My Poetry: Reflections From A Coffee House Window

Part One

Two festive hats sit sipping

From branded throw-away cup,

Both lean against a doorway

To an agency trading in health;

One sat on a blue mat

To keep the cold from his piles,

The clean-faced one sits on bare floor

Her clothes look less slept in.

The one in the Santa hat

Stands, turns to face west

Rucksack slung across back

Beanie pulled tight to her brow

Neither smile,

The one in the red cap nods.

He has no place to go,

As darkness falls around his shoulders.

Time ticks slow sat inside

The stone wind

Where clocks have no hands.

An ambulance screams down North Street

As seasonal whores

Bend their heads to the day

No time to look up between tills.

A glass wall sits between me and winter

My reflection sits beside the homeless figure,

I think of 'A Christmas Carol'.

A woman walks past

Gifts a chocolate cookie,

Food over money,

The middle class mantra,

But what good is sugar

When you need a hit

To soften the cold concrete?

He sips from branded coffee cup

I sip from mine

But it’s not the same

Part Two

I wipe a piece of beetroot

From my moustache,

This place used to be a treat

A one-pound sanctuary from home

Back when the government

Kept me off the streets.

Nursing a branded coffee cup

I'd sit daydreaming things were different

Writing colloquial words

With pockets empty of ambition

The monotony seemed less glamorous

Than when Hemingway told me

‘The Sun Also Rises’.

The sandwich's packaging

Asks me to 'break the cycle of homelessness'.

In a shrinking society each man

Must offer his largest largesse:

Here, take my job

Take my bed

Take this four quid falafel

Take the chains which shackle I

To the cycle of bourgeoisie holiness,

Where prayers plead

'Please, don't let the redundancies hit me, again'

And 'I hope Mum makes it to Christmas'.

The homeless man

Pushes a napkin around the doorway with his foot,

Rolls his blue mat into a bag,

He smiles at the chocolate chip woman

Who skips back to a six hundred grand house

Hopelessness slips from her brow,

She shed a weight from her consciousness

The only difference she made today.

The tramp's brow remains knotted

Is this how to break the cycle?

One biscuit at a time!

An ambulance flies by,

Does it know the answer?

A street cleaner stops

He ignores the tramp,

This town doesn't sweep up

The homeless.

The Brighton and Hove council officially counted 43 homeless in the city in 2015

This dedicated to: Casey – known as Taffy One Pence; Lesley 'Gareth' Raymond (see below picture); A woman named only as Caroline who all died over the 2015 festive period

My Poetry: The Blood On Their Hands Will Be Tory Blue

Terrorist sympathisers

Get back in your box,

Stay in the lobby

If 'Yes' leaves an ugly

Taste in your mouth.

Trust me, I know,

I’ve read the report

And media speculation

From five bedroom home

Buried deep in suburbia.

Mobilised by terrorism

I voted for retribution

See my ideals are magenta:

Labour Red in the field,

Tory Blue in the House.

Lets blanket bomb Syria,

Lets flatten Islamic State

Get rid of Daesh

By erasing this generation

Of Jihadi Johns.

We can rebuild the country

Fashion a McDonald’s from the debris

Turn that old school into a mall,

For who can be angry

About losing their siblings

Chomping a Big Mac in Top Shop’s new collection.

They’ve taken over Tooting

Regent Park, the whole city.

What next? New Church Road,

Heaven forbid they make it to Hove Park.

No need for a whip

I’ll vote 'Yes' with a smile

Please sir, please sir,

Can we drop some more;

800 grand a bomb, 35 for the flight

We don’t need hospital-wards

The casualties are not ours,

Ebola’s under control— AIDS an 80s footnote

In fact lets shutter the NHS,

My pals don't use it anyways,

We've always gone private

Even my kids Syrian nanny

Gets her teeth done thanks to me,

Because I’m a socialist true blue Labour man.

Dedicated to Hove and Portslade Labour MP Dr Peter Kyle, who voted to bomb Syria.

My Poetry: God Damn This City

*please be aware this contains strong language*

God fcuking damn this city

Full of dickhead daydreamers

Taking looking good too seriously

Five minutes behind London

I weep for the capital

And what it must look like

If this is a mirror

Of modern life.

Hipster pastiches energised by

Art, music, coke and dope;

Working jobs that pay peanuts,

Serve coffee, tend tills

Answer angry phones,

In the call-centre centre of England

But none can save for a rainy day

Cus living wage is eroded

By greedy landlords

Letting rooms for a monkey

Or hungry bars

Swallowing whole weekends

Selling the same 'hip' beer

To the same clichés

Everyone chasing a fading rainbow

Or a fresh piece of arse.

Salt and pepper parents

London's career diaspora

Living middle-class dream

In moneyed lifestyle dystopia

Push thousand pound prams

Through the crowds

Tarquin & Matilda

Simply must get to their Oboe

lesson in Hove,

Don’t you know.

In the laines

Teens pout and shout

Like the world is their stage.

Tourists take pictures

Saying ‘Ain’t this Quaint’

But it she don't look so pretty

When ya pockets are light

You're feeling shitty

And your guts are raw.

In Churchill Square

A girl in short skirt

Sings pretty songs I don’t know

Serenading shoppers

Too busy to listen.

I stop to sip a coffee

And try to forget

I’m just another dickhead daydreamer

Thinking of elsewhere

In this God damned city.

This is set in Brighton, on the UK south coast

My Poetry: Swap Whiskey For Wine

I'm drinking whiskey

Like its beer,

Sitting silently trying

To quench a thirst

Thats more than just a dry throat.

I think of switching to wine

But can't think of a good reason

To put down the highball,

So I nod at the waitress

And slam another note

On the bar.

He's cooler than me,

And younger, and all those things

Age tells me doesn't matter

The watch face is swimming,

Time is rushing,

It's 4:15pm

And I'm wondering

If it'll be me or it which wins the race

To five o'clock

I hear a song

On the jukebox I've not heard

Since swaping beers for whiskey,

One night stands

For Saturday nights alone,

Sharing hours with the waitress

Saying fare thee well

To my paypacket

The singer reminds me

I was once young

Knew all I needed to know

About love and sex,

I wish I was that dumb now,

So I order another

Whiskey and wait

Remember how I swapped lovers

More often than my jeans,

But some of us grew out of it,

Got wives and things

Swapped obsessions of the body

For those of the heart,

And now they beat more peacefully

And more quietly

And less sharp

And more happily

Perhaps it's time

I swap the whiskey for wine.