I've told you before stay clear of that

Boy if you ask me there's

Something wrong there

Turning up to school on his own not a soul

Knows a thing about him he's a

Right mystery

(Stand still when I'm

Talking to you) he may be good at

Maths and yes' he's

Tiny but he's always fighting he's

Beaten kids much

Bigger he made mincemeat of Jimmy

Cummings its autism if you...

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In churches Gothic or

Norman the pious had them blessed by

Light from stained-glass as the perfume of

Incense attended their angular

Descent, while brave Lancelot's were

Housed in chain-mail and in

Modern times Marilyn took two to her

Grave, as, just the other day, did

George Floyd, his neck the latest

Pew for genuflection by a serving

Police officer who though no dou...

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Giant girders bent and burnt and

Crushed fire engines daunt the

Halls of the museum at Albany N.Y. the

Monumental fossils of

9/11 but what will be the

Bones of war with small fry that

Flew poker-faced into the side of our souls?

After the cover-ups and cock-ups and shifty politics and

Constructive euthanasia and

Plastic heroes what

Glorious moraine can grinding folly ...

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She filled her boots when

Panic buying was the vogue her

Bulk brushing rivals aside

Toilet rolls were the

Least of it

Catering packs of SPAM enough

Condensed milk for an army platoon, boxes of candles and

Assorted biscuits filled the loft her

Bathroom plastered with paracetamol cough

Linctus and mouthwash but above all

Valium for honed to a

Tee by loneliness

Mab...

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In the days of yore and

Specsavers you went to

Opticians with myopia but

No more silly squinting or annoying

Puffs of air, now

You put your wife and

Kid in the car for a sixty-mile

Road test so

Dispensing with my glasses and

Wearing a blindfold I set off I

Knocked down two old ladies killed a

German shepherd and pranged a brand-new

Porsche Cayenne but it did the...

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In Sherwood Forest did Friar Tuck

Love a pork pie while

Chaucer's glib wanton spurned

Slum and gutter dwellers, and now tonsured

Brother Dominic, a noble pillar to his Order has been on

Pilgrimage to preach at Durham where the Hounds of the Lord the

Black Friars dwell at St Cuthbert's, and like his

Founding father

St Dominic, the Inquisitor-General, whose

Mother dreamed ...

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With pride of place, as tall as me

Only more alive

Regular as clock-work it got polished

Or wound for its chimes.

In between she used to say (knowing my mother)

"Don't mind her, you're as good as anyone" but later

Few women polished me, let alone wound my spring

I never kept good time or chimed and

Rarely got listened to

I'm ticking over now

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The chemistry of lock-down music is key the

Need to look after your

Mood paramount so

Facing an hour or two of ambivalent toil

I tried Macarthur Park

Then Easter Parade and

Now I'm wondering if Richard Harris

Ever met Judy Garland

Or if she was pals with Ginger

Though I suspect not, anyway its

Something to research tomorrow

Between a chorus of tap-dancing e-mails a...

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If we wore labels

Things would be simple

A badge on the forehead

Summing up the wearer

Might say: "antibody-free" or "worrier"

"Optimist" or "past caring"

Or even "never been kissed"

Yet thats too easy for after all

Part of the fun is

Getting to know someone

Otherwise, what are social skills for?

PS. I'd be "desperate"

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Its London in 1665 so hold your nose they

Blamed a parcel of silks sent from the Levant, amid the fug

Amulets and charms were in vogue not

Oximeters, wizards and fortune-tellers preferred to

Press conferences with boffins

Remedies like garlic tobacco and Venice treacle sold out for want of

Mouthwash and high dose vitamin C while

Handkerchiefs soaked in vinegar served as masks ...

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There's a park near me where

You see beings on two legs with plastic bags

Who wait patiently on smaller beings

With four legs and a tail before

Bending down to retrieve

A pile of waste extruded from the latter and

Put it in their pocket or

Carry it with some ceremony to a nearby

Receptacle.

If a Martian landed

What would it make of the

Ritual and

If so inclined,

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Despite a host of technicals and

Crystal clear instructions somehow

They've sent low salt

Corned beef, low sugar ketchup

Even gluten-free bread now the

Balance of power has shifted

They send what they want.

