Three Poems For My Mother

I Never Thought I’d Live This Long

This song will never be played again,

Because it’s different this time

To every other time

And I won’t remember it next time,

If there is one.

My mum asked if I felt different,

Now that I’m older,

But I told her, I

Never expected to live this long. 

Thought I would be long gone and

Leaving a tragically small, but

Celebrated back catalogue – beautiful,

To match my corpse.

Last words recorded by a tearful nurse,

Hearse chased by obsessive fans

And debt collectors

Health inspectors recommending

That my bedsit be condemned, and then

Bankers turning down a lone loan application

To turn it into The Museum of the Lost Cause.

No, I never intended to live this long.

Oh, to be unappreciated in my own time….

Instead of under-appreciated in my own rhymes.

My Moment Of Fame, Ruined

It was my moment of fame:

They read out my name

At the out-patients waiting room

They mis-spelled it on the form

And I was ready with ready wit

To make the waiters in the waiting room

Laugh; but not too much

(That would be inappropriate)

But they pronounced it right,

So the nurse didn’t apologise

And I never said:

“Don’t worry,

It will make a good story

In my autobiography

Available March 15^th

In any surviving bookshops.”

(That chapter will be entitled:

My Big Moment Ruined

By An Over-worked Nurse.

And it will be

Fucking hilarious.)

It was my moment of fame,

And she ruined it,

But that’s ok.

She was professionally stressed.

And I’m extravagantly talented,

(And my Mum says

I was the handsomest boy in school…).

A Postcard Home (Greetings From Glasgow)

Haw, Maw,

Ah’m back up North,

Near the park

That was ma Da’s auld stompin’ grun’

Catholics against the prods at the fitba’

And sectarian banter ‘n’ a’ that ‘n’ a’…

Naw, Maw, ah havnae seen ma Grannie yet

‘Cos I’m weirded oot by

Proximity tae a deathbed.

Breath left suggests

I put that phoney accent out of my head

Before I get telt with a boot aboot the head

I ran all the way back to Govan,

Wi ma wee cousin

To avoid all the Glesga life-lovin’

Heavy-drinkin, stinkin’ aggression.

It’s a curse and a blessing

That I was raised in England –

Where the winters are milder,

And so are the women.

Dragged up in some circumstances that

Made me grateful

For working class parents, not

Stereotypical

Fish and chips on a Friday night, like

The rest of the western world.

Bristol’s prettiest girls turned my head

But not my persecution complex

A fat Glasgow chip on each shoodir,

For wherever I rest.

But I’ll soon be back in Bristol,

Where we bristle, but slow

Baptised with incense and skunk smoke,

Ah’m no homesick,

Ah’ll no greet,

I’m already home;

Greetings from Glasgow.