Description: Many of the poems in Timing are hymns to the momentary and the marvelously futile: physical love, football, the preoccupations of patients on a dementia ward, fashion, and poetry itself. Several of the poems were written as performance pieces, as is the case with "Spunk Talking":

When men are belligerent or crude,

it's spunk talking, it's come come up for a verbal interlude:

in your face Jack, get shagged, get screwed, get your tits out,

get him, lads, bugger that, hands off, just you try it,

you're nicked, left hook, nice one Eric, hammer hard,

shaft him, stitch that, do you want to get laid or not, red card.

Spunk speaks in guttural, with verbs. No parentheses.

Spunk's a young con crazy to break from Alcatraz.

Sonny, you'll go feet first. So spunk has to sing.

hoarsely, the Song of the Volga Boatmen, I am an Anarchist,

the Troggs' Wild Thing.

Cynthia Payne said, after her researches, not to be debunked,

that men are appreciably nicer when de-spunked,

Before time be the void revolved, as smooth and bored

as an egg, when a tiny ragged crack appeared,

and the world exploded like an umpire's shout,

as the primal spunk of the cosmos bellowed Out!

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