Some poems

Fault 

But for you I could have a cushty number in insurance, seventeen kids in Preston and a beige four door, I could have a sensible credit rating and a noose. 

The life of quiet desperation gets bad press, but screaming desperation, none? 

Art? 

Art is just mental illness you can dance to,  

My advice to you is don’t touch the stuff, move to Cardiff or anywhere they don’t have it yet. 

Take up a good moral hobby; badger baiting, chasing squirrels into cul-de-sacs, rhythmic fidgeting, anything,

Anything that won’t cause you to persecute a poor, blank, page. 

Pandora 

Here lies a jar of hallowed antiquity 

In who’s dark and conceal’ed interiors 

Lay fates both great and small 

But fair white hands did free them all 

Set loose, on me, my kin and thee 

What weathered age has spake a myth 

Has cast me to my knees 

To wait, to live, and to Hope  

Martel 

Your blood bled at Tours 

Your kin held 

Cavalry faced foot, and cavalry white-faced fled  

At Lepanto your line lined the decks 

As shot filled the air 

They won the day 

And you? You’re afraid of the flu 

Terrible thing to think what your kin think of you 

Home 

Land of the creeping Starbucks of the soul 

sparrows in mirrors and fun house cages 

Colosseums wrought of Lego  

Look on my works ye mighty, I despair 

And did these feet in ancient time walk upon an overflow carpark? 

There’ll always be an England 

Land of hope and multi-storey 

Noblesse obligatory diversity training 

Grant to me lies in stone 

Plexiglass truth, do not condone 

Rough hand hewn, calloused rock 

Recyclable cup construction begat

Soul trading on open floors 

Oppenheimer 

Had it set in? 

Dead from gangrene 

Smiles and good humour, bandages starting to reek

Beta Max versus VHS, MTV, and the locomotive loosed 

Not with a bang this, but a whimper 

Dancing in the streets of Lot 

As it was in the Days of Noah, so shall it be at the Goldman Sachs’ PRIDE parade 

The Hollow men, riven across the plain 

Dead eyed, glass eyed, the eyes are the Windows XP of the soul 

“I need these on my desk by Monday” 

The keepers of the flame we, we who are not flammable 

Bequeathed a ruins, barbarian me, bleating at the Romans 

“God grant that my enemies are ridiculous” 

And this he did, and us also 

A photocopy of a photocopy, fighting dragons 

He who stares into the iPhone take care lest.. 

I am become Modernity,  

Destroyer of worlds 

Kyrie, Kyrie, Kyrie Eleison 

Middle management 

Man does not live on bread alone 

Dies irae, Imago Dae, employee discount at the staff cantine 

The True, The Good, The Beautiful 

Can we put a Sainsbury’s in the basement? 

322 Cable Street 

Leviathan bred, great translucent seven headed Beast 

Bursting, full birthed from the Thames 

In thee I see 

Thine sides aslick with commuters drizzle 

Netflix adverts reflected in thy Babylonian flanks 

Shake off the umbrella rain at the sliding doors 

As cheap flights to Majorca wander overhead 

“fifty quid return, not bad really” 

O thou, thou unholy thing, thy innards unconceal’ed 

A thousand thousand Legion toils 

Computer screen’ed 

Your guts obscene, all usurious and comfortable trainers on Fridays 

And behold, a pale horse, and on him sits the intramural five-aside team 

August 19.59pm 

Red marble flamed, swallow clad, and green leave fringed 

God grants crowns of glory to the tenement blocks 

Icons of the saints, with their satellite dish halos 

Magnificent these concrete beetles 

All things unclean by hand of man made 

Redeemed by that divine and painterly eye 

Shorn of disc, clothed in imperial purple  

last salute of the seagulls  

Who’s wheeling, and swooping, and settling on the big green cranes 

Reaps in the last day light  

Don’t be French 

Stop it. It’s superfluous. 

Tome 

Never met a book I didn’t like 

If I the Motte, the better part of better men the Bailey 

Plato wasn’t much fun at parties, but part of he’s in me 

and I know all the dirtiest dirty jokes 

Fool

Though I could speak in all the tongues of men and angels, but have not her.. 

A crowd, a face, and hope, despair 

What profit the man? 

What once was mine, cast off, thine 

In the losing, losing self, to become and come undone 

Nemesis, foeman, reflected in a passing car 

What once was wounded, once was moving, lingers still 

And cracked, and parched, and prays for rain 

The lost 

Rudderless, riderless, unchaine’d bark 

Tempest driven, thirst unquenched, Bacchus mocked 

Harried on, on, on, the Styx, the Sahara 

Hound chased, chasing 

Libidinous, two become one, become too many 

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