You Took the Last Bus Home Read online

Fifty Shades of Grey here,

  but someone who knows their way around

  the complete works of Shakespeare.

  I would rip out my heart

  and write her name upon it

  if she might recite to me

  his eighteenth sonnet.

  So don’t give me eyes

  to get lost in,

  I’d like a lover of Jane Austen

  or an admirer of Joyce.

  She could have the voice

  of Donald Duck for all I care

  if she were prepared to share

  her rare edition

  of Vanity Fair.

  Because something I’ve learnt

  as I’ve got older

  is that literature

  lights up love

  and makes it smoulder

  and that beauty

  is in the eye

  of the book holder.

  I Before E (Except After Sea)

  For relief from the heat

  I swam in the sea.

  Dreid myself breifly.

  Had freinds for tea.

  No Hands Macpherson

  ‘No Hands Macpherson’

  they called him.

  Partly for the way

  in which he rode his bike

  (with no hands)

  and partly

  because he had no hands.

  The Heebie Bee Gees

  He danced

  like a man possessed

  one fevered Saturday night.

  He gave me

  the heebie bee gees

  and so I left the floor in fright.

  Some blamed it

  on the Boogieman

  but it was a John Travoltageist.

  Curriculum Vitae

  PROFILE

  A selfish, self-centred, self-effacing self-starter.

  A team-playing, dragon-slaying, modern-day martyr.

  A blue sky thinker whose ideas are a vapour trail.

  A proven communicator with a kean eye for detial.

  EXPERIENCE

  POET – 2012–PRESENT

  Duties included: being deluded,

  finding myself from parties excluded,

  writing sonnets on love and despair,

  Netflix, and falling asleep in my chair.

  VARIOUS POSITIONS – 1991–2012

  Chartered Accountant. Lawyer. Cashier.

  Building Site Lackey. High Grand Vizier.

  Inhuman Cannonball. Scullery maid.

  Skilled Chicken Sexer. Guitarist in Suede.

  Postman. Dustman. Class A Drug Dealer.

  Dog Trainer. Tea Strainer. Banana Peeler.

  Batman. Batsman. Bowler. Head Chef.

  Doing odd jobs for my Uncle Geoff.

  Goalkeeper. Zookeeper. Dandelion Tamer.

  Pilot. Hotelier. DJ. Boogie Blamer.

  EDUCATION

  UNIVERSITY OF LIFE – 1988–1991

  My time at university saw diminishing returns.

  Studied Scottish poetry. Got third degree Burns.

  SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS – 1981–1988

  School for me, I must confess,

  proved an unqualified success.

  INTERESTS

  In my spare time, I like to ponder

  the fragile silk of existence

  as it hangs

  like the industrious spider’s

  silver-sewn threads

  and billows in the late afternoon breeze.

  I also enjoy ten pin bowling and the films of Bruce Lee.

  REFERENCES

  Sadly, my references

  have altered their preferences;

  their words are harsh and

  abhorrent.

  Even mother and father

  have said they would rather

  not comment.

  Scenes from a Railway Carriage

  The silent stretch of fields in s–

  The sudden surprise of a blackbir–

  A ragged scarecrow stares b–

  A plastic bag seized by natur–

  An abandoned barn li–

  Some houses.

  Slough train station.

  Twelve Haiku

  INSTRUCTIONS

  Please choose the haiku

  which applies the most to you.

  Choose two, get one free.

  I

  Subbuteo man.

  Legs broken but re-glued twice.

  A fragile sadness.

  II

  A leaf, desolate,

  wind-blown, stuck to the back of

  Bruce Forsyth’s toupee.

  III

  A note left hanging

  in the cold night air, dispatched

  from a flugelhorn.

  IV

  Unclaimed bag revolves

  on a lonely carousel.

  Such a hopeless case.

  V

  Lonely, vacant box

  in someone else’s org chart.

  Never to be filled.

  VI

  Imperfect haiku,

  starts off quite well but ends one

  syllable short.

  VII

  A tranquil puddle

  disturbed by a sudden splash!

  Clarkson’s driving glove.

  VIII

  A semicolon

  in a place where it really;

  has no place to be.

  IX

  Reality show

  contestant on a journey

  back home to Skegness.

  X

  A smell which lingers.

  Vaguely reminiscent of

  Adrian Chiles’ socks.

