Category: Free verse

Bubble Wrap Blues, by Pete Mullineaux


By Robert Garnham

Bubble Wrap Blues

Stack away the coffin boards – pack away the nails,
moor that boat for Avalon, lower down the sails.
Place me on a bed of foam before I take a nap,
swaddle me in comfort,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Take down the big marquee – pay off the cabaret,
cancel the choirboys and girls – come back another day.
Hold back the holy waters, the tree bark with no sap,
let a band of homeless sing –
‘bury me in bubble wrap.’

No bankers to hold the handles, no regulator prayers,
no corporate greed to drive the hearse, no soft landing soothsayers.
No message from our leader, no sentimental crap,
give me a dry-eyed crocodile,
bury me in bubble wrap.

If I rage into the night, can’t take it on the chin,
find it all too much to bear and go without a grin –
let the feelings run and run like a leaking tap,
lend me a suit of armour,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Farewell world it’s been a gas, a never ending joke,
banana skins to beat the band, fun-loving goats to poke.
Laugh me forward to my spot, place me in the trap,
bundle me in comedy,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Life is just a holiday, brief relief from nothing,
huff and puff and other stuff, we get on by bluffing.
But even an off-performance deserves a slow handclap,
minimise the damage,
bury me in bubble wrap.

What’s done is done, no mileage in regret
if it wasn’t exactly all my way, too late to get upset.
The exit doors are beckoning, time to mind the gap,
don’t spare the layers,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Pete Mullineaux has published four poetry collections, most recently How to Bake a Planet (Salmon 2016) – “A gem” – Poetry Ireland Review. A new collection is forthcoming in 2022. He’s been interviewed on RTE’s Arena and also had three plays produced by RTE radio. His work has been described by reviewers as ‘profoundly sensitive’ ‘gorgeous and resonant’ & ‘grimly funny’, and comparisons made with Roger McGough, John Clare, John Cooper-Clarke and Pete Seeger. His debut novel Jules & Rom: Sci-fi meets Shakespeare (Troubador UK) was published in April 2021, (‘Certainly worth a gander’ – Irish Times). following an ebook version in 2020. Website: petemullineauxwriter.com

 

Mnemonic: or, When Dr Asperger met Dr Alzheimer, by Mandy Macdonald


By Robert Garnham

Mnemonic: or, When Dr Asperger met Dr Alzheimer

For example:
you are about to leave the house.
You have a letter to post.
You forgot it yesterday. It must be done
today.

You put it on the hall table, where you can see it.
But you know you have to check
one more time
that the back door is locked
and that all the burners on the stove are turned off.
(15 February 2010 has never quite gone away.)

But you know, too,
that after doing these tasks you might well leave
without picking up the letter.
So you set the letter slant
on the hall table. For as soon as you see it
slant on the hall table
you will have to straighten it so that its edges are parallel
to the edges of the table.
And as soon as you touch it to set it straight
you will remember
that you have to post it.
And then you will pick it up and put it in your bag, hoping
that you will remember to post it.

NB: You do NOT go back and check
the back door and the burners again.
Things have not got that bad
yet.

Australian writer and musician Mandy Macdonald lives in Aberdeen. Her poems appear widely in anthologies and magazines; her pamphlet The temperature of blue was published just before lockdown by Blue Salt Collective (http://bluesalt.co.uk/the-temperature-of-blue/index.aspx). Mandy writes in the hope that poetry can change the world, or at least make it laugh.

 

Driven Bats, by Jim Lawrence


By Robert Garnham

Driven Bats

Just 27 nautical miles
Off the eastern coast of Nowhere
Rusts an old abandoned oil rig
Where guano is piled impressively high

The bats that leave this rich deposit
When not hanging upside down
Off the western coast of Somewhere
Fly backwards like black hummingbirds

Other times they love to hover
Helicopter-wise for fun
Above the ageing public buildings
Of Nowhere’s bureaucratic streets

And when they flit through Somewhere’s skies
Bothering tourists for fish and chips
They cackle like demented demons
As they dive bomb with Stuka screams

But there is nothing they love more
Than flying over the oil rig
Cranked up on snatched carbohydrates
Shitting a mountain of minerals

Bio: Jim Lawrence is a poet, freelance editor, writer, translator and bedroom guitarist in Southampton. He likes the blues, cats, Jack Daniels, Gillian Anderson and any food that isn’t an avocado or a sprout.

