Pomes and Funnies

Big Garden

2006-12-21T16:23:00.000-08:00

As a child
I would often
cross the road
and catch grasshoppers
by their little legs
in the scrub patch
opposite our house.
We called it 'Big Garden'.

I would let them go at once.
I just needed that moment
when their tiny bodies thrusted
in the delicate tweezers
of my fingers.

That's twenty years ago I suppose.
The big garden is now a house
and my hands are too big for
catching grasshoppers.
I don't mind.
My priorities are different these days
anyway.

White Shark

2006-12-21T16:17:00.000-08:00

The street is alive again
and I need some water
some bread and a bottle.
I left you sleeping on the steps
of the exchange and
propped a sign about your neck
that said
Caution: Great White
and hoped that would fend off the
bums and drunks who got too close.

I'll be back before the dawn
when the real monsters come
circling.

The Rainbow

2006-12-21T16:07:00.001-08:00

I walked you to the hospital
and you talked of old Malawi.
'Pink Gin Days', you called them
and you cried.

Your boy was only five.
You left him for three days
alone and terrified
to talk of old Malawi.

Doctor, Doctor, what do we become?
The air, the sky, the elephants,
the sad and long-faced men?
The walk was done
and was undone.

We talked just then of Christ
and elephants.
Your boy is gone.

The Mood and the Moment

2006-12-21T16:07:00.000-08:00

Young marine, you lost your friend.
His blood was in your hair.
Faceless killers and
a language you fail to speak.

Step across the desert,
move out of the sunlight
(ducking through the doorway).

Roomful of enemies;
women and kids.
They could be haunted.

You're pulling the dream together
from the trigger of your weapon.
Roomful of bloody dreams.
It's the mood and the moment.

The Lovers

2006-12-21T16:06:00.000-08:00

I bet you don't remember this:
sitting cross-legged and drunk
on the roof of my car
and staring at the setting sun.

I told you you were beautiful
but you looked at me and said,
'If you think this is beauty,
you need your fucking head examined'.

Later, we made hurried love
behind the police station stables
and you whispered,
'love is one long rape'

and I took you home
and listened to your father's records.

Notes To Those About to Jump

2006-12-21T16:05:00.001-08:00

All in all it's very sad
when people's parachutes go bad
It's quite enough to make you cry
as they come hurtling from the sky
screaming with their final breath
and plunging to a messy death.

I saw one once whose 'chute had failed.
(You wouldn't believe how much she flailed.)
Her legs and arms windmilled around
right up until she hit the ground.
At that point (and this is rather sick)
she just became a bloody slick.
Her parents got in quite a muddle
When they saw their daughter was now a puddle.

But you've got to see the funny side
as for every parachutist who died
there's loads who had a super time
and landed on their feet just fine.

So if out of your party three or four
end up as ghastly heaps of gore,
just tell their families to be realistic
and quote to them these great statistics
then help them out by saying, 'fuck it.
Let's collect your kid. I'll get a bucket'.

Destiny

2006-12-21T16:05:00.000-08:00

You didn't see those falling logs
as the lorry bounced on the
corner of the curve.
Somehow the bump
threw them up
like grasshoppers.

I remember thinking about
something you'd said when we were
growing up
'Some people are born to
be killed in accidents', you had said
laughing
and then you fingered me
as a prime candidate.

I remembered also when we
were f---ing about on that frozen pond
and I knocked out three
of my brand new teeth.
You laughed.
'Better get used to it, Bro,
It's just a taster'.

Yeah, and now those logs
poised in the air
grasshoppers no more
sudden and fatal
and I thought I'd had it
but then everything
I thought I knew about gravity
went wrong
and the logs hit you instead.

I'm gonna miss you, Bro, but
I guess
you realised your destiny.

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

2006-12-21T16:04:00.000-08:00

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

Part One - The bride.

You get me as you want me
Mimicking sighs in the lusty morning
Etching patterns of extasy into your back
with perfect unbitten fingernails.

You get me as you want me
Wearing skin tight primary nylon tops,
unredeemed denims
and no knickers to block your way.

