Delicious Is In The Details

 

Delicious Is In The Details

He’s already on his third coffee

and later he’ll try to sleep

without success - toss and wonder why

they’re slinging slabs of meat

on cheese, ladling on the salt

and claiming delicious is in the details.

There’s third rate brains that compete

for attention, leaders replete

with latest block transfer computations

forming thin entropy out of thick air,

sending striations anywhere

in faint pulsars beyond the farthest star

overlapping in convergent subduction -

and tomorrow he will try to work.

On Sky, views might make them weep

but they’re 20 minutes in, hip deep

in babbling brooks - cataracts who greet

each other, stone each other’s backs

fool gold for noises off the Richter scale –

and tomorrow he will try to teach.

Now this - she’s on the phone,

bodies gone to rack and ruin, with knees

chockful of some ill diagnosed disease,

cigarettes, chocolate, gin not tonics,

they say we’ve got it something chronic

send more money, please, won’t you?

And tomorrow he will begin anew.

Build

 

Build

 

We don’t build anything good anymore,

don’t drill, don’t pump, don’t mine -

no shipbuilding on the Clyde or Tyne,

or coal- fired plants that yawn and roar

bite into landscapes with feral force,

to turn the mills, to tap the source.

Honour Owen Williams’ M1 bridges -

block concrete stalwart staples stitch fabric

warps, majestic wefts, hauling traffic

to docks, to ports and to the world.

Now windmills squat by potholes -

silk spinning spiders in milk white cloaks,

vast fields sewn with rooted mirrors who live

and are all the better to see you with

whilst catching the setting sun over Albion.

They’re tapping on our broken pipes

- hey, who switched off the lights -

in morse codes, help, save my sole  -

tinpot echoes from drought linked cells

of dripping cloying honeycomb,

our millions indolent stay-at-homes –

paid in crypto to forget coined in iron,

told they’re sick, to give up trying

and, if they forget, then they maybe are –

to replace petrol with electric car,

remove hard shoulders and call it smart,

rebrand telegraph poles as abstract art.

Bird Trap on the Étendue Sauvage

 

Bird Trap on the Étendue Sauvage

 

You often catch sight of these green

metal contraptions - seen

where verges are somewhat verdant

or they’ve bagged up flat insurgent

arid blooms of grasses, palms, shrubs

and your birds are grubbing

amongst litter and plastic scuttered thinning soil

beneath an incubating sun that boils.

Approach with caution. The common myna,

clever bleeder - ringed eyes like shiners -

has tunneled within, taken the bait,

filled his belly, cleared his plate,

hopped back to realise his sticky predicament.

His fate sealed like feet in cement

and his mate – they pair bond, you know –

is looking from without as if to go

and join him within. No, no, no, no,

he must seem to her to shriek,

horrid morsels mummifying on beak

until he gives up the ghost and his feet

are pointing skywards. An invasive species –

or so the pundits will have you believe,

that does nothing more than thieve

living space – squatting on indigenous nests,

noise pollution, parasites, breeding pests –

must be controlled, it’s humane you’re told

and you shrug, accept, call it or fold

and look - they paint the bird traps green.

When you sleep, you often dream –

shrewd eyes looking from without within

that wonder if you’ll save your skin.

Summit of Beauty and Love

 

Summit of Beauty and Love

 

A desert day fit for hot baking,

your armpits damp, your throat aching

conjure cracked roadside eggs sizzling

and sweet-filled taco syrup spilling -

just oozing into parched cracks.

You’d watched her morning struggle -

arm behind, her fingers juggling

as she's hooking up her cupcakes,

and now you sit outside and wait,

the Pajero’s air-con grappling manfully

with an Arabian summer’s heat.

Her friend comes from dark interiors

of some low-rent abode

bucking bales as she negotiates the road -

surely those buttons will never hold,

or so your inner bad boy hopes.

Later at IKEA, she’s picked sausages

a hearty helping, a wanton portion,

her teeth, her lips perform contortions

and how you loved that word –

tittered at it, when you were young

and growing up, it was among

those you banked for sleepless nights.

Later, among the clocks and lights,

her bag bulging with trivial picks –

she speaks Filipino and licks

the cone as whippy ice cream drips

from wafers onto fingers.

What you’re told later long lingers

into your afternoon siesta’s dreams –

her French boyfriend, of vast appetites

vacationed and had taken flights

of fancy with some other squeeze,

sending evidence in the post –

it must have been a hollow boast

after she’d packed him. Such a shame

but, even so, you feel it just the same,

swimming up the torpor of your brain

and Venus was her name.

