Shhh.

I want to tell you all about it,
To express my fury, fears and frustration,
But it's like having a dirty secret.
I am not free to express myself, you see.

I would express scorching ash over her green shoots.
Shoot acid at her bare flesh.
Gouge her eyes so I can see,
Throttle my oxygen from her gasps.

So I must be strong, and silent.
And she?
There is no reciprocation in this pact.

But self pity is vile.

I must drink cool pools
Breathe deep draughts
And tell you, who travels alongside me,
I am the same as you.

The Poodles visited St Paul's

When the poodles went to St Pauls
They marvelled at Mr. Wren's halls
And on the way home
They posed with the dome
Dressed in their best wooly shawls.

A Point of View

I appear rude and thoughtless
And unappreciative of your care
Because you are far too touchy
And intolerably unfair.

Them and Us

You're different from me
Look, you have freckles, and your hair is longer than mine.
We're different from them
Look, they have external reproductive organs,
But at least we're not like them.
Look, they've got big noses and speak with accents,
However, we are all more important than them.
They don't speak at all.
Look, they have four feet and some even crawl on their bellies.
Even so, we all have brains which is better than them.
They just grow in one place and can't think.
Nevertheless, they are organic which is superior to those.
They're not alive, only mineral.
They were bound together in sea beds and in volcanoes.
Which makes them more complex than those.
They formed in the stars.
But they're not completely un-transmutable.
Look, their nuclei are made from quarks.

When they burnt my Gran at the crematorium, all that was left was ashes,
We keep them in an urn on the mantle piece.

Wild Lychees

From a Chinese childhood

A lychee tree overhung the garden
Its roots above the storm drain.
The hard shells of its fruit stained my thumbs.
The labour of peeling bark-like skins from eyeballs
Rewarded when blisters popped.
Fragrant juice tracked through the dust on my forearms
To drip from my elbows.
Each globe slipped in the mouth
Slid across teeth and tongue,
Till, unable to resist any longer,
Bite released cascade
Of sweet nectar.
Scented flesh
Stripped from glossy black stone
With busy little chews,
Surrendered.
And I fell to unwrapping the next one.

Later, my mother, noticing the brown smudges on my thumbs
Accused me of eating lychees
As if it were a sin.
Hands behind me, cuffed,
I bowed and shook my head.
But I didn't really care what she thought.
Some pleasures are too wonderful
to be denied.

Franz, the blind jackdaw, has breakfast.

St. Sebastian

A poem inspired by the sculpture of St Sebastian by Claire Curneen (pictured right).


Transcending pain?
Whatever!
The hands open and stupid,
Small features are blankly insolent - mid-shrug.
Where there's no sense there's no feeling.

The martyr,
A thick white lump.
The extremities crystalized.
Hands and feet achieved some potential
He could act or run.

But the rest,
The calves, legs, torso and flabby waist with tiny genitalia
Are but cellulite on a baby.
He is a goat's-cheese of a man.

What would make such a man special?
And Sebastian needed to be important.
So important something greater than can be deceived (to paraphrase the ontological)
noticed him.
Saw his capacity for turning mulish self-aggrandisement into a virtue.
Something admired Sebastian's gullible faith without base.
His conviction.

And taking pity on him
Paradoxically, given his lack of existence,
With ineffable wisdom
He set Roman legions against him
And at the moment
The wounds poured forth,
Wouldn't it have been good
If he'd turned Sebastain's blood to gold?

Wicked Thoughts!

Glimpsed its face,
Didn't mind its own business
As an innocent would
With eyes turned skywards, or
Down, inspecting fingernails.
No, it met my flash of recognition
With malicious glee.
Wet, bulging orbs stared back at me.

Shame, like an egg cracked on my head,
Slithered down to my shoulders.
A cold shawl warped my flesh.

“Everyone has bad days,” they said.
“Nothing's as bad as you imagine.”

Do they know how its breath stinks, and
Now, I must lift it and suckle that bite.
Clutch it close,
Like the secret.

Only you helped me, when you told me
“We all have vile babies, you know.
We spend parenthood justifying their need for oxygen..”

How I laughed.

In an Empty House


The thin tin cooker
Like a tower block
In the eastern block
Brown window
Greasy fog
Obscures pinched features
Peering out.

