When I was five I wanted to be a cat. So I could reach the sun and climb the apple trees. When I was ten I wanted to be a ninja. So I could leap from rooftops and defeat evil. Looking back I just wanted a katana. A samurai might have been better. …
Stop Creativity: A Poem
Stop Creativity
A jellyfish swims on the tiles in the bathroom.
Deer prints walk through the paint on the wall.
A cat meows through the shower curtain.
The kettle whistles steam down the hall.
The world rolls on. Up moon, down sun.
Star scatter across paper skies
made by children’s finger-paint projects.
Rain spatters. Scatters. Runs down
drain pipes. To the tune of washing up.
Done in the halogen glow of December.
Rain stops.
A cat turns and turns on blankets. Settles.
Purrs and stops too.
When the horse and the rider left.
When the horn fell to silence,
Imagination went for a wander.
It still hasn’t come back.
Misery Loves the View of Company: A Lonely Poem
Gather around, Misery. Let’s play murder. To start, we want them young. Let’s relieve you of your burden. That parasite. Eats you to death. Let’s watch them grow into thin. Twirl, ballerina, twirl. Fall as Ophelia fell. Let’s dance off the edge of the skyline. The news said you shone. Brilliant. Down to the murk …
If I Could Wander the Earth as a Duck: A Poem for Dreamers
Duck Dreams
If I could wander the Earth as a duck
I would keep swimming until I’d waddle.
Waddle and waddle. To make humans laugh.
That’s all I’d want. To make humans laugh.
To share a piece of their world.
From my wet, wobbly corner of quacks.
I will keep wandering until I find one.
A duck friend. To make a quack orchestra with.
To swim two by two. To waddle then and more.
If I could wander the Earth as a duck.
I would keep on swimming.
Somewhere Out Beyond the Walls: There is a World, Poem
Somewhere out beyond the walls travel buses and aeroplanes full of people. Living people.
They laugh at knock-knock jokes and groan a grin at terribly clever puns. Terrible ones.
They run and twirl through marathons and hip-hop duels. Between isles. Over seats.
They play games to pass the time, they sing songs to pass the days, they tell stories to pass the years.
Until they arrive at their destination.
Did you know?
If you circle an aeroplane enough you’ll break the world record. For fun.
Did you know?
If you drive long enough, you might hit the end of the world. Race that bus.
They don’t know any difference though. Those aeroplane or bus passengers.
So truly, the record breaking moment leaves no more impression. Than peanut butter.
They don’t even have that.
It leaves no more impression than baking a birthday cake over the hotplate in the crew cabin.
Someone had a few boxes of those instant mixes which will stay fresh until they drop off at the end of the world. In lava.
They’ve forgotten the world now. The dirt, root-tangled, leaves and lions one.
They have a new one. A normal one.
Living in the circles made by the aeroplane in atmosphere.
Living in the tunnel which never ends in the light of day.
If they can live in aeroplanes and buses which never reach a destination.
Maybe we can too.
Did you know?
The darkness cannot comprehend the light which shines within it because it is darkness.
If you do not know it. You cannot find it.
Shine your light in the darkness. It does not know you. It cannot judge you.
Ride you own bus, your single-seater aeroplane to infinity.
One day you might smell the end. It has peanut butter.
Until then. Keep driving.
Rubber Duck Pathology: A Poem about the Masks We Wear
Rubber Duck Pathology
First find a carving knife.
I recommend the one used
On turkey and the occasional picnic chicken days.
No machetes, or butter knives.
We are all humans here.
If you happen to have a Semtex vest strapped label
Of some psychological sort.
Stick the pig that strapped you, first.
Then, find your carving knife.
If you happen to have hemp hair
Or butterfly barrettes of various shade.
Pick red or, purple people eater, pink.
Then, find your carving knife.
If you happen to always take a trowel
to cherry tomato parties.
Brush up on biology.
Then, find your carving knife.
If you happen to have concrete light bulbs
Packed near planet high.
Hold a symposium with dirt.
Then, find a carving knife.
Step two. Pick your duck up.
Behead your duck. Yes,
behead. A half slice is for the dead.
Rubber ducks breathe water.
Did you not wonder why they always float?
Let’s play biology.
When you detach the head, set it on cotton. Step three, grasp body
like a fresh oven bun. Now slice.
See the web of bath mould.
Black skein veins finger from ends to centers.
See the glass froth bubbles of cotton soap. Caught between tail feather and foot.
