A couple of weeks ago I was at Newton Abbot doing a bit of train-surfing. Train-surfing, I hear you ask. What’s he going on about? Train-surfing is a method I use so that I don’t have to get the local service all the way from Exeter to Paignton. It’s usually full of drunks and ne’erdowells and it clatters along like a bouncy castle and it’s really most uncomfortable. So if I get in it at Exeter Central, then I get off it at Exeter St David’s and catch the fast service as far as Newton Abbot.
That’s Train-surfing.
So I was at Newton Abbot the other day having train surfed from Exeter, and the local service to Paignton was just about to arrive, I was getting ready for it to pull in. When an Elvis impersonator shambled along the platform. And he was drunk.
‘Excuse me’, quoth he, ‘Do you like Elvis?’
Now I know this is sort of like seeing a vicar or a priest and the first thing them saying is ‘Do you like Jesus?’ But it actually happened. That’s the first thing that he asked.
‘He’s okay’, I replied.
‘Them people’, he said, pointing in a kind of drunk way to the town of Newton Abbot in general, ‘keep laughing at me’.
The man is dressed as Elvis.
‘How come?’
‘They only care that Elvis died on the toilet. I keep telling them that there’s more than that. He made great music. But all they care about was that he died on the toilet’.
‘He died on the toilet?’
‘Yeah. And they’re laughing at me because of it’.
I’ve never really liked Elvis, but I didn’t want to tell him this. I appreciate that he had a good voice and some good songs, but I’ve never really seen him as one of my favourite singers.
‘Do you like Elvis?’ He asked.
‘He was ok. But for me, the best singer of that period was Roy Orbison’.
Now, I’ve told this story to a friend of mine and she said that this is the moment when the whole encounter could have gone tits up. He could have reacted badly. But instead he said,
‘I love Roy Orbison! He was the best! Well, apart from Elvis, that is’.
By now the train was coming in and I decided that I didn’t want to be stuck with a drunk Elvis impersonator for the rest of the journey, so I decided on a cunning plan. I would let him get on and then run down to the next carriage.
‘Here’s your train’ I said to him.
‘You are’, he said, ‘a good bloke’.
And then he started that drunk persons thing that drunk men do when they have to shake your hand. Except he did it about three times.
‘A good bloke. And I’ve really enjoyed talking. Such a good bloke. If I ever see you in the pub I will buy you a pint. So good to meet you. Yeah. Roy Orbison. So good to meet a good person’. He said all this while shaking my hand.
At this point I realised that if I didn’t get on the train I’d miss it altogether. ‘You’d better get on’, I said, looking at the guard.
And as I watched him stumble on board, I managed to time it to perfection, running down to the next carriage and jumping on just as the guard blew his whistle.
I spent the rest of the journey hiding in the next carriage, squeezed up against the wall hoping that the Elvis impersonator didn’t see me.
As my friend Anne says, I seem to attract these sorts of people.
Tag Archives: poetry
On receiving compliments .
Do you know what I’m really rubbish at? Compliments. I don’t mean giving them out. I’m free and easy with my complements and if I think something is brilliant, then I say it. What I’m pants about is receiving compliments.
It happens, every now and then. But lately people have been reading my book, and even better, buying it. And they’ve been ever so nice about it and told me so. And I’ve done that thing that people do, you know, automatically apologising and saying that it could be better, or some other attempt at humour.
So a friend took me aside a couple of weeks ago and told me that I need to work on this. This whole receiving complements business. Lord knows, it doesn’t happen often over the course of a lifetime.
Smile, they said. Smile and say thank you.
I mentioned this to another friend and he suggested I just put my thumbs up in recognition. To be honest I might not do this.
Another friends says, well, that’s all very well and good, but how are you at taking criticism? You must, they said, ominously, be prepared for that if you’re having a career in performance and doing things in front of the general public.
They’ve got a point.
The other day I received a couple of compliments about my performance style. I was very glad about this because this is the area I’ve been concentrating most on lately. I’ve even gone so far as to get advice from a theatre director, who has been watching me rehearse and gives me fantastic advice about movement and emphasis and all that sort of thing.
I didn’t go to drama school and I never even took drama during GCSEs. I acted in one play in 2009, but that’s as far as it goes when it comes to performance skills before I started all this poetry malarkey.
So I had to watch endless videos and YouTube clips and read all about the finer points of performance, and of course, I had to practise a lot, both on stage and in my room.
The compliments I received were:
1 – You never move your feet when you perform.
2 – I love the way you have perfected that tone of voice as if you’re ever so slightly nervous.
