Tag Archives: comedy

A town called Burnsville, West Virginia.

I’ve been very fortunate to have travelled all over the world from an early age, and since I started work I’ve travelled on my own to some fantastic places. Also, as a part time performance comedy poet, I’ve travelled all around the UK, too. I’ve seen some nice place and visited some wonderful cities, and I’ve seen some downright grotty places too. Yet wherever I’ve been, the thrill of travel has been half the fun, and it usually only kicks in once I’m back at home.
It would be a bit naff right now to list all my favorite places, or those in which I have – (and I hate this phrase) – found myself. Tokyo and New York, for example. The rain forests of Australia. A four day train journey I took from one side of Canada to the other in the middle of winter. (I said I wouldn’t make a list, but now look at what I’ve gone and done).
I live in Devon, now. It’s a long way from the suburbs of Surrey where I grew up, and it feels like another world. Yet when I was barely eighteen years old, I took a journey out to Canada to see my Uncle and we ended up visiting a place that has stayed with me ever since. And I have no idea why.
In 1992, I was an enthusiastic traveller, diarist and amateur writer who saw the whole world as a source of adventure. Raised in the dull suburbs, yet defiantly liberal in outlook and, it has to be said, possibly a little camp, I wasn’t totally sure of who I was yet but I know what I liked, and I knew that I was different to everyone else. A holiday with my Uncle in Canada would be a chance to feel slightly independent, yet still under someone else’s care for a couple of weeks.
During my stay my uncle decided we would drive down into the US and just keep going, with the vague idea of going to Roanoke, because it sounded nice. We hired a white van and duly set off, driving all day and then stopping at motels, meandering across the southern states. And one night, when my uncle was too tired to drive, we stopped at a small town called Burnsville, West Virginia.
It was hot. Humidly hot. I’d never felt a heat like it. The moment I stepped from the air conditioned van, the humidity would cause me to sweat, instantly. We pulled up at a motel called the 79 and booked in. I remember thinking that it was the hottest I’d ever been.
I couldn’t sleep that night. The noise of insects kept me up and the small town had a rather unsettling feel to it, with valley sides and hills and forests, bleached white grass, hot car parks, and a deep starry night. Soaked in sweat, I decided to go for a walk.
The town was so quiet, except for the sound of traffic on the highway. I didn’t see a single person as I walked, in a kind of zig zag pattern. There was a bit of a valley behind the hotel with a stream in it which seemed to have dried up, and a bridge over the stream, and the sound of insects was quite loud. I think my allergies were possibly playing up. I saw a cat and I wanted to say hello to it, but my uncle had warned about diseases, and when I got closer to the cat I could see that it was badly injured as if it had fallen off of something. I felt really bad.

  
Kind of feeling that I should get help, I wandered around the side of the motel and saw light streaming out from a room beneath, in the basement. There seemed to be a laundry there, whether it was the laundry for the motel or a town facility, I did not know, but there were two young men in there of my age, shirtless, doing the washing. The moisture and the sweat made them appear to glisten in the fluorescent light and, well, you know me, I just had to stand and look at them for a while. It was the first time I’d thought about sexual matters for weeks, and this combined with the heat and the injured cat and the incredibly long day to make me feel strangely dissociated from everything.
I went away, sat for a while next to the road, which was mostly traffic free, looking at the woods on the slopes around the town feeling like a very small person in a very bit universe. Away from my family and from the comforting blanket of suburban Surrey, I suddenly realized that the person I was would stay with me for the rest of my life, no matter where I happened to be. Yes, I was in a strange new place, and there was the horror of the injured cat, but the glimpse of the sexy young men in the launderette reminded me that I had a culture and a life of my own.
I think we left fairly early the next morning.
As I grew up, and as I’ve travelled to other places, the town of Burnsville has stayed with me, always there at the back of my mind. Every time I feel hot or humid, like today, I’ve thought of Burnsville. Every time I’ve doubted myself I’ve remembered the motel and the launderette.
Lately, I found a Facebook page for the township of Burnsville and I’ve befriended a couple of people from there. They do not share the same beliefs as me and some of their Facebook posts can be quite infuriating for a suburban city liberal performance poet, but I can’t get angry, because this is their culture and this was the town where I realized something rather big about myself. It’s better to change the world slowly by example. And if I can’t sleep tonight, I know where my imagination will take me once again. 

I’m a poet and I’m not at Glastonbury.

Hello.I’m a poet, and I’m not at Glastonbury.

