Lexical Set

 

Lexical Set

 

Do you feel Anxiety - scanning right wing UK red tops

as Beloved by your social platforms; your TikTok,

reporting your wank; transcribing slop

of the highest fucking order.

Betrayal of what? Minor royals, major minions,

sinners and hypocrites – all of you lot -

Biased, shitting panties, offering soiled

evidence as Blackmail material, boiled up,

fished from woks with tongs and served. Bombshell?

Like what? Tripped up on wires, buried landmines

or something less Brutal, concoctions of candy floss

for dense masses in Bursts of hyperbole; Chaos

in some thick twat’s Devastated household tonight -

bubble bursting in an Embarrassing twist

a four-word Exit issued by a Z-listed

presenter – Garraway, Nunchetty, Kelly – today’s

bunch of fuckers, sucking off their own tails

chowing on Extreme Fury and talking epic-fails.

Horror Hots-Up,  Humiliated by a Major Warning

witness on-air Meltdowns, some fawning

bastard, licking royal boots, Nicholas Witchell wannabes,

with nothing approaching Mel B’s charm;

Panic-Inducing, stirring thick clots, raising false alarms

Plead, Plot, Pour on Ramped Up polemic

Record it - you’ll be up to thunder thighs in chunky vomit,

and Rocked to the core, Scrapped,

put out to pasture, and while you Struggle,

while you’re Urged to believe and Weaponised

you’ll Wrestle with a smokescreen and shut your eyes

on anything grievous With Immediate Effect.

Pinch Point

 

Pinch Point

 

Last night I missed the plane

but kept forgetting the memory

until with a jerk, I remembered again –

all a bit Bee Gees, you’ll agree:

 

‘Gotta Get a Message to You’

north by northwest of staying alive

somewhere between half past five

and other random stations

existing between this and that nation

where you and me reside.

 

There was no cradle, no receiver,

no coiled cord, no dial, no whir, no clicks –

as though such things did not exist;

they’d never deliberately missed

out Q and Z, and the plane had not taxied,

 

Was there still time to call,

ask for a refund, beg for a delay?

I could get to Heathrow within a day,

if only someone somewhere would listen -

it was never planned, something missing,

how I could explain to you

this absence – that in truth, I was an alien

in a world where they dispense a splash,

place absorbent tissue in a glass

and the drink replenished, reappears.

 

For beer it tastes overwarm, sickly,

and no matter how quickly

you drain it to the bottom – it fills again.

 

There’s a crush at the bar; closes at 10

disgorges drinkers onto the street,

disconsolate; treading on my feet

as if eager to trip up the careless pedestrian,

single them out, teach them a lesson

and you are so far away.

 

Cometh the hero, cometh the day -

the pinch point is approaching,

negligent of feeling, it cares less

about you or me, intends on leaving mess

behind – they’d beg me to be preacher:

‘We’re but as good as our worst teacher.’

Evil. Infinite Evil.

 

Evil. Infinite Evil.

 

Yesterday, hours flew past.

I was back on the bus before I got off –

there were pangs, you know?

 

Like an egg, sunny side up

or flipped over-easy - greasy -

either the yolk sings

or it leaves you queasy

 

while the gnawing rats of depression

chow down on your innards;

they are never far away,

thickening their nests inside me.

 

Anyway, last night's a thief,

I knocked back the beers of relief,

no more than one or two,

and waited on sweet sleep

and her promised velvet lands –

to fly somewhere softer.

 

Yet still, those black ponds

of messages wait.

something banal, trivial, of no use

yet twisting into a barbed sisal noose –

at which I might howl disbelief.

 

What they contain is nothing less

than bureaucratic zero-interest

yet they task me, they rate me,

and just when I’m pulling free,

drifting into green Sargasso Seas,

I am dragged back, 

castaway and beached.

 

Oh yes, there was apology;

the sender rescinds and beseeches,

her hollow hull suffered breeches,

for I too have messages in me:

and she knows about payloads -

call it a latent capacity

for evil, infinite evil.

 

So, I suppose I could’ve referenced

‘Apocalypse, Now’,

or Joseph Conrad’s colossal

trek into dark iniquity –

but I feel I understand the source

feeling aggrieved; 

manipulated, forsaken, undone -

so, instead, reach out to 

the Keeper of Traken.

Blusher

Blusher

 

Today she’s an early riser

creamy vest top, cleavage spilling and down

as she stretches to tie trainers

with an uninvited yawn:

‘How’s your sleep?’ Not good

and she doesn’t want the gym

but off we troop, put a few kilometers in

by order of the smartwatch –

 

it congratulates us, patronizing,

as though we achieved something

unparalleled and unique -

rather like Norton, thieving a payment

from your account by subscription

then informing you of your unmatched success.

On the way back, out of breath

she says: ‘Last night, I finished the Cadbury’.

