Your tall feathery flowered plumes
Set on metre long stalks
Sashay in the soft breeze
Bringing to mind catwalk models
Of stature, poise and grace.
But you are just glorified grass,
Whose time has now passed.

Don't get me wrong, the trip was a blast.
I loved the chatter and drinking,
The joking and the mishaps were hilarious.
Did I mention the drinking?

The heel snapping off your "good expensive" new shoe was a hoot,
As was the train letting everyone off but you!
Did I mention the drinking?

But when I get home something odd occurs,
A completely baseless melancholy descends,
Joined by a stubborn belly ache.
Was it all the drinking?

I am very lucky, I do not suffer with depression,
But I've noticed a pattern,
And diagnose the post-session blues.
It must be the drinking.

To split a universal truth
Through the prism of poetry.
To write with mercurial mystery,
Employing cryptic non-sequiturs
After succinct statements of staggering profundity,
Is what I dream of as I contemplate
The enormity of my mediocrity.

River water flows
Quenches imagination
On scorched riverbank

I'd like to pepper my poems
With referenes to Greek mythology
Or sprinkle a little Norse legend
Throughout my stanzas.
But, alas, it will never be:
For, you see,
I utterly failed my Literature GCSE.

The further away I get from you
The more I can see into your past.
Time and space offer a grander view
Of how we made it last.

When we were joined at the hip
And our love was new,
All your faults were totally eclipsed
By my romantic idealised view of you.

I love you.
I have to,
I want to,
I need to,
I'm your dad,
It's my duty
And my honour.
I thought you felt the same,
So imagine my shame
After running through pouring rain
To save you from the horror,
The anxiety and dread
Of your first day in school,
To find you smiling and enthralled,
At the after-school club
You weren't meant to attend,
And didn't want to be saved from
By your loving dad!
So I say, my darling daughter,
Enjoy it all:
9 to 3,
September to July,
2019 for the rest of your life.
I love you.

A tragedy miles of time away
But pain is a stubborn stain
Counselling never washes it out
New love never puts it out of its misery

It is a stubborn ****,
Rooted in composted memories,
Finds nourishment in unwelcome recollections;
The slightest trigger allows it to blossom.

Funny
Honey
Money
Bunny
Sunny
Dummy
Chummy
Mummy
Crummy
Orange
..­.****.

It always amused me,
How no one in the building
Had neither the time nor the inclination
To change that default ringtone...
That harbinger of problems upon problems.
It amuses me more that,
After a break and a change,
I find that default ringtone
Still echoes down the corridors,
Like incidental music in a bad horror
And how I still snap into action mode
Each time I hear that default ringtone,
How I enter crisis management mode
Each time I hear that default ringtone,
How I brace myself for bad news
Each time I hear that default ringtone.
What a thing the mind is!
Impressions made upon it,
Triggered by a catchy default ringtone!

On his frame hung the rotting fruits of his experiences
A living carcass bejewelled by hate and spite
Candied fruit soured by the fermentation of bitterness and regret.

Mirror mirror on the wall,
Who's the sanest of them all?
They say I'm mad and egocentric,
But you and I know I'm just wonderfully eccentric.

You've reflected my soul for many a year,
We've seen me shed many a tear
For they all have it in for me
As my beauty lives in infamy.

I know I'm stunning and uncrazy,
But, some days do get a little hazy;
If I forget to take my mild prescription
Then my beauty really does defy description!

Some day
SOMEONE
May come across
THIS.
But until then,
There is
YOU.
And you will
NOT DO
So please,
Put this
MESSAGE
Back where you
Found it.

Your secret stands tip-toe on my shoulder,
It leans in to whisper in my ear,
The teller, the story, the revelation
Intoxicate me,
Spin me dizzy,
Turn my thoughts fizzy.
Your messenger tells me you love me:
This was most unexpected!

What Was The Point Of Life Before Children?
And other self-important working titles, like...
What If I Wasn't Developing Life Saving Medicine?

He has so much poetry within him,
But it's all based ON him;
Full of false modesty
And self-conscious irony,
He never deviates from the theme
Of HIM.
BORING!

Our interstellar messenger
To no one in particular
Sports two naked figures
Representations of a civilisation
That will have destroyed itself
Long before these astronaturists are found
...and probably judged.

But it makes me smile to think
That such a thought-out diagram
Of a male and a female
Was judged by some
To be "sending **** to space" 😂

Visual heaven,
Swirls all above me,
Moons and stars whisked into one.
Who is stirring the night sky
Whilst I battle on?

Chaos both high and low,
Danger here on the ground
Serene safety high above.
A contrast not lost on me.
Do I battle on?

An inviting heavenly white
A ****** red stained green
An ache in my chest
My senses fading.
Is this death I feel?

Lies surf on her very breath
The words spill out spit wet
Only to writhe on the ground
Like fish out of water

Not one for the truth is she
It is devoured in her mind's womb
By its own deceitful twin
The Serpent of her soul.

Lies surf on her every breath
The words spill out spit wet
To writhe on the ground
Like a fish out of water

Not one for the truth is she
It is devoured in her mind's womb
By its own cerebral twin:
The Serpent of her soul.

