ESPRESSO
was malingering in Hell’s
best coffee shop
started to fancy a coffee-
coloured barista
serving espresso
shrouded
by steam
and yet
still no mistaking
her demonic beauty
(so on point with
these fine surrounds)
and me
trying to catch her
jade green eye and
lure
it
towards me
as if she might fall
for a run of mill, ordinary devil
such as
the one there
in the corner
writing this thing
MONETIZE
monetize
demonize
I am
writing a new thesaurus
looking for
a common denominator
even as you
wait in the shadows
crumbling
to dust
once wondering but
now given your answer
as to
how it is
all going to
end
SOFT
your poem
is soft
is malleable
when you call
it answers
fawns
rolls
at your feet
always there
to do your bidding
is as safe
a wicked pleasure as
anything the Universe
contrived
to devise
as harmless an intervention
as can be imagined
desperate to
appeal
this
I really feel
deep in the heart I’m
pretty sure I have
GAME
saw you reading
my poem
in a Video game
and there I was
writing this poem
as part
of that narrative
an Escher etching hanging
on the wall
windows
mirror
smoke dolls and
boxes
looked around but failed
to see anyone writing
about to
reboot me
so I just
drove to the ocean
to admire the artwork
the artwork there almost
beyond belief
NARC
beautiful planet
so we
can expect narcissism
everybody
overdosing on blue
smoking thick cloud
but now
like a battered football
a bit sore
about its looks
sad for the planet
sure it is has its own
ideal of
something to which
it once
so
tragically aspired
PYGMALION
the gods pitied Pygmalion
his love for his statue
(so nubile under
his fingers),
her reflected love for him
decided to bring them.together,
enshrine in marble
make
their love immortal,
permanent
aching to embrace forever
inching closer each
millennium
a tale with enough true
sadness for
our age
though the fable
Iives
inspires in
different form
secure in
its impossible irony
TOROJAN WOMBMEN
Toorojan Wombmen
have helmet heads
love licorice
(it is their
most guilty pleasure)
hate
allsorts
would send all allsorts
down to Poseidon’s locker
something fishy already
felt about the smell
Oh but the Achaeans
are coming
the Myrmidions are coming
loaded with logic
and rationality
their armour as
bad-bullet proof
as Blackpool rock
(so many cavities
in the fangs
you
are bearing
so much yellow enamel
in need of bleach)
HARPIES
They tug at the heat strings with state of the art wirecutters
so let us call them
“Harpies”
double envelopment
they have
broken through
both flanks
and encircled humanity
the minds they have captured
headed fod relentless torture
but this
blue bunting, red-
hot pokers
is all about mythology, about
Palladian architecture
and ancient meanings
the ocean sighing as it pulls
back from.the Dover shore
before biting further
into ths landscape
no time to
set fire to the ships we
must imagine them burning
must instruct
the plebs to
see them burning
everything so gaslit
it is plain
as day
and there
quoting disparately
in elementary Latin stands
our Caesar
sort of stands our Caesar
Oh when will
such a Caesar ever
come again?
FOR REAL
No one here
is for real
everyone
is a smiling simulacrum
a fiction of shadows
a ghost voice pleading
poverty from.beneath
the stage
trap door
as if that is not
the place they should be
writing antitheses
finding sustenace
in the darkness
Satire on Rishi Sunak’s idea everybody must do Maths at school until 18.
poems 2 die for