'I'm fed up looking like Father Christmas,'
Muttered Father Christmas one year.
'I need a new outfit. I must move with the times.
So, for a start, it's goodbye, reindeer.'

His name is called and there's a pause

just long enough to halt a war

tame timber wolves and trim their claws

hide diamonds in a secret drawer

There she was on the news,
Miss Goody Two Shoes
caught on CCTV.

Don't look so shocked.
Of course you know who – who else but Goldilocks!

I like to stay up
and listen
when big people talking
jumbie stories

I does feel
so tingly and excited
inside me

He's the Keepy-Uppy Kid.

We're the Mafia cats
Bugsy, Franco and Toni
We're crazy for pizza
With hot pepperoni

One was beautiful, silken hair to her waist
and dutiful, kept it neatly in place.
Please and Thanks were words she’d use.

The living room remembers Gran dancing to Count Bessie.
The kitchen can still hear my aunts fighting on Christmas Day.
The hall is worried about the loose banister.

In our flat
faces speak
of places across the sea.

In our flat
voices walk in
talking, but not like me.

Don't be so glum,
plum.

Don't feel beaten.

You were made 
to be eaten.

But don't you know
that deep within,
beneath your juicy flesh
and flimsy skin,