Starman

Hello…

Are you there?

Ground Control to Major Tom?

I… I hope you don’t mind me addressing you like this,
But it’s just that I feel I know you,
After that summer,
You know the one,
When we’d bought School’s Out and Aladdin Sane,
And blasted them out for the whole holiday
At my pal’s house
Because his mum was doing summer school
And didn’t seem to mind the catalogue of neighbour complaints
That were waiting for her each night.

And, ever since then,
I’ve had your voice in my head,
The Starman who watches over me,
My own personal Jean Genie.

And you taught me that it really was OK
To be the odd one out,
To be the only person in my year who didn’t like Slade,
And to have long hair and not wear a fucking Crombie.

And, hell, if you could be Ziggy and wear a dress
And still have girls chasing you,
Well,
Then there was hope for me
And I wouldn’t be a Diamond Dog
All my life.

And later you showed me I could wear suits
And still look kinda cool,
That I could say Let’s Dance
To girls that I liked
And, maybe, know a little
Modern Love.

And I’ve always turned to you when I’ve been
Under Pressure,
Or when I felt like Dancing In the Street.
And you gave yourself to my every bedsit room,
Well, at least your posters on my wall,
And I even bought your
Tin Machine CDs although everyone said they were crap,
Because being weird is really all about
Getting it wrong some times.

So, I’m going to miss you,
Ziggy Stardust.
And without your poems I’m going to
Be writing on the walls,
But now it’s time for Ashes to Ashes
And I hope it’s Hunky Dory wherever you are
With Andy Warhol
By your side
And that, by the time I get there,
Heaven will be a weirder place.

Because now you’ve gone and left me out on a limb,
No notice, no nothing,
Not even Five Years,
And though I keep hoping that it’s all a stunt,
And that you’ll swoop down onto the stage
Like Lazarus on a flywire
I’m scared that it’s really true and that you are really gone,
And that I’ll have to
Keep you alive by playing your old records
Like some sad old man,
Because I think the kids have killed a man
And it’s time to break up the band.
Can you hear me, Major Tom?

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.

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!

Dr Who Poems

Tardis Dreams

There was an old police box down our way,
Wedged tightly on the corner of
Peter’s Café and Mario’s Chipper.

And I remember it shrouded in fog
On a Sunday night,
Coming home from visiting my Aunty Barbara,
And sometimes,
If the planetary line-up was
Just so,
The blue light on top would flash like a beacon
As we shuffled past
With out chips and Caramel Logs.

And I used to dream
That the Doctor was setting off
On one of his adventures
And maybe, just maybe,
If I was really good and didn’t complain about
Eating gristly mince,
This time,
This time he’d take me with him.

Who needs witches and wardrobes,
After all,
In this world of Tardis dreams.

The First Decade

Suburban gardens overrun with children
Are suddenly stilled,
Rows of little square lawns empty,
Whole streets
Like a wasteland,
Living room windows filled with nuclear test dummies
Huddled around the tiny screens
As entire avenues echo to the refrain of
Kiddillydac-Kiddillydac – Woooo-ooo,
Wooo-hoooo-wah-woo!

A new religion sweeping the country,
As children with plungers on their heads
And wearing egg box skirts
Bark
Exterminate, EXTERMINATE!
To long-suffering mothers.

Ten years on we still watch on a Saturday night,
The televisions in colour now,
But bigger screens
Show up the warts and faults.
And cloth-draped boxes and
Monsters pulled by strings
Are no match for the pull of
The Old Grey Whistle Test
And
Local Odeons showing films full of the promise of
SEX…

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!”

First Kiss

For National Poetry Day

My first kiss was with a girl whose name I didn’t know,
It wasn’t really anything to write home about.
I’d expected a big romance,
Swirling orchestral score,
Julie Andrews skittering down the mountainside,
Not two strangers suddenly going mouth to mouth,
Like a pair of sturgeons lip-locked in a fishmongers window,
As disco lights flashed like running water down the slab.

There wasn’t even really a song to lock the moment in my heart,
Just Marc Bolan and T Rex going
La La La, La-La-La La, mmmm, ah, ah ahha!

Still, she was pretty,
With long dark hair and gold lamé hotpants,
Her shapely legs in clumpy white PVC boots.
But she legged it as soon as the song was done
And vanished behind a wall of skinheads
That no amount of hormones were going to propel me across.

However
A search at school on Monday morning revealed that her name was
Jessie
or maybe Lorraine,
But, horror of horrors,
She was in 3B,
A year above me and a million miles away,
And my message sent on the grapevine of jungle drums
Played by giggling girls,
That, Max wants to go with you,
Vanished sadly into the ether,
And Jorraine,
Never acknowledged me again.
Though,
In school uniform she wasn’t that hot,
So,
Really,
It was no big loss.

Poets’ Boyfriends

By popular request!

At first
She can’t find him in the gloom of their darkened room,
But she follows the snapping undergrowth of
Pizza boxes and crumpled beer cans to his chair,
The sonorous chant of football fans
Echoing
Like a throbbing descant of cicadas.

Good night, love?
His voice floats through the miasma.

The best, she begins, elated,
I’m slam champion of the world…

Oh, that’s good…
He says,
Not quite with her,
Oh, oh, oh, yes, yes, YES!
What a goal!

Sorry,
What were you saying, love?