The Departure Lounge

George sat in his chair
The glare from the West
Necessitating aviators
And he remembered!
One more thing
Before I fly this plane
He looked along lane after lane
Of dots and dots and LEDs
Til he found the button
It said Autopilot.

Careful of the controls
George put his feet up
And kicked back in the cockpit.

Erection (Reprise)

Sometimes
An erection is not embarrassing
Sometimes
An erection is impractical
Like when I need to micturate
I have to improvise
Slap-dash
Off the cuff
Step back
Tilt away
Lean to the right
'Cos I hang to the left
Arch my flow
To the bowl
But mostly to the floor
From the most obtuse of angles.
And as the pee
Starts to finish
I begin
To reel it in
Edging closer
And closer
Sphincter tightens
In conjunction
Flagging the end
Of Act II.
More pee flops
To the floor
Via my foot
Tight hamstrings
Hamstring my plan
To leave the bathroom
Spic and span
But that's really a lie
'Cos I know
You'll clean it up
In the morning.

Anti-Sepptic

Sepp Blatter chats shit.
I know this
And so do you.
I think secretly
Even Sepp Blatter knows that
Sepp Blatter chats shit.

Sepp says:

"Football is just a game, and we're all part of the game and at the end of the game, if a nigger has been affected by racism, then he should shake his assailant's hand (or bump his fist) because it's just a game, y'knarrrmean???"

So, we've ascertained that
Sepp likes to play games.
How about this game?

I buy Sepp for an undisclosed amount of money.

I ferry Sepp back to mine for 'training'.

I fuck Sepp repeatedly up the arse with a copy of Things Fall Apart in hardback for 90 minutes plus injury time (and there will be injury time) everyday for four hundred years.

Sepp shakes my hand (or bumps my fist, I'm not fussy).

What's the matter, Sepp?
Did my sassiness upset you, Sepp?
Did my haughtiness offend you or
Did I upend you with a hard, sliding tackle from behind, Sepp?

Sepp?

Sepp?

Seppy?

I think Sepp's upset with me
'Cos I never told him about my awful first touch.

Erection

Sometimes,
When thinking of you
As a symbol of my affection
I get an erection -
Correction -
A stonking great big boner.

When I was a boy
This projection in my pants
Was embarrassing.
Red-faced, not yet red-handed
I would arrest the upstart
And uptuck it up my belt.
Like a BIG GIRL in a sports bra.
Sometimes he'd peek over the fence
Enraged by his incarceration
But othertimes he'd subside
Once tied up.

Now I am a man
This projection in my pants
Is cause for celebration
That three years in
I stand to attention
When you call me
Still I rise
Still I rise
Still I rise.

Dead Centre of London Town

It was autumn and ting
No need to set the scene
You've seen this scene before
You know?
Trees shedding skin
Rogue leaves no longer in vogue
September Issue out of fashion
The baton passing from
That season to this.

Stood at the gates
At the Dead Centre of London Town
Highgate Cemetary thought it was done
So I broke in
Scaled the wall
Unseen and wandered around
Chaperoned under full Lunar Patrol.

Through this minor act of criminality
Philosophically
I learnt a pertinent thing.
I learnt that No-one Ever Really Dies
Because I'm telling you that place was alive.
I heard
bristling
rustling
restlessness
creaking and croaking and weightlessness.

Whilst I had the temerity to jump the wall in the first place
I'm no Billy Big Bollocks -
I'm not ashamed to admit that I was spooked.

But as I pondered, I remembered that
No-one Ever Really Dies
and that this place is alive.
So I danced with graves
the whole night through
consoled by that thought.

Untitled

Captain of my ship, When I'm on the mike,
Clocks went back, but I shines a light
With my lyrics I exhibit a fierce kind of might
My pen v your sword if you want to fight
Poetical like sleight of hand
No trite words 'cos my shit ain't bland
Prick your ears up right so you understand
You can't test me 'cos I'm the man.

The Banker's Crisis

We plumb the depths of degradation
We surf to supplement flagging imaginations
We leave deposits in the bank
So when you're buffering or offline
You've got your memory to thank.

The King

Gaddafi,
Colon-El, Muammar
In his shiny, shiny Ray-Bans.
He's the first dictator-cum-rockstar.
Like Elvis. The King.

So if Gaddafi is King
Then Mubarak is Judas.
And if Mubarak is Judas
Then Silvio is the Priest.
And if Silvio is the Priest
What does that make David Cameron?
James Blunt.

At Mark and Charlie's

I am the epitome of mobility
Riding hands free along the canal
High-fiving low-hanging trees
Cat's eyes watching me
Knees pumping like pistons
As I breeze through the breeze
Terminal velocity as my
Velo
Extracts me from the city
My olfactories spy the genesis
Of good old Scottish whiskey
Half Moon pricks the sky
With perfect geometry.

The Bus Stop

Stood in my spot
At my squat
I'm the big shot
Looking down from atop
My high rock
To the Bus Stop
Where I wave at you lot

With my willy.

