Holiday

Summer suffers from terrible hype

and yet of course it’s good

when the sun shines and

we spill like beans onto

London’s pavements

forming indiscreet huddles

sweating out the gossip

celebrating the sales we made

and the wars we won on

air-conditioned battlefields.


The backslaps flow freely

the sunglasses get lost

and the phone gets dropped 

in the beer

as the promise of sex sets

like the sun because

you’ve all had way too much.


It’s time to send anxiety away

take that longed-for holiday,

pictured so clearly when

raincoat collar protecting

the neck,

you made

hateful zigzags past desperate pubs,

projecting all hope

onto the glamorous celluloid

of summer.


Super 8 fantasies of you at the heart

of a perfect family

antique games; cricket on beaches,

hide and seek in panting forests,

moist moss offering succour to

sand burnt feet, or even god forbid

in rain, when kids who never argue invent cherubic games

and summer itself will love us all too much to even think

of ending.


But the trouble is,

when you finally find yourself checking

the features of your holiday  against

the promised list finding nothing amiss

you realise,

you brought

your self

to paradise


and are no better placed to enjoy this

than  a punishing winter’s day

when the bar to happiness is
 
never quite as high.