Chronicles of an endgame sour the day,
the last cormorant glides home half-asleep.
mauve tapering headland not faraway
Is darker; the treachery still indiscrete.
I trail past the quiet, dark caravan,
chest pounding with sorrow; tried to walk it
off but it don’t go – a woe-begotten
rotten vixen’s smashed my fragile heart.
On the rise, I make up the chintzy night scene
of Port Ithaca’s tourist hostelries.
Thronging poached Grockles being obscene
Python Lee Jacksons in a broken dream
HEAD-RIP
He was known to live life dissipated:
Gambolling in crazed buffonery,
Guzzled half a modest brewery.
When his liver, bored, emigrated.
My Uncle Head was steadfast and insistent:
‘Feed me!’ he yelled ‘Til I’m wild euphoric.’
For a pint of gin, no tonic: chronic.
So immaculated homeward: distant.
Ten Afton and a quart of Barleycorn,
stern tea and two, too loud radios
Unwelcomed him the very next morning
as he dimly recalled Jack de Mannio,
gave up on a shower and yawning,
levitated outsidewards to soil the patio.
Back inside he trawled in his shotaway head
and dredged up from its slum, the aviator,
Louis Blerio, who, a century and
one day ago, fetched lobster thermidore
and ate it for breakfast on England.
Head sloooshed a tuft of dog and considered
The perilous return voyage while his liver withered.
We are whaling, we are whaling, call me
Ishmael, the lucky bugger who found a tree
trunk drifting in lukewarm Horse Latitudes
and fashioned a canoe: sound, swift, bit crude;
but still, given the hairy circumstances,
he avoided the Fish’s necromancies.
Sat here on blustery Selsey Bill, chill
blasts of wintry Solent swoop the feral
groynes, sloppy creosoted and duned
with mounds of heave-hoed pebbles; propelled
from an ocean of discarded dying hulks,
Trainee corpses for the breakers yard: shelled.
This leviathan could not give tuppence worth
with his Moon and Sixpence and an old hair shirt.
Last night’s feast for lunch instead, postponed due
to pork pies. A Quiche! Bless you. Shrove
next Tuesday. Easter April Five. Another
forty days & forty nights wilderness.
Invert and live in lushious luxury!
The Jolly Messiah, rollicking cove
frolicsome, flatulent, Fallstaffian
Game for a laugh. Fat cross bum. Floozies seep
with laughter. Knickerpissing! Raus, Raus.
Crucifixion riot. Festival of the oppressed.
Why waste carnival on the cold months?
Turn the world upside down in Spring.
Letta tausand blumen blume…
…time moves in an oboe polka from slug
slow to impish sprite, flits in heavy privet,
snakes under town tractors, hides behind
wheelie bins, always a nick ahead of
the quick, automatic click, the belated
enough glance, the I’m looking for you look,
off it skedaddles, darting, flitting, slick
freezing stone still, mischievous, keen alert,
a baby Pan messing in misty morning moonlight.
I am busy elsewhere, cursing these bogus charts
messing with focal planes, vanishing points,
hocus-pocus concepts of moon, window-
frame, yucca and squint till boss-eyed, purblind,
I miss the goings-on altogether…
Eight bells, sundown…
Molten golden idling gown, catch worm casts
shadow lampshades gloam, come dance this
light’s fantastical…
Remember whimsical?
Critical, you must do,
Momentary, exemplary, contemporary
fly toff fancy, impish man, cuneiform
zero: trousers inside underpants!
See small things fade insignificant, rhubarb
Leaf green mottle release sorb daub…One bell,
Mr Sundowner, that race is well run, just
glad it was when it was, time and place past,
inspired, the candle understands. Lights on…
An old Jew’s harp prism, makes corona
schism, sees the heaven’s children glisten,
heeds bystanders syllogism, shut up
if you care to listen! Says let sly ones be
bygones, give away the ghosts, or a new world
disappears, defy at your peril swell your
placid eyes with tears. Comet’s trails point away
from the sun, seek out a place in deeper space.
For, if this love does not illuminate,
it won’t be for a want of hate for hatred,
dressed up to thrill the fat potentate
his opinion of himself inflated
soon to implode, unconditionally sated.
Below decks I ate wild mushrooms in scrambled eggs,
warm Parma ham,and a choice, prime cut, brown bap,
Oodled in buttery herbs, then, replete,
ascended , fortified to sullen work
after a digestive puff
A glimpse of sun is better than none,
must learn to be more grateful for these, my gifts,
the vessel drifts, time floats, ice too.
Less temperate climes, incursive east wind,
will blast and burn, singeing our lashes
saying only we have committed sin
a mortal sin, the sin of not being them.
Leeward, a cacophony and splashes
Dolphins, a school, weirdly mocking, unabashed.
No aims, no lords, just me, and the sea…
Snug in the lap and rock, the slop and plash
Diving deeper, the sleeper plumbs new depths
Of woozy deep, slithers, warm down the unseeable
Billowing liquid flames of the core, the temenos,
Breeched and hewn by exquisite heat, forging a
Pillowed inglenook in which to mosspot ease.
This is no dark blue luxus dreamt up
in tune or sketch, no symphonic flood,
folk smoke trail stream or ramble.
It lies here with the corpuscle
glitching grike soft timorous in the mammoth,
anemone corner of the one now clear
smiling eye behind the fourth stone.
Another bitty night, the wind’s to blame,
the Ham, the game, the Cheese, they all took part,
but did not do what you did, Maria…
You sly one, you twisted, silent, deadly sister
Due to your emission, I will suffer
endless tumult and derision and you will
live to lie in pastures new as if butter did not melt
Guts are a bit choppy, the wind’s to blame
I explain to the assembled throng who
Conclude it was me, not you who caused the pong
Now, simpled, feeling a complicit tool
You play it Cool, queen the art of cool,
woman’s grudge is women’s definition,
Powder your nose, pass the ammunition.
Grimbeau 