Category: Poetry

Three Poems

September

The body knows when Autumn is on the way.
No need to look at the calendar.
A lifetime spent in school, college and school again
Has seen to that.
It's seeped into the bones.


The smell of the first fallen leaves, sweet and earthy.
The gathering dusk, earlier every day.
Thin, dazzling sunlight fighting against
Lowering clouds, gusty winds, cooling temperatures.
A losing battle.


We try to disguise the dying year, like putting rouge onto a corpse's face.
Dressing it up as a new start.
Exaggerating the pleasures of log fires, jolly festivals and going out, 
Rosy cheeked and mufflered.


It worked when I was young,
But now, in the autumn of my life,
It heralds only Winter and
The cold, cold ground.

History Teaches Us

I used to love History when I was little.
Stories of primitive people, emerging from the cold ,sticky mud,
Improving their lives bit by bit:
Fire.
The Wheel.
Farming.
Stone buildings.
There was comfort to be had,
Thinking how much better we are now than them.


What monsters they were!
To maim and kill without a second thought.
Ears clipped.
Noses slit.
Hands Chopped off.
Skin branded.
Heads severed.


A little older, I learned of Industrial slaughter, meticulously planned
In quiet office buildings, with flow charts and targets.
Comfort was shoved aside by disbelief and horror.
Whole peoples exterminated.
How could this be possible? How did they let it happen?
We would not.


Yet every day the numbers rise, just before the weather forecast,
And no-one calls it what it is.
What monsters we are.




November Sunday

Darkness had fallen.
Curtains were drawn against the yellow lights that
Budded in the empty street.
A log fire crackled softly, a flickering, dancing glow,
And you sat in my lap,
In the nest of my arms,
One on each leg.
You both gazed, silent and entranced,
At the television and the lions of the Serengeti,
While I gazed, silent and entranced,
At you.

I bet Rishi’s house is warm

I bet Rishi’s house is warm.
No extra jumper for him.
Perhaps a silken dressing gown
Over shorts and sliders, as
He pads across the heated tiled floor,
To eat eggs benedict and read the FT.
He never stops working, to keep the economy safe.

I bet Rishi doesn’t turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees,
Or shares the bath with his wife to save a few bob on the bill.
To be fair, she’s a non-dom, so she doesn’t live here.
Not really.
Unlike Dom, who does.

I bet Rishi has a shiny walk-in fridge, with banks of delicacies from around the world
To sustain him when he’s peckish.
He will choose between smashed avocado on sourdough
or locally sourced quails’ eggs with truffle oil.
We will choose heating on, or white sliced toast with marge.
He’s just like you and I, underneath, honestly.
Because we are all in this together.

He does not know how to use contactless,
Or fill his small, grubby car with petrol, bless him.
He’s too busy for that. Because
He never stops working, to keep the economy safe.

So, it is just terribly unfair
When moaners smear his wife for avoiding tax.
After all, Rishi, a very modern Conservative, 
Does not own his wife.
He just owns
Us.