You need 20/20 vision
To focus on the good in 2018.
But don't lose faith,
2019 might surprise,
Positive rises and positive demises:
Let's not name names
(If I did, there'd be no surprises!)

What wonders have my wasteful eyes overlooked
Over thirty years of fleeting footfall

A hungry desire for fitness and weightloss
Now yields to age and acceptance.

The polite crowd clap and whoop
Their brogues and plimsoles tap the floor.
Yeah, they worship and adore
This little mess of a group.

Their tunes were never mainstream
Which is just how the cool kids like it
Their identities pursue the dream:
Reject the norm and fight it.

Your careworn heart broke
When death came to claim
The life it had coveted so long
The life you shielded for so long

An end to a doomed purpose
Anti climactic? A death and a half?
The shackles a tightened privilege:
Release did not bring you peace.

House and soul were empty that night
No shallow breath for company
The thermostat's click a reminder
Of the warmth he enjoyed.

“Why us? Why no normal boring ****?”
The miraculous odds that you were conceived
Were offset by the misfortune of love unfit.
A birth with much promise but ultimately deceived.
Left to fend for yourselves like moths and butterflies.

You, the unlucky ones, not cared for in your early years.
Your resilience fails to blossom like those lucky ones
Who know little of your chronology of pain
But still ask what you would do if you had a magic wand,
As if that will provide them with solutions to you, the problem.

Trust takes time and is quid pro quo.
You need lessons in trust and attachments
But this is something that most adults don’t know.
Instead, they humour you or treat you with kid gloves,
Meaning that your adolescence is a bitter surprise
When you’re no longer the person they can infantilise.

“Why me? Why no normal boring ****?”
Questions you've asked all your young life.
The miraculous odds of your conception
Offset by the misfortune of love unfit:
A birth of promise ultimately deceived.

Resilience failed to blossom.
'They' know little of your chronology of pain
But still ask the 'magic wand' question
In vain hope of solutions:
Solutions for you, their problem.

You test for trust, seeking attachments.
Instead, they humour you
Treat you with kid gloves
So your adolescence is a bitter surprise:
You’re no longer the person they can infantilise.

A funny thing occurred to me the other day,
Then deoccurred,
Then reoccurred.
Then it occurred to me that it wasn't that funny.
Well, nothing to write about anyway.

Head plunged beneath the smallest lake
Suspended in an acrylic tub,
The warm lathered water,
Womb-like in comfort and familiarity,
Allows the briefest reflection and realisation
On how this very same room
Once offered me tranquility
And on how, earlier today,
In this very same room some thirty years later,
I bathed my own infant son in tranquility.

There were often times,
As I laid in that same bath tub,
When I pondered on my future
Wondered, in intervals of 10,
What life would be,
What skill I did not possess
Might dictate my future?
The joke being, I held no special talent,
No self-belief that any talent would emerge,
And so, my hopes were never high!

The looming grey of your promise
Hangs heavy above our heads
As does that glimmer of hope you hide:
Hope forever present but rarely seen.

Our all new house
Is a 'House For Life':
It's a bit of a sty but has:
Toilets downstairs
Toilets upstairs
Wide access doorways
And low level light switches.
Trouble is,
It's made entirely of straw.
Worse still,
Our neighbour is a ****** wolf.

Scuffed brown shoes
With laces as long as your arms
Skip and scrape upon the cobbles
Skimming over tiny puddles
Reflecting a hundred suns
Dipping in and out of a thousand clouds.

Like so much Beer Money
Jingling merrily in a pocket
The oafish group jostled,
Clanging and clinking
Calling and cursing
Up the unfamiliar boarded-up street
As, unbeknownst to them,
Their collective bird brains
Homed in on the nearest pub.

I never come here, you understand,
I'm of a higher social class,
But my washer dryer has broken down
And has left me without a single gown.

My dishwasher works fine and my wine rack is full,
But still, expensive washer dryers can breakdown
And make a lady frown.

I've got someone coming to fix it
(We have our washer dryer insured),
I should really get a new one but it's been really rather good...
It's always washed away the stains of fancy food.

Fellow launderer please understand -
as you look rather tough -
I won't judge you if you don't judge,
So let us wash our clothes in unspoken harmony
And make my inconvenience as unawkward as it can be.

But to my shame my snobbish mind assumes the worst;
That every rushing washer
Is thrusting clothes into the machines hurriedly,
Because they've all been on a killing spree.

Now the drying is almost done,
I can leave you with your dreary woes of working life and sleepless nights,
And go right home to dispose of that gun.

