In My Head I’m Still Nineteen Years Old, So Why Am I Stuck in This Old Man’s Body

Help! In my head I’m still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man’s body?

I can’t stretch, I can’t bend, oh where will it end? I’m still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man’s body?

My pace I revoke, my reflexes a joke. I’m still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man’s body?

And my feet they both hurt, my balance desert. I’m still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man’s body?

And I’d still like to chase women, but eyes they are dimming. I’m still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man’s body?

And my muscles I tear, what’s happened to my hair? I’m still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man’s body?

And I shake and I shiver, my wrists all a quiver and who’s that old fuck that I can see in the mirror? I’m still nineteen years old, so why am I stuck in this old man’s body?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Careers Day

When I went to meet the careers advisor,

I told him that I wanted to be

Superman,

Not Batman or Catman,

Or any other miscellaneous caped crusader,

But the Big Enchilada of men in tights,

The blue and red hero who puts the world to rights,

Mild-mannered Clerk Kent by day,

By night…

Well, let me put this another way,

Insurance executives have to wear suits and fly a lot,

Pretty boring,

But when you do it as Superman, it becomes really hot.

And are you qualified for this profession, the long-suffering advisor asks,

Can you fulfil the promise, complete the tasks?

And, looking at him witheringly, I reply,

Well my biological father,

Was a ruling member of Krypton’s hi-

erarchy and my mother put me in a spaceship

And sent me to Earth before our home planet went splat,

How’s that?

And can you produce references to that effect, he sighs,

Yes, I say, laying them on the table like a tissue of lies,

But…

These are gibberish, he exclaims, his breath redolent of Menthol Tunes,

No they’re not, I say defensively, they’re written in Kryptonian runes.

Well, I don’t know… he begins, getting irate,

I say, don’t be stroppy, just use Google translate.

So he writes me a chit to take back to school,

This lad is unemployable, he’s just acting the fool,

There is no place in this life, I have found,

For people able to leap tall buildings at a single bound,

And his blind determination, well, it makes me quite nervous,

I really think this boy should settle down,

And train for a career in the Civil Service.

Breakfast With Ian Duncan-Smith

I normally eat cereal or, maybe, a boiled egg,
But today I’m having caviar, and ham, carved from the leg,
There’s gold cutlery and linen cloth, and spreads brought from the deli,
And candied fruits and plovers’ eggs, to tempt and fill my belly.

And I said to Ian Duncan-Smith, how can we eat this spread?
When people are going hungry, it’s messing with my head,
But he smiled a smile of smug content, said, don’t listing to that braying,
And have another roasted quail, it’s all for free, the plebs are paying.

Father’s Day

I’m glad I don’t have children and don’t celebrate Father’s Day,

So I don’t have to say I like the gifts that come along my way,

The starchy shirts, the puke-green socks, that stuff for cleaning cars,

And all the eager faces saying, Dad, we’ve bought you land on Mars.

 

I never have to feign delight at books about Top Gear,

Or have to eat what kids have cooked, a parent’s greatest fear,

I don’t get jars of after shave that smell of cat urine,

Or have to tell my eager brood that I like the tie just fine.

 

So, keep your tins of toffee bits and lotions to make me tingle,

For when you mention Father’s Day, I can safely say, I’m single.

The Tragic Passing of Undead Augustus

There once lived a boy called Augustus Fred,

Who wouldn’t get up and just lay in his bed,

He slept all day and slept all night,

A disgrace to his father, to his mother a blight.

 

One day they decided to open his curtains,

The sun would surely him out for a Burton,

But Augustus had nailed them tightly shut tight,

So the light in his room was always night.

 

So they opened the door and wheeled out his bed,

And though he lay dormant as if he was dead,

They pushed his bed to the sun so bright,

Said, look my son, this is daylight.

But he just went all a-quiver and turned to ash,

And Mum said, Blimey, we’ve settled his hash!

A Vampire’s Prayer for the Demise of Stephenie Meyer

Oh Stephenie Meyer
On your funeral pyre,
What have you done to the poor vampire?

