Poems
Casagemas
Casagemas, why did you blow out your brains?
The waves were grey and unremitting;
the fool’s gold of my verse debased me;
the halter of crude lust would choke me.
Perfidiously the stars had winked,
flittering silver light upon my upturned brow –
I thought it an anointment, an election,
but their astral gilding vanished in the sun.
Little to lament in mediocrity;
better battering waves beat smooth the churned sand;
scatter a lightweight mintage to the winds,
and let the torrid masquerade of Love,
in which I languished cruelly, mock the violent
passage of its woe begotten foil.
What They Need
Hitler’s vegetarianism
Pol Pot’s little cat
Tamburlaine’s pet monkey
Attila’s hunnish rat
Pinochet’s philately
Amin’s baking sprees
Stalin’s railway timetables
Franco hugging trees
Tyrants need a furry friend
A hobby or a quirk
For the Devil drives them very hard
When they do his work.
Ménage
Marie Laurencin’s three lovers lay on the bed
and shared a cigarette. “That’s some appetite!”
uttered Glob, his pasty flesh puckered with sweat.
“It’s beyond appetite,” said Brète, “it’s Nature’s boundless lust.”
La Roche remained silent as he took the cigarette
and drew on it with acerbic detachment.
Suddenly, a shriek from behind the bathroom door
raised the three men’s heads as one.
The door swung swiftly open on Marie,
squatting libidinously over the bidet,
her delicate, dancer’s feet prehensile on its rim.
“Oh, là là!” purred Glob as she piddled.
“There is no shame,” smirked Brète as she sang.
“The World is a pimp and we are its whores,” growled La Roche,
flinging back the bedsheets, reaching for his shirt,
and abjuring for the moment his no-holes barred debauch.
Michael
The demons have snared Michael:
They make him slam his head against the white brick wall,
Groove his forearm with a rusty carpet blade;
They are the ones who set him up
For a fall with his fragile self-esteem,
Lay the wires which trip up
His lumbering new-found hopes.
Blithely malignant, they never leave his side,
Those goading little devils,
Ready to jab and spike any easier moments,
To make a hell of halcyon days,
Render bitter all that’s sweet.
Where did they come from, those vile saboteurs?
We think our mansion doors are closed to prowlers
And that behind the wainscot lurks nothing more
Than mice and spiders,
But many mansions in a house
And dark and subterranean their interlocking tunnels;
Michael lived in many mansions,
Was pushed through Pluto’s passageways from earliest infant days,
Good enough for a retinue of evil companions
To trail those dazed meanderings.
And now within a labyrinth of demon lumber rooms
Michael stumbles, a mute Theseus,
With neither sword nor thread,
His home a mansion maze of horrors,
No Ariadne as a guide or solicitous Pallas Athene,
Just those whispering ministers
And their baleful, burning spears
Driving him into heinous, dark rooms
With minotaurs at each threshold.
A Broader Point
a gun discharging
pointedly
a pen that writes
scribe archery
galaxies
dust and sparks
a dervish disc
and pointed arcs
a loaded brush
a heavy drink
a needle point
a need to think
a labour ward
and mother’s milk
steps to point
a later trick
a child at war
and railway times
spotting planes
pointless crimes
robot cars
double guns
quarry scars
and emissions
a haiku moon
a pointed word
a buried past
a journey dared
all night rave
big point tour
mega concert
plain two hander
mighty freight ship
pointed arms race
past the goalie
walking in space
those who ponder
those who protest
those who plunder
those who fly west
in the classroom
shot at dawn
violations
in all forms
the mother of all
voted charades
a pirate ship
a house of cards
cottage garden
greasy spoon
woodland swing
agri-ruin
love and marriage
love and sex
a point from the dark side
last respects