On Putting Up The Ticket Price at Hammer & Tongue

You think it’s easy,
being this airy poet dude
and still going out to earn a living?
My usefulness, such as it is,
resides in twisting words into strings of sweetly wrapped
bricks of meaning
to smash the glass walls of the discourse we’re trapped in.

An Apology on Behalf of the White-English Council of Great Britain

“This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family. We understand the victim is a serving member of the Armed Forces. Muslims have long served in this country’s Armed Forces, proudly and with honour.”

When in May this year, the Muslim Council of Great Britain issued this apology for the murder of Lee Rigby on behalf of all British Islam, I remembered that many years ago, my brother and I found this apology issued by the lesser known ‘White-English Council of Great Britain’. I dug it out again recently and publish the text below.

Market Cafe

Food is prepared with genetically modified soya bean oil.
We can only please one person per day.
Today is not your day.

The Last Days of Thatcher

We watch Margaret Thatcher’s
bloated face and cloudy mind;
remember the hardlined features,
the decisive fist, the woman not for turning;
as she stumbles in jumble-brain confusion;
discharged from hospital;
not long to go now.

Keep Calm and Carry On

First they came for the disability benefits…
Keep calm and carry on!
Or was that first?
First, didn’t we have unprecedented levels of stress,

Mind-Sirens and Sand-Lines

There’s mad talented writers round here
who’ll never be great.
Had their minds twisted by the sirens of the state,
a swirling battle cry that gets a man into a fighting state.

The Road

“Improvement makes straight road; but the crooked
roads without Improvement are roads of Genius”
-William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,1793

There once was a path that led from A to B.
It was a green path, muddy in the winter but passable,
overhung by heavily swaying branches in the summer
that shimmered and murmured with the sunlight.

Sonnet for Salena

To celebrate the birthday of Salena Godden on 25th June, I composed her a sonnet. What a brilliant poet and beautiful person. Good luck to her! Long may she continue.

Tooth Extraction

Numb up to the eyeballs
You pull at my tooth’s root.

Tension, Hackney Downs, Easter 2012

For days it hasn’t rained.
The newspapers celebrate exaggeratedly,
Pictures of Blackpool, Brighton, Bournemouth,
Hotter than Barcelona, Lima or Roma.