Everything we know about the M4 relief road

It was the evening of the day you left.
I’ll always remember, first gear was sticking.
I was in the Picasso, just after its MOT.

Flipping Brynglas tunnel gridlock as usual
My finger was tapping a fair old tattoo.
Stomach knotted. Acid reflux. Take a Renee.

It’s a shame the new road will wreck the levels.
They say there are cranes nesting there –
the first for four hundred years. Oh well, c’est la vie.

At eight, I inched onto the 4042.
It’s alright Newport. But the traffic ...
Perhaps if the jet pack had been invented

you wouldn’t have taken up the ukelele
and fallen in love with that lout
and then, maybe, you wouldn’t have walked out.

I would have got home earlier, see.
Rubber hits drive. Aldi chicken in micro
and a post-it: ‘Brian, it’s not you, it's me.’

My fate was sealed when he showed you 
how the diminished chord slides smoothly
up the uke's fretboard. Soon, you were wooing.

You moved in with him, set up a new life.
Flipping traffic, flipping cranes, flipping gearbox.
Congestion on the M4 cost me my wife.

Wilderness with tea cakes

With slippers for snowboots I inched my way
across that flat and desolate wilderness
I pitched my tent on the Christmas ice shelf

Day after day, I trudged wearily
through blizzards of apostrophes
and the swirls of sugared almonds.

Wind moaned through the conservatory
playing a hymn in a minor key
that was well-suited to my melancholy.

The moon howled as I trudged on
at three, it was already midnight
scowling at an invisible horizon.

What would provide a requiem
for this doomed and lonely journey?
Perhaps some words scribbled hastily

on a post-it note for my family
the metronomic tick-tock of the kitchen clock
on the table, a half-finished crossword.

These hands

These hands want to make things

like tables or boats

not push words around a screen.

The president did not attend the war cemetery
because it was raining.

How could I improve upon such an infamy?

Words are for cyber bullying and fake news

and, anyway, they are mainly clichés

beads of light strung on  long chains.

Soon, they will spun from giant lie machines.

Strictly hunk is Celebrity love cheat.

Desolate Dec blasts Toxic Towie tomboy.

These hands do not want to message

or to add value to a brand.

They want to push umbrellas through the rain
hold coffee mugs, or play the ukulele.

These hands want to make things.

Minister for loneliness

Now I have my own ministry!

They could have given me anxiety.

I am so grateful that it’s loneliness.

It’s far better than fear, or mild ennui.

As a frigid wind teases the North Sea

I will launch my first strategy

for the loneliest people in Britain

as identified statistically.

The colour grey will be abolished

there will be no more ageing, or frailty
by the time that I leave office

total strangers will talk freely.

There will be a significant reduction

in isolation; the sky will lighten.

Those will be my solemn promises

on a dull winter’s day in Skegness

An incident in the park

Taut in black Lycra, lean as greyhounds

in the citrus light of the floodlit court

they are a tableau, glowing in the dark.

Free spirits, their hands snatch at the white ball.

With their long haunches and arms of coral

they are not of our earth at all

but of some watery realm

like nymphs on a Greek vase.

Their gift is to trap time and pass it on.

Or, I could say, ballet, or a colourful fresco

but, the truth is, I am no expert on netball

merely an office worker, walking through the park.

Through some nuance of movement

I sense that they have noticed me

My gaze must have landed a little too long.

I am a trespasser on their ritual.

We are fallen, the spell is broken.
They question me; I question myself

and my interest in their delicate art.

This is not religion or mythology, it’s sport.

I cannot untangle my brain from my heart.

And so, nymph wrestles with satyr.

I am a man; I must walk by

their picture trapped in the film of my eye.

The best days

Latin. The hollow tedium
of a winter afternoon.
The day was turned upside down.
Later, mummy would arrive
and take me home for half-term.

I was always the last boy in the dorm.

When daddy left us and moved out.

I wasn’t disappointed at all.

I didn’t miss my family, why would I?

That school was good for me.
I was never lonely.

They sent me there because

one should be tested by adversity.

How else could a man show his mettle
than on the playing field or in battle

On the Somme or at Mycenea?

Cold mornings in the gym.
The horse, like a blank wall
was high enough to challenge Odysseus.

Blood splattered my shorts.
I did not cry in the sick room.

The team played badly
but in the fading light
from defeat snatched a sudden victory.

They sent me home.

When the business went bust
we sold the family house.
There is no failure, only challenge
mother said

Brave Horatius guards the bridge.

The sand of the desert is sodden red.

The best days lie ahead of us.

Brexit: a threnody

 “I passionately believe that our best days lie ahead of us.” 

The Prime Minister’s Conference speech

What’s needed to get through this Brexit business is some good old fashioned public school resolve

The deep baritone of Boris, the Epicurean, is counterposed by the chorus of Theresa, the Stoic

Latin. The hollow tedium
of a gloomy afternoon.
Later, mummy would arrive
and take me home for half-term.
I didn't miss my family at all.
Why would you? The best days lie ahead of us.

We had tea with nanny on Sunday.
As usual, daddy was not there.
He was doing some business abroad.
The next day, I went back to school.
I wasn’t disappointed. Why would I be?
Of course not. The best days lie ahead of us.

Bread sliced thin. Fish paste
like the memory of some lost sea
Cold mornings in the gym
the horse, like a blank wall
was high enough to challenge Odysseus.
It would be. The best days lie ahead of us.

