Poem
Check in desk one is closed
And check in desk two is closed
And check in desk three is closed
And check in desk four is closed
And check in desk five is closed
And check in desk six is out to lunch
But
Check in desk seven
Is manned by a chicken.
Did you pack your bag yourself
Did you have your bag all the time.
Have you any liquids or
Small firearms
Did you book your ticket on line.
Buck-aaaaapppp!
I’m still alive
There are so many things.
That can kill you
But none of them have
Killed me yet
Unless you’re reading this
In a posthumous collection.
I’m very much alive.
My chakras may be misaligned
Like wonky buses in the bus station
And my feng shui
Might be all too much feng
And not enough shui
But I’m still alive
And when I saw that chicken
Operating the airline computer
And issuing boarding passes I
Thought
Good for you.
Good for you, chicken.
Good for you.
And I want to live and I want to fly and I want to have a real good time and i want to make this life the best I can I want to be a real man that’s the plan
I want to live the life ecstatic I want to be the absolute best I want to breathe the sweet sweet air I want to feel the wind in my hair.
I want to live.
At that moment.
A representative of the airline arrived.
And she said
Sorry, is this chicken harrassing you?
It doesn’t represent the airline or any
Of its associated companies.
We’re so sorry.
We’re calling security.
Check in desk one is closed
And check in desk two is closed
And check in desk three is closed
And check in desk four is closed
And check in desk five is closed
And check in desk six is out to lunch
And now we’ve got to just stand here.
Poem
Since you left me
I’ve been able to get so much
More done.
I painted the skirting board.
Put up a shelf.
Learned some rudimentary expressions
In Cantonese.
Cleaned the oven.
Planted some hanging baskets.
And I finally got round
To cataloging my cd collection.
I can’t believe
It’s been thirteen and a half years.
Poem
At night
The lighthouse syncopated flashes she translates
In morse.
Irregular yet beautiful words,
Strange juxtapositions,
Poetic devices and
Postmodern cut-ups
Beamed to her coastal cottage.
Who might be this
Mysterious lighthouse keeper?
This poet of the senses?
Enthralled,
She strikes out across the shale
In a trance-like state,
Those breathtaking words
Spurring her on
Only to find
An automated lighthouse
And a restless cormorant.
Poem
My friend Ben is monotone.
He says things and they’re monotone.
He speaks to me he’s monotone.
He laughs at things in monotone.
When he has sex he’s monotone.
Unmoving and quite monotone
No tonal shifting monotone
Call him on the telephone
And wait there for the dialling tone
Then he comes on all monotone.
My friend Ben is monotone
He drives a Toyota.
Poem
My cousin Phil
Slipped at the top of Box Hill
Bounded end over end
In a never ending cartwheel
Right from the very top,
Then straight through the middle
Of a loving couple’s picnic,
Damaging a sausage roll
And two scotch eggs
Virtually beyond repair
Falling at such a velocity
His shoes flew off
And one of them clouted a nun
Who shook her fist at him.
He, er, he, huh huh, he died.
Poem
People always ask me
What I think
Might be
The meaning of existence.
Poem
I cheated on my eyetest.
I remembered every line.
I cheated on my eyetest.
The optician said I was fine.
I cheated on my eyetest
It felt so good to do it.
I cheated on my eyetest.
I breezed my way right through it.
I cheated on my eyetest.
This morning I walked into a bus stop.
Poem
They said it was full of monsters and guns,
Hot humid nights and mist hung over verdant valleys,
This ain’t no place for a stranger.
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
A one stop truck stop on a highway heading south,
Too hot to sleep in an un-air conditioned motel,
Nothing on the tv, no Ant and Dec
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
A glowing Coke machine attracts moths and flies,
Throws out its glow on the melted Tarmac road.
I’m probably thousands of miles from the nearest Lidls.
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
There’s a Bush in the White House
And bumper sticker pro-gun slogans.
When I ordered in a diner the room went very quiet.
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
There’s an ice machine on the motel verandah
And everyone’s drinking Mountain Dew, though
It’s a relief to see they still have McDonalds over here in the US
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
Country music on the radio, preachers on the radio,
Jesus is out to get me with his AK47
And now on channel 53 for some reason, ‘Are You Being Served?’
