Now,
A medicine ball props me up.
I find myself on a purple furlough
from San Drunken to Alchotraz:
fatter, stupider, floundering
wondering
Why –
which is always a stupid question,
as I well know
(should know better
but don’t).
Regrets?
I’ve hand a few…
Perm-interrupt of daydin,
blight noise,
like thistledown,
calls me down for
an absinthe
and
an anchovy.
Stubborn as
stillborn longhorn,
I wrastle with my conch shell
and succumb
Whoops!
A post
Apocalypse
Calypso
Dust.
Sun Ra.
Free jail.
Cordelia
Blimey
O’Reily
Red
Buttons Mushrooms
…after a prolonged retreat
back in the sod-all,
back
to the ordure.
Like micky spillane
Complete with
A brain
In a drain
And that, so it was, till now.
The journal arises
on Whitsun Saturday after a prolonged
jojourn in the land of the tetrahedrons,
inspelled by inchohol (how are things in inchaholy?),
in the leantime a beggar become,
so injured the risk of recovery is
now a threat, like church twice on Sundays,
or school
anyday
Smart,
smug Smart Alec sat,
soiled by ibex ordure,
popping vindicates
at established fates.
Marquis de Plonqueur
Mozart Violet echoes
conch in Sea.
All is stop.
No ghosts,
(One did look!)
The door!
Is that a dog?
Would it, could it be?
Back from killing conies,
flushing out fat farm rats,
haring up hills,
racing gannets on the strand.
Yes, don’t be silly,
it was here,
it was her.
Fresh as the icy, blue zephyr,
that bid me: ‘How are Ye?’
Great Allotments of Albion yield up
sweet pea & radish.
The bearded mates look maddish
and lose well
the first challenge, woody, blemished
offerings get scant consideration from the judge,
old before his time, made over for the telly.
A sex god with a perverse
glint in his eyes
when he says ‘the last thing we want to see
is a drooping sweet pea.’
He knows, you know
Take the air, the quack
said and so we
caught the only sun,
the rest have weekends off,
shining on the righteous
who know who they are,
or have been, or keep trying.
The unlucky ones,
the unrighteous rump,
get no sun,
they know who they are too,
and can’t or don’t want to
do anything about it.
At night they become the majority,
there are just a few
righteous burning most nights,
but they cast no shadow then,
they are the ones
dreaming the same dream
on that special night.
A night that everyone has sometime,
whether they deserve it or not.
A dream like this.
One…
Moo-cows and moo-bulls
thick mist and drizzle.
With window open I give
Whisht; ruff & honours paused,
Play-Boys & Play-Girls
dragged half-dead from dream
to school
to play.
Two…
The big kids attend
grownup therapy
later with grownups.
Children in Need,
they exasp, have these!
Comic relief, they
sad clown, give me some
I need it.
Three…
How they chuckle
at their chosen lot.
Today, we will not
play with cats
learn
a nursery rhyme called:
Brock the Bad
Bad Badger.
Four…
The children will nap,
not get to the last,
best dream,
and cry and
scream, and run away
to live with cats and
friendly badgers
in the woods.
Five…
It is there you can
Contract polio,
malaria, diphtheria, and hysteria
like the big kids who
fetch you later and
scold you for what they’ve been through.
You will learn a lesson
They will regret.
Grimbeau 