Tag Archives: poem

TOLCHOK

TOLCHOK

got clockworked by a plod
me and my droogs we did

next to Maine Road
for playing street football
alongside a football ground
(none of us
even a
City supporter)

and pushed around by
the law severely human right
violated
   and seriously affronted
aforementioned street
being empty
the thought
    did cross our minds of
doing him in
(burying that fat
navy blue body beneath
the Kippax Stand)

and all of us
at Manchester Uni
me for
me Ph D

working on Swift’s excoriating
satire
  most violent stuff
confined
to print

tolchock called down
on mostly everything

got
clockworked
but no orange

that
C-charged
most creative of
colours
Eden-juicy
most sustaining of fruits

TESLA

TESLA

the light
transmigrates

finds us,
for better
or for worse
will always
find us

death written into
the lifetime of
a standard
Edison globe

too much
here there everywhere
to these waves and
particles
for even you
to shepherd
my alluring Nikola

the stuff
winking at us
telexing itself
as it sees fit

and yet
strangely together
fully on point

still so much
about its smarts we
need to scope, astutely
thought experiment

something about its circuitry
we
      both suspect
runs infinite
 
     winds us
          like a} key
  

TUT TODT

TUT TODT

my parents

once young
now elderly

now
dead

demanded on
a daily basis
I be respectful
write nicely

cherish every moment
of what they did to
(sorry, did for) me

keep that overwhelming love
I felt and showed
when I was young
         the love of
one
who could not
have been more wrong
could not
have been more
useless

Oh, those gaslit days,
chip off the old block
determined
to
shape me as

strange how
time takes, took,
eviscerates
all that 1940s
dapper Dachau elegance

like demure store-front mannequins
neat in their flexible
moment of life’s capture

waiting
upon the rapture of bone

force
to split a dove

tut todt
you would be shocked
to know
     how you
are remembered

beyond your pay grade;
beyond your conception

LOST ON ME (HEADCASE)

LOST ON ME (HEADCASE)

the gods did it
so wanted to fuck with me

last day
before i left England
to journey
to South
Africa

apartheid
South Africa
some sixty
two
  years ago

threw the book at me
(two of them actually)
hurling them
     from the top of
a wardrobe
(direct hits
  on my cranium in
both cases)

later, in these very books,
I would find
      parallels,
Polyphemus tragically blinded
by Nobody
throwing boulders at that
taunting Achean hero
to avenge
     his mutilation

or Ajax throwing rocks
at the Trojans as battle became
brutal
   beneath the city walls,
the fate of
all Ilium
   hanging in the balance

of course, being only eleven,
this symbolism
was lost
     on me
and Homer’s Iliad and
the other one
had, no effect on me, were
lost on me

about to sail the wine dark sea
myself
      they did not
impact my life at all

amusing them that in their hubris
they thought
     they might reduce me
to a blind poetry headcase

OILMAN

OILMAN

bug
   in a spud

getting buddy
with that spud

dossiers on
every blackmail secret

but
  emerging ftom his spidery
hidey hole

finds himself on the flight
deck of a nuclear-powered
aircraft carrier
       in borrowed uniform
sitting in the cockpit
of an ait dominance fighter

great photo
opportunity before
the crucial press conference

two hundred feet below
a thousand yards off
starboard beam

bug in a sub
with a bone to pick
over the issue
of oil
and Empire

up periscope
calculating missile launch
sequence and torpedo spread

COMRADE KROPOTKIN

COMRADE KROPOTKIN

Comrade Kropotkin
lines up meticulous
at his desk

works
at a measured pace
with clever care

consults his almanac
to get a handle
on the time

he hopes
the weather will
be fine
Sun
   will shine
on all his
friends close
to the
Tsar and Tsarina

and bring
revolution and
state
   of extraordinary equality
and political freedom

far to the left
of Lenin and Marx.

BULLET POINT

BULLET POINT

he wrote
his poem
in bullet points
came across
as a cross
between Navy Colt
and MG-42

yes
   a bit of a risk
playing Russian Roulette
with an AK-47

not
  the route to take
believe me

in this game
failure is legendary

sniping at you
(as if they
could do
any better)

snide remarks about
when you
put it up
as
  slideshow
can see they were wrong
to expect poems
of high calibre

3 POEMS: THE BOOK/ WITHOUT BATTERIES/WANTED TO WRITE

THE BOOK

let me tell
your story

let me
write your book

alpha
to omega
cover
to cover

put it out there
do the marketing

and then
sit back and read
everything there

your life
open to everbody
in such detail

a life history
somewhat fictionalized
for the ages
even if it does
not end with me

****

WITHOUT BATTERIES

insidious, the pun
destabilizes

and here we are
with our ban on homonyms

thinking of a present
for the son I
do not have, never had,
could not
have thanks
to low sperm count
(my father
ascended to Heaven
as he always proudly
said
   he would
up there laughing at me)

and what, you ask, did
I eventually come up with:
a goblin-green
         genetic hybrid
of Sauron and
Darth Vader
perfect evil action figure
to exemplify
    the outright commercialism
of this day

on its back
a collection of cave trolls
and death stars
to teach
     young minds
how to deploy their
mass destruction forces,
ceaselessly strategize

making it a peerless
death to Middle Earth and
galaxies
     far far away festive
time

bliss for
    the changeling child

****
WANTED TO WRITE

intended to write
a very sexual poem
but the ink
in my pen
jumped the gun

wrote a mess of words
refinement
wasn’t ready for

wanted to write
the scariest poem ever
but my ink
froze
   lost my nerve.
my blood curdling

needed to write
a truly emotional poem
awash with feeling
but the page
got
   too fluffy
went all soft on me

as a last resort
convinced myself
I now
   by process of
elimination
absolutely had
to write
about death

with your
loving help

should know I am
banking on you
to kill this last line
put it out of its misery