Bring Out Your Dead

 Bring Out Your Dead

 

You might see black clouds massing

in the East

if you ever lifted your head.

 

instead -

 

What a good chap the King is,

in the counting house, by the toll booth

this side of Boothferry Bridge;

 

there’s horror for Andy

will he survive the Winter? He’ll be lucky

if bias from Munchetty

don’t get him first;

 

and Traitors cancel an entire series

due to a devastating four-word firestorm

while influencers swarm

over Stockport’s nursery manager

with the kindest soul;

 

there’s fresh outrage sparked

by sleeping trailblazer,

bombshells Meghan, will nothing faze her

or bring this odious couple

to their knees

rid you of this turbulent priest;

 

while over there in Pickle Cottage,

divorced celebrities plant beans

but cannot say

how many make five;

 

bless Garraway, oh Garraway

and all who launch her,

crack champagne bottles, splitting sides

if he gets out of there alive;

 

your viewers aren’t happy,

they never are,

when a minor Premier League icon

is always crashing

in the same car;

 

marvel at the UK stockpiling toilet paper,

alongside six other everyday

household items, cannot say why,

 

and millions on the dole; hand-outs,

foodbanks, thinking salvation

taking holidays to the nation’s

sick capital, Merthyr Tydfil,

spawning epidemics of feeling ill.

 

You might see black clouds massing,

in the East

if you lifted your head –

 

Instead,

bring out your dead.

How I Wish You With Me

 

How I Wish You With Me

 

‘How I wish you with me,’

but I’m more Sweeney –

call me Dobson

stirring the bath – I let her raise dust,

watch spinning wheels

depart to break bread, ponder

if there’s communion wine used

or if they make do with grape juice.

It’s crushed super-sweet -

I know this,

having braised lamb shanks,

seasoned them with mint

sipped jus; still winced.

I noted there’s still a soupçon of rust

about the knees in the gym

this morning - spoilt my quadriceps

from that step too far

I took. Golden the Glossop days

and how I cursed,

unswallowing every expletive ever learnt -

a trip I took on trust,

sent tumbling like Iranian stocks,

absorbers not enough for shocks,

belly’s but a backpack of rocks,

left only with regret

for the sweet and sour pork balls

I didn’t get.

Still, she pulled me up,

from the rowing machine –

where I’d managed a ginger stroke or two

asked me to film her lifting weights -

‘Great tits dear, nice ass,’

I called, as you do:

you're told you shouldn’t these days,

but clearly we’re both out of date

because, 'Thank you,' and she laughs.

Later looking at the watch-fit, contemplate

my obesity – reading the grim news:

She scolds me, ‘You’re pogi,’

and tells me she still has use

for all of that which we call our own.

I could complain she’d adjust my waist

quite easily if I lose the requisite -

but she would’ve called me out

for talking shit

if she’d ever used words like that.

Instead, she drops me here to sit out 2 hours

to write of cast-offs, sailors, ships

as she communes with those higher powers

that I somewhere let slip.

 

 

 

 

‘What If Tom Baker…

 

‘What If Tom Baker…

 

…left at the end of Season 15 (Invasion of Time)?’,

opined some pock-skinned You Tube git –

a tongue-tied hobbledehoy with zits,

a self-styled influencer, all round, cradle-bound tosser,

a greasy spot well versed in yeast, a foreskin flosser

with less right to comment on Great Tom’s legend

than your baker’s dozen basket-case of knob-ends.

Ask someone who was there – no, why bother:

yes - substandard production, dodgy script -

they’d scheduled ginseng and arenas of killer cats,

but inflation put the mockers on all of that -

so, went for a weekend and whisky script,

bunkered down, pseudonymed up, tore through it,

the rest is history, French for story, you doubt he knows.

What if? What if what? What’s your point?

He didn’t leave – three more glorious years, anointed

the greatest on most occasions; I vote you fuck off -

don’t spend weekends filming yourself rubbing cloth,

speculating your chin-dribble in spattered glasses,

ejaculating misinformed dictats to the spanking classes

while the rest of us watch the donkey leading the asses.

Construction Time Again

 

Construction Time Again

 

In this city, it’s construction time again.

It was yesterday, it will be tomorrow,

for us it’s all one and the same.

Deployed -  Hyundai 220 mechanical crawlers

that yawn elaborately, bare teeth and bite

deep, ravage this poor sub-soil

of grit, concrete, gravel and spoil –

nothing green grows in such solid grey caliche

never a bush let alone a tree.

