LAWYERS

When I talk about our compatibility
You accuse me of nattering,
So let me compare us
More quietly:

You’ve got more faults than a fracture,
And your meter is inaccurate,
And you’re tearing us apart
Every night,

Whilst my emergency services have resigned
And been replaced by a force less inclined
To pick up the pieces
Dispersed,

And with one double bed replaced by two singles,
And a number of flaws intermingled,
They’re waiting to see
Who’ll crack first.

DELTA

Do not wipe my
Eyes when I cry today,
For I know the laughter
Lines of my youth have
Found their calling,
As falling calms
The flow.

DISTINGUISHED.

The error was inherent,

The tangle integral,

The blooper absolute,

The failure inalienable,

The incursion conclusive

And fault inalterable.

GROWTH

A further teenaged disturbance in the street,
But unlike others this one caught up with me.
So there I am with my hands at the throat of a moron,
When I sense another behind me set to strike;
I spin round with the first in my arms
And he takes the second one’s spike.
The assailant looks mildly surprised
Before gliding backwards and flying,
Leaving two smaller goons, who, after
Chattering monkey grunts at each other,
And scratching their obligatory baseball
Capped heads, also leg it.
I drop the trash I’m still holding
Into the nearest wheelie bin,
And wonder if the council’s
Policy of recycling really does
Work on people.

ELSEWHERE.

In corners,
Off centre,
Over edges,
Unmentioned;
Around Inclines,
Amidst half surveyed ridges
Of surface pitch,
Behind the horizon,
Beyond the sun rise
And underneath the earth.
In pocks and post holes
Hidden in the road,
Lower than the street lit tarmac,
Between the natural and artificial
Boundaries of livelihood,
Where concealment pits
Rain water drained against
Our sewage merchandise,
And perfect well springs begin
Without knowledge of what
They will become.

HALF

There was a bingo caller’s hole
In the middle of her forehead
Where her single eyeball rolled
Until eventually florid,
And her weathered vest was served
By a solitary nozzle
Whose measured dress was curved
To hold her only elbow’s jostle.

A lonesome socket loitered
In the centre of her pelvis
Where the sole hip rocket jointed
Hopped and swivelled more than Elvis,
And one trouser leg was anchored
Over half a pair of gaiters
That aroused a keg of thankyous
From the patrons and the waiters.

WHOLE

The tarantula and pepsis wasp
Performed their famous dance;
The spider reared,
The sphecoid neared,
And quickly took its chance;

It stung the softer abdomen,
And like a fallen fly,
The spider’s legs
Collapsed, as eggs
Were laid to multiply.

LIVED

More than a car crash:
A train wreck,
A plane failure,
An air strike,
A tectonic plate quake,
A comet impacted planet,
A solar nova,
A colliding spiral galaxy,
A universal stretch
And crunch,
But fun while it lasted.

LOVED

It did its thing on me
As she was passing,
And pulled the rug from underneath
Whilst I was still fastened,
Felling me to my arse amidst
A partial introduction
And displacing granite structures.
Filliping my minstrel’s grace
Until it failed to function;
Taking a hammer and pick to my side
And offering terms of alliance;
Purchasing a furlong because of its light
And running me around in the dark,
And like a nimble man in limbo land
Who thought he’d won but couldn’t
See that entropy was closer to the ground,
Dragging me down first, and educating more
Thoroughly than loathing ever did;
Then standing me candidly and
Leaving me with a queue
Jumper’s view of the scene,
And the feeling that I should
Have stood in line.

GIRLFRIEND

Compared to my pastimes your hobbies
Seem less complicated, although I can’t imagine
What else they could be,
Ruled by desires undiscovered by mine,
And moved by music less tuneful,
And books with pictures,
And films with flash edits,
And others arts charged by crayons or
Pencils or pastels or painted by numbers.
But what could I have expected when my
Heart was captured by a backwater
Woman like you;
So I’ll revel in your body,
And buy you the lingerie I like
For your birthday.

LADIES

I prefer those girls who shave
As opposed to those who epilate,
And those who aren’t pushy
Or inclined to dominate;
Those who smoke filter-less
Compared to light cigarettes,
And are wont to inhale
And unlikely to spit.
Them that drink pints
Instead of kids’ halves,
And take it up the arse
Without having being asked;
Those who move with you,
As opposed to wet fish,
And flood twice a day,
And grant any wish.
The ones horizontal,
The few standing up,
Bent double or trebled
Or single or grouped,
And who feel like a boulder,
And sound like a scream,
And look somewhat older,
And say where they’ve been,
And taste like the ocean,
And smell like sunshine,
And are dirtier than earth
And glow when they’re mined.

