Like a blushing timebomb it parachutes
when its time is up. It is dying already.
Its brittle skin and ice hardened arteries
map a spiral of luminous decay.
This show of futile gallows defiance
should be a warning to all of us
and yet we praise the dissolute beauty
the sang-froid of its gaudy silk waistcoat.
This hostage to gravity has lost its grip.
After the fall, its final ignominy
is to end up as sullen pavement slush
waiting to break a pensioner’s hip.
for JJ
In the shadows before caffeine and light
Strange creatures assemble in black coats
On the wrong side of the city, at night
Bending the darkness with their sweet notes
They astonish with their lines and chords
They lend us poetry without words
They are the rule-breakers, almost foolhardy
See them skip recklessly across the wire
Throw shapes with their shadow puppetry
Or pass their bare skin through the fire
We admire the illusion. Is it trickery?
Fortune favours those who are brave
They know, with mathematical certainty
When to push, when to hold back with their art
Their artistry has no boundaries
We’re not like them. We could not scale the height
Of these sky dancers. See them gamble with eternity
In deep cellars, where candles are burned
They are the poets of the cold,
thin air
They fill the darkness with
their luminous sound
They need no net. They know that
one is there.
Tomorrow sharp showers will break like pencils
A popstar will die. The rivers will flow.
Light will break. Two friends will argue.
Trees will burn – they are plotting against us.
The weather map will turn pink.
A shamed film star will be cleared.
Rivers will ask us questions.
A lying person will be truthful.
The flames reared up. We cut down trees with chainsaws.
The mountain exploded. The soil blew away.
We sealed the borders. The airports were closed.
A country starved. Some deaths will not be mourned.
Look serious in
A and E
Like you're making history
All that's
decent you can shreddit
Shift the blame and take the credit
Increase deniability
By lying with sincerity
Play the joker
have a laugh
Posing for a photograph
There was no
party, wasn't me
I was in the lavatory!
For a country
based on greed
Eton boys are what you need
Tug you
forelock, bend your knee
When you give your vote, you see
Getting rich is
the first rule
Not for you,for me you fool
That summer I upped my skills, big time
My similes were giving me grief
So I hunted down fresh imagery
Like a spear hunter on a coral reef
Each morning, in the dark, was a victory
knocking new poems out of the park
My rhyming couplets were legendary
See, I had an awareness of the wider game
Allegory, allusiion, alliteration
Litotes – he plays for Leicester City
I was flying, bruv. No one could catch
me
One day, a scout knocks on the door
And asks to see my mum and dad
He says he’s heard about this lad
Who is subverting poetry, could he have look?
Maybe there was a place for me in a new book
It was a really exciting anthology
I still have to practice my keepy-uppy
To get to this level, you don’t go gently
Now I am driving a brand new Bentley
What would it be like without Lineker
The gladiator turned commentator?
The stifled cries of caged animals
Gave the restless crowd no answer.
The blue lid of the roofless arena
Was an empyrean. A vulture circled
Lazily. The bird was in no hurry.
Scavengers do not honour the dead.
A painted sign intrigued those who were there
‘Enjoy Walkers crisps’, it said.
The ball was pleasingly spherical –
Certainly an improvement on last year.
Eleven players a side, all human
Covered the field of play effectively.
Their movements were graceful.
A small, wiry man, more agile than the rest
Weaved like a shuttle, in intricate patterns.
He was the best. The crowd groaned
As a javelin pierced his chest.
Time was stretched. The crowd held its breath.
A sabre flashed. His severed head
Dropped neatly to the floor.
The astonished crowd breathed out.
Its sigh curdled into a blood roar.
Grace had been shown in death.
Honour had been satisfied.
As the bronzed Linker would have said
If he had been there.
Only blue and red of the arena
Would satiate them today.
The vulture, an eye’s blink away
Caught the rising scent of fresh gore.
