Lemme segway a sec, cos I’ve totally pegged
This hen-pecked, pen-heckled,
Old speckled hen sipper,
Cackling, old, tapas tipple tipper,
Real deal, Big Dipper zipper ripper.
Claptrap trapping, insensitive sentence clipper,
Yom Kippur for the mansplaining leg spreader,
Straying in boots made of real leather,
Cowskin soles, maturing his cheddar,
Pray for the weather, air miles collector
Fucking springtime Alpine ski slope sledder,
Regretting greeting Greta at the regatta,
Shoulda sat with them legs together, forever.
Forget her genial gaze, bet she’s older than a genie’s age,
Or older than the jeans in which Norma Jeane lays.
Got beads on his wrist,
Polished mahogany shackles carved out of sticks
Probably by someone who lives in the sticks
Turning these tricks, I hope that it sticks
Custom fitted for the rich, or for
Kitsch – open bracket,
bracelet wearing, oversharing, uncaring
close bracket – dicks.
Seems to forget exactly where it is that he is,
There’s strictly no sound on the underground
But it abounds when a throaty guffaw flags up his flaws
So take your best pick from the penny pick n mix:
Unbuttoned shirt fluttering under a North Face fleece zip?
Or money not in a wallet but held in a clip?
Words slurred by a permanent lisp?
The blue blood glues shut his lips,
That’s just how it is.
Tag: Poetry
9th February Commuter
Mercy, mercy me! God damn!
I do declare those are working man’s hands,
Candidly handling an empty Fanta can
Recanting financial incantations
Using the fingers on each hand.
Each one fat as a rustic bread roll,
Stocky white van men, naturally bald,
But unnaturally bold when it comes to
Cigarettes that have to be rolled.
Red light, Amber leaf, soon to be green teeth.
Fiddles with a filter, fulfilling the filler to
Throw himself off kilter.
Head rush, heart rush
Maybe enough to guilt her into uncompacting their crush?
Not likely after a puff, puff, puff, but still,
That’s the stuff; off the cuff links to
Thoughts of other stuff –
Turn it up, that thing that makes him grin:
Could be the podcast in his ear,
Or memories from a different year,
Like when he made that bully shed those tears,
Exchanged overbearing fears for underwhelming peers.
No fear, not hurting, coat bought from Burtons,
Same dull shade as his tobacco faded curtains.
Time to curtail and close these curtains,
Hard to tell but I’m certain that he’s hurtin’
Cos when the grin fades, the wrinkles upstage
And I can’t gauge his age
But fears allayed, come the end of the month,
He’ll get paid his wage
And can finally afford another can of
Fruit flavoured lemonade.
8th February Commuter
Taxi cab cabbie or cheeky chap chappy
Sitting alone in his lime green cappy…
Happy go lucky or
Trigger happy finger plucky?
Snap the cap off the sharpie
Pen these features on sharply
Pinching pinched cheeks in disbelief,
Looks like it’s time to water the heath,
Thin, patchy stubble with unwashed skin showing underneath,
Half grown, half mown,
Mach 3 would make sweet moan.
How can he hope to atone when
Razors blades are erased and instead
The payday loan pays for yet another burner phone?
But phoning mugs and plugging drugs,
Helps to make the next payday his own.
Coke blown, cash blown, should’ve known
To take his cod liver oil,
Wrap that shit up and smoke it on foil
Make the blood boil and end up six feet
Beneath the soil. Still toil and trouble,
Life goals achieved by blowing a Hubba Bubba bubble,
Working that jaw like a grass chewing horse,
Voice probs as hoarse as a hungover whore.
Dropping bets on the scores in a Kangol windbreaker
Believing the tweets of all the fake news breakers
Breaking the ice into manageable rocks
Now so frazzled on rocks, thinks he’s in Fraggle rock.
Lock stock and two smoking nostrils
Nostradamus on Advil can’t predict overdue bills
But who needs to see the light, when
The blood from your nose is reality distilled?
7th February Commuter
Studious caterpillar reveal your wings
Curl up in a chrysalis and change will begin
Begetting dreams of Bugattis and bourgeois beef patties,
Brioche bun and truffle mayo for the fatties
With the fattest wads of cash. How would he
Survive in a wadi without wads to splash?
Hide your stash of silk,
Stick to lactated milk,
And try to avoid blasts from the past and things of that ilk.
Cast your mind back to your childhood dreams,
Black Velcro trainers and ripped denim jeans
No need to worry ’bout bags stuffed with just stems and seeds,
Still using pipe cleaners to sustain his pipe dreams, and
Listening to mum explain how things are,
Gonna be and should’ve been.
Grasping the cover of a Roald Dahl book
Fiction’s Wilhelm scream with that Quentin Blake look.
Look, reading is an endemic pandemic systemically
Changing the world with words read retroactively.
He’s chasing these paper trails so actively,
Coast to coast, cover to cover,
It’s a marvellous medicine and he’s so sick
Just give him another.
