frightfully british but
also roman catholic
ate no meat on a friday
was always fish and chips

we’re both getting old,
but she still has dignity and desirability
and a demure sensuality and
all I have is a cough

don’t like restaurants
are full of people
who could have stayed
at home and cooked

jumps out of bed
what have you done
  with my *******
she says
I’m late for work
  they’re on the floor
  next to my socks
if I remember
  correctly
last night       ..

your underwears me down
with it’s expectation of
fulfilment, but I’m just not in the mood
right now I’m reading

why call murderers butchers,
    when we get our lamb chops
from the butchers, and very nice they are, too
    few, those old shops   ..

the angry knocking
and the insistence
I open the door

couldn’t help wondering
what was behind it

a man of letters
who pens
upon
trivial matters in convivial inns
where his life is spent
almost invariably
in tatters       ..

love to walk alone
through the city
streets are not just for grown
ups a daisy!

alas
a loss
unless
undressed
the poor old
chap was loved
I guess
her curls
in swirls
around his chest       ..

ok so I’m alcohol dependent
you got a problem with that ?

he said I don’t know why
I ever went out with you ..
she said but you didn’t go out
with me, we just happened
to leave at the same time  ..

looking back
on our old haunts
me still    ..

we brush against each
other
than that there is
nothing  ..

as she closed the
door behind her
mind was made up

opened a bottle of scotch
“how’s that going to help?”
ever tried drinking this stuff
with the lid on    ..

the castle on the hill
   is a ruin
still ruing the day when
  it fell
but I doubt there’s a case
     now for suing
worth
    pursuing
although I suppose one
   can never tell

why do people dislike politics
so much that they
prefer mob rule over civilised debate
is better than hate

people tend to comment on
the content or subject of a poem,
rather than the form or the style
it out, mate, style it out

nigel farage is a joke
is it’s on his fans the lies that aren’t
quite so funny for the rest of us, either
said the old bloke  ..

there is little conversation
over dinner as we’re concentrating
on eating I wonder what we’ll
talk about after      ..

a sunday roast
washed down with a pint
got back on the coach
and belched.
what more do you want     ..

last time I wrote a poem that
was
any good was on the late lamented
deep underground poetry site about an elderly woman on the
bus who offered me a boiled
sweet,
I thought,
but no, thanks     ..

if you haven’t read any of the
british library crime classics, then
what is there left to talk about, muttered
the old bloke down the pub

sitting in a pub writing
a poem but it
wasn’t very good and the
beer was awful

p g wodehouse and
john betjeman made
life seem worth living
just to read them    ..

old bloke in the café reads his
newspaper religiously
over breakfast every morning and
thanks God for letting him be
for now

d h lawrence was writing
beat poetry circa 1929 with his collection
of poems called pansies, but man, they’re
something else

feel unsteady, seems windier than
it used to be -
don’t know if it’s a climate change thing,
or just me

old bloke in the pub says
he’s drunk on the unfulfilled hopes
of his youth
but in truth it’s the scotch

someone stops the road sweeper
and asks him the way;
he says, like this     ..

don’t get me wrong
I like trains;
it’s just getting on

some days my legs work better
than others look at me oddly
as I clutch onto the railings, the wall
and you, you most of all  ..

the first time we met
I loved her face
but I fancied her legs
and I know that’s
sexist and objectification
but we’ve been
married for thirty two years
so who cares

what’s with this whole twenty
first century internet
thing about having followers,
I mean I feel like a stalker

rather write detective fiction
than poetry but I wouldn’t
be any good at it, and what’s
the difference? she says

stevie smith was the
greatest poet of her
age, but what’s her
age got to do with it

just recently discovered
   christina rossetti on a second
hand book stall
  down the market there were
others shouting their wares so much louder,
   but who cares

use a stick since my stroke
approximately four years
ago it was when I last ran for a
bus, but I don’t miss it

aren’t as many second hand
bookshops on the charing cross road as
there were when I was younger
of course, so were they   ..

ate our sandwiches sitting
on the steps leading up to
the art gallery
it’s a matter of taste, she says

love museums full of stone age
artefacts, the odd roman sandal or two
and victorian pottery, and all
those insects skewered beneath glass cases
not solved by pulling faces
at what our ancestors got up to

can’t see a way out at all
     wherever one looks there’s just wall
    and yes, one solitary gate
      whereby they gather to await
    the old fool

most people around here
take democracy for
granted they vote for the fascist  ..

old bloke in the pub says
buy me a pint and I’ll be grateful
for ever mate, neither of us
have got that long       ..

the pub at lunchtime
is quiet, he says,
I’m eating

this is all knew
I’d find it odd
my dear

leaves him alone
in the wood
are all he has    ..

just a glove, which everyone takes off
with well honed mimicry,
knuckles exposed, brittle *****
in their lack of symmetry, groaned
as they all have a hand in correctly mocking
all the above

let’s do lunch tomorrow
not sure if I can make it
I’m not asking you to cook