Now, the first thing there, the moving feet thing. I’m glad about that. My director Ziggy told me that this was most important and during rehearsals he’d shout, ‘Feet!’ if I started to move. So I’m glad that someone noticed.
But the second thing . . .
I always felt I sound confident and that this is an important aspect of my performance. And feeling confident makes me feel good about what I’m doing. But the person who said this was the mother of a fellow performer, and someone that I respect a lot.
So then I started thinking, well, maybe perhaps that’s my voice. Maybe that’s a trademark of my style which I’ve never noticed before. Maybe I should build on this.
So I started trying to sound a little nervous on purpose, but that just made me feel nervous. And then I’d get nervous about not sounding nervous enough. So I’d try to overcompensate by sounding confident but then I’d get nervous about not sounding confident enough. And that made me feel nervous, so I’d over compensate again. And now I have no idea where I am.
I’ve decided not to think about it. I’ve decided just to carry on where I am and the apparent nervousness (which I’ve never recognised) may come out during performance, or then again, maybe it won’t.
The last thing I need to do is write a blog post about it.
You see, I think I sound confident. And that’s good enough for me. I’ve decided not to worry about these sorts of things!
Steadfast
Imagine a prison
Impossible to break from
Yet without physical form.
Invisible walls
Built not of brick but of pain,
Notions, expectations,
Life ruined by the abstract.
There are others of your kind
Unseen in their struggle.
But the very nature of your
Sublime imprisonment
Blinds you to them.
Rather than fight, they pine,
Or else ignore the obvious,
Face sweating behind bitter masks.
Those who are fortunate
Fill you with anger.
Their love is nought but luck,
And now they love their luck,
And how lucky their love.
Another head of sweat rolls
Beneath your jaded caricature.
They’re so immature.
You dance in your mind.
Rhythms so sensual
Pounding party silly rhythms
Inexplicable sun shining smiling
Fresh faced rhythms incomprehensible
That fact should swamp denial,
Go on dance close your eyes and
Dance and let yourself go in a
Way that shouldn’t be disco lights
Flashing almost unbelievably as you
Submit to the bounty of freedom
Sugar flip heart pump running
Fingers across the forbidden and
Not one ounce of tired regret
Just don’t. Open. Your. Eyes.
Steadfast in your culture.
Grey tomb of the senses.
Flesh unblemished by whip crack.
Absolute devotion to the ether.
Shouting loudest from the opposite shore.
Anger seething in the night.
You’ve got to do what’s right.
You’ve got to do what’s right.
You’ve got to do what’s right.
Imagine a prison
Impossible to break from.
Not one, but many
Millions, everywhere,
And in some places more than others,
From which
Only the lucky few have ever escaped.
Six poems inspired by tea towels.
One of he weirdest projects I had last year was to write thirty one poems about tea towels. Here are six of them, all inspired by the pictures on my mothers tea towels. Hope you like them.
Poem
1. How would you describe the behaviour of cows?
Cows line astern
Grass munchers in a row
Like forensic detectives
At the scene of a crime.
2. Are you familiar with bovine behaviour? Y/N
N
3. Describe the types of cow that you saw.
Fresians black and white
Flanked by invisible maps.
Half of an hour hyped up.
Are they black cows with white splodges
Or white cows with black splodges?
4. Have you ever been caught under the silvery moon suddenly transfixed by the inate beauty of cows and the way that they seem to reflect the celestial moonglow as if lunar objects themselves?
N
WTF?
5. Were you aware of this before the incident?
I had a crush.
6. Explain in a single haiku the beauty of the cows you saw.
There once was a field of cows
Upon which I would browse
By the side of the gate
And other places on the farm
Often in shady areas but sometimes in the full glare of the sun.
7. That’s not a haiku.
Oh
8. Eulogise a cow for me.
Daisy
I know this rhyme is lazy
And people may think me crazy,
Daisy
But in this rhyme I praise thee.
Says me.
Daisy
You are amazy.
9. Tell a cow joke.
In what way is a cow like my parents bungalow?
10. I don’t know.
They’re both fresian.
11. Do you have anything else to add?
I have no beef with you.
12. So I herd.
Poem
The quivering chrysanthemums
Which, in their stately manifest,
Seem to shield all harm from life,
Colouring the inevitable with an
Affected glee multiplied by the
Verdant nature of their bloom,
Would justly fill my jaded heart with
Inordinate bliss, but until such a time
That I may bask in their chrysanthemummy goodness, I must
Temporarily satisfy my whims with
Hydrangeas and the occasional
Rhododendron.
Poem
On the fifth night we argued.
