Friday night fleeing from the scrum
like the last thing on our minds
are other people’s kids:
the outrageous, hysterical bashing we take
hour by hour as
we
just
try
while each successive boss quickly forgets front lines
and asks for ‘evidence’
of piling into the meat grinder

Then something tiny reminds
why we’re even here:
a flood of tears perhaps as dogs have died
or that kid who says “I’m a microwave
bzzzzzzzzz”
and despite our glowering frowns
we smile so hard we cry

Head resting on the cold glass,
the bus streams a show
of tired towns and spent countryside,
my oh-so-worldly heart
beats through paper thin sophistication
anticipating mum and dad
with all the missing love
that for a forgotten moment
makes the *****, vaulted ceiling
of the station resound

Out on the ice as the season turns
the lake groans in leviathan language
and I understand, I do

But routine decides the route, not me,
and this floor might spiral fracture
as a passing thought
to those dark waters

Blossom caressed
fat leafed
unabashed
exhibitionist spring
get out and let it couch you
to forget
and remember

I seem to have missed the lesson,
or maybe it was a paid seminar,
where being a ******* to folk not like you
is seen as cool

A staggering self-belief, or indoctrination
into a way of thinking that excludes
the workers, powerhouses, batteries,
seems insane in a way
that only limited lineages
seem genetically capable of

But now I’m stooping, so I’ll stop

Let’s all stop
being in thrall to noisy *******,
rugger-buggers who had charmed and broken youths,
who knew no hunger except in minds
and no kindness except paid for

I would feel pity, but these bred monsters
are parasitic,
so to let them survive,
******* and spouting lies,
kills us all in the end.

Britannia rules these waves

To crawl, the impossible crawl
to swear, the most swearable curse
to bear all the ******* they throw us
and not, leave the place in a hearse

To nod, when you just want to punch
to eat, every snack that you see
to cry, when you misplace a pencil
or meltdown when you can’t find your keys

This is our quest!
To get to the end!
Without killing a colleague,
or upsetting our friends

To still teach fractious kids
without question or pause
to stride strong into period 5
without breaking some laws

And I know that the end is in sight
so I’ll bite my lip
late July will be peaceful and calm
with a big gin to sip

And the future will not be so bad
to our heart and skills we affirm
September we’ll all start again
but for now we consign to the past
the unteachable term

Call call callous
all wretched all broken all

hear the melody call
discordant heart
arrhythmic

choked, abysmal
abyss, abyss

while the clock still ticks
are we

I love you

from a tickle to a thrum

a bothered everything for now

for now is a time indeed

same as others gone

and others still to be

I’m invincible, unstoppable

until I stub my toe
and come a cropper
and the earth below me shifts
and sits on my chest with a manic grin

The gasp for breath
like a feeble request for one more chance,
******* properly in a bunch
as all avenues close

These are the swings and roundabouts,
the reciprocal motions
that see rise and fall as one

decades in you’d think it’d all make sense
but this viscous, thick emotion
is as sticky as always

Splinter and divide,
time after time,
bluster and misdirect,
point to the workshy or foreigners,
twist the knife in vulnerable hearts
and fan the fear

We’re here because at some point past
we agreed this land should last
that it stands for goodness and right
and all heads shared the thought
so the idea
became

Our disgust and indignance
threatens a retreat
so the squeakiest wheel triumphs
through attrition

Your mission,
should you choose to accept it,
is this:

Call out the heartless, the bleak,
the self self self serving,
the thoughtless, the blinkered
the unthinkers

Every breath, every day
our grit and mettle can save us
and an idea worth saving

Cupboards filling up
with stuff we can’t touch
like industrial sacks of dry roasted peanuts
and biscuits for cheese, specifically.
Seems this season of excess
begins with an interminable exercise in restraint,
where even one mince pie is missed.

