Vauxhall, Keep Off, Gridiron Lady.

Vauxhall

Repeatedly
Scotsman Politics
Apathy Tube
Loves London.
Hates Celtic
Likes my Shoes
Ska-man! He calls me
Repeatedly
Biggots, The Sour Sturgeon,
Over we chew
Shows me his Partick Thistle tattoo.
Repeatedly


Keep off

Don't punch
The bees
Don't feed
The pigeons
Save the
Foxes
Hate religion
Don't
Hate the
Religious


Gridiron Lady

As successful as
The Cleveland Browns:
Unity projects
In England's smallest towns.
That's what they want you
To swallow down.

Kingston Train Station Observational

Hot pants and tears
At the suburban
Railway;
S’alright he’s
Got a comforting
Suit on.
Not comforting really.
As right and
Proper as the pigeon
Spikes
In his investment,
His Chicago bears
Play the bulls
“No, love
What I meant to say
Is” not
That.
Paying the bills.
S’alright though,
He's got a suit on.
Over the shoulder
Mascara drips,
Behind previous I
Afternoon
Text message tiffs,
Waiting room doorway
A tear-drops hits,
Price drops,
Rain drips,
Time slows, ticks
By an obscene
Amount.
The necessary
Train guard waves.
They both
Separate
Their
Never ways.

A Couple or Three Down The Compton Arms

A Couple or Three
Down The Compton Arms

You always push it
An hour, see.
I don't care for Dave
I don't care for Kev
I don't care for Billy.
I care like you
Should.
For an hour.
For me.

A couple of 4 short ones

A Haiku

Fifteen point, nine point,
Five point plan. By! Each day ticks
Tips hat to You, Gov.

A Tanka

The Art of Being Straight

Straight lines straight lines you
Straight call lines these straight lines call
Straight these call you lines
Straight you call line straight these you
Straight up lines you call these lines?


A Haiku

Feeding season,
May Stable bolts, not strong to keep
Hungry mice at bay


A Tanka

One shows oneself, up
One shows what's behind blue eyes
One shows neck of brass
One commits to maintain one’s
Personality bypass

For Manchester, a poem

I wrote this in an hour,
Which was not an act of flippancy
Or braggery, just an an emotional response.
I'm not from there, but close enough.
It's a city I worked in and had some of the
Best nights of my life in.
This is a city I know and love
And if you spend any time there
It becomes a bit of you and
You become a bit of it.

For Manchester

Throw that shit at us?
Take it on the chin, mate
You ideological blagger.
Chest it down,
Volley it in t' top corner,
Celebrate with swagger.
More soul in these
Dancing shoes, mate
Than your empty, selfish jabber,
'Cos we're spreading
Love not hate,
Singing unity songs,
Casual, yet dapper.
'Cos defiance flows,
Like lager in the rain,
So, sort yer neck out,
You ignorance projector,
You pointless Beswick Bag Collector.
Whatever shit you throw at us,
This City is United.
With industrious creativity
With balls, with soul, with chivalry
As Tony Wilson said:
"This is Manchester,
We do things differently."



Peace.

Ess

(For a bit, at school, ‘ess’ was shorthand for ‘essence’,
meaning 'brilliant’, i.e. ‘It were ‘ess' = 'it was brilliant')

Blokes debate
The necessity
Of the
‘-Ess’ suffix.
Actor,
Actress.
Manager,
Manageress.
To excessive
Excess.
It's important
To them, it seems.
In, the barperson leans.

These cerebrally
Impotent bloke-esses,
Discusses,
The unnecessary-ness
Of lack of success
To homestead press
Such Jurassic parquess
Suffixes,
There’s a
Verbal express-ness
Of the unequivocal-essness
Of the mandatorial-essness
Of the quintessential 'esses'.
The barperson expresses
Some distresses
Without successes,
'Cos the bloke-esses
Have myopic deafness.

Repressiveness,
Is the assertives' assetess,
Manifesting in this
Manesses’ congress,
Putting to press
This malevolentess
Incompetentress's
Seethers' digest
Of incomprehensibleness.

These imbalanced genderists
In the bars' breasts
Nest and coalesce
And request:
No more outspokenness!
Or balance upsets!
'Cos lest we forgets:
That's just
The way
It is
Bruv.
(Ess.)

