The Tidiness Of Life

All of this in the space of one table top

One table top by just less than one table top:

Playing cards

Newspaper

A bottle of orange juice

Jamie Oliver’s Christmas video

A scarf

An handbag

And a box of half eaten lime jellies

There by the mobile phone

Is the TV controller

All of this and more in the space of one metre

One metre by just less than one metre, pray go on:

The old sweet and present wrappers

A CD case (Music by Tim Hardin)

Two copies of the same book of poems

(Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming to Dover!)

A cup to make your own filtaire of coffee

A completely empty box

Once for Dairy Milk chocolates

A bottle opener

Also a packet of propranolol tablets…

All of this in the space of one ordinary day

One ordinary day by just less than one ordinary day

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Stare Hedge

It’s not such a great life

No matter how

The miners son

Might try to put that one across

No, out here in open country

No more spinsters to wait for

No more soldiers from the war

No more hens in the coop

Only headlights

Petroleum exhausts

Only midnight frosts

That I skip across

With the hungry crunch

Of the silence underfoot

Pavement to the post office

Cold clean air

How did the advertisement go

Consulate 

Menthol fresh

Cool as a mountain stream

I walked through that air

My long overcoat hanging loose

My untidy hair

Not combed for days

I heard the silence of the rooftops

The kerbside cars all off to work

I heard my footsteps

Took stock of all at once

Clear in my mind

That the fresh breath

And the chilled trickling waters

Are not far from Bluestone Ridge

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On Stage Now

Jazz, blown here through the backstreets

A raconteur who reels out the endless reams

Poet, painter, philanderer, a portent raised

In the endless fight against ubiquitous ubiquity

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GM

Shiny trousers

Frayed cuffs

Grey stubble beard

A mind to die for

Sand specks

Call the seashore

Windless waves

Snort the breeze

Star sets unbolt

Rebuilt by moonlight

Lakeside lovers

Lay down on sleepy lanes

Shiny silky trousers

Frayed and frilly cotton cuffs

Grey with silver flecked bob-cut

A mind and a body to die for

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New Job

All day

At the showroom reception

All day

To wait for the telephone call

How many times

Can the digital desktop be tidied

How many times

Can the words of welcome be re-arranged

Powerless to touch

As the dual-carriageway traffic passes

Unable and maybe only half aware

As to any of the passing travellers dreams

How many times

Might you offer to make coffee

How many times

To pass around the Country Life magazines

All day

At the showroom reception

All day

To wait for darkness to fall

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