Pam Ayers on crack

 

This poem is like a crumpled tissue.

It’s full of snot, piss and blood.

 

It is an opportunist

It ticks the right boxes

 

It has every letter of the alphabet

 of otherness – even the plus.

 

This poem went to a good school

Carefully, it hedges its bets

 

Note to judges – it has all of

the correct mental health issues

 

Fuck, shit, piss, bollocks.

It even has Tourette’s!

 

It’s the first among unequals.

Strange how, this fucked up mess

 

of drug litter, blood and puss

the tedious road back and its

 

endless narcissistic sequels

pleases, even down at the pub.

 

It must be the new fashion

for over-sharing

 

Pam Ayers on crack

competitive victimhood.

 

This poem is no fool.

It uses its glottal stop like a club.

Winter Olympics

In my opinion, we should penalise perfection.
Instead, we should award the laurel wreath
to those who try too hard 
who fail through an excess of self-belief;

those who ride the air like tumbling doves
and fall off; or who hurtle down sheets of ice 
on flimsy trays, with grace
refusing to accept the laws of gravity

or those who spin out of control
their limbs spread out like snow ploughs
pain etched onto their face 
as if they are puzzled by their catastrophe.



 

Golden age of the lard butt

 

This week I have scaled El Capitan

three times, free solo.

See the fat man using a ring pull

as a climbing aid. That was me.

 

I rose high into a forest canopy

and spotted a rare and exquisite bird

that David Attenborough has yet to trouble

without ever leaving my settee.

 

There is nowhere I cannot go.

From Everest’s peak to the rotting hulk

of the Titanic, in a home-made sub.

Nowhere is alien. I live vicariously.

 

My closest friends are Bear Grylls and Dan Snow.

 I can wow the X Factor with a poignant song.

I’ve abseiled into an active volcano.

I know exactly where Hitler went wrong.

 

Select a button and I’m on the Amazon

hunting for deadly fish in a dugout canoe.

I can grow azaleas on chalky soil.

There’s is nothing I cannot do.

 

My eyes plunder the world for its bounty

as my finger probes for a new show

like a climber seeking a tiny hold

as his anxious girlfriend watches below.

 

One slip and its all over.

All this without ever leaving my sofa

except to forage for Red Sripe

ice cream, or a new bag of Doritos.

 

One day I might get sucked into

a deadly quicksand of orange crumbs.

I am the king of the lard butts

a couch potato, a horizonal superhero.

The snowflakes are coming

 

Why is a person of wisdom and taste

hanging out in this sleazy bar

this cess-pit of ignorance?

Let me tell you why.

 

I have zero tolerance for beastliness

I am here to lampoon.

your low-wattage intelligence

I am your keyboard enemy.

 

I may seem mild in manner

but my power is mighty. See how

I can raise the temperature of the room

with a slightly raised eyebrow.

 

Good manners are not in fashion

but I have superior compassion

and the trusted weapon of irony.

I Twitter regularly on Bluesky.

 

People like you are ruining this nation

Well the snowflakes are coming, my friend

We aim to bury your kind

in an avalanche of mild indignation.

 

We will settle on your roof, break through

and smother you with our disapproval

How does that make you feel?

Be afraid. I am a ninja in oatmeal.

House arrest

 

I could go out, but downstairs scares me

It’s a frozen tundra with gun towers

And barbed wire – the gulag archipelago

I know it’s a gross failure of desire

 

To see what’s outside. I simply don’t want to

The bars are imaginary by what can you?

You see, I have lost all volition

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

It’s been like this for years and years

In fact, ever since I retired

Visits from the family on Sunday

Tea, cake, awkward conversation

 

I might get myself a new tattoo

Bird, jail, choky, the clink, jail

At least I can get email

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

The geraniums on the window-sill

Are struggling to be free

They don’t know its winter

They have no seasons, you see

 

They are pushing out flowers

Like tiny red fists. Bless them

I admire them. That’s ambition

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

Hope is what keeps me going

Home-made hooch, colour TV

Sunlight glints on the horizon

I imagine walks to the museum

 

Flowers. My favourite tree

I know it’s the human condition

I’ve read Sartre’s existential exposition

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

The fall

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
an inconvenience, a broken hip

Semi-shade

 

Happiness is fading as the nearly sun
throws its half-light across the garden.
Invisible pressures form our horizon
like the bars of an open prison.
This seeping greyness will persist for days.
The sun came out briefly. It’s raining now.
We have a word for it – semi-shade.
Many words. it is our Eskimos’ snow.
Our only certainty is ambiguity.
How do we feel? ‘Oh, not bad’, ‘you know’.
Shipping forecasts map our moods –
‘New low moving across Southern Faroes’.
Summer is a friend who promises to visit
so fleeting that we might miss it.

No net

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

 

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.

Bojo Maximus

 

Write a column, buy a pup
Sign a treaty, rip it up

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

A poem of two halves

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, allusion, 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

 

 

Bread and circuses

 

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.

In praise of the turnip

Ah turnips. We had eaten them for centuries,
marvelling at their excellence.

