It jerks and rumbles through the blue,
Hauling night-capped sitters
Over seven time-zones.
They emerge rubbing bleary sun,
Breathing forgotten toothpaste.
Clock hands are all out of whack,
If anything slipping slyly back,
And the taxi red in a breakfast noon.
That night it’s 3am, or 7pm,
Dinner: broccoli, salmon, spaghetti!
The routine buoys him,
The rhythm looses,
And floating on homeward foam,
He departs a nameless jetty.
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.
Fetch me ten persons aged eighty,
Would you please?
They can be marathon-runners
Or sufferers, wracked by disease,
They can be grandparents (or great-grandparents)
Or the last of their line,
They can be lucid, and sharp,
Or not quite of their mind.
No matter. Go, and fetch me ten,
Then line ’em up like a conga,
Then measure the line; it won’t be longer,
I don’t think, than a few metres
(Maybe more for a wheelchair or zimmer);
But that distance will be equal
To the distance we’ve strayed
Away in time
From the Fifth Crusade.
She has an hourglass body.
By which I mean,
That the last few grains of sand are sinking into the lower atrium.
He turned
and lost four years.
Panicked, turned
Back
Only to find the same scene,
A decade on.
He pivots
Now,
Toeing each patch,
Foot-sniffing the precise
Degree.
Meanwhile, wrinkles
Profound, and hairs
Wrinkle like leaves.
I am going to live to 150;
No one believes me, but I will.
I’ll see my great-great-grandkids born
And squeeze the sprites into my will.
I’ll fill with letters an escritoire,
Each signed by the hand that scratches the arse
That sags upon the royal throne
Like a funeral falling into farce.
I’ll visit the deathbeds of all my chums
And bid them fair adieu:
“See you in 70 years my friend,
And sorry about the feeding tube.”
Shorter Poems 