the yaktrax

a pointless punishment
for my eczemic fingers
janurian resolvers avoid
pavements rinkish
speak to the sun, the sky,
the sea and the trees
mass palomas fly,
sneeze around disease
rife and virulent,
bring us to our knees
re-shorn past the
pine scent xmas ceme-tery(eee)

my fingers were sore from the cold. the streets were asheet with ice. i bought myself some yaktrax, remembering them from a personal injury legal report. but the ice was gone before i got to wear them. meanwhile, people were throwing out their christmas trees, fed up of love and goodwill and all that sort of stuff.

ending

@poet’s corner 10 dec 2025

fellow poets, the end is nigh. 

this is called, the hoarse foreman of the apocalypse

life under actually existing capitalism continues; 

a unique combination of boring and stressful

the yoga word lost to an armed counter revolution 

be mindful, namaste, 

despite the flames, be restful

the firewater fades to a numb, dumb dysphoria

as we tag along 

behind the hoarse foreman of the apocalypse 

on foot due to cutbacks

i think about time a lot, the hopeless impossibility of the past, its unchanging nature, its doubtful provenance. but do facts remain or do they change over time? the despots of the past become sanitised by history. they become great men. nearly always men anyway.

but we don’t need great leaders. we need stability, peace, equality, food, shelter and entertainment. we need good company.

this is called

endless time

how would you feel 

if everything happened forever 

if every moment of your life was still ongoing 

everything always in total contradiction 

i want the unexpected

off script, dumbfound me

astonish me quick 

with your attention to retail 

when they finish the history books we’ll see

we just have to just accept the past

it happened

i was once diagnosed with a terminal illness. that was the start of my midlife crisis. i was then completely undiagnosed on my 39th birthday. a misread x-ray was all it was. i went to decathlon and listened to madonna.

i remember the days after diagnosis. feeling so heavy. feeling like i could forget to breathe. this is called 

lonely consequence

maybe we can choose 

our consequences

and gain energy as the 

days accumulate 

have i mentioned my inability to visualise the future?

scared, listless, 

unreadily forced to bear witness

a dusken golden moment lighted

a sudden recognition; 

that leaden feeling 

when they tell you are going to die

is loneliness, 

as much of it as you can have.

my on and off girlfriend and i were finally turning the dial fully to off. we were taking active steps to move on. it seemed like that was what we were going to do. i decided i would focus more on my housework. but as usual. the temptation to check in arose. 

inconclusive, in conclusion

anyway, that was yesterday, 

with that we close the chapter

for now the winter sun flits 

over scarecrows, toclips and frosty nips

and it all begins to feel conclusive 

but then the things as usual 

start to get ambiguous

and once again of the good souls 

we must ask forgiveness 

and one last thing. this is the last chorus of the first year of my epic, ongoing, poem, the love epochal. 

the redemptive final chorus

o wean in a manger, 

your chocolate trough 

it’s a preposterous amount but 

somehow never enough 

i have a theory 

that love is pain

different but the same

reus brexitus 

brexitus rex, a fencepost;
no entry for french blokes
yes hello we are here
it is act two of don quixote
or quixote like quick’s oat
(though i prefer key oh tick,
like chaotic)
in which we ask,
will the windmills we recall
from the first act charge back?
in which we find,
that windmills
don’t charge on poets

happy new year.

i started publishing the poem a year after i started writing it. and as i published, i continued writing, but within a new context. in cervantes’ don quixote, book two was written after book two was published, and don quixote’s resulting fame was part of the story — the other characters he encountered has already read the first book. the first novel and the first example of metafiction. so if you are the sort of reader who throws the book at the wall when the author is introduced as a character, i’m sorry to inform you that this has been part of the challenge novels present to readers since the start.

the redemptive final chorus

o wean in a manger,
your chocolate trough
it’s a preposterous amount but
somehow never enough
i have a theory
that love is pain
different but the same

if there is one thing i have learned, it is that love is pain. love will always hurt. you have so much tied up in it. but it is worth it because a life without it is devoid of the highs and lows that are emblematic of the life poetic.

