(with acknowledgements to Cubby Broccoli)

We’ve a new allotment holder

Just retired from MI6

Wears a Beretta on his shoulder

Calls our lady members “chicks”

Drives a silver coloured DB5

He won’t get much in that

When he has to transport compost

From his Docklands penthouse flat

He takes his Martini shaken,

In his shed he keeps a score

Of days spent with psych...

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There is no finer prospect

Than the idyllic, tranquil scene

Of cliffs and fells and water bright

Of the Coniston Fourteen

And gathered all together

Beneath the Old Man’s craggy face

Fifteen hundred runners

Anxious before the race

Amongst them, there was I

In my gloves and woolly hat

Pondering the test ahead

And how I’d handle that

The announcer s...

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There is no finer prospect

Than the idyllic, tranquil scene

Of cliffs and fells and water bright

Of the Coniston Fourteen

And gathered all together

Beneath the Old Man’s craggy face

Fifteen hundred runners

Anxious before the race

Amongst them, there was I

In my gloves and woolly hat

Pondering the test ahead

And how I’d handle that

The announcer s...

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At Algorithm central

it’s time to make a choice

between ChatGPT and DeepSeek

While you still have your own voice

It’s a race to get the brightest app

whose misleading demeanour

will leave you in some logic trap

A digital in betweener

We know AI will kill us all

It’s no harmless lingua franca

It’s been created just for profit

By some lawless tech bro wank...

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Wee Willie’s agent made the call

Willie wasnae expecting it at all

As in his bed he idly lay

That fateful January day

“Get up Willie, Tam exclaimed

Get oot your bed and leave yer hame

Get on your kilt, your brogues, your hose

And grab your pipes and don your clothes

I’ve had a call from the SRU

The very man they need is you

This is no wind up, it’s the truth

They ...

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When this place first opened

It was a science fiction wonder

A gleaming, glassy palace

Over the tarmac rapids’ thunder

At night it was a spaceship

In a ribboned Milky Way

Of Ford Anglias and Zodiacs 

With its shimmering array

Of magazines and wine gums

Pies and chips and peas

For modern minded connoisseurs

To bask in motoring ease

Peeling off th...

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For the New Year I resolve -

Not to swim with Humpbacked whales
Or ride an alpaca on the Inca Trail
Or skipper a ship with three masts and ten sails
I’d rather be lashed with a cat of nine tails.

The Northern Lights shall remain darkness to me
There will be no Amazon trips to see all the trees
If you dropped me on Everest attached to skis
I’d say “no thanks”, not “yes please”.

You w...

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For the New Year I resolve -

Not to swim with Humpbacked whales
Or ride an alpaca on the Inca Trail
Or skipper a ship with three masts and ten sails
I’d rather be lashed with a cat of nine tails.

The Northern Lights shall remain darkness to me
There will be no Amazon trips to see all the trees
If you dropped me on Everest attached to skis
I’d say “no thanks”, not “yes please”.

You w...

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Sim-ply ha-ving a wonderful Christmas time

The Travelator hums with Advent cheer

I got all my gifts on Amazon Prime

Tesco’s delivered the wine, the beer

I have been vaccinated against Seasonal Stress

And McCartney on the Public Address

Don’t make me go to Lapland

Wherever that may be

For the holidays I have nothing planned

I might stop at Terminal Three

You can leave ...

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He’s hit the post, clipped the bar

And now he’s the better man by far

For the humbling experience of being

A nearly published poet, work still unseen

A ghost, a shadow nursing the dream

The invisible man of the literary scene

Not seeing his words preserved for an age

Black on white on at least one page

It was fun while it lasted, the fleeting thought

That some...

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Where laced up leather boots so softly tread
Beneath spiral columns of spindrift snow
Time freezes in the ice where he lies dead

A gnarled old man with two teeth in his head
Prays to Chomolunga from down below
Where laced up leather boots so softly tread

One month before, Gray’s elegy they read
Whilst they waited for the storm winds to slow
Time freezes in the ice where he lies dead

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The leaves come down

And they’re orange and brown

And they fall in the forest

And they tumble in the town

And they clog up the gutters and gather in the grates

They're  the colour of butter when they shine on slates 

And they crinkle and curl as they silently lie

For this is the time when the leaves all die

In Autumn gales 

They are blown and tossed

As the sun tu...

