You Took the Last Bus Home Read online

  I try to make myself

  hard to see

  because I think someone

  is after me.

  In a stripy shirt,

  bobble hat, glasses,

  I hide amongst

  the unwashed masses.

  Why they want me

  I do not know,

  but I keep on moving;

  I must not slow.

  So I wander lonely,

  in a cloud,

  choose the safety

  of the crowd.

  I just pray that

  there’ll never be

  a Malthusian

  catastrophe.

  Sporkle

  it is not the way you walk

  it is not the way you talk

  it is the way you wield a spork

  queenly exponent of hybrid cutlery

  you make my stomach

  utterly

  fluttery

  one minute, your pronging

  fills me with longing

  the next,

  you scoop to conquer

  it is driving me bonquers

  elegant elision,

  practised precision,

  your spork

  lights the spark

  in my heart

  rightly or wrongly,

  I want you to

  scoop me

  then prong me

  Roger’s Thesaurus

  In order to grow, expand, widen

  his lexicological corpus,

  Roger bought, acquired, purchased

  a synonymopedia, a thesaurus.

  Soon, presently, without delay,

  he no longer ran out of things to say,

  speak, utter, express, articulate,

  give voice to, pronounce, communicate.

  This was all very well, fine, great,

  wonderful, super, terrific

  but his friends, mates, pals thought him

  boring, tedious, dull, soporific.

  So let this be a warning,

  an omen, a sign, a premonition,

  it’s all very well to show learning,

  education, knowledge, erudition,

  but here’s a top tip,

  a suggestion, some advice,

  don’t ever let it stop you

  from being concise,

  brief, short, clear, pithy,

  succinct, compendious, to the point.

  Breviloquent.

  Too Much to Bare

  Dr Augustus Meek

  had a puritanical streak

  through the streets of Preston.

  Kept his pants and vest on.

  Choreplay

  Let’s make love as soon as we are able

  when the plates are cleared from the table,

  the dishwasher stacked neatly

  and the surfaces completely

  wiped clean of crumbs and yolk.

  We can leave the pans to soak.

  Let’s make our love fast and urgent

  once I have bought some more detergent

  because the backlog of laundry

  is simply quite extraordinary;

  we really should do it oftener.

  I will also get some fabric softener.

  Let our bodies writhe and manoeuvre

  when I’ve finished with the hoover.

  I know that it’s rather late

  but the house is in a state;

  and our schedule has got off-kilter.

  I think we need to change the filter.

  Let our love be reckless, exciting,

  after I have done the recycling;

  the lilac sacks securely tied

  and placed in the street outside,

  careful not to cause obstruction.

  And so begins the sweet seduction.

  Orpheus in the Umbroworld

  Orpheus descends

  into the Umbroworld

  of trackie bottoms

  and replica tops,

  ragged running shoes

  and knee-length socks,

  skeleton racks

  of shell-suited overstocks,

  and sidesteps

  the slow shuffle of dead souls

  with their tatty dreams

  of Sunday morning goals,

  deadly crossfield passes

  and Hacky Sack skills.

  He slays three-headed Cerberus

  behind the tills,

  who blows bubblegum balloons

  from three sullen mouths,

  and finds sweet Eurydice

  wrapped up in sports towels.

  Unlooking, he unravels,

  unfetters, unfurls,

  ushers her back through

  the Umbroworld,

  past gumshields and goggles

  and tennis ball canisters,

  under the watchful eye

  of Nike and Adidas.

  But, in the security screen

  on the threshold,

  the face of Eurydice,

  he accidentally beholds

  and she is suddenly gone

  from him forever,

  lost in the folds

  of a thousand golf umbrellas.

  The Day That Twitter Went Down

  That day I got things done.

  I went for a long run.

  Played ping-pong,wrote a song.

  It got to number one.

  That day I did a lot.

  I tied a Windsor knot.

  Helped the poor,

  stopped a war,

  read all of Walter Scott.

  O what a day to seize.

  I learnt some Cantonese.

  Led a coup,

  climbed K2,

  cured a tropical disease.

  That day I met deadlines,

  got crowned King of Liechtenstein,

  stroked a toucan,

  found Lord Lucan,

  then Twitter came back online.

