The traffic engineer explains it best:
how widening the road and putting in an extra lane –
just here, beside your daughter’s school – will reduce journey times
and help with congestion rather than
doubling the volume of traffic.
Safeguarding children is the highest priority.
A hospital is somewhere you go to get made better.
A hospital promotes recovery.
More recently, there are a number of positions I held in esteem,
that as the velcro ages or gets clogged with carpet fibres and hair, have come
unstuck.
The teacher relayed them
and we reached them from Julia’s phonics books.
We learned to read,
but the longer mum is wheeled around in here, the less fond I am.
Here’s another one:
The Police solve crimes.
Even a ladybird can go to them for help.
The Telegraph carries this news,
it trues these laces, tight.
Everard, Lawrence – outliers.
People deserve what they get.
Exceptions are almost liars.
Computers save us time.
We make our own luck.
A cliché saves nine, but because brevity is the soul and
a poet speaks to truth,
I won’t go on.
We are experiencing exceptionally high call volumes.
You can save yourself time by going online.
The dentist said with a twinkle, “Open wide as poss!”
The year after I was ten, was when he got stuck off.
Mum said he was horrible to his assistant:
“Are you stupid love, or are you just trying to annoy me?”
(She’d passed him the wrong tool.)
Still later, he got done for dealing reefer in The Nook.
The nurses care. Sometimes.
I’m trying to tell them your sheets need changing, but they’re not listening today.
They had to cancel another scan.
due to an accident between an ambulance and a van.
Never assume, I’d say —
but that’s lazy — you can’t just un-assume everything.
I have to check the sources, and reward reliability.
We go to school to learn, not malleability.
Age brings wisdom.
Does this apply to you mum? You’re reaching out to someone or something.
I think you know I’m here, but you’re hallucinating –
maybe a vase, maybe something you put on.
The label is there to tell you what’s in the food,
but the picture of a peach is not in the yoghurt.
Above the bed a nurse has written, “A teaspoon of water, little and often.”
And, “What makes me happy is: to see my husband, Jim.”
You can’t quite string a sentence.
I expected the chip shop to provide vinegar for chips,
but look it up – chip shops don’t have vinegar.
Trust me, I’m a poet.
You will be surprised, you will be squeezed.
It’s “chip shop condiment” – harmless, vinegar tasting.
We don’t need to reject everything just because it’s a lie.
The consensus is, and here I concur:
it’s better to care given others are lost.
It’s better to be there.
Look to your kids, and help keep them kind.
Love where you can,
Love who you find. Some of the time.
What other half truths did the headmaster hide?
That fat, scary bastard once gave me a clout
just because whilst in the playground, I was playing about.
Hospitals make you better,
and although mum knows I’m here,
she isn’t getting better.
I touch the brown, tie-died bruise on her hand.
I think she knows I’m here,
and it matters less what’s true,
than if a shoelace, or some velcro secures her slipper shoe.
