Category poems

This autumn morning
sun streaming in through the windows
back door open to the world
she is in the kitchen,
bubbling pans...

for the last time. And this morning
in the June heat, men are hauling
the awkward empty bulk of chiller units
from shop to pavement to truck,
already sweating.

In which the reader is invited to consider the A-Z of charges laid at the door of Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, setting them against the oft-repeated claim that he is doing his best. Please tick all answers that apply.

Here’s the way to spin it, boss.
Go out there, look glum,
say you take responsibility.
Don’t mention Dido, dad, or Dom...

two months in, he can barely remember
a time before, has pared life back
to weekly shop, the bins, a newspaper
that yellows on the kitchen table...

The dog ate my homework.
I did not have sexual relations with that band, ABBA.
The dog is called Fido, er… Tyson, er… Boris, no…

Like Saul on the road to Damascus
when Jehovah stopped for a word and held forth
Mary Wakefield met Lord God Almighty
on the A1. In March. Heading north...

these numbers on a page
are a testament to british ingenuity
a familiar fairytale of sharp teeth
wolf as grandmother
remember people would die anyway...

Two hours, in, you hunger for what isn’t there,
the flesh on their bones, the life behind the names...

Rattling through the low hills
in the darkness and the endless endless rain
the train is overcrowded
because the train is overcrowded...

And so, it comes.
That winter morning when you wake
and find that you have had.

enough...

Laura’s snaffled an exclusive
freshly minted by the Tories
a left-wing thug has punched a bloke!
she tweets...