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The leaves come down

And they’re orange and brown

And they fall in the forest

And they tumble in the town

And they clog up the gutters and gather in the grates

They're  the colour of butter when they shine on slates 

And they crinkle and curl as they silently lie

For this is the time when the leaves all die

In Autumn gales 

They are blown and tossed

As the sun tu...

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That is no session for old men. The young

With lithe legs and arms stretch like sapling trees

We, flailing generation whose Latin songs

Fail inflamed and arthritic joints to ease

We began at eight, it’s now ten, how long

Before one amongst us succumbs, and dies?

Caught in that sensual music all wrecked

Monuments of years of bad neglect

An agèd man is but a tragic ...

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Morning sun silvered the poplar leaves

Somewhere others lay in the cut clay, waiting 

And I smelt the sea’s dead things

As I walked. 

Kelp, razor shells, crabs, limpets

We laughed and swam in sandy craters

And I walked

By Goat's Water, the Old Man looked down

As he had for all my life 

And all those other lives before

The smell of wet bracken, sphagnum, washed sl...

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On The Village Outer fringes

Lives the legend Rocketman

If it burns, explodes or singes

Pyrotechnically, he’s your man

His potting shed’s a bomb store 

He goes there when he chooses

To stack the shelves and fill the floor

with gunpowder and fuses

He plans every Guy Fawkes night

By astrophysics and geography 

Filling the sky with sound and light

And aerial chor...

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Get yourself a lump of marble

Twenty feet by six by six

Borrow a set of chisels

Or buy them from Screwfix

Empty out your garage or outdoor store

Of furniture and kids’ bikes from ceiling to floor

Grab yourself a mallet

Michelangelo liked wood

And get stuck in whilst listening to Johnnie B Goode

With every blow you will release

The body shape within

From a...

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“Lovely to hear from you!

We have a whole school poetry recital in the morning for National Poetry Day — it would be lovely if you could attend and maybe read one of your poems to the children? It might be best to phone school before you come, just to make sure about timings (if you are able to make it).”

So there I was, walking past the little hand drawn signs featuring pictures of dogs fil...

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Just because you can play it doesn’t mean you should

I’m talking about After the Goldrush or Before the Flood

or anything by The Eagles, Paul Simon and Stormzy

Keep these artists separate from your ukulele

Just because you know the words don’t mean you can sing

Paul Rogers is Bad Company, leave Fields of Gold to Sting

Give Roy Orbison numbers a miss

Don’t kid yourself you...

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I will be your paddle baby

in a boat that never leaks

Wanna be your saddle baby

and nestle in your cheeks

Wanna drive you crazy with my pike position

Wanna make you my gold medal mission

Wanna greet you on the street with a Kata devotion

Wanna swim in the Seine, surf in your Ocean

Wanna ‘nother clear round without any fault

Wanna plant my pole and make the vault

Wann...

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I don’t want no Staycation

I’m not that kind of holiday guy

I’d rather not drive to some coastal location

When there’s budget ways to fly

I want to fall foul of Parking Patrol

Get mentally stressed and shout

I want to queue at Passport Control

Have breakfast with lager or stout

I want to remove my trainers and belt

Fill trays with keys and coins

Want to have...

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Said Willie to the Dazzler 

As they settled in the snug

We’ll take a pint of Bushmills malt

To fill yon claret jug

Then the silver jug was lifted 

And held to Dazzler’s lips

To celebrate the winning

Of the Open Championship

In the sunlight on tobaccoed walls

As gold on silver fills the west

In black and white and green and red

The mythic Georgie Best

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Said Willie to the Dazzler 

As they settled in the snug

We’ll take a pint of Bushmills malt

To fill yon claret jug

Then the silver jug was lifted 

And held to Dazzler’s lips

To celebrate the winning

Of the Open Championship

In the sunlight on tobaccoed walls

As gold on silver fills the west

In black and white and green and red

The mythic Georgie Best

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When Lee Dixon opens his cliche cabinet,

We’re havin' it.

It was a game of two halves

The lad’s put in a shift

You couldn’t write this script, that’s a gift

Get in there my son, go on my boy

The phrases flow, sucked of joy

He pulls rabbits from hats

With consummate ease

He’s a mangled mouthed magician

Can’t you see?

His left foot’s just for standing ...