Four Candles

 

Four Candles

 

You watch them put people in the jungle

and make them eat worms,

slap leeches in their baths -

been doing it for years – adding dabs of colour -

celebrities, influencers – off they trundle -

I mean, if it’s a Tik Tok Twerk

with followers a-plenty, they better get packing.

Switch it on, how we laughed –

or if you think something’s lacking,

maybe not. Later tonight there’ll be a top ten

of things somehow better then –

Fray Bentos, Dixons Pick n Mix,

Saturday shopping at Woolworths –

but there’s a nip in the air.

Want a national dish? Have an English -

goodness gracious me, you saw that once

they’re putting chips on everything that’s wrong

but you’d rather be caught with a poppadum,

left wondering if it’s dubbed a classic

because the dim and distant remember it.

Who told you to think that,

made it a condition, a living thing,

a terrible thing to lose –

you'd never put yourself in their shoes

or walk around in them

because they know there are those

who laugh at four candles –

even Griff said it’s a shoddy thing to lampoon

shooting sparrows with a cannon,

there must be something worse in the room –

coming from jungles, sculling with spoons

while you’re told those poor people on the rafts,

will make it here and will fail to laugh.

A Jack of all Knaves

 

A Jack of all Knaves

 

Sometimes you’d like to jack it all in,

my Johnkin, wish for the tin tack, the sack,

put the boot in, flirt with original sin

some negligence, misdemeanor, peccadillo,

tell me, is this the way to Amarillo,

Phoenix Nights - show me your Peter Kay,

homeward bound? It’s that way.

But Jack Sprat could eat no fat,

whilst ever-expanding girths of those who lack

for nothing, are in want of filling,

need stuffing, see? Keep on drilling,

keep on running, gimme some lovin, roll with it,

lumberjack, steeplejack - nothing bootjack

will ever have teeth enough to remove shoes,

pining for the fjords, what’s the use?

You’d fix that flat, but the jack’s gone AWOL,

the AA  won’t pick up the phone at all,

the RAC used to salute, you know,

but you’re stuck there and cannot roll

or join the great big convoy

and ain’t she a beautiful sight?

Rubber Duck, Pig Pen,

Spider Mike might allow

your tar to plant his jack on the ship’s prow,

watch that pennant flutter South

as she’s churning

her buttered Northbound wake –

HMS Raleigh, HMS Drake

bowling for jacks on Plymouth Sound

as the Spanish Armada’s Eastward bound

for the Philippines.

Or even you dream

of kicking back,

plugging headphones in the jack,

Hit the Road, Jack and don’t you come back

no more, no more, no more, no more.

Ah, it’s all a bit of Jackanory

what’s the story, Balamorey,

while she’s home at home from home

plumping your pillows,

licking her lips,

heaving bosom and see-through slips

standing with her syrups on her rose-hips –

another month brings another wage

while you tell it like the end of days

coming on like a polymath’s sage

but all those scratched spirals speak

to nothing so much as a jack of all knaves.

Please Remember To Mention Me (In Tapes You Leave Behind)

 

Please Remember To Mention Me (In Tapes You Leave Behind)

 

Fishy tissue from the bin

you just put the used trash in

wipe liquid from your puncta

cold smears and the glass is smudged

from side to side

so please remember to mention me

in tapes you leave behind

 

Vans exist in old Qatar

did not know they reached that far

talking T Shirts not the car

lifting artifacts off the hook

that stray offside

so please remember to mention me

in tapes you leave behind

 

She’s got wheels wheels of steel

dentist and her whining drill

his cavalry and his hill

never too far from glorious

but too unkind

so please remember to mention me

in tapes you leave behind

 

Curiosity kills cats

born in skips, but for all that

there is nothing that they lack

and the marimba shimmers

as beaters grind

so please remember to mention me

in tapes you leave behind

 

Magnificent men in their

flying machines windswept hair

up tiddly up up and flares

shoot up dummy Lee Coopers

but where’s your spine

so please remember to mention me

in tapes you leave behind

 

When your world is running down

all you find is all you found

she who’s in will make no sound

but trespasses against you

and love is blind

so please remember to mention me

in tapes you leave behind

 

Shangri-La is sitting here

playing postman’s knock that's clear

name that tune then disappear

and I’ll name that tune in one

I think you find

sometimes I did remember to mention you

in tapes I left behind

Yesterday’s Favourite

 

Yesterday’s Favourite

 

There are bureaucrats and plunging necklines,

you know which you prefer -

and her eyes glittered with half mocked up steel,

viz - well it all depends on how you feel

and some are well past their sell-by date.

