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