Don’t ask believers to ever explain it Or give concrete examples of benefits Or fathom out how we’ll get over it: Just run along, come along, Right or wrong, bung a bong. Swap metres for furlongs. Bang a gong, sing a song, There’ll be no Skylon to admire And your sheets of nylon just might catch fire At the Festival Of Brexit. The queues will be endless, to bind us asunder. The tent leaks like a promise, the food supplier’s gone under. Workers are casual now their rights have been plundered. So come along, hum along, With a headlong swan song, A years long ding dong. What could possibly go wrong At the Festival of Brexit? Career opportunities will be fewer & fewer, There’s a smell of decay like a medieval sewer, The face on a fiver’s Julia Hartley Brewer At the Festival of Brexit. The catering tent may lack some edge With shortages of imported fruit & veg So suck on a limp lettuce celebration Of a facebook-fed dis-united Kingdom There’ll be loads to celebrate, you’ll soon see, Cos Ringo and Michael Caine both agree That it’s so much better to be poorer and free: At the Festival of Brexit Free of red tape, like Health & Safety. Free to make trade deals we had already Free from all those skilled doctors & nurses & carers & plumbers & cancer researchers. Free to be racist, Free to tell lies, Free to feed hedge funds, free to wear long ties. So tag along, string along, Moan along, sing along, Leave along just as long As it’s a 3 word song: But Don’t explain Cos that’s such a pain. Dispense with facts And don’t mention tax. Believe The Express, flog the NHS So come along, headstrong, Wave a flag the daylong, The money’s fled to Hong Kong. You’ve been lied to all along Monkey chants are our new song At the Festival of Brexit. Democracy’s welcome Extends to lies and hate So don’t call him Boris ‘Cos he’s not your mate.

Why we lost (29/11/19) Too many hostile newspapers Too many billionaire donors Too many reflex-tweet journalists Too many monsters made cute by satirists Too many boomers with no stake in the future Too many rooms full of Russian hackers Too many daft conspiracy theories Too many short or faulty memories Too many fancy-dress poetry revolutionaries Too many selfies Too many memes shared without checking Too many thinking they’re the first one thinking Too many cat videos that cost the earth Too many bored thumbs Too many algorithms Too many spying devices bought for Christmas Too many Halloween masks in August Too many back to school offers in July Too many disposable barbecues in June Too many Father’s Day gifts in May Too many unsold barbecues in April Too many Mother’s Day cards in February Too many Easter Eggs in January Too many Valentine Cards in December Too many Black Fridays in November Too many Advent calendars in October Too many selection boxes in September Too many rooms where we all just agree Too many state-sponsored drug cheats Too many acts of denial Too many live matches Too many state occasions Too many look at the state of that! Too many cars Too many crap trains Too many long-hauls Too many Stag & Hen do’s Too many tests Too many reports Too many inspectors Too many myths passed on by teachers Too many buy-one-get-one-free Too many clothes Too many FINAL REDUCTIONS Too many comfort snacks when you’re skint Too many notification pings Too many driven people who don’t know where they’re going Too many cakes on Friday Too many Black Fridays Too many reality shows that aren’t Too many talent shows that aren’t Too many employed that aren’t Too many automated checkouts Too many shops boarded-up Too many cuts Too many zero-hours contracts Too many consultants Too many managers who can’t manage Too many unaffordable mortgages Too many gig of free data Too many cameras Too many giving billionaires free data Too many days to raise the profile of that and this Too many who just don’t do politics Too many in cells instead of hospital wards Too many awareness-raising badges Too many pat answers Too many acts of remembrance of nothing much Too many actors selling souls in adverts Too many homeowners saying never a borrower or a lender be Too many told they were born to rule Too many papers owned by too few Too many slogans that don’t work once you think them through Too many war films at too great a distance of time Too many clickbait outrages from Mailonline Too many pub landlords on Question Time Too many lies to keep a track of Too many lips poisoned like Botox Too many thinking Trump reads their replies on Twitter Too many singers who sound like a phone speaker Too many buskers with expensive guitars Too many guitarists with too many guitars Too many effects pedals Too many guitarists Too many singers using auto tune Too many who can’t put down their phone Too many lagers cheap as piss Too many season finales you mustn’t miss Too many box sets Too many pointless remakes Too many sequels Too many prequels Too many best ofs Too many bots Not enough votes.

