On the Occasion of Colin’s Funeral

They played the Doctor Who theme as they carried the coffin in
But the coffin was too small.
It should have been bigger, huger, vast
A super star destroyer technological terror
Thundering over our juvenile heads
It shouldn’t have been there at all.

There were too many of us too fit into the chapel
But there should have been more
There should have been thousands, an army
An honour guard of cybermen, a massed choir of daleks
We did our best
But we shouldn’t have been there at all.

They held the wake in the pub across from the station
I mostly stayed outside with smokers in the last of the sunlight
We told stories to stop ourselves from weeping
We had a chuckle but there should have been more
There should have been such laughter that they could have heard us back in London
But there wasn’t, because he wasn’t there.