Only the Strong

 

Only the Strong

 

Take weeds – no, take mosquitos,

nipping at your heels;

your ankles – how often you feel them

kissing hairs just above –

ah, it must have been love

but it’s over now

and even though you dealt her a death blow

there’s snowdrifts more coming through.

 

Once a flea thought he was not a flea

at all, and jumped, maybe

150 times his relative size

but, alas, he was not king all he surveyed.

His was a schoolboy error, made

landing, as he did, on sticky tape.

You folded him inside,

like amber, but on contraction he popped

and what a lot of blood he’s got –

yours, probably.

 

Back to weeds, this summer’s heat,

relentless, the burning sun, scalded the lawn

crispy brown until grasses being born

gave it up as a bad job. Still, patches of green

are dotted hereabouts, like bacteria

thriving in a Petri dish that time you warmed

your coughs and sneezes -

thistles, docks, dandelion clocks, riding breezes

and thriving.

 

Why? And the brambles

abseiling your fences, downward spears

tooled up with thorn, there’ll be tears

if you pluck what sour fruit is on offer –

you scowl, make busy with the Roundup or Raid,

but it seems they like the taste –

that or greet you from some other place.

 

Sneaky bastards – they’ll gouge out your eyes

given half a chance – they despise

your weakness – you can’t articulate why,

what it is that’s needling you,

nor can they put it into words,

how they keep just ticking along,

how there’s nothing here wrong,

mate, holding out hands that if bitten

become feeders, suckers, creepers – give nothing

unless you’re counting bees -

even these seem to tuck tail and flee.

 

You could argue,

the more you cultivate, the more the risk,

while sheering wool, you’re fleeced –

but take out the mower, attack at least:

Taking measurements of how strong

by how frequently you are preyed upon.

Moving On Up

 

Moving On Up

 

Some songs sting more than most,

but not for those reasons:

 

not love, not hate,

never the changing of the seasons

or the guard - the rennet’s set them hard -

coagulated whatever stirred.

Some songs sting because they’re heard.

 

I speak not of loss but something’s lost:

they’ve done us wrong,

moving on out, your time is up –

some bland playlist drops,

Falconer and Garraway rap

something milquetoast, rock your baby,

but I’d rather jack than Fleetwood Mac

and I always hated crap like that

 

And so say all of us, or should –

but no – so smooth, you’d gag

like you did when they served semolina.

 

One day, I predict, you’ll rue

lack of potholes, bumps in the road.

Dreams? Means nothing now.

Somebody to Love? Broken vows.

Baby Can I Hold You? You did.

It Must Have Been Love? I fled.

Moving On Up? But where?

What have you found that counts?

 

Join me, if you will, but won’t,

burn an ear, if you do, but don’t,

pardon my misgivings

but set my face in stone,

I’ll walk on, walk on, alone –

 

There’s part of me keeps on wishing

while the nation congeals,

and it grieves alongside Curtis Mayfield.

Slow Boat to Flushing

 

Slow Boat to Flushing

 

‘You disappeared from view.’

And – on cue –

Mylor Harbour fading out like Layla,

and other assorted love songs

‘And we were worried about you –

but, moving on…’

 

Simon’s got the helm,

steady as she goes -

you could trail your hand

and stroke the mirrorlon below,

break blue borders,

to send ripples to shore’s far corners

imperceptible by the time

they make landfall

and comb the grains,

but they’d be there, just the same.

 

‘Those are oysters,’ he reports,

his voice cutting through their small talk

like a short bladed knife -

each hiding a pearl,

cufflinks for boys, strings for girls.

 

You wonder if he now wishes

he’d stayed below to steer

from within the cabin, not here

on the quarterdeck.

That’s me escaped up the fo'c's'l

by the bowsprit,

but I can still hear it:

their talk a sink full of greasy dishes.

 

I remember we had adjacent offices,

I hadn’t stayed in touch –

such things become too much

like most people are -

the latest flatscreen, the newest car:

 

‘And then we stayed at the Hilton,

Singapore, and at the bar, guess who?

Lionel Richie with the forward row

of England’s starting 15, true –

and that's Ben singing 'Nessun Dorma',

just over there, by the corner...

but, you know,

we were worried about you…’

None shall sleep.

They don't know; the idea creeps

that you could dip them both in Carrick Roads,

trail them behind the boat

to see if its glistering wake could soak

through; make them gleam.

But the only bubbles blown

are the ones they call their own

and trapped within

they push outwards at that thinning skin,

a long way from here to home.

 

Simon grunts while I make clear

there was one boat deploying forwards,

and another abandoned here;

tied to that pontoon;

you don't want to make a splash,

just a dash for new horizons

or sometimes you just get drafted

and there’s no raft back –

 

Or - if there is - it just exists

drifts and drifts, screwing cork into itself

crewed by two by twos

dipping and pulling on opposing oars –

just flotsam from wrecks, 

lashed together

with creepers for the deck.