You get me as you want me
Never saying that I love you,
Vacant-eyed as I find you cheating,
You'll never see my lipstick tears.

You get me as you want me
Crucified on our marriage bed
choking on your drunken breath
as you abuse me with arbitrary domestic objects.

I am strapped to the underside of the planet.
It slowly turns against me.

Part Two- The groom.

Who stapled that pornographic blowjob smile onto your face?
I do hope it wasn't me.

Who scissored away your memories of first love and closed-mouth kisses
and gaffer-taped a rough and hasty handjob in their place?
I honestly don't know anything about that.

And who, I wonder, mugged Cupid for his bow
and sent a volley of his little love darts into the
soft flesh of your unsuspecting cunt?
I was busy creating art so I didn't see the crime committed.

As I reap the crop from seeds I didn't sow,
I have to wonder if you even noticed the changes taking place?

How Not to Kill Everyone on the Planet

2006-12-21T16:03:00.000-08:00

We were waiting for the bus
the bastard one oh seven
and you said, 'Hey, let's for fun
kill them all'
and I blew my nose and said
'Who?'
and then you just repeated
that one word
'All'
and went off swinging up Bounds Green Lane

Later, the police called and asked me
to come and get you from
the police station in Enfield.
You'd killed a cat, they said,
but you were sorry.

The Misfits

2006-12-21T16:02:00.000-08:00

Two men were roping a wild white horse
on salty desert sands
and somehow the sky and clouds
were shades of grey
although the sun was shining.

And all through the silence of their concentration,
you did your crossword puzzle
and drank fresh lemonade and
stirred the ice-cubes with your finger
and licked your fingertips
and looked at me.

It was like I had been summoned before royalty
and you said something to me
that I never understood.

You said, 'I am the sky and the horse.
You are the men who drain the colors.
Let go. Let go of the rope'.

No-One Would Dare

2006-12-21T16:00:00.001-08:00

I have to say it was obvious
as the water surged over her body
and the lifeguard was elsewhere
(up the beach with blondes I suppose)

I have to say I knew she wasn''t coming back
and when you looked at me and said
''Don''t worry'',
I thought ''coward''
but then you held me
and I held you back tightly
and hated myself

It broke all our friendships that day
as the water took her further away
and we each wore that same terrible expression
What did it mean?
We knew what it meant all of us.

It''s just hard to explain.

Rebellion and Murder

2006-12-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Rebellion and Murder

It's hot and it's Saturday afternoon.
The garden is the garden still.
I just came back from watching the ants
make a nest out of parts
of our shed.

I can't say how long I watched.
An hour at least.

They made their nest and it made me think
about chaos, about death
and life and birth and revolution.

I let the ants climb over my feet
and over my hands and arms and
then finally over my face and
into my
mouth.

I tasted their movements gravely
and felt suddenly old and tired.
Then drastically, I poured my coffee cup into
their nest
and watched them sail away
and watched them drown.

Christmas Cake: A Recipe For Life

2006-12-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

Christmas cake: A Recipe for Life

Ingredients
5 teacupfuls flour
1 teacupful melted butter
4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded.
1 teacupful cream
1 teacupful treacle
Between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children, unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes slain 27th May 1234 near Altenesch, Germany.
1 teacupful moist sugar
80,000 Turks slaughtered at the Battle of Belgrade 1456
2 eggs
1oz of powdered ginger
20 million victims of First Crusade
1lb of raisins
several hundred thousand witches, burned at the stake or hanged
1 teaspoonful carbonate of soda
20,000 Huguenots killed on command of Pope Pius V
Thousands of Jews slaughtered in 1096, maybe 12,000 in total
All the Jews of Basel and Strasbourg, lightly burned.
200,000 Polish Jews, massacred in 1684.

Countless dates, all forgotten

1 tablespoonful of vinegar.

Each Dawn I Die

2006-01-18T04:57:00.000-08:00

Each Dawn I Die

I dreamed that I was Godzilla
ravaging the city
and in my claws were you and I
and we were arguing
in Japanese.

