Alan Halsey














Three Remarks of Uncertain Consequence








Three Remarks of Uncertain Consequence







Days of ’49: A Postscript

Arriving in Moscow that December
Mao Zedong was overheard saying
‘I am here to do more than eat and shit.’

How wrong could Mao be not to guess
his boghouse was bugged. His shit collected
and analysed. End of Sino-Soviet pact

due to low levels of amino acid and
a lack of potassium which indicates
a nervous disposition. At least

that’s what the BBC had to say.
Moscow made no comment and
developments were left for another day.


New Year Letter 2016

Tentative at ten to two a.m.
just before death’s cousin mass hysteria
shows up with a brochure entitled
Extinction Coefficient. I once started
to write a book of that name
but we can’t always be going
back to the womb or can we?
It’s less than a month since the first
Ginger Brit blasted off into space
and that was only shortly after
somebody told the Daily Star that
Giant Rats Ate Our Xmas – and
that was not so long after we heard
how vultures are killed in the belief
that ingesting their brains bestows
special powers with the comment
‘This is very troubling for vultures.’
And now you’re telling me
language is inadequate. Isn’t
it not ‘in-’ but ‘over-’?


Update on a Sheffield River & its Names

‘As for Porter Brook
if it’s called a brook
then it is a brook’

but does anyone know
about some underground tanks
built a few years ago

somewhere right through at
the back as it’s so
off the normal routes

someone dug a hole below
Botanical Road to open
up the culvert system so

with a lode of iron ore in the mud
near Wire Mill Dam it’s no
surprise Okkerwater’s turned orange as

admitted in some Council
policy statements where it’s known
as a ‘corridor’ although

I’ve heard there’s some wildlife even so












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