I'm on the train again.
Stopped at Manchester Airport
I am presented with an excellent opportunity to check out a flight attendant standing by the doors.
Her uniform is block red.
Of mice and men, it's the boys
Who ogle, cats soon to be fed.
And I did always think there was something sinister about cats
Their sly eyes and how they yawn
How they pretend to sleep long past dawn but have been slinking and thinking and stinking and
Hunting
The blood of mice
and men reward their pet's **** with a stroke of their ego by their ego.
"It's human nature" to hunt for rich, red reward you say
"It's part of being a man"
I'll say human nature can,
No, should, change,
And I avert my gaze with shame.

I was on a train out of Chorley
Happy to be sad to be leaving
Smalltalking strangers with a great accent
Hot and uncomfortable because my super cool leather jacket wasn't breathing.

Lancashire, you've made me think!
Actually, trains make me feel pensive.
Or was it Mrs Barton?
Bumbling and hypersensitive (in a nice way)

"Remain vigilant through your journey"
"Do not leave your heart unattended or it may be destroyed"
We'll get into Cardiff at zero zero six teen
That's technically Friday; there'll be drunks to avoid.

We're past Crewe and I know
Younger me made the right decision.
The path I sometimes hesitate to follow
Is bold, beautiful and scenically inefficient.

It twists and turns, trees stream
Past the train's windows
The sky looks lovely tonight
A candyfloss cloud for each of my woes (only three or four obstruct the sunset and they make it shine all the softer)

Mother of a lover, you said
You thought you'd never see me again
You often think of me, and will "follow me".
Facebook makes it easy to pretend.

An elderly gentlemen sits in front of me on the train
In fine, red braces and a tweed hat the colour of marshland after rain.
He is concerned.
He left his coat at Derby station and is going to collect it.

A normal man of average age is more self-assured than this OAP.
A normal man with a boring job and nothing to see
Not even red braces

It's like when people get old,
Right before they're about to die,
They realise they don't know anything. They have nothing to be confident of.
They have lived fascinating, breath-taking, heart-stopping, totally forgettable lives.

We've reached Derby now and red looks back at me,
Mouth slightly open and with a long strand of loose hair poking from under his hat.
I smile.
I'm young. I'm only just beginning to know everything.

He is anxious and I am stupid and ignorant.
I hope he finds his coat.

Uninvited visitor
Black-eyed burglar
Shadow dweller
Nimble sprinter
Able contortionist.

Cheap, common yet
Generous
disease giver
Innocent troublemaker
Thief and scrounger
Bin searcher
Test subject.

Extreme sport enthusiast of my kitchen, bedroom and balcony
Sleep depriver
Olympic diver
Racecar driver with claws for wheels.
I'm not your pit crew, so please find your meals elsewhere,
Silent sniffler.
Constant nibbler
Unwelcome visitor
Gatecrasher!
And he brought a plus one, cheeky sod.
Wherever he goes,
He's pursued always by that faithful worm.

I'm a pendulum
Slowly swinging one way and another.
Always destined to be opposite,
Always almost touching one extreme or the another.
I long for the dull thud of metal on wood.
I remember as a child playing with the brass pendulum of my parents' clock. Interfering.

I'm a cuckoo cuckoo.
In my cuckoo clock.
Popping in and out.
Hidden inside or on full, crude display,
Chirping away,
But never will I not be the other,
In time.

I am the weather,
My own seasons,
A planet orbiting its sun,
Ever-changing, always running,
Spinning, dizzying, ever busying Myself but never getting to the sun.
Never knowing true dark or true light,
Only the insistent tick tock of day and night.
Regimented, regular dawns and dusks.
Waiting for the next change of scene
Wondering what it would mean to reach the sun,
Wanting to let the cuckoo break loose of its small, wooden case.

No one likes my poems
Maybe you will like this
Because it's about Rubicon
Juicy, loosy goosey Rubicon baby
Oh yeah, uh, uh, rubicon

too many fingers in too many pies
so far apart my body is torn trying to reach them all
and now I am dead