Not many poets are at Glastonbury so it’s really not a surprise that I’m not there, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I want to be there because it’s all on tv anyway. It’s a bit like going to a motor race. You miss most of it if you actually go, and then there’s the traffic jams to contend with, and the last time I went to a motor race the person in front of me kept smoking a pipe.

But afterwards I was able to tell everyone that I’d been, and there was something about the sounds of the cars that made it all worthwhile.

Glastonbury comes round every year. And the tv schedules fills up with coverage and there are some damn good bands but most of them I’ve never heard of. That’s probably because I’m getting old, and Ken Bruce only plays certain types of music these days. I’m rather excited about FFS performing on Sunday, but I expect they won’t put it on tv.

The thing is, though, there’s a poetry stage there, and the poets who get picked are always seen as the cream of the crop, the best of the best, the up and coming and the big names, and part of me wants to be listed among them even though another part of me knows that I probably aren’t as good as they are. They’re all young and trendy and enthusiastic and I’m only one of those things, or they’re older and more established and worshiped and I’m only one of those things, too. 

So they haven’t asked me to go and perform at Glastonbury. They wouldn’t even let me be the person who says ‘One two one two’ before the proper poets come on. Because apparently that counts as a poem.

So I’m caught in this weird mix of not wanting to be there at all, and wanting to be there. I know that if I was there, I’d probably show no interest in the music or the camping or the activities or the subculture or the alcohol or the whole ethos of it, though I probably would make a handy reference map for the other performers of where the best burger vans are. Is probably just mooch around the poetry area like a ghost. Muttering under my breath. 

I’m not at Glastonbury this year. In fact, I’m at work tomorrow, and I’ve got to do the Saturday figures and there’s loads of stuff needs doing in my day job, and I think there’s some motor racing on tomorrow on ItV4.

I’m not at Glastonbury.

But I went past it on the train, once.

Poetry Takeaway and Bang Said the Gun 

It’s been one of those weeks. One of those surprising weeks. To be honest I’ve crammed so much in that I really have been waking up wondering where on earth I am. But that’s the life of a modern performance poet, it seems. The hard part has been fitting it all in with a normal nine to five job!
On Sunday I went up on the train to London to help out with the Poetry Takeaway project at the Camden Roundhouse. Run by Michael Bolger, this is a unique happening in which poets are tasked with writing poems on demand for members of the public. It usually operates out of a takeaway burger van, the poems being wrapped as if they were burgers or hot dogs.
I felt very privileged to be asked to contribute to this. My shift featured Peter Hayhoe and Jemima Foxtrot, both of whom I hold in very high esteem. Indeed it was a huge joy finally to meet Jemima.
My own stint started well enough with a young lady who wanted a poem for her boyfriend because she loved him so much. It was all very touching, and she loved the poem that I wrote for her. The second person wanted a poem to help her decide which of the two men she was currently involved with that she should choose to spend the rest of her life with. It’s quite a tall order for a poet to decide on such matters, but I took all of her information and I wrote a poem which did it’s best at least to describe the situation.
And it seems that this is a by product of the project. The poets get told things that nobody else would hear. People feel that they can open up to poets, and tell them their deepest, darkest secrets and fears. At times I felt like a psychoanalyst, or even a detective, piecing together the relevant information.
The stint over, I caught a late night train as far as Bristol and stayed overnight in a hotel next to a Mexican restaurant. When I opened the curtains at five AM, footage of a mariachi jazz band was being beamed on to the wall of the restaurant. I wondered where the hell I was. I caught the early morning train in to Paignton, and work.
That night I guest hosted the Artizan Comedy Night in Torquay. I even debuted some comedic material. I thought I’d be pants, but people quite liked it. The comedians were all very good and I felt honored to be associated with them.
On Thursday I caught the train up to London again for my guest slot at Bang Said the Gun. When I first started spoken word in 2011, people kept saying that Bang was the place to aim for, and that you only arrived as a poet once you’d had a slot there. For years I kept trying to win a slot there by entering the weekly slam. On one occasion I happened to win, but because it was running late and I had a train to catch, I had to leave before the end and only found out the next day. The second time I entered I felt very ill with a virus and again, had to go back to the hotel. The third time I entered I came second to a guitarist.
I felt incredibly honored to be asked, even more so that Laurie Bolger, the evenings host, played a game with the audience called ‘Robert Garnham Or Judy Garland’, in which an audience member had to decide whether a quote was from Judy Garland or myself.
The night was the usual mix of noisy mayhem and energy, spellbinding poets and spoken word types, comedy and laughter. Just how they manage to keep it all up week after week remains a mystery. It really is the best poetry night in the country. Headliners Candy Royalle and Inua Ellams were fantastic, professional, and almost hypnotic.
My set was greeted fairly well. I was unusually self conscious, in a way that I hadn’t been while performing for about four years, and even worse, I performed the wrong version of Beard Envy! The audience must have wondered who the hell I was, inflicting such material on them, but I had a great time. The way that some of the poems were greeted with hooting and the rattle of the shakers made me feel that anything in life is possible. It was a wonder I got to sleep that night.
Thanks to everyone at Bang for the opportunity. It means more to me than you’d ever know!
And then a night in a cheap hotel followed by a cheap flight back to Exeter the next morning, for another day at work. My mind really does feel like it’s been in a blender this last week.
And tomorrow? Tomorrow I performing twenty minutes at the Respect Festival in Exeter. In a field. In a tipi.

