Derek Jarman & My Aunt

Dear God, please
send me to hell
will be received
& then hung up
equal to Sylvia’s
phantom cattle –
Mr Jarman & my
Aunt on my wall
[beside my very
grave self-portrait
in charcoal 1984]
My [almost] queer
gallery [There’s a
BBC Radio play in
that line] I’ll heed
my wireless every
day – streamed &
free on-demand
[til they agree it’s
not by decrees of
licence abolition]
I’ll mind one God
[my other Aunty
Beeb] & pray that
our public T.V. is
kept from Azazel


Also found on Medium

To buy your own piece of hell visit Prospect Cottage

Lunchtime News

The silence around the house
is perforated by the radio pips
as I switch on the hour’s news

and then my loneliness grows
as the reported world enters
and my scale of things is shown
to have such insignificance

my existence is low

states and men of action
do not hide from endeavors

but I do

How do you mute a problem like Katie?

[Apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II, none to Katie Hopkins]

How do you mute a problem like Katie?
How do you catch a cow and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Katie?
A fascist-in-favour, a will-o’-the wisp! A clown!

Many a-thing you know she’d like to tell you,
many a-thing she so mis-understands,
but how do you make her mute,
to listen to what you say,
being sacked is part of her bigger plan:

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Katie?
How do you get Hopkins forever banned?
When I hear her I’m confused,
ears bleeding and bemused,
And I know that she doesn’t give a f*cking damn.

Thought for the Day


Seven forty five, a mumbled ‘thought’,
the BBC re-tuned, for the overwrought:

Then ‘the weather’, to equate the accounts,
(we British bleed rain, in large amounts).

Headlines-recited, a modulation:
Slaughter of stock markets, our fascination.

Tea downed-cool as the BBC speaks,
this nation listens, to the half-scripted piques;

gone from the house, and our thoughts go astray,
these fears unsolved, by Thought for the Day.