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
The motel laundry doors lit bright fluorescent
Shining hot shirtless lads operate the tumble dryers
I linger in the doorway just a fraction too long
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
Hot drip sweat rolls under my Arsenal tshirt
A low moany groan emanates from the woods
I’m probably not going to get the latest cricket results
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
The highway sighs as if it’s all too much
The long grass crickets fill the night with sound
The whole place seems to have a malevolent intent
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
The hillsides loom and
The neon buzzes and
The passing trucks growl and
The world smells of creosote
And disappointment,
Something sticky and
Unsettling in the
Heat of the night,
Restless dreams in wooden homes,
This covered fold, this
Hidden valley,
And I start to wonder, to empathise,
Try to imagine those who spend their lives
Hidden in closets and churches,
Daring to love only in their imagination,
Peering out through fly screen doors
At total strangers,
I, without that frontier spirit,
An ethos without a Jesus or a Bible,
Being different just by being,
Plus you can’t get a
Decent cup of tea anywhere.
I’m scared. I’m scared,
I’m so very very scared,
Scared out my wits in Burnsville.
The next morning
I had breakfast in a diner
And the waitress
Made me read her the menu
Because she liked my accent
And the man at the next tab,e
Asked if I knew his cousin
In Clapham.
Poem
There’s a circus in the town.
The big tops on the green
There’s s circus in the town
The biggest one I’ve seen
There’s a circus in the town
But I am not so keen
There’s a circus in the town
The clowns are really mean.
Six of them this morning.
In the beach front coffee shack
Sadly stirring their cappuccinos
With the face paint flaking
The whole place reeked of
Caffeine and stale disappointment.
One of them was reading the Daily Mail
And nodding in agreement with
The letters to the editor.
Poem
Ben,
He’s trying to park his car.
Not getting very far.
He’s worked out all the angles wrong
He’s got
The car stuck in first gear
He’s getting nowhere near
The place he wants the thing to go
And now
The traffic’s building up
I guess he’s out of luck
Drivers are shaking their fists
At him
They really are appalled
And now he’s gone and stalled
The sweat is rolling down his brow
And now
The satnav’s voice comes on
She says he’s got it wrong
And now it is recalculating
He
Cares not one iota
For his grey Toyota
He wishes that he had a bike
It’s like
His life is on the blink
He finds it hard to think
Things now are so complicated
Rams
The car into reverse
He couldn’t have chosen a worse
Moment to do such a thing
He scrapes
His car against a van
It’s owned by a big man
With tattoos and a sour expression
That night
He gets home to his wife.
Coquettishly,
She pats the bed
Next to her and says,
Over here, big boy,
My brave warrior.
He leaps on to the mattress,
Misses, collides with the bedside cupboard,
The lamp stand slowly spinning around
As he lands in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Poem
That dream again.
All hot and humid in the sultry night,
Me in bed, and he’s there,
The prince of darkness,
Olympic diver Tom Daley,
Preparing for a back flip on to the duvet
He’s wearing Superman boxer shorts and,
Inexplicably, a cowboy hat.
He comes often between the hours
Of two and three,
Bathed in an ethereal glow,
imparts his wisdom,
Says things like,
‘The best way out of Basingstoke
In the rush hour
Is the A331 heading towards Farnham.
Love is an accident, pure chance,
A private dance
Skipping on fate
And being brave, it comes
Deep from within.
We’re talking about professor Brian Cox
And how his tv shows, informative as they are,
Might be half an hour shorter if he didn’t
Speak
So
Slowly.
The cat wants to be put out, and Tom
Volunteers,
Come here Kevin, he says,
Come here.
The cats called Kevin.
Mists swirl and time does that thing it does,
Rewinds.
I’ve only ever wanted companionship,
A guide through life,
A small banana farm in northern Queensland
And Olympic diver Tom Daley
This afternoon I bought the latest
NewYorker and a packet of custard cream biscuits
And Tom immediately chided me for
Eating too many.
What an appetite you have.
Why is it so untidy in here?
When was the last time you went
Around with the duster?
That picture’s crooked.
When you walk wearing those trousers,
(Those ones, there),
I can hear a shushing sound.
Softly, dusk fell,
Just like the Ukrainian who
Tom defeated in the European quarter finals,
Yet without that big belly flop that became
An Internet click bait Youtube hit,
Dusk, hiding with it the pain and the paranoia
As well as his classically handsome features,
Trained, toned physique,
Winning smile, you know how
People have often said we could
Be twins.
When Frankenstein’s monster tore himself
From the angst and ennui of the
Mer de Glace in Chamonix he passed
Right through Surrey on his journey north,
Just like Tom Daley on his way from the
Bournemouth diving championships
To an exhibition he undertook in
Milton Keynes
Whereat I nabbed a pair of his pants.
My friend Anne once opined that
True love is not caring when your sweetheart
Leaves a floater in the toilet bowl
After having a dump.
My hand reaches out,
Fumbles for the custard creams,
Finds nothing there.
Robert Garnham 