Wagtails wag their tails warily,

Wagtails wag their tails warily,

Stonechats chatter,

Storks talk about it,

And magpies natter,

In both Eurasian and Iberian tones;

but, these species are not alone,

And down on the strand,

Things are getting out of hand.

Turnstones have turned every stone,

Sad sandpipers pipe despairing laments,

Grebes, shag and cormorant all duck and dive,

But snipe do not snipe,

They swerve, dodge and sneak away,

Through reeds and sedge at the water’s edge

Gulls rise in skeins

From the slipway,

And ride the wind out over the cape,

To join the wild geese,

Far, far away

For exile is their destiny.

Since none can cope,

With prying bins and scopes.

Birds are themselves,

And do not exist,

Just to be ticked off,

On your list.

Orange Fly

Orange Fly

A ten millimetre fly

flew onto the window at

fifteen hundred hours

as from its rest in Ashford Kent

the blue train moved

the fly

head legs

back belly (pale)

proboscii (paler still)

and wings translucent

was in fact all over orange

as we increased speed

the fly seemed to position itself

aerodynamically

head forward

feet clutching the window

resolutely

history

evolution

I put on my spectacles

science of flies in extreme conditions

there must be a name

for this determination

to hold on

as the wind strengthened

so did I’m sure its tiny adrenalin

how would it breathe

battered by motes of dust and pollen!

and its grip is slipping

let go I shouted

in deafening silence

so not upset fellow passengers

who might have had

seizures of anxiety

had they come aware

of the perilous predicament

of the orange fly

unaccustomed

to the seismic new

technologies of travel

(no longer the slow gait

of plough and carriage)

as it searches pastures new

and now as the train

accelerates again

its eyes are closed

its cheeks rippling in

the ferocious slipstream

Oh two of its legs

have lost their purchase

Let go I cried

soundlessly again

my body arched in sympathy

my hands clenching

the seat in front

and moist eyes

reflecting round its tiny form!

now clinging

by two legs only

go home!

and it was gone.

(©Emile Sercombe)

Eel

You make me feel

Just like an eel.

And I want to wriggle out of it,

I want to squirm away

I want to slime away

I want to crawl away

I’d even travel over land if I had to,

Until I find the rivulet that leads

To the stream of my dreams

And then I’d be following my nose

I’d go with the flow,

I’d have a current affair there

Until stream become river

Fresh water turns to brine

Then I’d ride the tide

Out into the sea

And on across the ocean

Going where I have to go,

All the way out to

The strange Sargasso.

Because I am an owl.

Do not rub your wet body on me,

For I am not your towel;

I hang around at night and hoot in trees,

Because I am an owl.

Don’t do your carpentry with me.

As though I was a wooden peg

I see things that you do not,

And I am not a dowel;

I hang around at night and hoot in trees,

Because I am an owl.

I’m no kind of gardening implement

And I dream all day of eating mice

Which a trowel just cannot do,

Then I fly in the dark on silent wings

And occasionally hoot.

Furthermore, I’m not a sound made by a wolf or by a coyote

If you think I am, then you must have been

Consuming too much peyote

I am certainly not a howl

I hang around at night and hoot in trees,

Because I am an owl.

And I symbolise great wisdom

In my few spare moments

And fly away to sleep all day,

When the night is over.

I never make angry doggy noises

Since I am not a growl,

I hang around at night and hoot in trees,

Because I am an owl.

The anti-charismatic

Hello, I am a slug, and I’m crawling out tonight,

Leaving a trail of slime, because I’m going to unite

With the headlouse, the woodlouse, the weevil and the rat,

And also join up with several other species that

Are anti-charismatic, in the public eye,

But this is an injustice which we seek to rectify.

None of us look striking posing on mountainsides,

Migrating across savannahs, or singing in the sky,

We don’t dive or leap majestically out of the ocean

Fine artists don’t paint us to symbolise emotions,

Or patriotism, freedom and other noble notions.

We don’t roam in rainforests or on tundras,

We were stowaways on the ark

And where we live is called infested

Never made a national park

No one will cross the world to see us

But to hear a gorilla fart

They’ll fly all the way to Africa in a polluting jet plane

The gorilla farts, they gasp in glee

And then fly back again.

