I meant to say
that the garden looked beautiful
in the sunlight
with the shadows
highlighting its brilliance
like a ray-gun slice of reality
- and the bluebells spot lit
as though almost
in a Star-Trek transporter beam.
But then the light changed
and the clouds moved.
Somewhere in another street
a dog barks
and the cars continue
to impersonate the sea.

Now this is the winter of our discontent
we shall wait with weight upon our heads;
We’ve made a list of calculations
say Eton educated men.

The elderly must sell their houses.
Women learn to stay at home -

the public sector doesn’t need you
we only had it on a loan.

Disabled children lose their bedrooms.
Immigrants are left to bleed –

as nurses learn, they’ve no compassion
and teachers’ hands are tied to teach.

Now this is the winter of our discontent
we shall wait with weight upon our heads
– Hurt’s us just as much as you
say Eton educated men.

Hospitals are shaved with scapulas;
students work from age 16,

abandon all ye education,
learn to parrot dates and scenes.

Abandon college for a factory,
learn to work and feed machines,

the system has a need of people
to push the train that oils the wheels.

Now this is the winter of our discontent
we shall wait with weight upon our heads
- Yours is not to question why
said Eton educated men.

The country has a brand new boys club
made for banks and billionaires,

leave your bullion at the cloakroom
to be laundered, stroked and freshly aired.

The sick are signed up to the work force
as idleness should never pay.

If you are rich and very wealthy
we hope that you enjoy your stay.

Now this is the winter of our discontent
we shall wait with weight upon our heads -
The poor are often underserving
say Eton educated men.

Zombie Love

Time for a quick update on the old journal front. Over the weekend I visited Plymouth to attend and perform at Plymouth University’s fantastic, Zombie Symposium. I had such a lovely time. The event took place over 2 days and I only wish we could have gotten to more.

Highlights included such wonders as, Wireless Zombies, a live theatre radio broadcast, in 1940′s style, of a zombie love/horror story (Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries)- and a range of deeply engaging presentations, raising everything from gender and (undead)pregnancy, in all senses – to disability, new technologies and needless to say, the other. I met a local Plymouth audience member who was a free man of Leicester, and ate cupcakes with icing intestines.

For more info on the extract/abstract I shared, see here

Below is one of the pieces from it – thanks to Scott Bridgwood for the accompanying visuals – and to Dave Dhonau (https://soundcloud.com/davedhonau), for the corresponding track.

Zombie Dub.

I saw it on a billboard.
Read it in the news.
Heard it on the airwaves
going for a cruise.

Fresco-scape of Botticelli.
Liquid sea of serum ads.
An army of painted inheritors of everything;
corseted, jacketed and chemically enhanced.

Nanotechnology and seaweed extract
penetrate, plump and preserve the skin.
Fill a bath with ice cold water
then sit in it, till you forget to eat.

When Kylie Minogue is Aphrodite
and Primark is selling the budget range

When there’s botox on Oprah
and airbrush pollution
is Zombification the final stage?

Read it on a billboard.
Saw it in the news.
Heard it on the airwaves
going for a cruise.

Photo film is made of collagen.
Paralysis available on the street.
Dermabrade your epidermis.
Render your forehead impossible to speak.

Shave your shins, remove a rib bone,
implant silicon in your chin.
There’s a red faced woman in the evening,
sunglasses covering a surgeon’s ink.

When the easiest thing to learn how to copy
is the vacant look of lost without note.

When there’s Playboy in Tesco
and Page 3 undoes us
is Zombification the final point?

Heard it on a billboard,
Read it in the news,
saw it on the airwaves,
going for a cruise.

33 thousand
U.S women
would rather lose weight
than achieve any goal.

British ladies ask their doctors
for Joile’s mouth
and Natalie Portman’s
eyes and nose

When the face of perfection is made up of portions
of other peoples’ parts possessed.

When there’s Barbie for babies
and plastic solutions
is Zombification the next step?

Saw it on a billboard.
Heard it on the news.
Read it in the airwaves
going for a cruise.

Make me immortal
as long as I eat.
With an appetite for life
I’ll be walking down the street.

Atrophy my follicles, withdraw my hair
paint my navel to my neckline
electrocute my imperfections
slice my skin and suck with air.

When bruising and numbness
are considered quite usual.

When women’s magazines
are almanacks of persecution.

When there’s Playboy in Tesco
and airbrush pollution

and rape
and violence
and prostitution.

When the face of perfection’s
a substitution.

Is zombification the final solution?
Is zombification the final solution?
Is zombification, the last defence?

Image: Benini’s lover, on newspaper (Scott Bridgwood)

Venus meets a Zombie

The zombie walked out of the water;
nobody had taught her
she ought to wear a bikini,
or how to pose for the light.

Like Medusa from the old time;
hair plaited with seaweed and salt crust,
forbidden eyes as white
and round as pearls.

Like a fury;
or one of Jupiter’s ex’s
back for a visit,

like Lazarus risen
from a watery prison.

Venus waved, familiarly;
the lady charged.

True in the end
that after a
certain point,
in the dark

a woman may fail
to recognise her kind.