Here are two of the poems I wrote at Poetry Takeaway. I’ve changed the names of the recipients.
 Poem for Matthew from Natalie
How can I express my love for you, Matthew?

How can I express the fulfilling

Breath of life you instil in me

That I should feel so entirely complete

My lovely boy, Matthew.
I want to show you in a poem

The joy that keeps on going

But you know and I know and it’s the

Knowing that keeps on growing,

My lovely boy, Matthew.
How can I express the absolute

Peace I feel in your company,

The fact we are both wired in to the

Very real was of now

And I know it’s weird

But I really like your beard,

My lovely boy, Matthew.
I love you lots and lots

My heart is tied in knots

Like a room scattered

With discarded yoghurt pots

I gaze in them and it reminds me

That our love is meant to be,

My lovely boy, Matthew.
How can I express my love for you, Matthew.

I hope this poem will do.
Poem for Rem from Ben
Have you ever noticed football referees?

have you ever noticed football referees?

Refereeing, that’s their job,

They’re football referees,

Running around but not getting a

Single shot on goal.

Have you ever noticed that

They’re frequently bald?

Have you ever noticed

How angry they are?

Have you ever noticed football referees?
Probably not.

But if they didn’t exist

There would be chaos.

Nobody to call the shots.

There’d be an empty gap,

A referee sized gap.
Rem, when you left,

When you moved away I felt the

Same chaos inside.

You were my referee, I based

Everything on the feelings I had

Within.

You weren’t on my team but

I Could always sense you

Running along beside me.
I couldn’t tell you.

I couldn’t express myself.

And now you are gone.
The opposition is in their

Predictable attack formation

I keep towards the side,

Away from the game

Away from the game.
What were you thinking, ref?

What were you thinking, Rem?

Why I really, really rather like Bristol.

I really like Bristol.

No, that’s not a euphemism or Cockney rhyming slang.
Since I started performing poetry all over the place, I’ve had the chance to visit towns which I never would have done for any other reason. I’ve seen Wolverhampton, Swindon and Manchester. Guildford, Berlin and Barnstaple. And all in the name of poetry. 
But there’s one city which seems to have become a talisman, a good luck charm, and that’s Bristol. Good things have happened to be on many occasions in Bristol, poetically speaking. And I have never been there for any other reason than poetry.
When I first started performing around the Torquay and Exeter area, Bristol poets were held in awe by the local hosts and promoters, and we would regularly see people such as Nathan Filer and Byron Vincent, amazing us with their skill and commitment and their sheer brilliance. Consequently, it became a kind of goal to aim for, and Bristol itself stood as a beacon of poetic endeavor to which we should all aspire.
The first time I went to Bristol was for the Bristol Slam. Indeed, this was my first ever slam and there were many names there who would go on to be friends and colleagues in the poetry world. People like Vanessa Kisuule, Tim Vosper and Stephen Duncan. None of them knew me from Adam, and amazingly, I came second in the slam to Stephen. We went for a drink afterwards, the euphoria ensuring that it wouldn’t be able to get to sleep!
The next time I went to Bristol was to Acoustic Night at the Halo. It was a birthday present to myself a little journey away, and some of the Bristol slam people were there and they remembered me. Tim Ledwitch was as brilliant as ever. Amazingly, the host of the night liked me so much that he offered me a co-headline set for a couple of months later on! The euphoria ensured that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night.
The next time I went to Bristol was to do the headline set at Acoustic, and it went very well indeed. The euphoria ensured that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night.
By now I was zooming about all over the country and building up a reputation as a comedic poet, so the next time I came to Bristol was to support Vanessa Kisuule at Hammer and Tongue. I made a little holiday of it and stayed in a nice hotel, and I was just about to leave for the gig when I got an email to say that my first book had been accepted for publication! I remember dancing around the hotel room in my very camp manner indeed.
And then the gig itself went very well. The two Tims were there, and Graham Chilcott, and everyone was most complimentary about my set. The euphoria ensured that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night.
Last night I was back in Bristol again, headlining at Milk. It was a fantastic night, filled with talent and friendship. All of my Bristol poetry friends were there, and my set was greeted marvelously. I didn’t get much sleep last night.
There is a constant criticism of Bristol poetry, that there really isn’t much variety, and that it is youth orientated, slam-style, three rhymes per line and too deeply serious for its own good. Last night at Milk there was plenty of variety and styles of performance, and it was great to see Samantha Boarer, who I really do admire in a deep and special way. She’s just about one of the funniest people I know.
So Bristol remains for me a city devoted to, and standing primarily for, spoken word and performance poetry. Indeed I cannot see it except through this lens. I’m sure I will be back there again very soon, and when I do, I shall take some sleeping tablets.
I also like it because someone has spray painted, in large letters, the word ‘Arse’ on a wall next to Bristol Temple Meads.

