Poems from 2023

A few poems and performances

Everybody and Always

It can hit you like a hangover the morning after closeness

It can hit you while you’re talking to a loved one on the phone

It hits you like a 9-pound hammer when you realise that everybody is always alone

Everybody is always alone

Now I can hear the protests of the lovers thinking I have just not found what they have found

But wait before you shout me down I know that love ‘s the greatest crown

But every lover falls asleep alone

Every lover falls asleep alone

I read this as part of a 10 minute slot at Sarah L Dixon's Quiet Compere showcase at the 2023 Morecambe Poetry Festival.

This poem is actually a song. I like it because of all the alliteration and that little twist at the end relieving the melodrama a bit.

A quick recitation in the Old Pier Bookshop in Morecambe

If you read the Faber and the Nation’s Favourite anthologies of poetry enough

You might wonder if there’s something fundamentally amiss in the way that we’ve been writing about love

And you might begin to fear that the poets down the years have not been honest in their sonnets of romance

And the truth about love has been covered up and smothered by those poets in their art and sullen craft

Take First Corinthians 13, you know the one I mean because it’s read at every wedding in the land

You can even purchase bedding with the verses printed on it in a font that looks a lot like comic sans.

Love is patient, love is kind, without envy, without pride, no one in their right mind could fault all that

But if you’re selling a perfection that transcends all comprehension then somebody might want their money back.

Really important poem for me this one.

Don’t tell Dad

Don’t tell Dad about my spelling test

Don’t tell him I can’t tell one letter from the next

And don’t tell Dad how stupid I am, I’d hate for him to think I’m any thicker than I am.

But she did tell Dad and Dad did say don’t worry about that it’s just silly anyway

It’s not your fault how these letters evolved with loops and dots and sticks and curls

But here’s a little trick for b and d, just draw a little picture of a b.e.d.. A bed, you see?

Beginning and end that’s where the stick goes, there’s lots of other tricks and I’ll teach you those.

That's me on the back.

Up on the limestone of Hutton Roof, love it up there.