Grime with mouse-droppings
Fetch the 'oover.
Steaming hot buckets
And brushes.

Let's clean this out
Out. Out. Out. Out. Out.
Let's replace it with an
Aga.

Ahhhh.

A Rip In the Space-Time Continuum.

She looks as though she's seen a ghost.

Blonde curls poke through her
Straw sun-hat, torn at the brim.
Stitching together hat, wearer and big red dahlia,
To present an unearthly vortex
Of animal and vegetable.

Round eyes jiggle within smudged black lines,
Eyelash half unstuck, trembles when
She blinks.
She leans forward confidentially.
Red lips, furred by myriad rivulets above
Powdery chin,
Mouth,

“I saw something that was there.”

On the Island of Paros

Too long in the sun,
My admiration of Parian marble,
Disgorged onto the road,
Like chunky snowdrifts,
Flagged.

Thirst had turned my calves to pure alabaster..

Sun flailed my fair skin
Till I imagined it hung in ribbons
From scorched shoulders.

Ahead, a black crow
Fluttered above the track,
Next to a low whitewashed dwelling.

Shading my eyes with a hand, I peered.
The crow stretched out an arm and beckoned.

Not a crow but a woman.
An ancient Greek widow, in black gowns
Greeted me by clasping my hands between hers
As if enfolding them in prayer,
Before ushering me
Into her dirt-floored hovel.

At a plastic table, sat a beige-clad couple.
I joined them, and the old lady
Placed a glass of cloudy water before me.

The German pair,
(They had the caramel leather boots and bags
All German tourists wear.)
Seemed to sympathise,
With eyes fixed
On their own glasses, un-sipped.

An amoebic swarm
Flashed within the liquid;
Primordial soup.
I wanted to wait for evolution.

The old lady smiled
And nodded encouragement.
Her eyes lit by the strong sun
Striking through the tiny window
Into this stifling interior,
Were blue and cloudy.

I picked up the glass
And while the German couple
Looked on,
I drank.

I drank down my host's
Kind, hospitable eyes.

The Luxury of Work-aholicism

Short-legged heavers,
Kick the ground behind them.
Shoulders and sternum snap into straps,
Stretch inertial glue till
Tiny rock rolls to relief,
And the truck climbs the track.

In the black of the pit
Five lights bob on the brows
Of the heavers.
They slide and strain,
In a square dance of pain,
A squealing wheel
Marks time.

Muscles search for stores.
A breakfast of bread and fat
Barely meets the need
But thick and wide
Thews collide and kick
The ground again.

What do they think
As they spend their strength?
Do they feel manly pride
In their collective power?
Or are their minds blank
Like any beast
Set to toil hour after hour.

On a Calcutta street,
A mountain of jute
Totters on a matchwood cart.
Before it,
Little red donkey,
Splayed and dead
Too thin and tiny for his heart.

Miners and donkey
Had no choice
Forced to labour
Beyond their limit
Neither took any pride in it.

Life's work-horse
May crash with colic
But a working man
Is not a workaholic.

Schedules

She refers to earlier times as, when she was alive.
I say, “Before I was in service.”

But actually we have that the wrong way around.
There was a time when I was alive
And she was in service,
Like a bus is in service,
Going somewhere
Full of life.

Dirty Laundry

‭“‬Hang the fucking flannel up‭!”
I whisper in a hoarse cry,
The words break free like‭
Adultrous‭ ‬men in black,‭
Up to no good.

I see my snarl in the bathroom mirror.
Guilt at such pettiness
Makes me wince.

My friend has just been widowed,
Another's in remission,
And here I am screaming about flannels.

Good job I didn't really yell it out.

Yet,‭ ‬still I try to justify my fury.
It's a symptom.
A tip of an iceburg.
A metaphor.

Perhaps,
But I feel small.

I hang up the flannel,
Then decide to throw it‭
In the boil wash after all.

My Mother's Soup Bowl

My mother's soup-bowl has a lid,
And knobs on each side.

Squat, and plain, with a primitive design
Painted in earth colours,
It reminds me of my mother,
With knobs on.

