Your Kitchen

The stove is warm against my back

A scatter of branches 

Divides up the white sky outside

Photos of you, me, everyone, 

On the fridge, looking out,

Smiling at our future selves

Connected across time

And the heat of the stove

A heart, pumping out into this house

Its warmth uncurling through hallways

And dark rooms

Through the days and months of my year

So I can feel it now, 

Six months and 200 miles away

And in every shadow I can see

The amber glow of those days

Feeding the fire to keep it alive

The embers flicker, faint and nearly gone

I blow gently, to prolong the glow

Charcoal sketches in the creases of my hand

Birds in the branches

The stove against my back

Warming me, 

Until I’m there again

 

Some Things Burn Forever

 

The sun went down a little while ago

But pale, amber light still washes the sky,

Simmers on the walls of the bedroom.

It is past my bedtime, but I don’t want

To stop reading

So I huddle on the carpet, back to the window

Eyes gently tugging against the darkening pages

Eking out the last of the Summer day

So I can stay

With the hitchhikers and Cybermen

And witches cats and I’m not ready yet

For them to go away

It doesn’t feel like night, more

A hidden, secret part of the day.

An hour than opens and unfolds

A place that’s warm

And safe

The rooftops slope, diagonal, past the dormer window

Humming warm with the echoes of the sun

I read until the words are gone

Homogeneous Prometheus

 

Inspired by nothing more than optimism

Bill set out into the morning

To see if there was any magic

He thought it was probably there, in abundance

But most people missed it

Most people weren’t looking

Bill would not miss it

Bill would look at the world in a different way

A new way.

You know what?

I hate Bill. 

I already, definitely, hate Bill. 

I’m sorry. I know I just created him. 

I know I just created you, Bill

But you’re terrible

Bouncing out of your door like you’re in a cartoon

Or an advert for… I don’t know what

Waffles, or car insurance or fascism

Or something

Looking for magic? Seriously?

Were you going to follow your heart?

Search for truth in the dreams told by the clouds in the sky?

Have an original thought, Bill.

I feel I may have crushed Bill’s optimism somewhat.

And now I feel bad.

I’m sorry, Bill

It’s not your fault

It’s mine

It’s my fault

For making you so awful. 

Look. Maybe there is some magic. 

Over there. In that puddle. 

Most people wouldn’t look there, 

Would they, Bill?

In a puddle. They’d avoid it. 

But not you.  

Because you, Bill, you see things differently.

Go on. Look in the puddle. 

What’s reflected?

Nothing, Bill. 

Nothing is reflected.

Just your stupid, weird nosed face. 

Oh, yeah. I forgot to say. 

You have a really weird nose. 

Stay on Target

 

Close your eyes and let it drift away

It’s OK if now and then

We don’t create an epic story with our day

If we say fewer words to one another

Than Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator

If our interior worlds remain unsaid

If, sometimes, when the light goes off

You just need to sink forever into bed

If the most romantic thing I’ve said all day

Is “I got you a biscuit,

Because I was getting myself a biscuit

But if you don’t want it, I’ll have it.”

Our silence as we stare at our phones

If this were a play

Would be a telling tableau of a relationship

With all the colour drained

But days like these are echoes, not of disaster

But of a song that’s always there

If you know how to listen

Of days when the course is set and strong and good

And I need nothing more than you

In my peripheral vision

Auto Semiotic Asphyxiation

 

I’m frightened

Like a banana

Looking at a Twix

“What’s this?”

A banana

Afraid that its sleek yellow curves won’t be enough

Not against this golden beast

Afraid that the precise, firm, concave sweep of its fruity surface

Will fail to entice

When opposed to the sugar rush immediacy 

Of not one

But two

Caramel biscuits

God damn that Twix!

I’m scared

Like a dinosaur

Looking up to see a meteor

That’s going to throw the ground into the sky

I’m apprehensive

Like it’s 1999

And I’ve just registered a website

For my business selling fax machines

I’m worried

Like the town crier announcing the birth

Of the printing press

What’s happening is this:

I’m typing a poem

And the software predicts 

The next word

Correctly

How can artificial intelligence know who a poet thinks?

If it can, how long before my kind become…

No. I wasn’t going to type ‘extinct’. 

Maybe I wasn’t going to rhyme at all

You don’t know me

You system

You machine

You don’t feel 

You don’t desire

You don’t dream

But I confess

If the words I choose are something a computer can guess

Maybe I’m not the wild eccentric I imagine in my head

If a plastic intelligence can pre-empt my so called eloquence

Then it’s me that needs to change

I’ve got stuck in this here lane

And actually, this is brilliant, I reckon

I should thank the simulation for bringing this to my attention 

I have to try harder

To be a smarter banana

This diplodocus is going to survive the encroaching disaster

I’ll defeat you, you Twix, 

Yeah, you in your wrapper

All tempting and dapper

Don’t feel bad, you meteor

You’re nothing but a metaphor

For the death of art brought about

Not by technology

But by metaphysical complacency

And a slavish adherence to the form of poetry over its

True, joyful purpose

Which is to disrupt and be improbable

Let me go back to the beginning of this parable

And stick things in you won’t auto predict

Banana skins to make you slip

Dinosaurs to make me smile

Fax machines, because half my audience won’t get the joke

Town criers because I’ll keep calling out, 

Proclaim the news in the town square

A thing of beauty makes no sense

You can’t predict it

Only know it

When you see it standing there

Like a banana