It flickers across your mind,

death by a thousand paper cuts and all that

and you wonder why she did not say use by.

Maybe she sees your woman, sawin’ on a fiddle,

playin’ it hot – and raising flames of sin

with her violin, violin, violin –

all yours, Babooshka, Babooshka, ya-ya -

like how her subtonic, snaps to, resolves tension

and release – oh, her buttons be thieves of vision

she looses just one or two -

you’re never caught looking but looking, she’s shaking

think of all the music we’re making

oh, and how we’d like to make even more.

Still, a phone call begets a tap on the door –

something about revelations, elbows, short sleeves,

those boxes need to be ticked you know

so, consider this a ticking off, ears made of cloth -

sweet sweaty brows onto pillow cleavage drips

like sails billow over prows of departing ships.

 

4 Whats, Fool?

 

4 Whats, Fool?

 

Once, when he was very small,

he scrawled in biro upon the toilet wall,

4 to Doomsday.

What made him do this, he could not say,

It was all that university food in the JCR

one too many at the bar

of the student union that time David Owen

popped in – there was going

to be an election – 87 and  Maggie Out,

the riff-raff shout –

all that Two Tone, New Wave,

calm down, behave.

Wait, wait – was it Peter Davison?

Could be, he had a lot on –

A Very Peculiar Practice, Sandra Dickenson

all squeaky voice and Trillian,

Brenda Blethyn, Chance in a Million,

and then there was The Doctor.

No matter, what’s salient is this,

when he returned next day, for a shit,

beneath it, some wag had put

4 Whats, Fuckwit?

with much ado about underscoring.

They’d call that trolling these days,

but back then it had made him think,

wounded and blink.

Still, ask him that question in 2026

and I think he’d have 4 answers for it.

This is Wrong, Right?

 

This is Wrong, Right?

 

He’s claiming he can’t strum it -

I’m just a campfire guitarist, see?

we nod, it’s a standard setting,

his done thing, not letting

practice get under his skin

and from out of somewhere within,

Alex hits the drums – punctuates him.

But you put up, shut up,

and maybe rhythm sections

indulge in a bit of back to basic

eye-rolling. That’s him, that’s me

waiting for a cue –

meantime he’s given a G Minor,

patient in her rough good humour,

so we can all swing it together.

And there’s something here

isn’t it? Like, decades back

looking, seeing nothing of this, that,

hit the road, Jack,

just static, grey snow,

then white out - there you go, that’s me.

Who could’ve caught it,

or said to your fuzzy futures go,

don’t pack ice, toss it behind,

close doors after you

and who knows what’ll you’ll find?

There are some faces, still

getting grainy, camera roll back and mix

pointing fingers, scrolling credits,

guilty as charged pay the debit

and you do try not to forget

director’s chairs and producer’s hats

as she rosins up to play

something about life's best days

not slipping through her fingers

all the time - try to catch it every minute,

how your future’s bright -

but this is wrong, right?

This Could Be Rotterdam or Anywhere

This Could Be Rotterdam or Anywhere

 

When Dobson’s holding two pair

this could be Rotterdam or anywhere -

say Manchester in the High Peak,

so to speak.

And all that he is

and all that he teach,

and all that he loved,

and all that he seek,

put him somewhat out of her reach –

because she's gotta hold allusions

or it’s all confusion

and the lunatic is in your head.

So, after all that tolling

on the iron bell,

he might prefer to kick back -

rather than scrambling to pack,

make the bus, rush the train,

mocking up those kaleidoscopic strains

of On The Run -

rest a little, see his little one

who is little no more – but like a son –

and just breathe, breathe in the air.

And Dobson, after all,

is only ordinary men –

and they shipped some 50 million.

You’d like to give a bit of it away

in clues, but what's the use, he say:

if you didn’t hear it by now,

if it didn’t permeate, infiltrate –

well, this could be Rotterdam or anywhere,

and there’s more time to stand and stare

than maybe you’d care

to think.

Implacable

 

Implacable

 

Here’s your flotilla – a floating thing

of carousing crews, champagne corks

and popping off a quick selfie from the bridge.

Stand fronting the mirror, all a-quiver

and service the art of self-service -

post pictures, memes,

high jinx on the high seas.

You crawl above the Mediterranean basin

with all the speed of sea-snails set racing

against nudibranch,

urchins and worms,

tossing off plastic

as you drift idle amongst the bottles.

In your wake, come admiring crowds

cherishing anemone fronds in reflected ponds

with nothing much to say at all.

