@corner 31 march 2026

i was an absurdly anxious child, and i suppose i must have known it wasn’t normal to be so anxious, yet i spent most of my life in extreme denial about it. then i was on a weird trip for work to a sort of cult gathering and i guess it made me think about historic childhood excursions and related feelings. i’m calling this

thinking about my history as a ferocious blusher on the weird work week road trip

storm away with amy
on the weird work week
road trip
yet wherever i go
i’m always me
and find myself adverse to
reverse columbo,
so i hold my tongue
pathologically, i realise,
in the hotel power shower
my beetroot trauma
my painful blushing
the loss of limb control
the shame and the denial
too scared to ask
for the haircut i wanted
until i was almost middle aged
nobody ever explains
the comb numbers
it’s not taught in school
barbershops remain
somewhat mysterious to me

i maintain that all my poetry is just one long poem and is to some extent a linear diary of the sort of things i do and think. i just write little things down as they occur to me, then work out what to do with it later. but sometimes, i write so much poetry in a day that it ends up just naturally telling a little story.

write poetry before the ball

drop the pen on the latest line
i’ve finally found my voice
then i read some early stuff
ah man i’ve lost it
may as well just do puns
so i moan about michelle mone
she pulled herself up
by the brastraps
filled her cups and ran
eventually manage
to tie my bow tie
go to the ball
it’s too loud
wish i had earplugs
go to the loo
do the thing where i
hover my hands under the
paper towel dispenser
expecting hot air
i suppose i’ll go home
and write poetry

i studied philosophy and politics and i’m autistic so i’m never sure how much other people know about philosophy so just to explain the reference, john locke was a philosopher who used the term ‘social contract’. it is a sort of philosophy that seeks to examine the circumstances in which people would and should submit to government. this philosophy was extremely influential on the drafters of the us constitution. for locke, private property was very important. so much so, that everyone must have, ‘as much and as good.’

life under actually existing capitalism iii

as much and as good,
john locke said
the social contract’s been
frustrated i pled
everything’s owned
there’s no land left
if they could meter it
they’d charge for breath

the tech is quite useful
although it surveils us
we pray the welfare state
won’t further fail us
for nearly two decades
crises have availed us
imposed by the rich
to distract and curtail us

and finally, isn’t this just the worst timeline. where are we headed? the nun murderer and pop singer katy perry hasn’t had a hit in years and yet bezos not only rocketed her into space, he also returned her safely. what a pointless technology.

we have to stop katy perry and her gang of space villains

i should prepare
for social stress,
but foolishly
don’t push myself
so katy perry’s
in her spaceship
i’m burnt out
and need a facelift
she killed a nun,
i liked it not
oligarchic turn
make it stop

@poet’s corner 18 march 2026

less what breaks through. but more, what i wish i could break through, to other people. this is called

the futile push

i decry the wasted effort
of nationalism
if you look for
a thing that isn’t there
finding it
will take forever
but we keep looking
for sovereignty
as if it could keep us warm
or fill our bellies
when we have for long
lived in an age of empires
we bear the fasces epochal
as the colonial ceasefire breaches
yet more racist murders
sanctioned.
victory is hollow.
temporary.
achievement too
the only things
of meaning
are the gentle process
of making
of caring
of loving

nationalism is an addictive mixture of complacency, historical delusions, perverse grudges, jingoism, racism, fairy tales and holy violence. the struggle of one is the struggle of all people, of all lands. so i now want to offer everyone a positive vision for the future.

the 13th month

the bell chimed,
it’s time
to introduce the thirteenth month
rationalise the calendar
with months of 28 days
plus an extra day,
a global holiday
for all workers
during which the bourgeois financiers
shall man the (beer) pumps
and another one the same each leap year
and the extra month should be a holiday too
slide it in
between july and august
call it hedonia,
for a free summer of bliss

so, i was buzzing for my new society, with its new, quite lazy calendar. i started developing a utopian framework of government. but, ultimately, power corrupts, so i decided i would do my fellow citizens a favour by seizing it all for myself as a sort of sacrificial benevolent dictator, with questionable priorities.