Trees, School Dinners and The Daftest Thing I've Erver Written

Haiku

Yew trees hear you, oh?
Yew turns season's tree you coat
Yew turn away, u-turn.

Tanka

You child! Yes, you there!
Give us your dinner money!
There's a fault line in
Our faulty fiscal figures
And it's all your fucking fault!

Me gustan los árboles

Me gustan los árboles
Se puede sentarse debajo de ellos y escribir sobre ellos
Nuestros líderes son como árboles
Se sienta debajo de ellos y
se escribe sobre ellos
Me gustan las motosierras

Read in Solidarity with the striking LSE cleaning and security staff with Poets on the Picket Line

After, After Noah

She's beautifully strange
She's always a-la-mode,
A David Bailey model
Quite the Queen,
Of King’s Road
A style of, fifty years
Either side o’t’ 60s,
(You think she looks good now
You should see her, come Christmas).
A welcoming one, a teacher
She’s what you might call ‘Clahssy’
The friendly face
Of re-invention;
Just occasionally arsey.
She's kitsch, she's kosher,
Consistently contrary,
Her family of catholic-size
Are hanging round St. Mary's.
Been knocking round for donkey’s,
Always on the blower,
Swapping gifts
For smiles
In retro-fitted aisles,
Eccentricity’s a grower…
Go see her sometime,
She’s getting there,
Like a Hamley’s train set,
But slower.
If you knew her,
You would love her,
But to love her,
You’d
‘Ave to
Know ‘er.

The spurious sham summation of a stitched-up snooker showdown

After the break of 27,
Not clever,
He sits down
On the exclusive
Green leather.
It's late in the game
And most of the reds have gone.
He takes off his
Clip-on tie and bows with shame.
If only,
He laments,
The budget cue
He rents,
His refusal
Of a long and easy rest
Taking the low scoring yellow
Instead of
The smart safety of the green
The bloody difficult blue -
He could’ve easily potted,
But! outside the rules
The referee re-spotted,
The white gloves,
Pulling strings,
And ultimately
Nothing's
The thing
That he could do.
No Chas and Dave
To whistle,
A baying crowd of hacks
Bristle and
Laugh
At his marching shoes,
At missed pinks and blacks,
They go for the throat
Of his high-vis
Waistcoat.
The resentment grips,
The match a fix
And this’ll
Prove
What different
Result
It could've,
If the the match
Had been
On the
TV screen.

"Severance Pay" and a right pair of Tankas part 3

"Severance Pay"

Severance pay
Twenty severance pay
The old school ties
Cut the old school ties
They sever
We pay

Tanka #1

Le Pen, Le Pen; Shit!

Le Pen, Le Pen, Le Pen; Fuck!

Le Pen, Le Pen; Merde!

Thank Fuck! Le Pen, Le Pen Ain't

Mightier than what, I swored.

Tanka #2

Rolling redundant

Career ladder accident

Daily despondent

Is there a more pointless job

Than Royal correspondent?

It's Black and White and I'm Red All Over

It's Black and white and
I’m Red All Over

Not cool as chips
Not safe as camels
The straw stuck in my
Craw-dropping
-smacked-gob
And I'm s’posed to
Stick that
Under me hat
You twat?

We're in the land of
Ain't so funny, honey
So haul yer
Eggs up sonny.
The top brass-
Tacked monkey
With eyes right
Says nothing bright
And drops his
Dead donkey Kong
All over this one.
Share of the pie with
Cucumber butties anyone?
We’ll make sure
The  sycophant
Never forgets, pet.

Cheap
As big
Girls blouses,
Keep your deals
In yer trousers
And keep it quiet,
As church mouses
But I'll gather
Sticks and moss
To chuck
At your
Glass-ceilinged houses
Boss.

Caught in nowt
But stockings and a
Basque,
You moral separatist.
I get the gist,
You popularist,
I'll put you on the
Kick-the-bucket list,
As many a truth
In a bespoke vest,
But I suggest,
That schtum
And mum
Are the words,
For the news
Paper’s new,
Polished turd.

Not happy, as
Larry lambs to the
Slaughter, as we
Go to the dogs
Brian,
We're
Sick as a Norwegian Blues,
You prick.

As you may pretend to have
Three jobs.
It those who actually need
Three jobs;

That you want
To read,
That
Shit.