You wonder how anything rooted here,

what it destroyed, what it cleared -

that’s me, picking my way between bunkers

screened by poor to middling safety bulwarks,

therefore, anyone intent on tumbling

can only blame themselves – that, the night,

or the heat haze blurring lines of sight.

Avoid murderous traffic, two-fold slayers

who exterior heat to interior cool or flay

your heels alive with spinning tyres

that pitch and toss the dust storms higher

than they’ve any right to be. If I make it –

the jury’s out – I might order coffee, ponder

why the pit outside is dug that deep,

did they remember chemicals to exterminate

the scuttling cockroaches that proliferate

and find nests so easy to build? Once inside

I am besieged by the one fly

who somehow knows and has found me out,

will attack without remorse or any thoughts

for its own survival – I swot without any hope

of success in preventing exit or egress

and wonder if I hung a flypaper throughout

it might ultimately lead to my arrest.

Chickadees

 

Chickadees

 

Not the most promising of subjects,

but it has to be tackled - I expect

little will come of it; won’t move mountains,

overturn rocks or grind pebbles into sand –

yes, nothing much here, nothing grand.

Chickadees - and you may ask what sound

is made – newlings, who flew using westerlies,

accustomed to sitting back, coattailing,

utilizer to cancer and something of that

and how loud they are, how sweet they sing –

of sealing wax, of silly-string

of rum, red bull and teaching,

of shots, soft pillows, sleeping,

of minted lattes delivered late,

of however did she get in such a state?

A sweet midnight chorus punctuates my night;

tossing sour, turning bitter and overbites

into unfurling dawns that reach surging crescendos

until, one day the silence of nothing at all.

It’s sound and fury of empty kettle

switched on at socket, of filament blown

and circuit breakers that halt the flow

burnt to cinders; let licking flames

fuse the hems, to part the stitching once again,

make merry with meal of candy brain.

The Hollows of Mars

 

The Hollows of Mars

 

I come here to speak not of Asimov.

‘Buy Jupiter!’ He screamed from the covers

of schlock paperbacks –

emblazoned with impossibly delicate constructions

pollocked with nuanced gleam and splashed shade -

and from each block of light a face

might be planted there, hard to see, but

acclimatized interstellar with not a hair

out of place, embracing space;

how tempting and easy to slip

one of these into your blazer pocket?

Or ‘Boys! Grow GIANT mushrooms in your cellars!’

Get this – I recant Bradbury, disavow Clarke –

a fall of moondust, sinking shuttles

beget creeping worlds that evolve and scuttle,

send out for Kimbo Kinnison – triplanetary extraordinary

needed more now than he ever was.

Didn’t they ignite the gases of those giants

to send a message to the stars? Buy Coke?

No. For here, in the Hollows of Mars

there is a lack of substance –

once it was buttered thick, now only shea and palm

such quantities won’t actually do harm

per se – but witness these tacky packages, plastic tat

with which they are pleased to wrap

your futures – not mine. Lo! Fry’s Chocolate Cream

surreptitious beneath your sheets before you dream

of ‘To Your Scattered Bodies Go!’

where Sir Richard Francis Burton’s beyond universal

masked in new flesh; ready for rehearsal.

I Charge Thee Hence

 

I Charge Thee Hence

 

Last night she came to me.

To say I was surprised was an understatement –

you see these Doha pavements,

well – they’ve too many cracks – agreed?

Tread lightly and with care,

you could conjure threads never there.

When she left, some of her last words

were: ‘The spell is broke.’

This, of course, is a private joke

and I screwed with the adverb

for the rhyme. Some of her last words

because there were others she toyed with

in due course - she takes, you give –

fall through cracks, but live,

so I’m pleased to say neither of us

left the battlefield untouched.

Battening down my sight to penetrate black

and see she is naked front and back,

full figured firm – it is 10 years ago, again – clearly

when we said stuff like: ‘I love you dearly,’

but a year and a bit is all

it takes to change that,

just wait a few more; everything sags,

there’s tattoos, creases, pink dyed grey hair -

but I know why she’s here; what she wants.

Those in the room with me, licking lips,

cannot tear their eyes from breasts and hips;

she only has to say it once:

‘Come with me.’ She beckons, opens, reveals

what it is she thinks I should feel:

‘I want you to meet my new partner.’

And if I should choose to go with her,

well, here’s a door opened onto lost life,

with talk of past futures, new wives,

galleons whose sails are billowing full,

offering safe passage to any fool

who takes hold of stray threads and pulls -

so, you know, I charged her hence:

‘And do not haunt me thus with empty boats,

for I am real and you are ghosts.’