The Last Clap

Clapping is competitive
Rewind, relive being sat with contemporaries
In assembly when I was six
We would sit in
rows
and
rows
of
single-file
rows,
Cramped and crammed in cross-legged
Elbows sunk like achilles heel stilettos into laps
As one hand hides slacken jaws
And one hand holds heavy heads.
Heads heavy with lofty ambitions
Of playing up-front for Arsenal
And of one day getting a good look up Sarah Marshall's skirt.
Early doors dreamy detour and general torpor
SONIC-BOOMED into oblivion
I'm back in the room.

Mrs Thornton annouces the introduction to the stage of the Year 5 Wind Band!
What came next? Recorders!
My bleeding ears go through the mill to
Play host to music that soundtracks
A Chaucer-age cuckold getting hen-pecked by his aggressively amorous wife.
If this is what passed for pop music in Tudor times then
No wonder Henry VIII killed all his wives.

Being a hipster even aged 6
And able to grasp the concept
I clapped ironically, enthusastically
avowedly, unashamedly, ironically.
The clapping receded
But still smatterings
Around the gym hall.
I clock Tommy McCall and he's clocked me.
He's doing the same thing!
No-one could be as sardonic as me!
I hate Year 5 Wind Band more than anyone else in the world and I'm determined to show my unappreciation by getting the last clap.
Mrs Thornton carries on her daily sermon
Of shepherds and flocks
Of outbreaks of pox
And of how we're not allowed to play bulldog at lunchtime anymore because Danny Wilson's mum rang up the school because all Danny's shirt buttons got ripped off.
I clap sporadically
Tommy McCall claps sporadically
I clap steathily
Tommy McCall claps stealthily.
Problem: Mrs Thornton has clocked the game and says
'don't think I haven't noticed and the next person to clap is getting detention'.
Assembly is competely still.
I haven't the gumption
Tommy McCall has the gumption
The detention and most importantly,
The glory.
Hands sore, I walked out of assembly with my freedom
But left behind my dignity.
I lost the Last Clap.

Swordfight!

Butter the pen and flick the Stan
But on religious grounds, allow the kirpan,
Gentlemen and gentlemen
Boys and boys
Fuck the knife and resurrect your swords!
Take this not as the phallic dribblings of a priapic prick
I AM DEADLY SERIOUS
I'm no coward
I am waaaay past the oral fixation stage.
Back-stabbing is so passé
If we're gonna fuck each other
Let's do it like missionaries
Not like mercenaries
Look each other in the eyes and fuck
Face to face.
A shank is like a wank -
It's very impersonal and it's over too quick.
A swordfight! A fucking swordfight!
With it's
clink
clink
swish
slash
clink
clink
swipe
jump
left
right
bob
weave
clink
swish
clink
swish
clink
swish
clink
clink
clink
clink
clink
clink
clink
clink
clink...
Well, that's just poetry in motion.

Cross

It’s twilight, the special sort of twilight where the low slung Sun sits impotently in the sky like a paper tiger, it’s stellar rays still magnificent yet it lurks behind cityscapes sans the anger that earlier forced you to ‘low a jacket.

Down below, on street level are the most successful animals on the planet all about to go home after a hard day’s winning. Some have been shopping, some have been at work, some are on the way to drink in a pub to unwind before they go home, others to a show, to a funfair, to a private gallery exhibition premiere, to meditation, to speed-dating, to the gym, to self-defence class. Each of the animals busybody about until they have to negotiate a pelican crossing.

One man gets to the crossing first and presses the button. He likes the fresh click of the first press, the press that activates the red man on the interface above where his finger had pressed. Slowly but surely, the crossing fills up with people desperately wanting and capriciously needing to get to where they’ve got to get to. The animals hustle and bustle, bump and grind, elbow and winch themselves into perfect position ready to attack the gaps as their counterparts copy them across the way.

Traffic is sporadic. Sporadic enough that there are windows of opportunity for an illegal cross but busy enough to deter anyone attempting one. One animal does make a break for it, the other animals watching, collective breath completely still, watching him just make it to the other side. A car toots as he whizzes past.
The countdown starts and the panic, though still heightened, is muted for a few moments before they begin again.

Three.

Two.

One and the warring herds rush toward each other with a ferocity and intensity that could power cities. The two tribes hit each other and the lines melt, the demarcations between the two are gone, the frenzy commences. But ho! Wait! On closer inspection, the two tribes are not killing each other. It appears they’re making out in the street.

I Wrote A Poem About The Stars, So Fucking What?

The crackle of leather as I crick my neck to
See the stars for the very first time.
Before I would look, now I can see.
Stars do twinkle
They do illuminate the sky
And while I watch with wonder the luminescence
These stellar fairylights bestow below
I know that tonight
I'm an audience of one.
But the simple fact alone that these stars shine
Means I'm not a trailblazer
And I'm alright with that.

