So when does the mid-life crisis actually begin,
as I am sure that I am eligible to claim around now,
being too old to truly wear jeans
but wearing them just to rebel against
the condemnation of the teens
and the look of unruly disaffection of my grandfather’s
era who once married and with children of their own
reverted to looking as if they had stepped out of stage
managed Victorian costume drama and the stiff upper lip
kept the emotions in check.
I keep looking through the spyglass in my door
There were many who I held a candle to
in a world full of chalk dust, well aimed projectiles
and the despair of being told that you
were not good enough to breathe the same air
as the teacher’s favourite Rottweiler,
snarling, punishing with savage artistry
and then finished off with the red pen death
of being
wrong, wrong, wrong.
There were many, my diary attests to this unhappy fact,
who in one way or another made my life more bearable
when not in English, History or the love of the drama
I am not keen on fruit,
though I do have respect for the vegetables
that find themselves hurling their way
on to the dinner table, although I do sometimes suspect
that they are they there to devour me.
I am not keen on fruit
and only partake in the selection of the traditional three
Apples, Cherry and Bananas
from the conglomeration shop that once housed
a Greengrocer’s daughter
to ward off scurvy
and brittle bones
since losing the milkman in the 1970s.
To infuriate the huge supermarket grocer,
I was driven to the dark side by you.
The psychological warfare you declared on my soul
was swift, brutal, embracing and total; for that is what you do,
the use of my fears, you coveted and stole.
You climbed into my bed and ravaged me late at night,
it is not an accusation, more of a memory of the first line
we shared, and then forever, I have kept you in sight,
even with you missing from the night time, your nightmares became mine.
Surely
there are no two words more dangerous in their combination,
than the pair that leads to the poison that is rank,
stinking jealousy
and the sickly covetousness of the envious vampire like
drilled with suspicion and unhappy malice fucks.
There are no two greater words to cause such misery
on the shoulders of humanity than I Want.
Bitter jealousy and envy, the twin darlings of
the grasping I Want, mewling, mealy mouthed and despite
the odd good intention, such as I Want World Peace,
There is a dwelling of myth and magic
deep in the heart of the British countryside,
a place near Burnley
where Polytunnels do reside.
They are grown in this place near Burnley
in secret, tested by Hamsters and a six foot Guinea Pig,
chased by unicorns and frolicking maidens called Rebecca
and mused over by a comedian whose reputation is big.
The Polytunnel holds many secrets
in the place near Burnley,
a shorter commute for the weary traveller,
closer than Liverpool anyway, surely?
When research is over
…and also it is the dead eyes of a psychopath that terrify me most,
your eyes staring back at me, staring back with coward
like jealousy oozing out, yellow pus filled, the small secretion
of envy wrapped in guilt, draped in opulent greed
and enveloped, bound and laminated in your own self belief;
hubris defied you and allowed you to stand tall with ignorance.
How far does the delusion go? Does it spread all the way through
to the point of no return and your words
unable to fathom the point of exit,
In what seemed high above the clouds to the mortals below,
their daily grind and purpose-led lives and their enriched
and awkward filled lies, in once where Mad King March
in a fit of male ego led temper threw his army to the wind, scattered
and shown no mercy, punished and raged as the wind tossed
with ever greater stakes as control
was sought for peace of mind,
now stands, in serenity and cast iron beauty
the queen of all, for none is fairer or bountiful
than Thrimilchi, to her allies Wonnemaand and to her lovers
On the day that April Ashley
became a citizen of honour
in her home town that was once rugged,
rough, the tumbled down
and decaying, you cannot but help raise a smile
and nod to the fact that acceptance is the most
powerful form of understanding, a lesson that rarely
gets learned and that we are all guilty
of displaying the disgraceful
ridicule to those whose hearts beat
in time with ours.
I saw her being interviewed once
by one of the greats of the new build city
It was a secret,
one of those places you
were not aware of
until you were properly ready
to understand the significance of the change
it would bring
into your life and the preparation
into the adult that would stand bare naked one night
thirty years later
as the world became a more lonely place.
I found myself recalling the piece
that landed me my first part
inside the hallowed halls of the most exciting building
in the whole of Bicester and started to hum it,