now is the time

i’m a basic bitch consumer
i just wanna be humoured
eat this pish
it’s a fancy foreign dish
while i appreciate expertise
i’m keener to fetishise
passionate begginerism
call for a strong and stable new era
are the good souls ready
to forget forgiveness
and embrace the love
that burns old epochs down?

dear reader: we embraced the love. it was a shame to burn the old epochs down. but one must live now, in the present. it’s the only show playing.

and aside from one final chorus, this is the end of part two of the love epochal. and it’s a happy ending! please join me in part 3, giletdonism, in which i start a new job, embark on a career as a poet and writer, and embrace gilets in my casual wardrobe.

the christmas rush (for profits)

we share lunar nectar
from the honeymoon phase
i’m melodramatic.
a little bit insane
come on to it,
we’ll get through it
furnished on pews at church for the bell
for those in the business
of avoiding hell
a prayer for vast,
wasteful riches
research and develop a needless
needle’s eye
and call it camel sized
to scadge a tad of marked time
then a renegade point one nine
in and out caused a firm, wide flummoxing…
i’ll be driving the laptop home
for christmas this year

happy/merry christmas, delete as appropriate.

my love and i shakily reunited, exchanging christmas gifts. she got me a guernsey. i got her a little scroll in a charm on a necklace. we decided to surrender to love.

work was busy, but i had a new thing lined up, and i was getting itchy for a new year, a new challenge, a new configuration.

my darling and i went to church to hear the choir. sadly it was their day off, so we just endured a freezing cold sermon. at least hell’s warm.

atlas tugged

earth is comprised of water, mud and metal
so is the human body.
and as we pump pollutants into the air
we literally incorporate them,
a singular ticket to where?
i’m in my prime and,
unlike miss jean brodie,
atlas tugged
people expand in space to take it all
when i just want to be so small
hitlerism is coming back
and i’m as depressed as i am scared
and i’m suddenly not sure,
is everyone humouring me or not?

i’d just read primo levy’s masterpiece ‘the periodic table’ and was touched greatly by it. the vile inevitability of war, hatred and suffering, coexisting, always, with the fantastic beauty of the cultural world. as the bombs dropped, the poets worked on in the dark.

the culture war will exist forever. because there will always be the poetic and the curious on one side, and the bullies on the other side, who think that poetry is an affront to them, because they dare not try and understand it. and even now, when the bullies are fundamentally in control of america and the internet, they strike against poetry, and call us elitist, when all we are is a disparate mass trying to make sense of the hatred in the world, and imagine something nicer.

the war on wars

veteran of the wars on terrorism
drugs, poverty, intellectualism
now let’s declare war on concepts
and rush into combat
clench fisted and limp wristed
the joy of the process is doing it again
g sharp minor has all the black sharps
do you remember the shoe people?
i realise
i myself am a slow cunt
who thinks it so important
that the words look nice on the page
with nice punctuation:
in all the nice places!

you know, we have grown up in a traumatic time. since i was born it’s just been empires collapsing, financial crises, wars and pandemics. the nuclear arsenal rests above the fireplace like chekov’s gun.

i remember once standing at the roundabout on dumbarton road, by the thornwood. with n or m. and talking about the shoe cunts. rather than the shoe people. a pretty weird kids tv program. and we moved from shoe cunts to slow cunts. people for whom time travels at a different rate. meaning they seem slow to observers. in retrospect. clearly we were talking about ourselves.

the minor scale

how could i be complacent
now that i know
the minor key is
just a line below…
is there a word
for the sense of being
so fundamentally insignificant
on the scale of the cosmos
but so important
to those who love you?
if not, can i suggest
we are all imbued
with great minifiance;
as every speck of stardust
lights its own constellation
and is lighted
and it has been an honour to share
our hour on the rock together

i was dealing with my mid life crisis at this point by focussing on music lessons. i picked up most of what i know about music by just mucking about. and in my 20s, my music theory knowledge was dross, but i had a good enough ear to write some songs that were good enough to get on the radio every now and then, and to get the opportunity to play lots of gigs around the city.

after i finally gave up on the dream of being a renowned rapper and producer, i pretty much forgot it all and concentrated on learning about debits and credits, and on writing prose.

anyway, i’m still pretty crap at music but it is very satisfying to be able to perform a few songs on my melodica and i know my scales now.