Christina Sestina

I wrote a Sestina
I called it Christina
She works in a chain store
A specialist dreamer
She is superior
On the exterior
Her nails her attitude
Make me inferior
The man from the label
Need acts for the stable
With tip-off in place he
Gets her round the table
Knocks opportunity
Plucks from obscurity
Promises fame and
Financial security
He rents drum kits guitars
Buys her pink neon bras
With 10 percent money
Keeps her plastered in bars
He gropes in the toilet
He writes out tonight’s set
He powders her nose while
She asks “what do I get?”
He presses record as
He barks out the orders
A 3 minute single
With pin badge disorder
Her face on the front page
With free flexi-disc rage
She’s waved about wholesale
The queen of the new wave
The journos all clamber
For snippets of anger
They act all much worse when
They put down their cameras
She’s not being funny
But “where’s all the money?”
She’s the animal tester
A punk playboy bunny
The toll takes its firm grip
Each motorway night sick
She’s cooking up backstage
As long as he sees fit
Equality vacuum
Sucks out in the green room
Where pin ups are pinned up
And torn down with “fuck yous”
Economy as art
Was there from the start
Will stay for the encore
And till death do us part

Rest in Power
Pete Shelley

Bored Meeting

For all the homogeneous
Boards and executives
Need the bottle
Shaken up
For the needle
The cultural injectionist
Presents
The mash butty
Covered in
Catsup

Pieku

Fake mince season nears

Santa baby’s treason is

Not at all gravy

Sleep Shopping aged 13

Here’s an often visited
Town bus station
A teenage
Brain combobulation

It’s 12:15
There’s too much noise
It’s Toys ‘R’ Us
Without the toys
It’s BoyzIIMen
CD cellophane
It’s 12:15
Have a lie-in again

And your eyelids
Are darts
From JJB Sports
Your engine’s
Stolen from Ivor
You saw a dream
In a magazine
And it only cost a fiver

The ever rain
Plays havoc on your trainers
The market smells of bacon
Hair’s a disgrace
But grows a shaver setting
By the time
That you awaken

Kicking burgers
Round the cold town centre
When the
Smell of lurkers
Entertainment that’s
A bus day tripper
Where’s the punks
Outside Boots
You saw as a nipper?

You wonder what
The time is for
And why the scallies spit
Staring at the football tops
Wishing you w’ good at it

You know the names of skateboard tricks
But no clue how try them
You know the names of girls at school
Fuck-all about them either

Taste in music awful
Sense of direction shit
A Saturday lone ranger
The poll tax what is it?

With a sports bag full of questions
A pocket devoid of answers
When pubs were as much use
As libraries
Before you learnt to dance
Son

Quilted for Ashley

Is your jacket quilted?
Your bog roll,
The same pattern?
While your Sports Direct derrière
Does prepare,
On the golden throne
You’re sat on?

Pants by ankles, hoping
The golden retriever,
Doesn’t leave you,
Jilted on the John.
After you wipe your arse
With our season tickets,
Just remember who
You’ve shat on.

Time is tight

Time is one up before 5 minutes of extra
Time is five down after 5 minutes of closing
Time is TIGHT

Bonfire Night Tanka

Remember it’s that
Time of year to remember
This’ll show ’em what
Remember to set fire to
How much money that you’ve got