‘I am old,’ said Pig Duroc. ‘I missed the last bus.
and I had to walk toting this carp.’
‘You’re myopic as well,’ said Cat Slynog, then shied
from the pig, and played Bach on a harp.
The music they made as they harped and they carped
seemed to pigeons that flew by great grief.
Then the carp joined in; all three flatted and sharped
till the end of the day, and this brief.
I’ve been pushed away so often that I’ve left.
You don’t notice nothing missing. You don’t look.
And I left the music playing and the broken rocker swaying
and my heart there where you pressed it in the book.
The screen door slammed behind me in an off key
and the drums rolled thunder on the radio.
I looked back and saw you reading and I hoped I saw you cry
then I saw you pick the phone up, say, ‘he’s gone.’
The puerile croc up to his eyes in alligator flats
has polished off two kiwis: one cordovan, one black.
He much prefers, he leers at all, the polish to the paste
and says he bastes his choice more on staying power than taste.
Koalas smell of leaves they eat, and in the same way Croc
has belched himself an aura that locks vulture flocks in shock.
One fly-by of Croc’s lee side, they refuse to salivate
and chunder in their plumage. Croc waves and calls out, ‘Mate,
come down and swim with me and we’ll gobble monotremes,
amuse ourselves by snorkelling sharks and other creek extremes.’
The vultures retch incurably and curse big reptile geeks
as blithe as kookaburras with two geckos in their beaks.
Published in MÖBIUS, May, 1998.
I am not sure exactly who I am
nor precisely who it is that I am not.
We meet and mingle without smoke or sham,
then separate, but share a common lot.
Not empathetic any way that counts,
we are more a blurring of the borders books
ascribe to personalities: an ounce
of human-kindness traits, a pinch of rooks’
and God knows what. In forests I am trees.
On beaches I am cloud and surf and sand.
I am the universe each time I sneeze
and it is me each morning when we stand
on the bridge to all tomorrows, and the rain
comes down like prayer, and we begin again.
A hot big-bang describes the start
of this our universe.
Does that explain why teeth feel pain
or why this tale’s in verse?
To say birds fly because they fly
is talking through my hat.
It isn’t wrong but unlike song
it’s both too sharp and flat.
If you were dumber I’d seem smart
but that is not the case.
I see you want to find out Why.
Why don’t we have a race?
Let’s start off slowly: physics first
then chemistry and math.
Their dinky hurdles are not tall
enough to block our path.
We’ll run by frozen accidents
that pave the way to life
and run uphill while force cements
complexity that’s rife
with run-on sentences that stop
most runners in their tracks.
They won’t stop us; we’ll set up shop
in logic and brass tacks
and when we tire of calculus
of how if ‘p’ then ‘q’
we’ll race to board an omnibus
to view the primal stew.
Description’s easy (well, it’s not
but I’ll let you explain)
so I’ll describe and you’ll tell why
and that way we’ll both gain.
This race might take all afternoon
so bring along your mind
to exercise it as we run
from Darwin to the kind
of husky question I can see
there cooking in your brain.
Let’s run uphill until we’re tired
then run back down again.
(a ballad occasioned by my consternation on
learning that a ‘ferretería’ is only an ironmongery)
His four feet fastened ferret-style
upon the olive branch,
Raúl resents the tourist’s rude
‘If that’s a mink, it’s ranch.’
Raúl runs out the open cage
and up the tourist’s leg.
As ferret passes trouser cuff
the tourist starts to beg:
‘Oh, spare me from this maddened mink
or pocket kangaroo!
It’s not my fault. I didn’t want
to shop inside this zoo.’
Raúl, well in the dark by now,
is frightened by these cries
and charges on to private parts.
He can’t believe his eyes.
In general a ferret stops.
A major problem, see:
will Raúl, so incited, al-
ter corporeality?
The owner of the hardware store
can captain ferrets out
but doesn’t know where Raúl is,
or understand the shout.
The tourist turns bright green with fear.
