DIG

A dinosaur & a unicorn were arguing one day
Thought the other fake because it weren't seen down our way
"I'm real cos I'm in the ground
for all the kids to find!"
"Yeah but I'm forever trotting in a kiddies mind!"

The moral of this altercarion?
Dig dinosaurs & imagination.

TIMING SLEEP

I'm waking up earlier and earlier
It's making me surlier and surlier
I'm well on the way
Back to yesterday
Where there's me
The insomniac journeyer.

SUMMER SENSES

The distant hum and whirring
of a strimmer in the sun
A garden chair scrapes patio stone
turned to the best of day
A glass takes light through fruit-coloured drink and scatters tiny rainbows
Childrens voices climb up and down fences
I welcome the tinkle of summer.

THE MIGHTY TREE

We can't hear the tree breathe
We can't see a leaf feed
We can't tell it traps time in its core
We saplings, we planted
We just take for granted
There'll always be rings to explore.

FORCED RHYME IN ANCIENT GREECE

Oh Icarus, Oh Icarus
In those waxed wings
You look ridicarus

Oh Icarus, Oh Icarus
We laughed so hard
You must be sick of us

PLUMMET

As a tiny child
in my back garden
I climbed a plum tree
where I got stuck

I shouted for dad
and he appeared
"Jump" he said
"I'll catch you"

I did and he did
I was flying through air
Never before had
I felt so scared

I landed in big arms

Now I could climb anything.

CARRY ON CLEO

I wake wrapped in the duvet
My wife & I lay there
Before & after silk worms
I'm an Egyptian mummy in a summer tog
I quietly roll out of bed
Unfurl myself on the floor
Cleopatra-in-a-rug
I toddle off to make coffee
Semi-skimmed
No asses milk
Pharaoh nuff.

THE PLURAL OF ABACUS

Abaci is right
Abacuses, too
You're thinking, can it be?
Count on me it's true.

PULP FICTION

More and more
recycled paper
recycled paper
is now being used.

The newspaper you read
or the book you devour
have been through many lifetimes
since it swayed in the sun
and fought the breeze
and welcomed the rain.

Season upon season
Held briefly in your hands.

ECHOES OF TIME

Time
Strangest beast in the universe
Splits in half
And half again
And half again

Time
Strangest beast in the universe
Doubles in size
And doubles again
And doubles again

Never-ending echoes
In which we live our lives

BLEARY-EYED DEFINITIONS

Monologue - the world's smallest timber yard
Museum - looking at what a cow says
Upstairs - happy steps
Recycled - a lap of honour in a velodrome
Rectangular - a ruined geometry experiment
Behind - the business end of honey

MUSICAL FEAST

If I ate music then I wouldn't waver
I'd start the feast off with a packet of quavers
I'd think for a minute, food for the soul
Then I'd eat my share of old rock & rolls
I'd finish the meal with a refreshing soda
What else at the end but a cold can of coda?🎶

PAW

As brickies that reach the ascent
Of a chimney-pot part of a build
We'd sign our names in cement
A tradition to show off our skills

One day we thought of a new twist
And left some fake paw prints up there
Poor future archaeologists
Will think once all dogs flew in the air

NINA

Nina Simone & I make coffee. My headphones keep the High Priestess Of Soul from waking a sleeping house. Sunday chooses a grey filter. A jazz filter. Smoky with spots of colour poking through. Birds improvise in syncopated time. They, coffee, & Miss Simone have put a spell on me.

UP

93 million miles from a sun
We zoom 'round this shining star
Gravity comes from a force that is spun
The ground & us never go far
What will go up will always come down
Newton's 3rd Law says it's true
I'll tell me wife, it may stop a frown
If it's used on the seat in our loo

WALK OF SHAME

I have walked home with the dawn and a girl
But not for many a year

I still see the dawn and its beauty unfurl
But just me and my prostate are here.

DON'T READ ALL ABOUT IT!

A stink of ink and vinegar
seeps right through the paper
Yesterday's news is that
tonight's dinner is served
Battered bits on page 3
Headlines of halibut
All sea life is there
When did newspapers stop
in the chip shop?
I don't remember reading about it.