She died,
Not yet seventy.
Carotid arteries choked
By almost a lifetime of rich food.
Carrot broth in her sixties did little good
For a woman who hated vegetables.

I recall her eating Heinz tomato soup.
She supped her warm medicine.
Pursed lips drew liquid from spoon -
A stilted ritual.
When the last drop was gone,
She put the lid on.

Now, years later,
Nourishment swelters
Under primitive earth-colours.
I take the lid off,
Release a spicy cloud,
And sip her memory from my spoon.
I empty the bowl,
Just like she did,
But when I am finished,
I leave off the lid.

L. Ron Hubbard?

L . Ron Hubbard?

When I see a swallow's wing
I think of Helliconia Spring
From a hole a Morlock creeps
And by a pool a Yahoo sleeps.
Jerry Cornelius, rides again
A hero amongst common men.
Rented-a-tent, Rented-a-tent
There's aliens crawling in through the vent.

It's life Jim, but not as we know it.
Give me warp and try not to blow it.
The worm-hole's closing now we're doomed
In Veils of Azlaroc - marooned.

I see the stargate shimmer there
Where the heat meets the air
I smile and wonder at the minds
That built these worlds for human kind.
The Arthur Seas and Asimov hills
It would be dull without such thrills.
Imaginations rich and bright -
But L Ron Hubbard? - Pile of shite!

Hygienists know a thing or two.

Ode to the Hygienist

She's a professional,
She's a health professional
If you don't show you're humble
She'll let let your molars crumble
She's a professional,
She's a health professional
Eye-shield and white coat prove it
She's got brains so move it.

You snivelling little pleb!

Just look at that bacteria!
To which you are inferior,
If you don't floss and clear this dross
She'll confiscate your bony plate
And lascerate your gums.

Cos, She's a professional
She's a health professional
And she nearly came top in her class.

Freedom

Free at Last

The door was left open,
I yearned to be free.
I hopped to the doorway,
Cocked my head to see;
The window was open
A breeze cooled my head

I heard a finch singing

"Here's freedom," he said.

With no further caution,
I flew to the sill.
I slipped through the op'ning,
Borne up by the thrill.
The clear sky above me,
Sweet meadows below,
Zephyrs around me,
I heard a cock crow.

I lit on an oak tree.
Heart beat in my chest.
My wings were still feeble,
I needed a rest.
The finch stopped his rondo.
I swelled up with pride,
My song became solo.
I sang for my bride.

Each chirrup and cadence,
Melodious phrase,
Expanded to warm me.
Oh joy of my days!
I sang sweet deler'ums
From my prominent perch,
The hawk found it easy
To narrow his search.

No other bird sang
As the shadow passed o'er
I thought them entranced
By my glorious score
The shock of the snatch
Took my last notes away
My freedom was lost
On that marvelous day.

Would I hop through the window
And sing in the tree,
Knowing the perils there are for the free?
My answer, at once, from my beak opened wide,
At least I knew joy at the moment I died.

This is actually the eyes of an Eagle Owl, photographed at
a recent country show, but I couldn't resist using it to illustrate this verse.

Don't We Just Adore Blind Faith?

Don't we just adore blind faith?

---

Green Beetle

Cryptocephalus hides his head
Not in the sand, nor in his bed,
Instead it's there for all to see
Metallic green on Hazel tree.

He has no shoulders nor a neck,
So birds don't know which end to peck,
Like debris from a welding spree
Metallic green on Hazel tree.

Once forged by fairy farrier
He shuns the aurucaria.
Prefers to nibble tenderly,
Metallic green on Hazel tree.

Deep within the dusty vault
A scarab beetle dry as salt
Wishes he could one day be
Metallic green on Hazel tree.

Cryptocephalus hides his head
Behind a name that's seldom said
Which hardly brings to mind for me,
Metallic green on Hazel tree.
(Penned 1st September 2008)

In The Beginning

In the Beginning

When Mavis began creating,
She was a shapeless, chaotic mass.
Thoughts perished between her synapses,
Mid birth.

"Let there be light," she said.
Separating the light from the darkness,
She made something to see,
The Earth.

And she saw that although is was shapeless and chaotic,
She was part of it, and reflected in it.
Communicating with it -
What mirth!