The year got started with King Leopold’s Ghost,
About the Belgian monarch who decreed
He owned the Congo. I got so engrossed
In tracking his abominable greed,
And its effects on those who suffered most
That by the end I felt no evil deed
That fiction could invent would further darken
The heart that strolled through palace grounds in Laeken.
Convenience Store Woman, picked up next,
Was ghostly in itself. Narrated by
A character perpetually perplexed
By human interactions, it’s a wry
Outsider’s take on humans: oversexed
And difficult to please. It made me try,
Despite my reservations, to commence a
Liaison with my local Marks & Spencer.
Read MoreShin-deep in surf suds, we looked out to sea,
Beyond the breakers, in the seeming calm,
Where gliding through the waves, effortlessly,
We saw the graceful shimmer of your arm.
Read MoreLet’s raise a glass to Robbie Burns,
Whose dialect, one soon discerns,
Can give the palate friction burns.
Don’t try the accent!
Or swallow, as the schoolchild learns,
Muscle relaxant.
Read MoreMatt, both of us are happily in Spain,
A proper summer break long overdue.
For days now heavy clouds have presaged rain
But their appearance doesn’t spoil the view:
The hills that seemed so dinky from the plane
Now loom above the mist like giants. You
Will hopefully accept with an apology
This sloppy foray into climatology.
Read MoreClive James, the poet, raconteur and wit,
A man whose light no bushel could conceal,
(A fact I’m sure he’d cheerfully admit
Between prolonged quotations from O’Neill)
Wrote letters home in verse – the clever git –
A trick too entertaining not to steal.
In striving thus to emulate my betters
I hope to write more interesting letters.
Read MoreIf you’ve done any Underground travelling in London recently then you will have been confronted by the bafflingly terrible TfL posters which urge you to adopt proper Tube etiquette through the medium of poetry.
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