  XI

  The forlorn pathos

  of an abandoned crossword

  in a bin in Fife.

  XII

  A bag of Quavers,

  offering cheesy comfort

  yet steeped in staleness.

  Compilation Cassette

  It was about three weeks after we met

  that I began work on that compilation cassette.

  Each track the result of a deliberation worthy

  of the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints,

  subject to a process of veneration and beatification

  before acceptance into the cassette tape canon.

  It’s a miracle it got made at all.

  I can’t remember now which songs made the cut.

  There would have been no Country & Western,

  (there was never any Country & Western)

  but they would have shown me to be

  discerning yet eclectic, both acoustic and electric,

  vaguely exotic, mildly erotic, quintessentially quixotic

  and other things I was not.

  I don’t know whether you ever played my cassette.

  By the time I had posted it through your letter box,

  you had already started going out with Colin Hancox.

  He was good at rugby.

  Acrostic Guitar

  Got it for my seventeenth birthday.

  Unreliant upon additional means of amplification.

  Imperfectly tuned to reflect the flaws inherent in life itself.

  Tank tops should be worn when playing it.

  Accompaniment to songs of love, revolution, and farming.

  Rattles with the ghosts of lost plectrums.

  Bin Lorries

  With the sureness of hearses, they

  rumble through early morning towns,

  oblivious of the slippered

  footsteps on uneven pavements.

  They loiter past every house:

  all bins in time are visited.

  Then children pushed out of front doors

  and office workers who drum their

  fingers on impassive steering wheels

  observe the bleak, black voidance

  of the week’s detritus. ‘The stench’,

  they whisper, as they turn away.

  Borne off to sprawling landfill sites
r />   and incineration chambers

  or reincarnated, perhaps,

  into other imperfect forms;

  the rubbled, jumbled remains at

  the end of their jagged journey.

  And those who lie in beds unwoken

  sleep troubledly all the same,

  and dream of wasted days and nights,

  filled with a lifetime’s tawdry trash,

  and wait and sleep and dream and wake

  to the morning’s insistent thrum.

  Mixed Up

  Poor Brian felt confused,

  his brain out of order,

  his reward was a prison,

  without need of a warder.

  For Pam was an anagram,

  a crumpled map with no key,

  his just desserts, he stressed;

  he’d gladly eat her for tea.

  But maybe she was married

  or had some other admirer?

  Yet hope’s thin flame resided

  in his heart; he desired her.

  He was held rapt in a trap

  and would think of her hourly.

  She was wordy, she was rowdy;

  she might come with a dowry.

  He felt angered. Enraged.

  World-weary. Wired. Weird.

  Couldn’t declare his feelings

  until his head cleared.

  He examined all the angles

  and prayed to the angels above;

  she gave him the will to live on

  and he knew he must be in love.

  Haiku for Doomed Youth

  Cutting out pop stars

  from last week’s NME with

  rock paper scissors.

  Friday the 13th

  Let’s be clear,

  for him Friday the 13th

  held no fear.

  He wasn’t superstitious

  (or even a little bit stitious)

  and didn’t view the day

  as particularly suspicious,

  or with the promise

  of the unpropitious.

  It was then that a black cat

  crossed his path,

  causing him to step on a crack

  which made him stagger

  under a ladder

  and shatter a mirror

  being transported

  by a passing albatross,

  who suffered fatal blood loss

  from a shard

  which had buried hard

  into its heart.

  He didn’t think anything of it

  until later that evening,

  at a wine reception,

  he found himself trapped

  in a conversation

  with Piers Morgan.

  Duffle Coat

  You were a one song wonder.

  Don’t know if you ever

  made another.

  Got made

  NME single of the week.

  It put the bubble

  in my squeak

  and the snap and crackle

  in my pop.

  I played it twelve weeks

  non-stop

  until the jingles

  and the jangles

  softened

  the awkward angles

  of what it’s like

  to be fifteen.

  I kept the sleeve pristine.

  I wore a duffle coat

  all that summer.

  Someone told me

  you’re now a plumber.

