A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

Sixth sense at sixes and sevens,
reading too much into bibles and heavens,
best be down to earth and no nonsense,
with a say it as it is and a penny for your thoughts with a sales tag pence.

Play dumb to deceive.
Play undertaker to bereave.
The younger you are, the longer you’ll last
till aging takes over which it will do fast.

Live through everything life has to throw at you.
Don’t bother making a mountain out of a mole uphill.
Seems like you always knew what there was to ever know
gossiping just round the corner with that same postcode still.

It was a nosebleed.
It was optimism and pessimism balancing on a word.
It was a new year’s day lead
with evidence and clues that deliberately tone-deaf dawn chorus birds heard.

Occupational hazard for the meaningful
is posting their ideas for the meaningless.
The worst best thing for guillotine builders is being cool
as they lose their heads in a bloody mess.

Running to the wings and coming to a dead end
poor little rich millionaires run out of mansion bedrooms to hide in
cornered by wool knitting nitwits who’ve pulled wool from their eyes and who lend
themselves to do something historically original and trespass against those who sin win.

Revolution against revolutionaries and coggy wheelers.
Up-ending the head-over-heelers.
Have you had a good day or made a day good?
Looking forward to seeing you turn blind like you envisioned you would.

The getaway car’s engine is running inconspicuously
ready for the disappearance act.
Timings throughout meticulously
timed to overturn doubts and make them fact.

If all goes to plan, the getaway will get away with it.
The authorities won’t have a clue.
No fuzz but champagne fizz
and living it up in sunny climes with nothing but leisure to do.

Codename ‘Calvin’.
Make of that what you will.
Make counterfeit copies of original sin
and vanish into nothing or into an unwanted mug shot still.

Writing poetries
is like Nostradamus wrote prophesies.
I don’t know if they shed light
but, if you drink enough to candles like me, they might.

If you breed sentences with turkey-fat words
you can make them full of fake alibi meaning.
In any court of poetic justice, you might get away with being a free-verse jail bird
when you answer for your double-meaning scheming.

I like everything psychedelic.
And colourful nonsense.
But I’d rather write meaningful classics.
Fact is I can’t, so hide behind a fence
as a sniper of words.

Sixth sense at sixes and sevens,
reading too much into bibles and heavens,
best be down to earth and no nonsense,
with a say it as it is and a penny for your thoughts with a sales tag pence.

Play dumb to deceive.
Play undertaker to bereave.
The younger you are, the longer you’ll last
till aging takes over which it will do fast.

Live with everything life has to throw at you.
Don’t bother making a mountain out of a mole up hill.
Seems like you always knew what there was to ever know,
gossiping just round the corner with that same postcode still.

It was a fiery poppy red bleed.
It was optimism and pessimism balancing on one word.
It was a new year’s day hospital revelation lead
with evidence and clues that deliberately deaf medically-trained revellers heard.

365 days
do 360 degrees
with winter snow, springtime bloom and summer haze
through to autumn leaves
spiralling back to icy freeze.

I’ve had quite a year
that no new year’s resolution could have crystal-balled.
An unseen leap year forward on February 29th
that would have left any boastful know-it-all fortune teller appalled
with no anniversary near.

How’s it been for you all?
The next 12 months beckon.
We’ve been here before
and know it’ll pass in a second.

Wish you well.
Wish us too.
Kiss who you love to the midnight bell.
Hope you’ll be listening to songs you love that woo
or, if not, ones in your jukebox head, bringing in the new.

The actors can’t remember their lines
so, their hands are gripped
on The Right Rant Rag Mail, or The Dark Deluded Mirror. or The Troubling Times
with their lines tucked inside centre pages
so they can read their cover-up script.

They walk the boards in every scene
with their characters tabloid-nose down
and sell tickets to audiences who are keen
to see the latest breaking news interpretations in town.

During the play, they may need a stack of papers
which they pick up from the prop table.
It makes for some theatrical capers
which they sort out during press rehearsal.

And all this because they can’t remember their lines!
Actors who want to be dead sure they won’t corpse on stage.
Even in London, seeing the classics behind
broadsheets has become the west-end rage.

Can’t remember which password.
Don’t remember what to click.
Can’t remember why this doesn’t work when it should.
Don’t remember what option to pick.

Can’t remember how to read.
Don’t remember what to say.
Can’t remember that stuff about “hand” and “feed.”
Don’t know what else to do but turn it off and prey.

Can’t remember what’s beeping in my head.
Don’t know what’s crashing in my brain.
Never remember what the IT department said
was “so easy” before I forget it again.

Think it’s me or you or it that has to get away.
Think one of us is mad and one donkey short of a bray.
Can’t remember who’s meant to fit.
Ah just remembered: “Byte the hand that stream feeds”
– yep, that was it.

Up in the menu is poems written this year. Some have been published in the course of the year, others haven’t, but I have put them into a new collection or, as I like to think of them, a new album. A double album in this case! Nearly all poems have brand new collages to them. And it’s all called ‘Imaginary World.’

More & more in a muddle
Somewhere in the middle
You turn in on yourself
where’s there’s no-one else.

You don’t know where to look.
Autumn leaves left underfoot
& a green-finch on the path
you remember seeing in the past.

A snail-shell weighing you down;
All your possessions lost & found.
Slow-worms & slugs that go on slow.
Blackbirds & thrushes lying low.

Taking a right, you get it wrong.
Spontaneous mistakes never take long.
It’s getting dark and much too late
To run out of time and hesitate.