Poem (for Katie Hopkins)

Poem (Katie Hopkins)


Once upon a time

There was an evil monster

Whose ferocity was fed

Not by those it maimed

But by the pumping buzz

Of publicity and sound bite,

Controversy and sheer big-headed

Attention-seeking desperation

And it was called 

Katie Hopkins.


And the more it fed the more

It scratched at the surface of

Polite society hoping that the

More damage it inflicted

The greater it’s substance would be

Only to find with each

Deep vicious cut

That people merely laughed at it.


How it scowled at the world

Like a mardy shark

Spoiled not by circumstance

But by the slow drip of publicity

Which it mistook for adulation.

How it fed so ravenously

On the eternal circle of

Jaded misguided opinion and response,

Prejudice disguised as truth.


Oh, Katie Hopkins,

Like a bad busker on the

Pedestrianised high street of proper debate,

A sad singer wailing at the world

Having only made 10p.


You’re like the kid in the quiet cul de sac

Whizzing up and down on her skateboard

Starting to become a nuisance.

Looking out from the window,

There she is again.


Whizzing up and down on her skateboard

Back and forth, hither and thither,

Whizzing up and down on her skateboard

Get off that skateboard, Katie Hopkins.

Get off that skateboard, Katie Hopkins.

Get off that skateboard, Katie Hopkins.


I like to think it’s an act.

No-one can be so stupid.

I like to think that you

Meet up with your friends

And you’re perfectly normal,

As easy going as the rest of us, 

Hoping that one day we will all realize

That it’s a silly joke,

A grotesque parody,

Somehow revealing our own

Misgivings and

Actually adding something to the world.


Oh, Katie,

You vain fickle brained warthog,

You gloating flap mouthed pimple,

You xenophobic motley-minded weasel,

You rank vomit-inducing ne’erdowell

With a face like a permanently surprised frog,

You toxic, provocative, class-conscious, 

suspiciously orange

Arse.

It’s like you’ve seen that Farage bloke and thought,

I’d like a piece of that,

Though he’s far too left wing for my liking.


It can’t be like this, surely,

It can’t be.

Yet a part of me suspects that it is.

If you didn’t exist,

Then we’d have to invent you.

And that, I suspect,

Is what’s already occurred.



   

Flying in to London. Double lush!

Flew in to London yesterday from Exeter. Amazingly, it was cheaper than the train. The secret of this is not to have any luggage.

But there’s also a childish delight for me in flying instead of getting the train. I’ve always been a fan of flying, whether short haul or long haul or just popping up in a small Cessna. I love flying and everything to do with it.

It wasn’t the worlds longest flight. Within ten minutes we were over the Isle of Wight, and within fifteen minutes the pilot announced that we had begun our descent into London. The pilots name was Captain Shackleton. Could there have been a more appropriate name for a pilot? Kind of neutralized the effect of seeing that the aircrafts registration was G-JEDW, which immediately made me think of Jedward.

