Christmas Eve 2005

I wonder what I’ll do tomorrow that’s out of the ordinary?

For murdering the English language and his profligate use of useless adjectives, the anti hero of this poem receives the long sentence he deserves

My favourite Christmas morning breakfast is home-cooked ham on bread and butter.

We are spending the New Year in Vlissengen, in the Netherlands. It’s where Jill and I fell in love, in a little attic room in the house of Annemarie and Hans. They’re selling up and moving to Italy and so this will be our last visit.

(haiku)
one, two, three, four, five
accumulating darkness
crow keeps his counsel

They found Santa dead in the back garden, a gun lay close by.
They are rounding up the usual suspects

As I write this, the watercolour sun sets
in an orange sky
behind the scribble of hedge
and the spilt water of bank

My favourite ever Christmas present was my first guitar.

I haven’t written a song for Jill this year
But I have composed a symphony for her
in my head

A frosty morning
In the corner of the council tip
is a huge blue cage
chocabloc with broken TVs, computers, laptops, monitors, maybe there are a thousand carcasses there, bashed, splintered, split, crushed, cracked, dead
their ghosts sucked back
into the ether
Frank blows into his gloved hands
It’s cold enough for snow, he says

Despite Christmas being for children I enjoy it too
How about you?

I saw my granddaughter in her first Christmas play
She was an angel

How rare to end a sentence with an empty stop

If Life Was Real

If your life was on celluloid
What film would you be in?
If your life was a song
How would your chorus begin?
If your life was laid out on a plate
In the best restaurant in town
What first course would you choose?
And if you woke alone
In the empty hours
And couldn’t sleep
Would you turn on the TV
Or listen to jazz on the radio
Or pick up your guitar
And quietly sing the blues?

Please also leave comments for the Tony Meehan poem here.

Goodbye Tony Meehan

Who noticed you
Packing up your kit
Stowing it in the back
Of the cold, black van
Leaving the town for good
And no return gig?

It seems the world sat watching
And waiting for the final whistle
Of extra time
In the George Best game

Not for you
A noisy farewell
One minute of wild, rapturous drumming
At the Brixton Academy

But I shed a private tear
For my lost youth
When you stepped out of the shadows
When life had a simpler four four beat
And your paradiddles dazzled

You were the stylist
The silhouette in the yellow spotlight
The star
And because of you and Jet and Hank and Bruce
I bought my first guitar

TV Lover

I saw you in the adverts
And ordered you
On your special number

At last
You appeared in my life
And I loved you

I adjusted the widescreen control
(I never liked girls who were too thin)
Altered the level of colour
To bring out the blue
In your eyes
Tweaked the contrast
To lighten your hair
And darken your skin
Turned down the volume
And turned up the bass just a smidgeon
For those husky notes

My Girlfriend Guide informed me
You would be round every Saturday at nine
After the watershed
But if I missed you
You'd be round again on Sunday at eleven
After the news
And again in those lonely wee small hours
On Triple X Gold

To be on the safe side
I programmed you into my sigh-pod

Now that your transmissions are over
I often replay the bit
Where you said
You loved me too

From Searching For Blue Sea Glass (the book) (Rabbit Press)