Tag Archives: poetry

PRECIOUS

PRECIOUS

I was confiding
in my friends
the insects

all the true scientific
horrors of nuclear war

when you came down
like a missile
from up
   on high

demand that I shut
my mouth, cut
all such nonsense

speaking through a translation
device
     this being a head, a father’s
head attached
to a stick

and then, since our debate,
was going nowhere
you opened up
on my tiny
friends
with a state-of-the-art
multi-
   barrelled weapon

firing
     millions, billions
of rounds ripping up the landscape

but fortunately
my friends being so small
took
   out such precious
few of them.

BEN

BEN

Ben is
in his bunker

thr missiles cruising in
with sirens to greet them

seems hard to believe
it has come to this
and yet its author
is now the nation’s hero

king of its deepest
darkest fantasies

best at
divining
his people’s purpose

see him in the swirling
smoke and other
miasma upon
this
fiery pinnacle

speaking with God, or
perhaps we should say,
speaking to
him
or even at him

returning in triumph with
the hot word
they dance in rapture
force-
feed each other

beyond which shores
no one no
way insane
can bend their brain
to believe a single word of.

SNAKE AND LADDER

SNAKE AND LADDER

my tongue
endeavouring to
acquaint itself
with you

ladders and snakes
snakes
and ladders

your nipples seem
to have
something to say
a point
to make

tell me
to look here
there

this way
that way

ask me
if I can turn you
into a butterfly

can turn you
into a million butterflies

which, if
they should co-ordinate
find their rhythm
best
fractal pattern

a truly stupendous storm
must needs create

EYES

EYES

thought it was
a web

but then,
as you carefully pointed out,
it is more
a nest

in fact,
your nest

place of ongoing struggle
about survival

which
    got me to swivel
from my initial, position less
enlightened

trying to see your world
from your pespective, situation,

admittedly difficult
since you have eight
legs, eight eyes
and I
   have but
two

and as for all those
legs and eyea

what legs!
what eyes!

  how apt, on point,
suited to task

and
    if you think about
them carefully

how beautiful too!

WICKED WAYS

WICKED WAYS

On the farm
lots of the things
                    that

go bump in the night
are seldom ghoulish,
hardly ever extreme

just Nature
        unflexing, having
a little fun, making
some sport

reminding me
       who’s boss
should I
ever
     presume otherwise

keeping it clear
    should I have naively
allowed myself
to
forget

justly accused
of having a nerve

to overlook
the terrible abundance, syrup
lips

all she can take
      all she

can give

      the wonder
of her wicked ways.

RECTANGULAR

RECTANGULAR

Suddenly my head
feels Oh so rectangular

the Romantic poets
of my youth

gone
for good

and that Britain whose
shores my family shunned
when I was eleven

fades into the distance:
a freshly post-
imperial strange,
sad memory

just in time
to miss out on the Stones
and the Beatles
and every dear English
Summer of Love

but did
return for
the dour seventies and
punk deconstruction
my mastering
of Manchester in
my own
inimitably cock-
eyed way

and ducking out as
Mrs T swept
herself into power

our true
English Aphrodite motor
boating in with
new neo-liberal tide

and end
of society

wonder how that went
(smells even at this distance
so distinctly
born-again Nazi

can only imagine
how torturously writhing
poor Orwell in his grave).

T (TO PERFECTION)

T (TO PERFECTION)

don’t want to see
him

have you for tea
know you
to a T

measure you
exacTly
     find you wanting
leave you
wanting

wearing my mad hatter’s hat
skyscraper top hat
am going to
invite myself to

that cream
and buns party

see how many tiny mice
get stuffed into
that teapot

until, with
absolute aplomb,
time is called on
that sad
   stale old joke

forever recurring, such
crucial, critical distance
between its
    sweeiness of promise
and hap-
   handed execution
  

RIGID

RIGID

when British satire
became
  (Oh, what’s the kerfuffle?)
self-
    satire
  (losing its old
job description)

and British comedy got
its priorities straight
putting its foot
             right up its
mouth

when Goon and Python hilarity
cowed in the shadows
onset
     of Orwell reality

the laughter of the gods
truly
    deserted this place

left it to sink with
traditional flawed false graciousness
under the waves, get
swallowed by
        ocean, reign of
old stuck-
up unconscious

spirit
    of dead gravity much
bemoaned by Pope

in his assault on all things
vapid, and without
                     substance yet
weighed-
       down by Dunce
rigidity

most righteous of true
rigidities such kingdom
could ever
know

FRESH FRUIT

FRESH FRUIT

On the farm
I wonder

about the ideology
of a tree

the entire tree:
roots, leaves, branches

cannot
escape asking myself
what haiku currently
courses
   through the flowers

Of course
    this is (dear reader, I
do recognise) a
category
   mistake
of the first order, and will
no doubt, none too late,
be brought
   to my attention amidst
much
  wild snarling

and thus forgive me
my contextualizing in a poem
how much theory
pervades
        everything (truly
it is in
its nature
    to be an invasive species)

and Fall and Autumn and
all those mellow feelings
much
   written about

some ode or other
      that leaf to dead leaf
is
  remembered

all the wherefores and whys
as to how
  this system getting greener
came
   not just
    to be but
into conscious being

ruthless and polite both
stuck in a rut this day whilst
supposed
    of infinite variety

and my voice
     estranged, coming back

to me alien

as if
   freshly arrived, in awe of
all capacity to
shift the
      word of perspective

see things differently.