Proud parents smile overlooking
their children singing back lyrics learnt by heart.
Got past mistakes set up for the future selling out and overbooking
as kids sign the dotted line to a recording contract that will make them falling rising stars.
After a few spills’n’thrills
the game ended goalless
with flickering frozen action stills
of baggy-shorted 19th century defenders parking the omnibus.
No one but her gets it.
No one but her knows what I mean, really.
No one but her would laugh in fits.
No one but her would I even tell it to, see?
Got something special together
as the world upside down goes on spinning its bad vibes.
Keep ourselves raining in bad weather.
Keep ourselves keeping it nasty to jeering jibes.
No one but her knows her minimum
No one but her knows a white rabbit.
No one but her knows why ‘That joke isn’t funny anymore” is a song to be sung.
No one but her meant every whispered word just a little bit.
Deep-green fields far away,
picturesque and framed on a morning-memory day,
I’d love to be there
breathing in the dewy air.
I’d hypnotically stand as mesmerised as a foggy-faced scarecrow
up to my wooden stick ankles in lush-green grass blades
where sheep bleat and cows low
bringing me round to duelling crow-cawing echoes
where my frozen nose
refuses to dethaw to frosty wintry morning sense-of-smell dawn raids.
Wearing your heart on a sleeve
in your octopus pullover
like when you grieve
because it’s over.
Like when you blurt it out and see it blow away.
When instantaneous taxidermy stuffs you for your museums.
Like when you wrap up on a winter’s day.
When stalactite and stalagmite teeth get iced up in your gums.
Like when wearing your armour and slippers.
when plotting your fate at your toasty-crumb table
with more mights than mighty.
Like when you’re so keen to get there, you trip over your flippers.
Like when you’ll gaze out through your frosty flat-let window
in November 2090.
I like walking by the sea
with my head in the sand.
I like picking up my seashell ears to listen for free
to waves with their timpani drums and starfish band.
I like getting away from everyone all alone
to be by myself to see what it means on my own.
I like being by the sea in the winter and spring
as autumn goes and summer’s about to be invaded by that near naked human thing.
I like throwing sea potatoes back to their long-lost friends.
I like skimming slim-line shiny pebbles in their personal Olympics.
I like looking up at seagulls overhead even though my wig falls off now and again.
I like admiring the web-feet artwork they leave behind and poo poo their critics.
Nothing like being by the sea
with a weathervane on top of my head spinning as sea breeze worries unwind.
I like paddling with my sandwich board on, declaring myself free,
as seaweed tangles up between my toes, just to remind me complete freedom isn’t that easy to find.
I was just another one
who knew it was wrong
but didn’t speak up for what’s right
and slept safely in my bed at night.
I was just another one who didn’t act
apart for show
to get brownie points racked
up on my school report to sleep well on my pillow.
When history books gathered dust on my shelves
and history channel commentators spouted their wise words to themselves
I was just another one
who didn’t stop them doing what I already knew was wrong.
And when I became just another one who got myself battered
I, at least, got myself saved and conscience cleared by being a victim.
Just another one who didn’t think it mattered
until I was dragged away from my bed to detention for being too dim.
Old friends with old tolls to tell,
pulling together despite a ropey universe,
where nothing means nothing
and whenish arrives the hearse.
That rascally boy and that tomboy girl
ringing doorbells and running away
snapping cheesy smiles of frankensense and monster myrrh,
unwrapping presents on a vague week-long recordless birthday.
OAPs singing songs from The Great War
keeping everyone awake in the middle of the night
crying out for water, rebelliously bedridden, with a churchful in store
leaving behind a haunted house in the sticks under the January moonlight.
Rationally, makes sense through and through.
Emotionally, leaves hearts full.
There”s nothing you can do.
Destination dead end day in Morgue Street
at the end of something as fleeting as cruel.
The best thing about having young parents
is they’ll be with you through a lot of your life
unless they die young
which is the worst thing about being young.
Of course the young looked older back then
and getting older turned them back young
unless they acted so old
they pretended to never be young.
Look through a kiddy kaleidoscope
and roll marble grown up eyes
unless your box of cut-outs has enough question marks
to keep on asking curious childish whys.
Use unless a lot
unless it doesn’t fit.
Sorry if it’s difficult
being close a lot a bit.
A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 