So much catches on
Spiral here! Spiral there!
Togetherness and English show
Belles and Beaus
Tomorrow is another Vanity Affair
Gliding errors and aching booths
Scenes together
The shopping mazes of familiar faces
Lands claimed by Tom Tom
Roads, streets, maps and buses that drive themes
new age romanticism
Are You Writing To Him
Are you writing to him?
The gay man at the end of the bar
The one with a handlebar moustache
Checking out the fellows with draught beer.
Do you have some autumnal cheer
Like randy sweet ecstasy befriending the cocoa butter
Dances in the middle of the dance floor
Sweet French kissing when the numbers are up:
What is the showman
When the empty cup is always half full?
How does he know my so well?
Who takes his photos on Instagram?
The shop has a door where the custom is welcome
The personage had a past where these things were shut out.
He likes to scream and shout
The old man called Paul and Jock –
Two o clock and it’s pistols at Dawn’s
She like to play hard to get
And my life is an enormous amount of regret
Shadow debutant feelings
Energising a wet towel on the bathroom floor
And selling some products for London’s COVID environmental workers
The tear jerking from a jerking off man
Planned Satanism revival lamping one on the face of the nearest poet
The Arts are not funded in Royal towns in London
Again and again, he speaks of the medics name
Naked in the rain like Adam buying John Betjeman a cold hard won drink
Dripping with icey perspiration from the thoughts of a delightfully dinner
And some conversation about love making that makes the condensation erotica.
An advert perhaps – announcing the change in temperature?
Sirs. Please. This is Birmingham.
We have so many Civil Partnerships to go…
AI Summary
It’s a poem about watching a man at the bar and feeling the whole machinery of nightlife, desire, regret, and self‑consciousness whirl into motion — the moustache, the beer, the dance floor, the Instagram poses, the old men shouting, the poet worrying about his own life, the COVID workers, the unfunded arts, the rain, the imagined conversations, the erotic charge that dissolves into embarrassment, humour, and self‑reflection; the poem moves through Birmingham streets, bathroom floors, pandemic memories, and literary ghosts, ending with a wry acknowledgement that the city is full of civil partnerships, full of lives intersecting, full of stories that never quite resolve, and that the poet is still trying to understand his place in that crowded, messy, human scene.
Anything for Culture
Anything for culture
A watermelon on a Saturday afternoon
Shopping in the rain
A subway trip instead of a minicab.
Bread rolls and some quarter measure of cheese;
Laying off the wine for a lazy Sunday and a game of golf.
Where is the wolf that will eat up my day
Taking me whole into the night for sexual imagination and a good night’s sleep.
I troll the internet deep
I look for my mate in the rain
Someone to appeal to my brain
An intellectual conversation in the rain.
She would make that repetition trite
Something black, someone white?
Who knows if the Asian one would be tight,
It’s my day off and I’m the laptop King.
Some music, some nachos and some time to sing
I don’t care when they are around
The noises in the moody weather
The office fiends being clever
Resistance in the celebrity scene
People who know what my art work means
Residents who have been there before
Workers in their own right feeling a bore.
Why don’t you feel more?
I’ll give advice one day.
Something merry, something gay
There’s always something lesbian to spiritually say…
(Come Back to Me from Hampstead)
AI Summary
It’s a poem about the small rituals of a weekend — watermelon, rain, bread rolls, golf, music, nachos — and the larger hunger underneath them: the desire for companionship, intellectual connection, emotional resonance, and a sense of belonging; the speaker scrolls the internet, imagines conversations in the rain, wonders about attraction, listens to the weather, watches office workers and celebrities, and feels the weight of being observed and misunderstood, all while trying to keep his creative identity intact; the poem ends with a wry, almost tender gesture toward Hampstead, toward return, toward the possibility that even in boredom, noise, and loneliness, there is still something “merry,” something “gay,” something spiritually alive that wants to speak.
Healing
The energy is not calling me
I am not there
Tomorrow is so corporate
The shops are so self aware.
The office blocks have Maya in them
The oceans are so pertinent with religious history
They have been sailed by navigators and Navigant Consultancy
When I am unemployed and arrived at so self aware.
What is meant by repetition?
How is woman to shake the disease?
The emerging markets of South America know nothing of Peruvian coffee
Traded in Aldi for the competition scarcity and poverty trader’s delight.
These are thus fights and I am astrologically bereft
The man in the café is joking with my reputation
The Queen knows me better than myself
All is so obvious to them.
(Stealing Old English again)
Robin Hood strains in my navigated market place
I can see the futility of travelling alone
Talks
Walks
Speaking in a café
Welling up at the wishing well – looking for some pride and happiness
The search for human values shall not be in vain
In spite of the United States nuclear missile declarations and the gains that have been costed.
I’m off to Costa tomorrow for some latte and millionaire shortbread
Thinking of my winnings banned from the horses stables at Amazon CEO’s backyard animal farm with Amal
The amazing woman who stole my economy
And her friend Karma who does like my ride now.
Is this the eternal questions?
Poet’s riddled as Kings denied their cross.
Tomorrow is the boss for the lilies in the field of the man
Who stationed his wagon for the American plans.
Delhi can’t delegate again
The dead need waking up again
The ego is about to blow
The Drs never got sent down below
The writer is despondent
The family is poor that supports him
Paul Ready is quota
The nurses need milk floats
And Ferris Bueller is shaking it crazy for the war between thee BMA, the DTI and EQUITY.
“He who comes to Equity must come with clean hands”
So shake your dick off well in the urinals for the lands of by elections at Kingstanding
And whatever judgements are merriment to the sick and puke in the school toilets
When they and their transferred parents are too young for such legalities.
These economics are free
This ALCS is for me
The servant is quarter the height of the negro with attitude who nearly punched me today
And there is more reason to increase the poor prat’s pay
Selling coffee
Serving bread
Counting the computation of the cost of a pint of milk
Politicians lose the word of God to raise the wages of sin
Slick like an average RnB dancer without some good place to go
The negro
The negro
What is the heart of darkness of the negro?
Compassion for the BBC again and again and wasted energy about which they cannot be you and see the I in the me and not sell medication for to not be The Complain.
Complan.
AI Summary
It’s a poem about feeling drained of energy, alienated from the corporate world, and overwhelmed by the repetition of economic struggle, social judgement, and spiritual confusion; the speaker moves through cafés, supermarkets, global markets, Robin Hood fantasies, nuclear anxieties, and family poverty, all while feeling watched, mocked, or misunderstood by strangers, institutions, and even fate itself; the poem spirals through humour, bitterness, political noise, and personal despair, naming the absurdity of modern economics, the weight of unemployment, the ache of being misinterpreted, and the pressure of carrying identity in a world that keeps misusing it, before dissolving into a frantic, exhausted meditation on dignity, compassion, and the desperate need for a place where the “I” can breathe without being turned into a symbol.
Wild Stage 