A thousand poems
is my new hourly rate.
(All must be epic.)

Three poems by my mum, Marie Florence. They are all made up from anagrams. See Not Sudoku and Arse for reference.

No 11 IMPERFECT

“You’re a nice piece”
Leered Peter at the temp
On her first day
At The Empire Cinema.
“You’re in your prime
Pert ripe and trim,
Although you remind me
Of a prefect sometimes
Perhaps too prim.
Maybe it’s the way
You crimp and perm your hair.
What’s your price?
I must have a receipt
For the V.A.T.”
His words were a recipe
For an epic disaster
She pierced him with a glare
As she typed even faster
“ How dare you?”
She flared
And flexed her triceps
She had a short temper
I don’t permit such tripe
Pipe down you
Imperfect little creep!
What makes you think
You can peer
At someone
Perfect like me?
Take a trip
Off the nearest pier
You pimp!”
He crept off, chastened,
On crepe soled shoes
Whistling the blues.

No. 14 DECADENT DECADENCE

Anna and Dean
Made a decadent pair.
They both knew how
To let down their hair
They danced entranced
To the cadences
Of the decade.
They caned it
They canned it
Until, dented
And deadened
They ended up
On Deadend Street
Where they need
No addenda
To their decadence.

No.2. INHIBITED

Bide with me
Hide with me
Dine at mine
Forget the diet
Smoke Bidis and watch
The tide comes in
With me.
Don’t be inhibited
You can bend
Your behind over my bidet
Any time.
You hinted you
Felt indebted
But don’t be shy
I promise I won’t bind you
No need to be tied
I’ll edit out the debits
What’s mine is thine.

insects
we were afraid of them
they made us scream and scream
my best friend always more than me
she had to do BUPA and Valium
and other stuff because it was a
really serious phobia
compared to my amateur
teenage hysterics that did not warrant
a specialist
she was even frightened of ants
of course i had a story too
a moth flew between mum’s glasses and her eye
and flapped and flapped all brown and furry
when she was only five in Westminster Abbey
so that made me afraid
and then in that hot summer there was one
as big as a hand that fluttered
against the cornicing
you could hear its wings beating
like a heart through a stethoscope – loud
i did not see an insect all day today
insects are terrifying because
no orifice is sacred
that is why i happily can kill them
i can’t believe they are tasty
prawns are the only pink insects
it is the sea that makes them that way
i like their legs best
perhaps i would survive armageddon on cockroaches
roasted broiled baked fried spatchcocked poached jerked
i do not want to know their habits
just eat the legs
in a needs-must situation

What is it about faded grandeur? It’s irresistible. A bit like Kate Moss – they had it all – even the pool – thought they were flash. Look where it got them. Oh how the mighty fall. (Advice to Kate: don’t worry about admitting that you ‘tried’ cocaine, just say you didn’t inhale.) Anyway, I think this could have been a case of location location. Maybe a patch of no-man’s land between Kennington, Oval and Vauxhall just wasn’t the place for the only pub with a pool. I’m tempted to climb out back, take a look, but I’m scared. God knows what I might find. The fossilized bones of a forgotten extra from Get Carter face down in a dirty puddle? Maybe it was also the weather. Okay, maybe it was the wrong thing, in the wrong place, probably at the wrong time. Five years from now I’ll weep when I cycle past another block of converted luxury apartments – with a pool. Not just because they’re there, but because I didn’t make a mint putting them there and the hope that I might make that mint will finally be over because someone else did what I didn’t do and convert the only pub with a pool into luxury flats. That’s why I like it: somebody really believed in that idea. It didn’t matter that nobody else had done it, and there might be a reason for that. This was the only pub with a pool. All those dreams dreamed too big and made small again by life. The only pub with a pool. All right, I just like saying it, the only pub with a pool, the only pub with a pool.

I saw a bunch of roses chucked in a bin on Notting Hill Gate and immediately reached for the trusty Nokia, only to find I’d run out of memory. So imagine my delight when these two turned up on a wall at the end of my road the very next day. Two decapitated red roses, no stems, no necks left, velvet and bloody against the concrete. They looked like a pair of perfect lovers. As it happened, I needed a flower for a meditation session, so I separated them and took one on a little adventure. I felt intermittently guilty then imperfectly omnipotent about breaking up this lovely couple. They wouldn’t get old and die together now. I imagined I’d re-unite them later that night, but of course I didn’t get round to it. The lady in the newsagents noticed the flower cradled in my hands and smiled. ‘Smell it,’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s a real one – you can tell because it’s perfumed,’ she said, inhaling. I knew she wanted me to give it to her, and I wanted to, too; but I couldn’t. I needed to keep this one for myself.

Hola amigos,

I’m back from Ibiza. Thought I’d therefore post my t-shirt diary from Sonar in Barcelona June 05. Ooh, this blog is sooh up to tha minit. Seriously though, I’m always thinking that for men it’s tough because they don’t really get the skirt and dress option. T-shirts are their only sartorial creative outlet. That said there’s a lot of ladies chatting camiseta. I was accused by one girl of just wanting to snap chest shots. As if! Actually, there’s something satisfying about photographing strangers and leaving their heads out of the frame. It’s all very ‘who’d wear a t-shirt like this?’.