BREXIT

“I don’t want peoples’ change mate I want a change for people like me who people like you write poems about that no fucker will read because it makes em feel bad. People want happy endings and I ain’t it”

– Lou, Ring Road, Cov

In full view she slept in shrink-wrap popping like a real fire

And she was, she was a real fire petering out in the ghost grey blitz.

In full view she slept presenting a problem in the Al-Fresco wonderland

It’s not good for business bringing your problems from home into our work?

In full view an awkward looking yes-man awoke her with impeccable manners

and the ‘problem’ moved on to a biffa bin where she plucked her Monday crib.

Away from sight I broke my focaccia like a Jesus of the ring road desert and

she told me her name as if it meant something to the whole flat world.

Away from sight we got talking about life, of politics and when I said Brexit

she thought it was a chocolate bar so I left her with a taste of Europe,

chocolate, and pigeons shining like naff zirconias in Cov’s cheap ring.

THE STRAYS

For Samantha

When your tired black dog stopped barking

moon laid white lilies all over the Midlands and

now I think of wastelands as half written manuscripts.

When you fell asleep with your trained black dog

I stroked its coat of night sky and comforted you both –

realising letters are broken tools poets sculpt into eulogies.

So in fields of sky your final sun will bounce like a sad red ball

and I picture your smile as you unlatch heaven’s gate

to yellow stars you once wrote for those labelled;

this was your true holocaust;

you kept the dead alive as

we will keep you;

running as ink

on white

fields of

paper.

I DREAMT THAT GOD WAS A WOMAN

You’ll find me in the full stops of lit windows

up there in sky-scraper nebulae I am man@work,

down there in the invoiced afterlife I am loved and

you, yes you, will find me staring into space finding us.

Last night we got wasted and talked about God,

I imagined a woman dragging earth through stars

and as she did so sparks created red new worlds

growing in her broken waters I love how they make us pure.

You will find me in the lay-by with my heart racing

as better cars and worse people pass me in blurs,

and I have found life’s formula but lost it at the lights

when god in a van yelled “wake up you fucking wanker.”

I have found myself awaking at three twenty one a.m

around the time I was born with hair they had to bobble,

And Indian men came to tell my mother she was lucky

I slept by their daughters and never cried till they did.

You will find me looking at space through artex

when days make slaves of us and we walk content

knowing that maidens were once tied to lost ships

like battered sails of dark clouds hanging over us.