 

Instructions for reading a gas meter, by Ama Bolton


By Robert Garnham

Instructions for reading a gas meter

1. You’ll need a pen and paper and a torch.
2. Open the door of the cupboard in the corner.
3. Move the vacuum cleaner and the two pairs of boots.
4. Get a brush and remove the cobwebs from the meter.
5. Lie down on the floor so that your face is level with the meter.
6. If there isn’t enough room for you, move the sofa.
7. If you can’t move the sofa, get help.
8. No, not me. You know I’ve got a bad back.
9. Press the button.
10. No, the other button.
11. If you can’t read the numbers, get a magnifying glass.
12. Press the button again.
13. If you still can’t read the numbers, get your camera.
14. Turn off the flash, if you can remember how.
15. If you can’t remember, find the instruction manual.
16. No, I don’t know where it is.
17. Try the top drawer in the kitchen.
18. Under the mousetrap?
19. Press the button again and take a photo.
20. Quick, before the number disappears.
21. Maybe use the zoom?
22. Try again.
23. That’s better.
24. Upload the photo and write down the numbers.
25. Go to the website.
26. The password’s in the blue book under G for Gas.
27. Enter the reading.
28. Yes, I know it’s a smart meter, but the new supplier can’t read it.
29. No, we’re not changing back.
30. Cheer up; you only have to do this once a month.

 

GDPR, by Marie Studer


By Robert Garnham

GDPR

He stretched his legs under the hospitality
Of her kitchen table, listed the locals lately deceased,
Those who reached old age, those taken young.
She offered currant cake.
Reaching for a slice he asked in a flash,
What age would you be now, Nonie?
She returned the plate to ellipsis equalised
On oilcloth. Smiling benignly, she enquired
What age would you think I am?
He subtracted generously from the score,
Near enough, she said.
No hacker would ever crack
My mother’s personal information or ransom her ware.

Marie Studer has written poetry since her teens in the1970s and started to submit in 2018. She won the Trocáire Poetry Ireland Competition 2020 and the Halloween Ekphrastic Poetry Challenge, Bangor Literary Journal 2019. Her poetry has been published in the Stony Thursday Book, The Waxed Lemon, Wee Book of Wee Poems, Fire & Water, Drawn To The Light, online and local anthologies.

Twitter handle: @StudiMarie

 

This shit?, by Jo Sachs-Eldridge


By Robert Garnham

This shit?

Is this it?
This shit?

Are you happy with your lot?
Cos I’m fucking not.
Not with this lot.
This rot.

Not this.
Is this it?

This shit?
If it is
I’ve had enough.
I don’t want this lot.
Not this.

I don’t want the trying
The crying
The sweating
The giving
Of everything
I’ve got.
For what?

Is this it?
This shit?

But don’t you dare ask
What do you want?
Cos who fucking knows.
But it’s not this.
Not this lot.
Not this.

She’s happy with her lot.
But what’s she got
That I’ve not?
What is it?
Maybe she just doesn’t know
What she’s not got.

Or maybe
I don’t.
Maybe whatever I’ve got
Is the lot.
Maybe you just grab that shit
And you say
THIS IS IT!
I’VE GOT IT!
This lot.
My lot.
I’ve got it.
I’VE GOT
THE LOT!

Jo Sachs-Eldridge lives in Leitrim where she mostly dreams up community projects involving bikes and words and other stuff she naively believes will change the world. She has notebooks full of writing that is legible to no-one and a daughter who is a wonderful distraction from everything.

 

There’s no toilet seats in the psych ward, by Aoife Cunningham


By Robert Garnham

There’s no toilet seats in the psych ward.
I nearly fell down the loo,
Like Alice in wonderland.
While im trying to excrete urine.

