Well, Big Frank the banker was pinstriped and neat
coked up to his eyeballs and chewing his cheek
when dreaming of methods to catch out the meek
an underling entered and started to speak:
Please sir, I need help our investors are starting to scream.
The big man just smiled and replied quite serene:
Take all toxic assets to [...]

Last week I walked through Maidenhead suburbs,
the houses huddled together in twos
like anoraked couples perched on a bench
on some Autumn day at the end of a pier.

Past kids playing scrappy 20 a side;
lads leaned on Bangra-blaring Golf GTIs;
Toyota Corollas with rear-view signs
on suckers: Dad’s Taxi, Baby on Board

and If you can read this I’ve lost [...]

Fat Josh – his forehead dripped with lard
his manner blunt as bricks
he lead a gang of burly boys
with swear words on their lips
an appetite for violence
and a bigger one for chips

they hung around outside the school
collective gut immense
they yelled, and spat and vomited
and caused untold offence
they robbed pizza delivery boys
then ate the evidence

at school they [...]

Imagine a pub on some hazy afternoon
with warm autumn sunlight being cast through the room
the second pint started, the discourse fermented
a large group of friends feeling fairly contented

And yet damn the conversation for Luke is not in it
no one’s paid him attention for nigh on a minute
his lips start to quiver and his head starts [...]

The poet strides across the boards reeling
off his verse like some touched religious nut
slowing down to emphasis the feeling
he is sure will be aroused. Then a rut

of his groin at the front row, this means he’s
sexy too. Look at him there, smoldering
away like Heathcliff, shooting the stale breeze
to a crowd of teenagers bordering

on the edges [...]

Seven PM,
we’re here – Stepney
pre-weekend beers
extended sesh
meek Drew meets gentle Beth
he resembles Dexter Fletcher
her eyes gelled green
she’s Renne Zellweger meets Betty Spencer
svelte yet sexless

hey sweets  he creeps
pets her tender flesh
pecks her sherbet cheek
she merely tee-hee-hees
then screeches Feed me Drew!

They enter The Ten Bells
(est. seventeen-seventy-three)
where he spends freely
they get entrees, mezze, Red Cherry Reef
(the effervescent refreshment)
desserts, [...]

Colonel Crampon Goes Off

His brolley drips pools of dreary water
on the mock marble floor at Kelvedon station
he remembers when there used to be a porter
here to help with bags, chat to whilst waiting
now there’s just a fat man that sells bad news
and worse coffee. Colonel Crampon buys both,
his Telegraph expunging the same sad truths
we’re all [...]

Before my voice even broke
I turned my back on being a bloke

You see, I grew up in Colchester
Where very little culture stirs
A soldier town where cabbies boast
‘bout how they used to beat up Blur

and me in bottle green cords
coming back from after-school activities
would see from the windows of my father’s Ford
what I thought boys all [...]