Wayne Dean-Richards has shared 18 poems for us to publish during 2023. The collection is called It's a Mad World, But Funny. Eventually there will be a free, downloadable PDF of all the poems and a planned A6 compendium too. (Links to all of the poems way down the page.)
this house
I lived in a broken-down house
which for a long time I tried to mend:
wielded tools I couldn’t name and
sweat away whole fucking days.
but it crumbled faster than I could patch it together
and as soon as I stopped working
it laughed at me:
a cellar-deep rumble.
from then on when slates fell off the roof
I just listened to them smash.
and when the central heating packed in
I put on a coat.
now
curtain rails are crooked
wallpaper peels from walls
colour’s leeched from carpets
winds whistle through cracked panes
despite which I smile and sing
smile and sing.
© Wayne Dean-Richards
Essential Information
The 18 poems comprising Wayne Dean-Richards' IT'S A MAD WORLD BUT FUNNY series are listed below. Outsideleft published them all throughout 2023 and 2024. A free downloadable PDF and a limited edition A6 Outsideleft Booklet (for neither profit or loss) is available now we are at the end.
Buy A Mad World But Funny from our new otherwise quite empty shop here
Download a PDF version for free here
It's A Mad World But Funny (complete)
- a father's advice to a son being interviewed to work on the Coventry Ring Road - 1958
- a shopping list and Lowry
- alone
- big dog training
- buying boxer shorts in next
- lanyard life
- melancholy
- snowman
- this house
- fight in an art gallery
- you cunts
- road rage
- different face
- Dostoyevsky didn't have to put up with this
- the cleaner
- bailout
- glue
- are you