Last Boyfriend

How should I not be happy
for my first boyfriends?
rare as they were like slivers of beef,
like miner-celebrities, emerging from dreams,
for massaging my battered ego into self esteem;
complementing me on my
Revlon, apricot, sparkly, eye-shadow,
worn frequently in German, and CDT, and even
for the lower set of Maths;
hiding with me under the
large golfing umbrella,
in the rain, on the playing fields;
for the mix tape and the love letter,
and to Theo Boyce especially
for paying for the pizza
at the Pizza Hut, on Granby Street
which was £5.
For not noticing the rolled up wads of loo roll
padding out my optimistic wonder-bra.
For being flawed, or terrible, or irredeemable.
For providing context.
There will be tea, and travel cups, and the colour pink.
The internet. Sunny days.
Spontaneous bunches of flowers
will be bought home from car-parks.
How should I not be happy for my first boyfriends?
And for all of their girlfriends and boyfriends.
And for you, making something from nothing,
reading your paper, in the beer garden on the High Street;
Hungary; books; the colour purple;
dangly earrings; the night-time; summer;
the Fraglerock jigsaw I once won
on a phone in competition;
the environment; buddhism; rain.

My hair, smelling of coconut and satsumas
and falling relentlessly onto the carpet
in the dining room
and onto the sofa
and the parquet in the kitchen
and the tiles
and onto my clothes and woolen shoulders
black jumpers, leggings
to mingle with the cat’s
who is both white and ginger
but who only ever seems to shed the white
hair; waiting to be hoovered,
or brushed, or sticky taped
to death.

My hair is waiting to transubstantiate.
To become the hair of Cindy Crawford,
thick,
fibrous,
rope
like.

Each strand the width of a motorway.
Each strand, endless.
Each strand incapable of falling out, thinning, breaking
ever needing to be hoover-ed up.

My hair is waiting to transubstantiate.
To grow pink. To self -hoover.
To learn to speak in cat tongs.

Air

Cool as
balmy in Summer,

frozen in Winter

with needles

like diamonds

of asbestos.


Smelling of kitty litter

to put it politely.


Indoor heated. Fragrant.

Hibiscus scented.


For Sale; more expensive when surrounded by a

five bed townhouse,

than a two bed end terrace.


Easily explained by a weather diagram.

Colder at one end of the kitchen

than the other.


Easy to hold
in one or two
palms of your
hands.


See through


silky, precious, miraculous,

necessary,


a matter of concern

in a hermetically sealed hostage situation.


Running out of my lungs

when I try to take my
unfamiliar body for a run.


The same in the lungs of my lover

as in the ordinary capillaries

of my worst enemy.

All there is between us.


Air.

Cool as,
balmy in Summer,
frozen in Winter
with needles
like diamonds
of asbestos.
Smelling of kitty litter,
to put it politely.
Indoor heated.
Fragrant.
Hibiscus scented.
For Sale;
more expensive when surrounded by a
five bed townhouse,
than a two bed end terrace.
Easily explained by a weather diagram.
Colder at one
end of the kitchen
than the other.
Easy to hold
in one or two
palms of your hand.
See through.
Walking down London Road,
frequency of fried chicken.
Cycling through fields,
radiogram of a thousand florists,
lush, dense, swaying sunflowers.
Silky, precious, miraculous, necessary,
a matter of concern
in a hermetically sealed hostage situation.
Running out of my lungs
when I try to take
my unfamiliar body for a run.
The same in the lungs of my lover
as in the ordinary capillaries
of my worst enemy.
All there is between us.
Though there is no guarantee.

My Kitten and the Zombie Apocalypse.

If the zombie apocalypse should come to town
I’m afraid of late  it would pass me by,
I’d be far too busy playing inside
with my adorable tabby kitten.

With it’s kitteny buns of snow white paws
and their velvety pads for pressing of palms
and it’s almondy eyes of luminous pools
and it’s habit of chasing it’s tail
and sleeping in the bottom of the rugby sweater
hung up on the radiator
behind the sofa
with the radiator on.

We wouldn’t notice
when the telephone lines went down -
and the signal must have jammed
on the television aerial..

If the zombie apocalypse should happen to town,
à la maison avec mon chaton!
all of the neighbourhood cats would come round
with their stumbling, sort of, human loves.

And off down the street, a cacophony of car alarms,
the occasional shout that we wouldn’t regard.

Inside shuttered beneath Venetian woodwork,
we’ll be doing the one with the pin pong ball
for which kitten has been nick-named, Pelé.

We’ll be watching snooker
curled up on kitten’s favourite cushion,
with the patchwork stitching and
purr-fect for pawing, fish wire threads.

And through the window, you can see next door’s cat
feasting upon the body of the postman.

If the zombie apocalyspe should roll into town -
if the worst thing should happen -

me and the kitten
suspended in the midst
of catch the green fish
on a springy string lead -

they would have the advantage.

Even now I know it,
I’d be helpless as a kitten,
sweet enough to gobble up.

If the zombie apocalypse
should come to town,

they may corner me
in the living room,

but they’ll never catch

my ginger ninja
straight out the window
thanks for all the Whiskas

kitty -

kat.

Franz. aka: Mr Franz; Franzipan. aka: kitten.

Today

Walking through Luton
See – a flying spaniel
miraculous, yes.