“I can see you want to,” says Miss Polkinghorne.
And I do. I smile as I hold open the pages of my Early Reader.
Which is when it happens: ‘Janet can run and John can too,’
But I myself am pinned to the desk by the photographer’s flash.
And I see the sign:
-Last black hole for 20 billion light years-
Wow!
I throw the book into my spaceship’s airlock,
Press eject, watch my childhood disappear over the event horizon.
And engage hyperdrive.
I’m five-years-old.

Goodbye Janet, goodbye John,
See me, see me, see me run,
I wonder how a five-year-old can read and fly a spaceship.
One day we will know,
In the meantime, on and on and off we go.

At eighteen, it has become obvious to me that time is not linear:
From my bubble-topped intergalacticar I can see both past and future.
They lay before me like an unfurled map of everything,
Which is how I‘m able to read the previously mentioned sign.
I have, on several occasions, been waved down on the intergalactic highway
By someone I believe to be Miss Polkinghorne.
I hadn’t stopped, “I could see you wanted to,” she would have said,
Then she’d have asked me where I was going
And I wouldn’t have known,

At twenty-five, I arrive.
As advertised, it’s a world without end.

At thirty-six, or thereabouts, I discover the Instantaneous Transfer of Matter:
Cataphlatrix Six appears suddenly in the co-pilot’s seat and wonderful she is.
However, our love-making organs don’t conjoin as well or as often as I would like
And there are other issues, (steering wheel matters).
Soon our happiness is in tatters and she begins to not-so-instantaneously fade away.
“Given you can see into the future, this must come as no surprise,” she gurgles
And is gone
Before I can tell her of the parallel universe I was counting on,
The one in which we were to live happily-ever-after as dad and mum
To a little Janet and a little John
But on and on I run.

Happy birthday to me, I’m one hundred-and-three.
The leak in the airlock blows out the candle.

By the time I turn a thousand, the gift of foresight has lost its appeal,
Every day the same surprise, and I switch off the engine.
Then I see this new black hole and realise how far I’ve come.
I pop on through.
There’s nothing here but perfect peace
And my old Janet and John book.
Which must have wormholed its way through time and space.
Look. Look. They both can run.
Good luck Janet,
Good luck John,
On and on and on and on.

Perhaps at my old school they’ve still not solved
The mystery of the boy who disappeared.
And yet I was an open book
So I’d be surprised,
Surely someone saw the faraway look in my eyes.

This morning in the park
The toes of baby giants have sprouted through the grass.  
They’re mushrooms, of course,
But it’s a cheery thought.
I’ll pass it on.

Not to Gwendolyn:
She waves a hand, then, head down, hurries past
In pursuit of late husband Edwin, always the quicker walker.
Edwin whose mind turned to sand and trickled, egg-timer-wise,
To his boots.
He left behind the trail she follows every day.
Edwin, who, towards the end, asked Gwendolyn  to hold his ankles
While he stood on his head.
A lovely bloke,
He liked a joke and would have laughed at my mushroom thing.

No point in telling Percy Pointer,
Ordering his mobile phone about again.
I’m sure there’s no-one on the other end.
Perhaps he thinks the same of me.
He might be right.

Too early for John and his dog
He’ll still be at church talking to God.
John that is, the dog’s agnostic.

Ah, this little schoolgirl I’ve seen before.
No mum today, just her dolly and a packed lunch,
Mother’s Pride no doubt,
Beautifully turned out,
A brand new shadow every day.
This morning she’s trying to stamp on its head.
‘Ha! Only hurting yourself!’ I would have suggested,
If I’d wanted to get arrested.

This jogger has wires trailing from his ears
He sings “Doo-be-doo”,
I wonder if  the one wire goes straight through
But he is past before I can ask
And I’m beginning to lose heart.

Then suddenly, out of thin air, she’s there,
My ex... Invisible Jennifer.
(I don’t see her anymore).
What brings her here?
“Why,” she says, “this gorgeous morning!
The greenery,
The scenery
And have you seen the toes of the baby giants?
They’re mushrooms of course but I thought...”

I think you’ll find that that was me, I try to say
But can’t get a word in edgeways.

Oh well, it wasn’t all that funny after all.
Let’s ****** off before she drives us up the wall
Jenny
One imaginary friend too many.

“And who are you my dear?” I hear her shout.
“Are you with misery guts?”

I think she’s talking to you.

Do not open
A parcel bomb
Or an email from Nigeria
A phial of the diphtheria virus
A conversation with a serial killer
Or a joint account with Godzilla
Don’t open my diary
Or a pub in Dubai or
The door to a Seventh Day Adventist
Your heart to a Muslim fundamentalist
Your legs to a Jewish dentist
Your knees to a bee
Don’t open a message in a bottle if it’s come from overseas
Or your bowels in Cecil Gee's
A can of worms
The seal on a pharaoh’s tomb
Old wounds
Or your mouth to speak ill of the dead
Some things are best left unsaid.