Its a stock controllers dream;

Stuff near its sell-by date

Slow lines

Tuna in spring water not stuffed anchovies.

I suspect a degree of perversity

They know ...

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Like piano keys my perspectives were

All or nothing black or white

Molehills or mountains

As much shade as a desert

The colour-blind empire of a

Benevolent despot

It took a disaster but now

I see grey areas sometimes

They match my hair

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Out walking I saw a fifty pence piece

On the pavement

I looked round before bending over

My lucky day but

Trying to prise the thing free

Not knowing it was superglued I

Did my back in.

After lying up a few days I returned with a crowbar

In a carrier bag but

The coin was gone

Now I glue them to the

Path outside my window

Its great fun watching folk trying to

L...

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She wears sneakers and

Uses the back streets

Dark alleys cover her tracks.

Its like the days of

Prohibition only without the

Tommy guns and as

The first bit in any book on

Economics is

Demand and supply and

They're crying out for her

Services the price is steep.

She sees a police car but it

Zooms off, a false alarm,

This is nerve-racking but a buzz and

She...

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Unlike Robinson Crusoe

They got marooned

Without a ship-wreck but

They'll still lose track of time,

The old folk

For out of sight of land

They're snagged in a

Cross-current,

Wondering will they die,

One way or another,

Before its over.

I know for I'm in the same boat except

It's been longer.

Yet they are the lucky ones for

They've had a life, while for

...

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Injuries are part of the tapestry of life

All of us mere bags of bones inside skin

Other wounds are more deliberate

Caused not by chance but by sin

A bruise on your cheek was the first sign

Make-up could'nt hide the contusion

When I asked you what lay behind it

You seemed covered in confusion

Another day I saw a scratch on your neck

You blamed it on the labrado...

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I don't know Harry,

This one's a rare bird and

No mistake,

Just how did he get in and

Where are his papers?

If he's an asylum-seeker, what is it he's

Fleeing?

As a rule that lot keep their heads down but this one's

Roaming the country

In broad daylight

As if he owned the place

Flouting the lock-down rules too and

Costing the tax-payer a fortune.

Tell me this ...

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We all had teachers we

Hated.

In my day hair and ears got tugged

Chalk thrown with intent but

Teachers are not meant to be

Loved.

There's a new teacher in class

He doesn't shout

Or impose detentions or

Send you to the headmaster, he's

Even scarier than old Mr Walsh (and

He was a terror),

Laboriously

Knocking sense into us

Day by day with

Facts and figur...

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Battle-hardened Sister Yvonne

Missed nothing

Double-checking mask, visor, gown

Everything.

Colleagues, even

Consultants, relied on her to pin-point

Gaps in their armoury.

If anyone was safe from patients

She was.

After her shift last night she

Clocked off and

Walking to her car

Got hit by a taxi taking home a patient.

Reliable to the end

She did not troubl...

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She died in a

Care home before the

Pandemic, from

Complications after a broken hip.

She helped see off Hitler but

If granny had lived

Would she have

Seen off the virus?

During the War she worked in munitions

Her factory got bombed, she

Made ammunition for the boys at the

Front.

In the care home both her

War-time comrades

Choked to death for want of testing...

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You didn't argue with him

Registrars quailed and more than one

Seasoned sister had fled in tears while

He was loaded, a

Private practice financing

Mansion, country cottage, horses, boat

All the trappings

A pretty if fading wife who'd put up

With a lot.

He was in his prime.

Then that bloody virus hit and he was

King no more

Elective surgery on hold

The normal ...

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They'd seen each other on the

Tube, followed day after day by glances and

Hesitant smiles and he'd meant to

Make his move

Break the ice but then came

Lock-down.

Now he's mobile again, wondering if

She'll sense the smile beneath his mask

But there's no sign of her

Is she scared to emerge, furloughed or God forbid, sick?

Will he see her again?

Last night he watched T...

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A cloak hid her weight

Or she hoped it did as

She scoured second hand bookshops and

Oxfam for

Thirty-five years of books that she

Never let go.

You can imagine that lonely bungalow, the kind

They clear out on TV, with explanations from a

Psychologist, so when

Annie broke her hip she had to watch

Other patients during visiting hours and

Although she seemed on the me...

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The allotments will never be the same.

