Another of my older poems which I’ve started updating and making snappier. This old classic, which always used to get a great reception at Epicentre on those crazy Epicentre Nights, now confined to legend.
Anyway, as a bonus there are four new poems:
On boobs. (2013 Remix)
Haberdasher in custody.
Space is big.
Singularity.
Urges.
Boobs. (2013 Remix)
I’ve never liked boobs.
I’ve never been in to them.
You can put those away, Mrs Palmer.
I’m not interested.
They cling on
Like limpets on the hull
Of a sleek yacht.
I have no fascination
In that area.
I’d much rather have a flapjack.
Why do they wobble
Like jelly on a washing machine
When you have a coughing fit?
What’s that all about?
My only interest is architectural.
My friend Mark goes all unnecessary
When he sees them.
I have to fan him with the Argos catalogue.
There’s only one tit in this room, I quip.
They make me feel
Claustrophobic.
Thrusty busts.
Improper floppers.
Bulbous knockers.
Flame-grilled whoppers.
Burial mounds
Harbouring the last rotting remains
Of my heterosexuality.
Protruding impediments to intimacy,
I expect,
I’ve never really tried it.
I don’t see the point.
The points.
Of them.
Unnecessary full-frontal terrain.
Stop that, Mrs Palmer!
I was going to have dumplings later
But you’ve put me right off.
It’s like being nuzzled, simultaneously,
By two rather curious polar bears
And I don’t like it.
When you dance they sway like airbag pendulums.
You went to buy a bra
But the alphabet only goes up to Z.
When you were sunbathing
A passing helicopter hovered for eight hours
And then ran out of fuel.
When you wore that tight t-shirt with a quote from
Wordsworth on it
The town’s literacy rate improved
Particularly among teenaged men.
And then a man
Walked straight into the window of Costa Coffee.
I don’t want to see your cleavage.
I can do without your puppies.
I’d rather not make one with your fun buns.
Not for me your gazongas, your jambongas,
Your bosoms, your melons your twin honkers,
I don’t find them tempting,
I don’t find them teasing
It’s a wonder carrying those around
You’re not constantly wheezing
They jump up and down whenever
You start sneezing
But you can’t tempt me, you can’t capture me,
You wont get very far with me
Because quite honestly
I don’t get boobs and I never have done
I can think of other ways of having fun
They don’t do it for me
They make me feel quesy
I prefer knobs.
Haberdasher in custody.
They’ve arrested my haberdasher.
He phoned and asked me for bail money
But I had none.
I can’t just magic it out of thin air,
Mr Haberdasher,
And say ‘Abracadabra’,
Mr Haberdasher.
I’d cook a meal
But I haven’t got a potato masher,
Mr Haberdasher.
Nor am I a party crasher
Or an atom smasher, or a gravel basher, or a flasher,
Mr Harberdasher.
Nor will I start a fight
While saying how much I like Swedish pop
Surrounded by people who like other kinds of music,
I’m no music mish-mash Abba clasher,
Mr Haberdasher.
What have you been arrested for, Mr Haberdasher?
Did you really do it, Mr Haberdasher?
Or have you been stitched up?
Space is big.
Space.
It’s big.
And there’s lots of room.
It’s why it’s called ‘space’.
It’s in your face.
It’s all over the place.
You can disappear without trace
In space.
You can always find somewhere to park the car.
It’s got a vacuum
Unlike my flat.
It’s got no atmosphere
Just like my flat.
It’s bloody cold
Just like my flat.
It’s got galaxies and things.
It goes on and on.
It’s very persistent.
It’s existence.
It hasn’t got corners,
Like my flat,
Or a Specsavers.
Space.
It’s kind of like Dartmoor
Except without the ponies.
Singularity.
I once had a nightmare
That the world had been stretched out,
Nothing left, squeezed,
Elongated into a very thin line
Upon which I, the last man alive,
Must tightrope walk over the abyss
Of nothingness.
I woke sweating and,
Thinking it was real,
Pushed myself right into the corner of my room,
My sweaty palms flat on the walls
So that I knew they were definitely real.
Years later
I read about black holes
And what happens to things that get
Sucked in.
Urges.
He anticipates his urges
And occasionally he purges
Himself of his urges.
His fascination with urges
Verges on the perverse.
As the pride inside him surges
He merges into the background
Of a world without urges.
Excited, he swerves
From urge to urge
As if his oeuvre
Is a scourge of those
Whose urges converge
Into one
Big
Overwhelming
SPLURDGE
Of anti-urge sentiment.
Then he has a bit of a lie down.
And here’s a little video I made today, too:
Robert Garnham 