Having said all that
Sometimes it’s fun to do
Things that are bad for you
This is a **** it list
Though I’d give the parcel bomb a miss.

I am a clown,
People laugh at the things I do.

Walk a mile in my shoes.

Henri the stage contortionist
Would twist his body into exotic shapes
Before suddenly straightening
An act which brought the sort of thunderous applause
That might have been denied him
Had he performed it in reverse
Which is what he sometimes did in rehearsals.

It’s Winter and the trees are bare
Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?

I’m leaving a note out for the milkman
Told him I’m not all that thirsty
And that I hope his cows don’t bursty

But I signed it in the name of my next-door neighbour
So that the milkman thinks she’s living with me
She’s a gorgeous bird
And would certainly have shown concern for the herd.

The children say we’ve got to
That we’d be crazy not to
“We’ll treat you,” they said
“You’re a long time dead.”
Trouble is, travelling’s not so easy now
What with my legs and Malcolm’s hip dysplasia
But we’re off to Euthanasia this year!

In a dark alley
Behind The Rex
Mary Carey executed her ex
Dumped him by the side of the street
Revenge was sweet
She cut off his head
Collecting his thoughts in a black plastic bag.

Took it home and showed her Mother
Who took Mary to the attic
And showed her the others
“You did all this?” gasped Mary Carey
“No, some of them are Nana’s
And Great-Grandma’s too
There’s allsorts here
*****, ***** buggers every one
Christian, Jew and Hindu.
Men, they’re all the same.”
Which would be nice if you were talking world peace.

Mary Carey had a daughter
And, in an attempt to break the family tradition,
Gave her away to the nuns at the Mission
Grown, they sent her to Rome.
Where, in St Peter's Square
She bedded
Deaded then
Beheaded every man who tried to kiss her
Leaving behind a trail of bloodied mitres
And a pile of bin liners that might have been tied tighter.
“Can’t stop
Myself.”
And off she popped in search of other buggers.

But the plastic bags in St Peter’s Square are suppurating
And, far away from the Catholics,
The collected thoughts of de-bodied Protestant
Muslim, Hindu, Rastafarian and Jewish men
Are flatulating through the puckered ***-holes of untidily tied knots.
Some smell of roses
Some of Forget-Me-Nots
Of Valentine’s bouquets
A lot of them smell like old ashtrays.

And one or two of rotten apples.
These waft across the polished toecaps of young girls
And leave a nasty stain.
***** minds:
They're all the same.

I put you in my poems,
Keep you near, Judy dear.
If you knew how much I sat around and pined,
You’d **** your tongue and shoot me right between the lines.

My dog Lucky passed away today
Over a cliff
I’d seen him put his head out of a car window before
But this was different
He did not bare his teeth
His lips did not ripple
And I did not laugh at his flapping ears
He howled all the way down
I blame her, the *****

Lucky was a mutt
And not much more than a puppy when he met her
She was a purebred Red Setter
And a good deal older
With a pedigree like that
She should have known better
He wanted fun, she wanted his body
But Lucky wouldn’t let her
He’d sniff her bottom
And she’d present
But Lucky wasn’t keen to
Because I’d had him seen to

He bought her a stick for Christmas
Money wasted
She refused to chase it

She went off with a Beagle she met in a bar
He’d made a packet testing cigars
He bought her a fur coat and a fancy car
She demanded a diamond studded collar
And he said he would sort her one
She wanted a dog and he bought her one
The rich are different

Which left Lucky holding the Christmas stick
And he would sleep with it
And his back legs would go
And not very gently
As if he were chasing a Bentley
He stopped eating and his whining broke my heart
So, this morning, whilst we were out for a walk
I took that stick and made it disappear
But throwing it away was a bad idea.

My dad asleep in his chair
His eyes closed like pressed flowers
A great big man
Having a great little sleep

“Good morning, lovely weather,” he said
Leaning over the counter and
Unfilling a bucket of goodwill over my head
“I’d like a girlfriend,” I replied
“A friendly, pretty one
And preferably one not delivered from a bucket.”
“Picky, picky, aren’t we? Unbucketed girls don’t come cheap.”

He showed me his stock
I showed him the cash
I pointed to the one with the tiara and sash
Which was a mistake because she turned out to be Miss Worlds Apart
As, when I looked more closely, did all the others
Strange to see them together like that.
Then to make matters worse
The man in the shop turned out to be Mister Parallel Universe:
As soon as he had my money he disappeared.

And she didn’t even come with a free bucket.

