You Took the Last Bus Home Page 2
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.