Construction Time Again

 

Construction Time Again

 

In this city, it’s construction time again.

It was yesterday, it will be tomorrow,

for us it’s all one and the same.

Deployed -  Hyundai 220 mechanical crawlers

that yawn elaborately, bare teeth and bite

deep, ravage this poor sub-soil

of grit, concrete, gravel and spoil –

nothing green grows in such solid grey caliche

never a bush let alone a tree.

You wonder how anything rooted here,

what it destroyed, what it cleared -

that’s me, picking my way between bunkers

screened by poor to middling safety bulwarks,

therefore, anyone intent on tumbling

can only blame themselves – that, the night,

or the heat haze blurring lines of sight.

Avoid murderous traffic, two-fold slayers

who exterior heat to interior cool or flay

your heels alive with spinning tyres

that pitch and toss the dust storms higher

than they’ve any right to be. If I make it –

the jury’s out – I might order coffee, ponder

why the pit outside is dug that deep,

did they remember chemicals to exterminate

the scuttling cockroaches that proliferate

and find nests so easy to build? Once inside

I am besieged by the one fly

who somehow knows and has found me out,

will attack without remorse or any thoughts

for its own survival – I swot without any hope

of success of preventing exit or egress

and wonder if I hung a flypaper throughout

it might certainly lead to my arrest.

Chickadees

 

Chickadees

 

Not the most promising of subjects,

but it has to be tackled - I expect

little will come of it; won’t move mountains,

overturn rocks or grind pebbles into sand –

yes, nothing much here, nothing grand.

Chickadees - and you may ask what sound

is made – newlings, who flew using westerlies,

accustomed to sitting back, coattailing,

utilizer to cancer and something of that

and how loud they are, how sweet they sing –

of sealing wax, of silly-string

of rum, red bull and teaching,

of shots, soft pillows, sleeping,

of minted lattes delivered late,

of however did she get in such a state?

A sweet midnight chorus punctuates my night;

tossing sour, turning bitter and overbites

into unfurling dawns that reach surging crescendos

until, one day the silence of nothing at all.

It’s sound and fury of empty kettle

switched on at socket, of filament blown

and circuit breakers that halt the flow

burnt to cinders; let licking flames

fuse the hems, to part the stitching once again,

make merry with meal of candy brain.

The Hollows of Mars

 

The Hollows of Mars

 

I come here to speak not of Asimov.

‘Buy Jupiter!’ He screamed from the covers

of schlock paperbacks –

emblazoned with impossibly delicate constructions

pollocked with nuanced gleam and splashed shade -

and from each block of light a face

might be planted there, hard to see, but

acclimatized interstellar with not a hair

out of place, embracing space;

how tempting and easy to slip

one of these into your blazer pocket?

Or ‘Boys! Grow GIANT mushrooms in your cellars!’

Get this – I recant Bradbury, disavow Clarke –

a fall of moondust, sinking shuttles

beget creeping worlds that evolve and scuttle,

send out for Kimbo Kinnison – triplanetary extraordinary

needed more now than he ever was.

Didn’t they ignite the gases of those giants

to send a message to the stars? Buy Coke?

No. For here, in the Hollows of Mars

there is a lack of substance –

once it was buttered thick, now only shea and palm

such quantities won’t actually do harm

per se – but witness these tacky packages, plastic tat

with which they are pleased to wrap

your futures – not mine. Lo! Fry’s Chocolate Cream

surreptitious beneath your sheets before you dream

of ‘To Your Scattered Bodies Go!’

where Sir Richard Francis Burton’s beyond universal

masked in new flesh; ready for rehearsal.

I Charge Thee Hence

 

I Charge Thee Hence

 

Last night she came to me.

To say I was surprised was an understatement –

you see these Doha pavements,

well – they’ve too many cracks – agreed?

Tread lightly and with care,

you could conjure threads never there.

When she left, some of her last words

were: ‘The spell is broke.’

This, of course, is a private joke

and I screwed with the adverb

for the rhyme. Some of her last words

because there were others she toyed with

in due course - she takes, you give –

fall through cracks, but live,

so I’m pleased to say neither of us

left the battlefield untouched.

Battening down my sight to penetrate black

and see she is naked front and back,

full figured firm – it is 10 years ago, again – clearly

when we said stuff like: ‘I love you dearly,’

but a year and a bit is all

it takes to change that,

just wait a few more; everything sags,

there’s tattoos, creases, pink dyed grey hair -

but I know why she’s here; what she wants.

Those in the room with me, licking lips,

cannot tear their eyes from breasts and hips;

she only has to say it once:

‘Come with me.’ She beckons, opens, reveals

what it is she thinks I should feel:

‘I want you to meet my new partner.’

