Obeachuary (Beachy Head Obeachuary)

Frantically cartographers must realign their charts
As Beachy Head commits a most ironic suicide
Geologists must dig for answers deep within their hearts
What is it that knocks a famous headland off its stride?
 
They haven’t found a note yet from the kamikaze cliff
But topographic analysts will rationalise its end
Gloomsday pundits will begin to splutter out “What if
This is but the first sign of a worrying future trend”
 
The ocean will immerse itself in drowning’s salty oil
The air will suffocate - a Sainsbury’s bag pulled o'er its head
The earth will bury all it is beneath this mortal soil
And Mother Nature ends it all as green fields turn to red
The elements are rampant claiming periodic spoils
Ropes turn into nooses and play hangman to their threads
Lava spills on its own skin, which bubbles up in boils
Pots of pills take overdoses then die in their beds
 
Razors slash their handles and bleed their blades bone dry
Balconies jump off themselves and shatter noiselessly
Guns turn upon their chambers, blow their barrels 6 miles high
Ovens try to gas themselves and set their food smells free
 
On our spinning garden in the corner of the sky
A little piece of Sussex throws itself into the sea

Give us this day our daily bread

(Give it to us daily huh huh huh huh

Give it to us daily huh huh huh huh

And all the girls say pretty nice for a white slice)

I like bread

Bread is the best thing since

Sliced bread

Say it with flour

Full of yeast and promise

All different sorts of bread

Farmhouse Split-Tin Cottage

One basic recipe and the miracle of the multiplying loaves

Feeding the 5,000 with fish sarnies

Bloomer Granary Wheatgerm

But basically it's all just bread

The ducks in the park will vouch for that

Well bred bread?

Or interbreeding

Into bread

By interkneading

Baguettes

Begat

Mini baguettes

Torpedoes Cobs Batches Baps

Crusty rolls

All fulfilling

With sandwich filling

The same roles

The United Flavours of Bread

Onion loaves

Walnut loaves

Bread filled with the fruit

Of olive groves

But essentially all bread flavoured

Bread of different colours

White and brown

And different nationalities

Chapati Nan Pitta Tortilla Focaccia Ciabatta Soda-Farl Coburg Unleavened Cholla Damper

Symbolic of diversity of colour and race

Sarcastic bread

Sardonic bread

Ironic bread

Rye bread

Loaves for toasting

Burnt toast is the new black

And it always falls on the buttered side

Hovis is the new brown

And mouldy bread is always greener on the other side

Savoury bread

And sweet bread

Croissants Crumpets Pykelets Muffins Scones

Eat your crusts, they’ll make your hair curly

A childhood memory

When young we always had home made freshly baked bread

The smell of nostalgia

From the oven of childhood yearning

Covered with the jam of bad metaphors

Thickly cut chunks

The doorstop challenge

One weekend my dad made saffron bread

Father’s Pride

Bright yellow

It tasted nice

Though glowed disconcertingly

At school on the Monday I opened my lunch box

And pulled out a

Big yellow sarnie

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’re got til its exposed to the wrath of the playground

“It's still just a sandwich”

I vainly said to the vicious mob

But they judged my bread on its colour

Nothing is more ruthless than a kid with an advantage and the support of the crowd

And the crowd pile down the sandwich shop

Who proclaim the latest fad bread

Making dough by making dough

Bagel shops rose overnight

The hole in the bread

Filled a gap in the market

Another way for cafes to earn their bread and butter

Last year was the year of the wrap

But is panini the new wrap?

Whatever, nothing can escape the fact that all of the above

When filled with meat and salad and cheese

Are

All

Still

Just

Fucking

Sandwiches

The perfect man?

Made out of chocolate
Looks just like shoe shops
Eyes reflect money like
Gold coated dewdrops

Always stands tall and is
Never diminished
Gorge on his body then
Moan when he's finished

An Answer to Sonnet XVIII

Why compare to summer's storm
Of humid heat and sudden rains
When darling bud goes flat and warm
And stench is leased from city drains
The yellow eye burns ozone layers
This sunburn's giving me the ache
A cooling wind blows through our prayers
"She don't suit shorts for heaven's sake"
Will these clammy days not fade
Or showers drown and wash away
I cower hopeless in the shade
While most put flesh out on display
And though my passion burns like fire
You don't compare to summer's ire

Fuiku

Fuck you fuck you fuck
You fuck you fuck you fuck you
Fuck you fuck you fuck

Poets Captured in Colliers Wood

Now as far as I know no one has ever written a poem about Colliers Wood before, and I feel extremely reticent about doing so.

It's a bit cliched penning an elegy to somewhere just because you live there and walk through it every day, although I suppose it is logical that Colliers Wood will impact on what I write because of the amount of time I spend there.

But I would never want, nor would it be possible, to get all sentimental about a place that is only there basically because the very concept of a conurbation would not allow a big gap of nothing to exist (if "nothing" can exist) between Tooting and Wimbledon, just because my bills get delivered to an address containing its name.

Not that there is anything particularly wrong with Colliers Wood....but there's not much right either.

It does have isolated patches of urban beauty amongst the sprawl of the retail parks. The Wandle flows serenely past Merton Abbey Mills before tip-toeing round the side of SavaCentre and jogging confidently on towards Earlsfield. Wandle Park is very peaceful but it's verdant in a sort of dogshit and crisp packet way.

The Sri Lankan restaurant is a fine addition to the cuisine of South West London but the Ode to Squid Curry is one poem that does NOT need to be written.

Other than that Colliers Wood is a couple of bad chicken takeaways, some dreadful pubs and a mass of out-of-town shopping experiences lived out in the suburbs.

There is the windiest entrance to an Underground Station in all of London, where many a carefully groomed hairstyle has gone tits up.

There is an tower block (blamed for causing said winds that have lead to the area being known as an umbrella graveyard), a skyscraper of sorts that can be seen all the way from Mitcham.

And then there is the SavaCentre, a mega monolith to consumerism, a hypermad hypermarket, that looms over the area like some silvery grey Uluru.

So, bearing all this in mind, why the fuck have they built a Holiday Inn in Colliers Wood?

They have taken this building that looks like bad lego and dropped it down next to the Victory.

Who on earth do they expect to stay there?

Do they think that hordes of tourists will flock from the four corners of globe seeking squid curry? Are they trying to attract a passing trade of motorists for whom Tooting is simply too far to drive?

Can we expect tour groups of Aborigines coming over to climb the sacred walls of SavaCentre?

Will coachloads of French people come over from Calais to shop there and stock up on Marstons Pedigree bitter when it's on special offer?

Will there be conventions of poets looking to capture that dogshit and crisp packet feel?

Poets trying to capture any sort of feel?

Or just poets captured in Colliers Wood.

Written c1999

Gratuitous swearing

I am not one to use the word cunt for no reason