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