Lightning illuminated my lonely garret,
Flickering omens of someone else’s storm,
Grouching and crackling the radio with static
As I tried to find French soap operas,
Lazy drops falling from an overcast night sky,
Stained brown by sodium lights,
Rolling ever so sadly down sash window panes.
You fumed.
I stare out the window at a jumble
Of slate tile rooftops sheening in the rain.
Momentary sheet lightning illuminates
Jagged architecture, chimneys, television aerials,
Your sour face.
There is no such thing as perfection, you said,
In your defense admittedly,
Having skewered my heart with mild
Grumbling a which seemed to match the
Rumbling thunder.
Having supplied a list of all
The things in which I fail.
And now you say, there is no such thing
As perfection.
Yet I read your blog, in which, in
Glowing terms, you eulogized and praised
And refused to criticize the herbaceous borders
At Polesden Lacey.
Poem
He set up a library in which people borrowed not books
But tea towels.
And they were classified dutifully under the
Dewey decimal system
According to their subject.
People said he was mad.
The two most popular sections
Were Travel, and Cats.
The Travel tea towels arranged on shelves
According to country, region, town, city,
Municipal districts, culture,
The cats tea towels
Were all kind of clumped together
Although some attempt had been made
Discriminating long hair and short hair.
Plain tea towels were measured
As to their viscosity and were
Stored in their sections,
Friction and non friction.
On most days he would appear
From his office in a 1920s showman’s outfit
Complete with top hat, jacket and bandsman’s trousers,
All made out of tea towels,
And he would dance along the aisles
As if caught up with the absolute romance of
So many tea towels.
People said he was weird.
The humour section was off limits to kids.
One of the tea towels was a bit saucy.
Some people don’t wash them properly.
Poem
An early morning sun
Sets afire the desert land.
An opal mine shimmers on a heat haze.
Nothing but sand
And the dull empty crack of life,
Existence as grand.
In a tin shack bar sits Jack,
Fresh from the dust, weary from a
Fortnight’s driving, weary, he caresses
A cool early morning beer.
How many sheep will he have to sheer
Until his dreams come true?
Yesterday, he dreamed of rodeos.
This morning, the outback sky was split
By a lone vapor trail, at the head of which,
An aircraft reflected the morning rays
Heading south to cooler climes.
We live in fantastic times.
Seven AM, already thirty degrees.
He ponders on unseen passengers,
Heading to their cool bars, their
Cool night clubs, their cool trendy flats,
With their cool friends, their cool husbands
And their cool wives, watching the latest cool
Films and reading the latest cool novels,
How cool it must be to be so cool,
Oh, right now how he wishes he were cool!
He traces his forefinger on the frosted glass
And ponders on appetites, fashions,
A suburban existence,
And the thought that a landscape so vast
Could easily suffocate a weaker soul.
The tin shack radio blares through static
Seventies rock opera, and in the distance
He can hear the chug chug from the opal mine
And the bleating of sheep.
Poem
You said you loved me
And you’d get a tattoo of my face to prove it.
Only when I peeled back your sleeve
Expecting to see my own youthful twenty-something visage
Emblazoned in ink on your upper arm
I saw instead a depiction of
The secret lost garden of Heligan.
I was most indignant.
You said you’d had a sudden change of heart
I pointed out that the
Secret lost garden of Heligan
Was neither secret nor lost
Because they’ve got a website
And a Facebook page
And a Twitter account
And several published coffee table style books.
You said that tattoos are permanent
And the nature of gardens in all their seasonal
Glory are but momentary depending on the whims
Of the climatic variables which make up this
Fine isle, they never look the same
One day from the next
And I said, neither do I.
I began to have my suspicions
That something was amiss
When I saw a little old lady at
The garden centre coffee shop
Who had a tattoo
Which was a very fine outline of my own
Facial features
And I said to Dean,
Was there a mix up at the tattoo parlour?
Yes, he said, there had been
A hideous mistake
But the old lady thought that her new tattoo
Was of snooker player John Parrot
So she was quite happy.
(His name was Dean,
I should have mentioned that
Earlier in the poem).
You Can’t Put Tinsel on Loneliness
Here’s my Christmas poem for this year.
https://youtu.be/QeCr-13YBEo
Poem
Amid the tinsel of a November Weatherspoons
A cold air nip as the log fire cracks
Alone at table 67, traditional breakfast
No one to share the superfluous hash brown with.
