Poetry
Issue #1
London
Don’t stand there and tell me that
There’s nothing north of Watford Gap.
I know that London never sleeps,
That pulsing crowds still beat beat bleat
Through endless labyrinthine streets.
Don’t warn me off the life provincial,
Your brash fads and fancy fickle
Are artless, artifice groomed and heartless.
G I diet? Keep it quiet.
If I spewed organic bile you’d buy it
Deptford, Brixton, Shoreditch, Tooting
Sweat and noise and fierce confusion
Commuters cram a single pram
And only I, outsider, stand
To let the Mother sit back down.
Richard Ashcroft sing to me
Sing Bittersweet symphony,
Oh sing me north to sanity
Insipid suits, some common sense please
Atkins died of heart disease
I’ll spike their herbal teas with Es
I’ll spike their herbal teas with ease.
Girl
Beautiful lazy jaw she had,
Blew me away.
She smoked Camels and led astray
Young boys. Selling flowers in the summer
I saw her before. Tendrils of smoke
Crept out her nose and I knew
She’d make it big.
She never did.
So she orders another, another, another
Calls her youth forever
Tombstones, hipbones, joints weak, crow’s feet
Can’t touch her yet.
I forget quite when we hit the bar, when she
Spiked me,
Robbed me and
Stole the car.
Still, a beautiful lazy jaw.
Spider's Advice to an Adventurous Granchild
Uprights have four legs, sometimes five;
Observe them well to stay alive.
They burn their prey in strange vats (some say
Wrapped in paper with dried vegetables)
Cast not your web within chambers
The Four legs in their nest sweep aside intruders rest
Their feasts are never caught in webs
But meat is brought in coloured boxes,
Opened with a metal leg.
Shoes are skins of other beasts
Shed at night when no disguise
Can hide their crushing feet
Those feet killed uncle Brian, and more
Will drown upon the porcelain floors.