A TRAIN POEM

If you do not want anybody
to sit next to
you on the train,
make sure you have worked
your back out
and your T-shirt clings
to your armpits
in dark
bunches. Put your bag
under the seat.
Leave the seat by free
as a threatening gesture.
A man and his daughter with chips.
Change seats.
The daughter does not like the chips.
Now you are
sitting next to the moon
going to Swine Town.
Opposite, the father
is raising safeguarding concerns
and bitching about Nanan.

THE NIGHT ECONOMY

Pushing mop. In
and out of the bucket.
Slop. The hoover sighs 
the empty space
between
meeting rooms.
Green corridors
of glass. An empty
conference table to
be sprayed and wiped.
A pile of papers
to be squared and set.
Office lights
clicking off over
every desk one by
one. The dark silences.
Empty waste baskets.
A single red LED
on a security camera
that blinks. Out.

RUMPLESTILTSKIN

Everyday he'd turn up
and sweep
the turnings on the factory
floor to piles
and no-one new his name.

They'd call him Jud,
or little Jud.
They thought he were Jud's
son, but he weren't.
He didn't even know a Jud.

One day, he comes in
all quiet
and gets about his sweeping.
The missus no-one knew he had
had lost the bairn.

Afterwards they called him nowt.
Cut a wide berth
round the machines to avoid
conversation.
Nothing awkward like. Just work.

At the Christmas do he didn't show.
Sent a photograph
two days later from Magaluf
and a bottle of champagne,
offering his resignation.

A bottle of champagne
for thirteen men?
We barely got a thimble each
the spawny get.
Jud. Ungrateful sod.

SHIPBUILDING MK II

I'm torn in two unequal parts by news
that one thousand seven hundred and seventy five lives
will be decimated by job cuts. In Portsmouth
shipbuilding will cease. Yet, can I grieve
that hands will not be put to beat hulls to carry
death machines to sand filled countries? It was not Bill
or Mark or Ged that gave diktats to the Middle East.
They just hit the metal where the man telled them.
These could be pleasure steamers
for all they care. The profits of their labours move
like dunes at night between the wealthy and the powerful.
It is sad. The harbour slimed with seaweed is silent save the smack 
of waves against the concrete breakers where hammers once clanked. 

TOADS AGAIN

for PH

5.00 am
5.00 am
5.00 am
5.00 am
5.00 am

I don't know how my father did it
I don't know how my father did it

65 years
68 years
73 years

WEEKEND

These are just blokes drinking on a Friday afternoon

after getting off work early after working like pigs

at something they’re pig sick of. This is where they let

rockets off to the moon, where the moon glows

in fruit machine flashes and flashes of tempers burst

like fireworks bursting, obliterating the stars.

The stars are all over the pavement. The pavement

is strewn with celestial beings and extra-terrestrials.

Angels and extra-terrestrials are singing, singing

alleluias from every street corner. A busker is singing

in excelcis deo on every street corner in town.

The shout goes up and is hoisted aloft and carried

through town like a varsity rugby captain 

hoisted atop his teammate’s shoulders and shouted

round bars like a saucy joke. Their shoulders are round

where they’re worn like a threadworn blazer or jeans

in the knees and crotch. They’ve been on their knees

all week and year, a decade of prayer. Praying the work

keeps on coming after the weekend. Until then their crotch

itches at denim and nylon skirts. Stiff nylon electricity.