I laughed in places
   Where Laughter was not asked for,
     In granite market towns
       Beneath refugee palm trees shivering.
                                    

Running from giant hands
That were covered in car wash fluids,
   The back of children's heads imprinted
     On their palms.

I laughed during disciplinary procedures,
  Before authority figures
    With cornflakes in their red beards
       And my laughter crept over the edges of their flowerbeds
         And the grass laughed with me.

I laughed at funerals,
The sounds of horses beyond the churchyard
   And a messenger ran down the aisle
    panting and exhausted,
     He had a message for my laughter
      ' Quick you must come at once'.

I laughed during marital feuds,
Laughter rising out of its own body
  above broken guitars and dried up bonsai,
   Above all the things I said
    That contradict me now.

I laughed during serious films,
The tulips drooping on top of the T.V.
   The sun slumped against the door,
     Behind heavy curtains
        I mistook for pigs on hooks.

I laughed over exercise books,
Above algebra and history
  Behind impossible bra straps
    That appeared out of acne and ink flicked backs.

I laughed at the swimming pool
Hiding birthmarks like stains,
  Drowning above the water saying
   'I am a fish I must get back in!'.

I laughed in surgeries among migraines
and told my mother that robots were taking over,
  in the same rooms where they removed my brothers' verucas
   And I saw the doctors small blade
     escape through the window.

I laughed during friends confessions,
In between the silences of repeated songs
  While pantomime dames walked past windows
     make-up running in black and yellow rain.

I'm laughing while making coffee in a campervan,
I'm laughing because its a monday morning,
  Because everyone else is busy,
   Because we have an oil lamp from a pound-shop
    Burning beneath the sound of rain on the roof,
     Because the radio's silent…..

And because sausages are best done slowly.