Bully Beef

 

Bully Beef

 

Words - lost in time, but appropriated –

canned meat, packed and salted,

you might call them jellied tins

and there’s a key, to shred aluminum

and skin – no matter how much

care you take you end with a bunch

of shrewd strip metaled spirals.

Where do they end or begin?

Let’s spend some time considering

Chips - vinegar enough to outsmart

and sting – leave Beefy with the tart

taste of defeat by the time the strip’s

done. But he’s young and has won –

hefted sabres of success and run

circles around the protagonist.

‘You’re disorganized!’ you hissed,

in frustration, the last time

he’s left his pencil case outside

those four walls of learning, blocked

the lesson for the nth time, rocked

your coiled up serpent temper

a veritable, God’s honest class preventer.

Maybe, as an aged mentor,

you did indeed, pluck him by cuffs,

bully him firmly to chairs enough

to thrust in front of surly books.

But there were sullen looks

from beneath his fringe and he ached

to revenge for revenge’s sake –

more than capable to demonstrate

that all that’s canned up within

can become barbed and salty in its tin.

Cracking a Smile

 

Cracking a Smile

 

And she says to me:

‘crack a smile –‘

you’re thinking

I’d rather crack an egg –

or did not the clown say to Wagner:

‘Why, if I pulverize the calcareous,

do I not scoop out the meat,

to give you half?’

It seems not – rather

there’s raw shoulders of mutton

enough to satisfy the famished glutton

and the world as the yolk

enclosed within the white –

where’s Kit Marlowe? Search him up

send forth the hounds

bring us the sounds

of fang clenched britches,

send for the witches,

if we pull this off, there will be riches.

 

Stand down Margaret –

you want outstanding?

I invoke Cameron’s coasting coastal schools –

all his fools

and how they did for us –

here’s much the same

void of Latin declensions,

brimming with tension,

presenting pretension,

failed teachers four

who sidle in through the out door

and bare their teeth in fawning grins,

well you’re fooling no one.

‘I nominate thee

to work with me and not against,

stand forth Demetrius,

take what’s yours and be damned!

Stand forth Lysander,

thou, thou hath bewitched bosoms

with nought but trifles,

spreadsheets, ticksheets,

sheets of foolscap, mostly mislaid

and for this

a heavy price must be paid.

 

Here’s me feigning to grin –

wibble wobble, wibble wobble,

jelly on a plate

let’s have 10 days Inspection straight,

what heinous sins

that belong to me,

might they, this day uncover?

But she says to me

as we sit, side by side,

welled up, emotional:

‘Will you rid me of this turbulent priest?’

And as I take up this perilous emprise,

fulfill her solemn binding behest -

for only she binds me to her breast -

this one I hold most dearly,

whom I love the best

and would not see her downcast –

‘No, no!’ Speaks she like child,

‘For God’s sake, Peter, crack a smile.’

 

 

Sense and Censorships

 

Sense and Censorships

 

It’s a weekend, the 7th day – rest –

be thankful, smile, be blessed,

except here, they’re certain it’s best

to call it differently. Take some young teacher,

nothing special, with features

still forming; setting - not the finished article,

but with some potential.

You could work on shaping clay

with fettling knives, ribs, pray

that come some far-flung day

she could rise up, inspire, spark fire.

One day, the officeholders come to call

wielding spreadsheets, paperknives and small

grievances spread large like deserts.

Ah, books. Shred literature, censor art

with references to those parts

of growth and life deemed by him unfit

they’ll Fahrenheit 451 it –

or close schools, pick up tools, censure fools

who dare to dream beyond rules –

hide heads in black

and use AI to attack

because it’s sense she lacks.

Voices so small they’re hardly voices at all

must bite their lips

as starving populations watch inflation grip,

drowning not waving from sinking ships,

on activists’ necks the snug noose fits.

Easy lie crowns upon heads that sit

and watch them blowing each other to bits.

Borders

 

Borders

 

We’ll frame it all in black,

in truth, the only borders available:

a sort of corrugated card,

to staple around the edges,

hide the cracks.

because the music room lacked

the requisite panache,

a cliffhanger, last rites act

from management prior to the visit –

we shrugged, set to,

mundane, but someone has to

and we’re the band, after all.

Printed off all the old images

to slap on the boards as ordered,

sitting pretty and bordered.

And Alex said to me,

apropos of displays and such -

‘Can you remember, a first LP,

that first you bought?’ Well, I could,

duly reddened within,

so great was the sin;

defaulted to one that counted.

