High Ho Silver

Smart

Noise of Division

Spirit-sober mates

Socks and sandals

Grandparents houses

Free train station piss

Earn your breaths

Pain around the corner

Too many smiles and laughs
In recent times gone by
Inevitable pain now here
Our puppy just died

Splashing in sea
Like a child last week
Drowning in tears
As a man this week

Pain’s grasp is tight
Internally around neck
And heart is squeezed
With a crippling grip

The pup was a boy,
a naughty one too
Never became his biggest,
As a cute kid
Blake will forever be..

(May you rest in eternal peace Blakey x)

Life and death

Such close neighbours
You don’t even know,
Here right now
Then someone’s gone
This town and the next,
Gone one-way mate,
Could be a kinda fate
Never know at this rate!

They are both polite
Both need me like
Whiskey needs me
To smile it’s spirited effect,
At your girl that smiles back fast,
She sees a Midlands man,
Who drank stout outta can,
One that walks into a night
Ready for potential fight
Whether it is wrong or right.

I never came to make it right,
My way is just my way
I do hope to stay another day
This mans now thirty-three
Mum didn’t make this young age
So how can I be free
Knowing the keys to my cage
Could be in that Momma’s hands
And no woman has such big hands
To hold a passage for my release.

Should I stand?

Is she pregnant
Or is she fat?
Not enough info
To decide that

The preggo ones
Wear a badge
Here no such data
To analyse later

Bloating from lunch
Causing her hunch?
If I ask she may
Refuse and say

“I’m fine, you sit”
Then I will feel
Like a tit
For thinking her’s

Were be filling
In prep for crying
Clinging offsping
Getting a drink in

Hope she doesn’t
Now think she’s fat..
Thought train stopped
as the tube one did

New additions brings
A stenchy stiff whiff
from stinky Pete
Now on next seat

Takes decision from
Hands and head
To feet to retreat
Woman sits down

Next to Mr Smelly
Glance at me
Then rubs her belly
Very suggestively

Poles apart but it’s cool

I met a city female from
A different frequency
Do not even know
what number it was..
Hoping for a blockbuster
But got He-man 3

She was full of angst
I was not
She kept checking phones
Mine was off,
She looked very average
But in photos she’s not.

Only so much juice
I want to get her
Sober little pout
When I am on
Jamaican Dragon Stout

And then she was surprised
When I left to see my guys,
To have some ‘fun’.
Something she couldn’t give
Not even one joke
Or a laugh was evoked
So I linked the man-dem
for a good ol’ Belgian bun
With a cherry on top

Tory-funded Labour youth

Lock up blue parents
On voting day,
And you stop
Two votes for them!

Gain independence,
Earn your own cash,
Then the labour youth
Won’t need tory funding

Youth, pay your taxes
The system needs it,
Or don’t moan of
Poor public services

This son of a factory man,
Grandson of a foundry man,
Won’t need to convince his lot,
Redder than red to the end

Dream fears

Started to see them
And they’re not pretty,
Trauma but no unit
To fix this scarey shit

Why did I turn on
This dream mode again?!
Nightmarish dreams
But don’t want to label
them that nasty N-word

Different monsters
Appear every night
But now I remember
In the morning light

It WAS only a dream
But why was it mine?!
Now I know why
I switched them off
Fuck off bad dreams
I just want to sleep

Eye of the tory

Disdainful looks
At potential immigrants
Or anyone different

Piercing blue uncompassion
Don’t ask them
For directions!

They think you are
Diluting their
Dusty old money

Fat aristocratic prats
Never laboured
In their lives

Ignore the blue ties
You’ll spot them
From their eyes

(Cartoon by Dave Brown. Exhibited at The Political Cartoon Gallery, Putney in 2017. All copyrights are his, cheers Dave! )