*Inspired by a newspaper article in which asked William Hague if he could be James Bond, non-stories after all are the best…
No, thank you for asking,
but I can categorically say that I can rule myself
out forever running for Prime Minister,
I have no intention of walking on the moon,
neither shall I don a tuxedo
and play James Bond and kiss Pussy
Galore, as I believe no one could ever hold a candle
to the actress who played her before.
I state here and now for the radio mic
You talked of candles
burning brightly and yet
as I sit here feeling uncomfortable
in my own skin
and the remains of a once good life
laying in pieces
time and time again
as I struggle with the infinite cosmic joke
played out, I want
to take the light-bulb wannabe, the shadow of a
sun ray and gently snuff it out,
I want to impale the candle
on to the head of my own hidden anxiety
and I would very much like to
The more you open your mouth, the more I find
I don’t understand how people aren’t burning effigies of you
and asking if you are just by chance
playing the greatest political joke on a population
that has become ensnared between falsehood after false pretence,
of lie upon smear and finds itself lapping up the extremes
like a black spider, the eight legged terror, spinning
its web closer and closer together,
the tighter noose, not able to be crawled through,
let alone brushed aside, for fear of the millions
The parcel arrived with the postmark of Moscow stamped
across the brown,
undisturbed wrapping,
containing digital
information, music that had caught my ear as I surfed online
for something new to enthuse my world once more.
Unlike the day I first read Das Kapital, now residing on a dusty shelf
next to my Great-grandmother’s Gold leaf Guernsey Bible,
a copy of the Koran, the best of Punch and a much loved
set of drumsticks, yours by far the best as they slowly splinter
and decay as we all must.
There is a hint of madness in your eyes,
sallow, stinking of grievances mislaid;
a Kurt Cobain look but with none of the richness
or depth of consequence, a folly driven by a fool’s errand,
the unravelled strand of deserted rope decaying on the hot,
blistering jetty, no sign of a ship to save this sinking soul.
This madness, the musical abuse in which you crave
has lost its meaning
in your ears and all you hear now is the sound
of a ticking bomb, the explosion driven between the tick and the tock
…you should have been the one to live,
you should have walked tall and taken on the world
with all its prejudiced malice and spite for
we both know you would have made so much more
of the life once glimpsed on both our parts.
I can only offer false machismo, to the point
where I gave that up as bad idea, a notion unbecoming
at the age of seventeen, perhaps the moment
where we said goodbye on the corner, only to dream of each
other’s possible lives, still holding a part of ourselves close,
You’re charming
because you have no idea
how much you are loved,
even now,
people look at your picture and remember
how much light you bought into their lives,
how respected
you were, and just how much you meant to them.
I know,
as only one
perhaps who has slept in your bed
when you were out all day,
placed there by considerate hands
as my life become mean and meaningless,
placed there
with kindness by hands
that knows much pain
I saw your words etched down in spray paint,
BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS, on a rising pavement
in St. Julian’s Bay as the sun would start to glisten
on the Valetta streets
and the isle of Comino would soon begin to heave
to the sound of vendors selling deckchairs and the sea would spoil
for a fight.
I saw your words and was puzzled by them, not by the words
for even the damaged can understand pain,
but by their placement, their specific duty in time by unknown hand
The teachers, the tutors,
the staff, the head, the unpaid support workers
all bend their head in silent prayer,
know that the God of school simply doesn’t care
about their plight
their lot in life,
their unsaid collective fear
that there will never be a person to emerge from any year
who will make the school stand out
give the badge and crest some polish and stout
who they can hold up as a shining example,
the one person for whom they can, with gushing pride, let new pupils sample
In all the adventures a man can have, surely
the last they can have in the modern age,
one devoid of dying in battle, sword carried high, noble steed
between his legs; the final brush with an opposition
much respected, perhaps in a way adored, the sweat and humidity
of the final swansong as the owner’s sword is impaled on himself
fully sheathed,
and the opposition goes on to conquer the next in line
like a domino pushed over, perhaps to enslave and terrify;
the last resting post of the humble shed, hiding away in the crevice afforded