I tire of this and that
and go attired in flat
old Dunlops loping right
across the moon at night
to knock up Desiree
who’s out of lingerie
and she says into books
rekindling iPad Nooks
with classic acid prose
that could be verse suppose
she drops her closing lines
and gets sent to the mines.
She reads a little Proust,
I say Marcel’s a hoot.
I put on Paul the Beetle
in hopes his songs will wheedle
a paragraph or two
of future déjà vue.
Playing solitaire provides a soothing sense
that your actions count: that turning a new leaf
gets noticed and obtains fair recompense
for efforts made, and that when play comes to grief
it’s in ways a fair reshuffle can undo.
Each time you try again you’re not ignored;
your conversing with the cards shrinks down the blue
and empty space where you’re eternally bored
into images of action you can spread
around your mind as feedback amplified,
by wanting some, into old warmth that’s bled
away so long you think perhaps you’ve died.
Each time play ends and flowing hopes congeal
you foresee a better next hand, and you deal.
‘You have twelve more years,’ read the angel. ‘Erm. that’s twelve more minutes.
What do you, I mean did you, want to do
with the rest of your life within these finite limits?’
The angel watched me take this in and stew.
‘That’s eight now,’ said the angel. I was whistling,
making mind maps of the places I should visit
if I did had time. Death’s scythe persisted chiselling
at the stump of my lifespan in a rhythm to elicit
a shiver with each chip. I was not buying.
‘It’s a dream,’ I told the angel. ‘You and Death
aren’t really here. You two have not been allying
except in those gory stories like Macbeth.’
‘Till now,’ said Death. Death grinned without a face.
‘There always is a last time,’ the angel added.
‘Don’t you mean “first”? I asked. They both embraced
my pedantry a moment. Then Death patted
my arm, that froze, and said, ‘you’re down to four.’
I sang a childhood song to show sang froid.
Death said, ‘This does not seem to be your year.
You’ve lived your life as if it were a schwa;
neutral, muddling middle, bland, unstressed.
You’ve not done aught that you must answer for
so question time’s not needed. Face stage left,
adjust your collar, try for debonair
as we get in step and march. You’re down to two.’
The angel turned the parchment page and said,
‘Well bless my soul, it was years!’ (Death withdrew.)
‘What will you do from now until you’re dead?’
His gasconade, his stock in trade,
pretending catachresis
is what he meant in lines he’s rent
asunder in his thesis,
makes Schnidly head of his Sixth Form’s
poetic blunders study
where his mix of misty metaphors
has drove his tutor nutty.
He lets the runner in his ode
fly to the Finnish line
to stub his toe on Maginot
and tentatively entwine
his privates with his general quarters
whilst striking up the band
which gets him reprimanded
by a mandrill Genghis Kahn.
Schnidly is three wines into Monday
when elevenses are served
and he’s sure the Candy Stripers
on his ward think he is perved.
He enrols in near-rhyme sonnets
cause he’s been banned from dizains
and he craves Alsatian curry
when he gazes at Great Danes
like his Hamlet who’s been hamstrung
by Schnidly’s lame production
of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy.
He has brought the Bard destruction.
Root up your favourites, post them somewhere else.
The land where you first planted them has died.
New settlers hang your mysteries like pelts
of squirrels upon their handlebars, and ride
across the melting ice floes where you dwelt.
They tan your loves they want to hoard inside
their ugly houses built on IOUs.
They desiccate your secrets for their news:
Young commentators analyse your words,
and underscore the syllables you used,
as signs to rustle thoughts you kept in herds.
They’ve cowed you now. The branding’s left you bruised.
Old analysts trawl gems they make absurd
and quarter your last hobbyhorse. Amused?
Retrieve your darlings. Loose them in those cold
and empty places dreams can still take hold.
TFP (today’s featured poem) of 19.9.2011
When love eludes me totally it smears
itself like frog spawn tamped between my toes
from careless wading. Well, these frequent times
(they are no strangers) hurl me into brawls
I seek with authors, painters, stevedores
– with all who’re man enough that I can joust
against them without first or second thought.
I fight them fair as they fight me. No loss
of contest, money, fame – no future scars –
mar them or me in any mortal sense.
Not even if in battle we meet death.
We circle proudly, cowardly or stoned
and rock-faced heft each other’s fighting weight.
With women it’s not difficult at all
for me, forgetting contest, to enmesh
myself in every maybe, chase each turn.
I watch with them the bowler, not the ball,
am often stumped by simple toss, and try
too hard, too often, and to no earthly use
to plumb for meaning in their wished-for smiles.
The men I see I don’t see save as signs
of what can be achieved or understood.
With girls and wintry ladies I suspect
the universe’s reason to exist.
And find it. Then the gardener drains the pond
and tracks my insights homeward on his boots.
Eight bells on board. Ashore it’s four o’clock.
Time for a drink, the tourists and I think.
The terrace on the waterfront is chock-
a-block with whistles warbling for the clink
of glasses pushed along the long bar’s zinc
and on to trays the waitress swishes out
to praise in all the languages that shout
discretely – we are civilised, though dry –
as sailing Europe pushes the boat out
and wine regales us all with glasses high.
Earth Tourist 