Some People Are Just as Bad as They Can Be – Example nr. X

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He believes in his heart and in other uninhabited regions
(his hoof and his haunch, and, true to the cliché, his head)
it’s ordained that his gang (he prefers people call them his legions)
should invade the next country and make all his neighbours there dead.
Except those he’s seeded. He’s planned this invasion for years.
His discontent with his own life prevents him from valuing theirs,
the lives of his neighbours. Convinced the Apocalypse nears
(in dreams he keeps private for now), he dissembles and wears
his uniform well, with its medals for bloodshed and sorrow.
He smiles at his neighbours and tells himself, ‘They’re dead tomorrow.’

Mad Mackie’s Elevenses

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‘I shall want chocolate biscuits served with hot white coffee.’
(I have been out half the morning harrowing snakes
with ‘adoring combs’. (That’s what the French maid calls them.
(The upstairs maid (‘adoring’ should be ‘Darwin’.
(I’m speaking parenthetically because
it’s Thursday up on Pluto which as a child I did adore.
Since it’s no planet now, adieu, no more.))))
‘The badger’s back. I see it in the garden.’
‘No, milord,’ the butler sighs. ‘A mole.’
I’m out of my depth. I debit depth perception.
I credit Cyril (the butler) with a win.
We are painting politicians’ faces on clay pigeons
for a garden party I have plans to give.
‘If that’s not the badger, that mole’s the badger’s twin.’

Mad Mackie’s Manor

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‘There are a badger, milord, and red squirrels, at the door.’
‘Well, let them in!’ I yell. The butler sighs.
‘You don’t get it, milord. They is wanting letting out.
Your castle is not the keep it was no more.’
I go to correct his grammar. The squirrels dash
the penultimate Ming vase on the flagstone floor.
I help the butler sweep up, handling broom
and crystal dustpan more than handily.
I think the badger likes me, but the squirrels
have convinced him all he wants from here is out.
There’s no pleasing some, so I cry, ‘Fetch the shotgun!’
I send the butler to the village for fresh shells.
The mammals go out with him. All ends well.

Timepiece Cascade

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He had removed his watch so he knew it was not time
that was passing. He could hear the waterfall
growing louder and presumably getting nearer
in the darkness that was everywhere these days.
A duet for two or, less precisely, tutu
rang in his ears — where else? — as he swept past
the islands Bridle Sweet and Bishops Nein.
He heard, ‘Take two aspirin scold me. Yule bee fined.’
That can’t be right, he thought. He reached the edge… …

Staged Right

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We hear the stage direction, Exit right.
We face the audience seldom; it is us.
Beyond the footlights, all we see is night.
From here it looks eternal, as we fuss,

each with our own stage business, and we pine
for speaking parts, and plots where we can lead,
at least a little. Blind directors mine
emotion lodes. They make us cry and bleed.

We take steps that take us further from salvation.
Clapping hands disorient us. We pause,
on the edge of what we’d meant to be creation,
but which our hamming up reveals as gauze

and spangles masquerading as The Light.
We move across the stage and exit right.

Half-Hinged Fairytales – The Giantess and the Beanstalk (excerpt)

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I think that serendipity
rewards no one resembling me.
The wench, whose overweening chest
gives umbrage everywhere it’s pressed,
advances to unjust desserts
adroitly flouncing in her skirts.

Me, the Huguenot, and Thou make three
united ungrammatically
and in our apprehension grave
that hopes we’ll not be made her slave.
The giantess, for such is she,
grunts, approaching, ‘Fum-fo-fi-fee’

the distaff version of the hum
her husband grumbles: ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum’.
Thou and me make haste to squat
behind the hapless Huguenot.
The giantess gives his head a squeeze
that sends his brainpan to his knees

which swell like they’ve contracted mumps.
I am less scared of Heffalumps.
Thou and me hide by a well.
We gather this may not end well.
We kick our wellies off and dive
in the dark and hope we’ll stay alive.

Nine Days to Silence – Day One

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I retreat a final time back to The Farm.
I cross the creek down where the real road ends.
I walk from there, into the ever woods.
I ford the creek twice more and see the sun.
It cooks the dew from what had been the orchard.
The path is steeper than I had remembered.
A blacksnake on an overhanging rock
conceals her rapt astonishment if any.

Back into the dark forest. Does it end?
I work to think of nothing but I remember:
projects well begun but then abandoned,
salt traces on the cheek of one I loved.
The sun again. I step into the clearing
remembering it was here I learned to ride
with hope and halter, quirt and bit forbidden.
I used a blanket for a saddle on hot days.

Emotions I thought atrophied propel me
uphill to where the cabin’s rough-plank porch
was the perch I launched myself from in the dawn
before walking through the weeds that wet bare feet
to wade the creek and watch for rainbow trout
that faced upstream below the larger rocks.
On nearing, I see saplings, dirt, and weeds.
The cabin I planned to move into is gone.

Gymnast Anna at Sea

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The beam she walks is wider than they’re wont
to be, she sees. It is anchored at one end
but not the other, like a diving board.

A pulled-punch, prodding cutlass punctuates
her pause to think. Her puncture fear propels
her next step forward, leaving her less plank

than she’d wish for, and the ship’s slight heeling shows
her more waves than she’s seen since the time she won
the Olympic gold, and a friendly crowd had cheered

her coming home with it, had met her plane.
‘Planck’s constant,’ she says, seeing first her words
and then their value, wondering should her steps

be quantum small, could she prolong her stroll?
‘The plank is constant,’ said the Moorish Mate,
‘the penalty for not being one of us

but of another tribe.’ His hooting crew
hosannas Anna, while the arabesque-
festooned blade of his cutlass draws first blood

and then her full attention. Pirouetting
on what, for her, is a boulevard-wide beam,
she somersaults, then leaps on the Mate’s head

and hands it to him, having swiped his blade
then swiped it, horizontally, through his neck.
Four leaps suffice to reach the quarterdeck… …