The times they are a changin',
Algorithms are modern cupids
Generated and perfected by...
Matchmaking computer whizzkids.

Log-in details now the key to love,
Name, gender, age and location
Algorithmed and matched to...
A potential subject of affection.

But I met my wife on a drinking spree,
On the dancefloor and on a mission
Wine and music combining freely...
Generating the perfect alco-rhythm.

Your idealism burned your path
and led you there.
Your desire a burning scythe,
Scorching and hacking
anything you deemed pre-determined.

Only a few tried to stop you.
Only a few told you it was a foolish endeavour,
But you wouldn't hear of it.
Your ears filtered out contrary voices.
Your mind bias to your thoughts of absolute free-will
and its oxymoronic pursuit of a destiny.

And so you left.
Took off under your own power
Leaving a contrail in your wake
Stretching from an eternal West
to an eternal East.
A monochrome rainbow
Befittingly lacking in palette
as your tunnel vision
allowed for only one colour,
Not a mixture of hues and shades
That colour a normal youthful existence.

Although short and unfulfilled,
Your brief sojourn on this world
will be remembered.
Your life's contrail will hang in the sky:
A solitary mark on your life's canvas,
A testimony, not to your Quixotic mission,
But to the good that would have surely followed
the eventual demise of your romantic notions
of solving the world's problems.

My weekly downhill drive past your flat
And your static life in your static flat
Briefly synchronise courtesy of your mirror's angle,
Opening a brief view into your lonely life:
Your brown vintage sofa
With it's vintage orange cushions,
Your formica TV dinner table.
A retro combo,
Reminding me of the set of a 70s sitcom
Minus the laughs.
Yes, it's a terrible thing
That I can't help but gaze
At that speedy reflection
Of your Thursday nights
Above your anachronistic Everything shop;
The shop *** museum that you've curated
For forty years or more.

A day off to do nothing
Is got to be worth something.
A morning of sleeping in...
Dreaming, finally relaxing...
...HOLY CRAP IT'S 3PM!

I have placed my childhood bibles (that aren't Bibles) on your bookshelf; hidden them in plain sight. A cheap subliminal trick I know, but one meant as an investment in time and knowledge: to peck away at your curiosity like the Woodpeckers I hope you'll read about in that Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds, which to you, right now, is just a jumbo colouring book too heavy for your restless hands.

I fractured my wrist
When I took a risk
Saving point blank
A shot by a lad
Whose foot was like a traction engine.
Now I’m left with a plaster cast,
Yellow in colour,
Like the sun that beats down upon it,
Making my cracked wrist
Itch and sweat,
And sweat and itch.

There was death and gore,

During the second world war.

Many people died in extreme violence,

Killed before they could call out to loved ones.

Young men were trained to ****,

Often against their morals and will.

So when I see your 1940s weekend -

Your 'war was fun and cosy' pretence,

Your clichéd polyester and fibre glass mockery,

Aiming to re-enact a mostly imagined happy-go-lucky camaraderie -

Forgive me for not joining in,

As I happen to feel it a cardinal sin,

To idealise and romanticise a decade,

Made up of austerity, rationing and air raids.

I've read a little social history,

The 1940s were not idyllic or crime-free,

Just as now, there were heroes and villains,

Among the soldiers and civilians.

Heroism abounded but so did black marketeering,

There were brave sacrifices but also racketeering.

City-wide black-outs were a gift,

To those who would rob and grift.

Your jolly nostalgic tribute is an annual celebration,

Celebrating your own fabrication,

Of a time when the machinations of war and a crazed ideology,

Saw the near extinction of an entire ethnic minority.

I do not wish to be a party pooper,

But don't just step into the fake shoes of a fictional trooper,

Please occasionally remove your rose-tinted glasses,

To remember that beyond your nostalgic narrative of the routines of the masses,

People lived with the daily fear,

Of the likely deaths of people they held dear.

When I see your 1940s weekend -

Your 'war was fun and cosy' pretence

Your clichéd polyester and fibre glass mockery, 

Re-enacting an imagined happy-go-lucky camaraderie -

Forgive me for not joining in

As I happen to feel it a cardinal sin

To idealise and romanticise a decade

Made up of austerity, rationing and air raids.

Believe me, I've read a little social history:

The 1940s were not idyllic or crime-free

Just as now, there were heroes and villains

Among the soldiers and the civilians.

Yes, heroism abounded but so did black marketeering

Yes, there were brave sacrifices but there was also racketeering

And those city-wide black-outs were a gift

To those who would rob and grift.

