poems
LUCA
meet the ancestors
I finally got round to the family tree
and what I found was a shock to me
(because of the colossal weight of material
I focused on the matrilineal)
so follow me now through the DNA wringer
as I light the way with my index finger
Mum was a bowl of hand-pulled spaghetti
Grandma was a fastback forty-two Chevy
Great Grandma was coturnix coturnix, or Quail
G2 Grandma the common whelk, a type of sea snail
G3G was a filthy limerick by Baudelaire
G4G was a hypotenuse square
G5G was a broadway hoofer
G6G was a dyspraxic roofer
G7G was a stir-fry recipe using Pak Choi
G8G was the better-looking sister of Helen of Troy
but I’m afraid that’s where the record runs out
so if you find more information give us a shout
Whale song
I’m drowsy, droopy, drippy, lethargic
I’m slower than an iceberg drifting in the Antarctic
stuck like a truck rusting where they parked it
so flat you’d think I’d carked it
I’m slumbersome, cumbersome
I’d dial out for help if it wasn’t so troublesome
my brain like bubblegum
after it pops
my brainwaves flat and unorthodox
I’m stretching, twitching, yawning
so deep it’s like a new cave forming
for the dozy traveler to pitch head first in
or like a dreamy old whale who swims too deep
closes his eyes and sings in his sleep
radio times
I was born in the winter of 62 / and between the TV, me and you / and the licence detector crew / smoking and joking in their van / I watched as many shows as any kid can / I mean – actually it’s scandalous / how audio-visually ravenous / I was / breaking all natural laws / sprawled out flat on the sitting room floor / before it / like some juiced-up junkie ready to score it / a TV devotee on his belly to implore it / the mighty Panasonic three-channeled God / to give me the hallowed cathode ray nod / and bless me with an iridescent shot / of the purest primetime shit they’d got
so now when they stuff my head in a scanner
they won’t see anything resembling brain matter
just screwed up copies of a TV planner
and when the surgeon advances with her hacksaw and spanner
this is what’ll spill in a dreadful manner:
Joe 90, Magpie, Trumpton, Scooby Doo
Time Tunnel, Grange Hill, Skippy, Kung Fu
Double Deckers, Hector’s House, Cheggers Plays Pop
Rentaghost, Record Breakers, Fingerbobs,
Flashing Blade, Clangers, Noggin the Nog
Thunderbirds, Jackanory, Batman, Bod
Worzel Gummidge, Wombles, Captain Scarlet
Wacky Races, Catweazle, Flintstones, SkyLark
Sooty Show, Vision On, Pugwash, Newsround
Take Hart, Roobarb, Dangermouse, Paddington
Swapshop, Screen Test, Wonder Woman, Tiswas
Follyfoot, Mr Benn, CAPTAIN PUGWASH
running up the onion jack
Come all ye fine fellows that follows the government
With a way hey yah and a slap on the back
Please stand to attention and sign our poor covenant
As we run up the Onion Jack
Hark to your Chief, Ol’ Blo-Jo Johnson
Like someone stuck hair on a walking condom
He’s a windy ol’ fake with the devil’s delight
In any decision that makes us look shite
I prithee mates swerve Cap’n Priti Patel
She’s listing to starboard and furious as hell
You’re certain to worsen her cursin’ belligerence
If you talk of humanity, fair play and immigrants
There’s Raab on the beach with a pina colada
Wanking o’er the Spanish Armada
He’s way too busy to make the call
To help with the imminent fall of Kabul
There’s a cry from the bosun! Young Master Williamson
Swinging from the rigging in a muddle and then some
We leave him awhile ‘cos his wailin’s delicious
Draw lots about cutting him loose for the fishes
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and Gove
He really is an extraordinary cove
He’ll smile like a sloth as he diddles yer udders
Then drop overboard to snag up the rudders
Come all ye fine fellows that follows the government
With a way hey yah and a slap on the back
Please stand to attention and sign our poor covenant
As we run up the Onion Jack
God the father, God the son, God the Holy Forward
I have to say I’m a little pissed with events
in the American sense
although quite often in the British, too
slumped in front of the ten o’clock news
with a heart full of pain and a belly full of booze
because often it seems to me
that the world is spinning erratically
on the finger of a basketball-playing God
who thinks he’s LeBron James but he’s really not
a deity who definitely HAS NOT GOT
the skills for this particular shot
but hey, he ignores all the frantic calls
to be a bit freer and pass the ball
and makes his play
anyway
in a bearded and big-fisted biblical way
leaping for the planetary slam dunk
and the Earth hits the rim with a cataclysmic clunk
and when he fumbles the rebound
and crashes in a cloaky, old blokey heap to the ground
makes a furious, injurious ungodly kinda sound
and casts plague and pestilence all around
laying waste to the stadium
with flames from his cranium
and the human race on the bleachers scream yikes
but hey! he’s God! he can do what he likes
(and btw – he’s TOTALLY done this before
when he was two points down in the final quarter against the dinosaurs)
puppy to man
mum had kids when she should’ve had dogs
which makes such perfect sense because
it totally fit how she really was
a fit of adult distemper? maybe
but every dog she ever had was a baby
every baby she fussed like crazy
you can take a baby and a dog for a walk
but a dog only barks whilst a baby soon talks
and that’s where the strolls in the park start to fork
at the risk of sounding a little judgemental
instead of taking the road marked parental
she shoulda just followed the signs to the kennel
but the clock ticks on, enough’s enough
the kids were fed and watered and loved
(so we looked our best when she showed us at Crufts)
this way to the end of the world please
Form an orderly queue for the exit / what d’ya mean you didn’t expect it? / Johnson, Covid, Climate Change, Brexit? / The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse / are War, Famine, Plague & Politics / so screw the loony climatologists / communist apologists / what we need are more Bullingdon boys on Eton internships / for an extended Wall Game with heat domes and oil slicks / wack job boys’ club macroeconomics / sleepy BP PR optics / flawed but plausible diagnostics / bozo billionaires in cock-shaped rockets / burning through the troposphere and the cash in our pockets / while gorgeous, glittering TikTok armies / upload selfies from poolside parties / and the world gets tossed by tornadoes and tsunamis / and landslides dice the cities like salami / and you settle down with an iPhone and a pizza / to watch Netflix docs on endangered creatures / cooking to death on distant beaches / and your epiphany’s bigger than a grand mal seizure / when you realise all these glorious leaders / have been lining you up for the same procedure
Pinocchio underwater
the fugitive rock-tied puppet boy appears
donkey tail and donkey ears
dragging his sorry wooden ass across the sands
forty fathoms down from pleasure island
faaaaathheeeeeer
deeper, further
because even though he lost his strings
Gepetto’s still there in everything
he remembers lampy
going cold donkey
in the pool room
kicking out the mirror
the braying shiver
of his shadow
against the wall
the nightmare before the fall
workshop to island, cliff to sea
the last wooden leg of his journey
faaaaathheeeeeer
deeper, further
and the spatted, furious cricket struggles
to keep his hat in all the bubbles
why he’s there he couldn’t say
except the fairy said he’d get a badge some day
faaaaathheeeeeer
deeper, further
but the scandalised fish only snap their jaws
and catastrophizing crabs all clack their claws
as the snooty, flutey clams withdraw
because despite all the innocent cartoon snores
they know
how these things go
they know
monstro