Epiphany

You should never run for the bus. Care not about how long it might take for the next one to come along. Never overestimate your proximity to the fleeting tail end of the bus, the exhaust fumes getting sucked up by the gasping sacs of air you call your lungs. (And for the love of God) Don't let the rain tempt you. The rain is your enemy. Why do you think it rains anyway? Yes, I know, they're God's tears and everything, but also mainly because rain knows how hysterically vain peoplekind is when water hits its collective assortment of curtains, crops, cornrolls, comb-overs, fauxhawks, mohawks, mullets and moptops and buzz cuts, bowl cuts, bouffants and blowouts. Running for the bus can only end in ignominious fashion, the bus(tard) having acknowledged the effort you made to meet him driving off into the rainset leaving you with nothing but an audience who dutifully provide the muffled sniggers as you once more faceplant into smog as the bus(tard) exhausts the last farts from its cantankerous pipes.

So the other day, I ran for the bus. I was on the phone (to my friend Simon who is telling me the Arsenal score from earlier that day, a 1-1 draw at home to Leeds, a team we should be comfortably smashing) so I kinda styled it out by continuing my run down the road so I looked less like 'man-who-has-missed-the-bus-ignominiously-even-though-he-himself-knows-that-you-never-run-for-the-bus' and more like I was just 'man-who-had-received-some-really-good-news-maybe-like-his-girlfriend-is-pregnant-or-something-and-he's-just-running-down-the-road-because-that's-what-you-do-when-you-get-really-good-news'. I'm still winning because the bus got stopped by the lights about ten seconds later. I went up to the door where there was a super-swell gal sat in the driving seat. I gave her The Eyes and not The Eye, but The Eyes. These were the pleading eyes of a spasmodic Italian midfield general insisting to the referee through hand gesticulations that he 'got the ball'. The super-swell bus lady lets me on, hence the super-swell nickname. As I went to get off the bus, I went back up to the window to once again express gratitude at her super-swell kindness (and let's face it, common sense) for having allowed me to board the bus at an illegal boarding point, walked round the front to cross the road when I was halfway across before a Vespa tickled my toes as it whistled past my face, tooting as it went. I had just had a brush with death. I was ashamed I had been complacent merely one and a half days since my great Epiphany.

One and a half days ago, I had a great Epiphany. I'm 25 years old. I'm in my mid-twenties now. I'm no longer my father's son. I'm my own man now. I live in my own flat, where I eat my own food, smoke my own weed and masturbate naked in my own front room. I'm not a child anymore. I've got to stop planning my future and instead try to live my present. Most people my age worry about what they'd have acheived by the time they're 30. I'm a rock star, though. Morbid thoughts of my own immortality infiltrate my skyline and I think to myself, what if I got merked off the planet, dead, done, gone aged 27? That'd be pretty cool to go at 27, join the 27 Club and sit alongside such alumni as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Robert Johnson, Kurt Cobain, Jean Michel-Basquiat et al, but hold your horses, what if I did die at 27 and haven't acheived like these badmans have? I couldn't possibly be a proud member of the 27 Club and sit alongside such alumni. In order to reverse the status quo, I need to get my house in order. That gives me a year and a half to get my shit together.

Sure, this is a trite epiphany, the sort of epiphany that one comes to when someone close to them dies in a motorcycle accident. After a period of understandable grief, they then run about town declaring how the tragic death of the aforementioned dead one has made them realize that life is too short, a sentiment accompanied by a head tilted at two o'clock, hands clasped together and a furrowed brow. Of course it's a trite epiphany. However, to suggest that something is trite or cliched is a pejorative term to suggest that it is overused and therefore lacking its original impact. This can be easily explained as something that is good would tend to be overused and the issue of the lack of impact through repeated airplay can be explained simply through the law of diminishing returns. Most importantly, why would you overuse something shit?

Well, actually, loads of people overuse shit things. There is nothing wrong with the 'life is too short' bit; it's the 'and from now on in, I will live as if each day is my last'. That's the shit bit, because I reckon I can declare with a certain amount of certainty that no-one has ever lived each day as if it were their last. If you lived each day like it were your last, you'd be doing something much more important than reading this. And you certainly wouldn't get anything done. If it was your last day on earth, you'd do something silly, like withdraw all the monies out of your account and spend it on stuff you had always wanted to do and then you wake up tomorrow and you've got no house and no job and no girlfriend because you went on a monster coke bender and ended up in bed with a bevvy of bisexual lovelies. No, rather than live each day like it was your last, live your life as if all the minor decisions you make during a regular, ordinary day might be the last time you ever make that particular decision. Walk the road less travelled. Go off the beaten track. Get Ribena instead of Robinson's. No-one's going to make these decisions for you because no-one cares more about you than you. You came here alone, you leave here alone. I can't guarantee success. I can't guarantee happiness. But what I can guarantee is that if that Vespa mows me down two years from now and I'm in the departure lounge being interviewed by Davina McCall and it gets to the end of the interview and she shows me my Best Bits, I can rest knowing that I died trying. Being a rock star isn't just about shredding your Gibson SG til you got blisters on your fingers. It's about doing the stuff that everyone else is afraid to do. It's about doing the stuff you're afraid to do. It's about the endeavour for endeavour.