I Want No Part Of Your 1980’s Daydream

That soft parallel universe
Faxed to someone special,

The erotic retro buzz and click
Of unexpected surprise,

The dead eyed stockbroker
And the glamour model,

Bikini’s and calculated thunder,
Nightclub cardigans and valium,
Babycham and the horrors

And hollows that follow.

I want no part
Of your 1980’s daydream,

The permed hieroglyphics
Of style crimes
Chiselled into pebble-dash,

Synthesised car parks
Illuminated by ski jackets
And terracotta sunsets,

Puppet politicians
And their microwaved smiles,
A cornucopia of fakery

Groomed like a Portuguese stripper,
18 and studying maths.

Give me a humble cup of tea,

Pull down the blinds

And text me.

The Movies

The future’s always bleak,
The movies tell us so,

Torrential rain and chrome,
A snapped and shattered wish bone,

The helicopter drones
And the groans of civilians.

The greed of man fizzing
Across an electric-wired horizon,

The horns that usher violence

And the cascading shadows
Of eternal damnation
And dusk.

Where people
Once strode
There is nothing
But husks,

The seeds
Have been taken,

Ruined by guess work,

All hope forsaken.

The Battle Over The Remote Control

Some people
Will sit through anything,

A documentary
On falling cobwebs,

A slideshow of
Passing traffic,

The hair on a fat man’s arms
Blowing in the breeze,

Ex-convicts wallpapering,
A priest baking cakes,

An estate agent sneering,
Truck drivers discussing soup,

The dumb pretence
Of entertainment

Smeared across
Their eyes.

Right now

There’s a wolf boy
Lost on the Mexican-US border,

He sings poetry from a dying planet
And sums up our fears
With an high pitched ocarina
And a dancing prairie dog,

But it’s the same sorry tale,

The viewing figures are low,

The dumb
Have won
Again.

A Thought Sleeps

A thought sleeps
In the corner of the room
As we look on cooing,

The wandering nothing
That got brushed aside
Has found itself a spot,

And here we are,
Clasping on something silent
As the house slowly crumbles

Around us.

In The House Of Newspapers

In the house of newspapers
The sun curls its corners
And the draughts tickle
Yellow and jaded,

Yesterday’s headlines
And a tea stained blonde
Smiling towards sadness
And resting in time,

The twist of sly hindsight,
The hushed laughter of vengeance
And the untouched windowsills
Cracked in the heat.

Where once strode the pageant
Of black and white snapshots
There now sits abandon,
All wistful and saddened,

A coffee mug rotting,
A floor missing tiles,
The jubilant once was
Of now then goodbyes.

The Writing

They wrote
The writing

On their wall,

It was never
Written
For them.