Your jolly nostalgic tribute is an annual celebration

Celebrating your own fabrication

Of a time when the machinations of war and a crazed ideology

Saw the near extinction of entire minorities.

Look, I don't wish to be a party pooper

But don't step into the shoes of a made-up trooper

So, please, remove your rose-tinted glasses

To remember that beyond your nostalgic narrative of the routines of the masses

People lived with the daily fear

Of the likely deaths of people they held dear.

Inverted scene of coast and air
Granite cliff clouds and sky of sea
You and I inbetween watching
The topsy turvy, roly poly play
Of two who cast their cares away

My dear Astronaut,
Love you to the moon and back:
Easy on splashdown

It sits unsquare
Made of tumoured granite
In a dip on a peak
Overlooking a lush green carpeted landscape.

Hurriedly hewn by many hands,
And thrown up by makeshift stoneshifters,
It balances on large pebbles
Held together by Play-Doh mortar.

It is, for all its aesthetic faults,
A resilient testimony
To a family's love
And to a proud identity.

The Starlings lent the tree a voice,
A murmured anguish: no rejoice.

You ripped the door off:
The electro-magnetic attachment
Was no match for your frustration,
Which goes to show,
You cannot guard against
A young man's anguish
Manifested as rage,
A judged and stigmatised rage,
Born of poor attachment:
An open door that was never closed.

I hung tantalisingly in the night sky
For a billion and more years,
Your coy companion,
Your one-faced little twin sister
Left barren by our mutual creation.
Glad was I then
- as an Aunt to your four billion children -
That you sent twelve to visit me in my dotage.
I do hope you visit in peace again soon.
Yours faithfully,
The Moon.

To say you are a Junior Doctor
Would be an understatement.
To say you are fit to practice
Would be irresponsible.
Your bedside manner
Leaves a lot to be desired.
You break your Hippocratic oath
At the drop of a hat.
You hand out prescriptions for Calpol
Like it's going out of fashion.
You tell me to take some pills
For the slighest of chills.
You take my temperature
And tell me I'm fine
When the reading says just 29.
When you check out my heart
You say it goes:
Ba-Boom Ba-Boom Ba-Boom Ba-Boom.
But I'll cut you some slack,
You may seem like a Quack,
But if I insist on a free medical
Then I shouldn't expect expertise
From a Doctor aged but 3.

Oh, the irony that a respiratory virus
Forced a breathless world
To stop to take a breath

The ponderance of non-existence
depends on the soul's resistance.
Is death an altered state,
or is unknowing nothingness our fate?

A cackle of Crows in her craw

The petrol flowed into its stomach.
Me, its feeder and its keeper,
The taxed and the fined,
The disqualified and the uninsured.
The gullible, puppy-eyed fool
Who bought a machine
To make him look cool.

Cars are real jerks.

Your creeping tendrils reek of toil and stress,
They've taken root beneath my bed,
Your nourishment is the nightly sweat,
That drip drip drips off my forehead;
You lap it up greedily.
Every drop intensifying your desire to confuse me,
To consume me with self-doubt,
Slowly but inevitably,
Turning my mind against itself.

An unwilling host for your dark massy form,
I carry you silently dusk to dawn.
You grow fatter day-by-day,
Becoming ever more greedy night-by-night,
Taking joy in supping on my liquid fear:
Like the perfect storm at sea,
You are too big to weather.
You are a ferocious dog let slip his lead.

You have blocked all escape routes,
Your shifting, insiduous form did that stealthily,
My mind, turned-in, paralyzes me:
A mental and physical double-lock,
Confining me to my king-size prison,
Meaning you can gorge upon my misery,
Until you leave nothing but an empty shell,
Then friends and family will all agree, 
"at least now he is free of his living Hell"

The weather was changeable,
A warming sun for the previous hour,
Then, without warning,
The wind rose high,
The roof rose higher:
No use running for cover, I thought,
Since the cover had gone the way of my courage.
You see, I had a role to fulfil
Sure, its fulfillment in sunny spells was a breeze
But in a Force Ten gale?
(Cue howls of laughter)
Progress was at the pace of a snail
And nerves are torn to ribbons
(Much like the poor flags).
Was it life or death?
Well, it depended on how much you didn't wish to die.
Luckily for me, my aim in life is not to witness death
And that is why I pushed on,
And huffed and puffed
Until we got our Lifeboat to the stricken drunken Jetski pilots.

Chester draws big crowds on raceday.

Employees dress up for away-days,

And punters hope for a big pay-day.

But, come the end of the day,

After bad bets that were the last straw,

All the fancy garb is taken off,

And put back in the chest of drawers.