Newspaper Theatricals

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.

Digital Breakdown

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.

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Garden Maze

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.

Dickensian Kenneth

Dickensian Kenneth as is his ilk
In pyjama regalia picks up the milk.
Slippers quick-march hup hup one two
Back at the double to Breakfast HQ.

Where in her eggcup marmalade empire
Tea toasted soldier paraphernalia,
Victoriana’s rule of thumb clear;
He’s under hers “Yes love, no dear”.

‘X’ marks the spot on his Union Jack bot
Where the canvassing Conservative candidate stopped.
His face, like the rosette, turned Tory Blue
Securing a seat in the polls ‘92.

Dickensian Kenneth as is his bent
Eyes left parades outside the gents.
No medals for lateness; Victoria’s cross.
Despatches excuses; Careless Talk Costs!

A pie eye for a pie eye

Drunk on revenge
See them square up to each other.
The same old scraps.
The same old bother.

They hold their minute of silence
while bad-mouthing and incapable of keeping silent.
One day, both sides might come to their senses
as amateur giant-killing peacemakers beat professional war mongers in a cup tie upset that sends dailies into delirious cup fever excitement.

Meanwhile, the school blackboard is blank.
What have we learnt in centuries of learning?
Give as good as we get?
Leave revengers and pie-eyed war party disco dance floor revellers disco burning?

Very wordy.
Too much so.
Simple message:
Let it all go.

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Tricks of the Mind

Plate-spinners spin tales.
Jugglers juggle coincidence destinies.
Acrobats do tumbles and cartwheels
while banging against skull cavities.

What people said and what they did
gets distorted in a hall of mirrors
as escapologist brain cells
vanish and disappear.

Trapeze artists in high-low mood swings.
Clowns doing slap stick comedy routines.
Dwarves playing pranks round and round in rings
as magicians cast spells to magic away and free lions and horses and childhood dreams.

As tricks of the mind cloud fuzzy senses
big top heads get lost
in thick theatrical smoke that billows and tent-denses
while thought lines get telepathically crossed.

Cats’n’Dogs

Teatime rain brewing in teapot clouds,
powers-that-be dunk their big biscuits in their big cup.
A pretty kettle of fish and bones boiling in up-the-revolution kitchens with rights overlooked and doffed hats centuries kow-towed:
something’s getting somewhere like a cat from a kitten or a dog from a pup.

Legendary ties get consigned to history,
to be dug up again and again in eternal rematches that get postponed due to rain in waterlogged trench pitches.
Fighting cats and dogs, with little mercy,
a paw, a whisker, a tail, a skull, bubbling and steaming like being promise-vowed and brewed by 16th century revenge accountants and little quill-pushing civil snitches.

Meanwhile cats and dogs in many households
live together in peace or blissful non-aggression pacts, at least.
Time’s getting on and it’s getting muddled and old
as future generations drink and guzzle and party-revel, oblivious to a copy-cat unneighbourly dog-barking politely-camouflaged unidentified cat-dog mechanical biscuit-eating Yeatsian beast.

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