You’re a Naughty Boy, Fawlty

 

You’re a Naughty Boy, Fawlty

 

…don’t do it again,

but they keep doing it again

and, oh my God, what are we going to do?

 

She’s back any minute and we’re all doomed.

You’re doomed, too,

don’t you understand?

 

Oh, pull yourself together, Fawlty,

if it’s all gone wrong

then do something violent,

we’re on the cusp, so tote your stick,

parry, hit, slap, thrust,

boot them right where it hurts,

pants down, wallop backsides,

better yet – take a wooden spoon,

beat and beat and beat until eggs crack -

he’ll just whimper there

in his far corner of the room

if history has shown us anything.

 

You'll teach them to look at me

in that way, Fawlty, such insolence

must be punished, such defiance,

met with shock, awe, epic fury

or else, you'll maintain my grim silence.

 

Now it’s time for little boy

to become a man, Fawlty,

because that’s how it is, son,

my great depression, my world war two,

my do not do with old black shoe,

my bread and water, my gruel and dripping,

my reconstituted egg,

my ten lards a-spitting.

 

Consequences born when I was young,

Fawlty, shall be visited onto you -

call it my just civic duty,

my must moment, my love actually

my tutti frutti, good booty,

aw rooty and dress me up in a business suit,

here’s a whistle, here’s a flute,

a bowler bonnet for my bloodshot face,

prepare yourself for a little taste

of that something I prefer the most -

burnt bread. You’re toast.

Behind Closed Doors

 

Behind Closed Doors

 

And the people like to talk,

Lord, how they like to talk

said your actual Charlie Rich.

You know, he wasn’t joking -

I’m spluttering and choking

on all the drivel I’ve received.

Oh, how they’d like to grieve,

get vicarious thrills you suspect,

like, if the last one didn’t get

you the next one might

as nation against nation fights.

Sure, they’ve lobbed ballistics

this way - and the statistics

suggest you could cop for one

but then again, that song

they vetoed in Eurovision

has only just gone and won.

More Simon and Garfunkel;

less of your long-lost uncle,

distant friends, old colleagues,

ex-girlfriends under cypress trees

that steal brains while you sleep

or so it’s wrote. They creep

out from under filthy rocks,

oh, it’s been quite a shock;

thinking of you, honest injun.

The organs and their engines

journaling above scrolling doom

in red, make you leave the room

for bed - please let’s hear it

from trapped tourists in shit.

Baby, let your hair hang down,

and let’s button our lips,

I’m in boxers, you’re in silk slips

and please, don’t make a sound,

let honeysuckle that we found

do the talking; heal the wound.

When You Feel The Bite

 

When You Feel The Bite

 

 

When you feel the bite, it’s probably too late,

you’ll find raw ankles in a state,

or the very tips of your ear lobes,

your wrists, if you’re unlucky, your nose

swelling up like an excarnated globe.

And have you wondered how they know?

Here’s me, sedentary, watching news,

hearing the pundits give half-assed views,

every bulletin extracts another expert’s

grave address to camera in scabrous shirts,

helmets on, giving tongue and going for it –

then here comes another of the bastards.

You swot in violence, kill that little shit

it lies like black ink in your satisfied palm,

quivering, twitching in its impurity

and thereafter a period of quiescent calm,

you relax in some false sense of security,

before another swarm of the little bleeders

fill their thieving sacs with bloody feed.

When you feel the bite, it’s definitely too late,

so roll over and resign yourself to fate.

Ally Pally

 Ally Pally

 

So, we’re deep in someone’s crosshairs now -

some maniac lit the light, blew touchpaper,

removed the head, but kept the rest for later

to poke around in the sacrificial goat’s entrails,

read the tea leaves, throw the bones,

send the fireworks rocketing across the sky -

how far you ask? Well, I’d say how high.

Like how they built London’s people’s palace

to scrape clouds, sandpaper cumulonimbus

or Captain Birdseye scrapped with Findus

over whose fingers actually had more fresh fish

when really neither were fit for any dish

to serve to any King on any royal slice of bread.