METAPHOR V SIMILE

A metaphor is such a bore
A simile is similar
In fact they often get confused
It's like they're too familiar.

BOOKMARKS

The day is reset
by Etch a Sketch tides
Free to walk
on fresh sand
To leave soft footprints
Brief bookmarks
Striding by the sea
Our feet sink slowly
We are watched by raggedy cliffs
Their rugged memory
one day
will be all we have
to prove that we were
here

???

Is that a hole in my bucket
or a bucket 'round my hole?
An existential question
from thoughts I can't control.

Existential questions
Still blow my tiny bonce
Like are we all just one big brain
all thinking all at once?

ON ERNO RUBIK'S BIRTHDAY

I hate you Erno Rubik
Although we'll never meet
You stand there all cherubic
But my cube's still incomplete

You left me quite frustrated
I've only done the red
That's forty years I've wasted
Should've played outside instead

VAPE TALES

Vaping in a car
With a window down
A tiny steam train dragged
Puffing through the town

Vaping in a car
With the windows furled
Nowt but heads and bits
In a snow-globed world.

Vaping in a street
Oozing steam we see
If they were a kettle
We could make some tea

NEMESIS

Pigeons are my nemesis
With their stupid chests
Strutting roads with recklessness
Despite my own protests

No other birds tempt fate like this
In and out of traffic
I beep my horn, they take the ****
My language gets quite graphic

Stick to the sky
My pigeon-pie

FAIR

A hall of mirrors
this rainy morning
Trapped by reflections
of ourselves
Helter-skelter
pelting down
A log-flume of no logs
A dog-flume for the
barking pet owners
Bumper to bumper cars
waltz slowly to work
Scream!
You cannot go faster
Carousel commutes
Around again

RENTING

We all rent air
It's not ours
for long
We breathe in
It's ours
We breathe out
It's not
We breathe in
It's ours
We breathe out
It's not

We are all renting
the same particles
of air that everyone
who has ever lived
has rented

That's a lot to take in.

LIFE'S A BEACH

Yawning suitcase on the pavement
Lying where you stand
I know it's not an understatement
In it's last year's sand.

There are no fluorescent flip-flops
Sarong's have gone, not packed
Though it's lost those tiny zip-locks
It's brought the beach right back.

RETURN OF THE CONE

I once walked home with a traffic cone
balanced upon my head
Dad found out and I got a clout
as he kicked me out of bed

Forced to find the scene of the crime
Hungover and slightly rotten
The moral of the tale, stay off the ale
It's cone, but not forgotten

WINDY BINS

The morning cycle is set to spin
on rinse and repeat
and there go me bins
lifted by winds and gusts aplenty
I live at fourteen
and they've just passed twenty
I cannot be sure if they'll ever be back
they're not homing bins
I'll just stack me sacks!

INDEPENDENT DAY

Treetops cheerlead for the wind
Tumbledown clouds are sky-duvets
Birds fly a zigzag path of least resistance
As yesterday is filed away
with everything that has ever happened
I look to a box-fresh day to surprise
A distant ambulance siren reminds
me that tomorrow is unwritten.

GODBOG

We're living in God's toilet
I think we're in the pan
Don't really want to spoil it
From what's in there he made Man.

ROBINS NEST

My son was scared by a robin last month as he pruned my holly tree.
He's 21& 6ft4!
"It's just staring at me, dad"
This week he cut back a bush.
"There's 2 of them now, and they're both staring at me"
We found their nest deep in the bush, made of holly twigs.
Wish I spoke robin.

HAIR TODAY

Hooray! Hooray!
Hairdressers open today
Rusty fingers
Sharp scissors
Hair-dye covering
acres of grey
Stilted conversation
Doing anything nice?
Nope
Going away this year?
Nope
A done-up 'do
But for who?
And where?
And why?
Our 'do's done
Lockdown Nil
Normality Won.

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU APPLES...

I've sat beneath many a fine apple tree
Waiting for wisdom to tumble
Though Newton I'm not and they always miss me
So I'm happy to make apple crumble.