I dreamed that I was Sherlock Holmes
and you hired me to discover
why you had put that snake
into my bed.

I dreamed I was Count Dracula
befanged and dread
but as I moved to bite you
you gave me laughing gas
and pulled my teeth.

Each morning in the hour before I wake
you kill me in my sleep.

What You'd Said

2006-01-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

What You'd Said

Success with women
eluded you
because you were trying too hard.
It's obvious to everyone except you.

We found it funny too
(that isn't too strong a word)
that you cried when
the girl you desired
so much
got married and invited you to
join the fun.

We took bets on whether you'd
disgrace yourself
and then you did
and I won a hundred and twenty quid.

Best of all was when I was
drinking a cocktail in a seafront bar
and someone said you'd died.

I remembered what you'd said
about suicide being pure cowardice
and smiled.

That Hole

2006-01-18T04:02:00.000-08:00

That Hole

Reports indicate
(and Christ knows I trust reports)
that the sky has a hole in it
somewhere over Greenland
and places like that.

Anyway, I'm thinking
about that
(I think about all sorts of things you know)
and I'm thinking about
trying to climb out
of the hole
and stand on top
and look down on the people
in Greenland, and say,
'Hey, Sven. Fuck you!'

Maybe.

Flowers

2006-01-18T03:56:00.000-08:00

Flowers

You used to say that picking flowers
was like pissing
an orange moustache
onto the Mona Lisa.

Those are your exact words.

You said picking a flower
was like that moment
on Christmas night
where your dad unplugs the lights
and the room changes back
to your boring old lounge.

Anyway, even after you'd said all that
you still slept with Paul Morrison
and when I asked why
you said,
'He bought me nice things and YOU never did that',
even though he only ever bought you
a bunch of flowers
and a
gift-wrapped
threepack
of condoms.

Card Tricks

2006-01-16T03:35:00.000-08:00

Card Tricks

I bumped into Tom Simpson yesterday with whom I spent
several unhappy years at St Patrick's School For Boys
You could say, although we never did,
we were best friends.
Anyway, we chatted about his life, his two kids, wife,
Audi TT and then when he asked about mine I said
'Actually I have to go'
He handed me a business card and said 'Let's talk again'.
I couldn't think of anything to say and although I had no reason
to excuse myself I whispered 'I'm sorry'.

I didn't have a business card so I tore the pocket off the front of
my shirt, handed it to Tom Simpson and ran away.
A little later I burned Tom's card.

You don't think he could track me down from a shirt pocket
do you?

How'd That Happen?

2006-01-16T03:31:00.001-08:00

How'd That Happen?

The police told me you were dead
I said
How'd That Happen?

They said your corpse was spread
across five black plastic sacks
and stacked inside my shed.
I said
How'd That Happen?

The senior cop (the nice one)
Said what I had done
was pointlessly end the life
of my young and pretty wife
I said no nah no way mate
It's a mistake a fake.
He said give me a break.
He said she's dead and in your shed.
He said your bloody prints are on the walls
and on the sack and now you've got the balls
to answer back and say
How'd That Happen?

Our Car Park Cow

2006-01-16T03:27:00.000-08:00

Our Car Park Cow

A cow escaped from the market
and ran across the town
in a lonely stampede.
I imagine it was looking for
other escaped cows
or maybe just a door marked 'Exit'.

By the time it was cornered in the car park
outside work
it was looking tired
and confused
flustered like an old aunt
at the funeral of her matching uncle.

When the police turned up, the crowd were
already whispering about a child
killed in the High Street by a runaway cow.
Our car park cow didn't deny the charge.

The bullets punched holes in the cow's face
and it lay there for forty-five minutes
before the market van arrived to take it away.

The Tube

2006-01-16T03:09:00.000-08:00

Your Soul

2006-01-16T02:49:00.000-08:00

Your Soul

Look inside me you said
I'm open and I love you
Look inside and see my soul

I had had two large brandies
On top of the booze.
When I concentrated hard and squinted
your face melted away and I could see
two dogs chasing a rabbit across a dewy field
I could see twinkling lights
and horses
and salt-beef sandwiches.
Was that your soul, I wonder?
and if so
are you really the girl for me?