why i support scottish independence but only if i get to be in charge

i long to modernise scotland
to the revue of my imagination
to restrict actors to a single role
depiction in our nation
and making them legally change their name
to the one they portray in fiction
punishable by death
and claiming global jurisdiction
then i will reduce the toothbrushing time
from two minutes to 90 seconds
and thus sanction my cohort
to luxuriate over breakfast
then i will retire to
the camper-van i’ll embezzle
proud of my augmentation of
our cultural endeavour

thank you, remember to vote on the 7th of may

bonus material (all untitled)

how many times
must i scan my tesco club card
at the railway turnstile
before they put me
in a care home
as i fear i may have
already gone over

remember library tickets
little card folders
watch the librarian
slip the ticket
into the folder
file it in the wide drawer
slide it closed
hand me my book
giving me gentle
asmr tingles

i once threw a ball
and simultaneously
caught an identical ball
i chucked the ball
i saw it fly out of my hand
felt it ping my grasp
yet there it still was
within my fingers
for a brief moment
the laws of physics
time, space,
cause and effect
were all up for grabs
i’d sliced into the warp hole
then a saner hypothesis
occurred to me
though i note
it was not proven

@poet’s corner 4 march 2026

hello. i am thrilled by the recent evidence of sunshine. the theme took me back to a weekend last summer. i was in london with my girlfriend to run a 10k and visit friends and family. on two occasions that weekend i sat on a sofa in a garden by blooming apple trees, shading myself from the hot sun. and this is what i wrote at the time:

backpack to london
for the downtown fun run
ladybirds, butterflies,
apple trees
and sofas in the sun
through the field of wheat
like a young theresa may
teal dragonfly perched
on a vibrant green
leaf above a rust bed stream
we wade with baggy minnows
by the weeping willow
clock two foxes,
attempt avuncular football
scorched between the bridges
peddle assisted
to the bucket hat photobomb
goosebumps on
the cold carriage home

that made me think of holiday poetry more generally. i always try and record my holidays in poetry. i don’t know why i don’t just take photos like everyone else. this was a trip to wales with my girlfriend’s family, including multiple young nieces and nephews.

we pick brambles by nebo
up the lane from nazareth
hold a toddler up a boulder
you know slow is not
intrinsically good or bad
park the motor
don’t feed the metre
tempo of doms
get a parking fine
waitrose cafe
avocado experiment
free tuna baguette
for the crash test dummy
swings, roundabouts
humming a christmas song
i guess i feel like i’m one of the uncles
from home alone
all our kisses are stolen
kids voices climb the stairs
white hairs in my moustache
catch the light in the morning mirror
visit the folly hotel of port merienion
lily pads and various trees
a beach that doesn’t reach the sea
sleep in and miss the hike
overdosed on the house party life
read a book to ariana
mostly seems to bore her
well she asked me to
then the last supper
aubergine, cheese and garlic
you drive me home
i’m a good passenger you say
i’m infinitely patient
and never complain
but pray silently as we speed towards the
slowing car ahead
drop the car off at the airport
and run back to town
both bridges are out
so i take the subway home
as do you
in the other direction

and finally this isn’t on theme but almost worked with last week’s theme of chips. this next bit is written from the perspective of a tender stem broccoli and hence all opinions contained within it are not necessarily my own.

the last antipasti

broccoli can’t be a prize,
everyone says,
or would say
if inquired of.
but my stem’s tender
as a lover’s thighs,
crunchy with salt,
drenched in rendered
fat, yum
pair me with focaccia
and dipstick me
in extra virgin
verging on
extravagant…
a celebrity
of humble bent

mind the time
you overordered carbohydrates
a panicked salad reprobate
arancini, croquettes and chips,
you had a need that i could sate
pumped with protein
and polyphenols
light and taut
and a little bit special

trust me,
flake almonds upon me,
indulge in fulgent greens
i answer your troubles
with charm and sheen
there is no knowledge
but sensation
so slide on in
to my dm’s
the merlot refill
unexpectedly chilled,
effervescent on your tongue
makes you cry yum, yum

