…
if this very ball of string
in your actual hands
factual t’ speak
not so to oblique
like some kind of ghost
was any longer than
it’s full, unravelled length
stretched in extremis
it would reach the town
before those pesky metaphors
& we’d run out of poem
…
…
enter december –
unseasonably warm
between each polar vortex
enter december –
feasting on baked beans
& sausages for teatime
enter december –
may contain nuts
& hazardous packaging
enter december –
frosty cobwebs
on the footpath home
enter december –
crows caw in the dawn
your new ringtone
enter december –
smelling of z – list
celebrity fragrances
enter december –
having swam eleven lengths
& eaten their weetabix
enter december –
a photo of a solitary
swan on a calendar
enter december –
the undefeated sun
a greener in between
enter december –
& exit november
a ghostly bonfire
enter december –
sweaters & vests
& thermal underpants
…
…
no one reads these books
so the un-named narrator
stays anonymous
…
…
a cold rice pudding
fresh out the can
stodgy yet lost
& an icicle which since
melted in my hand
from last night’s frost
a sellotape roll
without a found end
so good luck with that then
an unwritten book
with white space within &
no isbn
the latest normie goss
about yours truly
none of which is true
five pence in change
two twos & a one
no receipt – now shoo
…
…
intersecting curves
on a sheet of graph paper
illustrate things well
…
…
re this bookish strange
the rearranged pages
it’s a frowning face
in the low cloud’s locus
it’s number sixty six
then seventeen somehow
i blame the teachers’ parents
& the cod of all odd
by the grace of this plaice
yet the blooming moon wonders
what the factual uck?
…
…
no one shat their pants
or wet their frilly knickers
when the screen monster screamed
stroke – roared with aplomb
& magic tricks were neither
magic nor a trick
as we knew that there’d be rabbits
somewhere in that hat
when everyone was kayfabe
& pretense was erased like
gullible from the dictionary
…
…
your advert goes here
the one about the holiday
in smug sunshine
or the latest wearable
that we’ll never wear – because
that’s n.p.c ‘reepy
or your miraculous pile cream
or chocolate flamethrower
whatever you wish
( dear mister e.washy )
to flog us all with next
…
…
a kitchen cabinet
reshuffle not
wetminster’s wazzocks – but
sortin’ out me cans
of baked beans for winter
…
…
we make their forms
from anagrams
a plastic pen
us spastic men
a head of road
the ghost in us
is mightier
than all your saws
the chain & buzz
we welcome shapes
the size of time
is not my spec
but welcome we
from other space
the doodles who
remember you
…
resarf poetry 