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Dear Friends and family members

Gathered here to celebrate

And rake over my life’s embers

So sorry that I’m late

I intended to be on time

For this, the concluding event

Commemorating in songs and rhyme

A life well spent

Only the traffic lights were down

And it just kept getting worse

With anxious mothers on the school run

Stuck behind the funeral hearse

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Greetings cards with wine or wellies

Gardening, golf and air guitars

Flawless lawns, beer bellies

For this is what you are

You’re slower, balder, fuller faced

Your jokes fall flat and stale

That bike you bought, still in its place

Another mid-life fail

The Lycra was more than a stretch

You ’re living in the past

Running uphill makes you retch 

And your tr...

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I must go down to the sea again, to the Lion Man and his shack
To follow the Lion Queen again on her sand blown, rocky track

To hear the heaving ocean, Breakers thundering on the shore
Where the whale bones bleach under pitiless skies
And the wind whispers “never more”

Never more to the Queen of the lion clan
Who bestrode these shattered wastes
Oblivious to the eyes of the man
All alon...

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Sheaves of stamps with perforated edges

Crumpled postal orders and giro books

Biros, jotters, paperclips and ledgers

Welcoming smiles and knowing, sideways looks

Parcels, diligence and calibration

Columns filled with calculator clicks

Ink stamps thud in rhythm with the nation

Lips seal envelopes with efficient licks

One day they came with boxes, drills and cable

“It’s ti...

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I lost my girl to a barista
He’s taken all I’d got
Wrote her name on her cup, then he kissed her
While she necked an espresso shot

I thought that I could trust her
But this is no minor affliction
Her love for the bean’s robusta
It’s a terminal addiction

I’m a has bean on the cafe scene
You could say at this juncture
Since I lost my Costa Coffee Queen
My Nespresso capsule’s punctured

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I love my perfect life
With my perfect kids and my perfect wife
And all those perfect times we’ve had
Being the perfect mum and perfect dad

And our perfect home where perfect friends
Adapt perfectly to every trend
Or those perfect days spent at the beach
Who says perfection’s out of reach?

We have perfect times when we go out
With perfect people round about
As our perfect laughter fi...

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I’ll take my chances by the crater’s edge

And hold my partner to the windswept ledge

Our heads thrown back as we await the crash

Of pumice stone and hot volcanic ash

With molten lava there is just one chance

To swoon and tango in one last romance

So take me in your arms and squeeze me tight

Erupting embers make the earth ignite

He holds her waist she grips his wri...

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I’ve got my eye on a bungalow

now I’m ageing fast and living slow

not much to do, nowhere to go

A remote-controlled garage door

An en-suite on the ground floor

These are the things I’m looking for

My rosy afterglow

I’ve got my eye on a bungalow

Where I can unwind, go with the flow

Touch the roof it’s only low

A resin drive that’s easy to clean

No moss, no weed...

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Two stones banged together 
To create a misplaced spark
Forget about the weather
Never mind the dark
Harnessing that fire
Gave Neanderthals a thrill
They could build a funeral pyre
And keep out the Ice Age chill

Down countless generations 
The flame remained intact
As in various locations 
Wood was splintered, split and stacked
By Maasai on the Kenyan Plains
In Uluru’s mystic glow
...

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Teetering on the platter

A treat for human senses

It’s food to make you fatter

Crushing all of your defences

Its snowy dunes and hollows

Of flouncy sweet meringue

Are made for ample swallows

Of dessert sturm und drang

Ignore it at your peril

Its appeal you can’t deny

When hunger makes you feral

Reach for lemon meringue pie

Its gaudy citrus layer

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In a castle on a promontory above a rocky cliff

As the sun sinks down the poets come to carouse and rhyme and riff

Chaucer riding on a dappled horse escorts the Wife of Bath

Johnny Clark smokes with Betjeman who complains about the staff

Shakespeare’s musing in the corner

Working out an obstinate sonnet

Emily Dickinson hides shyly in her cloak and starched white bonnet

Donne, ...

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William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman have alliterative names

For Norman Nicholson  and Stevie Smith  you may say the same

Sassoon with his Siegfried and Porter with his Peter

Were destined to have mastery of rhythm, form and meter

Marvell at the metaphysical, let Pope raise you higher

But the best poet’s name is Benjamin Zephaniah 

Some poets’ names onomatopoeically enth...

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Standing stock still on the Storyhouse stage

Purringly, the poet poked, parried, proselytised and punned

It was a wry, rhythmic romp, a rhyming rampage

With fulfilling Fibonacci fables, felines and one Frisbee being flung

Meteoric, metaphysical, making mincemeat of the Mail

Wielding words with wondrous wit

The Lemsip Laureate left a trail

Of moments that will hang about ...