They sent me there because one
should tested by adversity.
How else can a man show his mettle
than on the playing field or in battle
on the Somme or at Mycenae?
I agree. The best days lie ahead of us.

The team played badly
but in the fading light
from defeat snatched a sudden victory.
The sand of the desert is sodden red.
Brave Horatius guards the bridge.
Undaunted. The best days lie ahead of us.

The'yre sending me home next term
The house has been sold as mummy 
is no match for our creditors.
Perhaps, one day, daddy will return
Be brave little man. The best days lie ahead of us

What now?

A party conference moans in the background

Then a programme on loneliness

The wind is delivering an astonishing attack


What doomsday scenario looms in the clouds?

In the waving fronds of the bamboo, the whispering sycamores 
and the dangling keys of the ash trees is a hint of jeopardy

Someone has trimmed the eucalyptus, my friendly giant
How did they do it? It’s a hundred feet high

Beyond the blank page, the grey sky
and the blank day. What am I going to write on it?

The shimmering eucalyptus is a haze of blue green
The wind is whipping up a conspiracy

Later, the parakeets will come chattering by
By then, the day will have become a story

A warning from history

Wordsworth sees wild daffodils

To add his poetic ills

There’s no network in the hills

He’s distracted and depressed

His bundle cannot be refreshed

His golden thoughts go unexpressed

Afternoon in Camden town

Sylvia Plath is feeling down

She’s still in her dressing gown
Softly, she begins to cry

‘How can I without wi-fi
express myself in poetry?’

Says Shakespeare to his friend, Marlowe

‘My play is doomed, this Mac’s too slow

I’m giving up the drama bro.’
Kit Marlowe answers, ‘Let me guess
you must be on the new O/S.
You’ve just lost all your preferences.’

In Bristol, Thomas Chatterton
Craved the latest Apple phone
Instead, he bought a cheaper clone
Even poets need their bread
Languishing at home in bed
That mobile failed him: now he’s dead

Because his bitrate was too slow
The writer Edgar Allen Poe
Had no access to video
The author lost the thrills he craved
His speed slowed down the more he raved
His Gothic juices atrophied

Dickens was a natural ham
He fell in love with Instagram
He messaged to his friends, ‘I am
Scrapping novels, life I sweet
I’m sitting down at three to eat
Then I'll send another Tweet.’

Test card

You didn’t ask me why I left suddenly
but if you had, I would have said
that it was the burden of memory
of days that smelled like comics and spent fat
and pavements like hot plates.

On the estate, everyone hangs out by the chip shop
not like in my prim suburb.

I didn’t tell you (how could I?)

but it was the dust in your shuttered bedroom

and in your voice some quality of longing
for that which is ineffable
that caused me to freak out.

They reminded me of being thirteen
and of choosing to stay in with the test card

to test my patience

against the stubborn geometry
of six steel strings
when everyone else was playing outside.

I didn’t tell you but that’s what happened –

a feeling of wanting something
so badly swept over me
that it was unbearable.
That’s why I ran away!

The Beast from the East

For the papers you were a metaphor
of meteorological distress:
an alien bringing hazards
to our lonely grey fortress

Using their strongest words
they scared us with aplomb.
The warnings were flashing red:
‘Monster weather: snow bomb’

Standing in shops and offices
we watched the sky turn black
in a flurry of tumbling flakes.
There was guile in your attack.

You toyed with us artfully

as the temperature turned cold.
You teased us with your shredded clothes –
a lonely death foretold.

We cowered from your fists
but this wedding was no pillage.
That night, you were a charming guest
telling us stories from your village.

We awoke the next morning
still spoiling for a fight.
But, like the Wise Men at Christmas
you had brought us a gift – of light

You plied us with fiery spirits
and colourful winter clothes
we smiled and took selfies
wrapped up like Eskimos.

We exchanged telephone numbers
agreeing to meet next year –
and even to relax our borders.
Take that you Brexiteers!

The following day, your face
had changed to a sullen frown.
An army of ice assaulted us.
You had occupied every town.

Roads and railways were closed.
The whole country was frozen.
Food ran short. We shivered in the dark.
We rued the friend that we had chosen!

Dreaming

Tied to our cold grey planet
we need to have visons

of cities whose cloud-capped spires
stretch to the horizon.

We are made of hopes and
in the darkness we can

unleash our dreams
release our imagination.

The night-time brain shows us

where we could travel

if we were unburdened

from mere reality.

The night brain is for dreaming

the morning brain to plan.

Hedge fund

My job is to watch shadows

to count bees and study rabbits.

For this I am paid very well.

It is right that it should be so.

For who else knows their habits

or what to pick from the hedgerows?

I would not change any of it

for all of your financial stealth

or the indifference that you bestow

daily upon this suffering world.

For there is nothing in the wealth

of all of your counterfeit gold.

A map of loneliness

I am occupying an empty square.

I am living where no-one goes
willingly in the game of Monopoly.
My soul is in the Old Kent Road.

Anxious dreams normally wake me
when you are taking the children to school.
Solitaire is the game for me:
I can't play tennis – or pool.

There is no-one to counter or to check
my scores on the Scrabble board.
No-one to make a meal for
or to challenge my double word.

On the Essex coast, later this year
walking along the cockle shelf
I will harvest some memories
but I will keep them to myself.

I could go on my own to see a film
I might know what happens next.
But, the thing is, who would I tell?
I have no-one to Skype – or text.

No cards are ever hung up.
There are no contacts in my phone.
Easter and, especially, Christmas
go unnoticed. I spend them alone.