Perhaps they recall disrupted seminars, lecture halls,

turning up hungover, arriving late,

or just turning over in bed

to rest a self-weary head.

Now, here come the gunboats, soldiers swarm

implacable and hole, and sink

those above their paygrade and rank,

completely out-thought, out-flanked

and you claim the whole thing stank.

Most of you disgorged in Greece

to fill up on moussaka, gobble baklava,

chug down ouzo, toast yourselves at the very least -

and those they dragged off

might flit across a butterfly mind

before alighting on the nearest cabbage,

Now, your people can’t be sure

who the shouting’s really for,

why those most in need still go without -

and they may well envy the gibbering throng

with a green gaunt eye

while licking ravenous lips and dripping tongues.

Integrity (2)

 

Integrity (2)

 

When I retire, I’ll look for somewhere

with fresh running water, clean air

put my feet up, play guitar

in some LoFi jobbing pub band

where the sound of two hands

clapping won’t cover up mistakes

amateurs like us are bound to make.

Write grungy poetry such as this,

expect to be kissed by the mistress,

seek out all my ex-lovers,

offer them flowers and forgiveness.

Like a Skyline Pigeon, be set free,

tossed up, seeking irresponsibility,

the taste of pillow slips, flossed sheets,

and balling my head into my feet.

But, as for the here, as for the now,

you sought me out, trapped me somehow,

tottered in here demanding answers,

scrolling through your phone -

a foreknowledge of knowing glances,

what happens when you take your chances,

swop out truth for something rancid.

Integrity (1)

 

Integrity (1)

 

A most remarkable march, that,

where your Master would have had a fit

on the grinder, if he’d pinged it –

you can hear his screams now

painting a pretty picture in spit

like why did we enlist yer, yer git?

or what's the village doing for an idiot

while you're away?

Something along those lines at any rate -

his swinging arms are a state,

nowhere near the requisite ninety

and he’s cue-balled his fists

until his knuckles are lily white -

but where’s the fight

he’s expecting? He’s drawn the crowds,

they’re chanting something loud

and he’s going for the full fifteen rounds

in his head, better off dead,

better off far away from here.

Father? Yes dear?

Now, there’s something queer,

he’s trailing boy behind him, his son

who, to keep pace, has to run,

looking aloft at his blustery white beard.

A timely reminder, if one were required

that every match sparks fire,

and every pitbull sports an inner golden labrador.

I wondered about the score,

not that there’s any love lost

and I chuckled when he was torn apart by the boss –

looking for a dignified exit,

there’s an entire parade ground out of step

and the system lacks integrity,

yet I thought they both made for a pretty

picture and felt ashamed.

Somebody loves him - makes a difference,

and the sun should continue to climb

long after we forget who he is and time

erases a collective memory -

and though he was my enemy

I went there and slapped in for clemency.

Silent Noise

 

Silent Noise

 

You often wonder if others hear it –

the sound of the world,

the sound of the crowd.

Do they? No - you suffer alone

amongst that constant drone

of aircons set viciously high.

Background percolation of machines

brewing a mumbled hubbub,

and children unleashed, each a thief

of peace, raising cain

in premeditated, murderous grief.

Aimless, tuneless preprogrammed keys,

synthesizing unmusical fills

slip into any remaining space and drill

through teeth to seek out abscess

and as you struggle to draw breath -

here’s your unsilent-set cell phones.

Put on headphones, more noise,

it must be admitted

if only for yourself -

but even here you’re penetrated;

it seeps in and bleeds noisy fingers through.

More din from across seas -

both incessant in vain-glorious trumpetry

while self-satisfied influencers are pleased

with whatever illiterate 140 character conceits

you must block out or delete.

But, you’re ever the one defeated,

calls for ceasefire or a hiatus

ignored – which is inevitable,

when you’ve no weapons to lay down

and screams cannot cut sound.

Arrival

Arrival

 

I saw you standing tall,

the day after the day after you left,

wasting good breath.

Only tall because of those stiletto heels -

more plastic tentpole,

than academic colossus.

You were talking to the new boss

and beating off about their loss

all horsey and garrulous –

like anyone would give a toss -

packing your habitual whinny,

all nasal and tinny.

Go. Off into history hobble,

strutting like a tenth rate model,

in the left your phone

and the right, a paper cup, dripping foam

of some sickly Starbucks

delivered by motorbike.

Go. Take an overseas hike

and choke your future by the throat.

Here’s a whip-round - your best sicknotes

with no forwarding address –

I’d wish you success

but what I loved the best

was the arrival of the day you left.