Let me be your fridge magnet
Let me slip into your home
Like a leaflet for a loan
Hidden in a free newspaper
Or supermarket circular
I'm not proud
Oh how I'd love to be your Baby on Board
Suckered on to your smoothness
I'd feel every bump in your road
Know exactly how much air was in your tyres
If you let me
I could stick faster still
If you'd let me be your fridge magnet
I'd hang on to your cool place
So perky, so keen
I wouldn't let you down
I'd be superficial for you, gladly
Cling to any surface - as long as it was yours
Then I'd ask softly 'do you understand now?
Do you get the message?
Do you read me at all?'
Crowded out
Even in the in-crowd I've always felt out
I've never quite known what in/out is all about
I sense it's nonsense but to some it's all
Being big and central or sidelined and small
But we are small beings and we should all know
We'll all be put out when it's our time to go
So best be out and ready, waiting for the ride
It can be oddly pleasant, here on the outside
Not tonight, Radiohead
Please, my love, perhaps not Radiohead tonight
Right on the pulse of our lives it may be
But it's dark, so dark, and I need to feel light
I work all day to keep up the fight
To smile in the face of that creep misery
So please, my love, perhaps not Radiohead tonight
Now I know that light can be taken for trite
(Or something much worse which also rhymes tight)
But sight can play tricks and you might never see
How in darkest of dark, you can so need light
And we may love truth with all our might
But at times less pain can set us free
So please, my love, perhaps not Radiohead tonight
Instead joyous sounds, so hot they ignite
Disco or banjo or sweet harmony
When it gets this dark, it's not wrong to need light
I don't want a fake promise, it'll be alright
I'm not stupid, you know, just a little weary
So please, my love, perhaps not Radiohead tonight
In the dark, cruel dark, give me light, warm light.
The complete picture
You may find the words I write trite
I may find yours soporific
You may hate my poems… ‘lite’
I may think yours monolithic
But could we still be friends, do you think?
We both believe in word and line
You can stick to all your habits
I won’t mind, I’ll stick to mine
You can have the thick thesaurus
I will listen on the bus
We will write the complete picture
Somewhere, somehow, all of us
Folk club
It's a club full of folk
It's a place you can go
It's music direct
Some quick and some slow
It's a cold, cold night
But it's warm in here
We have sounds just right
We have wine, we have beer
We have fiddles and pipes
And guitars times guitars
Accordions, squeezeboxes
Banjos, sitars
We have sweet young talent
With speed on their side
We have senior players
Who've seen a few tides
We have guests who work hard
While we all lose our cares
We listen as one
Just on separate chairs
There's the odd crunch of crisps
Sometimes just out of place
The high drama of raffle
The look on a face
A surprise now and then
If the guest loses plot
But the locals rise nobly
And fill the long slot
There are sleepier moments
Quiet songs and long days
The vigorous wake-ups
The burns and the braes
There are jokes well spun
And histories told
There is pretty much all life
Some new and some old
It's a club full of folk
It's a place you can go
It's music direct
Some quick and some slow
Short love
I loved you for 3 weeks
Or maybe longer
It may seem a short love
But it was stronger
Than you might imagine
From its length
The ship
More than a TV show
People have very different interpretations of this word
Friends
To me 'we're friends' means
I value you as a person
I see you as an equal
I am not better or worse than you
You have qualities I admire
That draw me to you rather than to others
I want to do things for you
And relax knowing that we will help each other
I trust you
Because you are my friend specifically
Not an unknown quantity
Or a floating voter
But a supporter
Supporting me whilst I'm supporting you
We're a feat of physics
A natural phenomenon
Proof that people help each other
For reasons other than finances and self-interest
I believe all this
Sometimes it seems stupidly
This word friends
Maybe I read too much into it
Angels in oversupply
Strange to hunt angels
All these round our feet
Odd to want god
All the good folk you meet
Bizarre that we can't
Get by with what's here
We seek help from elsewhere
We really are queer
Spacing
When you die what happens to your MySpace profile?
Does it jam, does it crash, do your friends get told?
Does a bulletin post all the funeral details?
Does 'about me' blur as your body goes cold?