To those who demand you stand by their pandect,

Call them all cheats on call and collect,

They’re gargoyles hunched on their haunches,

Stalking the walk at lunches and launches.

They backbite, backslap, salubriously clap,

With cleaver hands to stick in the back.

Upset the art, trash the cattlecart,

Start the stampede in the heart of the art.

Don’t play poker with the mediocre,

Token-filled pack full of jokers.

The Class A offenders are pretenders

Protecting their pretence, return them to sender.

Feel fierce flocks of fight forming and flowing,

Know you’re only as good as your last poem.

Cut yourself, it should be ink you’re bleeding,

Know you’re only as good as your last reading.

Let wisdom be the weight of your wealth

And your greatest competitor, yourself.

I Will Not Speak Ill of the Dead

I Will Not Speak Ill of the Dead

In the orchard I catch a falling leaf and wish to make no wish.

Before my eyes the leaf, a veined slither of heart, pulsates.

A collar-boned branch snaps beneath or behind or within,

But I am here for a reason and cannot wait to leave.

I won’t speak ill of the dead.

Not a word as I reach, twist, then with a tug of the wrist

Pick the scarlet fruit from the bitter memory tree.

The sound of a hiss pours down in a shiver and circles me.

This is not fruit for eating. This bulbous leathery bruised

Over-sized bull’s eye, a cross between a lychee and an apple,

Seeps sticky brown oil that coils into my half-formed fist.

I am told this flesh is poisonous and so it is my service

That I should bring it to my mouth beneath my nose,

Smell and draw the decaying cancerous tinge.

Slow but deliberate, I sink my teeth into its stringy slime

And feel the cold flesh slide up my teeth and onto my gums.

The first bite is the worst bite and the brown oil slides

Down my chin as the mulch slips within me.

This is good. I am impervious to the poison, because

I was fed the seeds of this tree when I slept as a child.

It grows inside me. I feel its branches stretch inside

And at night-time sometimes I hear it tear my inner flesh.

Though a hand has become one deformed knot,

The other holds a wooden pen.

I won’t speak ill of the dead. Not a word.

There will be nothing more satisfying than knowing that

The sewage with all its pips and dangerous seeds

Will be dragged away from me, spat out into the sea

A long way away – I will not speak ill of the dead.

Not a word.

Transistor

Transistor

Airwaves transmit, vocals translate,

Emotions in transit transmigrate,

Story transmutes and what transpires

Are transfinite transonic choirs.

The soldier, the teacher, the lover, the storm,

Translocate, transform.

This Train (Sing Along)

This Train (Sing Along)