There were only 23 people on board and I was one of them. There were only two of us sitting anywhere in the front ten rows. I’d booked a seat where I could look at the engines and the wings, but the book in desk asked me to move to the front of the plane with special responsibility for the emergency exit door. The stewardess gave me a run down on how to use it. Pull down on this handle, she said, while pulling down on the handle. Remove the door and then throw it out of the aircraft. I couldn’t help noticing, once she’d finished, that the handle was still pulled down a bit and I spent the rest of the flight wondering if the door would suddenly open. Not that we ever gained enough altitude for depressurization.

The stewardess and I bonded and I really did wonder what would happen if I’d been one of my straight friends, for she was undoubtedly very beautiful and a lesser man would have taken her constant chit chat as flirting. Indeed, she chatted to me while Captain Shackleton made an announcement about being early. ‘We’re early’, he said, ‘Which is good news. So we are just going to wait for four minutes so that we are on time’. ‘Well then’, the stewardess said to me, ‘We’re not early then, are we? Captains are always saying things like that’.

We flew over Bognor. It reminded me of summer holidays as a child to Bognor. Sitting in a car with the windscreen wipers going,looking out at an angry sea, drinking tea from a flask. We flew over Hever Castle, and then the suburbs of London. And then London itself, swinging over the centre in a wide arc, skimming over the top of Canary Wharf and that silly cable car thing they’ve put in. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’, the stewardess said to me, as she strapped herself in. And then Captain Shackleton kind of flumped us down on the runway at London City.

It’s sunny in London and the world seems a place full of mystery and magic. I know that this will soon wear off but I’m wondering how much of that has to do with the fact that I got here on a Bombadier Dash 8. 

Builders in Sicily found these ancient texts. You wouldn’t believe what happened next!

As you know, I have always seen myself as something of an innovator in the field of poetry. Aided by the eminent Professor Zazzo Thiim, I have explored the heights and the depths not only of poetry but also spoken word. Interpretative methods and matters of composition have been prodded and poked, rattled and dissected until there’s nothing left but random punctuation and a hell of a mess all over the dining table.

But now this inquisitive mind of mine has dived deep into the past and ushered by Thiim and a few of my local poetry colleagues, I have not only discovered, but resurrected a form of poetry long lost.

In a farm in Sicily recently there were excavations linked to the famed missing pearl necklace seemingly the inspiration for that worn by Marge in The Simpsons. Two teams of competing bounty hunters dug day and night around the barn and next to the cattle shed but no pearl necklace was found. However, one of them dug up some ancient manuscripts, and opining, quite rightly, that these weren’t nearly as exciting as the pearl necklace, flung them on the compost heap.

Yet these manuscripts contained the world’s first scribblings in the long forgotten poetic style, the decadocahedronic double quatrain.

By means of donkey and a backhander to their boss, these manuscripts were obtained by Thiim, who verified them as work of Ivan ‘Papa’ Capello, the eleventh century monk and scribe whose poetry also resulted in the invention of the sonnet, and also, in culinary circles, the egg whisk.

The decadocahedronic double quatrain is relatively simple in construction and the rules for their composition are easy to remember. The rhyme scheme is ABAB BABG. Where the G comes from is anyone’s guess, but Capello was known to be a maverick at a time when most mavericks were burned at the stake. The meter is iambic, of course, because anything other then iambic pentameter was thought to cause madness in goats. It is the syllable stipulations where the decadocahedronic quatrain comes into it’s own.

1st line 5 syllables

2nd line 6 syllables

3rd line 16 syllables

4th line 11 syllables

5th line 2 syllables

6th line 18 syllables

7th line 63 syllables ‘or as closeth as one might reasonably fathom’

8th line 3 syllables.

Capello is known only to have ever written one poem in this style, the famous ‘Ode to the Rear End of my Prize Cow’. But he added one other stipulation, and this is that the decadocahedronic quatrain must always mention someone called Mandy somewhere in it’s content.

The fact that he only ever wrote one decadocahedronic double quatrain provokes many in the poetic community to conjecture that he only came up with the syllable count once his own poem was finished so that it automatically conformed, and that then he just couldn’t be arsed to write any more. Alas, due to copyright reasons and a promise of a knuckle sandwich from the curator of the British Museum, I cannot publish here the ‘Ode to the Rear End of my Prize Cow’. But fret not, for I have had a bit of a bash at writing a decadocahedronic double quatrain myself.

So sit back, and let this remarkable verse take you once again to Sicily, and the genius of Ivan ‘Papa’ Capello.

Poem


I shall go to Kent.

It is a place I like.

It’s about time I pulled my finger out and packed my bags and went.