And if I should choose to go with her,

well, here’s a door opened onto lost life,

with talk of past futures, new wives,

galleons whose sails are billowing full,

offering safe passage to any fool

who takes hold of stray threads and pulls -

so, you know, I charged her hence:

‘And do not haunt me thus with empty boats,

for I am real and you are ghosts.’

McDonald's

 

McDonalds

 

When the coffee arrived – finally –

after a three song wait,

the coda to an uncomposed melody -

I did not complain it was late,

cold or blatantly lacking

in promised milk and sugar.

The balsawood twizzlestick, too,

had gone AWOL

and she arrived with a look comprised

of injured pride, wounds inside,

and a bowlful of spilled cherries, fried

in something not totally unpleasant.

‘Why did the pheasant

cross the road?’ I might have said,

recalling one who had tried,

could not fly and died.

But I didn’t. So, she did not reply

‘Sir, you forgot your number - 6 -

which is why things did not go as planned.’

And, as for me, I therefore did not say,

‘I am not a number, I am a free man!’

while not a soul laughed.

Close Encounters of the 4th Kind

 

Close Encounters of the 4th Kind

 

She cut you off at the aisle’s

entrance with her silk-sheet smile,

satin-stockinged longing boxed in place

by cloister walls, a safe cage -

scans your face and you blush

feel words tumble, rushing

like undammed waters, your plush

tongue pushing against the roof,

stuck between bare teeth,

tasting sugar-salts without tasting,

pursuing defection, hunting relief.

Some liberated small talk forms knots

to disguise a bigger clotting

of ideas just beneath veneers:

‘Where’s Paulo?’ ’At home.’

And you think that’s good, so does she,

not here, not now -

but it’s coming, and when it comes,

violins will smoulder of fused enclosures

that bleed inside each other.

At midnight, perhaps you’re awake,

some distant noise – it shakes

but you’re enfolded by black night

and see another, something older - begrimed

that thumb-pricks and cannot help remind

you of feelings felt these many times.

She bares her breasts, it stirs,

upon her lips – and yours – form words

you both needed to say

before she takes herself away

again. ‘Is that you?’ ’No, me first, is it you?’

Both wondering why it has been so long,

what it is that is wrong

and all those small neglected affections

form strong once more

just before she finds the door –

you agree to meet as you agreed before.

 

If there’s a surface, 

you’ll struggle to reach it,

pulling puff-lunged breaststrokes that bring you

muddling from this one side

to another against flooding tides,

beach then wooly finger labyrinthine aisles.

And when you blink, you’ll find

you were not really close at all –

just caught yourself pushing at the 4^th wall.

Deserts of Vast Eternity

 

Deserts of Vast Eternity

 

Most fighting fish are stupid –

yes, they are stupid.

 

Swimming in deserts of vast eternity,

except, you associate deserts with sand

and fish swimming on land

are, on the whole, scarcely found.

 

But, define stupid and you may conclude

that these are fish holding views

in conflict with you

 

and yours. Frustrating, is it not?

Here comes a steaming great polyglot

of aquatic subrational species

swimming in and amongst the intellectual faeces

that serves as a subsurface pelagic zone

they are pleased to dub home.

 

I speak not to disprove what it is you deem

logical – you may think that to me they seem

unworthy of gills – but this is not ethics

when I caution you they keep having sex.

 

Maybe, like me, you feel pathos pull

at you - a new and inexperienced school

swimming enraptured into our aforesaid pool –

perhaps let’s call it their induction,

for argument’s sake – or preparation –

really, it is all one.

 

But there are some who say: ‘come, come,’

and with oxidised fins beckon,

then pack them all on

a multi-coloured, sub-surface contraption

that will convey them to meeting on meeting

in order to knock out invention

and pack them with stuffing.

 

Why, some become nothing but teddy bears!

I have seen it and I swear

it confounds all rationality. Only yesterday

I was trapped. A flying fish  who stayed

atrophied in thought some 40 years too long

found her way onto the quarterdeck.

 

Her words, such as they were,

belied a life that, to her, was full - so sure

she was. ‘I have seen such worlds

since I retired, and filled my belly

with meat and drink, I slept

in the finest hotels and met

such celebrated fish as turn out on pitches,

and there I took these pictures.’

 

And soon she swooned

for she had stayed out of her pool

so long – no listeners there had heart enough

to throw her back amongst such stuff

as dreams are made of.

 

But yet – who is to say that such piscation

does not bring the shoals elation?

There is validity in the common view

and safety in the cluster -

any ideas to the contrary will not pass muster

and can safely be dismissed –

 

Afterall, most fighting fish

are stupid. Yes, they are stupid to swim 

just deserts there

and find nothing

but the opportunistic predator.