Armistice

11th November

Armistice Day

Yellow leaves twirl

From trees turning skeletal

Pile up round borders

Cleared out and mulched

Year after year

Rain

Leaves

The fallen

History repeating

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The sex lives of Romo-Grecian statues

I.
When you got back from Madeira
You flashed holiday snaps:
An exhibition of stones found by children,
Trestled in neat labelled lines
Beside placards in four languages
Of the things said rocks resembled.
Nestled incongruously
In the front row:
A scrotum
And clitoris
In pride of place.
Not everyone finds one of those
On their travels,
We laughed,
At least they were checking for lumps.

II.
In a chance coming together
Of worldly antiquities
In the sterile hours long after closing,
Adonis lost a chiseled finger
To the permanence of marble,
Venus chippped an alabaster buttock,
Abraded her braids in dismay
Over her unyielding belly.
Pearly tears of frustration
Fell from their cracked exhibition
And were ground
Into plaster dust underfoot,
Proclaimed after dawn
To be footprints of vandals.

A long sentance in the present tense

The separate strands
Of the futures-that-could-be
Are a bunch of zips
Spilling out from a vase
To myopic infinities
The further down
Any line you look
From the fixed focus
Of the ever-moving present
Whose clenched teeth
Trail a snail line
That recedes ever more so
The further back you go.

Lion-Woe

The glamour was televised
Sword-waving mutant fights

Not
The narcoleptic apathy
Domestic arguments
About licking Lycra
Allergies
Overspending on hairspray
Fur-balled halitosis
Marks from the Claw Shield
Down the armrest
Of the interest-free sofa

Programmed pre-prognostication
30 seconds of British Gas adverts
That couldn’t be skipped
Before you got to ‘sight beyond sight’
And a recap of the recent past
Which
As it was just prior
To the immediate future
Was the present
Which was your own face
Growing increasingly exasperated

Struggling with the futility of the Thundercat condition
The nocturnal notion
Your nemesis is ever-living
So he can just…
Wait

He called the Samaritans once
“Snarf, snarf!”
Never again

Ivy

Dismissed as ornamental
You put down roots
Climbed aggressively
Flexed tendrils into crannies and nooks
Became self-supporting
Thickened with age

He bemoaned the bind
Of preening nip and tuck
The status quo maintenance
Muttered over the fence
Insidious, invasive
Grasping, sneaking, squeezing, smothering
Persistent, persuasive
Cherry blossom failing
Dreams of greener grass

It was a hatchet-job
No-one intervened
The portrayal postulated
You were poisonous
To the touch

He always thought you bitter
But he’d just held you back
You still feed the birds
Every winter

Words

Warming up for Speech Therapy at Nottingham Festival of Words, 19th October.

Food poems

To offset the recent maudlin missives, here’re a couple of more light-hearted ones spawned as comp entries.

 

A matter of taste

The tongue comes alive to a flavoursome five,

Marmalade swaps sweet and sour;

The very best bitter elicits a titter,

Especially if drunk by the hour;

Delicious umami will placate an army,

Though glutamate’s sticky my friend;

Aqua’s relief when it’s too-salty beef,

It’s all down to taste in the end!

 

Gone fishing

If pondering the right way

To catch a fish from brine,

Tuna’s like a telegram:

Best done by pole and line!

Sad noises

The defensive sparrows
perched on the fence;
they denied
the eggs were cold.

The family cat
looked right through me
the day before we found his brother:
he already knew.

Sometimes you wake
in tears,
I know.

There’s no embrace
in paw or wing;
when words fail,
we all share
body heat,
sad noises.

Darwin. Boom.

Roosting black in the flowerbed
Head turned eyes closed beak 
Nestled over scapula
Amongst the downy disorder
Of bipartite plumage
As though the feather-shined lower
Outgrew the downy upper
Unmoved by secuteurs’ snip
Soil clink of stone on trowel 
Or judicious watering nearfoot
Unwound blinking momentarily
Staring over the proffered glass 
Ashtray wormery worms wriggling 
I forget about strawberries
Head curling eyes closing beak
Back to the gloaming shoulder 

Slide patio door work-ready 
Look suited as you lie
Spreadeagled a foot from the spot
Sleeping in too early for sunbathing
In sprawling indignity 
Like a teenager somehow
Lying in or something 
Else knees in the air

Plastic bag get a grip
Body soft eyes closed head 
Lolling at the serendipidous bin day 
Dragged past dutch irises gravel
Planted down the lane down the side
Don’t pick them I said let them be
Petalled purple tongues xanthic stripes
Flowering thought of you flying out
Emerging if eyes were mistaken  
Closed head lolling breast
Still they call it 
the just in time principle
Phoenix rising from Eastcroft
A minor contribution to district heating
Round in cycles I thought
Round and round in cycles

When I got home the council had mown
Dragged empty bin by grass just cut
Scattered purple petals xanthic stripes
Would’ve been better in a vase after all
I concede as I pick strawberries left
To redden now riddled with holes
A day is all it takes to sate
Tiny slugs woodlouse burrowed
So deep and still I thought it
Gorged to death until antennae 
Waved out to the cut
Of flesh burrows 
Debrided for wormery worms  
Round in cycles I thought
Round and round in cycles

Special

Sand grains amongst silicates
Raindrops in an aerosol sky
All cry out to be 
The last plangent note 
sustained…
in a hushed auditorium