Be still my beating heart
and stop racing along as if you are being wound up
by Time, slow down, don’t dart
along as if the most beautiful woman
had asked you to kiss her with no commitment
to ever take her to bed.
I never imagined I would go this way,
I had the image of finally finding out what boredom was like,
the taste of a life, stuck in a bed, only resting they say and I
would joke along that rest is what you do when you
The old knight, full of lines and a paunch that has returned
despite many battles of valour and graces won, esteem
held high in his land for him
and even those he has taken prisoner full of praise for his honour
in their captivity, this old knight finds a corner
in which to put his hands over his face and allows a tear to fall.
A world in which has changed since peace was sought and found,
a peace in which he retired his suit of armour, sure that the fight
*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
If not for Maaike, we would never have met that day
where the Animals flopped and cursed their lot
in the aftermath of an afternoon ripping to shreds
the carcass of an old, unloved and despicable novel,
its spine cello taped and flea encrusted as much as the search
for it exhausted us all.
If not for Maaike, the genuine affection found in my first loved
band and in yours also would never have been shared
on a broken bed, caused by several Animals
pretending they were once more young cubs and by our hostess
…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,
…in the end, exasperated by non-compliance on my part,
my refusal to bend to the torrent of abuse that her indignity
demanded, the strength sapping empty gale
that I would pray to whatever deity
that shrunk in the back ground,
My deity’s peace sign held above Her head and on the reverse
the phrase, “Don’t shoot the messenger” emblazoned in bright colours
with the quirkiness of capital letters like punishment
thrown in here and there to make Her look as if she was hip, happening,
and a groovy chick in which to side along…but I knew