You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Twenty years of solo meals and microwave Christmas puds
And naps in party hats and texts from exes
And pondering on paperwork to pass the time
Or at least the polishing or painting of skirting boards
You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
You can’t put fake snow on despair
You can’t hang angst on a tree
You can’t parcel up and shrink wrap disappointment
You can’t fill a stocking with ennui
You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
A mardy face sneering under a felt red Santa hat
Randy nights of crackers pulled, curtains drawn and candles snuffed
Christmas Eve spending the day at your mothers, as a ‘friend’
Unwrapping just the one present and finding its a tea towel
It’s the thought that counts
You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Here he comes now, Josh, duty manager,
Yes everything’s all right with my meal, tell me how you’d feel
These cold mornings just expose the emptiness of the galaxy
And the dichotomy between companionship and the briefness of our existence,
Yes, everything’s all right with my meal, but
You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Table for one, sir?
Leave a coat on the chair so that
Some other loner doesn’t nab your seat
While you’re ordering at the bar
The all day breakfast is only served till eleven
You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Back amid the tinsel of a November Weatherspoons
Flimsy cardboard card advertising overpriced turkey
And the promise of not having to do the washing up
We timed our orgasm for the stroke of midnight
Rhythmic with sleigh bells like a radio jingle xmassified
You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Poetry Masterclass
Here’s a video blog masterclass workshop on the art of writing poetry. I hope it comes in useful!
http://youtu.be/zoKwlJ9BtyI
In case you didn’t know, I’ve got a new book out! : Thoughts on ‘Nice’.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve got a book out. Indeed, it is my first published book, my first proper collection from a real publisher, Burning Eye Books, rather than a self published effort. I can’t begin to describe how great it feels! Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a published writer. While other kids would daydream and talk about winning some football match or scoring a winning goal, I would dream about there being a book out there with my name on the cover. I would repeat, over and over to myself on those long suburban sultry nights, the image of opening a box from the publishers and seeing all the books there inside, ready to go out into the world.
It’s taken a while!
Burning Eye are the most dynamic and wonderful company I can imagine. They’ve published all my favourite names in the spoken word community, such as Megan Beech, Vanessa Kisuule, Rob Auton, Salena Godden. I have devoured every volume over the years, and when the chance came up to send them some material, I didn’t hesitate. I heard nothing for a while and I thought, well, on to the next thing, then.
Then last year, while staying in Bristol and supporting Vanessa Kisuule at the Hammer and Tongue event, I received an email from Clive Birnie inviting me to send in a manuscript, because he’d chosen me to be published! I was so happy, but I didn’t want to jinx it by telling anyone. The only person I told was Vanessa, and then I carried the secret around for months!
I cannot stress how incredibly professional Burning Eye have been. I’ve worked with editors and proofreaders, going through the poems and clarifying every last mark of punctuation or dodgy example of bad grammar. (Like this sentence). Hours spent enchanting emails about the rules on brackets and semicolons, hyphens, and the fact that one poem had to change its content in order not to be sued by a large film company which has a mouse shaped logo! Burning Eye were brilliant, it felt so good to be a part of their system.
So, what is Nice?
First of all, the title. I’ve always hated the word ‘nice’, because it’s so floppy and undescriptive, and it can be used sarcastically. But I wanted the book to be positive, to contain only funny or life affirming poems, and I needed a one word title that was positive in itself. The original title was ‘Nice One’, then I went with ‘Responsible’, and then back to ‘Nice’. I was also going to call it ‘Poems’.
So, Nice is a collection of fantastic upbeat silly funny poems which don’t tax the brain and make no claims to literary excellence, but they are the ones that I enjoy performing the most and the ones that the audiences like. There are also one or two brand new pieces in there which I’ve not yet performed, such as a rap about fuchsias originally written for my music group Croydon Tourist Office, and another about, ahem, weird sexual fetishes. Indeed, a first read of the manuscript shocked me at the amount of sex mentioned in the book, although there was nothing exactly graphic. I did wonder what a psychologist might think!
The cover is deliberately bright and clean. It’s based on the sort of design that you might see on a 1980s album cover, I wanted to create something simple and iconic, easy to replicate, and easy to put on posters. I think it looks clean and fresh, and the motif is repeated on the back. The colouring also could represent the rainbow flag, though this is not explicit and I only thought of it after I’d designed the cover!
On the whole, Nice represents the last two or three years of my performances, and now it’s out there in the open for the whole world to enjoy, and I can go on to the next thing.
I’m hugely proud of the book and the reception so far has been great. I’ve been working on it for a year and it still hasn’t lost its magic with me, so I hoping that this remains the case for the reader, too. The next step is a couple of events to help launch it, such as a book signing in Paignton in December, and a mini book tour taking in Torquay, Exeter, Bovey Tracey and Woking.
You can buy the book here http://burningeye.bigcartel.com/product/nice-by-robert-garnham
Poem (People Keep Mistaking Me For Tom Daley)
Poem
Got mistaken again last night
For Olympic diver Tom Daley.
