Category poems

when we finally get the keys to our kingdom– and it will be no easy thing, my brothers, my sisters,my friends, no quick and easy thing, this will be a story in itself –when we finally get the keys to…

This autumn morning
sun streaming in...

for the last time...

In which the reader is invited to consider the A-Z of charges...

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...