Category Archives: Poems by Alan Reynolds

Dry Me, I’m Alchy

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You want philosophy?
Your short end of the fudge stick?
Sensational:
All stories true,
some relevant,
none complete.

Few matter here, hurtling
along the harbour quay
on Helen’s husband’s Harley,
knees up, nostrils flared,
nares aflame, 
and nary a narc in sight—

but he’s wagering a week’s pay
he can pot me—pardon—
or Helen, or her husband,
before we stash what
they say we’ve got
which we don’t,
of course.
And we can,
and will—
except if The Parrot
gives us away.

Have I left out
or omitted anything
redundantly?

The Parrot’s deep in donkey
with the Law—
caught short with a long tin
of CAMRA bitter
he spilled on Louise.

Dumb is our Parrot
and will stay so till dead.
Should know not
to halve six
with the tax man’s wife.

It’s hell on these handlebars.
Sue in Apartment G binned my things;
I cried while she binned them,
her chary jut racing a Rénault
for a front row at Harrow.

Stories are more relevant
than relevance itself
when related
in the rite weigh
they’re having down the Safeway’s
counter of love.

Childe Harolde’s forty-fourth
descendant, blinded
by incessant matriculation,
punched his own ticket
while crying You’re Out—
then gave his game away, adding
Pull the Other One.

Making a Shuffle of Rare Bits

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When I welsh on my rabbit he goes spare
attacks my ginger beer and ginger hair
with any simple tool that comes to hand.
There are so many. One that he finds grand,
the celt, a common prehistoric tool
I had to throw away before the fool,
flat hat on backwards, hatter shades or worse,
had used the celt to chisel me, the hearse
drawn up and weighing on his mortal soul
and wanting mine and perhaps the whole
of what I want continued for a bit.
There’s something else my rabbit likes: a brit,
the young of herring and related fish
from the Welsh word ‘brithyll’ and a tasty dish
for Anglophobes and Anglophiles and Phil,
my rabbit’s name. Sometimes I call him Bill
but that’s Dutch courage. When Phil drinks he’ll bore
the heart out of a haggis with his store
of hoppy tales; the one of the Scotch egg
is crumby, and his rare bit re the leg
of the dog that bit him is one I can’t watch
and he has others I attempt to scotch.
A hare is what is wanted here I know
now Phil’s rabbiting about his new Dutch hoe.
I’ll get my Irish up or else he’ll bring
in, ecumenically, the Rabbi Ting.