
Not a soul had ever come close
And closeness, itself, she’d never shown.

Suits of armour in the hallway.
Manuscripts by candlelight.
She didn’t speak to anyone
But wrote her diary every night.

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’re 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.

Raindrop bodies cloud-gather ready to teem down
for a downpour on the battleground.
The forces of good and evil and in-between
are rolling up with mangled up metal ribcage spines.
Black crow words uneasily perch on carbon paper cable lines.

the plate spinner spins his plates
but he’s let things slip
a little of late
his life in pieces at his feet
that magic touch that filled the seats
a helpless helping of butter fingers now
all washed-up he takes a bow

what a shame what a pity
this inconsequential little ditty.

As they stitch each other up
and paint their eyebrows and gloss their lips
designer label lovers are as real
as the clothes they hang on their hips.

The show over, they dine
where restaurant cooks stir (with a fag in their mouth) behind kitchen doors.
As bedtime wardrobe window-dressers, they wake up the next day:
Just part-time boutique assistants, where make-believe breakfast champagne pours.

The tide rolls in.
The tide rolls out.
Seaweed on the rim.
Scuttlebutts tossed about.

The tide rolls in.
The tide rolls out.
Flaky boat-varnish walling
run-down saw-dust flout.

A port of sin
of by-and-large, and eelpout.
The tide rolls in.
The tide rolls out.

I’m impossible
Wanting the implausible.
Is it me or is it you?
My fishing boat on blue.

I’m unshakeable:
My resolve unfathomable.
Why can’t I sleep?
My heart wrecked down deep.

While hearing the siren
Bait underworld men
Old boys in cafes
Think out their days.

I’m so impregnable
But indefensible.
When will it ever finish?
A pretty kettle of fish.

I’m for Parliament. You’re for the King.
It’s more important you lose than I win.
Taking a stand, there’s no sitting on the fence.
I’m for Cromwell. You’re against.

Your men, for their cavalry commander, bark.
Cocking their legs at Pym, jumping at Charles.
Capturing Rupert’s black mongrel, we cut off its lugs
And make it a Roundhead; A pox on you Royalist dogs!

At Nottingham, you raised your standard.
The blackest year I’ve ever had.
While chaos in the countryside continues to grow
Landlords, levellers and clubmen come to blows.

If you’re not on my side, you’re on the other.
Dividing the loyalties of wife and mother.
You’d think we could find some common ground
But the world and our hearts are turned upside down.

At Edgehill, bitter rivalry finally got the better of us
With russets and browns, greens and buffs.
As all turned grey in the gunpowder smoke,
Field-signs set us apart on our coloured coats.

We fire our matchlocks, attack and retreat,
As pikemen form hedgehogs, and die on their feet.
Though they may number four score and ten
We bury more toes and fingers than we do men.

You take the piss out of our New Model Army
Coining it The New Noddle in taverns round the country ;
But with your Queen’s Pocket Pistol renamed as Sweet Lips
We taste revenge with every sip!

I’m so under the influence, I can’t see straight.
Marching a vicious circle that just won’t break.
I’ll be fucked if I give up on this uncivil war!
That tyrant and traitor will pay for it all!