Things Piss Me Off... (I.P.)

Those who preach, ‘Time’s a great healer’.
Dogs that make a bee-line for my crotch.
Fire doors – propped open...Tradesmen –
builders, roofers, plumbers, swear blind
they’ll be round at ten, then never show.
Folk what stammer, and folk what don’t.
Filling in forms; infuriating, ‘Tear Here’,
perforations which do anything but. Shops
with signs saying, ‘Break It and It's Yours’.
Revolving doors – per se. Sunny days
when I’m stuck inside...Other people’s
kids – my own, on a long-haul flight.

Jokers who tap their wrist as they ask
me the time. I know where my watch is,
so where the hell is theirs? Bad hair
days. The sock always goes AWOL
in the washing machine...The dream
I can’t remember, and the one I can’t
forget. The bats which refuse to use
the bat-box I painstakingly made
by hand for them. People who say
‘Time’s a great healer’, or did I already
mention that? The pale pink stub
of a theatre ticket, for a play we saw
marks the place in a book – the last
two chapters of Jude the Obscure,
I never ever got the chance to read her.