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.

Laid Solo.

 

Laid Solo.

 

This week, I've been laid so low,

hardly knew which dice was thrown -

it’s humbling, and I felt deep cut

like a Tears for Fears bonus track

from an unreleased side project.

Dissonant, distant, buried in the mix

and thought I'd a few better tricks

than these, even those lazy words

at my command rebel unheard,

seeking new careers in new towns.

Ramadan came, I scarcely noticed,

tooken hold of by a malignant virus

sweating within, sickening the skin,

paling the brow with clammy, thin

frostings of iced-sweat. Bedsheets wet

beneath my streaky-rasher back

and I toiled, labouring long and hard

to seek Nirvana, dreamt of same cars

I was always crashing in, broken glass,

something awful drawn on the carpet.

Standing on The Wall, waiting target

for that sniper’s rifle, well aware

he’d seized his chest in health scare,

by ambulance they’d brought him there

where he’s convalescent. My years

more or less - him short of breath

feeling those tightenings of his chest,

abnormal flutterings of sick muscle,

how thin the covering skin that rustles,

keeping pace with thick blocked valves.

What in the world can we do?

I’m in the mood for your love; you flew

so far, I’m laid solo, out of sound,

out of vision, but above my ground

zero, take wings to speed you home

for we're most ill when we're alone

and don’t you wonder sometimes,

how we'd come back from subterranean?

Kate

 

Kate

 

He wore a wig, Kate,

revealing perhaps a soupcon of pride

as it gnawed at him from the inside -

the chemo – not a great look, to be fair,

a bit chewed rat’s tail, off the rail,

unfitted and bought on spec.

There was nothing about him much bespoke,

we pointed, laughed at it

enjoyed a black country joke.

He was being thrifty,

well, you knew your dad,

maybe better than me,

although, I wonder, really.

Always reckoned Iceland food was a neat idea,

wrapped in thick plastic,

drank litre on litre of cheap bottled coke,

the own brand, dodgy supermarket kind.

Were we talking? Then, I mean.

Somehow, something had come between us,

you, or Peter, maybe –

my poor behaviour, chucking an empty can

onto the hard shoulder of the A30

that time we’d gone to see a punk band

in Exeter John Peel had been raving about.

I was pissed. Must’ve been my turn.

Sometimes it was his, believe me.

Then, he told me six months only.

Everything didn’t change, really,

he slipped away, I’m remembering football games,

times we took you to the horses,

holidays in France, Molineux, Les Conches,

and your mother kicking him out

with all his stuff in black plastic sacks

because once you’ve had black –

her words, not mine.

I miss him but I’m pleased to see you’re doing fine,

Sky Sports, glamour time, off the shoulder,

now that’s hat I call customized, a flash of flesh

and flaunting it all over press,

not an inch more, more an inch less,

and I wonder, looking back,

what he would’ve made of that?