Statistically Significant Happiness.

'Face wiz trippin' the loat ae um...' - Pedestrian.

The graph curves

into

a

frown

of

disappointment.

There is a weather beaten rock were you sit
with your back to the wind trying to light
a hopeless cigarette.

A bus stopped dead at the lights

sealed with young mothers, folded buggies,
and cantankerous soured faced history lessons.

If they took a slice of orange

on the head of their beer
they could enrich their lives
with some vitamin C.

You oil yourself on whiskey

and tough boy humour
and varnish old wounds.
You sure know how

to lighten up a swollen cloud.

A geriatric ward
with fourteen year olds
going on eighty

year old cynicism.

Statistically our laughter
doesn't stand
a chance against

the wall of the cemetery.

There is not enough

sun through the sky 

to cheer up this Nation.

Happiness

is a
dish

best

served

in the
Mediterranean.

Foot of The Walk

He is an old skeleton of a man. Stranded somewhere in his sixties. Stubble tough as sandpaper. Stubble cement grey. His eyes bloodshot and ghosted like a man who has been taken over. He whispers to himself.

He carries a bottle of wine haphazardly under his arm right which spills as he tries to settle it. A cap sits crookedly on his head. His short coat is dirtied by grease and sick mess. His trousers hang loosely around his waist. By all accounts one gone quite mad.

He walks stiffly like a boy who has defecated in his trousers. This is no simile; a sewage leak has stained through and dribbles down his right leg. He mutters to himself.

This is a man who has been burned of his wings and robbed of his halo. No Saints in this city. The burden is yours alone. Stories of despair wait behind so many dank curtains. 

At the junction he edges awkwardly round the corner. We cross the road, walking farther into our lives and further away from his; averting our eyes from the suns glare.  

Cheap Christmas Selection Box

Sky Glass

Snow flakes under magnification

look like complex mechanical structures.

Thank you, Great Voiceless One

for such immense Christmas décor.

We, Royally speaking, always knew you to be

an Interior Designer of the First Order.

Wise Old Beard

Father Christmas has a great white beard, it is:

A snow capped mountain top.

A frozen snow caked lake.

A snow covered gully near the mouth of the fjord.

A candy floss of snow carpeting the land.

Father Christmas's great white beard – adored, revered.

Perennially pruned, combed and sheered.

Let us never forget that large mysterious

most ancient of beards.

Dirty Realist

Santa is in the drinks cabinet using 

Billy Boys new monster truck as a drinks cup.

Bottles surround his black boots in worship. 

Billy in reindeer pyjamas climbs down the stairs, 

mouth open 'O' shaped in shock:

'You fucking drunken materialist whore!

You're not my Father any more!'

*Written in 2005. Edited in 2012. Dreadful for eternity.  

Mainly warm, asleep and safe.

No Einsteins here, no equations,

just gormless, goggle-eyed queues.
Some pray before false angels

end up dancing in psychiatric wards.

Build safe families with a perfect mortgage,

file it all under standard procedure.

Keep the monkey and bananas in the pen.

Hose yourselves down don't run the risk

of catching fire while the comets explode.

Bolt the doors, lock the windows.

God forbid the chaos of the fearless spirit

should catch our eye.

(2005)