A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

New Year’s Eve fireworks explode
and shell the midnight skies
after grammatically thicko teenage terrorists with their little bombs throwed
have already beated ear drums of jumpy elderly passer-bys into submission and into hiding.

Funny how in a world claiming to want peace,
the new year is seen in
to a planned frenzy of endless war sounds to fire ceaselessly
in a massive bombardment of crackers din.

Pets too have given up on their so-called human superiors and gone into hiding
running to the nearest refuge in a home of intoxicated revellers.
New year resolutions slurred out like no more predictions earnestly promised by fortune tellers
and hopes for new year conquests by war mongering lovers.

We had a quiet night in
on the home front, eating and drinking
as midnight mayhem was counted down to blast off from ten.
Met you before but don’t remember who. Saw in 2026 but don’t remember when.

Cesare street-bellows
above the bells;
Red wine has reddened his tonsils.
His blackened lungs tarred by Camels.

He’s the local lunatic
around whom stories circulate:
Of a life ruined all too quick.
Of a foreign legion escapade.

Were his dice destined bad
playing fortunes dicey game?
Or did he risk all he had
with no-one but himself to blame?

Now he gobs, the gobshite fool,
Fumbling phlegm from his chin.
An underdog is nothing new
nor the in-crowd who outcast him.

My first year in Italy was in Monza in 1992-93, and I wrote this poem about Cesare. I went back to Monza last week after 32 years. Met Roberta there who remembered Cesare who’s, not surprisingly, since died.

About to go back to a torrential rain a month after 33 years ago
wondering why stereotypical summers didn’t last as long as autumns on a tin
coastal birds swirl over cliffs down-beating down to earth in a pantomime show
with a why don’t they give me credit for doing what they wanted me to before it ended up in a bin?

Waking up with an alarm clock head at the same time every morning
afternoons go by as quick as an evening disappearing into evening
working is a long-winded way to get to a pensionable age
with a visionary workforce with x-ray eyes seeing through the pointlessness of a blunt edged wage.

If everyone wrote what they thought in a diary
or said what they’d ever written on shredded office paper
there might not be so many trips down lanes lost to memory
or so many tombstones jumping up and down in a comic who the hell were they? caper.

Tomorrow is a day with a concert ticket
and a flight of fantasy which could end in disappointment if over worrying wins.
I’m going back to a place I never liked but which now holds out a hand nostalgic
and I’m going to love being tortured and having to pay for all my sins.

I live with my muse in a music box.
I live like a duke in a juke box.
I sit within walls of sound in my bedsit.
I turn my factory 45s churning out hit after hit.

Feel as close to a return paradise ticket there and back
as a record player needle to a record track.
As fictitiously far away from human contact
as a ghost-written autobiography to fact.

Listening to your voice in my flatlet
is like eavesdropping the one next door
through a paper thin record sleeve wall
while reading sleeve notes to a kindred spirit.

It’s been a day-by-day year, dear darling
and being remote is a way to control it.
Dreams overnight might not make it
but long-playing ones might resound like music.

Sitting in my summer garden of an afternoon
and feeling safe in my middle class mother mountain father cocoon,
I daydreamed with the lawn mown
and all my neighbours a silver jubilee clone.

Long long later and of an after
and, once again, passed by for the Nobel prize for Literature
there I sat in a garden, daydreaming
listening to the coo of consciousness streaming.

Passer-by footsteps are a beat
while printed lyrics, straight out of a songbook,
flutter on nearby window curtains over a paper street.

Couples hand in hand talk of fingers in a pie
while babies in their prams deafen sighing parents as they bawl and cry.
A hat on the pavement coins a musical refrain,
but market forces won’t change till a chorus kicks in again.

I just sit and listen and chain smoke till it breaks.
Forget what’s going on around the world cos it’s a load of (rhymes with this busker rocks)
and is nothing to do with me as, elsewhere, money bag criminals on red carpets seem to always be getting away with it to fanfare handshakes.
Meanwhile, feet on the ground, another song is a-foot played by an afternoon busker in old socks.

Drunken words stagger out through saloon door mouths
and the world in the long-term is not where I would want to live.
I spout off a load of nonsense my predecessors would be proud of
but they have nothing left to give.

Have you ever wanted to go back to who you were?
Got sick to death of those nostalgia freaks?
I’m stuck somewhere in the middle and answer most people with duh.
I used to like a speak-easy but that’s not the answer and alcohol wreaks.

I’m going to have to get up early tomorrow for a flight
and it’s getting towards the small hours of the night.
If I don’t make it out the door in the morning
don’t worry, they’ll be someone ringing a last orders dring-a-long a-dring-dring.

A bright brisk breeze turns leaves clockwise
as a glimpse of a blackbird darts out of sight
with its alarm bell beak sounding the alarm
for catnapping cats to wake up for their bag lady’s daily bag o’ biscuits.

Criminal chancing it hooded crows,
always on their toes for a free meal steal,
pick a nick from under a dozy feline nose
as overhead swifts make a getaway from private reflective eyes like swooping pickpockets.

There’s a plaque on this park bench and it reads:
“You may suffer the side effects of drowsiness or wonder on benches like these.”
That’s a lie and there isn’t, but imagination feeds
on the medicine of moments sat completely alone amongst trees.

This poem written today is the first of a new idea for my next collection – coming as soon as possible to your computer screens!

everyone lies and everyone gets up
everyone hides and everyone
everyone keeps secrets and everyone
everyone betrays
and everyone
everyone serves everyone on runny treacle trays
and everyone

everyone stabs everyone in the back
and everyone
everyone gets railroaded off track
and everyone
everyone has rage
and everyone
everyone dribbles in their shallow bib grave
and everyone

They sleep through most of it.
Their birthday a day of sleep
They drink water a bit
and jump on cat biscuit buffet tables in one leap.

They like routine
and party guests are no different.
They’ve already been
and habitually went.

Birthday cats are too cool to know how old they are.
What do they care?
They know they’re immortal and got nine lives to spare.
Their fur at any party is the latest fashion to wear.