Just a little illness,
Something that gets me off my feet,
A friendly virus partial to good deeds
To leave me bed-bound for a day or three.

A minor car crash,
No one but me,
A harmlessish accident arranged by the Gods
To leave me bed-bound for a week or three.

A break is as good as a change they say,
So maybe a real hospital pass in 5 a side
- a wrist-breaker on crash landing -
So no more typing for four to six weeks.

Something high in the sky is superior
It views me as completely inferior
I fear for my soul
Lest it fall down a hole
Into a fiery Lake Superior.

Life is not a Program.
GOTO Hell
Syntax Error
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The Starlings lent the tree a voice,
A murmured anguish: no rejoice.

To split a universal truth
Through the prism of poetry.
To write with mercurial mystery,
Employing cryptic non-sequiturs
After succinct statements of staggering profundity,
Is what I dream of as I contemplate
The enormity of my mediocrity.

My poor nest I must address:
Fed up with poor nights' sleep,
Ending up, ironically, with crow's feet
It's not ideal in mating season
I'll demolish this nest for that reason.

An unorthopaedic mess of a nest
Is my rickety pokey ***** bed.
However, one solution in the offing:
A mail order memory foam mattress
That I could return before migration.

Your shrill sound echoes down the sickly fluorescent corridor.
I try to ignore you.
Its jauntiness jars.

I feel I shouldn't like your racket.
It bounces off the pain-bearing walls.
It exacerbates my claustrophobia.

But perhaps your music is soothing to some;
High happy notes inspiring hope of recovery
Or of a deserved restful sleep enveloping dear ones.

But I hear only the low notes.
Out of time with my quickened pulse;
A foreboding soundtrack to my deliberately slow steps.

But, I know you play for no pay.
Busking in this hospital for practice and charity.
And I know too, you do good both night and day.

For your primary instrument is a sharp sleek scalpel,
Wielded by your steady, practiced hand,
Rehearsed and well-versed in surgical concertos.

But, out of hours, your instrument of choice lends you a voice,
Allows flourishes and improvisations,
Best avoided during operations.

But, were you aware that for visitors like me
That the clarinet would take on a life-long significance,
Taking me back to bittersweet memories of visiting my Taidi.

Now, though, I am older and a little wiser,
My memories of him are more than just of hospital visits,
And I wonder, could I ask one thing of you?

Why no Rhapsody in Blue?

Partly awake
Mostly asleep
Tap tap tapping
Upon a glass keyboard
At twelve qwerty three
On a Monday morning
When I should be snoring
Not fighting boredom...
Fighting sleep...
Boring old sleep.

Head plunged beneath the smallest lake
Suspended in an acrylic tub,
The warm lathered water,
Womb-like in comfort and familiarity,
Allows the briefest reflection and realisation
On how this very same room
Once offered me tranquility
And on how, earlier today,
In this very same room some thirty years later,
I bathed my own infant son in tranquility.

There were often times,
As I laid in that same bath tub,
When I pondered on my future
Wondered, in intervals of 10,
What life would be,
What skill I did not possess
Might dictate my future?
The joke being, I held no special talent,
No self-belief that any talent would emerge,
And so, my hopes were never high!

What would life be
Without that twenty-three?
No seasons cycling,
Birthing, rearing, draining and renewing.

No heralding cries of labour
Harsh lives lived and vacated
To summon the next new cry
Of life unasked but bestowed.

That such a celestial charade exists,
Governed by an arbitrary number,
Amuses and disturbs me
As we would be naught without that twenty-three.

I watch an artist create
Something new from nothing.
I turn to the writer
Who conjures life and lives,
Realising fiction from nothing.
I face the other way to weep
In envy at the distance of talent.

Has anyone seen my wallet?
I left it on the roof of my car
And drove my Christmas drive.
If you find it you can keep it:
I'm moving on.
Driving license,
A ton of reciepts,
Ten Euro note,
Maybe eight pounds cash
And a book of stamps.
Mostly a reminder of a dreary life,
Heavy, not with cash but ****** expenditure.

