Category Archives: Poems by Alan Reynolds

Wot Gnu

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The lion’s coat, renowned in tribal vision,
is redolent close up of muck and dirt
and zebra remnants from the subdivision
of his last meal. Gazelles that you think flirt
with lions do so perhaps on television
but in real life the pride itself is hurt
by breath past fangs that flecked with unflossed prize
explain why lions converse with squinted eyes.

‘Who’s Wot Gnu?’ you ask. A magic gardener
conceived from little just like you and me
and thus with bugs and beasts and us coparceners
an inheritor of the sun, the fields, the sea.
Wot operates with me a veterinary
practice: we heal beasts to set them free
as they free us. They bring colour to our world.
We do not want a home that is not merled,
not foxed nor robined. We are for preservation
of rat-cheer rodents, sleeping ants, the chough,
and, in moderation, every nation.

‘What’s Wot got,’ you may ask, ‘to do with lions?’
I answer, ‘Everything from here to Orion.
It’s similar to asking how much twine
goes in a piece of string. All life is fine.’

‘What knew Wot Gnu to make you his disciple?’
you ask despairing of an answer clear.
‘Damn all,’ I say, ‘except he’s archetypal
of this whole confusing mess that I hold dear.’

The Pale Bishop Exits

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(in his own words)

‘Too many words
now nothing else is left.
My dull life
livens up in face of death.

My what-I-mights
and catamites depart.
Their absence delves
no abscess in my heart.

Their absent selves,
less aberrant than when,
abrasively,
they laid claim to my thin

and feigned concern,
elicit not one jot
of pity, nor
remorse. The mood I’ve got

is but the one
sufficing me for years,
a camouflage
of caring, for my peers,

and for my Self.
I almost made it work.
It moved me up
from labourer to clerk.

Much later, when
the bishop caught a cold,
it worked again.
He wasn’t very old,

or very strong,
a wispy little man
who died of draughts
accepted from my hand.

They weren’t a curse,
nor poisonous, no need,
just chequered crowns
I conjured up to feed

his inborn fears,
inadequacy, pride.
Within five years
I had his horse to ride,

and bed to fill
with acolytes, like he
had never done.
I had to hang but three.

and after that,
and by the Prince’s grace,
a quieter fief
than mine, a calmer place

has not been seen
since Caesar’s dotage days.
I couldn’t care,
or understand the ways

of those who died
for faith, or those who stayed,
for days sometimes,
alive, while minions flayed

them for some slight
to Prince, or God, or me.
I saw no need
to walk to Galilee,

go mount a cross,
lead martyrs on crusade.
I built high walls,
for glory against trade,

let men dig moats,
then populate each ditch
with those I let
be marked as thief or witch.

I kept the peace
through three proud Princes’ reigns
and, without war,
avoided any gains

in any sense:
no population growth,
no pleasure parks,
no single place where both

sweet love and joy
could find one hour’s respite.
I made each day
a horror night, a pit.

Perhaps men think
I’m monstrous. No one says.
I never met
a single soul could faze

me in my thought
that nothing has a point.
That Nothing’s what
inspires me to anoint

all widespread death
as highest good, and try,
this autumn eve,
to will my Self to die.’

Sour Striver, Aeon Diver

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He remembered being human
especially the last time:
striving, thriving, and passionate
about the hills he’d climb
faster than his fellows would.
They would stop and admire the view.
He never stopped until he dropped
and bid that life adieu.

He’d lain in a lane at Lidl.
He had breathed out and not breathed in,
expiring without inspiration
but the wordplay made him grin.

He’d then slid through the edge of a non-ending void
perhaps the same one as before.
After aeons spent there, plus one life as a bear
and a spate where he’d raved ‘never more’

he rejoined a queue of the unchosen few
to apply for a chance of rebirth
as a human again hoping this time he’d win
enough wisdom to live filled with mirth.

Disastrous Reigns

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Shadows claim me with a sense of obligation
that is the stronger since I know it is unfounded.
I stand in shallows of an edgeless river;
I try to remember towns that it contains.
I was born downstream of here in a coastal city,
a term we are forgetting now they are gone.
Behind me a dwindling people marches on.

I conflate thoughts no one should need to have.
The short disastrous reigns of evil emperors…
Rains, reins, reigns. It’s criminally late to care.
Whose fault is it we let democracy die?
Were Von Trumpf and Pinz the plague’s causatives or symptoms?
We groped too vigorously in the cookie jar.
When we broke it we rejoiced at the noise.