This roaring success, torched after 16 days,

was mostly bankrupt until fat men who played

darts, shot arrows right through them and stayed

while your average scumbag, getting pissed,

chants stand up, stand up; boring, boring table,

as sportsmen lob missiles at them if they’re able

and they broadcast this slop to a sickened world.

I’m getting messages from some several girls,

of life and times behind me now, they say you ok?

Ah yes, I remember we did the hokey-cokey

some years from now, it’s either too late

to care, too late to wave, too late to say I’m here,

because I put that world behind me, dear.

Me? I just scream with boredom, frustration -

not your knock-off Ludo with the no cheating dice,

I’m watching them stockpiling water, buying rice,

preparing for an oncoming storm that'll never come

and seething here under the racing sun.

Ah, Alison – she’s an answer looking for a question.

Well, let me send you a few suggestions.

The Masseuse

 

The Masseuse

 

I’m aware that my mouth tastes sour

but not in the sweet, stale way of tinned tuna

and yet I ever brush my teeth on the hour

every hour, take Angel Falls of showers

and yet she clings, in scents so familiar

my waking mind screens and bewilders

any notion of any ranking. Still, she comes,

comes as my fingers are picking, must strum

that unfamiliar bass-line she demanded:

Oh, have you ever seen the rain? It landed

like a love note, a Valentine’s unsigned,

my bleary, blind eyes stretched open to find

had flopped onto the doormat of the mind.

The rain falls, but rises in shocked octaves

I improvised and I joyfully concocted,

where drum fills are like a heartbeat rocked

and she does not pick up her violin awhile,

instead she’s dancing at me, sultry and smiles,

throwing more than pleasing shapes. I play

until she drifts behind where I no longer see,

her fingers grip my neck, and her fingers grip me.

The bad and good notes but one and the same

or, if I play not, I had not even felt the rain

she brings, her fingers with our music play

and the scent of her breath is treble clef away

from my rising bass; and do they not say

good boys do fine always? I know full breasts

are but a whisker, a half-step from a thin vest

that the devil will coat me in. Still, she grips,

twists until weak fingers from my frets slip

with some sort of smile, plays upon her lips,

she shrugs, takes violin and heels my neck -

bows notes yet unwrote and refrains complex.

Oh, You’ll Get No Swimming Today, Dear

 

Oh, You’ll Get No Swimming Today, Dear

 

Oh, there’ll be no swimming today,

dear, she’s dropped you, she’s on her way

but something rotten, a man chipping tiles,

scaffolded in the gods above, rasps and files

and renovation a Ugandan security smiles

with an apologetic shrug.

 

What can you do? You recall how Ronald spoke

of promiscuous womenfolk

and why absence makes the drought last less

decide not to put him to the test,

brave deserted windswept streets and walk.

It’s only yourself with whom you talk,

like Prozac or some other drug.

 

Your feet know not which way they drag,

and the brick weight of your brick bag,

grips at shoulders, chafes under armpits

to make a blistered bent back sag a bit,

reminds you you’re no longer young

and the slave that is the desert sun

is tasked to make you sweat.

 

Once you’ve rounded those several blocks

indecisively, hobbled over the extra rocks,

put in the unnecessary yards,

dodged the omnipresent security guards,

tapped in irritation to whining prayers,

questioned why you’re even there -

unfolded the laptop, scowled at reasons,

mumbling curses at their unforgiving season

that will almost surely get you yet.

Finger at the Stars

 

Finger at the Stars

 

He jabs his finger at the stars; proclaims

you’ll eat no cake for thirty days

like an inverted Marie Antoinette.

Oh, for God’s sake, you dare not think,

end of days without a drink,

everything shut, and this town

is coming like a ghost town

except you cannot mouth it, sing or act,

expect a hefty fine for that,

best incarcerate and shut your trap.

Such a forked celebration,

for a league of nations

who come here with deliveries from evil -

fleets of scootered fast food.

Here’s a cat without her flap,

she’s nailed there in crucibles of crucifix,

you’ll get her spayed for giving lip,

so best to just put up with it

when even chewing nicotine gum

could get you some -

watch these old, old men spout tired fire

and you wish to hell they would retire.