The End

 The End

(with a small debt to Adrian Henri)

Without you

the cocks won’t crow

the bulbs won’t glow

the flowers won’t grow

my mower won’t mow

Without you

the week won’t end

the banks won’t lend

the willow won’t bend

my emails won’t send

Without you...

the dawn may as well not fucking bother

Without you 

the planes at Heathrow and Gatwick

will just sit on the tarmac

with listless pilots

laying face down

between their wheels

Without you

the clocks will stop

even on boats

far out at sea.

They will always have been stopped

Without you

the crowds at Lenin’s Tomb

Easter Island, Mardi Gras

and Kumbh Mela

will all disperse

shaking their heads and

muttering darkly.

Without you

dogs will disregard their bones

and eat Wine Gums

from now on

Without you

football matches will be played

with only one team

all headed towards the same goal

Without you

the axis of the universe

tips towards oblivion

Without you

the greatest song ever written

will be dismantled

by all the broken composers

Without you 

Mount Everest

won’t have been conquered

anymore

Without you

the worms will give up

eating the dead

and hunt down the living

Without you

these hands of mine

cannot reach out in the night

and feel the darkness reaching back 

Without you

the hot moon dies

gets lassoed by gravity

and plunges into Bexhill-on-Sea

Without you

my poems are shopping lists

Without you

everybody’s poems

are just the words

‘shittlety dee’ over and over

for hundreds of pages

Without you

the world can catch fire

and spin away from me

slipping into the

clockwork cosmos of fairy lights

and I won’t even say au revoir

Don’t Go.