Captain Tom for Prime Minister 

or Health Secretary if that 

particular promotion isn’t available

or anyone else really instead 

of the current cumbersome incumbents

this embodiment of unpreparedness

these foggers of obfuscation

the economy

wealth versus lives 

the workforce dwindling

for the ghost gig

the leadership inadvertently solves

the crisis in social care 

through neglect and amnesia

maybe that's how the prisons will go too

no relations but expensive

to the taxpayer

the elderly and the guilty

captive audiences

sitting ducks

but the baby was saved

the robots wait in the wings with 

virtual mass graves for virtual funerals

and there's an unexpected reprieve for the environment

some good comes from every evil

some light in each darkness

(the Chinese revise the Wuhan death toll upwards by 50% 

people are not as malleable as data

but when they’re gone they’re gone

and become data though the poets 

try to breathe fire into that clay)

Norman Hunter

a Leeds United great 

plague victim

bites your legs

glory glory

the Health and Social Care Secretary 

offers care workers a badge

yes a badge

a fogging badge

a sticking plaster on a disaster

does it get any better than this? 

(no, not much but we have each other

and the air we gratefully breathe

and the baby that was saved)

ground control to Captain Tom

ground control to Captain Tom

Sunbathers on beaches in a lockdown

and a new type of offensiveness is born 

one that is inflamed by citizens doing 

what was ordinary two weeks ago 

but is now essentially criminal

and under scrutiny

some of the land's private wealth 

is revealed in the news of owners 

caught visiting their second homes

among them those extraordinary beings

who are our well-funded leaders

exhorting us mere plebeians

to stay at home protect the NHS save lives

the dual-edged maxims of governance

the mantras we do not all follow

do as I say not as I do

our two tier society

where did we lose our country?

Dunkirk is invoked for the ten thousandth time

while in Russia a medic assassinates 

five noisy neighbours

our inessential travel and inessential purchases

are sex workers on a furlough?

grim economic data arrives early

a power vacuum awaits

give me gilded horseshit

I’ll be happy with it

but won't bet on it

fear Easter when the sun shines

and we all want to come out and play

in the changed reality

the substituted stage set

the overloaded crucifixes

but fear more greatly an Easter

that doesn't rise in judgement

on its ritual structures

Build up herd immunity

selves as cattle

livestock locked down

in slaughterhouse towns

stay home 

protect the NHS 

and save lives

protect and survive

taking back control

the language of our various crises

the slogans of our desperate times

the litany of avoidable lunacy

an opportunity to inform on those

who veer from the restrictions 

of the pandemic's regime of new laws 

with new rules to learn

the requested change of behaviour

of travel and purchase patterns

the twitching net curtains

betraying an increased interest 

in the essential comings and goings

of one’s dear neighbours

funny how we find our true place

when we’re all in this together

and there's no let up from spam

its faceless operators still having

to steal a living as thousands die

may these gangster spamsters

be eaten alive by their hamsters

as other life forms colonise

the polluted human settlements

and the air is cleansed again

there’ll never be a Spring

quite like this one

until the next time

the lemming army of hoarders

is marching over the cliff edge

of dried teats and no deals

with their gluttonous supermarket trolleys

and who’s profiteering from 

Personal Protection Equipment

ventilators and medication?

who actually is in charge

of the looting the delays

and the half-heartedness?

my grandmothers could have done better

they were not hampered

by feelings of entitlement

but knew from real life drama

what urgency demanded

where to start in Ravi Shankar’s back catalogue

now I've got the time?

pandemonium reigns

now wash your hands

there’ll never be a Spring

quite like this one

until the next time

Herons explore new flood fields

red kites patrol the hearse road

up Suffering Hill

old and young

the two tongues

kin and friend

at the end

crows cosy up in creaking conifers

to watch the never ending pantomime

the rise and the fall

of the curtain of life

the labour of lowering

the strain of the load

released

the denizens of the soil

will accompany you

on your journey from person 

to depersonalisation

our endless recycling

our cheated Valhalla

of heroes without faces

of valour without bloodshed

later when routine resumes

a surprised mouse looks up

from among kindling

in a black plastic bin

before escaping me 

you 

our families 

the others

I hope I don't grow old and declining

running out of ideas

running out of running out

depleted of free will

knowing that I will depend on others

burdened with unreliable memories

irredeemable consolation prizes

and an unreachable hole

where I used to be

with people who have since left

there's little certainty

a leaf lands where it falls

then is moved by a breeze

or the industry of insects

the tramp of shoes

I am but a leaf

from a great tree

called family

I will land where I will fall

It was always night

would always be so to him

how it crept to become his friend

after childhood dread

tonight with axe and hammer

(or bwyell and mwrthwl in his language

somehow sounding less edgy

and threatening but almost comforting)

