an apothecary swallows fast it went down the wrong way chuckles of embarrassment lewd conducive intimation penelope's dreamboat melody tempts and titillates swineherds a discreet number parked deep down in the novelty oxen hide the men in yellow hats watch Eloise shyly unwrapping a cough sweet... rococo seashells shatter a new baroque is stillborn Rube and Curt were not impostors But verity was brute traduced: refracted
Sure there was winefestive nestlings playing up, most het up indeed, catch my eye
getting jumpy, get the wind up
Beware of swarthy eggsharks, capricious pine martens, pernicious rapine twitchers.
flurry overwrought inside, see insecurity in frenzies uniformity
Consterned as cops vexed fledgers issue squeaky peeps awaiting flaming June in rueful Minnesota
Carried away on arboreal gusts frisk baby leaves,
Martens fast encroach
Two skips is all it took
Two shakes of a lamb’s tail
To wipe out a twentieth century life
spent keeping head above water
Rarely if ever ahead of the game
Trading off lives with careless talk
Having a bit on the side
Giving as good as you got mind you
Sauce for the goose
Is sauce for the gander
Always an eye for a chance,
Jones’ suck up the Jones’s
unhinging light air traffic and small furry animals
o’erleaping avarice; now we send in the homespun drones;
reinforce a no-fly zone around the wasp factory;
Forthcoming static times hang in
a balance of increments crisis;
Till a feral cat let out of the pisspot of despots, tosspots & all their worthy heirs
Declaims this barely adds up to a steaming heap of beans…
So much for no grumbling, Nigel. First thing that came to mind. Poor me! Poor characters, all on the samey-blame me path. It bores me frigid Nigel.
Aja is an island freed of its natives by slavers in 1863 and remained so until the mid-sixties when reclaimed by six intrepid schoolkids
robbed a boat and hid out there for fifteen months in perfect harmony. William Golding was a god bothered soak in his spare time.
Friday on my mind (for it was a Friday); shifty manoeuvres are afoot; a climate of suspicion prevails; all locked down with nowhere to go.
Wanna topic. Lack a tonic. A gin and tonic for the troops (gifted clear sky-blue ideas plucked free from the aether); thought of it twice and got frustrated.
Climbing up the walls. Whit Monday radio news: windows open, summer day, lockdown wobbling, allure of mithra, life lived in one day, back to shitty work tomorrow,
half-term hols from shutdown schools, many will never return, social fabric wearing thin. No subject crops up; birdsong soundtrack palesjust gone nine
comes a moan for all seasons, rut-stuck in a gruesome shamble. Fire breathing vipers lick crusty ankles all hope evaporates for peace come flaming June.
Lining up for the second wave, the seventh is the strongest. Rip tides plunder those too dumb to flee, disbelievers and romcom tourists gather at the river, bored shitless by these endless update spiels,
Green mud I declare,
not to mention yellow air,
dragons turned to minnows
and mice to toothy tigers,
just because two toffs
got the chop
at precisely the right moment
Timing is everything it seems
when the wind blows backwards
and the waves return for one last lap.
I take time to observe the spots
on these bamboo leaves before me
And note they bear a striking resemblance
to the candescent snotter of dilettantes
Snow disappears
Guileful children on a beach. Acropolyptic.
Hope and Joy At Christmas c 1947
seventy years later.
Wrapped up warm pockets, Fur. Athens.
Green Park black in snow. Black and white snap.
Tense audition: slow cello pizzicato.
Angelic wails receding. Haunting voices clamour. Ghost beach cacophony. Polperro parrot.
Densely uninhibited. Rosewood box sarcophagus; in saecula saeculorum.
Dirce row the boat ashore, allelujah!
Mehta and life sentences; brahmin breaths and tea tree branches. Caste system begets Vast system.
Grain. Verlaine. Purple pupil beater. Flageolet old bean.
Tap Water sommelier; aficionado of bruised chihuahua avocado.
