What do you do at 3am when you're tired and bored and its raining?

Maybe this is punishment.
For eating those grapes before you paid for them in Sainsburys.
Or that time you forgot who Buzz Aldron was, or when you took pleasure at beating a five year old at Cluedo.
She started crying, and even then, you still
would not relinquish your title.
Maybe its for that time
You were accidentally racist  to the chinese guy taking your order.
Or when you forgot to buy your mum a birthday card, or when you made fun of your best friend for not being taller.
Or when you said, 'Maybe
selective breeding in humans,
Is not such a bad thing after all.'

Yes, Its definitely punishment for that.

But maybe its for all the litter you've dropped, inadvertently or on purpose.
Or for last week when you accidentally kicked the cat, or for stealing those library books,
For swearing at kids
and blaspheming at the dinner table,
Christ!
Maybe its for nicking your brothers chips, even when you're not really that hungry.
For halfhearted apologies handed out like office stationary, for scoffing at most modern art.
For not revising when you
Really, really should
...But telling your parents you are.

But even with all of this, isn't the punishment, just a little bit too harsh?

Well now you are sarcastic, and bitter and pessimistic at least 90% of the time.
And you do hide the fact that you quite like country music, and that you have a blanket with sleeves (and you genuinely use it) and that you're really rather patriotic at heart.
And you didn't say all that stuff when you should have.
And you said all that other stuff you didn't mean
And you spend far too much of your time
Invested in impressing the people you're never going to see again.

And you realize all of this... at three o'clock in the morning, alone but for the fading of the rain.

And you swear to yourself, with all the fervour of a tired insomniac. That tomorrow.
There. Will. Be. Change.
But in the cold, harsh light of nine o'clock the same day. Six hours after you fell asleep. You resign yourself to the fact that last nights punishments can all be absolved, by a nice warm cup of tea.
And despite what you say
at 3am when you're tired and bored,
listening to the sound of the rain.
You will always be a pessimistic idiot, with delusions of grandeur.
That watches too much American TV.

I am not the sophisticated underdog,
I trip and fall through door frames
Always unannounced.

I am the wavering circle,
I give myself away too early in the game
Always a red herring.

His dead!

I suspect Nietzsche did it in morality with a book;

I suspect Platon did it in birth with stillbirth;

I suspect Machiavelli did it on Ruling with the ends to justify the means;

I suspect Darwin did it in Galápagos with birds;

I suspect Scientists did it in laboratories with stem cells;

I suspect Romans did it in Golgotha with a cross;

I suspect Jews did it in Gethsemane with Judas;

I suspect Christians did it in Spain with inquisition;

I suspect Muslims did in New York with a plane;

I suspect Adolf did it in Poland with gas;

I suspect Stalin did it in Siberia with gulags;

I suspect United states did it in Hiroshima with a bomb;

I suspect United nations did it in wars by looking away;

I suspect God did it in Heaven by suicide;

I suspect I did it here with a poem
I suspect You did it.

I PLAY SUDOKU, CARDS AND CHESS,
BUT SUDDENLY WHAT'S MORE BECOMES LESS,
THEN, THERE'S BRIDGE, MONOPOLY AND LUDO,
WHAT'S MAYBE NEXT, I HAVEN'T GOT A CLUEDO;
MIND GAMES ARE THE WORST - JUST NUEROTIC
BUT THEY'RE NASTY, UNCALLED FOR AND DESPOTIC,
I FIELD THEM ALL LIKE ***** IN THE AIR,
I MUST CATCH, TO DROP THEM I WOULDN'T DARE,
THEN THERE WAS RUNNING, STAY IN THE RACE,
I'LL JUST HAVE TO SEE IF I CAN STAND THE PACE,
THERE'S NEVER A CROSSWORD THAT PASSES ME BY,
WHEN YOUR HAVING FUN, HOW THE TIME DOES FLY,
LIFE IS A CHARADE, GUESS WHAT COMES NEXT,
I'M NOT SURE, MAYBE HEAVEN - I'LL SEND YOU A TEXT!

Niblicks

What do I know about golf?
Well,
let me see.
I know there's a club and
I think there you get tee
There's a hole with a pole
Though not from Poland,  it could be.
That's commerce

There's something worse
and that's a bunker
where apparently golfers hunker
down with a frown on their face, 'til
they get out of that place.

