A strong short shower
overflows congested drains;
a dog turd disintegrates on the rough grass;
the scream in the night
was not from next door;
even upstairs i can hear the engine hum
Sad, alas, the man who dreamt of Fairies!
For a single dream spoiled his whole life.
once just like you I was a January Sunday pushing all the wrong buttons revealing the found rhyme correcting unsightly tyros How quick we are forgotten when we're gone as if it never mattered
Sat inside the morning moonlight
Digesting —
yogurt honey banana grape granola
Confounded Bristol stools chart
There is a trap set down memory lane
Especially designed for rogue elephants
Inclined to silly pop songs
1
Worsted, Tweed, Galician calicos, reamed
cotton screed, diaphanous silks, dour,
coarse linens, Chinese screen tableaux
of mislaid epochs, safe and unsafe tapestries,
sad stacked in the old mead hall, the conference centre,
the hubristic hub of soft arrogance now
Withered
2
The once sure folk have fled, melted and mutated,
The meek ones headed for the hills, they crouch
and mooch grumpy, sucking stale breadsticks
in their holes, the old caves and calcified barrows.
The diehards fought foolhardy rear-guard actions –
smouldering stockyard bone stooks stand pyrrhic
Edifice
3
With the Labyrinthines gone away, nature is displeased,
Ever abhorrent of void it convenes
Bison, heck, leopard, eel and titmouse,
Louse, curlew, ptarmigan, to settle
a modus of repair. They soon conclude the obvious:
You are only as good as your last, worsted
Algorythm
_
A redundant giant slumped silently on a porcelain escarpment washed by all weathers
Hesitated and slipped under the turbid foam. A mission bell tolled, candles were lit and praise was lavished on the magnificent shit.
“We may never see the like again,’’ claimed a source unknown to number ten.
A long time ago
I went on a journey,
Right to the corner
Of the Eastern Ocean.
The road there
Was long and winding,
And stormy waves
Barred my path.
What made me
Go this way?
Hunger drove me
Into the World.
I tried hard
To fill my belly:
even a little seemed a lot.
But this was clearly
A bad bargain,
So I went home
And lived in idleness.
Cracked pot: upset chair—
Out of upstairs window stare
Must have been a stir out there
A wind blew
A telling gust
Nine Red leaves
brazen rust: spring glare
New Grub Street records below for future delectation;
and on the ruby doorstep, a letter for Professor Phipps
containing a packet of pulverised sage
to keep the lonely onion happy
engaged in crazed seasonal endeavours
Festive lies.
A nuclear fog subsumes Trollenberg as
zombies fill the dishwashers
incanting the curses of Mali and
smiling on the memory of
Nkrumah’s regal foxtrot.
‘Maradonna’s dead’
‘Too bad, but what of wee Diego?’
‘Robust mudlarking,have no doubt.
Slicing dentures from washed up
concubines of the East Indian in
inky sepia drab.’
A crow observes from a tendrilled groyne.
All is muted, unspectacular.
Waters lap.
A heat pipe burps in fair Abrasia.
‘Will he wash?’
‘In good time, when opportunity arises.’
‘The crusty stench is beyond the daily luminal’
‘Crud!’
‘Poor wee Diego’
‘Aye’
Observations of a soggy flower
do not set the world ablaze.
There’s enough grief to
go round these days
I suppose
common old perennials
grow back when people don’t.
So sorry Lily,
you’ve had your fifteen minutes
The blank look; the pale face;
a swingeing cut & a lunging thrust.
I am always rocking and rollin’;
pullin’ & pushin’;
puffin’ and twitchin’.
Sir Realism chewed the wasp wing
absentmindedly,
he was looking longingly at the bust of Dickens.
‘Formegandros!’ The bellow echoed around
the huge, bare bathroom.
After rain falls sunshine