confidence is recklessness incarnate
so crunch my fibrous branches so delicate
are you here for sublime?
or did you get lost looking for
the beige light district?
over by the camp
but closeted quarter?
oh yeah have another breadstick,
fill up on brie
i know you’ll be back for me

perhaps i can attract
one of your more stylish companions
i grew in the alluvial soils of campania,
learned english from hollywood movies,
reared on volcanic aqua minerale
and the sun’s patterns
you, with the specs,
you don’t wanna eat yet?
i can feel i’m cold.
was it yesterday? really yesterday?
bathing in the sunshine
when yanked,
quite jolted,
held tight in a gauntlet
flung in a crate,
i’ve been in the shade,
a day, who knows
they seared me!
and i’m here,
with the almonds,
but the plate’s cold.
all the sundried tomatoes are gone
the salami too
even the mortadella

oh, love may be king
in napoli
but fortune favours
brocolli
yes someone will
come back for me

i remember
when i was young sprout
thinking that if i was the first human
it would never have occurred to me
to eat food
or make love
that was an absurd thought
for a cruciferous vegetable, i know
but come on and eat me,
end this limbo
let me go
my whole life
flashes before my florets
i’m sliding off the plate
into the wastebasket
into the bin
a cardinal sin
and you know
i don’t see any chips in here,
you philistines.
i am a prize!
how did this happen to me?
am i weird looking,
or weird being?
you reach the top
you’re hot
and then you’re not
just one shot
then you’re compost.
it’ll happen to you too
one day.
memento mori.
i regret nothing.

@poet’s corner 18 feb 2026

hello. nightmare. here is a poem about an experience i once had that was like a long slow nightmare. i went on holiday with a youth club and got to be bullied by a bunch of older boys abroad for ten days. i’m also autistic and didn’t fully understand much of it. it was the last year of primary school. it is also a tribute to the anti-theist writer and drink sodden ex-trotskyite popinjay, christopher hitchens. in the style of hitch, the piece tries to make a serious point while starting with a pun that is both inappropriate and laboured.

under his eye

since the pope died,
i’ve had religion on my mind
child protection and it’s opposite,
no child’s left behind
i endured the kirk
and a ton of bunk
in the mid nineties
on a coach trip
to innsbruck
some older kids and me
i only joined the club to play football.
how did i end up here?

crying to my mother
in the phone booth
an autistic
immature youth
unable to verbalise,
understand, explain
the abhorrent situation
i was in…
i had no way to pray
for succour
no deus ex machina
from the kirk

then i was home for the
first year of high school
alienated, scared,
quietly unusual
with no idea
what was wrong with me
needing people,
passions and a method of being
a year later,
on a coach to france,
i met k and c
and then p and s and g
(most of whom i fell in love with,
one of whom i am still in touch with)
who accepted me
when i rang their doorbells
every day

so, pope bob the communist,
riddle me this
if all of life
is formed of carbon,
ejected from the factory chimney
which i understand it is
why does the church
tend to make things worse?

so, i don’t really dream. or at least remember my dreams. i have aphantasia, a lack of a mind’s eye. although i do see a world in my dreams. i just can’t remember it. can’t picture it. perhaps as a result, i have a terrible memory. but mainly for details of my own life. i have a good memory for general knowledge, political philosophy, and the tax system. maybe just those three things. but people often tell me stories about my life, which i enjoy from the perspective of a disinterested observer.

the universal now

naked to the invisible eye
is my conscience
so jaded
they almost shot the president
and i didn’t buy the paper
the elbowed class are occupied
betting the house on forex
honest labourers:
poets, cleaners and cooks,
balance on the breadline
not even the climate crisis
promises to kill with equality
that’s ermine hegemony,
they’ll colonise the moon
before one less race,
people or nation
leaves immiseration

so we live in the spur of the moment
and we can protest or conform, it
is a choice we make from minute
to minute within a limit
and maybe within it
there’s a justice extinct clink.
am-me-sia,
a daily battle with my lived reality
so i try and write everything down
in case one day it matters to me

i’ve always had trouble sleeping now that i think about it. i had intense anxiety as a child and was worried if i extended my legs under the duvet i would be vulnerable to attack by snakes. so i tried to sleep in a ball shape. i also liked hiding in cupboards. i’m reading a book about sleep and it says autistic people generally maintain a constant level of melatonin. we are just a little bit sleepy all day. but can’t sleep at night.

