Paper Aeroplanes.

Mother breakfasting
lost in Mahler peach marmalade on toast
smile lighting this end of tunnel eyes.
Father's bitter coffee
grounds for divorce his daily quip
making notes
embyronic verse
on the paper tablecloth.

Once upon a time
he wrote on pristine A4
but we would filch fold launch his words
into the surrounding Bermuda triangles
now he writes on paper tablecloths
of the poem and the paper plane
a perfect marriage of art and science
capable of unpowered flight.

And how as a child
copying copperplate Keats nightingale
launch it from Hampstead Heath
watch it rising on its innate thermal...
And how
Thomas Stearns Eliot
would fold his own complicated words
send them skyward
singing
to lodge behind radiators, sofas and atop high wardrobes
that furnished his horizon.
Unreadable from here.

A poem for last years husband.

You cannot mend it with poetry
you cannot learn how to be a poet
as much as
you cannot learn how to be an artist.

All you can try
is
sadly
to learn techniques
which you hope will allow you
to present yourself
as less of a
less of a
as less of a failure in the first place

a failure for not understanding
that poetry is innate

and a poet ceases to be a poet
when he ceases to fail.

The artificial hip.

He's the prosthetic aesthetic
the artificial hip
the coolest thing to hit the town
since granny took a trip.
He is the London Fields creative
the Hoxton neo-native
the ultimate self-oblative
hip hip hip hip hip.

He struts the walk
he slurs the talk
dresses alike to differ
then visits
twice weekly
his local Hoxton quiffer.
He is the pastiche fantastiche
is cooldom uber alles
likes erzatz Piazzola pizza jazz
and avant garde French ballets.

He is he is he is he is
he is he is
he is

Hip hip hip hip hip hooray.

He is he is he is.

Rib eye.

I have not seen meat like this

since

that terrible winter of 61snowed in for weeks
grandma disappearing one bad Saturday

then meat on Sunday
grandpa's eyes glazed like honey roast ham
as he sang (between mouthfuls)
mythical carnivorous songs of long ago

long ago

The jeweller to the stars.

They are waiting in the cafe's
the restaurants and bars
or parked on unlit corners
in expensive cars
they are waiting for the snowman, the blow man, the let's go man
they are waiting, waiting, waiting
for the jeweller to the stars.

He is the closest thing to royalty
their business is all his
with his bags of herbert sherbert
(the silly rich mans wizz)
he makes them feel quite special
and just a
little
bit
show biz
they are guaranteed to talk the talk
walk the walk as well
he is the pied piper
the piper at the gates of hell.

White christmas is his ringtone
on his prepay mobile phone
his sole visible means of support
the long suffering wife at home
he is the king of the powder rooms
his shit it smells of roses
to the vacuous trustafarians
born
with
silver spoons up their noses.

He is known to each and every one
the jeweller to the stars
he hasn't got a friend on earth
and there ain't no life on mars.

Always Never.

I met my love on Wormwood Scrubs

he was running for his life

'Hide me from the law' He says

and I'll take you for me wife.

Now, I'm a middle aged shy spinster

and I've never had a man

at this uncertain time of life

you've got to grab it where you can.

I put my coat about him

my hat upon his head

when the old bill came running up

'He went that way' . I said.

My first man was true to his word

his loyalty didn't falter

six weeks later in Turnham Green

he met me at the alter.

Standing there in the eyes of god

the union about to be blessed

up stepped a copper in a shiny suit

cuffed him... 'You're under arrest'.

I says to the copper 'You can't do this,

You're destroying our future lives'.

'He's got his life'. He says with a grin

'For the murder of his last three wives'.

I now visit my love in wormwood Scrubs

It is a love that will last forever

for when I ask the board about parole....

The reply is always never.

Picking Blackberries.

Picking blackberries

I met her in the usual way

she cancelled her dance class by Blackberry

If only she had been less nimble with her fingers

we might have taken things more slowly

but it was all arranged by Blackberry

             The blackberry way

In those weeks

we met 

we talked

we laughed 

we ate blackberry pie 

we loved

we fought

we made up

and all the while she Blackberried

In the autumn I took her blackberrying

in a rural place without a signal

she left me then... By the Blackberries.

             I let her go without a signal.