I conflate thoughts no one should need to have.
’Why not,’ Mad Hatter asked, ‘give war a chance?’
We did. We fought. We died. We are still too many
for Earth to feed, now we have broken Her.
We did not break the Earth. At most we scratched
or irritated Earth, till She broke free
of Her patience for the spreading skin disease

(I conflate thoughts no one should need to have)
we were to Her. Her ancient Deccan Traps
reopened. She ignited Yellowstone.
Stood in silt, I feel fish graze my legs.
There are no fish. Plastic trash is what I feel.
Plastic: the ice-nine we gave to Earth
before we began to capitalise Her Name
and venerate Her, the way we do with Things
and People once we’ve killed them and they’re gone.

Alone in shade-stuck shallows you’d think I’d drown
but someone sees and hails me. We march on.

Gruyere-Some Squeals Are Heard, I Hope

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Here is a chant royal written a while back (1997) in homage to a super poet, Neil Harding, creator, when he was not pursuing Eastern modes such as sushi and rings a crumpet, of many a character trumping Punch’s Bargepole, some mentioned in the scree below in answer to his Anon a mouse series of cult fame.

When summer peaks and days start turning short
and wainscots creak and the blooming mouse does that,
comes blooming out as I take my first snort
of the morning, cor, I’m off to buy a cat.
A great large cat with eyes like rancid peas
and whiskers curling up so he must sneeze.
He’ll grab that mouse and gobble him with haste
while his brows recede at the truly horrid taste
of the tail and toes and bit that was the brain.
He’ll chew and smack till nought’s left but some paste
and seaside sparrows shiver in the rain.

When Ma Mouse whelps, it’s too late to abort
and her litter lands with giggles, squeals, and splat
and I drop the book where I’m reading of young Wort
and the dog gives chase and Ma runs out the flat.
But a nonagon staircase catches her lice and fleas
that flee as she runs, and cold flue makes them freeze
and Anon’s won’t grow up if he dares to waste
his chance to steal and grows up a pantywaist
who won’t gnaw cheese while the cat’s deaf from the train
that rumbles by while the polled fleas fall unplaced
and seaside sparrows shiver in the rain.

Now a mouse or twenty scarcely make a quart
but unlike gerbils you can’t keep them in your hat
because housebroken’s not what they’ve been taught
and they’re naught but midget mirrors of the rat.
As a midget rat with a squeal and rickety knees
who weasels on debts and often cops his pleas,
Anon’s not cute and it’s high fun to lambaste
his hide and catch him hopping, hot, shamefaced,
with his rat snout shining through the window pane
where clouds reflect how hares are oft more chaste
and seaside sparrows shiver in the rain

Old Anon’s author is a poet who can’t be bought
or I’d offer him a drop and invite him in to chat
of the cricket and whether he thought Botham ought
to have gone to Cape Town and taken his turn at bat,
not that I care about old histories
but he might forget to write mice, and I’d tease
for a flatman story, or a barge pole to impaste
that bleeding mouse with. No, I’m not two-faced
and I want my satire dark and that he’ll abstain
from mousing while the heavy stuff’s disgraced
and seaside sparrows shiver in the rain

A burger-queen kit-kat mouse house can’t be fraught
with rooms where royal chants can get to bat,
so rodent cultures are what we must thwart
to make our Weaver write a requiescat
or other work to take in hand our kidneys
or make sly fun of what’s begun (bard, please!).
I dream a dream, with cats, of how a whey-faced
mouse of some repute is banished, Samothraced
not to return because out there there’s ratsbane
and whips ensuring mice get steeplechased
and seaside sparrows shiver in the rain

O Weaver! Weavers! Help Anon get aced
so Wimbledon and cricket can regain
our oh-so-small attention spans. Let pain
pan-fry the mouse until at last he’s plaiced
and seaside sparrows shiver in the rain.

Reelecting the Villains

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Poeticising. Dreaming in the Word Mill.
Kaleidoscope-colliding observations.
Scenes sharply seen seem seamed with those imagined.
More esses than a snake can shake a stick at
go moseying along so slickly, that could Moses
see them shifting shape, he’s think his own trick poor.
To trick the poor into voting for reelection
of the villains who impoverished them last time
and other subjects mastermind the poem
that won’t get written. I’m poeticising.