 

So for insomnia’s sake, I stride to Palengke,

counting steps and she protests:

‘You only want some more than me!’

while hooking a bra, pulling on her dress -

which is true, and something sneaky.

 

On entering, MJ, tightly attired, marks me,

conjures herself sultry 

from between shelves,

brings what is required; says: ‘Where Ate?’

placing goods, nothing rushed

then marks my card with a smile and blush.

Hello, Kitty

 

Hello, Kitty

 

Princess Pussy Drawers wears some sparkly bling,

is a gaunt, linear, wispy-blonde thing

found hanging around in the morning gym

often as much as twice a week.

Scarcely moves; seldom speaks

except in squeaks, contemplating her physique

in the mirror, mirror on the wall.

Neither big but nothing small

she comes in tie-dye white vest affairs,

twitching her rear, tossing hair

while simulating dives off a low-slung bench,

gripping hands, safely lands teeth clenched

on the double-thick rubber mat –

as if to say, well, look at me; get that.

So thin, scratching her papier-mache skin,

picks a painted button nose, a pointy chin,

pale blue pond-water, powder-puff looks

in bleached plaster and closed books.

Everything’s lush, everyone’s ripped,

she surged from skies, didn’t slip;

is pleased to receive plus 500 quid

weekly, for conferring wisdom such as it is,

conducting classes of pre-nursery kids

through some little of life’s intricacies,

‘Heads, shoulders knees and toes,

knees and toes’; this is the way that learning goes,

Gordian rituals like ‘The Wheels on the Bus’,

with focus frowns; conducts her class:

‘Hop, little bunny, hop, hop, hop,’

sipping from Stanley a slurry of pre-mixed slop

she had delivered from a coffee shop

next door by a Nepali rider; disapproves of

his smell, but after all, the weather’s hot -

later she’ll put up with quite a lot more

burgers, fries, coke zero from the same store –

or somewhere similar. Checks phone for gossip,

if it’s scurrilous, she hopes she’s in it,

and come falling dusk and fading light,

gets skulled, pukes up her junk; joins a dawn

chorus of tone deaf Abba medley singalongs

hurling spurious shite into gathering storms.

Hocus Pocus

 

Hocus Pocus

 

And Magus says to himself –

‘This notion makes sense,

if you see my Excel as a fence

where each box is boxed itself

in an infinite sequence’ -

closed, bounded, nested.

And on the seventh day, did he rest?

No. Where each cell is a law

onto itself, and each tick scores

the paper just so, or is drawn

using a suitable software –

and here, thinks he, is a loose term -

for there is nothing soft

in hours spent and time lost,

where life is but a ticking clock,

a countdown, a screensaver.

Roll on, write more, press send,

here’s yours – efficacy as upload,

filling, filing, hitting ticks,

in praise of illiterate literal script –

‘Ancient parchments, what of them?’

thinks he, ‘My decree, my theorem

this my poetry, so mote it be,’

And did he smile his work to see,

where all are slave and master both,

don themselves in borrowed cloaks,

receive, complete, resend, repeat,

in ever-afters infinite?

Ticks

 

Ticks

 

The Cornish summer, lost to me now,

is not without its hazards.

 

Burning deserts lend perspective, however –

 

gazing skywards, wishing for showers,

lamenting drenched shirts

and whatever impulse made me brave the dirt

and dust of the streets of Al Sadd -

 

where, 5 or 6 musicians brood and clutch,

pick up sticks; achieve nothing much -

despoilers.

 

The mind scuttles backwards to a sign I read

many times: ‘Be Tick Aware’ –

on the fenceposts, stiles, kissing gates - there

as I walked along adder paths

leading down to the shade of the river’s trees,

shiver and think of Lyme’s disease.

 

Dogs, too. Embedded blackheads in blotched skin,

part the hair where it’s tunneled in,

recall father lighting matches,

touching cooling char on full blood bladders,

shuddering at the convulsing something

that emerged to drop its last.

 

I wonder if ticks also landed here,

followed me over

to gain purchase; aim to thrive

be the last living thing left alive

 

in deconstructing boxes that engulf streets,

get scuffed beneath my sandalled feet,

surf the sandstorms, catch the wind;

open and dare me to peer within.

 

Maybe a future where the tick is King.

 

Autocrats, laying traps:

‘Tick this!’ they might declaim, ‘You’re insane!’

and they’d pass around the sheet again

until the non-conformity is detected –

a pedestrian out for a midnight stroll,

arrested by the unelected –

 

Exposing flesh, they burrow deep,

invent new rules to keep

or someone’s nobody spreads and creeps,

creates a million million spreadsheets –

 

For ticks.

 

So, in a practice room, not far away,

spoiling a noisy day before yesterday,

we’re scraping together this unruly tune,

leaving the rebellious door to the room

open.