It’s Said You’ll Suffer The Most

 

It’s Said You’ll Suffer The Most

 

Whether you believe it true

or think it fake

depends on what sleeps beneath your lake -

if you can conjure up huge peaks,

uprearing, looming large

as you boat these waters alone

or not - if you’re scrolling phones.

20 year poor decision, that’s what it takes -

going for second-best seats

the second-most unhappy state -

sticking plasters, pinkies in dykes,

the second-nearest way,  the lookalikes

and just about rights.

Have jungled-up second-rate celebrities,

Love Islands, Big Brothers on TV,

the only way is TOWIE

and vote eviction or don’t vote at all,

austerity and Brexit after all

were pretty good calls

or as near as dammit –

you could sell the second-hand

and shell out billions

on feckless demands

to be tolerant of gender reveal parties.

Do what it was that made your parents feel

that this is just plain common sense,

boy, evicting immigrants,

putting up barbed wire fences,

patrol the white-cliff beaches.

Maggie, where’s your free market now?

Peopled by those tolerant

of diminishing returns.

Who cares? Not him, he’ll leave you to burn

and regard existence on your sidelong screen

as somebody else hurtles ravines.

Strawberry

 

Strawberry

 

She could be blonde, it could be dyed,

like most things that start from the inside

and grow outwards to greet the eye -

Behold her. You might guess Scandinavia,

possibly it has been brushed by Agnetha,

as there’s something going on - but no -

you’d be wrong because she belongs

to Czechoslovakia. It’s The Republic now,

she once insisted, when I was oblivious.

It’s been a tough month for both of us

for her, more than me, you’d guess,

what with war’s constant missile warnings,

school foreclosed, distance learning

imposed a second time this decade.

Age has withered her. There are lines -

some born of stubbornness, others kind,

it is ten years passed since we first met

and she picked me up - so I can forget

that in my heart I made a silent compact

to always protect. I feel I should pass by;

see her bright diamonds twinkle lively

today - for what she does we do – not die.

We smile. Shy. I want to see your lovely face,

I said, candid, thinking of a thousand ships,

and then, to my surprise, she blushed

to her roots. We passed some small talk

about history repeating, the day’s work,

how she snuck to her office, forbidden.

So,  I wondered if you could love so much

that all transgressions could be forgiven

even when her rage will come again,

thoughts can touch, and hearts can mend,

and her husband looking like Santa Claus

passes parcels through a shutting door.

The Basic Problem

 

The Basic Problem

 

Nowadays, people spout ‘reach out’.

it’s been seen going about -

one of those tuppeny ha’penny phrases,

that’s done the rounds a while

tossed off towards the end

of every insincere email sent.

Those with brains recall The Four Tops;

resonance of guttural shouts

that had ten times more integrity;

and meant something.

There’s wellness rooms, too,

if you’re overworked, stressed,

or violently depressed,

boasting scented candles and vibrochairs -

book yourself in, have 20 minutes of throb,

try not to think of Monty Python, Black Rod,

or Wankel rotary engines.

Meanwhile, another batch of undercooked

cookie cutter employees, most of them crooked

or on the make profiteers

with nothing squared between their ears

are heading your way, starstruck,

having been told they're professionals.

The basic problem is people, you see?

solve that, live easy, healthy, free.

A Clink of Lite

 

Clink of Lite

 

Just a ray and a Dreyfus’ eyeball

winking manic then winking out –

nothing more, that’s all

except gob-fulls of spat rhetoric,

but the other side denied it,

never happened, they claimed,

we care less, send your planes.

Door cracking off a quick blink,

oh, yes, you’ll see a glimpse

but they rewrote continuity

in time for ‘Revenge’s’ ambiguity –

he’s banged up in an asylum,

but then, maybe they all should be.

All this is moot, these chinks of light,

Sammy’s not for packing, no sir,

claims of cancelled flights,

domestic arrangements, childcare,

terrible Wi-Fi, honest, he swears

leaving those left over there

to slum it, pick over his traces,

do all that work on his behalf:

you can’t blame him for a last laugh

he’s praying that you’ll be all right -

toasts you with a clink of lite.

Rags and Shags

 

Rags and Shags

 

Watching news, your gaze is held, braced

as if by the locking arms of a service structure

before a rocket launches into space.

When you went to Everton primary,

you’d chafe at the bit for the mobile library,

lend The Big Book of Space and devour it.

Today, they shot frames of a pink deck chair,

abandoned in tatters, cut to it over there -

in amongst the killed concrete.

The deck had gone, hanging incomplete

and as for the fabric – sailcloth, canvas -

well, these artists brush in broad strokes.

Later you watch as a bridge is detonated,

surrounding brush and scrubs decimated,

causing gaudy peacock plumes to rise.

Meanwhile, on a brick littered Corniche

they’re building oilskinned cities of tents,

tarpaulins draped from tailgates, low rent

one ringed stoves slowly boiling over.

There’ll be no school today,

instead, a brother pushes his sister to and fro,

doing the Science, counting sink holes,

contemplating a combustion chamber’s thrust,

delivering its payload, driving aloft,

doing the Math, stirring the dust.

Scission

 

Scission

 

Over there you say being over here’s

too high a price to pay, too severe,

and talk of war zones, missiles, drones

send messages on your iPhones.

It’s all over International Sky News

journalists and pundits’ informed views

as long as it includes ordinary blokes,

UK interest, like this bird’s fat folks

whose flight was grounded. Stranded,

I’ll bet wishing they’d never landed -

after a while Al Jazeera’s a better bet

than listening to recycled shitheads.

I’m waiting at signals by The Corniche,

after casting for sheirii - that’s fish -

caught zero, bugger all - but it's fine

sitting under the rising sun, passing time.

My mind’s elsewhere, of course

in case there’s an alarm; deadly force

arcing overhead. I’m there pondering

fate, how you’d said I’d be squandering

everything when I put it behind me

coming here, then, by accident I hear

you gossiping incidents ten years prior.

Know what I think? Life must be dire

indeed, if that’s all there’s left to fire

up engines. What's kept is meaning less

as we’re getting older, shorter of breath:

when you retire, you said you’d travel.

Well, fine. Just leave me here to unravel

the dullness in your thoughts that drone;

I’ll happily reap this whirlwind alone.

Your Ordinary Citizens

Your Ordinary Citizens

 

Have not had a break in such a long time,

shoplifting’s on the rise,

a victimless crime,

no off-ramp in sight,

and didn’t you vote for Brexit?

 

Headline inflation’s on the up,

something about an oil slump

your prices rising at the pump,

benefit costs of feeding the five thousand invalids,

and didn’t you elect Boris?

 

It’s a profoundly devastating unenviable - a big spike

from your bottom on the rise,

and there’ll be a hike

in mortgages, rents, package holiday flights,

and didn’t you catch Love Island?

 

No comfort at all, post Covid, after Austerity, it’s all in bits,

massive effect of an immediate hit,

your heating bill’s due a bit of a blip,

something to do with geopolitics,

to be honest, you didn’t understand it,

something about existential shit,

and didn’t you vote for Brexit?