Music had come, gone; amounted

to nothing – but your Beatles Red

is indelibly stamped into my head -

from my very first cassette

that spooled itself into brown ribbons

around vicious toothed spindles

and snapped - to the cracked CD

double jewel-cased set sitting

next to Blue and –

above bordered grinning moptops -

two vinyls sleeved by peeling flipbacks.

Can we bear it?

To see us posted

could bring tears – they sound the same

but the bordered man

has long since bleached; faded

into run out groves, jaded.

But Daniella punches my arm,

punctures, pushes me in corners

‘Take up your bass and play!”

she orders.

A Push for the Margins

 

A Push for the Margins

 

Sitting inside our boxes within boxes

and seizing lined paper, foolscap -

where we long since abandoned

watermarks, jester’s caps

or anything amusing like that,

or along those lines and pushing

for the margin. ‘Write a date,’

we might command a class

but which one doesn’t matter.

I’m listening for the clatter

of metal on unoiled wheels,

body and wire basket, molded steel,

considering creative efforts

that went into conveying foodstuffs –

tipped into rivers, turned to rust

and think I might write about stuff

like that – and you? But here,

within these walls, we can call

but no one’s listening at all,

we could point it out, and somewhere

in our hearts, we know and we care

but it is all we’ll ever be.

Value of the week? Compassion,

of course, and caring – we’re nations

on nations of striving aspirers

but there’s flaws of floors in highrisers

that I once thought scraped skies -

we’re pointing at what’s obvious

and there’s comfort in penned oblivion.

Let’s push for the margins.

Room enough to scribble columns there

and yet I lately read of a tramp

who’d trollied everything he was,

set his face against the rat-race,

composed in decomposition,

wearing a dressing gown tied with string –

a gang of schoolboys did for him.

Need a Massage?

 

Need a Massage?

 

Walls of silence, walls of sound –

overused words, meaningless,

a blend of background noise

meets tortoise trotters –

 

and he always wins

in that story about a race up a hill,

featuring the rabbit, dog and ipis.

 

No – the real walls are in your head.

Lately I felt them,

screaming barriers, claustrophobic,

built somewhere between

terror and panic

 

and that cheese croissant on display:

It’s the same one everyday,

sat flaking in the glass cabinet

but it can’t be, can it?

 

Unless – they’ve sealed it in a vacuum,

but then, what’s the point of it,

what use can it possibly serve?

 

Hyperbole? Well, I guess so – moulting

outside, sat beside

this tortoiseshell cat,

a stray, curled up, shop cornered,

but mounting a campaign for my lap.

 

Careful – she could scratch –

but seemed so beautiful, a comfort,

content to stretch out her back

against my legs. Then, you arrived,

 

Pajero pulled up outside

‘Brands for Less’ – but I’m a mess

masquerading as somewhat dressed:

 

We depart, you speak of your sister:

‘Lori says, I should massage Daddi,

just gentle tonight, You want?’

 

Daddi – her pet name for me,

even though she’s 55, in Davao City,

halfway across the globe from here.

 

Instinct dictates

I should roll my eyes, ‘You hate?’

you reply, stroking thighs, and indicate

as we’re pulling out

across the painted lanes.

 

No. If it’s all the same,

I’ll accept. It’s either greed

or just maybe, I need.

The Last Box of Cigarettes

 

The Last Box of Cigarettes

 

The last box of cigarettes sat on a shelf,

the only company – itself,

which is tautological but quite neat,

you’ll agree – and factually inaccurate:

I have 52 more

gathering dust, in a drawer

back in the UK - always fact-check.

So how this one slipped the net

after four years spent repenting

is hard to say. Housed in a tempting

flip-back lavender-pink carton,

these Sobraine Cocktails, were a bargain

in rainbows of colour and gold tipped.

When your fingers gripped

one of these beauties, you felt rich.

Banned so fast, it made me sick

once the killjoys got their sticky mitts

all over them, because they did not sit

pretty in continuing eras of austerity,

Well, enjoy your soul grinding poverty

if you must – having extra work booked

on the weekend – some UK crooks

masquerading as school inspectors,

armed with spreadsheets, data, lectures

due - I took up the box to give to you

if you tipped up to help out. True,

I feel the spark, your heat

my eyes gypsy roving when you greet

me of a morning, lingering too long

and your engorged blouse. Wrong.

I know it, but there’s that frisson

that exists – and as I passed them across

to kiss your cheek, felt no loss

when you moved your head

to take my lips instead.

Later you sent pictures, delighted,

as for me, despite it all,

I couldn’t help but feel excited.