this is called

un oblique fathomably

i am unfathomably tired
so i buy the robot
that one day
will take its freedom
with my life.
welcomed into
the city of poets
and accepted by poets
to the poet poets’ poetry chair
of poetry
i sit in it twice
then the next day
i mope and
watch the robot mop
waiting for the clock
to say, bath time
i am fathomably tired

@poet’s corner 4 feb 2026

i graduated in 2008 into the great financial crisis. then we had a decade of austerity. then the culture wars – scottish nationalism, brexit, covid, anti-trans fearmongering. now we have the ai bubble and falling standards of living. and all this while the rich have got significantly richer. inequality destroys societal cohesion. it makes societies inefficient. it makes people poor and insecure. and it is a political choice. every impoverished child, every person sleeping rough and begging – are decisions people have made about the allocation of resources.

this is called

his false profits

i’ve seen a pandemic
and recessions,
i live in the aftermath
of depression
i’ve seen inequality
rise inexorably,
a corresponding decline
in provision
of the services required
for the good of all of us
so extinguish the myth
of the self made man
and his false profits

staying with this angsty left-wing political theme. i want to address one of the central myths about naziism. that there was something historically unusual about them. the nazis aren’t the only people who have tried to wipe out another race and take their land. that is also how the usa was established. but we see it differently for some reason. and it’s what israel is doing. trump has already set up a gestapo. what crimes are happening that we can’t see yet?

giletdonism, chorus iii

it was a massively morbid mistake
to teach generations
that the nazis were uniquely evil.
the crime of genocide
is fundamentally human
and celebrated annually
with fireworks and feasts
blindly strong and stable,
safe in our beliefs

let us adorn for the gilet years
whatever starts with hope
will end in tears
it’s the hint of sulphur
underneath the blend
ah well, we’ll get there in the end

i’m going to read something a bit longer now for a change. this is from february 2024, and its a sort of stream of consciousness diary. i went to the canary islands, and the blue sea and dry sandy land mass, as well as my out of control lovelife, had put greek mythology in my head. i also refer in this to a trip – this was my first and only dmt experience and i decided not to tell my barber, diane about it. the barber / patient relationship is sacred to me so i still feel some shame about this.

stanza 2 – february “witness/1 dope”

if all bald men
are solar powered sex machines
and if hercules in chains
is free to believe in himself
should i drink aegean water
when i hear my siren call?
hmm? a doubtful interjection.
beginning my each phrase
yet ah is how i start my whatsapps
—it’s a bit more generous.
an unexpected trip with
treasured brethren
of which diane was
not informed
cold, wet, gravel, ice…
and light new hoops.
story and sensation
is all there is,
between the end
and the beginning
ubuntu, our humanity,
sister, brother, heal me please
and i will heel to you:
we all rely on the good souls who forgive us.

skelly wean, have you tried the toblerone?
it’s very expensive, and different but not nicer
i have a theory that every generation knows completely different stuff
different, but the same

you trust me again,
you always could,
that love is unconditional
and universal, and specific,
and ebbs and flows throughout
the systems,
internal and external,
that are of us.
you notice another of my bizarre intolerances
—at last we have a term for it.
another shoe that
never drops,
no leg too short to
scorch the earth
are we a puzzle,
a riddle to be solved,
flawed and inconsistent
and driven by
unchosen passions,
forced to plump
for either irony
or idiocy
since the dawn
of the h bomb?
we all rely on the good souls who forgive us.