You’ve capped his fangs,
You’ve staked his heart,
Cut off his head,
Oh, you think you’re smart.

You’ve dwarfed old Drac,
And his werewolf kin,
Oh, pity the day they invited you in.

But Stephenie Meyer
With your financial fire,
I really don’t care that your books are dire,

But by the ghosts of Lugosi,
Langella and Schreck,
We humbly curse
Your royalty cheque.

For you’ve left the vampire
Bankrupt and blutered,
And though Pattinson’s beautiful,
Nosferatu’s neutered.

The Curmudgeon’s Valentine

I’m a man of scant enjoyment, a regular gloomy git,
A perpetual complainer, a really mis’rable shit,
I think chocolates are for losers and I spurn your red, red, rose,
For it makes me sneezy anyways and gets right up my nose.

I don’t care for soppy greetings card or flowers made of silk,
I don’t want to get toy animals or have a bath in milk,
Posh rest’rants make me nauseous, and red wine makes me boak,
And to suggest I go and dine with you, is, well, just a stupid joke.

So, please, don’t send me valentines, don’t say that you’ll be mine,
I live in isolation here and, yes, I’m doing fine,
I have no pets or partners, not e’en a goldfish in a bowl,
But I have to say I like it here, it’s therapeutic for the soul.

So, serve me soup and Kit Kat bars on a cloth of purest white,
And go celebrate some other place and spare me from your shite.

Animal Crackers

I was a “take-away poet” at Portobello Library (Edinburgh) yesterday, where people would come up to me and ask me to write a poem for them. There were all sorts of requests, but my favourite was a little girl called Iona who wanted a poem about small cute animals, leopard cubs in particular!

The animals were talking in the jungle one day,
There were tigers and leopards and a cheetah called Ray,
When Mister Len Leopard, announced to the group,
That his good wife was cooking some antelope soup.

And the tigers and wolf-cubs and lions and bears,
Went round to the Leopards’ and sat down in chairs,
And good Mrs Leopard served up bowls of stew,
With side orders of salad and antelope goo!

But at the top of the table sat a cub called Iona,
A cute spotted leopard cub, I’m sure that you know her,
She ate soup with her parents and said, this is good,
I’ll have second helpings, I think that I should.

So she ate and she ate, she had elephant cake,
Green octopus salad and mockingbird bake,
Salt-battered conger eel tart and walrus bratwurst,
But just before pudding, Iona, she burst!

Edgar Allen Poe in Suburbia

The fucking dog barked all day and all night, and the kid just kept shouting at it. “Pluto, hey, Pluto!” like he was Mickey fucking Mouse or something.

I tried throwing things, I tried bribery, I even tried violence, but nothing worked. Damn kid and damn dog just yapped all god-damned night and day.

Eventually, I took matters into my own hands. I dug a huge pit in the yard and I threw the dog into it, and, when the kid yelled at me, I threw him in too.

Then I filled it in and concreted over the top of it. Peace at last. Or that’s what I thought.

The damn dog just kept on barking under the ground and I could hear the kid still ineffectually yelling at him. All night and day. Echoing in my head. Round and round.

Could I cling on to whatever shards of reason I still possessed? Was I mad?

There was only one thing left for me to do to preserve my sanity.

Move.

House of Usher plc

It was turning into quite a dull dark and soundless day at House of Usher plc. There had been complaints about a black cat who had swallowed a whole cask of Amontillado, tried to eat a raven at the local cemetery and then promptly thrown it all up over the pristine tomb of Ligeia. Luckily, the local paper had given this no publicity as it was obsessed with the current spate of murders in the Rue Morgue, but it was a near thing, and to make the day worse, Annabelle Lee, a rival executive at Pit and Pendulum, had successfully bid for the Lenore account.

The parent firm had sent someone over to remonstrate, of course, a Monsieur Valdimar from the Paris office, but there had been a mix-up with his luggage at Heathrow and he’d arrived clutching a strange case. So, all in all, it had been a pretty disastrous morning, and when asked if he was coming back, the departing Frenchman clutched his tell-tale heart theatrically and replied, “Nevermore!”