Emptinesses
framed by inequalities
that sew the disaffection,
throw the disenfranchised into
blues sharp relief,
stark contrasts of
black and white
rich and poor
needful and needless cries

There should be no politicking
or filibustered unkempt bluster
in the emptiness of children’s stomachs,
nor grave injury from
the ignorant knuckles of authority

Hunger of all kinds
in guts and minds
brings pain
and a shame to even voice,
for there shouldn’t be cause
to have to

Hunger has a way of spreading
to hearts and minds
and when hurting enough
will drive change

But not alone

The comfortable,
careful, silent,
the full,
must give time,
use voice,
use currency,
and fight

Pinched fingers
on the tape ribbon
of this reel to reel life
have caused time to dilate,
elongating sounds drawn out
til no high pitched shrieks
or panicked squeals remain

an ****** stupor settles on us
and our slackened jaws
pass treacle speech
as another day peaks and troughs

unexpectedly we return
to analogue
with little in the way of
selection or control,
forgotten scratches and skips
audible once more,
to be ignored or heard

A day will soon come when you will wake
after a full, unbroken night
with no asides other than kooky dreams,
and materials for breakfast
will be at hand and in date

and your plans will be loose
and peopled with easy love
and activities that boost your soul

the weather will be just the way you like it:
that crisp, bright, balmy, bracing, intoxicating kiss
you’re perfectly dressed for

the memories you carve will remain
to glow in the dark
like the stars on your bedroom ceiling

a day like this will come again
so hold on my loves,
hold on

No one on this wet rock is self-made
they all got fat with a safety net,
foundations laid
by mothers and fathers who gave
time, lives, thought, truths
so we can do what we do

It’s this we should continue

Let those who can
burn bright and earn,
that’s fine, they’ll cope
but your concern should be
the bedrock beneath us

Your every task should be to
feed, clothe, educate and make safe.

If you want Great,
supposed lost,
fulfil your role as public servants,
right and honourable,
that’s the only real cost

Mens sana in copore sano
so they say
which these days is a worry
as the sedentary blur
sees a time-lapse
of my fattening *** shift
marginally on the sofa
while the pallor of my skin
makes corpses wince
and message u ok ***?

Given my increasingly potato shape
what state will my cabbage brain be
when they finally give the all clear?

When we are once again allowed near
I envision sitting with my primates
grunting fear as the brave one
reaches for the monolith

Hey guys!
Remember not to **** or **** anyone.
I know modern life is hard
with, like, credit cards and stuff
but just because you can do
something unutterably terrible
doesn’t mean you should
Ok?

And yeah, we don’t have a monopoly
on being shitbergs
In the general pissy sea of life
but statistically, with numbers and stuff,
we ****

So, y’know, try not to.
See how that feels.

Exhausted
kneeling so grit is driven deep
and the sneer and shove
of those robed in a fake love
harries

The smug, paid for fists
of sanctioned thuggery
inflict blows that go beyond
contusion and haematoma
deep into a world soul,
and scar

Solutions are there
if we bring a whetstone
to the keen edge of care
and weaponise kindness

Because something that has
been a mess for generation upon generation
can’t be ignored to fester more

It is time to exercise rights
and excise

Against the backdrop of a global catastrophe
witness us busying to fix the natural damage
heavily wrought
an endeavour in itself,
which ought to warrant respect
and the gift of time and patience

Our blood and sweat
a human resource
gladly spent to rebuild the detriment,
but not at any cost
not kamikaze squadrons
dashed upon the decks of a false progress

For each of us as batteries
are finite
and our spark will drain,
our light will die
unless the blinkered
see that trying is enough
for now

When foundations are rebuilt, safe
and feet feel steady
we will readily head skywards again

Bewildered by the difference,
the vast, unknown shape of it all

Not moments before,
ensconced in familiar tangles,
routinely fed and tended by parents
who flared and chattered
at the merest prospect of a threat,
met only by bolshy robins
who scoffed at fear
and tumbles of sparrows
who hid in each other

This necessary, Hail Mary leap
sees me petrified
grounded at the foot
of an adulthood full of flight,
song and the weight of freedom

if I can just get through
these cat clawed days and nights

These dry bones
once fit together strong
while time flowed one way:
on

That current held surprise
that knocked joints off guard
and a lied about collapse
occurred

Their ham fist could grip limbs
and clunk them together
in a fruitless pulse,
for what?

The trunk and branch
of what’s to come
must be reseeded
mulched and nurtured,
maintained root to crown
in different growth
or the same clown gardeners
will bring us down

Our feet scuffed drying ruts
along the riverbank
and we gave the land
our thanks for holding up

Alongside us, green bright head
curious,
a duck and drake kept pace

I know the quizzical eye
was a bread request
but you’re as lucky as the rest of us

Above us, swimming languid
in unbounded blue
two buzzards circled

My mind got to thinking:
what fate are they
hoping for?

