Boots

 

Boots (On the Ground)

 

Look, look - here be boots,

could be existential, possibly wellingtons,

or maybe my aged father’s ones

as he strode around his farm, on the lookout

for any oily rags up the crow’s nest

because you’re better, he’s best,

with boots grimy from soily people

fetching covenants from corkscrew steeples

with twisted ire and crooked fire,

scoping avenging angels with false lyres

riding clouds and rocking zoot suits,  

kinky boots, manly fashions

borrowed from two-bit brutes.

Here be boots, on the ground, cornered

and covered with shit sticky straw

put them newspapered by the door

and send out for the cleaner.

Is that you? Up on a high-chair high-stool,

far above the brass brosse décrottoir, 

and scraped with iron-work tools

while your flicked debris doing sterling work

in pelting your boot blacker with dirt,

shit, muck, manure – toss him a coin or two

and read out pull-quotes, why don’t you?

Wait. Wait. Hear the supplicant’s appeal,

for doth not Brutus bootless kneel

to feel blistering strike of sandalled heel?