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The primrose with its glowing face held high

Brings promise of the softer days of Spring

And gazes up towards the wind ripped sky

Through branches to the sunlight, filtering

New leaves unfold beneath the solemn frost

Where clasped they lie and frozen to the earth

A voice like yours is permanent, not lost

The primrose glows to celebrate your birth

And now each year it brings...

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Floating out on Windermere

Below the towering fells

Enveloped by the beauty here

And hosts of daffodils

Over the side of the little boat

Oars churn the placid lake

Where unexpected items float

To the Leven and the Crake

They meander through the baby trout

And clog their little gills

Of their origin there can be no doubt

Septic tanks and sewage spills

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Sleeping with Alexa

Got a new girl in the metaverse

It’s impossible to hate her

Although her repartee is terse

And she’s harvesting my data

Her presence is immersive

She’s made my life complete

Her motives are subversive

She’s got no hands or feet

She’s a disembodied avatar

Who tells me all I need to know

From how to drive a driverless car

What to...

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We’re locking up the poets

And throwing them in cells

They’re dissidents and show it

Via odes and villanelles

Collected incantations 

Against the status quo 

Acerbic observations 

Couplets in full flow

We’re exiling the muses 

To be banished somewhere grim

With Terza Rima that confuses

And volumes that are slim

Wokey right-on anarchists

Who kid...

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If dogs were made world leaders

There would be no futile wars

And laws and treaties would be signed

With inky prints of paws

Chihuahuas and Alsatians

Would respect each other’s space

There’d be no United Nations

Just a favourite sniffing place

Summit sessions would be held

In playing fields or parks

With flashing collars de rigeur

For meetings after dar...

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We needed Nelson Mandela

They gave us Elizabeth Truss

A crushing disappointment for all the rest of us

We needed Mahatma Gandhi

They gave us Elizabeth Truss

Which was seriously worrying

When her judgement is so sus

We needed Angela Merkel

They gave us Elizabeth Truss

Stick a three-word slogan on a big red bus

Liz our Healer, our Leader our Giver

Chosen to Deliver...

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Parish Councillor (after Betjeman)

I am a Parish Councillor; no job’s too small for me

From facilitating Bonfire Night to lighting up the tree

In every avenue and byway of our village small and neat

You’ll find me surveying the highway and examining the street.

Who’s that? people say as I stride along the lanes

Frowning, nodding, peering down to investigate the drains

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Six Nations wake from slumber

As winter turns to Spring

For tribal warfare on the pitch

It’s a Celts and Saxons thing

They’ll be singing hymns and arias

From the Tiber to the Tay

And the week feels that much longer

As we wait for Saturday

And the squads are called together

From places far and wide

There will be sunshine and foul weather

There will be shir...

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We said goodbye to my sister yesterday, a teacher for 34 years at St Paul's C of E Primary School in Manchester. She was a brilliant actor as well as being a great teacher, bringing every story to life. Her classroom, outside the main Victorian school building was simply known as "The Prefab". She also loved her garden and Spring was her favourite time of year. Writing this poem has helped bring s...

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Tread gently beneath the fragile fanlight

With its curving carved ribs

framing rippling glass

Glance up to the Venetian arch with its Canaletto morning sky

And the uncoiled mahogany staircase

Treads echoing to the creak and clatter of murmurous ghosts

Peel the plaster skin from the wall

Withies within, woven by dead fingers

Stiff reeds droop with the stilled pro...

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Hello Michael, Michelle here, are you free?

I understand you need a hand with Covid PPE

We’ve got factories in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Laos

And if you help us get the contract

We can build a nice new house

It isn’t complicated, just a straightforward import shipment

For the rapid expedition of personal protective equipment 

The kind of gear you need - masks and gowns an...

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Breaking News ...

They sent Santa to Rwanda

He didn’t want to go

The reindeer got deported too

That’s the last they’ll see of snow

In attempting to circumvent border control

It was deemed an illegal immigration 

Caught in the lights of the aerial patrol

With no proof of destination 

Now he’s in a detention place

The subject of arrest

They’ve digitised (and 3D ...

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This is for my dear sister Carole, whom we lost on Monday. She was a member of a very traditional and, dare I say it, quite mysoginistic suburban tennis and bowling club. She played neither, but was by far the best actor in the amateur dramatics section, which sadly folded years ago. She was a brilliant and inspirational primary school teacher, who loved telling stories, especially in verse. She a...

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