Ipis

 

Ipis

 

I wonder if your cockroach

finds enlightenment

in being – where being is spent,

scuttling from boot to boot,

born to be trod - if it has, indeed

any concept of birth,

death, in-between – often seen

coiled up, crushed, back broke,

prostrate on brick, peddling sky

kerb-crawling corners to die.

Even labels signal fate

in Oceanic spat consonance

or Eastasian soft sibilance -

something filthy shadowed

coming at night, shunning light,

quartered in your cortex.

Here’s a Tom from idle reflex

batting a stray from paw to paw

to pass an otherwise dull hour -

now, imagine, Winston, if you will,

his orange eyes, full of fever

and his boot, stamping forever.

Ever Inwards Outwards

 

Ever Inwards Outwards

 

Thick oily fumes of rumour

choke passages, screw with air,

maybe his files are somewhere out there -

it’s a battle to draw breath

and underneath thinning hair

thatching a liver spot pate

his tumor grows and grows,

issuing direct threats to the frontal lobe -

vogue, let’s get to it, nothing to it,

strike a pose and scalp.

 

Meanwhile at home, accept a plate

of warmed over, leftover

chicken. She’s sweet, he’s sour

wanting nothing so much

as a buttered cod, chips, beer,

she replaces a grim news with a loud cheer

of some nightly Filipina gameshow and -

finish up your food dear.

He’s sulky, rotavates rice with a fork

in push back, doesn’t feel the need to talk,

wishes he didn’t have to walk

the streets of Al Sadd

after she’s washed dishes feeling thrifty.

She secures his wallet with a grin

slips him her arm in

and therefore linked

closing doors, he thaws

because she’s so much smaller than him -

but fierce.

 

That night, the national emergency alarm

keeps him tossing, awake -

shrapnel tumbles upon Muraikh

drawing blood and unsheathing

as his missiles streak the sky unleashed,

drawing cat-claw scratch lines

across night's blackboard

in something like awe and ire,

but in the morning - ceasefire.

Absolutely No Sense of Humour

 

Absolutely No Sense of Humour

 

Oh, my grim-hewed night, oh light so black,

oh, alack, alack, alack.

You - found, wherever day is not,

to borrow a phrase - bloodletting.

Maniac eyes; in the way you drive,

cut up weaklings behind the wheel

in Landcruisers built from far more steel

than is strictly needed. It’s lost

now – from where or which organic soup

your million hordes crawled, which whoop

or flange of baboons, which troop

called you to arms, but here you stand.

Accountable to a strict regimen,

each of you a humourless specimen

of phlegm and yellow bile

forging ahead - top value scrabble tile

ace high straight flush for faces,

any vestige of compassionate trace

barely begot, barely begun, there's none.

This your land of lions,

your scorpion tails,

of blank slates that at wakes leave trails

of paddle-churned pale white whey

pudding spots in forbidding grey –

why, you are fifty years flipped from here

and when our worlds moved on,

your misbegottens were forgotten.

Oh, brave new world that brought forth

such blocks, such stones, such senseless things,

while I buy her diamond rings

and she’s in love with me and - well,

you know – she said so – of course,

so the only advice I’ve left to give

is why not laugh and let me live?

Donlon Gone

 

Donlon Gone

 

I flew in from the West, mostly done,

a crisp packet on the breeze - cheese and onion,

prawn cocktail, marmite or gammon –

these are my favourites, see? Have some.

And they put me up in accommodation,

showed me a local gym,

how to get takeaways delivered by them

poor people - in bags of trays

like your sweet sticky cold coffees,

your burgers, chickens, doughnuts, toffee

flavoured popped chips - left on me doorstep

until my arse is buggered out of bed,

shower with only seconds flat,

grab me drink, make the bus and sit,

shuttled in to work unprepared,

doze in front of twenty kids and stare

hungover at me phone. It's great, dozens of us

with just about enough pay

to - come the weekend - get pissed, you know,

until the money runs out - halfway through

the month, regular as clockwork,

screaming good crack, good crack 

at one in the morning,

having fist fights in the foyer and falling -

if anything’s there it’s nothing that I lack.

Then, one of them declared war on another one,

their loss, that’s me, Donlon gone.

Right Instinct, Wrong Time.

 

Right Instinct, Wrong Time.

 

Well, possibly, now war’s reduced

to white noise, stock footage,

grandstanding talk of an outage

you were moved to comment on -

thoughts return to the humdrum,

like mundane origins.

Here’s a wire bound notebook,

cheap biro, a cold study at his desk.

Conceivably Winter, back’s to the TV

that’s been forever forbidden

due to some forgotten transgression.

No amount of negotiation

will ever rebuild what’s lost,

just simmering resentment to this day,

years and years to count costs.

What will it be? Pick up stick,

and that’s blue ink that comes from it

in fits and starts. You look –

this blot on a copy book,

this misbegotten life,

this scrap to file under surplus requirement.

Yet, imagination’s budding, years unspent

without tools of war, but bent

satirical, angry, composing quixotic lines –

right instinct, wrong time.

The Cous Cous Syndrome

 

The Cous Cous Syndrome

 

There’s a war on,

she’s had a baby, he’s filling in.

There’s a grinding of the secret teeth,

no maternity relief,

procrastination is not the thief –

so, my, my - smile at least.

In the secret circle of suckers

he’s holding forth,

that’s the nature of the beast –

opines ‘Gimme. Gimme bad advice

you ever had - all in the style

of Kipling’s ‘If’’. Sits back, smiles.

But, you know, silence –

they’re unsure, he’s new

and they’re missing Miss, too.

‘When’s she back?

and other ungrateful crap

designed to try the patience

of a pedagogic saint

giving up all his free time

for free. But that’s not the way,

not how it pans out in life,

your saviour the remover to remove.

‘I’ll tell you about cous cous’

says he, ‘from Tunisia,

my advice, never eat it, see?

Just my little joke, kids, sorry!’

An hour later the first complaint,

from your outraged parent,

via Chat GPT

to give it that little punch –

cuts out the thinking,

scarred forever, traumatized 

and if life was skin,

she's permanently blistered.

So, the next day, ‘Where’s Mister?”

Oh, he’s gone, war on.

Utopia

 

Utopia

 

Four weeks -

All it takes, to show

you can’t have both;

how pipe dreams

sink boats.

 

Power from streams

provisional winds -

but what comes of cold

remains cold,

will do so

to the last rage

of a new ice age.

 

It cannot warm

will not prevail

hanging limp, the mains’lls

shiver timbers

with whispers of waste,

and all those ships

that cannot sail

remain in place.

 

Turn you turbines turn

like stroboscopes -

offer us freeze-frames

of better times,

8.3 billion stick silhouettes

dancing minuets,

writing one hundred lines

 

of unions trashed,

closed pits,

rust that clogs the drill bits,

and coal slumbering

deep in seams –

 

remove pumps,

shut off sumps,

let winding engines

wind their last,

with final blast

lay cooling towers to rest -

 

send generals and majors forth,

let whatever will

take its bloody course,

curse your green seas

damn your clear lakes –

 

four weeks is

all it takes.