Sweet Rush

Is there cake on the menu, mate, cake?!
I’m sure I saw slices suggesting

a cook has been busy with baking

and sweetness is what I crave most.

Look in my eyeballs, mate, balls

to your oranges, apples, bananas;

forget 5-a-day, throw a bolas

at brothers parading with cake and

drag all their cake to the cake stand,

sprinkling sugar deep snow.

I’ve gobbled up meat and potatoes

and now I want saccharine – speed.

Valentine

We look away at the same sky;

a sky that’s always changing.

I fail to make this world benign,

although we see the same sky

and here we are, alone now,

side-by-side with waving trees

and, in a our time, unerring breeze

is dancing down a blinking street,

like dancing thoughts of two;

the best of me, the best of you.

Two Down’s Boys

 Here we are

in our aprons,

dripping lemonade.

People are peeping

and, in the restaurant, tittle tattle

leather skirts and thunderbolt words,

politics, bible and bartered

avocado and prawns.

But we are munching oily chips,

fit and fat,

bellowing hip-hop

from our chambered hearts

- magnificent brotherhood.

That’s where we’re at.

Specsavers

‘Look into the green lights;

you’ll feel a little puff of air

on each eyeball, keep it there.’

Waves and tiny pleasure planets

pile into a retina today,

depending on my prayer.

A Moment

Traveling backwards on a screaming train,

I’m fiddling with my latest iphone

app and, looking to the left, a yellow sun has

risen up between a line of trees.

Heavenly light - in golden morning - stops

shadows on the right side of the train. I gawp;

feeling a glad splendor rising near my heart

but soon look down, restore technology – macbook, pixels, restart.

‘What a glory – this morning!” and it takes a stronger act of will

(stopping my little inner voice) to notice, once again, the Fall:

green and golden in my moments here – a sadness rises -

and my train heads westwards, onward, rushes.

Conception

I walk into a café’s mouth

and wander lonely as a soul

amongst the faces; people laugh

and grin and point at purple sea and

mountains on the wall.

In here, ice cream; knickerbocker

glory; outside, snails are sliming in the wet

and, as I gaze, a waiter (‘Peter’ on his name badge) says

‘It’s not self-service,’ wafts a menu in his hand

‘what’ll you get?’

Seven Ages of Day

Sun’s as bright as a hospital lightbulb

makes me eyes water and cry;

time to be up and about in me trousers,

get me washed into the day.

Just before lunchtime, I chat to me mates,

head off to the caff with young Amy

and by mid-afternoon I be graftin’ like bullocks

or else I’ll end up in the army

but just before tea-time I suss it all out

and tell all the bosses ‘bog off’

then flop in me chair now, with cold beans on toast

and watch me some footie on t’box

but it’s darker than caves, and both eyes are red,

so I’d better head off up the stairs into clouds in my bed.