New Poetry 2005

Sonnet Inc.

You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
You you you you you you you you you you
That’s enough about you, what about me?


Two legs bad

Unlike a square peg in a round hole the
Round pig in a square bowl prefers twiglets
To truffles, anoraks to duffles and
Rough sex to cuddles, and while some abhor
The boar in him, others delight in his mild
Indiscretions and sausage impressions
Which can often be found about the town
At the more popular dinning tables
They say he put the sty back into style
And champions all the noble causes
He often steals front page news and heading
Cosmo has bought the rights to his wedding
So God bless this bright and gentle porker
And please don’t tell him we ate his daughter

Shedding Skins

I never put away my things;
Socks sleep with their mouths
Open, floundering blindly
In a trouser-leg burrow
Slowly cooling until eager feet
Complete them in the religion
Of the morning’s ritual

Trauma, dawn

I used
to think
that we'd be
together, but people have a strange way of changing
their minds and their habits
and we stopped talking
but I keep your letters

the same
letters
even though strangers who share your name sometimes remind
me of our troubles and
how we tried to hide them
and sometimes, just sometimes
I try
not to think at all


Untitled

I sit and digest his stranger’s life behind a pint
Thinking I bet he’s the kind that wears glasses when swimming
And then hurries past all the bigger hairier men
Flannelling his guinea pig appendage
In an attempt to hide his weaker sense of manly pride
And I’m sure he gets his weekly fix of masculinity
Late at night he stalks by the kitchen glazing
Watching himself sharpening pencils with a Stanley knife
And maybe even if he is so inclined
He builds a garden fire and then intimidates it with a large stick
I sit and watch him, breathe and reject him
He drinks by himself as if it is a necessary ritual that surpasses
Satisfaction, this is his simply ritual, his burden
like standing old and naked in the changing cubicles
silently trying to defend against the cruel staresand the judgement of strangers in bars


Out in the rain

Significance of things left out in the rain
not so much neglected as forgotten play;
old friends caked in mud and M.I.A.
amongst the gooseberry bushes,
rolled long beyond reach.

The tragedy of lost balloons, parents consoling
children watching miracles float away.
Those out in the cold must endure.
Action man, with just a shirt
and no thumbs to button them, can’t find his
four-by-four.

One Christmas we watched our football
die in the neighbour’s tree. Laid waste
To the German light infantry
in deserts of building sand, some of whom
were left behind, poor souls, don’t know war is over.
The old bike makes its stand against time,
rusting silently, the orange oxides run
and bleed behind the shed; good company for ladders.

Some things look better broken.
The same old dogs bite through the fence.
Watching the kids take the inside out and bring
the outside in again. Come the spring, a spade
turns a lego man over in the sod, still smiling,
back from the dead and missing his legs.

PW

Balloon Poem

used to try and keep mine
alive as long as possible
tied to the bed-head
slowly it sinks
lower and lower
then one day
it dies.