Once I met a platypus;
I took her to my heart.
We held hands by the lake at night,
And flew kites in the park.
We drank red wine by moonlight,
And closer, by degrees,
Expressed our deepest feelings;
Explored our fantasies.
And then, as these things happen,
There came a happy day:
We took an ad out in The Times
Announcing progeny.
But outrage at the outcome -
Our beloved platy-pups -
Was front page in the tabloids!
What was the platy-fuss?
We gave the papers interviews,
We gave our truth and trust -
But still my Love was slandered
Just for being oviparous!
We formed an equal rights group.
We founded charities.
To educate, to celebrate
Our ovi-parity!
We swore a solemn, binding oath,
Between the two of us
The Wedding feast and party was
Quite monatrematous!
Uncle Mallangong was tearful;
Aunt Echidna was abeam:
The Boondaburra “Moonwalking”
Was something to be seen!
There were Joeys sloshed on cider,
Wombats smoking ****
Emus snogging at the bar -
Koalas wild on speed!
For sickness, health; for poorer,
Or for great prosperity;
I will love and hold and cherish,
Through all adversity,
My nondarwinian lover;
My mutant, duck-billed Queen!
My unconventional ******
My monotreme – my dream!
Jun 3, 2013
Jun 3, 2013 at 3:41 PM UTC
Up in the attic
Under the bed
Inside the closet
In the boxes in our head
All the things that we were doing
To try to hide ourselves away
Old yellow pictures
Yesterday's news
Seeking catharsis
In a twelve-bar blues
All the things that we were doing
To try to hide ourselves away
To hide ourselves away
Mummy will be angry
And Daddy will be drunk
"Be careful where you're going boy
Or you'll end up like your Uncle
As the black sheep of the family"
But Daddy - the black sheep ran away
Over the hill to freedom
He lived to fight another day
All the things that live to haunt us
All the needles in our heart
The shadows on the bedroom wall
The things that make us start
Out of our nightmares
Cold and frightened
In the dark
Go to church on Sunday
Say prayers for the dead
Confess your sins to Jesus
(Though he knows them all already)
Oh for Jesus is your saviour
He will wash your sins away
Jesus is your saviour
He thinks about you every day
But prayers remain unanswered
And Daddy still gets drunk
And I remember Mummy
Stealing candles from the church
All the lies our parents told us
To try to keep us in our place
To try to save their face?
And I think of all the baggage
That we carry through our lives
I think of all the times
I've had to run away and hide
Sometimes I find myself believing
I'll be running all my life
So angel hold me tightly
And say that it will be all right...
Mar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 at 9:23 AM UTC
She was old when I first knew her
To an infant, parents are timeless;
Fairy aunts are just… old.
A tiny scarecrow of a thing,
Her eyes glittered; her mouth
Never offered an ill word of anyone.
She was a good woman. She never tired
Of talking about blind Jim – a good man –
With girlish love in her face;
One man, one love, one life
He wove wicker and filled mattresses
And listened to the wireless in the evening.
Her constant thought companion
As so many might-have-been heroes –
Gone, before I could know him.
Christmas would wend round each year,
With Meg as star guest,
Tipsy before the Queen’s Speech,
Whisky rouging her cheeks; fairy lights
Made envious by her laughter,
My mother, and hers, basking in gleelight.
I grew up there, every other Sunday,
Overlooking the Hospital and the Tay
From the safety of her living-room window,
Inventing spaceships and spies,
Dreaming of who I would be,
As my mother and Meg made small-talk.
Month by month, her daylight dimmed.
I never saw it. She was only ever her;
Happy, constant and true.

Afterwards, I learned about the
Vying accountants and surgeons,
Postponing, year and again,
The procedure. She told me, when finally
Her appointment was confirmed,
That when the cataracts were gone,
She was going to buy a ticket
For the number nine circular
And spend all day upstairs,
Just looking out of the window
At the city she’d lived in
For nigh-on ninety years
A week before the operation
Her home-help found her in bed, with Jim;
Smiling as they danced through the daisies.
She seemed no older when she died
Than when I first knew her.
A good innings, they all said.
Not enough.
If only by the length of a bus ticket –
not enough.
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 5:27 AM UTC
(By Sir William Topaz Crawford-McGonagall, Poet and Tragedian, Grand Knight of the Pink Garter)
'Twas a Monday morning, in late February
When the clouds were covering London, thick, dark and heavy
(A beautiful city, when the sun is shining,
But not if it rains when people are out dining)
And waking up in the morning and looking at the sky
I felt quite sad, and moved to sigh
Because not only was the weekend over
(Which, having to go to work, I easily did discover)
But alas! the darkness made to sink my mood
(And that was not very good
For being in a low mood takes away my joy
And makes me feel like a grumpy and unhappy boy)
An Lo! The forecast was for more to come
Until Saturday or Sunday, at least, no chance to see the sun
I tried to think of things to do
Which would, perhaps, make me feel a little less blue
Despairing of the weather, I set to work
(Because in order to earn money to pay the bills, one must not shirk)
And bent like a Trojan to my labours
Hoping that happiness would be repaid as a favour
And slowly - oh joy and great day! - my mood it turned
And the harder I worked, the brighter it burned
So now I do not worry about the weekend
Because after the week which it subsequently sends
Another weekend itself there appends
And it all seems to work out quite well in the end
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 9:29 AM UTC
A message in a bottle
To a boy long cast adrift,
Would talk of Pride, and eloquence,
Of confidence, and gift.
Kiss a beaten forehead,
Stroke away a frightened stare;
Evaporate the anger
With a ruffle of his hair.
If I could write that letter
And cast it back in time,
I wonder if you’d wonder
If the words were really mine?
I’d sing about the miracles
A grown-up boy can feel:
The highs and lows, the joys and woes,
The velvet, and the steel.