Go ahead, steal my ID,
Who'd want to be me?
Not I!
But, drawing a parallel
Between my wallet and I,
Deep in a quagmire,
Weathered by winter,
Waiting to be found.
Not very subtle I know,
But here's my rebuttal:
A seemingly tough exterior,
Vulnerable to stormy weather,
Stitching that will fail the test of time,
Spilling out its contents,
Laying bear all it once held in.

But if not found presently,
Maybe in time it will be,
And be of some passing interest
To some far off future finder,
Who'll wonder for a second who I was,
And ask, "how did it get lost?"
And "what became of those two children in the photo?"
And "what the hell was diesel anyway?"

I hate the twenty seventh
All back to normal
Tweets from President Crazy.

I'm coming to terms with my age:
Memories are the captives of Time,
Nostalgia is but a hazy, rose tinted wallow of the mind,
And no matter how tightly shut my eyes,
I'm never really back on my childhood street,
With the ever-present puddle,
The goalpost van,
My friends and our stupid siblings.
No, those times are lost to time.
But lost is fine,
They're out there, somewhere,
Unanchored and adrift,
And I can live with that...now.

Our interstellar messenger
To no one in particular
Sports two naked figures
Representations of a civilisation
That will have destroyed itself
Long before these astronaturists are found
...and probably judged.

But it makes me smile to think
That such a thought-out diagram
Of a male and a female
Was judged by some
To be "sending **** to space" 😂

Sat alone in my car
High above the forest line,
My Sat Nav tells me:
"Make a U-Turn when possible"
(Funny how a soulless voice
Can give the perfect advice).

I feel so far from home:
I'm a cheap Chinese lantern
Drifting on the merest wind.
Am I near my destination?
I do not know...
Which way did the wind blow?

I love you.
I have to,
I want to,
I need to,
I'm your dad,
It's my duty
And my honour.
I thought you felt the same,
So imagine my shame
After running through pouring rain
To save you from the horror,
The anxiety and dread
Of your first day in school,
To find you smiling and enthralled,
At the after-school club
You weren't meant to attend,
And didn't want to be saved from
By your loving dad!
So I say, my darling daughter,
Enjoy it all:
9 to 3,
September to July,
2019 for the rest of your life.
I love you.

And so we sat, as you directed:
The window seats you always liked,
(a most desired spot from which to spy)
For you seek out distraction,
And shun focus
(slight of hand to avoid scrutiny).
As I settled in my seat,
I spied the scarlet and gold lining of your jacket;
A rare display of your heart and soul
Told me all I needed to know:
It's neither of us,
But it's both of us.

Such happy childhood memories,
Of the sweats you made and sold,
All those wholesome confectionaries,
Reminding us of times of old.

Your staff members, young and old,
So happy to work overtime,
Never revolted or ever became bold;
To do so would have been a crime.

But, like my wasteline, you have expanded,
You have factories in many nations.
My childhood you may have branded,
But I love you without hesitation.

I do so miss the sweat smell,
That poured from the old factory,
That dominated the town in which I dwell.
When will you come back to me?

Those lucky people on shores afar,
Who work all day and night,
Making those millions of sweat chocolate bars;
Their grateful sweat and tears ALL go into your delights.

Now I hear that you are diversifying;
The clothing industry in those developing nations,
Will add to your sweat bottom line,
Perpetuating your sweat *******.

Crap! Have I been spelling 'sweet' as 'sweat' throughout this **** poem?

A family outing in ice cream weather.
My sisters and I in the backseat.
The brown fabric interior of our Cortina chafing our legs
and dad's cigarette chafing our lungs.

At the beach, the lazy ol' Sun kept watch,
slyly burning us as we pretended we could swim:
A childish farce that was nearly our downfall
when my searching feet were grabbed by Gravity.