Still plenty of time to sleep and recover.
Man, it must be such a treat
To get some shut eye without the baggage underneath,
Planting seeds in dreams that turn over a new leaf.
Belief belies this wide eyed, four-eyed child,
Beatles haircut and coat out of style
While the lack of a scar on his head
Shouldn’t prevent him from getting ahead
And living his life however he likes,
You should try it. I tried it; still trying;
But I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t drifted out of sight,
So now I sit outside, spending my nights spinning these webs
To capture butterflies and eat the dreams in their heads.
6th February Commuter
Part time Pollock, pillock locked
Dribbling drops of time
Straight out of his mind’s eye
And onto the glassy screen
Tired with no beans, chilly in a beanie
Should’a cold shouldered that
Soul patch goatee badge
Like an antithetical cock-eyed girl guide.
Coffee smear paint stain,
Gillette razor blade game day,
Post trim splash of oil of Olay.
Goes some way to moisturise the skin,
Stops the wrinkles from settling in after
Settling tensions between tenants,
Tummy won’t settle after drinking too many Tenants,
Cos a tenner for ten Tenants
Is always gonna increase the tension, is he
Intentionally sitting there on iPhone solitaire
Reciting a cheesy sit and stare soliloquy?
Does he care that his chinos aren’t clean though?
Pebbledash pants dashed with stains of paint:
Pigeon shit white,
Chewing gum stuck to the soul of your nikes,
Too much tea, British teeth, tannin blight,
You know, that sort of dirty-dream off-white,
Call it cream and we’ll rent it for twice the price.
There’s no titanium here, just pastel yellow sneaks
Peaking from beneath the nuclear spill of an energy drink.
I don’t believe that red bull gives you wings,
It’s no different to eating Percy pigs on a Boeing
I’m not telling porkies, cos here’s the thing:
After a day of painting and decorating,
Cash in hand paid for the can in his hand,
And yet how can he still be sleepy
Despite drinking that shit he’s drinking,
Left me thinking, red bull gives you wings
To imply survival from the ship
It always ends up sinking.
2nd February Commuter
Asked for a ladder that Jacob couldn’t climb,
The clattering hubbub pulled my minds eye
To the gash in the back of her black wool tights,
Might try to cling on tightly not tiredly
If they weren’t so unsightly, reuniting skin
With fresh air, oxidising her legs
Along with her burnt copper hair,
Girly curls of wire curling so wildly,
Wily as a coyote.
Call her a talking, flaming bush, I’m blaming the peyote
What’s there to show me in your red leather bag?
Adorable Pandora or fair weather hag
Using the bag to haggle with her hangnail charm,
Two hands hang at the end of her arms
Cutely curtailed with cuticles so beautiful
They disarm. There’s no cause for alarm
But looking back, they were beautifully black,
Cos black nail polish is a tip top tactic
To hide all the grime,
The sort a whiny white male would acknowledge as
The secret residue of cut lines.
Her plush cheeks blush meekly from the pre-dinner wine,
And cork coloured eyes spill wider
Than the widest oil spill those sinners tried to hide.
No truth, just crude lies cruising so wide they were
More out of this world than that Buck Rogers guy.
Watch her buck teeth chew the buckwheat,
Buck the trend of the lean in 15 cheat sheet.
Got some pretty neat tats,
Inked in bric-à-brac stacked
In a handy habitat
Between each finger, imagine that!
My gaze lingers like a lazy acrobat on
A love heart and a peace sign and
Other tat like that,
Abiding, silently hiding until the oyster emerges at the end of the line
Hard to define such a boisterous girl
When you watch her spit out a spearmint pearl.
1st February Commuter
Ten damn stops until the end of the line,
The grape on the vine where X marks the spot.
Try and spot the lesser-spotted leopard skin blouse:
Is she mutton dressed as lamb or an
Overdressed, jam distressed dormouse?
Playing house inside tannin stained teapots,
When it’s only 5 o’clock and she’s already
Dressing madder than a hatter whose lost the plot
Too late to change her top
Too late to change her spots or her stripes,
You’re damn right, marching overripe
Hair into a tortoiseshell brooch.
Slowing her approach to make an impression
Impressing in a cotton pelt as sheer as Shere Khan’s direction
Straight to the top and don’t ever stop
Except to stop the rot.
Keep tutting with your glottal stop
Tainted posh, lips painted rot.
That’s German for red, which is the colour of
The blood that she coughs.
I’ve seen the hanky, diagnosed it, now thank me.
This ain’t no hanky panky,
I want some of that cash you got in the banky,
Legs short not lanky, saggy scarf hanging,
Tassels hassled by the carriage breeze
Banking the cliff of her hips,
Suede ankle boots will never slip
Just like ships that’ll never sink,
Who else thinks that logo clad tote bags
Are totally totemic baggage, iconoclastic
And plastic. Masticating the muscles
Of her shoulder, forever getting older,
Depend on that like the weather getting colder,
But unwanted like a cold caller getting bolder.
