Topological

 

Topological

 

Wait—you mean topical, don’t you?

There’s nothing topical about the M50,

an under-engineered relic connecting

nowhere to nothing much,

targets Wales, misses by miles

and barely offers a hard shoulder to cry on—

 

but look - on account of her—you’re forced

to swallow use it, use you or be damned -

I battled their logic for so long,

cursed when I was forced to buy one,

screamed 'you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong',

but was shot for a grouse.

 

So, pull from your pocket. Check. Enough.

Mine’s got fluff

that, God willing, might choke the bastard.

 

There are tributaries of messages

feeding estuaries of conrotatory seas—

a confusion of contradictions

you’re made to answer,

each and every one for everyone.

 

Don’t think to block, leave groups,

or invoke the fifth—

that only stirs a hornet’s nest

beneath her beehive:

sent on impulse, on every whim,

on every ill-formed

spark across synapses, thumb-fired,

six or seven already today to every soul.

 

All around her it grows. Forms

from a flick of the wrist, a stab at glass,

an eternal fluid rictus-stream

so thick she’s landscaping it now—

hod-carrying brick by brick,

each post rammed and replies laid in place.

 

We’re getting seasick of it,

shipwrecked mariners gripping the gunwales,

sucked off into lost tunnels

as it slowly reshapes itself—imperceptible

cracks become caves, stacks, stumps,

becoming whatever was as once it was.

 

And all around her hat, the debris

of her mind’s eye from her mind flies.

And they—cartographers of the surveyed—

issue grim diktats, dire warnings,

grey apocalypses from breast-pocket laptops,

scarring terrains, carving their names

into twisted metal, blasted concrete

trod under dust and rubble.

 

Clawed earth while she screamed violated rage,

warned you—but it’s already too late -

all that's left is a psychoscape.

Pronounced Ah-Teh

 

Pronounced Ah-Teh

 

The uneasy silence of ceasefire

and an unseasonal rain of domino spots

swabs the alley’s brick tessellations.

You’re walking with purpose

for lemons – clean out today –

in the shop, four pitted specimens,

no boat docked, so, yesterday’s

and MJ mugs and says, ‘Where Ate?’

while you’re offering to pay.

In bed. Lately, sleep’s hard to grab -

alarms, national alerts, distant booms

that infiltrate bedrooms –

but MJ pouts and rolls her eyes,

‘Bring milk, put egg, put bread,

wake Ate and say, table is ready.’

You nod. It seems reasonable advice,

smile thanks and leave, dodging raindrops.

That evening, Ate puts the grip

on you, over pizza and a bit to drink,

‘If you let me sleep, I’ll bring the stick,’

she promises with a languid wink.

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 them 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.