Panic rose from toes to head as the Sea birthed me back to air.
Just long enough to note that nature's forces were in cahoots:
A kidnapping Current, a magnetic Gravity
and a Sea hooding me with saltwater cloth:
All combined to set a course South of maternal reach.

Of course, a mother's instinct kicked in.
A non-swimmer herself, she nonetheless set off in pursuit,
aiming to liberate her son from Mother Nature's conspiring forces.

And what was my younger sister to do but follow?

Now greedy Nature had three in its grasp.
Three fifths of a family doomed to drown.

As fatigue struck me dumb
I made a naïf's deal with Death
(a simple choice, no game of Chess)

And so, enter, the young heroes,
(partying only moments before)
who dived in to wrestle our would-be Killers:
Saving three fifths of a family
and the grief of two more.

Such distant voices,
Like echoes from a recent past,
Calling over rickety field fences
Gently swaying the flourishing corn,
Diminishing as it nourishes,
So that the hearer only hears
A ghostly murmur and not the cheers.

A child assumed adults' superiority.
Hero worshipped older members of his family.
Absorbed opinions overheard over pints.
Tried them on for size at school,
As he did an Uncle's cool leather jacket
- comforting, macho and confidence-giving -
But he outgrew the jacket,
Cast aside those learnt opinions,
Tough, stubborn opinions
With rugged exteriors
Lined with seductive silken narratives
That, thankfully, perished over time.

Just this morning I anointed myself a ****** poet.
A pretty ****** ****** poet I know
But a poet of sorts
Who types into a Samsung that has that same dim glow
Of the fire that smoulders pathetically in my mind.

I've got the key, I've got the secret
I've got the key to the corned beef tin.

It goes
You know
I’ve told you loads
I’m talking time
It goes so fast
Nothing lasts
But here’s a toast
“To Mister Time
Stop a while
Chill yer boots
You go too fast
Let things last
You breezy sod”
I’ve told you loads
That I’m getting old
But time gets bold
Quickens it pace
Without a care
Leaving me to stare
At children growing
At Christmases going
And coming
And going
And coming and...
Well, you get the point
So what’s the point
Of telling you more
About my woes
About time
And how it goes?

Fragments of a cacophony hung in the air:
A note here, a note there

Broken glass crushed underfoot
Traffic-cone-trumpets playing flat notes
A grievous insult to the left
Uproarious laughter to the right:

All in all a right riotous night!

A long long week
A short weekend
My body feels weak
My spirit has weakened

Days and days of deadlines
Time speeding up as I age
Getting closer and closer to red lines
And all this to chase a meager wage

But trusty Saturday arrives
Hugs me with duvet respite
Yet lucid dreams that I contrive
Reawakened my mind all night

But sleep demands company
So even on Sundays you'll hear my alarm bleeping
For to succumb to sleep's Siren bewitchery
Would see me forever sleeping

The grip of sleep holds him tight,
He'll never know he died,
Never know he did not wake.
Such a fine line between life and death
Never knowing which might be your last breath.

Dry husks on close inspection.
Deadish, brownish black,
Plucked from petaled homes
Bagged in airless packets,
Left desiccated in a supermarket,
Their blooming potential undervalued.
No seed of resurrection, surely?
And so, this doubtful, non-starter gardener,
With nothing to lose but a pound,
Purchased and potted and planted
And watered and waited
Until the miracle of green emerged.
A determined rebirth
Sprouting from apparent death
And from the curiousity of a man
From whose soil those seeds found purchase.
Happy now is that newly-qualified gardener,
Surprised at nature's resilience,
And who declares to young and old
"Behold my Marigolds from B&M"

We heard a creak in the attic
I sent my wife to investigate.
She's still up there,
Negotiating with our new-found tenant
Who is totally unrepentant
For having snuck into our home
And setting up camp.

Twisting joy
Marbling its way
From head to toe
Infusing every corpuscle
Sending muscles into spasm.