Should’ve told her, that the signal from the iPhone in her hand
Resonates on a dangerous bandwidth,
But it’s what she listens to the band with,
Plugged into an iPhone I.V., a shrinking violet
Slowly hidden beneath apple’s poison ivy.
30th January Commuter
Cross legged leggings suspend fake leather leggys
In plasticine webbing, shiny and taut.
Puckered lips from the lemon tort,
A citrus blemish caught out and worn outdoors,
Can’t explore the great outdoors behind self-closing doors.
Black hair, feathered like Raven feathers,
Extra volume, very clever; too clever
By half. Too smart by a quarter.
Watch the silver bangles jangle
That her boyf probably bought her.
I’m pressured to make these presumptions,
It takes a certain kind of gumption, like wearing
Gummy rubber boots to a black tie function.
Doc Marten’s stomping the junction,
So shiny I can see my face in ’em
So shiny I wanna eat my lunch off ’em
Clapping the ham, applauding the meat
Tapping the letters into a text,
Better yet,
Call it a love note to a soon to be ex,
Time to reset and see what’s next
Cos the text that she wrote,
Left hearts broke
As though it’s murder she wrote.
Hid it so well under her black winter coat
Sniffing so well all the white winter coke,
Or maybe she’s sick and just cannot cope
With such a big winter coat; it’s far too warm,
Sweaty and alluvial, can’t wait to be born
From this metallic womb, silver spoon,
Stainless steel room, booming rumours
Chasing each station, burning tinder relations
It’s a fishy equation,
So Pisces she can’t see the fella.
Squinting those eyes at the guy’s, ay Ella?
Stirring things up a bit mrs paella,
Out of this world, Interstellar,
Digs the dark not the stars, clear night, no weather
Dunno whether she’s into selling the soul
She keeps down in the cellar.
25th January Commuter
He fumbles a thumb out of his glove,
A single digit shrugging off the above and
Exposing brown skin next to his cuff.
A fat, proud worm,
Stunted and rough. Peeled skin shrinking
As the cold air sinks in. Why do something
So obscene? Well, how else is he s’posed
To get a fingertip grip right on the screen?
Cos swiping gloves on glass is like
Wiping your ass with Vaseline,
Or quenching your thirst with kerosene.
Besides he needs a fix of technology’s morphine
And an apple an hour keeps Doc Rob lean.
It’s the ho-hum, hum-drum,
Drumming thumb, thumbing the thumbtacks
Stacking the hardbacks in favour of
8 Ball Pool and Clash of Clans, the themes
Clashing like cans, can’t stand the sounds
That obnoxiously pound our ear canals and surroundings.
Pet peeve, it’s one of those makes me frown things,
One of those down the mine, dead canary things,
One of those things best solved
With arrows and bowstrings.
Stringing us along on toe tapping
Steel capped boots, still can’t lose.
Hugs the back to front backpack
To his front not his back, sitting bareback
Head as hairy as a hairless bear’s back.
Honeycomb combover, thin as gauze,
Food for thought, thought for pause,
Pause for the lung thawing, throat scoring
Coughing prologue stop, starting
Over and over, tick-tocking, set your watch
To oily cogs slipping through the daily slog.
Mr Groundhog bogged down, sunk
Into a duck down coat.
Gotta wonder where the feathers go?
Too slow, eyes close, nose blows,
Blood flows, doors shut, train goes.
24th January Commuter
She’s nipsy-nipsy, oh so tipsy,
Bar shift over overly early,
Po-faced, no Dipsy.
Tinky-Winking like La La Land
But no tips on the bar where the jar-jar stands.
Check out that stance, hot pants sentry,
Sent to guard train entries with
Knee high black socks and the 21st century.
Wonder if she sees me seeing her,
The phone in her hand might as well say
‘Do not disturb’.
Hot blood vessels snake
Up exposed thighs, from the toe to
The heel and then up to the eyes,
Exposing each capable capillary
Lifeforce artillery, papercut distillery,
Silently standing so still it’s verging on inverse versatility
Some static mannequin-type anonymity.
Come on a minutey, for all intents and purposes
She’s intensely focussed on the proclivity of
Low hanging fruit, the pockets that sag like there’s nothing to lose. If only she knew.
Cos short shorts lead to all sorts of
Bertie basset thoughts and liquorice storms.
But of course you can’t force meteorological remorse
Onto the innocence of youth. I mean she’s
Looking mean and meaning business in
A green bomber jacket the colour of a
Golden Virginia tobacco packet.
It’s fucking one degree above zero and
she needs to sort it out, pack it in,
Showing way too much skin…
Now that’s not misogyny, it’s just
A legitimate citizens concern that
When she leaves, she might actually freeze
Stories On The Sofa 