Coming Round Again

 

Coming Round Again

 

Belts and braces – literally –

let’s not try metaphor, hide meaning,

instead, let’s feed on feelings

either eat or be consumed

because sometimes they take teaspoons,

tap your head,

crack you open like an egg.

It’s coming round again,

tonguing your belly like fire,

moving up through guts to heart

and we all have guilt. For a start,

your sending him to school in trousers

tied around the waist with string

and I have pain about similar things:

Belts and braces – don’t fade.

Children can be cruel at that age,

I remember my own drubbing,

those second tier bullies rubbing

my youngish nose in it -

and a coat unpicked,

stich by stitch, at the seams,

every night trying to avoid another clubbing

by concealing more leaked stuffing.

But, you know, you slough

your chrysalis and make it to man.

These days, I’m old – I can

reach in my pocket, shell out a few shekels,

after all, it’s only what life has dealt,

so, let’s go to buy the boy a belt.

 

I Travel

 

I Travel

 

 

Chacewater garden centre,

plants its mark on visitors,

who are mostly old.

Sipping tea, chewing scones

of gritty currants, dollop of cream,

jam – cherry, maybe

more likely raspberry,

excavated from the wholesale tin.

Spit seeds from gapped teeth

where they lodge like squatters,

dab tissues on dribbles like blotters.

Some have a partner oppositting,

perhaps there’s a little talking –

sometimes silence because they say

when you know somebody so well,

conversation gets in the way.

My septuagenarian neighbour, Kevin,

clatters metal buckets of weeds,

uprooting daily those unpleasing

thickets of intruders seeding

on his four square bit of green.

From my window his constant noise

is sometimes ignored,

and sometimes annoys –

often inoffensive, but makes me think

of other plots, days gone down

where we’re younger - it stinks

to have me around, he thinks

and he longs for the days I travel.

But here’s where it ends,

bent backs, pots and pails.

Today, I’m on Artemis, out sailing,

tacking across Carrick Roads,

maybe St Mawes, who knows?

Depends on where the winds will blow,

I’m ten years behind him,

in no hurry to rattle my tin

but know, in my heart, it’s coming.

Maybe, nations are only people –

they want to travel too

with views that may be strange,

but they’re views all the same

and we’ll mistrust our sight

as they waive your right

to cultivate, border and contain.

Within our minds

travels each and every state

to be explored with furrowed thought,

and destination is only            

what a planted life has brought.

Butcher’s Choice

 

Butcher’s Choice

 

There’s only one apostrophe.

On the wrapping. Quite clear,

signifying singular:

‘Butcher’s Choice’ it assures us,

slapped on the thin plastic packet

which some sleeving machine

took no time at all to wrap it

in. Purporting to be sausages,

high quality product, these porkers -

a year before a walker

as Squeeze would have it

in reverse – appropriate, you’d think,

but fry them, they shrink

and water come a mi eye.

I wonder what they’re stuffed with?

Sage? Onions? Certainly not bone

sawdust or reclaimed gristle – no

that’d be bang out of whack,

this is top quality and that’s that –

but I microwaved one

for a shade too long

and it turned into brick.

That or a pale thin anaemic thing

you’d get arrested for quick

if you waved it at a trusting public.

They claim with maximum fuss:

‘Good food for all of us,’

in orange wobbly Mary Ann sans serif –

but quick! quick!

Send for the sheriff -

I’ve seen shopfronts

of affronted butchers

murder in mind, downing hooks,

wielding hand saws and cleavers,

taking to a nation’s streets

screaming: ‘Where’s the fucking butcher

who chose these?’

Teatime Tygers

 

Teatime Tygers

 

It’s written as a cautionary tale,

obviously, one you can’t fail

to spot. Even a retired mallet,

gone to seed and having cracked

his fair share of heads

would leap out of his deathbed

for this one. Devised by a hack

with a nought degree, ECE, probably –

into barrel-bottoming

with a major in crayoning,

fuzzy felt and tummy time.

Couldn’t cut it as a teacher,

throws on a dog collar to preach.

Presents two or three pages

using the deepest, biggest fonts,

with, ‘Illustrate this, please –

let’s have animals, with placid faces

drawn not quite right, off centre,

clothed, standing upright,

you know, anthropomorphic porkers.’

Chalk in a comedy hedgehog

with a bonnet, wooden clogs

and a penchant for mushroom houses –

it’s Beatrix Potter with an asinine plot

so far removed from ‘Animal Farm’

the only probable harm

could come from paper cuts.

This self- published slop

is flying off the shelves of no shops

whatsoever like an out of breath

iron propellered Caxton Press.

‘Piggly Porker Chokes On Sausage’:

there’s little industry and no cottage.