... is me,
In Middle English, all at sea,
Self-pity and the Lesser Key.
I have been blind,
And unkind,
And stupid.

But what about you, Cupid?
Where have you been?
Worrying about bits and bytes?
Locking up the lippy whites?

Well I watched the news last night,
Used my ears and not my sight.
Oh Jess!
What a mess!

Did they take you to one side?
Say "Here's your arsenic, open wide"?
While one side pushes the other shoves?
No finger prints - they're wearing gLOVEs?

I'm done.
I'm going back to being dumb.
I've fallen off my broken perch
And I'll be as quiet as a Janeite
In Godmersham Church.

Good bye and good luck,
I'll miss that Irish... gentle man.

"SIGN for the medication" the registrar said,
Eye to eye, tilt of her head.

No! No! No! Not this full loon.
So the dish ran away with the spoon.

Another angry bee. Not a single dove.
Why aren't you watching ? Where is the love?

That book in the wicker basket,
North aisle of the nave,
Is one of the saddest things.
Messages for the little ghost who lies,
Alongside,
Some Anglo-saxon kings.

(I watched nobody read it
From a distance.
Her shoulders were shaking.)

Later,
Nobody went with me to London again,
On the train.
The NPG is a short walk across Trafalgar Square
From the station,
And there
(On the third or fifth floor - can't recall)
Was the drawing - so small,
Behind bullet-proof screens,
Alongside,
A bunch of Tudor queens.

(I think I read that she is on tour at the moment.  Australia perhaps.  I wonder who she is rubbing shoulders with now.)

"It's called terracotta”  Professor ‘igginz said,
‘Coz ‘e’s one of ‘em with big words in iz ‘ead
And we're in Tuscony on a cultural trip…
(Where they paint the buildings the colour of brick)
…To look at pictures and culture and stuff,
But after an ‘our
I've ‘ad enough,
‘Coz it's all great big churchez and great big tombz
And great big museumz with too many roomz.


And then I see this bloke looking at me
And ‘ere's me thinking “Who can ‘e be?”
‘Coz ‘e's tall and ‘andsome,
(While I'm short but not fat)
And ‘e’s stood on a plinth with wingz on ‘iz ‘at. 


And ‘e's got this lovely face
And a nice straight nose,
But mostly I'm thinking
‘E's not wearing clothes.
Just beautiful calves
Below gorgeous thighs
And everything's… You know…
Just the right size.


Then down ‘e drops, 
That ‘at gets a tip,
A nice little bow,
Them ‘eels givz a click.
And he makes me laugh
‘Coz ‘e's a posh sort of chap,
And ‘e torcs like this
While I talkz like tha’.


So I asks him - you know -   If he'll show me round, 
Then he pickz me up right off the ground!
And out of the Uffizi and up into the sky
And like buzzard with a bunny
Off we fly...
To this great big church
With a great big dome
And we land on the roof
Which ‘e sez
Iz ‘iz ‘ome.


And we sit there just chatting looking down at the crowds,
Then we lie back and paint faces on clouds,
And we watch the sun sinking like a great big ball,
And then just lie there saying nothing at all,
Til ‘e he turnz and whispers as the sky runs to black
And next thing I've got me legs round ‘iz back.


‘Coz ‘e's proper ‘andsome
With nice airs and graces
What  ‘igginz would call
“Prosopopoeia ekphrasis”.

Palms cup
Mother-of-pearl
To the ***** laugh
Of a clean-limbed girl
Whose teeth are white
And whose lips are as fresh
As lemon squeezed
On living flesh,
Beneath a salmon sky
As the tide slides out
And as we wash them down
With velvet stout.

Then she carves a heart
That reads "Chips for 'rus"
On the backseat of
The East Kent bus.
A choir boy
And his girl guide
Whose shell is rough
But who's soft inside.

Beneath the salvaged chandelier from a great ocean, liner,
I sip Earl Grey tea from the finest, bone china
With a polite little man in half-moon specs
In the warehouse of treasures that he collects:
Of hallmarked silver in glass, display cases,
Porcelain figures with colourless faces,
Pearls, ivory,  pallid pieces of jade,
Diamonds set in a Damascene blade
And before a naked Apollo in snow white stone
Plundered by the Goths from his temple in Rome,
The polite little man in his tidy bow tie
Kisses me on the lips as he
Unzips my fly.

She has a kind face and wears glasses with a tortoise-shell coloured rim,
And has a tortoise-shell coloured thing on her lip that could really do with a trim,
Which, when she is thinking, she flicks with the tip of her tongue,
And she says she's only fifty years old, when really she's sixty-one.

In bed she wears a laced corset of patent, red leather,
That concertinas the skin on her chest where it presses her ******* together,
And although she' four times my age, she says it isn't a barrier,
And it's not just because she's very rich that I say yes when she asks me to marry her.

The BBC have a new weather girl,
Her hair is blond and her necklace... pearl,
She warns bearded fishermen about rough seas,
While I stand here with my boxers,
Around my knees.

Some are friendly and like to be kissed,
Some are lonely with cuts on  their wrist,
But some have found,
When a man is around,
That it's surprisingly easy to walk into a fist.