There’s no toilet seats in the psych ward.

My shoes are dr martens
And I dress like
a bohemian goth,
This I must say,
Gets in the way,
of my OOTD.
Because I don’t have access to my belts or my lace!

There’s no curtains in the psych ward,
So I have to get crafty,
I get a little bit arty
and hang a sheet.
It’s like a sad tapestry
For the room that it is.
I guess that’s true

There’s no toilet seats in the psych ward

Now I’ve learnt all the tricks,
From drifting between institutions.
To wear a scuba mask,
In case I fall down the toilet bowl.

I’ve learnt all the tricks
From years of experience.
To use your wit to find a way
out of this hole.

There’s no toilet in the psych ward

 

Sleeping Legion, by Jennie E. Owen


By Robert Garnham

Sleeping Legion

They’re all here tonight you know,
every face you’ve ever seen
flickering behind your eyes like cherries
spinning like bells
they put on a show
as you push off your blankets
then swaddle them again.

Your old maths teacher chases you
to the edge of the cliff,
a book of equations in one hand
a garden gnome in the other. Whilst
a midwife leads you
down endless
hospital corridors

where at the end
you’ll find nothing but the check-out boy,
the one with whom you locked eyes
over a cucumber
and a packet of hob nobs,
last Tuesday.

Jennie E. Owen’s writing has won competitions and has been widely published online, in literary journals and anthologies. She teaches Creative Writing for The Open University and lives in Lancashire with her husband, three children, and cat.

 

When Brian Became Broccoli, by Ben Macnair


By Robert Garnham

When Brian Became Broccoli

When asked what he wanted to be,
three-year-old Brian thought about it,
for a while, and with a smile,
said that he would like to be Broccoli.

A strange choice for a career,
you might have thought,
but Brian was only three,
the age where you could be what you wanted to be.

When a kindly local Wizard was told of this tale,
he visited Brian and asked: ‘And who might you be?’
Are you the little boy who wanted to become Broccoli?
Brian nodded his head.

Brian went to bed that night,
but he woke up with a bit of a fright.
His hair was green, stiff, and standing on end.
The following night, he went to bed,
and woke up completely Green.
His Mum and Dad had never seen anything
quite so obscene.

The next day, they found Brian in bed.
He had become Broccoli.
The kindly Wizard broke the spell,
and for 14 years, all was well.

Until the Wizard turned up one day,
and was quite drunk.
‘I am afraid that the spell didn’t quite wear off.’
he said because Brian was becoming a Punk.

Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire, in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair

 

Why I ended up (for a while) in Hull, by Janet Sillett


By Robert Garnham

Why I ended up (for a while) in Hull

My group of friends read Larkin aloud
skiving off hockey,
outliers in a school
which dished out piety at 9am

We admired his contrariness,
dirty words,
and suburban weariness,
his constipated ennui

Larkin inspired me to study
in a god forsaken east coast city
a shared terrace with a parrot
a bath in the kitchen
on Anlaby Road

I skulked in vain in the library,
until we parted company abruptly,
Hull, Larkin and me
I moved on, as they say,
to Plath, Stevens, Crane
to a concrete place of learning,
and Larkin expressed his adoration
for Margaret Thatcher

I reread his poems, when living
in bedsits, in semis,
in the disillusionment of marriage

But let’s face it,
Larkin was a bigot, racist, serial snob
I want to see them starving,
the so-called working class
nostalgic for the good old days
when only white men played cricket for England

Consumer of pornography
(but never in the library)
composer of sado­masochistic reveries
shared to fellow man poets
posh adolescents fumbling with themselves
in bedrooms after lights out

I want to cancel Larkin
unknow his life,
his pervasion of archetypal Englishness
I settle for drowning in his poetry
with fingers in my ears

PS Apologies to Hull which I now think is a great place.

Janet Sillett recently took up writing poetry and short fiction again after decades of absence. She has had poems published in the Galway Advertiser, Poetry Plus magazine and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis, and flash fiction in Litro. She works for a think tank.