I’d tell you not to worry,
Not to panic, not to reel,
To trust your inner judgement;
To believe in what you feel.
If I could write that letter
And cast it back in time,
I’d tell myself to love myself,
Find balance, peace; and shine
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 9:54 AM UTC
What’s cute about my little cutie
Is his beauty, not brains
Old father time will never harm me
While his charm still remains
Just cos you grow old, baby
You don’t have to be a cold baby…
How I love my catamite
Rising proudly like a stalagmite
He keeps me young and beautiful
The way I want to be loved
Never fails to work his fluff
My delicious, golden powder puff
Keeps me young and beautiful
The way I want to be loved
Though I’m old, there’s no need to be placid
And if ever I feel slightly flaccid
I indulge in benign flagellatus
With my puer delicatus…
He lends me all his charms
When I’m tightly bound within his arms
Keeps me young and beautiful
The way I want to be loved
Though he’s not going to win any prizes
For his essays on Nietzsche or Kant
You have only to glance at his thighses
To see why I keep coming back…
I adore my catamite
My delightful little sodomite
He keeps me young and beautiful
The way I want to be loved
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 9:50 AM UTC
Gordon is a spider
He lives in my bathroom
I feed him up on house-flies
And chocolate Macaroon
Gordon is a spider
He lives behind the bin
He hides away when people stay
- it’s very kind of him
Gordon is a spider
(At least, I think it’s him –
Oh no! What if a bigger,
Meaner Gordon did him in?)
If Gordon Two ate Gordon One
My throne is surely cursed
No second toilet-mate could share
The manners of the first!
If Gordon's really bought it
I don’t know what I’ll do
I’ll have to write a notice
For my guests upon the loo:
**WARNING: SAVAGE SPIDER
BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU POO!
HE ATE HIS PREDECESSOR –
HE COULD BE AFTER YOU!**
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 9:47 AM UTC
…rain, rain, red rain, scarlet rain, ochre rain, incarnadine rain, rain driving in torrents unseen in millennia, pounding the desiccated earth in a frenzy of hydration...
I... I never dared hope to see this. In the last days... let me see now... this is so difficult that even my recollection grows dim...
In the Last Days, Council met and planned. We exhorted the brightest, challenged the greatest minds. We sifted through aeons of knowledge and philosophy, searching for the key to our salvation. Plans were made and discarded. Theories expounded... and proved false. In time, we came to the inescapable conclusion.
Our seed had grown thin. Hundreds of generations of advancement, fine-tuning, and engineering had taken its toll on our people. We had become threadbare; the canvas of our soul stretched beyond the limit of its frame. We had become a doomed race.
(...rain from pole to pole, reaving nature through force of Will, rain into rivulets, rivers cascading into falls, scouring terrified hillsides, on an unstoppable charge to the lowlands...)
The inevitable demonstrated beyond doubt, some lost all reason. Others chose their own end; marching calmly, in ones and twos, or in families, into the hopeless portals of Ra’k Tanar. A few of us chose to carry on, in the hope that something might be salvaged.
(...rain like the fury of a spent people, a whirlwind railing against futility, rain coursing and surging, hungrily rediscovering its soil, its flood-plains, its oceans, rain urging defiance, blood-red rain on blood-red clay, a million screams and a million years out of time...)
And in a way, we forged a kind of victory. Ruined as we were, we were not without Craft. Our best we gathered to the Hall of Treasures, under the icon you have only just uncovered. We laboured hard, so that even with our passing, the land would not forever wither. The seeds of your future were planted long in our past. You are coming into your inheritance: now, under the deluge...
(...rain like a thunderstrike echoing through the centuries, life-giving rain, angry rain, rain like the tumult and violence of all the wronged and lost, breathing, raging life into possibility all around, and with one last, weary, sigh, I leap into the heavens, rise up, become one with the sky, one with the rain, and fall in a billion crimson teardrops
Feb 14, 2013
Feb 14, 2013 at 7:56 AM UTC
close your eyes and
picture the garden beast –
you know the one
cold tail in poison
head, elder icon, circle
snake devouring its self
when you close them
what do you see?
adam? peace? hope? release?
when i close mine
i see an infant
reeling against the wheel
onan over ophid
i choose lovers
but never mothers
i offer love
but always i
tender my seed
at the altar
of a warm
and fruitless god
this wheel
will turn
no further
this wheel
will turn
no daddy
enough
enough
enough.
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 9:06 AM UTC
I’m sorry, Sir,
I know you said
I had to write out
50 times
“I must improve” - but
50 times
a different thought
came to my mind
i must look after myself properly
i must eat more
i must drink less
i must make time for myself
i must get the test
i must organise the divorce
i must sort out my job
i must sort out my head
i must get the car serviced
i must tidy this ******* place up
i must give up the ****
i must phone my friends more often
i must become a better person
i must take control of my life
i must find a therapist
i must hoover
i must grow up
i must calm down
i must sing more
i must accept myself
i must finish that poem
i must challenge ‘must’
i must find a new balance
i must raise my self-esteem
i must put on weight
i must get to bed earlier
i must return those calls
i must take up meditation again
i must get to the bottom of this paperwork
i must ease off the whisky
i must read more classics
i must remember how to feel good about myself
i must print those t-shirts i keep talking about
i must feed the fish
i must organise my finances
i must rearrange the living room
i must look into a mortgage
i must pray to the god of small things
i must hold good people close to me
i must burn out my cynicism
i must stop spending more than i earn
i must stop pushing people away
i must stop feeling icky about her past
i must stop being a drama queen
i must stop beating myself up
i must stop putting it off
i must stop going through the motions
i must stop looking for the answer in others
i must, i must,
i must
stop substituting poetry
for action
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 3:43 AM UTC