  Anthem for Unnamed Storms

  Forget not those who came before:

  the unmarked gales, the anonymous

  squalls and unhumanised storms

  whose howls haunt and batter

  our memories still. Not for them,

  a Met Office christening,

  no blustery Barney, gusty Gertrude

  or blowy, hapless Henry. For they

  never knew what it is to be known.

  But I shall batten down the hatches,

  light the candle and give life

  to the innominate from years long gone.

  A late autumn day and I, aged five,

  feel the sudden breeze as my mitten falls

  into the lake. I shall call you Cedric.

  A carrier bag in a 1980s supermarket

  car park lifts into the air like a kite

  and dances nervously in the wind. Sharon.

  My carefully constructed quiff flattened

  by the buffeting of Tim. A plastic chair

  blown over on the patio by Colin.

  The storms of my past. Eric. Patricia. Lesley.

  Doris. Brandon. You have your names now.

  Calm yourselves and be still.

  Book Group

  The last Thursday of every month was Book Group,

  when the books would gather together

  to discuss Graham.

  ‘He has barely touched me; I am sure I am

  only here so he can show off to his friends,’

  complained Ulysses, in a stream of self-consciousness.

  ‘Consider yourself lucky,’ cried Fifty Shades of Grey.

  ‘He’s always got his dirty hands all over me.

  Look at my cracked spine and turned down corners!’

  ‘At least he’s prepared to put you two on display,’

  sobbed Coping with Erectile Dysfunction limply

  from behind The History of the Decline and Fall

  of the Roman Empire.

  ‘The problem isn’t him, it’s you,’ declared the

  Oxford English Dictionary,

  with meaning. ‘You get too involved. With me,

  it’s just a quick in and out. We have an understanding.’

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say, pronounce,

  utter, articulate,’

  muttered Roget’s Thesaurus, who always had some words

  to add to the conversation.

  Graham entered the room, carrying a box.

  Dipping into it, he pulled out a slim, shiny metal object.

  He stared at it all night, his interest kindled.

  The books sat silently on the shelf.

  Coquet

  I put down my Guardian,

  remove my cardigan,

  other clothes follow

  slowly,

  sliding seductively

  to the floor

  I’m a snake shedding its skin,

  peeling,

  revealing,

  on the hunt

  for some healing

  Garments slip,

  I bite my lip

  in anticipation

  of emancipation

  But then the doctor turns around and says,

  ‘You can keep your underpants on, Mr Bilston.’

  Smoking Jacket

  He got himself a smoking jacket,

  he thought it would amaze her.

  But she just put a match to it,

  and it became a blazer.

  Bags

  you have bags of bags

  in your bags

  you keep more bags

  all bagged up

  in bags for life

  if there was a competition for number of bags

  you would have it

  in the bag

  i don’t know why you need so many bags

&nbs
p; it’s not as if you have anything to put in them

  except other bags

  No, You Cannot Borrow My Mobile Phone Charger

  Help yourself to whatever you’d like from my larder:

  my stilton, my sherry – or my port, if you’d rather –

  but no, you cannot borrow my mobile phone charger.

  If you want I will read you an ancient Norse saga,

  or dance naked in public to Radio Gaga,

  but no, you cannot borrow my mobile phone charger.

  Make me learn all the speeches of President Carter,

  or force-feed me quinoa until I grow larger,

  but no, you cannot borrow my mobile phone charger.

  You can beg all you want but I’m not going to barter

  because no, you cannot borrow my mobile phone charger.

  Granny Smith

  Want to know

  what’s under

  that tough green skin?

  Apply within.

  Jessica Fletcher Investigates

  Crushed to death.

  No blood, no note.

  Just a steel beam.

  Girder, she wrote.

  Love Excels

  Busman’s Holiday

  I had always wanted to go

  on a busman’s holiday

  so I saved up for ten years

  and then five holidays

  came along at once.

  Paradise Not Regained

  The retreat of a rented cottage,

  bathed in late summer’s shade.

  Urbanity unfurls itself

  in the seclusion of the glade.

  Nature’s tapestry surrounds me;

  a timeless river flows through,

  the towering forest comforts,

  the sky dips in cloudless blue.

  Inside, the considered furnishings

  of the holiday home owner’s dream:

  cushion-piled beds, rustic kitchen,

  the sofa of unsullied cream.

  All immaculately conceived,

  pure and clean, without marks on.

  But then I see, on a bookshelf,

  The World According to Clarkson.

  Eden withers and dies around me,

  forever more the holiday stained;

  The satanic stumble, the fall from grace.

