ALLIANCE

think I’m
going to
join the
Rebel Alliance

Lord Vader
says that all
her declarations
of love are
mind tricks

her kisses
creatures of
smoke and
mirror

what smoke!
what
mirror!

BY RICKENBACKER

that river
doesn’t work
any more
Sir Paul

I was born
close to the stream
which, swinging West
took its name

but you can feed me
purple painkillers (or yellow
or strawberry red) to
take my mind
of what was
grotesque in our
history

and long gone to
that not-
so-terrible beauty finding
its chords on
iconic Rickenbackers
honed to excellence
on a Hamburg stage

but dark nights ago
the wealth of our
darling nation built on
shame
of middle passage

not much in the neon colours
of your Sergeant Pepper
jackets
can assuage that away

SAY WHAT YOU LIKE

you
can say
what you
like
about
consciousness
and evolution

but in that
primal soup
the first
single-cell
organism was
thinking
about the future:

about the cosmos,
about binary oppositions
and their
deconstruction

about Hendrix, Bieber,
Trump and porn

ZAPPA FRIES

went to
an ultra
famous fast
food outlet

asked for a
big Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet metric
triple pounder

Zappa fries and
Tarantino sauce on

my Royale with
cheese

one might have
thought they would
be happy
to oblige

the customer always
being right

TS

happy birthday
Thomas Stearns

just
calling for
a little clarification

what did you mean by
telling me when
I asked you how to write the
poem of my postmodern
Neoliberal media wasteland

that should give up
iambic and syllabic
and learn
to play the guitar?

KEBAB

I like my Aristotle
in a
kebab

not Southern fried

but now I’m
old as the Pope
philosophically-
speaking

I will be less inclined
to spray my lecture on
sacred walls with
an aerosol

(should they call me
to profess much
academic freedom).

MY GRANDFATHER’S HOUSE

there was still the smell
of the Great War in
my grandfather’s house
even when the Beatles
were battling with their chords
on a stage in Hamburg

some sense amongst his wife,
my grandmother’s, porcelain figures
that life is
borrowed time, that
just one wrong domino
can bring
a world so secure, inviolable,
huge change of landscape

for there
were houses, farms, roads, whole
towns there swallowed
by war, as the Earth
became convulsive

shook and screamed
but
not to any songs

not to words that rang with
joy meant to transform but
now just
so much lost meaning

BORIS JOHNSON AT AGINCOURT

BORIS JOHNSON AT AGINCOURT

we bling, we bland, we bing-bang-
bong band of brothers

of which
I am
not my
sibling, shibling, shrinking,
did it all for
30 silver shillings
brother’s keeper

to the keep
to the tower with
all those
who sell our birthright for
foreign power

his passport
being made

SOMETHING BEYONCÉ MADE

when I asked
for lemonade

you gave me
something Beyonce made
there to
change our musical perception

but bell hooks says its
all just for shown
and sell

she the
most significant exception

CLICK THE LINK

can’t always get
what you want, Keith,

can’t take
anything for granted

so
I turned off the tap
till not a single word dripped

cut all hyperlinks, especially
those to Blake’s fountain

went
outside (took
time off) to
see the Sun

the real one, my one, not
the one in the planetarium
or my iPhone adaptation