Tag Archives: Animals

International Trophy Hunt, Shangri-La

Posted on by
Reply

‘C’est un acteur usé,’ says rich old Ron.
Or might have said. His paunch shakes and he mumbles.
He leans against his guides. Then, winded, wan
and sick from altitude, Ron turns and stumbles
the path down to the village he has hired
as base camp for the party he has fixed
to celebrate his prowess. Those who’ve squired
him up the hill, and watched him wound the ibex,
will spend tomorrow searching for the beast.
Ron shot it in the stomach. Shooting stars
attend the dying ibex, leaking yeast
from guts gashed by Ron’s dumdums. Any scars
will not get time to form. While Ron’s in bed
his guides will shoot the ibex in the head.

Published in SOMETIMES IN BALANCE

Nine Lives Divided by Two

Posted on by
Reply

I watch my cat try consciousness then conscience.
He discards the latter before it does him harm,
but he limps, less limbic than when our attendance
had been mandated by the witch’s charm.
The wizened wizard laughs at my alarm.
He and his malwife burnish brightwork plates
of steel they lay upon me, magic weights
that hold me fast. I am under their control.
‘We will weigh him, kill him, weigh while life abates,
and then know, by subtraction, what the soul

amounted to, how much it weighed in grams,’
his malwife cackles. I am sure they’re mad.
We had come here thinking we’d unmask their scams,
but their spells had lamed my cat, and now they had
me and my soul strapped to its launching pad.
My shambling cat comes nearer to me, purrs.
The witch proffers a mouse. The cat demurs
and his mind meets mine. He says, ‘Your soul’s a function
of their imagination, and of yours.
So do not worry. Don’t ask them for unction.’

‘All right,’ I say. ‘We’ve watched galaxies unfold.
The beauty of forever’s overrated
and youth is only valued by the old
because they’ve lost it somewhere while they waited.’
The cat pretends my soul is reinstated.
It swings a lightning paw. Claws kill the witch.
My weights take wing and the ignition switch
the wizard presses backfires. Blowback fries
him where he stands — or stood. We’ll go our way,
my cat and me, and live as if we’re rich.

Bésame, Carnicero

Posted on by
Reply

Pig Duroc’s uncle What Me Worry
had ended, Duroc knew, as curry.
So our hero harbours little
sympathy for humans. Spittle

mars his enunciation when he
thinks back to the pony’s whinny
when the butcher’s axe had ended
hopes his uncle’s life extended

beyond the age that is now Duroc’s.
He knows the butcher is thinking ham hocks
so Pig Duroc plays his trump card,
speaks Spanish, speaking fast and hard

to the pony: ‘Palomino,
life is one sour Maraschino.
Kick the brute. Eternity
for him or his axe’s kissing me.’

Bugged by Poetry

Posted on by
Reply

This ruby moves: it is a bug
in an empty shotgun shell.
The shell has served the bug as roof and rug.
I gauge it serves him well.
The bug wants more. He comes outdoors,
flaps his wings, flies to my book.
He says a sonnet only bores
a bug too small to look
across a large and ink-filled page.
I give him praise and drink.
I tell him poems are all the rage.
‘That can’t be true. I think,’
he says. ‘A single shotgun shell
costs more than any ode.’
He bugs off then – it’s just as well.
I’ve stepped on his abode.

Cat and Pig Among the Pigeons

Posted on by
Reply

‘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.

Crocodylus Acutus

Posted on by
2

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.

Ferretería

Posted on by
Reply

(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.