Fred was digging a new bed when he

Found it,

Uprooting silver collars, bracelets, armlets

Finger rings too along with

Amber beads not unlike flax seeds.

Mutterings of treasure trove sprout darkly

In the other sheds where his

Neighbours want their share but

Greenhouses grow security guards now while

Worst of all

Parsnips and pe...

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Its been on the ebb since

I was knee-high to a tarantula and

While some say baldness and

Virility go hand in hand meaning

Eunuchs are spared, I'm the

Exception that proves the rule for

I would rarely let my hair down

Even when I had it.

An acolyte of hair tonics since

Billy Walker advertised Vitalis,

Dreams only echo my obsession, whether

Fatal entanglement in the

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Did old Polly really drop her

Mentholated into my pram or

Was I too young to remember?

If so, why the link with Farley's rusks?

Later, one student summer

At the discount store in the market

I nicked a gross of tins and

It took three weeks to flush away the contents

Without my mother knowing and

One night I gave it a go and sneezed like a trooper yet

It did the trick f...

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Strange times but

What if this is a precursor?

We look to scientists yet

They're human too.

All we all in the dark

All of us being softened up?

Do others watch and wait while we

Kid ourselves in

Self-isolation?

Is this what a guinea-pig in a

Laboratory feels like?

It was a virus that saw off the

Martians so

By all means panic but

In case they come in for t...

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The brass band wears black arm bands

Now Ted is gone.

His lungs survived years down the pit,

He was a master of the

Piston valve but now his trumpet lies

Idle, its finger buttons at rest

The mouthpiece cold, quite free from spittle.

The air that made Ted's lips vibrate is gone,

No more the change of lip tension that varied

His vibrations giving notes of different pitch, ...

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It was 1960

Only fifteen years after the War ended

(Though we did'nt know it) and the

Prevailing dogma, a brave new world meant

Knocking down brick terraces

(Often quite servicable)

To build ten-storey flats.

Kids like us played in derelict houses

Door-less and

Stripped of copper and roof-slates their

Dank stone cellars exciting with

What today they call memorabili...

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I don't recall what I said

To upset him

That wet lunch-time at school.

Anyway, he slapped my face but

Ever since then I've regretted

My failure to retaliate.

That was fifty years ago and

Being uncertain of my reaction

I've always feared another slap.

Last night you slapped me and

This morning, taken into custody,

I know

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Losing a war, you

Sue for peace so

They've set up a committee to

Negotiate but

What terms to put to such a foe?

The offer of a Non-Aggression pact?

An appeal to our common heritage?

Hints of retaliation in kind?

Debt forgiveness?

A favorable Trade Deal?

A new World Order, even perhaps

Membership of the Security Council or as a last resort

Immunity from War ...

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Like fish out of water they cluster, gasping for

Herd immunity,

Scrap aluminium

Shadowing hot tarmac.

High on kerosene we were

Flying blind to Armageddon

Until a bird-strike did for the engines

Clipping our wings

Wake up and

Reclaim your baggage,

Be humble

(Latest score: Coronavirus 6-Humanity 0)

Ground your brain, breathe deeply and

Learn to get by with...

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Lock-down's the best thing that

Ever happened to me.

No more mad commutes or

Pen-pushing, watching the clock

Among people I hate.

Out of the

Mindless hurly-burly with its

Endless fugues of anxiety I'm free

To take stock and

Think about my life

The humdrum marriage

Malevolent in-laws

A defunct love-life

Three ungrateful kids

The money I squandered

A...

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Like you I sped up the ropes like a monkey then

Breathless we

Made mincemeat of the pommel horse but

How I envied your physique!

So ashamed that I kept my vest on, afterwards

My  matchstick legs hid in the shower.

Later I never put on an ounce or

Made a penny though

You grew rich and

Obese before the virus ran you down .

Today I heard they've put you

On a ventilato...

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I saw a thin bloke in the street

Beating a girl pushing a pram

Her wrist was in plaster.

He went limp when I grabbed him

And hopped it so

I took her across the road to a pub to recover where

A woman with ginger hair helped,

A former social worker,

After the pram wheeled away we had a drink and

Agreed to meet.

Its been six months now and being on tablets

She has moo...