My Uncle

2006-01-16T02:35:00.000-08:00

My Uncle

I don't know, I don't want to say
that killing six million people was acceptable
but my uncle only killed 355 of them
and they were Italians anyway.
Plus he's fucking ninety and hardly likely to do it again.
It's perfectly well and quite understandable
for people to say that war crimes
must not be forgiven

But I think when you're ninety
all bets are off,
your priorities changed from political gain
to comfortably finishing up
with minimal shame.
I suppose in my heart I can also see
that a ninety year old jailbird is a joke anyway.
My uncle is a prisoner in his own flesh.

A Happy Poem

2006-01-16T02:26:00.000-08:00

A Happy Poem

This poem is a happy poem because
Hitler killed all those people
but it didn't happen to me
and Stalin starved twenty million
but I'm eating chocolate biscuits
and in Sierra Leone and Chad
and Somalia and Bangladesh and
North Korea, people are fighting and
starving and suffering and dying
but I'm well out of all that
and more or less untouchable as far
as politics and economics go.
Yeah, I mean I know the planet's fucked
and my kids, when I have them,
will be looking at a demographic nightmare
of over-crowding, pollution and drastically
lowered life expectancy, but by then
I'll be pushing up daisies with a fucking smile on my face.

So this is a happy poem.
I mean, why shouldn't it be?

Blind Date

2006-01-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

The Last House on the Right

2006-01-06T07:26:00.000-08:00

The Last House on the Right

Our Final Solution,
much better than that Nazi one,
was to play music much louder
than our neighbours.
They liked country music
and hymns
while I had Eddie Van Halen's
guitar pinned up
with a crucified Jesus
on the neck.
We played the Eastenders theme
on my brother's drum kit
every night
for forty five consecutive midnights.
My brother had been killed
in a car crash
but the neighbours moved out
and their house was destroyed.
Bulldozers. Turn it up.

Nonsense Words

2006-01-06T07:07:00.000-08:00

There's a place I'd like to take you
where words like equivocal and absolute
are meaningless.
I'd like to take you there
that place where firemen burn in the night
and taxi drivers keep herds of cabs in line
with a vicious whip.

We'd get there and you'd look at me
suddenly still and pale and silent
and you'd say
"All this is this. All that is that.
All men are girls. All dogs are cats."
I'd say huh who when what why
and you'd look right back and start to cry.

Meanwhile these two old men in leather coats
would have carried away the world we knew
like scenery
and the new place would be home
and we'd change our names.

You would be equivocal.
I would be absolute.

Untitled

2006-01-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

Things haunt me
things you said in takeaways
as your cab pulled away from the kerb
things i barely heard
and things you never said at all.

How sad am I and how sad are we?

You followed me in the rain
home from school
with a knife between your teeth
and all these years later
you're married to a guy called keith
and cope with a deaf-mute child.
It almost makes me smile.

Isn't life cruel but interesting?

Don't you agree
as you cry yourself blind
Never mind: one day
you may show them what you're made of
sprout wings and fly
as the thunder begins and the rain comes fast
and you'll know how to settle scores at last.

Something I Liked

2006-01-06T06:44:00.000-08:00

Something I Liked

There's something about you
I liked
from the very beginning.

Probably you're funnier than me
and full of sharp things to say.
When you say those things
I always think
how nice it must be
to have all those people laughing.

When I try to do that
people just stop what
they were
saying
and consider what I said.
It's a joke just a joke
I tell them brightly
but by then it's
too late.

Or somebody gets offended
and I have to say
I'm sorry
secretly thinking
that you wouldn't have to.

I don't think there's anything about me
that anyone ever liked
from the very
beginning.

Welcome to the Blog

2006-01-06T06:36:00.000-08:00

Do you have nothing better to do?

Fair enough? Good. Read on.