in that tongue

in their hands

choosing the longest spell of blackness

cold clear close to Yuletide

they began their work

Thomas David

Jacob and Joseph

trusted masons and joiners

from the scriptures

timber and thatch

nails and planes

saws and chisels

grinding gouging grunting

cursing as bats reconnoitered low

he knew that David would later admonish him

in his good-natured avuncular way

by his ironic use of the word “holidays”

to describe some of the more wayward/

strokes/of/his/adze/

despite the urgent energy of this shift

the desperate grip of the haft

when at last their task was complete

and they were done with checking the horizon 

for the first sparks on the anvil of sunrise

and had kindled their own warmth

in the newly installed hearth

the cloud of their exertions shrank

back into relaxing lungs

they clapped each others' backs

before nursing their aches

and extricating splinters

smiling broadly as Mary came over the rise

bringing the dawn in her basket

of bread cheese and ale

the first rays of a new day

a new life in her smile

and Christmas was coming

The amnesia of politicians

the mule refusal to learn from the past

the expensive studied ignorance

leads to the bonfire of billionaires

and reparations for the original Americans

and those of us driven from

our lands for any reason

and all the silver gold coal

wildlife wages spaces and hope

they made us help them

steal from us in ongoing plunder

featuring in blockbuster movies

for which we receive no royalties

and this despite the proliferation 

of information

or perhaps because of it

the overload of data required

to thrive or even survive nowadays

I drive in the low hills of autumn

in their twilight coat of russet and orange peel

the low hills of this time of my life

until bird droppings in the shape 

of a salamander on the car’s window

change the view

I chose a path

but don't remember which one

What is the story of a bra jettisoned

on the white lines in the centre of a road

eyed by a bevy of starlings on a telegraph wire

while green wheelie bins line up 

on a mucky grass verge

like recycled squaddies at ease

or lazy cut-price Easter Island statues?

our parents used to exhort us 

to always wear clean underwear

to spare our blushes

in the event of emergency personnel

having to intervene

when some inattentive motorists

unseated us from our bikes

bish bash bosh

if you're free a week Thursday afternoon

why don't we start to dig up 

the clogged-up motorways

then do the same to their feeder roads

and the unclassified roads

and any slither of poor

potholed tarmac or concrete

for they are teeming and pollutant

not the fresh air and ideas

of the caravans from the Middle East

the old books promised us

instead we gag on the rank fumes

of millions of vehicles going nowhere

very slowly in the congestion of our lives

A place of former habitation

now degraded

disregarded

and unguarded

its garden a tangle of bramble

a battle of nettles

forlorn thorns

and overthrown lawns

what enigma is hidden

beneath its heavy ivy overcoat?

what tale of abandonment will be revealed?

maybe its interior is derelict

unsafe and claustrophobic 

its rooms shrouded in 

a gradual accretion of dust

a pinafore hanging on a door

places set at a table

the trouble taken

over a meal never taken

toys sombre after childhoods

of excitement and exploration

curtailed by the games of adults

by the mystery of growing up

the heartbreak of having to decide

mundane objects

on shelves in cabinets

drawers handbags and boxes

or under beds

may have held a significance 

far outweighing their outward appearance

modest treasures promised to family members

keepsakes that were not handed down

a Bible open at a page

but what page?

what book?

its remembered names 

the family names

and those names

that were their own

no one else's

inscribed for some sort of deluded posterity

in the land of God and his enforcers

and the erasure of the seasons

the clouding of happenings

in the sedimentation of time

On my cherished isle

of rainbows flecked with words

that were meant but not said

the loveliest in all the tides

salmon-swept and seal-circled-sealed

I nurse my wounds in

my Savlon non-Avalon

an eminence in a deepening ocean

whose delving trenches are becoming

an even greater mystery

a friendless dwindling rock 

where I can play king

so bring me my dynastic sword

forgive me 

but I can’t read the small print any more

and those untutored minstrels

of my language of 40 years ago

where are they now?

they burned brightly but briefly

fireflies those guys and girls

I half-heartedly search for them

in scant grainy footage on You Tube

like a different country and historical period

I may have met them there

but I don’t remember

the frontier of familiarity

breached and confused

in a mess of pencil jabs

and eraser rubbings

and unconscious cultural step changes

to be larger than life 

to give life up 

and live larger than that 

and what's a real sinner?

shoot to my heart in

the stupidity of dance 

that I can't resist nor

the stupidity of stupidity

I who win inconsolable

and customisable grief 

not that I needed

or lacked it or benefitted 

from its purported utilitarianism