I shall then ask my really good friend Mike

Or Brent

If they would like to go to this magical place and ride a motorbike

Because I’ve often wished it would be beneficial to many in the wider artistic community to gather ones objects and belongings and make a pilgrimage to a place where small annoyances are, and stay in a two man tent.

Or not.

Ok, so I’ve only just realized that I missed out the obligatory mention of Mandy. But it’s not bad for a first attempt and Thiim himself said that it brought a tear to his eye. He’s off for a lie down, now. I hope this becomes viral. I’ve got washing up to get on with.

  

I get nervous. I used to get nervous. I don’t get nervous.

I’ve been performing poetry now for about five years up and down the country. I’ve been to parts of Britain that I wouldn’t normally go to, like Wolverhampton and Swindon, Salisbury and Cheltenham. And I’ve met some great people who have become friends. But there’s one constant which won’t ever go away, and that’s the state if nervousness I get before a poetry night.

It’s been there since the start. I thought it would go away with practice, but it doesn’t. It starts as a dull ache in the chest and a funny feeling in my stomach, and then as the day goes on it increases.

I don’t think this is necessarily about the performance, either. Yes,it is scary to stand in front of strangers and do poems about ostriches and goats, and to tell jokes which they might not laugh at. But the nervousness which I get usually comes from realizing the logistical details of getting somewhere, finding the venue, arriving at the right time, performing, then spending the night somewhere.

Because I’ve got one of those minds which always thinks of the things that can go wrong. And while I try to plan in as many escape routes and procedures as possible to negate the effects of Something Going Wrong, there’s always the chance that Things Might Go Terribly Wrong.

I remember taking part in the Wolverhampton Love Slam in 2014. By chance it was the same day that the railway fell into the sea at Dawlish. It took almost twelve hours to get to Wolverhampton from Paignton. The first person I bumped into was Jonny Fluffypunk. That’s when I knew that everything would be okay. But the whole day up till that point had just been one huge nervousorama.

I used to be the host of Poetry Island. I loved the nights themselves, there was so much energy, it was the poetry equivalent of being in a tornado. But there was so much organizing to do, and so much worrying about all the minor details, that in the end it wasn’t worth doing. I would spend the hour before going to the venue lying on my back on the floor and staring at the ceiling, trying to calm myself and run through everything in my head. That can’t be normal behaviour, now, can it?

I’m sure it’s the same for other performers. But the results far outweigh the nervousness. I’ve been to such wonderful gigs this year already, and I’ve got loads planned for later in the year, that I’m not even thinking about the nervousness.

Lately, I’ve been pursuing a new tactic. It’s called Operation DontThinkAboutIt. The day before a gig, I just carry on as normal. And even when I’m changing into my poetry outfit, I’m not thinking about what it is I’m about to do. And then I lie on the bed and I listen to pop music on my iPod. Loud, disco beat kind of stuff. The upshot of this is that it all makes the act of going to the gig and performing almost natural, and it seems to work. I’ve been having much more fun when I get there, less nervousness, and I reckon I’ve been performing better, too. If I stress too much over the minor details, then the actual reason for being there gets left behind. But now I don’t stress so much at all and it’s cleared my mind, made me focused on what it is I am meant to be doing.

Having said that, I’ve got some gigs coming up further up the country. So I shall see how it goes! And as long as the railway line doesn’t fall into the sea at Dawlish again, things should be okay.

Anyway, for no reason whatsoever, here’s a poem I wrote late summer while staying in Brixham.

Poem

Too hot out
For serious contemplation.
I sit in the cool of my room
At my parent’s
Bunga
Low.

Window open,
Net curtains twitching on the slightest breeze,
Car tyres on the concrete road surface,
Apolo
Getic.

The stipples ceiling has cracks.
Little roads through a mountain landscape.
But instead of being round the world is
Rectangular
( Except for a slight recess in the east).
The capital city is the light fixture.
The explorers are ever so brave
Who reach as far as the
Archi
Trave.

Outside in the summer heat,
The plaintive honking
Of something that honks.
I’m a city boy so I don’t really know
What kind of animal honks.
But I wish it wouldn’t.
It gives me the willies.

I imagine the room filled with
Albino
Ocelot
Octopuses
Cool
Coral
A
Drinks
Vending
Machine
PepsiCo

It’s so hot
I try to visualise somewhere cool
Like an airport air conditioned coffee shop.

Actually the honking is probably
Just the shed door
Creaking in the breeze.