Smilers...

I'm not sure if Facebook is the place to place my poetry. If I don't put it there though where does it go? There aren't exactly thousands of publishers queuing for the rights of my poetry flow. Does anybody even read poetry anymore? Does anybody read my poetry? I don't know. What I do know is that the words and ideas need to be somewhere other than inside my head. If I don’t get them out I think that my head is likely to explode.

Smilers

You're seen the permanent smilers,
the clowns,
the jokers,
the happy hopers,
the ever cheerful,
never tearful,
the joke sharers,

so quick to giggle,

the big grin wearers,
that ever smiling woman,
that hearty guffaw of a bloke.
Take a look beyond their happy,

are they trapped inside their own joke?

Is that sadness beating their hearts?
A flick of fear in the eye?

They are the ones to worry about.
These ones that never cry

Aside: The painting of the clown is one I painted a few years ago. Today I discovered that it's been borrowed by an American playwright - Tony Yajko - who resides in New York to illustrate his avant-garde play Bloody Strange.

You can read 'Bloody Strange' here.

Caption...

Auntie Peggy wondered if Santa Claus could actually bloody read. 

She was sure that her Christmas list had clearly stated dildo.

Caption...

Uncle Paul used to be in the navy. On wet days he would get out his 

dressing up box so that we could all play his version of pirates.

Caption...

Going around to visit Uncle Neville could be quite unsettling. 

He didn’t have any curtains and there were always 

test tubes lying around everywhere.

I want a coffee…

I like my coffee to taste like coffee. I don’t want it flavoured with anything. I don’t want raspberry coffee or vanilla coffee or maple syrup coffee or peppermint coffee. I don’t want it sprinkled with chocolate dust, gold dust, cinnamon dust, or malt dust. I don’t want flavoured sugar, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, sea salt, coconut oil or butter. I don’t a want a pear juice, apple juice or cranberry juice coffee. I don’t even want milk or sugar. I do like a little rum, brandy or bourbon on a cold day, but generally I just take my coffee as it comes. Just coffee. I don’t want it frothed, I don’t want a heart swirled on the top or a cute template dusted Teddy Bear. In fact, I don’t want a picture of anything on top of it and no, I don’t want a bloody Cappuccino. Neither do I want an Affogato, a Bicerin, a Breve, a Café Bombon, a Frappuccino or even a Yuenyang. I want a coffee, a black coffee, call it a bloody Americano if you must, but just give me a coffee. Listen I don’t care about your expensive coffee making machine, I don’t care that it cost ten thousand pounds. I'm not interested that it can make coffee twenty different ways and makes noises that sound like a bad case of the flatulence. I don’t even care that it was imported from Italy and designed by a man that used to design Ferraris. I just want a coffee in a cup. Not in three chemical beakers deconstructed into its parts, not in a jam-jar or a ramekin or a champagne glass or a hand-turned wooden beaker. I just want a cup of coffee in a cup or even a mug if you don’t have any cups. I don’t want it iced, or filtered through rose petals, I don’t want it with an ice cream float or a flake or even the teensiest little bit tepid. I want it hot and strong and black and steaming. I don’t care that you trained for five years and making plain coffee is beneath you. I don’t care that you like to be called a Barista and not a waiter or waitress. I just want a coffee and preferably not one where the beans have been eaten, digested and excreted by a Palm Civit - and no I'm not impressed that it’s come all the way from Sumatra. I don’t care if it’s from Italy or France or Japan or Ethiopia or even bloody Vietnam. Listen coffee is a drink. Not an experience, not an art form, not a mission, and certainly not a performance. It’s a drink. I just want a coffee and preferably one that costs less than a fiver. 

Don't worry. I'll go home and make my own.

Halfway to china...

Halfway to china

Anyway, let's drift away

together.

Where should we go?
Scotland?
Tunbridge Wells? 
The Orinoco?
Set up home in the country?
On a radioactive beach?
Or how about a council house?
A few square feet of peace.

Under the sky in a tent,
inside a rainwater vent,
anywhere,
somewhere.
They’d never guess
Where we went.

So let's drift away
together.
It can be anywhere you choose.
It doesn't need to be in a boat.
We don’t have much leak to lose.
Escape in an old carpet.
Hide in a bottle of plonk.
Go anywhere and not come back.
Like a couple of mismatched mugs,
Chipped,
but not broken.
Just a pair of Toby jugs.

Anyway, let's drift away
together. 

Caption...

Mildred clearly didn’t understand how taking measurement 

really worked. Even her friends suspected that fart speeds were 

measured in knots and not in feet and inches.