  At the Intersection

  The Pillow Man

  I am the pillow man

  plumped up

  a bag of straw, that’s all

  A cushion of flesh

  a floppy bean bag of bones

  shapeless, silent, still

  Between the thought

  and the action

  Between the notion

  and the motion

  lies the cat

  For I am her dominion

  Between the decision

  and the reaction

  Between the question

  and the solution

  lies the cat

  She is very warm

  Between the remote

  and the television

  Between the bookcase

  and the book

  Between the stairs

  and the bed

  lies the cat

  For I am her dominion

  For I am

  For the cat is

  For I am her

  This is the way my day ends

  This is the way my day ends

  This is the way my day ends

  Not with a bang but a whisker

  The Power of a Homophone

  ‘Sometimes the power of a homophone

  comes out of nowhere and hits you,

  just like being struck by a ten tonne truck,’

  articulated Laurie.

  Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

  I saw the chicken cross the road,

  deep-set in contemplation,

  so I followed in the shadows

  to end all speculation.

  He sidled down an alleyway,

  and then suddenly stopped dead

  beneath a sign that gently swayed.

  Upon it: The Gag’s Head.

  I heard a noise. Knock-knock it went.

  ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Just me. The chicken.’

  I watched him quickly ushered in

  and the plot began to thicken.

  Through the window, I peered inside,

  now intrigued about this place,

  and the first thing that caught my eye

  was a horse with a long face.

  He held something black and white

  which was also red all over,

  and stroked a dog without a nose

  from which came a dreadful odour.

  And next to them, a big chimney,

  smoking in front of his son,

  and Pikachu who’d missed the bus

  because nobody poked him on.

  An Englishman, Irishman,

  and Scotsman stood there in a group,

  with an elephant in a fridge

  and a breaststroking fly in soup.

  The chicken got himself a beer

  and joined their night of boozing;

  to escape from this joke of a life,

  made not of their own choosing.

  I turned myself away from them

  and decided I should split.

  First rule of joke format club:

  nobody talks about it.

  Night Vision

  To see at night

  with extra clarity,

  make sure the food

  you eat is carroty.

  And beware the dark

  can seem much gloomier,

  should you choose to make

  your meal mushroomier.

  Bonfire 451

  I made a mighty bonfire

  from remaindered copies

  of The World According to Jeremy Clarkson

  and saw the dance of sparks on

  the face emblazoned upon

  a thousand covers turn to flame,

  spreading quickly across his name

  and spine, until the pages caught

  and raged in flickering fury.

  Warming to the task, I threw

  Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

  on the heap and the crowd grew larger

  beneath the November night sky,

  drawn in by the spectacle as

  the paper crackled and smoke curled high.

  Out of bags and rucksacks and pockets

  came copies of The Da Vinci Code,

  Twilight, Naomi Campbell’s Swan,

  Paul McKenna’s I Can Make You Rich,

  as the bonfire trembled and twitched

  and turned fifty shades of orange.

  Caught in the passing of a sudden breeze

  were heard the shrieks of a hundred

&
nbsp; ghostwritten footballers’ autobiographies.

  We stood back to admire our handiwork,

  this funeral pyre of published inanities,

  a bonfire of insanities.

  How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail

  I would rather

  eat Quavers that are six weeks stale,

  tie up the man bun of Gareth Bale,

  listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail

  than read one page of the Daily Mail.

  If I were bored

  in a waiting room in Perivale,

  on a twelve hour trip on Network Rail,

  halfway through a circumnavigational sail,

  I would not read the Daily Mail.

  I would happily read

  the complete works of Peter Mayle,

  the autobiography of Dan Quayle,

  selected scripts from Emmerdale,

  if it meant I didn’t have to read the Daily Mail.

  Far better to

  stand outside in a storm of hail,

  be blown out to sea in a powerful gale,

  then swallowed by a humpback whale

  than have to read the Daily Mail.

  If I were blind

  and it was the only thing in Braille,

  I still would not read the Daily Mail.

  A Brok n Po m

  Upon b ing awok n

  h found his k yboard was brok n.

  Th ‘ ’ did not work,

  it drov him b rs rk,

  h f lt lik a j rk.

  So h w nt to s Louis .

  Sh was ag r to pl a .

  Sh was th b ’s kn s.

  Receptacles

  It was a love that came together

  through the use of receptacles;

  for he had his beer goggles on

  and she, her rosé-tinted spectacles.

  How’s Wally?

  Paranoia stalks me

  through the streets,

  the park, the fairground,

  the crowded beach.