Doors and furniture

pilled up

Gettup in the morning
Take me Metformin
Then I take some Perinodipril
Oh oh-oh oh-oh
I’m all pilled up.

After that I take
My Digoxin
Put some Omeprazole
Into my cakehole
Inhale some Spiriva
Then I’m ready
To go out

I got more pills inside me
Than there are in any chemists
Can’t you hear them
Rattling about
Oh oh-oh oh-oh
I’m all pilled up.

So I forgot to mention
Biosodiprol
Amolipine and the Warfarin
Oh oh-oh oh-oh
I’m all pilled up.

I take more pills
Than all the Who ever used to
Or than the entire
Population of Moldova
So I don’t die whilst I get old
I’m all pilled up.

When I go down the street
They shake around inside me
I sound like a can full of tin tacks
But I been years paying all my taxes
So now I’m now getting them back
Oh Yes o yes oh yes
I’m all pilled up.

When the president’s Helicopters fly over & IN LENINGRAD

When the president’s Helicopters fly over

When the Ruler of the World comes to London
And his iron chariots thunder, up in the red night skies
He slices his air with the rotors
And my semi detached residence
Trembles volelike beneath.

I don’t respect him,
I didn’t elect him,
I don’t want him,
And I didn’t invite him.

But when a convoy of Chinooks and
Other associated night-riding heli-hags
Slice across ordinary north London suburban air
I’m down with the people in Dollis Hill,
Shaking in my boots,
Whether I want to or not
And a splash of coffee leaps from my cup
With what could be shock
Or be awe.
My beverage may wish to grovel on the floor,
But I do not.

IN LENINGRAD

In Leningrad
A diabetic pensioner dies.
He once was a teacher,
But now cannot pay,
Enough to keep
His killer at bay.

The prices of his medicines have flown
Higher and higher
Away beyond his reach.
like migrant swans,
they’ve  gone well south
Down to warmer lands
Where the fat boys play on the beach all day
And where their parents pay and pay
For pizzas, burgers, fries and fizzy drinks
And metformin and insulin.

All of which are beyond the scope
of a Soviet teacher’s pension
So I hope
That there’s a workers' state up in the sky
Since the one on the earth couldn’t cope.

drawins drawn 2008

3 pomes

I am an ironing board

I am an ironing board
I can be hot and flat
I can even get very heated at times,
But, I feel no emotions
About this or that
Things get laid on me
Things get straightened out
I am an ironing board
This is what I am about

I am a Tiger
I am a Tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night,
Or in the day, and in the shade, lying, watching in a glade
Where golden light is stripeing down
Through green foiliage and leaves,
Me almost invisible
Except for my
Unbliking eye
Which only the dying should see
I am a Tiger and
I once heard a philosopher teaching, he said
“Philosophy is like searching for a black cat in a darkened room at night with a
brown paper bag over your head. It is totally out of court. It is just not cricket.”
I thought that this did not concern me because,
I am a Tiger, not a black panther,
But lest some roving forest gypsy passing by
With a handmade flintlock gun made out of an old gas pipe
Should descry my unblinking eye
And shoot me through it
In order to sell my powerful powdered penis
To give another Chinese millionaire
A hard on that he doesn’t really need,
I stir myself
And pad out across the jungle floor
Yes I think I’ll eat a philosopher tonight
Knock of the back off his head with one swipe of my paw
Lick all the knowledge porridge out of his skull
With my abrasive tongue
So that I then might know
What he was talking about
Or I could like my northern brothers
Up in the snow
Go for a Siberian
But that might just be like
Drinking a gallon of vodka.

LEADER
Waking up in wet November
Crawling into clothes
Crawling into types of transport
That take you where you don’t want to go
To spend a day
Doing what you don’t want to do.

That is depressing.
Or hearing the radio, early in the morning
State the date
When that day is the day of the exam
Or the day when the dentist will drill your gob down to the nerve
Or the day when the bill hits the doormat
Or the day when the shit hits the fan
But nothing is more depressing than
Hearing a crowd enthusiastically applauding
A leader’s speech.
I’d rather be a shepherd
Stuck up some celtic shitpile in the rain
Hearing the bleeding sheep, bleeding bleating
Again and again and again
Than ever have my aural orifice offended
By the happy clappiness of humans surrendering their humanity
To some blonde political phantasy

Oh, leader, leader
Take it all away
Take us up to heaven today
Where sweet sky pie is free
And we never pay
And all our headaches have gone away
Because all our thinking is over and done
It’s all all over
Because you are the one
Who bathes us in smiliness like the sun.

So clap, clap, clap
You vacuous creeps
Your public grovelling makes me weep
Smack me up, send me back to sleep
Let me die and rot and feed a tree
Because political compost is what I’d rather be
Than ever follow a leader.

The entirely appropriate Reginald

This poem is entirely appropriate,
because it is called Reginald.
And because it is a bespoke poem,
Not ready made
And especially tailored for this moment only.
It is exquisitely crafted
And contains words like
Voluptuluminate
And arquebusphosorounderdrome
Which cannot be found elsewhere.
Some of its vowel sounds and consonants
Have been washed by the spume of atlantic gales
and the soft rains of peat bogged coasts
they have been carefully collected from
The utterance of gnarled Hibernians
Who ply their age old craft by speaking softly
In sail lofts and crofts
Pieces of their speech
Have then been cut, sewn and woven
To make this entirely appropriate Reginald
With all its subtle and softly
Unspoken undertones.

The whimbrel whines

The whimbrel whines in the gale gnarled gorse
A curlew rises piping feebly
Silhouetted above the ancient drizzle stained edge of moor’s blunt blade
This piffling avian is blown away,
Like a drug addled scribbler
Tatters of scudding cloud
A wind howling through time has blown
All vacuous vapour away eastwards
Away from old hills
To piddle on flat midlands
In this wereweather three men stalk across eons
Rising dripping from peat hags like polished bog-oak
Three men from Porlock some say
Although the place that they come from
Has had other names
Some once uttered in long lost langues
They were even once alluded to
By the ice people who some now call
Neanderthal
With brow ridged grunt and crude gesture of flint adze
Hirsute the mammoths trumpeted mournfully
And avoided their gaze
The three haul huge monolithic concepts in our time
Heavy and absolute as any henge pillar
The three brought the ideas that inspired the antler pick miners
And the hewers and haulers of
Massive granite shards and blocks
With fire water rope and slave
But mound and ancient Temple are
Only passing representations sketched in stone
Of infallible inevitable and immutable rectitude
Ponderous super heavy weight thoughts
That pulverize all other ideas
And pointless poetic drivel
Like an tank track crushing
A poppy into paste
This then is their mission
They did not choose it
But being the determined determinators of determination
They must enact their duty.