Frontman

The frontman from a band I used to like

Just showed me round a maisonette.

His hair was cut to that benign kind of length:

Short, but shy of a buzz cut kind of length.

Its previous looseness, that used to

Punctuate especially tasty indie guitar riffs,

Was reigned in with a handful of wax.

I’m sure it’s honest work at The Estate Agency—

Which, ironically, was an early candidate

For the name of the band—and

It would have been hard to generate much

In the way of savings, when half their income

Was paid in crates of warm, imported lager.

But do you still stake a claim to creativity?

Hear something like a drum beat in the

Two-bed-one-bath. Two-bed-one-bath.

Note down the word kitchenette for its

Evocative qualities and save it for future use.

Well, it’s partially my fault, I suppose,

Having only skimmed that last album and

Finding the both of us to be different people:

The kind who, in just a few years, would

Extol the virtues of a private parking spot.

glasses

That Specsavers is all a big scam, you know.

Not just because when they claim I’m short-sighted,

I detect a double meaning, and I swear last time the letters

Spelt out “P-R-I-C-K”— albeit split across three lines of the chart.

It’s not even the casual reminders that my eyes,

Like everything, will keep on getting weaker by the day.

It’s just that recently I’ve left the house glasses-less

So that I might soften the sharpest edges of the world.

I spotted our long-departed border collie, in the dim shape

Of a neighbour’s labrador, just far enough away— and

Where the grass bleeds between the bare tree branches

Looked something like the leaves of our last summer.

And I’d rather take another thousand split seconds

Of you, rendered in the blurry face of a stranger,

Than lose my hope to a so-called “corrective” lens.

Seasonal Vacancy

Seeking old acquaintance,

Brought to mind in the local,

On a roughly five-minute contract.

Hometown applicants only.

Mutual year eight lessons essential.

Spending Christmas back home,

Instead of in an otherwise empty

London house share, desirable.

Effective three pint communication.

Detail oriented: such as recalling

Recent insta stories of city breaks

To ease the occasional silences.

Has experience managing priorities,

Like balancing really needing to get back

To your mates with basking, for another

Few seconds, in the dying light of the past.

A bachelors degree in yearning for a time

That likely never existed or, at least, is lost—

Or other relevant practical experience.

Reports to: the old group chat. Though

Usually distracted by external stakeholders,

Has more bandwidth this time of the year,

Hearing murmurs of do you remember him?

Twenty-eight

I’ve been complaining a bit,

About turning twenty-eight.

But I don’t think I mean it.

You’d never start moaning at

The world’s best restaurant

Because you can’t order

What you had before, though

The next-door table gets

To enjoy it for the first time.

Or sigh, when you hit the slower

Middle chapters of a book

That changed your life.

Would you stifle your celebration

Of the third goal, in an eight-nil

Thrashing of your local rivals,

Just because you’re more partial

To a long-range screamer

Than the bicycle kick you just saw?

I wouldn’t break to rub a hamstring,

With only a whisper of soreness,

If I’m on the most beautiful walk

I could ever take— as though

Something might stop me going on.

modern problems #10

I missed the aurora borealis again,

but I don’t mind all that much.

I would rather not muse about

how small I am

when all I care to know is so small.

And I don’t have time to be reminded

that I’m at the whim of the sun

by a brief skyful of miracle

blown in on a light solar wind.

That’s why I was inside, texting you

that we’ll see each other another time

and we both revelled in the lie

that we might have a say in the matter

as the light beat against the blinds.

Modern problem #9

I lost all my lives on Duolingo,

Conjugating the French verbs wrong.

It’s not that I don’t get the rules, but

Why would I make that cruel past tense

With ‘to love’ or ‘to know’ or ‘to be’

When I’m barely through with the present?

And besides, I kind of like this little world—

Bound by the few adjectives I know—

Where everything and everyone is,

By necessity, amusant or plus gentil or

Très, très bien.

modern problems #8

no need for the quid, destined for the cake sale tin;

there’s a PayPal link in the all staff email— fees apply.

and that leaving card is online, too, so keep your biro.

there’s a whole bunch of hole punches gathering dust

you can put it with, just next to the gunless staples.

dump printers and telephones, before patience ends

on skin and bones, the most unoptimised of machines.

all these cables lead to nowhere, you know; they’re all

VGA in the age of HDMI. hanging on like the old USB.

first they came for the PC towers and I said nothing,

because I found my laptop largely more convenient,

but now I’ve never had so many places to dock while

feeling so unmoored. and the desks are so bloody hot

that no one can bear to sit at them.

so I’ll never believe the lies spread by big ergonomics

about why eyes sting in the unnatural, overhead light.

the end of summer

and when the rain came,

which we knew it would,

we didn’t mind too much.

because what rose from

the tarmac was the smell

of those last days of summer;

like a breath—sweet and cool—

from the depths of the shortest

nights,

when we’d almost forgotten

the tired, midday heat.

film ideas

I got in the room with some hollywood film execs.

they’d seen the success of Barbie and wanted the next

big idea to restore the faith in some other multinationals.

“how about an anthropomorphic Amazon parcel that needs

to find its way home, after the driver is comically sacked for

inefficiency? no, okay.

maybe the CEO of BP learns the true meaning of fracking

with help from a talking bichon frise he rescued from an

oil spill. or,

a politician shilling for arms manufacturers pursues his dream

of being a paid board member of an arms manufacturer; played

by Jim Broadbent.”

modern problems #7

the IT department said it was time

to change my password, but i’ve

run out of ways to arrange your name

with the letters swapped for numbers,

and the run of exclamation marks

at the end is getting out of hand.

not to mention that they think it’s

a security risk to have something so

manifestly meaningful as the protection

for these excel spreadsheets.