1.
A certain stasis of shapeless days
backlit a little by obscure sport
leave a lot of room
for double-edged thought

2.
I’ve bought two mandolins
one cut my fingers
the other cast them too fat,
what’s up with that?

Green shoots,
little shocks of brilliance
from mouths so oft distracted
tis a wonder they’re not more malnourished

the courage to give an opinion
on long dead white kings of literature
who speak Christ knows what but it ain’t English
is, as they themselves may say, lit

my tired soul has read the lines so oft
I feel peppered for all this,
so finding out Romeo is now a simp,
has the hot blood stirring again

I get that beef fat and butter
in this day and age are a sin
and contribute to the decline
of myself and this earth

But, my lords and ladies,
I am weak
and beholden to the
grease shined smile
on stuffed chops
as my euphemistic dad ***
becomes ever more so,
ballooning to a middle age where
there be dragons

I plead mercy,
and perhaps some ice cream

Gee officer Krupke
my memories hold nunya well
dug the early grave and stood above

my soul still holds tunes and counter melodies
and my heart bleeds
it bleeds ooblee-oo
ooblee-oo it bleeds

pools like knives
belts and rocks
still bleeds buenos
noches

Yearning for frost sharp, gaudy lights
in November seems apposite in a year consistently blighted with dull, pedestrian horror

The itch to raise a tree and string lights
to no and every god
could be scratched this time

We can pack our proud sneers
in the loft or attic in exchange for
electric hope and cellophane cheer

As nights draw in
we’ll bluff metaphors of closeness
until a wellspring comes to right us

Like, you float
and welcome the buoyancy
But
a mooring now and then
would be loved

Let’s think
of the sunk cost fallacy
whereby
the sweat, tears and cash
you’ve ****** into your endeavours
means you never let go
of your burning ambition
so you beg borrow steal
to stave off the immutable truth
that you’re wrong

Then let’s think
that instead of a business
or crazy high jinks
you invested in the sense that
some humans outrank others
at birth
and hidden behind the privilege
of that thought you ignored
what was often in front of your face
or at your work place
or fatally jogging through your neighbourhood
til it shone straight in your eyes

and your beg steal borrowing
does nothing
because lies and filthy ideologies
can’t stand the light of day
so grasp as you will at
the pictures and voices of shills
who defend the grotesque
and try to mess up a people,
a nation,
with fat cat, fat handed,
fat tongued oppression
your fingers *****, but empty

The lesson:

it’s ok to be wrong

it’s ok to draw lines
under ugly pasts
so futures can be brighter,
you can apologise,
learn
and make right

A restrained ahem
echoes into the night
without even the edge of an eyebrow raised

the tentative gesture
fails to interrupt business
as usual
no mass exposed
to the fat con and filial misdirection

while on the stage
the hamfisted prestidigitator
sweats so profusely
that the greasepaint nearly shifts

Gies a wee sookie
a wee swatch an aw

member a was braw,
pure braw

an a luv ye an aw

We stay in the meat grinder
as kids are mostly good

we give our time to causes
that no other buggers would

we shoulder the weight
as our colleagues keep us up

we try to raise a thousand toasts
with nothing in our cup

we don’t do it for league tables
or targets plucked to reach

or for managers who do their jobs
as they do not/cannot teach

we do it as it’s in us
it is simply who we are

and we’ll do it til indifference
goes just one
                      step
                             too
                                  far

There have been other years
when the gross ache of being apart
was caused by the spiral growth of life,
but it was ours,
easily fixed by a Boxing Day trip
or a warm January shindig.
This year’s exponential spiral
stifles all but the cold binary of a zoom call
and fans smouldered ire at the avoidable

One: my life spins in small circles
that very infrequently stretch
to somewhere as far as Benidorm

Two: that after 12 years married
she’s right about most things
so I’ll listen more

Three: a lot of annoying stuff
is dust in a much bigger wind
so look for the wins

Four: the kids are what it’s for
and all their silliness, fear and anger
is a handle to clutch on to

Five: we are here and alive
and we should forever
fight to keep it so

I know which fat bells are tolling
with “Pupils come first” on lips
like a benediction spoke by those
whose fingers dip the collection box

But it can wait.

Piles of marking like ancient pillars
meant for Samson to do his thing
remain upright

Because a little tight in this metaphor,
Samson is for cooking a roast
playing video games
and watching the last gasp of TV,
anyone with me?