There's a five on the fifth and a three on the first
I've read the rules and I'm fit to burst with a thirst for the game
But then I read of their *****
and call me a ****
don't think that I need
my ***** to be whacked.
So it's back to the cluedo and ludo and do you know
I'm not sorry at all.

Pam wear me welterweight
beached in butterfly arms
Bright huts twinkle blighty eyes
a disguise.

Faces flair
wished elsewhere
sick cluedo:
Plath
In bath
with turned on toaster
Roller coaster

on slick rails of sleepy lids
down a doused mouth
crooked in upward bend
the baby rattles rattle
rattled in the end
powder descending hills
Till I gobble the goblet further

stump to a tower of transient treats
toss bosses in storms
called Paulie
and shake shake my box in Jest

Pam makkah in hajj
Hell o' a love
I got the bug.

If slow could show itself as being fast
the driver of this bus would still
come last.

And then we wonder why
productivity
once so high has gone into
decline,

it's down to bus drivers tootling along
and taking their time.

Almost to a man they don't give a ****
never a please or a thank you,
they
shunt you in to a forty foot coffin
and we're off in
what appears to be
a snails pace
it's no wonder they're laughing

There's a lot to be said
for closing your eyes and
staying in bed
but
not a lot of people say it
instead they'll pray
for Saturday
which'll be a long time coming
if it takes the bus.

Mr Homeless
on the street
by
a
lack of interest.

In the
library
with a sharpened
quill
by
Will
Shakespeare

Converts from convicts and convictions reversed,
rehearsing conversations and
checking out of the jail.

The convoy unaware of the danger back there carried on,
strike one.

Rest breaks and more takes, is the cameraman ******?
reverse hold and conquer,
we will win to win will.

Strike two,
the best murderers do,
they usually get caught and
I thought it was Cluedo, but what
would I know?


'A handbag', she said,
I said,
'Oscar's long dead
and we broke down and cried.

Strike three and I'm out,
never thought that this failure
would send me back to
the jailer.

Prison ballet,
pirouette and
point the finger of blame,
rehearsing the conversation
not knowing my name.

Sharp edges as glass cracks
and eyes looking back through the prisms of jigsaw shards
where clowns laugh through the madness of tormented lips

Lulu sips her champagne
she's seen it all and it's all the same

broken and reset only to get broken
but now she's smoking'


crystal cuts through paper trails
and sails into the night
watched until she's out of sight
and then forgotten

Rock me with that uppercut
to get ****** upon a kiss
and your magic is the poison
I will miss.

It's all a game of Cluedo,
we have to find who's done
the deed
and we die before we lead the
next parade.

When something's itching at you
from somewhere deep inside you
and the need to know just what it is
is the need that just defied you.

It's there and I will find it
( I played Cluedo as a kid )

but
the pen that opens up the word for you to read
the mildly absurd,
is short of what is necessary

the well is almost dry
the nib is cracked and
I could cry

if tears would only form written words
I'd have formed a library of books..
but they don't
and I didn't

the itch is still there.

I have time on my hands
I also have 'Vicks'
ha, but
( this is not a line to rhyme)

I get up to old tricks until
the ibuprofen kicks in and
there's
not a lot of street cred' in that

Perusing 'Mims' is a whimsy
when it's not a necessity  
and it could be the death of me
( by a book in the library )
Cluedo!
get it?
no ?
you will,
there's a lot of it going around

You'd know if it was Cluedo
by the body in the library,

it's good he knew the difference
between real life and a game
all the same
the body was dead
and rigor had set in,
which gave the time of death
at a breath after five.

Miss Marple
had she not been fictional
would have known what to do
but she was fictional so they
called in the local constable
to investigate the late,
deceased
body in the library,

time for me to look for a clue,
said constable Drew who was
married and owned a cottage
in Kent,
which he thought of as he went
about
the business of finding out
whodunit.

it's the wind-up to the weekend
when
though weakened we feel stronger
and the longer this day carries on
the stronger we become,

but
I won't be going anywhere
Covid's given me a scare,
it will be snakes and ladders,
Cluedo, ludo and we all know
these are games we play,

and wine at the end of a fine day
is fine
in
moderation.

You can cry and you can pray
but you're not going out to play today.
I wanted to go to the park and feed the ducks
but who gives two crumbs about that?
( no swearing on Sunday even if it would rhyme)

So
it's Ludo or Cluedo.
she says
strip poker is out of the question
and I have no answer to that.