Here is the news

War and pestilence in Africa
Refugees paddling to UK
Weather’s getting a bit frisky
Storm Bernard is heading this way
 

Trouble at Wimbeldon
Hurricane to hit Surrey
Arsenal draw in dull game
UK turns migrants away

Godalming and Dorking in flames
Rioting on Henman Hill
Latest on devastation
Luton Town one, Burnley nil

Now Haslemere is burning!
No escape from killer virus
A peek into Lilly James’ beautiful garden
Help us, someone please help us!

 

A short history of the world

They’ll ban fire next. All that danger ­–

its graceful and balletic indifference.

 

They don’t like its theatrically
the cool nonchalance of the orange flame.

 

On the bomb site and in the circus ring
we played with it, like a half-tamed lion

 

we ran it up and down our arm
we swallowed it, to display our mastery.

 

But now no spirit or element may contradict
the illusion of human certainty.

 

Fire is unpredictable. Blame Prometheus.

One day, a spark from flint catches on moss 

 

and curls into divinity. Next thing – gastronomy.

Soon, we’ll be forced to surrender all of our tricks

 

in an amnesty of the uncontrollable.

We’ll live in a perfect world of dials and monitors.

 

How can I light up my briar pipe?

They don’t care. Next, they have their eyes on smoke.

 

Leaving

tonight in this heatwave
the house is pressed back by silence

I have boxed up my life so that
others may impose their shapes

and dreams upon these blank walls
I have erased myself from its history

the house remembers with each creak
each child I carried up to bed

our rituals, the meals we had 
our safaris, on scooter and bike

to the shop, me following carefully
my nighttime prayers, like a rosary

we waited for the sky to break
through each heatwave and war

this heat seems fiercer somehow
the future more uncertain

already half of me has gone
my ghostly soul is in transit

I have boxed up my life
smoothed out each bump of memory

Microsoft

Shuttered tight in our glass cells
we were the drones of the beehive
hunters gatherers with Microsoft calendars.

We were warriors with smashed avocados.
We fought our battles with whispers down corridors
even the air we breathed was not ours.

We were never at home but merely ‘out of office’.
We did not notice. Our life was a library –
a catalogue of scrolled imagery.

Now we hold meetings with our own family.
We are forced to lip read their words
as if watching a poorly dubbed movie.

The office world is following us
with its wagging finger and its
dull, half-baked technology.

It never worked properly.
Of course, it is dressed casually.
What next? That’s what worries me.

Synchronized bank holidays?
Perhaps, at the top of the stairs
a Pret a Manger or a new Costa Coffee.

The great silence

That year spring came unnoticed.
It whispered to us from outside
in the curious languages of birds
that were normally unheard.

We had moved inside. The skies had emptied
erased of humans and their quaint terrors
as the virus lumbered across the world
in a pestilence of numbers and words.

Inquisitive observers, self-exiled
we watched the planet that we had poisoned
pressed back by the great silence.

We were prisoners locked in glass houses

trapped by an epidemic of loneliness

reading a message that nature did not need us.

Today is Thursday

So, you go out less – of course you do.
You want to. Bench press, power walks by the cemetery
but mainly you don’t. It’s not that you are lazy.

It’s just that, the horizon is approaching.
If you got there, you would spend less time here.
Also, there is the small matter of gravity.

And so the soft shoe shuffle to the shop.
Holmes and Schofield are battling –
pygmies warring over Perspex

baboons flinging their own excrement.
Brexit, the ever-shrinking economy
the assault of crass, vulgar stupidity.

It all matters, but what can you do
now that you are living outside the tent?
Most importantly, today is Thursday.

The peanut fight of squirrel and parakeet
is more interesting than most TV.
The bird table is my Serengeti.

Zealots attack the political centre.
Through the megaphone of social media
comes the rancid anger of the true believer.

Is it just me? This winter seems darker
Walk to the shop. Same face greets me
Most importantly, today is Thursday.

Ayatollah

The loft light, why was it left on?

And the fridge door, why is it open?

In the lounge, who has betrayed me

with this spreading empire of dust?

There is a reason for my cleanliness

for the world outside is leaderless

Let it be known. My power is absolute!

I am the supreme ruler of this house

This light that breaks in wantonly

did I not say the curtains should be drawn!

No no no no. Do not approach the door

The goal that you seek is illusory

There is freedom in security

If you leave, others will surely follow

There is no need to venture out

Did I not build you a new patio?

Beyond the garden wall is mere anarchy

You would shrivel, like a dried fruit

By my beard, my words are holy

I speak with the tongue of Solomon

No-one can oppose my authority

I am the lord of the conservatory!

Smoke rings

Born at 40, he lived his life backwards.

The man inside the solemn child

was always occupied by mortality.

He typed out his index cards neatly

blew out poems like smoke rings.

He wore no welder’s mask but a cardigan.

Was this the way for a man to live?

Certainly, his life’s work was weightless

the inside out life of a librarian.

What other way was there?

That was always his question.

He interrogated with each metaphor

life glimpsed through windows

the preoccupations of humans

specks of bright dust, suspended in air.

The wrong kind of weirdo

Bright kids like to shock it’s true
But few do so by turning blue

Dom liked to read up in his room –
Adam Smith and David Hume

Imbibing at their dismal art
Marked this peculiar kid apart
As curious as a flightless bird
Throwback, misfit, spod and nerd

In his musty Tory tent
There was no enlightenment
Reactionaries turned him on
Instead of re-vol-ut-ion

He liked to wear their apparel
Absorbed their crap ideas as well
Racism and bigotry
Selfishness, misanthropy

Thatcher was an utter joy
To this twisted Tory boy
And as the Tories screwed the poor
He hung around at their back door

Howard ‘something of the night’
Noticed that the lad was bright
Gove gave him another spin
Then Bojo said, I’ll let you in

On you I'd like to take a punt
Why don't you come round to the front
I see you are a disruptor
A student of the art of war

There will always be a path
For the ambitious psychopath
Thin-lipped thugs in Burberry
Superior in bastardry

Gollums wearing quilted jackets
Skilled in hate and mathematics
Soon Britain will be great again –
Genocide and porcelain