Curb

A quad bike idles -

mother and baby

downwind of the exhaust.

Quiet coughing.

Another woman

wishes to speak.

Unremembrance Day

Something happened -

at some point in your eyes as

they looked up from your phone

or stared down at your pint.

You wouldn't tell me what,

well not with any words but

I could see it in the way that

even your shadow trembled.

Perhaps it was something I did

or that I didn't say often enough,

more likely the way you made me

ashamed of being me too much.

Welrod whispers hissed amongst

the voices I heard in my head

as I tried to forget watching you

walk away and not looking back.

+1 for Treason (dedicated to Azhar Ahmed)

Wake up. Wank. Wash and shave.

Have a cuppa and check my emails.

Laugh at some clips on YouTube

and wonder if my digital doppelganger

(courtesy of a database of databases)

is going to be late for work (hint: it is)

then have the misfortune to go on Facebook

and dare to tell my friends what I really think.

Then come the outcries of well-heeled men

with shadows and screams held in their eyes like

a lunatic's vision of the future in a crystal ball.

There's no boot stamping on a human face

because no that would be too obvious,

so out come the legions of Oxbridge recruits

in sharp suits and dapper ties to wag their fingers

and gravely shake their heads.

But how's this for a "racially aggravated public order offence"?:

Fuck you, imperialist cracker scum,

you Yankee arse sniffing poodles

what right do you have to fly our flag

over the graves of the not-so-secret dead?

None, of course but that wont stop you

like Javert on the trail of Valjean you see

the guilty everywhere except for in the mirror.

Decades ago misguided young men were simply

following orders and Nuremberg awaited them, but

what court will stand in judgement over our finest sons?

Certainly not an English one; no they're too busy

locking up kids for speaking their mind, not knowing

that thinking outside the box could get you put in one.

The only thing they have to fear is fear itself which

apparently is us and everyone who knows enough is enough.

Pine

You told me to remember to smile

if not for you then for myself;

would that I could recall how

but my heart just isn't in it.

That cardiovascular hydra

devoured it in your name,

and now is more keenly felt

for the absence in its wake.

How easy it was for you to use

the most profound of truths

to cover up so simple a lie

and make it seem like my fault.

“These things just happen” you said

and I know, hope, you didn't plan it;

“But that's just the problem,” I said,

“These things always happen to me.”

Einzig

It's often said that you can't miss

the things that you've never had;

but I do, like a magpie on a broken

branch with no treasures left to find.

Your photos say nothing about you

except how you want people to see

how ordinary you are having

never even considered loving me.