I've been poked by Jesus

Explanation: I told Lucy that we had sung a song in church called 'Jesus is my best friend', and she suggested that in this internet and social networking age, there ought to be a song called 'I've been poked by Jesus.' Never one to disappoint a lady, so:


I've been poked by Jesus, lol,
Jesus is my friend.
We're BFF, FYI,
our tweets will never end.

Status update: he's so GR8
I've got him on my wall.
I know he'll never unfriend me,
IMO he's best of all.

I used to lurk, but now I ping,
ASAMOF UC
He answers all my FAQs
OMG is he.

With many apologies to anyone who reads this. L8R.

Exam season

In the temple of learning
ninety heads are bowed.
Heads once full of pranks,
excuses and games
now hear a different call.
Sunbeams illuminate
those nearest the windows.
Red hair gleams gold,
and brown hair silver, halos
of concentrated enlightenment.
O have mercy, great OCR —
spare us, mighty Edexc-El.


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light of the world

By you I see the perfect tonal balance
of the ladybird's black and red shell.
By you I see the rightness of a mother
angrily protecting her son.
By you I see the beauty of symmetry
and the greater beauty of creative chaos.

By you I see that I cannot see you:
I am within you
and cannot see you from without.

By you I see.

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The Time Traveller

I was trapped in the late 1990s,
stir crazy in the compound,
despite the perfectly landscaped woods,
the nine-hole golf and magic aquachutes —
trapped in the holiday paradise, built for kids
with endless energy, perfectly homogenised
chalets scattered in orderly muddles.

So I mounted the hired bike, and rode
as far as the cordoned off car park,
and drove to freedom, to Mansfield.
An ordinary midlands town, a town
of butchers and bakers and brewers,
and to a baker's shop I went.

Six pikelets, and three or four words
took me back in time. " 'Ere y'are, duck,"
as she handed me the white paper bag,
the precious tea-time treats, and a wormhole
to the 1960s.

Three or four words,
and I was back in time, a small boy
visiting Nana and Grandpa in Nottingham,
eager for Goose Fair, for ghost trains
and ginger-snaps and balloons,
Nana playing A Windmill in Old Amsterdam
on a piano, not tuned for twenty years,
Grandpa pressing a five shilling fortune
into my hand, with "Don't tell yer dad!"
and the candy floss lady at the fair,
giving me the sticky sugar cloud on a stick,
with " 'Ere y'are, duck."




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Dusk

blinds splinter my view
of a soft May evening
settling to calm darkness


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Precision

Cutting a tile inaccurately means one of two things:
a wasted tile, or a bathroom wall that grates
with its misalignment, its unsightly overgrouted gap.

Cutting an image wrongly short-circuits a poem,
and what should be a small machine, throbbing with power,
becomes a relic for display, the shape the same,
but the function gone.

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