From ear to temple,
A well-defined vein
Scampering
Like a mouse’s ECG.
Is that effective, in the boardroom?
Does it clench, when brushed
By an intensity of thought,
Or misgiving?
Do clients divine in its shallow
Oscillations
Reassurance?
I think, perhaps unfairly,
That it must say something,
If only because its bearer
Feels that way too.
TOMMY ROBBINS
I’m not a poet.
I don’t even know why I’m writing these lines.
But it seems the best thing to do.
I’ve got to man up,
Stop fumbling a greeting
Each time she swings past.
The smell of her!
As a kid, I’d roll in the fields,
Crushing the tansies and chamomile
Beneath the back of my Marvel tee;
Their scents spilt all over me,
And I’d lie in them,
Somehow assured that school
And Paul’s cancer and my lost iPod
Would be alright.
That’s how Yvonne smells.
She’s periphery too.
I think we’d understand one another,
If I could just muster an ice
Breaker. I remember when we
Brushed arms. My dark and her pale hairs
Pulled for one another.
I was too shy to apologise.
YVONNE BLOO
These boys-not-men,
These less-than-gentle,
These eyes-not-on-my-eyes.
I hear their filthy dreams,
Conceived each minute
In flush and heat and thighs.
Momma told me, she told me,
The quiet ones are the worst.
And that Tommy Robbins is quiet.
I’ve seen his gawks and ogles,
His nostrils when I’m near.
He’s lust in a pinkish shell.
Last week he touched me,
TOUCHED ME!
I know I heard him moan,
Like a conscience tasting delicious sin.
He must think about me too;
In his mind he’ll have defiled me
A hundred ways,
As a quiet boy’s mind will.
Well, he’ll not spoil me in
God’s
Eyes much longer.
I’m up now against his window jamb,
Carrying Pa’s hammer.
People get away with things
Because they make good metaphors.
Nobody wants squid ink in their cow’s milk,
Or snake bite in the community well;
The path most trodden is for chattel,
With the cud unchewed
In all four stomachs.
And the voice on the corner,
Swept up in the prevailing wind,
Surely has some sense to breathe
From her unkempt lips.
Don’t you hate it, when the umbrella
Span is nearly enough and leaves you nearly wet?
You pull it down fast, like a blind,
And single hairs get yanked in the metal hinges.
The amount of human festooned
In umbrella frames defies belief.
Plenty to restart, when we realise
The personalised clods we stand on
Owe us nothing.
That’s assuming, of course, that Elon
Finds enough introvert fuck-ups
To water carrots for the rest of their lives.
People get away with all sorts of silly things.
Excuse Soulja Boy,
He’s here every morning —
Here for the same reason as you,
Would you believe it?
Shrink wrapped voice:
Nice squeaky cling-film
Round the larynx.
A few escapee YOUS!
And CRANKS!
Maybe even an OH!
Very little past that.
But why are you so hushed?
Who’s netted your tongue,
Loosened your cords?
You don’t want to end up
Like him, do you?
No, I thought not.
So say Aaaaaaah,
And let’s see what we can do.
Oh, tell us!
Won’t you tell us?
The master-poet smiled.
The smile meant no.
He adjourned to the coast to die.
From a clifftop verandah he peered down
At the swash, hoping for a glimpse of Venus,
Birthing on the waves.
He didn’t see her,
And so he lay down to die.
Crowds bubbled to hear The Simile:
Students, professors, aficionados,
Past lovers, fellow poets,
Those who knew the master-poet
As a sardonic cad.
Ahem.
I’m like the tooth fairy,
In that I’m secretly your Dad.
She wanted so bad to be edgy,
To square her rounded mould:
“Adidas for Joules, vaping for baking,”
Was a mantra she to herself told.
Each day in her cap a new feather
(She donned a fresh peak from Ellesse):
MD, EDM, and avid Corbynism
Were the limes from which she squeezed zest.
But one balmy afternoon whilst reading–
That Postmodern bulwark, Infinite Jest–
Her eyelids drooped, her head soon followed,
Until her chin found respite on her breast.
She awoke — oh horror! — to a shapely
Metamorphosis, a most peculiar bodily lesion!
Where once limbs and curves, now
Twelve vertices: enough for a dodecahedron.
Could you open the door for me, please?
No, no, no, you’ll never advance like that:
Tailing with a “please”, like a servile rat.
And that ambiguous opener, the tip-toeing “Could”;
Let them know its non-optional, a must, more even than a “should”.
To do this, we bolt the imperative to the verb:
“Open the door”, at volume, so as to ensure that they’ve heard.
And for godsakes dispense with that awful “for me”;
Allow the cretin to retain some sense of their autonomy–
In fact, let them trust that they’re worth something to you:
A fronted adverbial — “kindly” — will do.
But why are we turning door knobs at all?
I’ll make a conservative sum to rile your gall:
Three seconds to open, a hundred times a day,
Thirty minutes a week, two hours per pay;
In a calendar year you’ve lost a whole day’s labour–
Ergonomically speaking, it leaves a grim flavour.
I’d direct you to this electric model — how its glass does so glisten —
And this way, you won’t ever even need a colleague’s assistance.
The red bow-tie,
The eyes, unblinking,
The insistent boot tap
Upon the Walmart floor.
He bleats, placid,
Like a toymaker’s demonstration,
Or a hologram
Beamed from another world.
We met a guy outside Oxford station,
Whose accent, by my guesstimation,
Synched cockney and northern Australian.
From behind his grill he wore a permagrin,
Vending a limited menu therein
(With the odd translation in Mandarin).
When, at length, I enquired about these
Infrequent Hanzi, he replied, “If you please,
They reconcile my commercial needs.
If all were translated, people might see
My humble grill as an outlet Chinese;
So to preserve my name as a barbecue,
I determined only to gloss the most select few.
But, because I orientally spell some,
My clients from China feel always welcome.”
Unsure what else I might feasibly say,
I nodded,
“Understandable, have a nice day.”
He was on the couch again.
He was having thoughts again.
Thoughts about killing Grandma.
Sheila inked on her Moleskine:
Primary caregiver’s primary caregiver.
They sat in silence for fifty-nine minutes.
Then he admitted: she’s old, I’m young–
I won’t succumb to her arthritic thumb.
Nodding like a pendulum, Sheila
Penned a careful addendum:
Remind Karl re: Boohoo order.
Shorter Poems 