Cyclone

I walk a cyclone on a nylon lead
They can be cared for really easily,
Remember they will always need to feed
In wind and rain and other weather fronts,
Engulfing all that stands up in it’s way
Trains and cars, People and wildlife too.
The upkeep can be quite prohibitive
If you have nowhere else to really live,
The cyclone never sleeps, it runs around
And turns the street it lives in upside down.

Pasta Sauce

Hooray for pasta sauce,
Only the stuff in a jar of course,
The other stuff is poncy and grim
And yes it’ll help you keep all slim,
It’s not the same as the stuff in a jar
This wonderful Italian ambrosiarr.
Made in Norwich and bottled in Gwent?
It’s the taste I love, and it’s left me spent.

Poetry Addict

Hi, I’m Chris,

Response: Hi Chris

And I am a poetry addict.

I have been clean now for three months,
My head is full of facts and figures,
No stanzas or trochees or sestinas.
No rhymes. Just statistics.

At my worst, I rhymed everything I spoke.
Trying to get a point across was a joke,
I couldn’t stop thinking like Dr Seuss,
And soon my sanity started coming loose…

I’m sorry, for a minute I lapsed back…

I’ve been poem free for three months,
And as soon as I stop writing poetry in my head
I’ll start to feel like I’ve come back from the dead,
I’ll be alive and I’ll grow again, I’ll be human again.
And I can’t tell you what it’s like to be clean,
To stop being a walking poetry machine,
I’m sorry, I’m doing it again…

OK in times like this, my therapist said
“memorise some statistics before you go to bed,
it doesn’t matter how random they are,
Just to get your brain to finally refocus again”.

OK so here goes, my little mantra.
The Office of National Statistics would be proud,
That I can recite half of their book out loud.

Cellular phone technology has now spread so far
and gotten so cheap that likely more than half of
humanity use cell phones.
There are now 4.1 billion mobile subscriptions in the world,
a global penetration rate of 61.1 percent: This compares to
1.270 billion fixed line subscribers, corresponding to a
penetration rate of 18.9 percent
45% of Americans don’t know that the sun is a star
In a day 34,000 children die every day from causes
that are related to poverty and hunger.
Of married couples, 70% of men and 60% of
women have cheated on their spouse.
Annually, the amount of garbage that is dumped in the world’s
oceans is three times the weight of fish that is caught from the oceans.
In the past 12 months in Britain 174
small children have been killed by their parents or carers,
or died in accidents while left all to themselves.

I quickly come to see, that I hide behind my poetry.
The world out there is too hard to look at for me.
So sometimes we need a protective coat,
A large castle of words we can sit in, with a large
Deep moat.

Maybe you should come back next week Mr Gower.

Exmouth (after an argument)

Why would you want to be
In that weird little place by the sea.
Why would you make the trek
to a place that has no self respect?
Why would you want to be seen
In a place where better days have been

Why would you make a home,
In a place where they steal garden gnomes,
Why would you take your gran
To a place where muggers roam the land,
Why is the way to go South,
When you live in that glorious, sunny Exmouth.

Wedding Ring

Took off my ring,
Yet it is imprinted on my skin,
Punched and branded like
Cattle.
You saw me do it
But chose not to say anything,
Although it has been
a long time coming.
My finger is the only
part of me, that is
fine.

Services (Gordano)

We’ve stopped, 
and our aching bodies function again,
after three hours in hyperspace.
Place your feet on martian
aggregate. Bright white walls,
candy coloured cuddly brand
logos, shining in a radioactive
post apocalyptic flicker.
The foyer, home to sedated
loney cheeseplants living
next a faux-oasis in a stasis
of activity. Baby changing
facilities, sterile loo blocks,
faint wafts of coffee blending
with strangers urine and diesel.
Our seat is plastic as we tear
open our plastic prey from
their cartons.
Brown watery coffee,
depressed freshly
prepared sandwiches from
an industrial estate off the M5.
Our eyes never meet as I
glance at the cars outside.
The passive audience of a
Theatre of motion.
Stage left.
Stage right.
Travelling to that
same inevitable destination.

Cathedral

No ball games
On ancient bricks,
Viynl chips the brittle
Sandstone. Base of
the tower, grand old
lady in goal.
With every shot she
Neither dives or jumps.
Static, still and almighty.
800 years can stop
more then a football.
History patched
and quilted in to
brickwork.

Birth Mark

 

You just want to stare,
but no matter how hard
you try you can’t help
Looking.
Surely it’d be
More polite to comment
Or the birth mark or
disfigurement.
Complementing on it’s
Unique angle. Or inspired
Use of colour.
But they know,
it’s not as if you
are the first to stare.

Change

My muse was tired, a waking curse, a living gallows.
You don’t go to bed early enough, I said. He threw a slice of marmite and toast at me, spitting
His answer through black and yellow teeth,

Go to hell, he said with his eyes as I cupped
His forehead. Gently stroking his small eyebrows, A boylike peace fell on his face as in death.
Quietly his twitching carcass rested.

He lay there on my bed for three days.
No fluids passed lips, or crusty hovis rolls did he eat. To the Victorian physician he
Might be dead.
But still warmth from his head
Let me know that someone was still at home.

The next morning his tar stained face was gone. Sheets left like crisp Ikea clad clenliness, a display room.
Cold white water left still in the glass on
The bedside table. And now I knew, I’d changed.

Dressup

I sewed,
Leather patches on my
Elbows

I placed.
A Pipe between my

Teeth.

I become.
An intellectual for two
Seconds

And then.
You said I looked too
Old.