On this blank sheet,
torn from my bedside journal,
I could record
the unshared grievances
and missed embraces.
All the adventures unexplored.
And when that page was full
I would fold it –
again and again and again –
until it became a tiny tablet.
Then, as you looked away,
I might drop it
into your water and watch
its words dissolve, disperse,
filling your glass
like a love potion. Or poison.
vii. 2024
a birthday poem for TJS
Moonset, out there.
Already they are on their way.
Maybe women also wheelie back and forth
with bins to empty, and return.
Settled, foetal, you cling to the cardboard hem
of flat-pack dreams:
an unfilled mind riding the Alpha waves.
A slant of light squints through the louvres of your blind –
darkness begins to lift.
There is juddering outside.
You’ve seen that monster – lifting, tipping – eat before,
and turn deaf ears on it.
But all your time-torn wiles to win back sleep
are useless as a punctured tyre.
From under snugly covers, grudgingly
you pull yourself up, strand by strand;
realise that comic handstands are a skill
beyond your years.
iv. 2024
with apologies to Leonard Cohen
Come, my sisters and brothers,
let us govern Britain,
let us apply our best minds,
let us discharge sewage in Downing Street,
let us make the Lords a torture chamber
until – one by one – they all confess,
let us purge the Labour Party,
let us make Europeans speak English
not only here but everywhere,
let us promote the dark races
so – when they take control –
they shall be magnanimous,
let us make content for TikTok,
let us all be tourists,
let us float across the Channel on a Li-Lo,
let us whisper sweet nothings to the enemy,
let us cast bullets in men’s sheds,
let us sell Irn-Bru to the Third World,
(Do they know three of our national leaders were women?)
let us terrorise our colonies,
let us merge republican with royalist,
let us not show a white flag,
let us demand a written constitution
sponsored by Bet365,
with prize for the most ground-breaking suggestion,
let us threaten to join the U.S.A.
then chicken out in the nick of time,
my sisters and brothers, come,
our best minds are waiting for us
like sleeping bags abandoned in shop doorways,
let us give them purpose soon,
let us keep a world-leading silence
beside the Thames.
v. 2024
I drew a straight, red line clean through my own name. It had longtime been listed there. The world in my fist no more.
We have arrived at a terminal moraine. Unprepared, even after ten years with a smart phone. No stile or kissing gate in sight.
You experiment with a brand-new look, apply fresh make-up. I pass your instruments, but do not know what they are called.
The view from the back window is almost the match (I say) of the one before. Even if it falls away to a ditch, not a river.
Splashdown! An echo of fallen debris. We pick out what is clean and useful. Our new infrastructure – durable as a glass hammer.
Why is the light on a timed circuit? Every five minutes, we are plunged into darkness, and one of us must switch it back on.
These constant interruptions. I am layering moussaka (made from leftovers) into a dish. Is this a thing? 8 / 10 respondents say “yes”.
iii. 2024
