Nothin' But Air

 

Nothin' But Air

 

You would think she might have

run out of air, grasped the fact

that some of us don’t care –

have earned a holiday, a break,

but, no – look at your messages

and there’s more, for fuck’s sake.

Who can it be now, men at work?

No – some penny ante award,

a grubby, grasping exam board

issuing certificates willy-nilly,

desperate last gasps for publicity -

even cardboard’s worth more

than anything it gives credit for,

yet she feels the inner need

to oxygenate, satisfy greed –

or perhaps draw attention from

an abject failure to perform.

There’s the usual murder of crows

in delightful chorus, composed

of inane self-laudatory plaudits,

you’re thinking ‘bag of shite,’

they’re waking you up at night;

you wish you had the courage

to leave this group; its sludge,

but, shrug instead, bake bread.

As yeast ferments, it fills your head

with nothing but air, crusts form

over crumbled textures as warm

thermals rise from within the stove –

serenity drifts as dough proves.

The Lost Years

 

The Lost Years

 

Lennon had his lost weekend,

a booze-fueled haze

where the only music made

did not hold back the years –

although you’re partial to a bit

of sweet birds of paradox.

What did you get? Socks,

mostly, once handkerchiefs

were cancelled due to the nagging

doubt that pocketing a sopping

wet rag was outmoded.

You’d got another Secret Santa tie,

binned it with a sigh

because some narcissists never die,

then cast a suspicious eye

on the new year. What’ll it be?

There was an idea to explore

youth, cast a dispassionate look

at things that formed your mind,

memories that may or may not be real,

because although you feel them,

there is no real proof or veracity

in the coalescence. Intangible things –

let’s see what the year brings

then Trump bombs Iran,

and everything’s lost, replaced, canned -

it all seemed so important then.

You wonder if time’s wandering

abandoned in some fallow field

wanting a shepherd or a border collie?

Get down, Shep, we’ll find it yet.

Corral those lost years with a pen,

round them up, count them:

they’ll surely make a tidy sum

as your skin folds and what was young

is misplaced somewhere.

Still, you could always look

down the back of the sofa

or under the fridge:

When you lose something

it’s nearly always there, you think -

except when it isn’t.

Curmudgeon

 

Curmudgeon

 

I feel like a bit, sometimes,

of a morning in that liminal space

before sharpening my axe; beheading

those refusers of the call to wake.

I could do with it, feel the urge,

could bang on her chamber door,

have my fill and demand more –

because every dog’s due his day.

Instead, I hit the gym,

look at how my inbox has refilled

like my cistern after a long flush:

‘Sorry for the late message,’

exclamation mark, which I will not

reproduce here for its lack of wit.

Most of hers are shit –

products of a limited brain,

but I throw her a bone, due to the fact

that lately I am curmudgeonly.

When someone tasked me,

I said something along the lines of

‘The tragedy simply exists

because you can see systems,

feel symptoms, point at them and bay,

but they persist.’ But who can say

if any of this was gathered in?

So, I reply, ‘Any message you send

is but a delight, keeps me up at night,

fear not, for come daylight,

I’ll do thy bidding.’ Did no such thing,

but after the same spreadsheet came in

6 times - I counted - at last

I hurled myself from the kennel,

with thoughts of something penal

resulting from my violent unhammocking.

But, in less time it takes to stomach

Viagra, wash down a petit-four,

cast cursory looks or slam a door,

I was smacked up short with thoughts

of contend in vain, crumpled forts

and Birnam Woods v Dunsinane.

‘Oh, we are completely insane

to think this thumb, these digitigrades

lacking anything opposable could save

dykes from crumbling, plug the leak

by sticking it in.’ Therefore, my feet

to bed will wend their weary way

and beg the mistress to come play.

Abandoned

 

Abandoned

 

You don’t feel it – moving much, I mean.

Imagine a scheme

you had – eight weeks ago –

 

term’s beginning, hot ice flow

through sporadic permafrost veins,

a one-way ticket to the blues,

you’ve vacationed, now pay your dues,

boy – thought of filling manuscript

with random notes; kids playing it

because the kids are alright.

 

You’re thinking, ‘Damn me, revelation,

this’ll save a flailing nation,’

but toting a keyboard and amp to class

is too much like farce

when some litigious parent will claim ‘haram’.

 

The Inspectors came and went,

so you want to, but the band’s spent,

she’s floundering sultry on the sofa, all tits up,

chesting her disinterred violin,

in busty disinterest, wan grin

apologetic – you get it – she’d let you in

but won’t put her bow to the strings –

 

and as for him?

Cut his strumming fingers, split his nails,

tries arpeggios and fails,

‘Any chords but B,’ he wails,

without taking the trouble to clamp the capo

like a tourniquet.

 

‘Where’s RZ?’

Scuttled off absent without leave,

his keyboards sitting idle,

an uncased axe shunted in a siding

somewhere between here and Tehran –

 

plays when he can,

but there’s leitmotifs of looming cyber-attacks,

flatlined internets when their flack

starts droning overhead again.

 

Bassman’s plucking mixolydian modes:

‘What’s that one in?’ Doesn’t know –

calls out a sloppy something

like B Sharp Minor, slaps the open E string

until its buttocks are raw -

there’s nothing noted, nothing scored,

 

they’re gazing at the open door,

and wondering – until the drummer

throwing his sticks

declares – ‘that’s it, I quit,’

because you’ll get days like this – nothing clicks.

It Exploded In My Face

 

It Exploded In My Face

 

Some of life’s minor trials are unexpected –

putting up the moose head,

one bell a semi-tone higher

than another – you could end up dead,

probably not forever, though.

When it goes off, you’re practising bass:

‘Another One Bites the Dust’, tasting

an acciaccatura from open A to G

you feel the downstroke, don’t see

what Deacon’s doing, per se – until

some Irish kids set fire to their kitchen.

Professionals? Doughnuts, you might think,

chucking cold water from the sink

onto a blazing hot fat chip pan –

little wonder they’re forever ordering out

and they put these hungover lager louts

in front of classrooms full of infants

Sunday through Thursday. They’re skint

halfway through the month, with cisterns

flushed, protesting about overwork.

Soon, you’re outside watching the car park

overflow with half-cut kids all trademark

mini-dresses, vests, coiffured chests,

still half-dressed in their Thursday best,

tattoos and scars from the night before –

the police and firemen guard the door

while some poor sod - skipping stairs

with an extinguisher – kicks a fifth floor

door down, keeping an eye out for clowns.

An hour later, pick up bass where you left off,

tacitly admiring craftsmanship – doff

your cap to years of trial and error,

practice, skill and his sheer bloody grit –

you don’t let your mind shift

to what transpired or was witnessed:

liken it to scripts that Dahl had rejected,

when writing ‘Tales of the Most Expected’.

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.’