I am excited to announce that I am in the last steps of editing my new poetry book, Life Before World’s End.
It is a fair representation of the years between 2008 and 2013.
It ends on the day the “experts” told us would be the end of the world.
There is also something very personal I have weaved into the 133 pages of poetry and short prose.
Keep an eye out.
She attacks it like a nervous
Making a vital speech for conflict.
The burger didn’t stand a chance.
Her gerbil cheeks hardly swelling
When her impatience throws its
Hand into the black clouds.
She licks her fingers, her burger
Carton. The tomato ketchup cup
Shudders its way to her slug-tongue.
She turns. The mouthful, visible
Like the brains of a dead rabbit,
Puts me off any nourishment.
She finishes hers and attacks
The shocked date’s fries. He
Politely leaves his thoughts in his sickened mind.
Eenie-meanie-minie-blah
Wishing on a passing star
Not for money or a car
Eenie-meanie-minie-blah
Itsy-bitsy-blipperty-blee
If not them, what could it be?
Holidays near a foreign sea?
Itsy-bitsy-blipperty-blee
Eebie-jeebie-sarbie-schwings
Not holidays or shiny things or
All the trouble that fortune brings.
Eebie-jeebie-sarbie-schwings
Ibbedy-bibbidy-barbedy-bite
Just a quiet place in which to write.
A roof above to sleep safe at night.
Ibbedy-bibbidy-barbedy-bite
£5 for a two slice toaster.
I feel strangely Fagan-esque paying.
I must be hurting someone;
It’s so cheap is all I’m saying.
The user manual has to cost
More than the light plastic.
I’m bothered by the dubious history, but
Our needs are purely drastic.
Is that how they grab you?
Blind us with fewer numbers.
Too busy penny-pinching to
See the evil it encumbers.
We pay pence while the workers
Pay with their hardened lives.
All bending at their workstations: men
Children and crippled wives.
What’s the answer, when
Charity begins at home?
It’s going too fast. I need to breath.
It skips like a springbok. It doesn’t wait.
My heart. My thoughts. Actions.
It goes too quickly.
There are moments where it looks
Towards sights of young couples
Walking with their first child.
His tiny hands are gripping
Gleefully to their big thumbs.
The child totters forward, safe in
Their grasp. Their love.
Then it speeds like a skinny man
Hunting for care.
I will catch it.
I already feel its
Propulsion easing towards a
Gentle. Slow. Stop.
This is my moment to inhale.
This is my time to slow down.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale…
A lost child; a parent’s nightmare.
Why must degraded brains seek
Gentle minds to manipulate?
Why do these filthy bottom feeders
Hunt down our blessed children
Like ferrets at downy rabbits?
What dark caverns their dreams
Must be for them to lick their Chapped lips at the merest thought of tender fright.
What empty shells their black souls
Inhabit, when every day they plot.
Their need to tarnish youth’s trust;
A dreadful game where evil’s
Vilest claws reach out and rip
The life of child and fearful parent.
On a train
Again.
The lowered voices share
Muffled tales and crisps.
I mull the passing trees,
The lights from Sheppey’s isle.
The stiffness in my elbow,
The underused wide smile.
Why is there a single solitary
Broad bean lonely by the seat?
I’ll soon be in dear Sittingbourne
Where I’ll have to use my feet.
I disembark, turning my tired eyes
Away from the scruffy pair
Who are busy eating each others
Tongues and lips and hair.
I pray that the Sheerness comet
Is waiting on platform three, but
Alas, the gods of early bed are
Ignorant to my pleas.
Another forty minutes of kids
With little on their blue skin and
Drunks dripping wife beater or
Puking kebabs in full bins.
Shouldn’t there be police for this?
Or are they all asleep?
After praying by their bedsides that
Their souls a god will keep.
An unassuming man on his mobile Tells his mum that he will
Punch her in the face
If he is arrested.
Arrested he says!
Chance would be fine.
The south eastern bullet
Arrives virtually on time.
I jump aboard.
Followed by mummy lover.
Please don’t sit near me,
You vicious little thug.
Go slide under a rock somewhere
With the crawlies and the slug.
I breath a sigh as he
Slopes off down wind.
Carrying the stench cloud
That is his breath.
I exit at deserted Swale
Faces question from their seat.
Like patrons of a veggie cafe
When a straddler orders meat.
The eerie cacophony of fowl
Follows me up the darkened road
Their webbed feet squelching
Like the murder of a toad.
Nowhere in England have I
Heard this frightful din
It’s a vocal representation
Of how demons would sing.
No amount of shouted abuse
Will curb their bloody tongues
Their hellish cackles drown out
The noises belted from my lungs.
I scurry on.
My eyes are accustomed to the
Darkness by the time I enter
The bright, warm light of Mavis.
Sunday morning cup of tea.
Planning places they should be.
But first the loved one needs a wax
Scrub and polish. Aching backs.
Its shiny surface bears the smiles
Carrying suns reflections over miles.
Now thoughts of luncheon in the park
Heading home before its dark
Washing work clothes for the morn
Sleep disturbed by light of dawn.
Join the race to pick up cash
The metal skins losing flash
The weekend’s here; time to relax
Cup of tea, wash and wax.
No words are needed
For this sheer wonder.
I could tear apart libraries,
Leaving dictionaries asunder, but
What’s the point?
Nature’s taken my place,
With this great sight to
Redden my face.