This blue dot, home to **** Contrarius
Custodians and abusers of Earth
Who named everything seven thousand times
And created seven thousand differing deaths.

Just this morning I anointed myself a ****** poet.
A pretty ****** ****** poet I know
But a poet of sorts
Who types into a Samsung that has that same dim glow
Of the fire that smoulders pathetically in my mind.

Cotton candy mystery,
A fellow with no history.
Sugar cane disaster,
An apprentice with no master.
What befell the sickly boy
When he lost his favourite toy?

Just a little illness,
Something that gets me off my feet,
A friendly virus partial to good deeds
To leave me bed-bound for a day or three.

A minor car crash,
No one but me,
A harmlessish accident arranged by the Gods
To leave me bed-bound for a week or three.

A break is as good as a change they say,
So maybe a real hospital pass in 5 a side
- a wrist-breaker on crash landing -
So no more typing for four to six weeks.

I had forgotten this silence existed.
One that lets me hear so much
Over distances my senses cannot gauge...
The bark of the dog doing its job
The clanging of trailers and gates...somewhere.
Birdsong, of course, is a constant
But I leave them to it, no need to disturb.

Not a socket in the house is on, by the way
Spring's sudden Sun generates comfort enough.
No Telly, no phone, no radio required,
Instinct tells me to hear the quiet
To receive not broadcast.
A bright orange book lies beside me:
It confessed all to me this morning.

I'll remember this silence always.

I had forgotten that such silence existed
one that lets me hear so much
over distances my senses cannot gauge...
the bark of a dog doing its job
the clanging of trailers and gates...somewhere.
Birdsong, of course, is a constant
But I leave them to it...no need to disturb.

Not a socket in the house is on by the way
a sudden Sun generates comfort enough.
No Telly, no phone, no radio required
instinct tells me to hear the quiet...
better to receive than broadcast.
A bright orange book lies beside me:
It confessed all to me this morning.

I'll remember this silence always.

The human form in darkness
Is a frightening vision to behold
Be it a giant of a man
Or the slightest of child
A shadowy silhouette
Always makes my blood run cold.

Double beds are a bad idea.
Everyone knows familiarity breeds contempt,
But not everyone realises that double beds breed contempt AND children.
Yes, I do believe in a single bed policy.
Double beds for married folk is a total fallacy.

Do we really need double beds?
They're all elbows and knees and farts.
Why can't we sleep apart?
Meet up in the morning and smugly tell each other how well you slept.
Maybe arrange to have a twenty minute cuddle in a neutral bed.

See, no double bed no sleepless nights.
No simmering hostility because of a careless knee,
No cold war because of cold feet,
No lifelong bitterness because of blanket stealing.
And no ill-feeling because "you're taking more space than me!"

Asleep in his cot.
Or so I thought.
I hear his restlessness
(No sleep for the rest of us)
I lie and wait for the inevitable,
His teething has been terrible.
He's about to start crying.
But the restlessness ends:

Silence is eerie when it is unexpected.

My tired brain seizes its chance,
Shutting my eyes on my behalf,
Forcing my body to relax,
Filing away my anxious thoughts,
But, no! Just as sleep takes hold,
My door creeps open.
There stands my son,
Or at least an approximation of him:

Doorway silhouettes are unnerving.

Then, a dragging realisation:
My son is just nine months old.
He cannot climb,
He cannot walk,
He cannot even stand.
The sleeping process reversing,
Adrenaline begins coursing,
The small figure approaching:

Staring and with spittle drooling.

I choose flight over fight,
Need to know my son is alright -
That he is not this thing of the night -
But the child-thing chooses fight,
Chases me, grabs me and bites.
It will not let go,
Its claws dig in,
Its breath stinking:

My son is my dying thought...

You grow wild yet reverential
Your bowed white heads
Gathered in prayer groups
Dotting the well-kept lawn of the dead.

Do the residents tend to you?
Do their icy-white greenfingers
- reanimated by the winter moon -
Awaken you with a deathly touch?

Snow, unexpected
Causes excitement and fear.
How will I get home?

"Gonna quit drinking at forty"
That's what I said aged thirty.
"Gonna quit drinking at fifty"
That's what I said aged forty

Never fulfilled these intentions;
Sobriety fills me with apprehension
For a life steeped in tension
Both avoiding and seeking attention.

Truth be told,
I don't want to grow old
As the green grey mold
That thrives in my home so cold.

Drinking is my hobby and my crutch,
Everyone knows as much,
And each drink I touch,
Takes me nearer Death's cold clutch.

But I love the *****,
I've got nothing left to lose,
So what the hell's the use
Of not lighting Death's fuse
With just one more flamin' Drambuie
Just for old time's saké?

The walk I wasn't on
Was, by all accounts, a good one,
I wish I'd been there
Because you were there,
But I bet you had nothing to say,
Probably distracted by nature's display,
Studying the forest's floor
Daring to be the bore
Looking up, occasionally
At the forest's canopy.