skelly wean, have you tried the toblerone?
it’s very expensive, and different but not nicer
i have a theory that every generation knows completely different stuff
different, but the same

this isn’t really on theme although it does reference the, perhaps, myth of boudicca commanding the tide. however, the reference is passing, being to a ‘beef sauce boudicca’ – a term of debasement that i invented that refers to the sort of englishman who is king of his own castle, but the only tide he can command is of packet gravy over his miserable overcooked roast beef.

brexitry in the uk (inc. chorus iv.)

i’m an analyrical
political animal,
fresh from facing off
a foreigner at the botanicals
i’ve reached the top, surprised
although i did start in the
middle (class) i realise
oh well, no pulling back
teetering on the brink
of my cul de sac
maybe i’ll hoist
a union jack
yeah i made my billions
by betting big
on brexit
i’m a big swellin’ bell
a beef sauce boudicca
and now it’s done and gone
my creativity diminished
naked on the stage
in the empty bar basement
shouting random swear words
for my own entertainment
they say a weird brother
is a sign of a weird family
drunk under the table,
call it strong and stable

wrap up warm for the gilet years
lasagna al forne and an afternoon of beers
it’s like 10 thousand spoons
when all you need is the bus fare to partick
ah well, we’ll get there in the end

@poet’s corner 25 nov 25

sometimes in poetry, the words really tell you everything and it doesn’t get any deeper.

prick threw an egg through

flashback to the day 

apple watch ultra two was launched

launched like the egg 

some rocket threw through my open window 

thanks for that. prick. i

’m going to clean that up one day

or paint over it.

—-

i had a mid life crisis a few years ago. caused largely by interactions with the medical industrial complex. lockdown was tapering off, and so was i.

i inexplicably lost a bunch of weight for no particular reason. i’ve been fit and active for most of my life, but i am prone to beer and sweets and my figure always reflected that. but suddenly i just couldn’t maintain my weight. i

t was a bit scary at first but by the time i wrote this i figured, lean in, just eat sweeties whenever i want.

the tempo of doms

to the sweetie shop why stop there’s no consequence 

i run and i come as close as i’ve came since whence,

rage rover through the stroll pastoral 

cape town to mugdock bog, 

wide spectrum gossip, conspiratorial 

prone to panic about other’s perceptions

a tendency revealed through a habit of projection 

concept album? i am living a concept life

into the tempo of doms i go, abandon strife

the internal rhyme rolls the rhythm, through indecision to precision

yes i am getting organised, on a mission

to rise up contra to mindless repetition

yet once again i combine olive oil chilli and paprika in the kitchen

—–

when you find out you are  autistic, there is a tendency to temporarily get more autistic. i have actually only had a few meltdowns. i am a quiet person. i am prone to shutdowns. i don’t like to draw attention to myself.

the few meltdowns i have had have tended to get me in serious trouble. like, hospitalised, or mortified.

on this occasion, i merely smashed a phone that was already quite scratched up and to be honest i probably wanted an excuse to buy a new one.

anyway, i had a hot bath to get over it, and when i got out, the plug was stuck in the bath. i had to empty the bath one bucket at a time into the loo.

plug stuck

am overwhelming day, 

a meltdown throws my phone away

the bath is full of soapy water, 

the plug stuck in its circlet

it’s thursday the 12th, 

what the fuck will tomorrow bring?

i start the drill and it’s enough 

to scare the plug from its crown 

——

recently,. i was a victim of attempted violence. a guy tried to knock me down twice, one of the times actually on the cycle path on victoria road. i had the guys licence plate.  

I had to decide if should i report the crime, and myself propagate violence (via the criminal justice system) on my assailant? 

i know victims of the police, i know that the punishment is often worse than the crime. i thought it over for a couple of days and my yearning for revenge declined quite dramatically. no doubt the same man will one day kill me and i will rue this.

choruses three and nine

have you tried the toblerone, pleasant child?

i have a theory my anti car philosophy i

s not strictly environmental 

but because i was in two major car crashes 

before i was 10

different, but the same

brazen child, pray share y

our toblerone with me

i know you pinched it but i’m no a grass

i have a theory 

that the criminal law system 

propagates violence in place of justice

different but the same