Just one iota
of that teenaged brio,
utterly fearless in the way
slim life allows,
would power our souls for
whole years

fears, as they come,
are whispered on sharp minutes,
on slow hour memories,
on broken days, lost
in an oubliette
desperate for a single glimmer

youth can be reckless
self-sabotaged and trite
but by god,
there are lessons in the might of it
in spite of it
if we stop,
look
and listen

#emmaraducanu #youth #joy #riskreward #thrills #liveloud #rageagainstthedyingofthelight

The bull necked man
with a single thought
could only muster one retort
“****” he said
and a million Wildean thoughts
cascaded in my head
and ultimately I said
nothing

The clarity of that light
apologises for the fact the cold
will still shrivel your extremities

Once again
we sit in wait of the first hot pulse
to wake our state

They say it’s coming
but we’ve been (not) burned before
so cautious underwear is worn

But be sure
that ****** foil barbecues will sell
in panicked droves come Monday

Glimmers in the hinterlands
as I begin to settle
into reaching my Old Ben days.

So rage reshapes, tempers
and can be passed
to the compassionate and energised youth

Torch will still be borne
and saber swung
but I’ll pay in aches and pains
in coming days
and likely collapse to
sage blue spirit status

My anger slowly feels
like an elegant weapon
for a more civilised age
while the streets call
for the bluntness of a blaster

I’ve mastered thinking round and round
and missed chances to parry,
but my force will be added
to the great wave of change

This empire is dead

The sounds of your voices
work with me,
the resonance of your mirth,
your anger, your vexation,
your empathy, your soul,
is orchestral in our everyday scrum
to keep me humming along

As chasms open up to swallow
I’ll eye them carefully
to see if I should cling or dive

The thing about chasms is
that there might be something amazing
at the bottom, that reinvents you

Or there could be spikes and crocodiles,
or spiky crocodiles
with knives

You just never know with chasms

Your sick incarceration
held against a shining will
‘til unmoored you walked

a light you couldn’t see,
that lifted others,
dimmed

each step seeming free
with inexorable gravity
drew to the woods

your last embrace
brought cold release
and all our griefs became

Never more distraught
than when parents dared
to have a night out near Christmas.
Complete desolation at their betrayal
was quickly assuaged by nana,
babysitting like a boss,
with a steady stream of treats
and staying up late to watch
Dempsey and Makepeace

This morning
bird song
like black tar ******
incapacitates

dizzies senses
slight numbed
by minor isolation

all too brief
a moment of reverie holds

before returning to
web spun garage
and forgotten loft

to make busy

A swallow pair appeared
fashionably late
to legitimise the charcoal incense burned
in honour of escaping carpet
and the same ****** curtains

Other birds stuck with us through the ****
but as they are chubby, drab and common,
love’s taken for granted

The sign of these slick interlopers
with their continental drift
makes us giddy and all a-flap
at least til the bite of autumn

Walking
like the hardest game
of hide and seek
I’ve ever played

On the whole,
I love my fellow man
but the walk was the thing
away
that kept the humours balanced

So if I know you
and our paths cross out
don’t be offended if I doff
and move on

Unless you are a bumblebee
or the trill of a spring visitor
you aren’t what I’m looking for,
for now

The problems with grilling
aren’t clear
until you choose to clean

This guy and that guy
try to shake me down for some truths, y’know?

I says “Snow, fellas,
always follow the snow.”

and they looks at me askance
but obtuse
so I stole the tiniest chance and flew

Hoooie!

I’ll be payin’ for this one

Still loose, my mind drifts
over coppice, brook,
past fields left fallow
to heal
ragged with sedge, ragwort,
while crickets twitch defiance

Here is where I send myself
as the keyboard walls clatter in
and time returns to rigid
and gravity remembers to hold

The words we say to you
aren’t strictly true
as much as they do
what we want them to

shaped and spun
with hidden gears
so when they reach ears they fit
K-chick!
neatly settling
without drawing attention
to the shabbiness
and moth holes

Look here my good man!

Hand shadows dancing
on a bright screen
hiding meaning
in dumb show gestures
of duck quacks and rabbit concerns

In Oz, the wizard’s heart came good,
behind our curtain
you’ll just find avarice
and certainty
that a brief, gout ridden future
means more to us than you