Jenny with some rue seeds, better take some rye:
Pockets full of wishes never gonna shine,
If you get your sixpence, give it to the grind;
Money where your mouth is, bread is close behind,
But Johnny’s got your sixpence, and Johnny’s doing time.

Johnny’s on the down-low, Jenny’s on the climb,
He’s looking for his chance, but the stars won’t quite align,
She’s taking what she can, but the can won’t ever chime,
So sing a song of sixpence, sing a song of rye:
Songs with happy endings always cost a dime.

~Michael Danger Caskey

She says beneath her breath “it’s fine, it’s fine,”
As if this madly grinning giant child
Defines how fine it is when she inclines,
Staring with wild eyes and wilder smiles,

Yet nonetheless it nears her step by step,
Each in between a cautious thoughtful pause,
Considering if altruism’s kept
In such a mousetrap-hand and open claws.

It takes the food and flees somewhere discreet;
I wonder if it thought the taste was sweet.

~Michael Danger Caskey

“I read they’re taking out our pensions now,”
The first one told the second with a sip,
“They’d take the very air if they knew how,”
The second person answered with a quip,

“It really costs too much to live these days,
Without more taxes for the government:
They’re raising eight pounds more per year, they say.”
“The nerve!” said one, who saw his pint was spent;

He found his wallet, paid £3.50 more,
And asked the barback for another pour.

~Michael Danger Caskey

“Well now (and I feel awful saying this),
I’m not, like, getting anything from her,
You know? Yeah no, but really, I just wish
I got some sort of insight or whatever

“When I hang with her. I just don’t get that,
And so I think I shouldn’t anymore;
Besides, sometimes she’s like, a total twat,
You know–she’s been that way since we were four.”

So someone said, not word-for-word as such,
But she said just as little with as much.

~Michael Danger Caskey

Clockwork Breakup

Reject me, will you? Well if I’m repulsed by you,
I’ll be repulsed by you in every other way:
I’ll think of you when coupled with the worst abuse,
And so, Ludovico your every memory away:

When I’m hungover from a wild night,
I’ll view your pictures with my throbbing head,
And when I think of that drunken barfight,
I’ll think those fists looked like your face instead,

And when I get another blackened eye
If one more husband finds me in his home,
You’ll come to mind beside my bruising side
And broken thigh and tired, tender stones.

Reject me will you? If you knew my plan,
You would regret you ever dumped this man!

Like how, as you explained to me before,
He shows up late for warm-up every time,
And when he does, he always looks so bored–
Indifference which is a personal crime–

And how you caught him staring at your chest
(Not even through the corner of his eye)
And then you heard him mumbling “nice breasts,”
Oh what a wretched man–you could just die!

“I want nothing to do with him,” you shout,
But lately he’s been all you’ve talked about.

~Michael Danger Caskey

Mind the Gap

This poster-child at the Underground
Whose picture posed across the station stop,
Whose smile declared more ways to spend your pound
(And save!), seemed like the child of Photoshop,

For every part of him had been distilled
From fruits of the Anglo-Saxon tree:
His hair, his eyes, his color, chin, and build
All screamed the best of British dynasty,

And yet, around me, noises filled the air
Of screaming children next to chiding tones,
Collaging  jokes and laughter met in pairs,
And people talking into open phones;

And yet, of all the things I overheard,
“Please mind the gap” were all the English words.

~Michael Danger Caskey

“The stars were never so illustrious
Before this moonless night to light the ground;
My limbs were never so industrious
That I feel I could run the world around;

The air was never fresher, nor so clean,
And never gulped by lungs so hungrily–
Each breath, each step, each sight, I dream!
Officer, I’m drunk on life; in ecstasy!”

“Don’t be a smartass with me, kid,” he said,
Wrote out a fine, and cuffed me on the head.

~Michael Danger Caskey

The hair that framed her face played over mine
As she explained “like, something from a movie:
Moonlight reflected on a glass of wine
As starlight lovers dine in secrecy,

“Or maybe flowers from a bought bouquet
Still fresh, despite the dusty sill beneath;
Write something beautiful and far away
For me,” she said, and sighed herself to sleep.

I only saw the streetlight through the blinds,
On her, and writing wasn’t on my mind.

~Michael Danger Caskey

Anyway, a poem. The relevance to London is tangential. By tangential, I mean it’s not London-themed at all and I just wrote it just now while living in London.

On Wit