Ten O’clock— Big Seven. Threepack Strumpet, Sir Cumstantial,
Phidippides takes the bait (bad day for peas); black pudding weather;
Blazes Boylan, venal baritone; heebie jeebies scatology;
Socrates in a basket; wax my slippers, Maestro please; abject please on bended knees; laxido unction up tuxedo junction; keep on plugin’, sluggin & sloggin’—get to hang Ovid one day; then u is milin;
Alice…hair flows like meadow waves;
Midday—no prime minister-no questions; stretching hams, fizzy up; paeans to beauty, mannikins of mildew; auto scribbles; no hard shoulder to cry on; heavenly ten ton truck;
Kersplat Morrissey. Old Tosh cops it. Amazon scammers fuck me round. Louis ain’t rough
Ninety minutes spent wisely in the organic community means death on a couch of sedge in the third world. Plague takes three million worldwide every second. Big numbers crowd sevbig books. Thor world fills ledgers thinner than most
Grey warm flat empty sandstone treasury of Petra in Sunday drizzle
Monday is the boiler fix, a dirty spoon abandoned , a muzzy morning nuisance caller, an offer to be sniffed at, a fresh bed of noses, an aqueous shower, and a tale of two leopards disputing a missing bone
Feel compulsion comin on
Moon shines under curfew;
pub names seek out provenance;
swept up dog shit and fag butts;
morphing on shampoo;
gurning calypso whistles;
tailspins round on moccasins;
issues mystical whispers;
moon shimmers underwater;
lamprey medusa turns
bongos into boulders;
bleak cold war imaginings
old as drenched dépaysé hills
...divined at last why fingers when flexed twinkle ; grown truly sick of naff reflection; noises off conspire to confound; unbled fucking radiators rage; absent mind drifts to dark arcadia; mourn dancing planets lost to soundbites; melancholy sunflowers snigger; limpid equine eyelids droop; molten magma tears flood fenlands; hairline fissure on the ocean; four squinting barracuda scatter; flying fishwives dissolve in bitchy gossamer; slope caught shoplifting by mantrap anchovy; collective conch shell earholes prick; bleached fine tooth back combed beehive sparkles; electrifying orchid sighting; touchpad static ocean tingle; giggle nervily giddy hooded; end of media for a twelvemonth day; never one to follow fashion; mores to boot and save a fortune; purchase rawl plugs unclear of conscience; epistles replace cheapshot missives; dreamy brave new worlds collapse; announce a sure solution to eye pollution; exhort perpetual indulgences of the ear; waxing lyrical brooks no doubt; blessed peace and quiet deafens; profaned by preposterous firesale plugs; fingerful of fofmaldehyde secrets; no go dip your wick in that; be careful with that wax eugenie; dunno where its been; a butterfly picks its nose in siam--and wham; sorry bob never was your uncle...
The Faber Book of Neurotic Plants & Fruit fell open at ‘Gallimauphy’.
Inspector Funk arrived on fire.
The only witness present was a mute cook called Chum.
The blinds were shut tight.
The light a marsh gas lava lamp.
‘This setting is singularly inappropriate’
scrawled across the crudely artexed wall.
Water dripped three-four time into a blue builder’s bucket.
A neurosurgeon minced nervously from door to door.
A fat man rested his eyes in the blind corner of the crowded annex.
Chum was taken off for interrogation in the wet room.
The clock was stuck at seven twenty-four.
On the lawn red fungi appeared from the mulch of scattered yellow maple leaves.
The silver rowan tree was barren.
A youth on a black bicycle rode past. Blurred adamant and grey.
She was fleeing the clutches of a thousand-armed family that dogged her every move.
Belatedly the phone rang. It was limpid doomed Patricia, destined for the perfumed abattoir.
Funk was lost for words. Platitudes are all he has to offer; he winces at his indifference
The varicose veins were clearly visible in the low November light. They were hungry.
A chicken jalfrezi and chapati were all there was on offer.
His bane, Epimetheus, patrolled the galley like a hawk in times of need. Nutrition was rationed out like peter’s pence to supplicants, the law of inbuilt negligence was cited.
Chum would be released on good behaviour by a Nightingale.
He had done nothing heinous.
The Faber book of Neurotic Plants & Food was shut and files sent to Coventry. Funk gave way to apathy and examined the food for truffle spores.
warm rainfall in the liturgical woods:
plump homely droplets
out of old potatoes
–olive galoshes
how strong the hay smells
turn me into your shadow
progress is glacial slow
–love every second
beast ill
maya
king sighs
Lost half the month already
to seasonable sloth and extreme frost,
torse spores shimmer in moonlight
two cats watch blackbirds re enacts a dogfight
Over the Solent
a robin watches on from the cankered sill
of a cedarwood pergola
The battle for britain is back to stay
with the plague world looming
how many more times can i respond?
Going the last inch at the drop of a hat
Dog tired at eight-thirty hurts
Grimbeau 