It couldn’t last
She kept herself at a distance
Then blamed me for shouting
We never went out together
We slept in separate beds
Took separate holidays
I bought us a tandem
She bought a unicycle
I bought two tickets for the Superbowl
She bought a barge pole
“This isn’t what I was promised at the shop,” I said
But I could produce no bucket as proof of purchase.

She must have slipped out her bedroom window one night
I found a ladder propped there in the morning
A ladder, two lines that never meet.
It had to be him and sure enough
Up from the garden drifted the smell of what could only have been buckets.
And no letter of explanation from Miss Worlds Apart.

One Winter’s evening
Hurrying home from work,
The North wind whistled at her
And she a married woman!

She slowed
She glanced about
She slowed some more
She stopped.

She turned down her collar
And took the scarf from her neck
She closed her eyes
And allowed the wind to blow its wicked way with her

Bold as you like the ***** homeward rushes
But walking through the door
She cannot hide her blushes.

How little I seem to have done today
How little there is to show
How busy I’ve been
It’s so terribly clean
Now I’ve tidied it all away

I think he’d be pleased
He was house-proud you see
There isn’t a speck of dust in it
And nor anymore
Is there gore on the floor
There’s a visitor due any minute

He’d have been mortifided
If I hadn’t tidied
Poor Mr McGinley
I sliced him quite thinly
He took it quite calmly
And was only alarmed
When his blood hit the ceiling
And started congealing before he could reach for a cloth
I was going to roll the bits up in the carpet
But he said it would ruin it
So I posted him piecemeal down the waste-disposal unit
I heard his teeth grinding
Did I need reminding that filth was bad for his health
And did I think the sink would clean itself
“That’s typical of you
And us with visitors due.”

Now the cutlery’s washed
I polished the cosh
I wiped down the walls
It looks terribly posh
So there’s nothing to show how busy I’ve been
He was always so eager to leave the house clean

As leave it he has
Run off with the neighbour and taken the cash
Or so I told the police when I asked them to call
I think that’s Plod now
Why doesn’t he knock?
I bend down and peer through the hole in the lock
Oh no! He’s lifted the lid on the drain

Up through the grating like toast
Pops the ghost of my dissected next-of-kin!
And though -thus far- he’s taken it calmly
The voice of my salamied sweetheart
Is bending the ear of the boy on the beat
“Don’t you dare forget to wipe your feet!”

Plod peers through the key-hole and we see eye to eye
He winks and says goodbye.

It was the incense perfumed aftershave that first aroused her
suspicions
Though there were other clues:
The purple balaclava
And the fish tattoo
The funny collar on the bedroom floor
Sunglasses indoors
The little round wig he always wore

“I think you have a secret life,”
She murmured to her lover.
As, under cover of darkness,
Father Doyle
Traced a crucifix in baby oil across her thighs
And gave her a blessing in disguise

She was so much younger than he
And here they were, alone,
She all flesh and blood,
He all skin and bone.
All bristles, knees and hips
Skin as tight as vicar’s lips,
A slight smell of cheese,
They’d warned her there’d be nights like these.
She stood there with a duty to perform.
She stood there in her nurse’s uniform.

The old man was quite dead.
She drew the curtains round his bed.
Began to wipe the grime away,
As mothers will do every day,
She washed his ***** knees,
They’d warned her there’d be nights like these.
She scrubbed behind his ears
And stroked his head.
She combed his hair
And tucked him up in bed.
She thought about a goodnight kiss,
But no, not on nights like this.

If dead men dream then this was his:
He took that goodnight kiss
And dreamt of the wife he’d won,
Who’d touched him as the nurse had done.
He dreamt of days of bliss
Of when he never dreamt that there’d be nights like this.

I know where the time goes,
As go it must,
It goes like the wind,
Which explains all the dust.

I do know where the time goes,
I heard it talking to the trees
When I was three
So I asked my dad,
“What did it say?”
And he laughed and said,
“I’m here to stay.”
Then he found a twig  
And scratched that lie into the ground with it.
Which suited me down to it.

We avoided cremation.
It would have seemed that time itself had set dad’s *** on fire
As though belatedly berating him
For making his non-carking remark
In the park
Thus consigning him and his joke
To a message in a bottle of bloke.

Now I’m back in the park
And hoping time has been kind enough
To preserve the evidence.
Hmm, I thought as much;
It’s blown all the leaves into a heap
Like secrets the trees couldn’t be trusted to keep.
It’s broken the twigs’ fingers
For their part in the scam
And I’m afraid to say
That all the rain today
Has turned the dust, like dad, to clay.
Which has itself been washed to the same place time goes
Which is either, rather beautifully… away.
Or, less so…down the drain.
Depending on how fantastic your dad was.