That’s the third time this week.
The classically handsome features,
The tanned, toned physique,
That winning smile,
Just like Tom Daley.
A lot of people have said
We could be twins.
Coming out of Morrissons with a
Supermarket trolley,
Some yob shouts from the bottle bank,
Tom! Tom! Tom!
Tom Daley! Tom Daley!
It’s Tom Daley!
Swimmer bloke! Trampoline swimmer bloke!
Tom Daley! Divey swimmy divey divey
Swimmer bloke!
From the tv!
Oi!
Tom Daley Tom Daley Tom Daley Tom Daley!
He then peered at me closer and said,
Oh.
In the coffee shop,
Flapjack please and a decaf cappuccino
The barista above the steam gurgle machine
Says, half heartedly, ‘hon haley?’
And I say, what?
And she says,
‘hon haley? hon haley?
and I say what?
And she says,
‘hon haley.
Nothing, nothing
I thought . . .
Sitting in the coffee shop
Avoiding eye contact
Feeling
Awkward.
Tom Daley is one of my favourite athletes.
This is because of the way that Tom Daley dives.
Tom Daley climbs up the ladder and then
Tom Daley dives off of it and Tom Daley
Hits the water and then Tom Daley swims to the side
And Tom Daley climbs out of the pool.
You could buy Tom Daley an ice cream and Tom Daley
Is the sort who would say thank you for buying me
An ice cream because that’s the sort of person
That Tom Daley is.
I dreamed that he came round
And we chatted about Professor Brian Cox
And now his to shows, informative as they are,
Might be half an hour shorter
If he didn’t speak
So
Slowly
The cat wanted to go out and
Tom Daley volunteered.
Come here, Kevin, he says,
Come here.
The cats called Kevin.
Sometimes people mistake me for
Professor Brian Cox, too.
I’m not Tom Daley
But if I was I’d probably
Wear a false handlebar moustache
In public
In case someone dropped their handbag
Into a river or a harbour
And a call went up among the throng,
‘Is anyone here an Olympic diver?’
Another invitation this week
To open a summer fete.
Just wear your swim shorts, the email said,
So we can put pictures in the staff magazine.
They thought I was you know you.
I’m fed up that
People use me just as a sex object.
Turned on the tv last night.
Diving championships,
Happened to be on.
Just in time to see Tom Daley
Clambering up for another
Rocket ship from the springboard.
And the commentator said,
‘And now here’s something different,
It’s performance poet Robert Garnham’.
A walk around rainy Brixham
Most weekends I come over to Brixham. You know, how Superman has his fortress of solitude, or the prime minister has Chequers. Or the president has Camp David. It’s a nice way of ending one week, beginning the next, catching up with The Olds, and catching up on reading.
Brixham feels like the end of the universe. It’s a town on a rocky escarpment which juts out into the sea ending with the sheer drop of Berry Head. It’s the end of the line. There’s nothing after Brixham except salt water and fishes.
Obviously the news the last two days has been depressing and the weather has been wet and windy, but today I decided to go for a walk and perhaps think of subjects to write poems about. The town centre was mostly closed due to the end of the tourist season, and sheets of rain could be seen blowing diagonally across the harbour where paint peeled row boats jiggled like shivering mice. In quick succession I saw:
1- A sign on a closed cafe which should’ve said ‘Closed due to our renovations being carried out’ which now read, having slumped down on its blue tack, ‘Closed due to our being carried out’.
2- A young teenaged man working in a themed restaurant, in an alleyway, dressed as a pirate, emptying a Hoover bag into a bin.
3- A sign on a shop which read, (rather inexplicably), ‘Due to staff illness, please use the other door’.
I went to a coffee shop to try and write an acrostic poem. I couldn’t think of anything to write an acrostic for. Normally a quite famous local poet is in there, holding court, and he once said to me, ‘I feel as if I ought to know you from somewhere’, but he wasn’t there today. I pondered on life and how lonely and cold Brixham felt, then stood up to leave.
Just then the door opened and my ex came in. He looked well. Sickeningly well. He looked fit and happy and for some reason was wearing tshirt and shorts. We exchanged pleasantries and I told him how weird it was to see him here, of all places. My fortress of solitude. He said that he was in a charity Zumba day at the social hall. Which was the last sort of thing I expected to be happening at a sleepy Autumn fishing port.
I walked home and wondered briefly what it was all about, and whether I should be doing something like Zumba, or whether it mattered at all, that such an ostensibly lonely walk around a shivering little town should leave me feeling strangely good about people.
Some new poems I’ve been working on.
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.