 

We hunted for rabbits and squirrels

with homemade bows and arrows.

 

We realised that we could live on nettles

and what grew in the hedgerows.

 

We abolished any vegetable

that was not textureless or bland.

 

Why had we never acknowledged

the excellence of British food?

 

Proud that we were free of foreign influence

We wound back time to before the Romans

 

But why stop there? It was the land bridge

that had caused the ingress of foreigners

 

with their strange and exotic diets

their laws, languages and farming.

 

Soon we would grub in the dirt for worms

a proud people, our dignity restored.

 

The glorious three-for-twos

 

The past is coming clearly to me now
stories of my old campaigns, like how
that summer, shelf-by-shelf and floor by floor
we conquered the local department store.
Under a creeping barrage of strawberries
we made our way through cheese and charcuterie
to bottled condiments and frozen food.
Our way was clear. The going was good.
With only sporadic opposition
we moved, easily, through ladies’ fashion.
In hardware, we were seriously rattled
by a full-on medieval battle.
With gardening tools, we fought on
to the glory of the battalion
and in toys, greeting cards and stationery
we raised our colours, in victory
close to the tracksuits and men’s shoes.
We were heroes – the glorious three-for-twos.

The war of the seasons

In October, it’s hand-to-hand combat, tree by tree
Winters says, ‘admit it mate, you can’t beat me.’

Summer says, ‘yeh, well I’m not rattled
Your dirty tactics won’t win this battle
I’m saving up daylight; I have plans for next year
Your leaves will rot and I have spears
I am returning, further down the road
In every garden, a crocus is waiting to explode’

 

In November, low pressure brings
Winter misery, a blizzard of metaphors
It’s the ‘beast from the east’ says the news
The experts advise us, ‘close your windows’
In December, in a railway carriage on frozen rails
The seasons bring out their finest brains
To broker a peace deal, once and for all
Despite their best efforts, it fails

 

January. Brooding skies lower like pewter
Battalions of mist creep down from the hills
Just when the ground seems to be lost
Summer brings up its special forces – the daffodils
In February the deadlock goes on. But, hear that sound?
The trees are whispering. Summer is tunnelling

It is marshalling an invisible army
of worms and microbes, deep underground

 

May. A sponsored walk is trashed by rain
Another disappointing bank holiday
In June, summer delivers a body blow –
Lovely weather for the flower show!
In July, a tornado attacks the Henley regatta
Summer says, ‘it really doesn’t matter
In August, winter, so quick to the wicket
Totally ruins a game of cricket

 

Still, it seems much hotter than before
There’s a reason, global warming has joined the war
Summer says to winter, ‘now I’m in clover
Admit it, bruv. The show is over.’
Winter replies ‘that means storms and flooding, right?
That will make for a bumpy ride
People are going to be terrified at night
Oh, by the way, spring and autumn are on my side.’

 

No they’re not, says summer. They are with me.’
And so it goes on, for centuries
Humans arrive and invent new technologies
They say that weather is isobars, not deities
But they act surprised, when rain stops play
They cannot erase their primitive fears
Of the irrational. They do not want to, actually
For, without them, there can be no poetry

 

This is what modern Conservatism looks like

A skeleton holding an empty cup
A death star imploding on itself
The toll of doom from a cracked bell
Margaret Thatcher’s corpse in a mouldering bear skin

A shrieking pipsqueak in clown’s shoes
A refugee paddling on a Lilo
A ribbon cutting ceremony for a food bank
A cancelled children’s Christmas show

A fanatic’s Twitter feed
Hospital radio for the deaf
A cleaner working an extra shift
A hairdresser with a chainsaw

A bucket of boiling frogs
A pike eating a minnow
An oiled seabird
Pound shop bunting on a bungalow

A banker’s bonus
A melting ice cap
An eviction notice
A bonfire of workers' right

An ocean filled with plastic waste
An ordinay shooting weekend
A minister lounging on a green bench
A hedge fund manager's new Ferrari

The day it rained

 

Becalmed in that sun-blasted hulk

we languished in the dog days.

The flat sea was like glass.

We yearned in that wooden world

for our old life to return.

 

We prayed for the sighing rain

or a line of green on the horizon.

Suddenly a cry came: land ahead.

The sky cracked and, slowly at first

the wind pushed like an old friend, the shed.

 

The moisture that we had sought

blessed our cracked lips like a sacrament.

I looked about at the scorched grass

the flagstones that fire had burned

and the skeletons of lupins and spent lavender.

Helios

A frown passed across the sun’s brow

He said, It’s gonna be gloomy now.

See how I tug on your moods, like a string.

See the emotions I can bring?

I am the master of your planet.

 

I know everything. I control you.

See that cloud over there?

Think you can move it, with your mind?

Go on. Oh you can’t. Nice try, bro.

 

There is more in this universe

than you and your trigonometry.

I am that which cannot be understood.

I know you because we are the same stuff

 

the same atoms, the same breath

the same humours and elements.

I am everything and everywhere. I am numinous

That’s why you should respect me.

No worship is required, merely humility