When You Came Home This Evening

Love, your hat was a toothpaste top
unscrewed to reveal hair
crazier than your mother.
Your nose was a sick baby Robin
and your knees two creaking floorboards.
Your face was a graveyard
just after the funeral
and your stomach
grumbled like Chernobyl.

You discarded your bra
to let your breasts argue
with each other and stood there
looking like something dragged [...]

Considering The Issues
If you got (but never opened) an envelope
from a convicted smuggler,
which turned out to contain
five thousand Euro
you knew nothing about. If you know
what you think it’s okay for old
men to do with underage boys
while visiting the Temple of Zeus,
you’ve got my vote.
If you have questions to answer
about incest and blackmail;
if last Thursday [...]

You Dream Again of Bus Conductors

In that corner of your mind
that’s always on its way into Leicester, circa 1979.
Men in brown coats deliver rented TVs.
Your sister’s going out with an arsehole called Andy,
and smoking is good for you. You gobble
nationalised sandwiches on trains
that are all the same colour. These are the years
of porridge and brick [...]

Elegy for Bettino Craxi (1934-2000)
- Bettino Craxi was leader of the Italian Socialist Party
and Prime Minister. He went into exile in 1994 and died in Tunisia.
Poor Bettino Craxi, you’ve been taken to your grave
and we won’t see your likes again.
Your social democratic bones were barely cold
when your obituaries began to bitch.
All week long it’s [...]

Crowbar
She jiggles her one year old on her knee
and smiles like Magda Goebbels,
of whom she has never heard.
If you don’t have central heating,
more fool you for having no respect
for yourself. She is not au fait
with trade unions. Her laughter,
a bag of rattling crowbars
and always at someone else’s
expense. If you didn’t get paid
no one to blame
but [...]

Austerity Mantra
Everything must be on the table.
Your ninety seven year old granny
is no longer cost effective, would
benefit greatly from being brought face to face
with a compassionate baseball bat.
The figures speak for themselves and will
be worse by morning. The paraplegic
in his insanely expensive wheelchair
will have to crawl as God intended.
Here are the figures that won’t [...]

Sacrifice

“I’d be a bit more cautious about that aspect of how
I conduct my social life.” Brian Cowen

Though the world no longer permits,
for the King’s pleasure,
the Saturday night offering up
of girls on the altar at the Acropolis;
on a good day we’d allow you
anything short of being found on top
of a live boy or a [...]

Community Employment Scheme
for Jack O’Connor
I am the thin fat man woman
you have been assigned to,
henceforth known as
The Co-ordinator.

Before the afternoon’s out
I’ll have you counting toilet rolls;
or guarding the traffic cones
that live at the bottom of the canal.