She’s not cute; she’s awkward Looking, always chewing. Chavvy scratter, Mouthy munter With form for burglary And assault, swearing Like a fuckin trooper. It’s her who banged you out, Snatched your bag, smacked you in the mouth. Where’s the victim? What’s the plan of action? Will it rhyme like a photo? Can I monetise your confusion? He’s not cute; obese and smells, sounds half-pissed As his sweaty farts, mobility cart, Foul mouth, ugly loud The kids all say he’s a paedo round here. Lives alone in that big house Lost his mother last year. Dealers use it to shift their gear. Where’s the victim? What’s the plan of action? Will it rhyme like a photo? Can I turn it into a slogan? It’s not cute; it’s normalised And you wish upon a celeb That this local hell went somewhere else, Anywhere, don’t actually care, Just not just over your brand new fence. You might expect it somewhere like Leeds; Maybe some metal-smiled angel can sweep it away like the leaves you blow from your drive to the street. Where’s the victim? What’s the plan of action? Will it rhyme like a photo? Will it monetise?

Neighbourhood So I find myself in Europe’s first automated factory with my pen-friend’s dad and his mate Courtesy of a long-gone Post-war Twin-Town initiative, now derided as woolly and unsafe, Which had dared to plant our council-house outlooks in sun-dried families who fed us better than our mums, (which wasn’t mum’s fault, l loved beans & chips), We rode real racing bikes, were given cab-rides in trains, And got tanned in November. This tinkered irrevocably with our brains. My dad had told me they were all “Backward and dirty, you see’ Which felt close to home, to me. Anyway, I forgot all about it till the middle Of what, in our house, passed for debate. The phrase “British jobs” made my gut tighten: In Cas, Castres or Koblenz Redundancy’s tragedy meant empty plates for friends. A worker is a worker. A welcome is a welcome. A whole family Once learned “Happy Birthday” in a second language just for me. The buildings were all post 1945, my friend’s parents could remember it all the sirens and the darkness and reprisals outside the Town Hall. Cut to the Now: I have to choose.Do I wearily talk to the wall Of Twitter accounts with no followers but lots of flags and enmity? Or do I drive a thousand miles to apologise to the families; Marty, Arnoldy Casiez? Flags never fed me.

There’s a reason a 5 year old didn’t do this…. Is this poetry for people who don’t like poetry? Like music for people who don’t like music? Here’s the James Last orchestra in words? Is this poetry for people who don’t like poetry? Like a story for people who don’t like stories? Here’s some live & exclusive CCTV. Is this poetry for people who don’t like poetry? Here’s a photo for people who don’t like art. You know what it is, don’t you? One day, I said; I know this place like the back of my hand; And when I looked, There was this huge lump. I’ll be honest: I panicked. The doctor said it was a ganglion. Harmless. Hit it with a big book About Modern Art. There’s a reason they have benches in galleries, But if I have to tell you what it is, The moon just becomes a circle on paper.

Jerusalem 2019 (Staring at an old painting of Wakefield in the Hepworth). “It’s shit.” “Why’s that?” “Just is,” she said. How might Westgate become like this? Grimshaw’s oils turned cobbles into the scales of fish, Though his nicotine sunset never let slip About cots where kids hacked blood-sulphur in grey spit. Could JD Sports ever glow like this? Our rough sleepers will never shine With tricks of the light Or twists of a palette knife. Hepworth’s face, thoughtful as her mallet head Sucked on this like a Woodbine, then left. Now, look at the weather: Fire, flood and monkey chants. Everyone’s in their pyjamas, faces beaten By algorithms that flatten Everything in sight. The big questions Are Yes? or No?, not What? Or Why? “Don’t you just serve coffee?” She said. Grimshaw’s sky, like when we’d read You could age a treasure map with Nescafé, fools no-one who’s waited up Westgate for the taxi home in knock-kneed sleet. But, maybe, we could start to build it; Inside an exhausted viewer’s head, Right at the point where they stop saying “It’s shit,’ and ask instead “What is it?”