  Paradise found, lost, never regained.

  Running Wild

  Returning to his old school

  twenty years later,

  he vanquished

  childhood fears of chastisement

  by running

  in the corridor

  with scissors in his hand

  and, so doing,

  liberated himself from

  the claustrophobic confines

  of his cloistered conformity.

  He did this

  for approximately twelve seconds

  before the tiger got him.

  My Unbearable Politeness of Being

  It’s the same dilemma

  each year, I find,

  upon meeting a person

  for the first time,

  for how long

  does wishing them

  a Happy New Year

  remain de rigueur?

  Perhaps I blow things

  out of proportion

  but I tend to err

  on the side of caution

  so I’ve always

  Happy New Year-ed

  until October the third.

  Pusher

  The next time they came for me,

  I was ready. Surprised them,

  as they forced my head down

  into the urinal, with a sonnet.

  Smashed them like a bowl of eggs.

  The demands changed.

  Lunch money settled in my pocket.

  Homework remained unstolen.

  Instead, a request for a villanelle.

  A haiku. A rondeau.

  I was the don, a playground

  dealer in dactyls and spondees.

  Two lines of iambic pentameter

  to get through double physics.

  Cinquains snorted behind bike sheds.

  Ballads kicked around at break.

  A cheeky limerick to impress the girls.

  Then one day a boy in the year below

  OD-ed. An irregular ode apparently.

  Nowadays I stick to novels.

  Clive of Suburbia

  Clive’s a brass-knocker examiner,

  a doughty door-hammerer,

  selling Wikipedia Britannica

  with suburban street stamina.

  He goes from door to door.

  His feet feel sore and raw.

  He’s just turned forty-four,

  more or less (for less is more).

  He’s a doorstep smash-and-grabber.

  A gilt-edged gift of the gabber,

  he got the moves, he got the glamour,

  he got more jabber than MC Hammer.

  To Clive there can be nothing easier

  than selling self-authored pseudo-academia,

  fifty leather-bound laptops of Wikipedia,

  with a month’s free access to Virgin Media.

  The Boogie Monster

  You were always blaming things on the boogie.

  The time you stayed out in the sun too long

  and your speckles turned to freckles: the boogie.

  The evening you admired the light of a full moon

  only to trip and fracture your hip: the boogie.

  Even those times which once seemed good

  became named, shamed and blamed on the boogie.

  I quite liked the boogie.

  I didn’t know why you had such a problem with it.

  Morrissey’s Quiff

  His quiff

  was stiff

  from all the hairspray,

  I dare say.

  Thin Poem

  this

  poem

  is

  thin,

  slim,

  svelte,

  has

  no

  need

  to

  tighten

  its

  belt

  Subbuteo

  They lie there as if in state,

  green boxes transformed into tombs,

  a taphephobiast’s fearful fate.

  A living nightmare looms.

  A grave situation indeed.

  Your hymns

  will not stir the fallen

  inside these curious coffins,

  nor mend their

  shattered, scattered

  l i m b s

  All over the country,

  in all of the attics,

  lie these atrocities of neglect,

  of athletics, rovers

  and cities fanatics.

  Those childhood cup dreams

  gather dust,

  no more the trophy

  held aloft,

  for the loft holds now

  only atrophy.

  The Offertory

  She would go to church

  every Sunday,

  religiously.

  Not to listen

  to the bullshit

  from the pulpit,

  but to watch Ray

  with the offertory tray

  advance in style,

  and wish it was her

  he was taking

  up the aisle.

  And at night,

  the curate

  would contemplate

  and take stock

  of the romance

  which blossomed

  in his flock,

  and live out

  in his dreams,

  their courtship,

  vicariously.

  The Problem of Writing a Poem in the Shape of a Heart

  Envy Not the Rich Man for I, Though Poor…

  Envy not the rich man his stocks and shares,

  the offshore accounts, and his French au pair

  who minds the kids when he’s out on the piste

  with the trophy wife he plundered from Greece,

  and his city pad and country estate,

  the mistress he keeps for when he works late,

  his Jag, Bentley and Range Rover Evoque,

  his Dom Pérignon, and Black Dragon smokes,

  the island retreat of which he’s so fond

  where the Bahamian sun turns him to bronze.

  For I, though poor, have him tied to this chair.

  The night is still young. He hasn’t a prayer.