PROMPTS

You left and the air was different

It is such an effort to be continually new

Keats, Surgeon Extraordinaire

A 25-Year Sulk

Here is one I stole earlier

If we had to talk to spouses by telephone

Two Tigers in Waitrose

Could you walk on my sunny side?

Grendel was a pussy

A fat pasty from a greasy-spoon

The queen is doing cartwheels down the Mall

Bring your trunks and we’ll make a day of it

A mountain of coffee-grounds

Dirty men eating fingerprinted sandwiches

Fart From the Maddening Crowd

I’m worried about becoming anxious

A periodicity of chimes

Laughing With, Laughing At

The moment the milk goes off

Electrolyte replacement plus water

Violets, Rhinos, Flamingos

Pretending to like Seamus Heaney

Miscounting Calories

Twenty Different Cocktails

Lavender, Chocolate, Cyanide

Black Toe!

Outside the Boston Aquarium

 PROMPTS


Yes, I have certain hopes

Hamburger Grillers in the Mist

We will shortly connect you to one of our advisors

Singing in Wookey Hole

The Many Rivers Underground

Interviews with Angels

Melons, Lemons, Bananas

Higher up the Mountain, greener grows the grass

The Ode Less Traveled

Nurse! Nurse!

The doctor should be here by Friday

A single photon of light

The Ferry Queen

How Women Get Minks

Like a glow-worm at midnight in a coal-shed

£20 to spend in M&S

Satan’s nephew

Afternoon Tea at the Ritz with Michelle

Old men playing cribbage

Dance of cadavers

My gloves, my mask, my bobble-hat

A Poem about potatoes

What wooden fences think of trees

Old, fading, he died quietly by the stove

The stables at midnight

The Deaths of many poets

The Problem with Albert’s Nose

 PROMPTS

Between then and a good time later

The Moose

Let us talk about the things we thought we wanted

I like the even un-even beat

Old Brown Things

The view from her apartment, Copacabana

She keeps a dead bird in her purse

The speed of the incoming tired

This is how the days were lost

Saving the cow

They have lined The Mall with barbed-wire

Playing dominoes in the Snug

Before I went to stay with my aunt

I have learnt many unimportant things

A black shoe, hammering on a table

The police arrived and we all went blind

Manuel, the blind knife-thrower

I cannot say my name

The dark smell of old fat buses

When stones rise from the sea

Bulldog on a trampoline

The Prince in his immaculate LandRover

You have dismantled me

Why the committee carried my mother’s coffin

The village is drowning

Another mug of tea

King Liar in a world of lies

 PROMPTS

I have a spare island if that helps

Yes, I have big feet

The various conjunctions of our disparate lives

Hugh Drama on British Rail

The bare floor, my father crying

Picnic in Potters Field

Like a gendarme drinking a cognac

Buses full of the dead

Love squeezed down to drops

That kiss was only flesh and you are fled

A fire breaks out on the line

The casual vulgarity of a Tory MP

Waiting to become barbarians

Would a red swan be beautiful?

The room smells of old dope and ghosts

Trees grow from carcasses

The street empties, then fills with soldiers

My mother knits straitjackets

Prose, but spoken better

Jibber-Jabber, Jibber-Jabber, marry-ing the Pope

Mr Chalk and his wife, Mrs Cheese

My great-grandfather buried the hanged

Dram on the Bung Mr Spooner

Like clock-don’t-work

Polish the glasses, put out the linen

The unremembered boys of Abersychan

As Green waves claim us

 PROMPTS



The enumerated parts of a church

His best brown boots

The unseen dangers of Lycra

He left his overcoat absorbing smoke

But if I die I’ll miss you!

The Woolworth’s Women are rising

How they loved, hated, cheated each other

The growing grey stain on the bathroom floor

Can a masochist love his wife?

Two ready avocados

I am trying a pony-tail. It means nothing

Songs for my funeral

The Stepford Husbands

You Raise me Up!

A Kitchen-Sink Comedy

Somewhere, rain becoming drizzle

No, it’s really about a pigeon

They have freed the poets. RUN!!

Water-in, Water-out, Repeat

Two little Chinese kids, singing

The pain in my big toe

An early-morning enema

When the boys finally leave

Why does Frank Sinatra SOOTHE?

Rules for vetting lodgers

I need to be disturbed

Why towels should be ironed and folded.

 The legions are coming!

I like many things, but best, the dark things

Crawling to Slough

Can you tell me the settlement figure?

They took the calf away bty barrow

Every ‘plane above my head

Before agency, life is tedious

Reading treasure Island beneath the covers

Two-Way Family Favourites

Poeticus Interruptus

The clunging clock in Grandfather’s Hall

from the bath you leave dry footprints

I almost went there once but changed my mind

Kicking strangers in the head

How a damp ceiling says “corruption”

The softer cotton of your underskirt

My heart feels settled, quieter

Raw Green Flesh

We could call it a vacation!

Our silences are not the same

Looking past the goldfish in the globe

My eyes clenched tight-shut - orange!

A PUBIC right of way

My wicked life in the Sahara

We could take a rocket to the moon!

House smell differently now

He breathes out bubbles which is not good.