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Archaeology was my chosen field,

Artefacts and pottery sherds, that sort of thing

Above all I strove to date that

Bronze Age hair those white thighs, her

Confusing layers of strata.

In muddy trenches our

Trowels clashed and one wet field trip

We excavated each other.

Epochs later I observed her digging in a charity shop

An old ruin now,

A bit like myself

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Curly red hair and fond of knee-high boots

She hated those legs.

That's how I remember her,

Something else too.

Appointed by the court,

The poor girl did her best to help me and

Even though she failed miserably

We became an item

Her life had been worse than mine

Self-esteem pilfered by

Childhood trauma

I wondered how she kept going,

I would ask:

"In that...

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Ten years it stared at me

A reminder of that windy night

When red wine was spilled in anger

Just by the coffee table.

I let it be but often, bored by TV

Or trying in vain to read

I'd let my eye linger as it faded.

A bit like me, for

I never found anyone else.

Instead I kept it but

Heard about her the other day.

She never had a clue about her Axminster memorial

N...

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I was a student at the time so

Lodgings were par for the course

I'll never forget Balham and

Mrs Gleeson, or was it Gleeful?

She'd knock on my door late at night

Usually there was some pretext,

A dog barking or a creaking stair

Then she'd sit on the bed and

Offer me a fag

It was only a matter of time

Uninhibited is the only word

I was left covered in scratches

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A diamond marked our betrothal

The gem sparkled bright on your finger

Then we sped to the chapel to wed

We no longer had any need to linger

Two sacred stones haunt my memories

The ring that you took to the grave

And the marble headstone above you

After that sad return to the chapel nave

Our marriage was short but blissful

We had no time even to think

About c...

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Horizons and herring made us Vikings

No estuary beyond our sixteen oars and shallow-drafts.

Silver arm-rings we wore, bound by allegiance,

Chained thralls shared our graves

Ninety miles a day in a fair wind

Sea-sick abaft oak prows and reeling sails.

Monks in towers prayed for stormy seas but

Stiff with salt it was nuns not gold we wanted

After conquest we traded ...

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His favourite word was precipitation

Agog, we'd wait for it,

Windchill factors and average

Mean temperatures too, while once he showed us

How to make a weather station

He's dead now

That kind of geography extinct.

Its Climate Studies now, scaring kids,

Breathing in anxious jargon from

Melting ice caps and rising sea-levels.

Their future.

Slide rules rip u...

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Quite bald, it blew on the by-pass

in slow moving traffic trailing a cortege.

After hobbling on three wheels a garage,

chiding me, buried in a skip its remains.

An ignominious end.

Yet after fifty thousand miles of hail and shine

it left its mark, a latex varnish

while killing prey (insects foxes badgers)

or squealing in pain at sharp bends

when under-inflated

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Eight Monday evenings for two hours

"Psychology for Beginners":

Ego, super-ego, id

Neurosis by osmosis, Freud, Jung Adler,

Cognitive therapy, Gestalt, Twin studies,

Attachment Theory

I never knew how unhappy I was

I'm half-way through now, a mass of

Symptoms, fresh phobias

Nesting in my head, making sense of what caused

Those empty evenings to start with.

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It was 1942 and we were exhausted, we'd fought our way to Cairo

While on leave I made friends with Soraya, a local bint

She offered to get a mate to tattoo my chest on the cheap

Which was just as well in the circumstances as I was skint

Out of a library of designs I chose the Great Pyramid up the road

In those days my torso was broader than a redwood tree trunk

Time flies an...

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Its morbid I know but

Queen Victoria had fourteen years to go

When she was my age, while

Darwin had fifteen. For his part

Napoleon had been gone sixteen years,

Marilyn six. Ghandi on the other hand

Had twenty-one years left and

Julius Caesar was just bowing out.

Me, I dont hope for longevity, as,

When my father was my age,

He'd been dead ten years,

Quite suddenly h...

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I've just met a woman with fourteen cats

Dogs are fine but cats fill me with fright

Sheila says they'll soon get used to me

She wants to introduce me tonight

I'm sitting in my car outside her house

I can almost smell the cats from here

I got scratched as a kid by a mad tabby

I've still got the scar above my right ear

Its eight o' clock and they're waiting

Its m...

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