The ferret gets stuck in.
You’d think he’s at the colonel now,
not only at the shin.
‘Ironmonger,’ screams the tourist, high
of voice and on fear,
‘Retrieve your beast, be admiral.
Protect my lone-star rear!’
The monger thinks the tourist mad
and telephones the cops.
The ferret’s met their dogs before
and so he simply stops.
Down trouser leg, he lopes to loo.
Tenant plans has he.
He’ll lurk there till the tourist goes,
or stops in for a wee.
Having enjoyed ‘How to Become Ridiculously Well-Read in One Evening: A Collection of Literary Encapsulations’ edited by E.O. Parrott, in which poets wrote short (and some not so short) poems telling very briefly the stories of books, I decided to try to encapsulate Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel ‘Robinson Crusoe’:
( A ‘soe’ is a tub, of various kinds, and varying to some extent with the Scottish or English locality.)
Encapsulation: Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’
Against his parents’ wishes Robinson Crusoe
sets sail from home, not in a Scottish slew soe
but an English ship, that pirates from Salé
take over, carting RC faraway
where he becomes the moored slave of a Moor.
Escaping with a boat he’s been befriended
off the western coat of Africa, then’s ended
as an owner of plantations in Brazil.
But where there’s weigh of anchors RC’s will
sets him at sea and soon he’s sailing more
or less in straight lines back to Africa
to catch himself some slaves but not a chica
’cause sex don’t raise its head in Defoe’s prose.
Some sort of anti-slave god I suppose
sends a big storm. RC’s shipwrecked, cast ashore
in 1659, and he’s lost his companions
and the ship is breaking up in frightful canyons
of water and the wait until it sinks
seems very short. It’s fortunate he thinks
to fetch himself and key supplies ashore.
He builds a habitation, reads the Bible,
domesticates some cats ’cause rats are liable
to eat him out of feet and shoes unless
the cats or Bible help. He thinks he’s blessed
for missing naught but humans on this shore.
Some nights RC’s awakened, terrorised
to see arriving cannibals tenderise
their prisoners which they devilishly saté
save one he saves and christens Man Friday.
You know the rest so I relate no more.
The fish caught seconds earlier, not dead
but less than happy in the summer air,
lies pressed upon the bank’s long grass and reed
until his captor cuts the hook with care
and tells onlookers while a fish may bleed
it can’t feel pain. Like it, onlookers stare
until it leaps. Then, noticing it’s free,
the fish regains the stream, the lake, the sea.
We too played fishers when our world was young,
and hooked whatever bit, and profited
for many noons, and now that shadows long
themselves for cover, we call salmon squid
and quid for quo stands for our marching song.
When you asked me did I love you, then I did,
and we, proud we had legs, took evening walks
investing energy in whispered talks.
What hooked us and we looked upon as love
while reeling, each of us, the other in,
was evolution, golden treasure trove
of progress down from mindless bug to sin
and up from there to faith in an Above
elusive as it’s precious. Don’t begin.
We’ve heard each other out too many times
and know what happens when one of us climbs
beyond our station. Our red-marrow bones
lack the air fillings of the natural flier.
We sink, in spite of aspiration, home
into the river. What was our desire
gels into habit, and inside our room
we throw each other’s papers in the fire
we hope will keep the creeping cold outside
with the dark we sense approaching our blind side.
The salmon who escapes the dam, the bear,
and anglers paying through the nose to kill,
spawns far upstream, at home for its last hour.
Depleted, safe, successful for a spell,
it glories in the sunset of its power
before the scavengers eat its free will
and its predestination, and its flesh.
So little of us passes through the mesh
of the nets that are our destiny, our death.
Descended from the fish who chanced on lungs,
we each, more relative each passing breath,
say absolute good-byes. As sapient beings
we think we know that absolute’s the dearth
of love and living, a sinking pond rock’s rings
that can’t feel pain. I hurt as I break free,
and follow you in stream, and lake, and sea.