See childhood imprinted in water.
Carve yours in splashes. Bubble beards.
Liquid cotton and railroad boat tracks.
Digested within your rubber duck.
I Ate A Box of Chocolates and Hated Myself For It: A Poem About Self-Image
A Box of Chocolate
I ate the chocolate
I knew you hid it
behind the cheese crackers
in the corner cupboard.
It tasted of superheroes,
beauty pageants, Olympic medals.
It melted on my tongue
into celebrity.
A zero-size, tree-tall,
front-cover, magazine model.
Then I swallowed.
Reached for more.
Until my fingers felt only paper.
I ate the chocolate.
It settles in my belly,
making me suffocate under
a phantom circus parachute.
I have celebrity
with a hall of mirrors.
A rolly-polly attraction.
That’s how the room sees me.
I won’t eat the chocolate.
Ever.
I found the chocolate
behind a cup of soup
in the corner cupboard.
I knew you put it there.
Under the circus parachute.
The crowd thinks
I’m the cannon bomb.
Set to explode.
Maybe I should.
Bluebell Questions: A Poem About Lacking Self-Confidence
Bluebell Questions Do you see me? Funny you would ask. We don’t look here. We don’t talk here. We don’t even ask here. Why do you ask? I ask because I can. I ask because I should. I ask so that I learn. I ask so that I would. Do you hear me? Funny you …
Unknown, We Live by Soaring, Never Stopping, Always Exploring: A Poem
The Unknown, We Live
In the Blue Mountains Where the moon never sets. They say there lies treasure.
Far beyond the green land, the lakes, the rolling hills. The horses.
I travel the sink sand of faces on trains.
Getting lost in crowds. This yo-yo world.
We live as. Rocking horse horrors for a circus show tale.
Sometimes creaking around nineteen-seventies hotel corridors.
All beige and yellow diamond patterns. With cigarette stains.
As I travel, teachers giggle in corners, throwing wit and sarcasm
about classroom doors. Sometimes searching in drawling accents
for accommodation on a bike trip to Paris. A village called Groomsville.
Population sixteen hundred and seven. Website, under construction,
please contact Peter O’Toole (no not that one), at 07543 677 677.
That equals all the sums. Total, planet Earth’s existence.
A yo-yo, ukulele and back-packing bicycle trip to Paris.
What’s treasure to you?
Out here in the Blue Mountains. Where the moon never sets.
Note Left on the Door for a Hero: A Poem for Confidence
It is, if you like, seduction.
To feel flesh part
as a spoon through pudding.
Life. Blood. Sinking deeper.
Every lap of the dragon’s tongue
like a kitten’s caress. A kitten called Death.
So I want you to remember
as you stand.
During the rain of lightning
under the burning sun.
Time is ancient
in the eyes of young.
Long ago, we painted unicorns.
In a monkey bar imaginarium,
as red as ballerinas’ lips.
Bloody orange rinds
peeled back to an overgrown palace.
But then, you left. The sun is burning.
Buried beneath a million skins of paint.
A million molecules of sand.
Not a single one red. To mark your footsteps.
No more does the unicorn fly.
No more does the horn sound in the valley.
Shadows filch laughter into a iron chest
where deep below, the dragon whispers.
Why bother living when shadow
eats shadow.
The sun has burned.
Do you see me?
I stand here. Gaze reflected
on a world. Drenched in Rapunzels. Who drown in Shallot.
A Sisyphus world, where the children
of Fenrir walk the streets.
People sleep with open eyes.
Why bother
when the sun has burned
into a million grains of sand.
I am a waste of oxygen.
Counting eternity with every dance
between knife and flesh.
No. I want you to bother
because your blood drains
still. So still. Ever still.
It fills lakes, feeding dungeons
with drachma.
It is the metal which forged rings.
It is the lightbulb. Like a star,
that blinks and gazes from the window.
Calling you, oh foot-swept traveller, home.
When you hear the wind whisper
a dragon’s sweet nothings.
When the headless maid speaks
of posies and pockets.
When the raven cries blood
nailed to your door.
When the swan trumpets victory
bought with a thousand ships.
And you flee as a hopoe to the cloud
cuckooland.
Rise up, out of the ashes. Singing.
I want you to remember
as you stand.
During the rain of lightning
under the burning sun.
Time is ancient
in the eyes of young.
So when you next greet seduction
hear me call
We are all just stories
in the end.