ANGEL

Be grateful that only
A voice escapes from
The darkened place,
And not its owner:

The hateful incumbent,
Whose eyes see what
You do not want to,
But cannot deny;

The attrition maker,
Scraping the surface
Of your spirit with
Ancient abrasives;

The partition breaker,
Whose last word is
Always the same as
The worst available;

The first amongst equals,
Rivalling every level
And rolling down
Your finest aisle;

The legendary devil,
Incarnate within you
And no longer
Fallen from heaven.

IDEAL

I can see that wheelchair pushing future
Creeping up on me,
Rolling closer
Every day;
Nobody thinks of us
Who are left to pick up the pieces
Of a broken back.

So we plod on like Humpty’s faithful
Foot soldiers attempting
To glue you
Together again,
And anybody left to
Encourage our efforts should be
Fallen in,

But they’re too busy rebuilding their
Own bodies, and keeping
Their parts separate
From each others,
To know if somebody else
Needs more care and attention
Allocating to their clots.

And when they do fall down their hill,
And their former corner
Pieces mingle with yours,
Don’t call me,
For I’ve spent too long looking
At the box art and imagining
How you should look.

TEENAGED

The not so little half ladies
Crawl around the terraced streets
In crews of no less than seven
Looking for alcohol, or fools
Willing to finance it for them;
Either down the throat
Or up the road, or any way it flows.
Though everyone round here
Is enamored of themselves,
And the armour assumed as society’s:
Hefty golden hands,
Backwards baseball caps,
Elasticated waist bands
Of fallen truck apparel,
Half priced fags from strangers,
Diluted drugs from neighbours,
Booze in bulk from nearer
Home than continental superstores;
They’re junking or dealing,
Or foreign or freewheeling,
Or a tribal member or a tourist lost on
The edge of industry, or a
Rambler thigh deep in
Gilt edged fields -
So those little girls
May be in luck.

KIDS

Unfortunately, as I said to my child,
The story of the tree trapped cat
Would not be the most important
Tale of the day, but she still watched
The news anyway so I guess she’s
Learned something today.

Not that it will matter tomorrow, when
Once again she will ask at the worst possible
Moment the first thing that enters her
Head and then tramp off flat footedly
Upstairs before an answer, to trance out
In front of an equally unwitting mirror.

Stronger in the brain’s casing than
Its contents, but she’s not overly concerned,
As all the other kids out there are
The same and the number of times
I’ve asked her not to use this in
Defence of her case increases.

But they’ll only do what they want,
And play ball in the street, and get hit
By a car, and then some useless track
Suited moron substituting as a parent
Will blame the driver for not looking, but
As long as it not my wife, I don’t care.

BONED

I set little bets with myself
As to when you’d come home,
And lost everyone.
Found scraps of paper wrapped
Around coins in your pockets,
And avoided the phone.
Talked myself awkward until
I ripped out the wires and
Was left with no tone.

Fastened my latches and blotted
My lights whilst I sat
Up alone.
Slept when I thought it correct,
And awoke outside
My comfort zone,
And watched as you notched a
New mark on the face of
My stone.

FUGUE

The tubular metal skeleton
Of the wheel barrow
Was all that remained amidst
The ashes it was
Meant to shift,
So I had to shovel them
Into a sink bowl to move them,
And was later told that the dishes
Were still in there, but they weren’t, as I
Imagine they’d been re-fired the night before.
And to top it all
Nobody knew
When it was dinner time
As the only clock in the house
Had also been sacrificed to the flames.
Luckily for our tired frames
The settee and its relatives
Still remained in the front room,
Although one chair was slightly charred
And scuffed with
Paint the same colour
As the back doorway,
So we must have remembered
Enough sense to return the furniture
Inside before it burned too.
There was so much distance in that house
Once we arrived, although it was only terraced,
And silence in the sounds
Once cherished.
Not only were we going slowly,
But poorly as well.

SOLD

It’s that soda fizzing,
That coated chicken,
That family secret
That can never be kept.

And if you want to flog a car
Sling a bird in the back,
And if she fishes her tits out
You might sell two.

How far we fall for flesh
When all seems set
Upon the unexpected heights
Of simple trading rituals.

LAUREATE

He single-handedly reinvented
Verse for the masses,
The new middle classes,
High born horse’s asses,
So called experts passing,
Chattering proles gassing,
Word burglars harassing,
The bled and set fast,
The received and outcast
And first born and last.

FEET

One fine lazy day
Those old soul mates
Met up at the bottom of the bed,

But the lesser of the four,
In toe and claw,
Were a little too loving for the others.

And temperature wise,
Were characterized,
By the stale embrace of embalmment,

So the senior half
Of the partnership,
Disgorged them from the covers.

They packed their weight,
Though hardly straight,
And made the trek down stairs,

To lonely alight,
Until, by night,
Limber up together.