We won’t sell you anything

With cute faces or appealing eyes

The means of our own deaths are what we advertise

Since a picture of a cockroach sells tons of insecticide.

We are vermin, pests, pariahs, carrion eating parasites

 But when it all ends, we’ll cut you down to size,

Because the corpse of one lion will feed a thousand flies

Sabotage

Sometimes underrated,

Sometimes understated,

And sometimes squished into dog poo.

But the interface of foot and planet

Is the domain of the shoe,

Or more truly that’s the place of all footwear,

It could be a boot, or sandal, or clog

That’s located down there.

And, though I’ve no wish to be rude,

I do have to tell you, that feet can be nude,

Exposed to the elements,

To sharp thorns, to cruel broken glass

Or the bite and sting of beasts

Who lurk in the grass

But Footwear can show status, or betray poverty

Be high or low heeled, be hidden or be seen,

Be dreamt about by fetishists

Or be marched in by fascists,

But if you study history

You’ll see that footwear’s destiny,

Is not to shield feet,

Nor ornately display them,

Nor keep them camouflaged,

But to break the machine

Like the hurled workers’ clogs.

The true purpose of the shoe is

Sabotage

LONG LIVE THE SUICIDAL WEASEL

LONG LIVE THE SUICIDAL WEASEL

The weasel that bit through the cable

At the great hadron collider

And died, fried

Was a heroic guerrilla fighter

Trying to make the world righter

And stop humans playing

At being gods

Since we, being silly sods,

Full to the brim with

Vanity and insanity

Will wreck this planet

And make it unfit for all to live on

The weasel, the human or the gannet

Or orcas either,

Or even the beaver

If capitalism gets its way

We’re going to inhabit a huge ashtray.

So let’s raise our hand, our beaks, fins and paws

To the weasel who died, fried

For a noble cause.

mousedeathode

I arranged an assassination

Of a visitor to my home,

But, I’m no modern Machiavelli

Or player of a game of thrones

So I must stress

It was not a guest,

Who died on my floor alone.

My victim came in uninvited,

I was not a jovial host.

He or she ran away

In a streak of grey

So I thought, at first, it was a ghost.

But in the end through over confidence

My visitor showed its true form

Pointy at the front

And incontinent at the back

It shat all over my floor.

Now I’m no benign Buddhist mystic

Or smiling tolerant sage

So scattering mouse turds all over my place

Caused my anti-rodent death rage.

But when I took the limp corpse out

To throw it in the bin

The Mouse god started planning a vengeance

For my rodenticidal sin.

Soon I know that I’ll be offered

Something I cannot refuse

A free holiday forever, or a return ticket to youth

I’ll tread on the trigger to get it

Then the man trap will smash into my back

And I’ll become reincarnated

To scurry for crumbs

In the corners of some fat bloke’s flat.

The great auk is gone,

The Great Auk is gone,

So we’ll never know now

If it cried “Awk”, like its own name;

And Steller’s Sea Cow

Has gone too,

So we’ll never again hear

Its maritime moo.

The Passenger Pigeons’

Great commute is done.

And the thylacine,

Who can say?

It could still be around today.

That’s what we’d rather believe

Than face the fact

That we are butchers, who loose little sleep,

Then wake to kill and kill and kill

Only then do we weep. 

2 leg chimp

I am a mortal thinking ape,

I can play memories like a tape,

Or a file, or disc, on a machine,

That I can view on an internal screen;

But when I do,

There is no re-run

Where I can change what I have done,

To what I should have done instead

Or erase

What I shouldn’t have said.

Unlike my cousin, the chimpanzee

Who can hoot and swing

Through trees,

I’m bipedal and when I look behind,

With my eyes or in my mind,

I see my track

And I went where I went,

And I cannot take it back.

2 POMES JAN 16

THE AVENUE OF THE LIVING DEAD.

I walk along the edges of hedges

Staying strictly on my side of the boundary walls,

That divide the public from the private

In this suburban street

I respect private home owners protected by privet

And do not pry

As I am only a spy or a secret agent

In my dreams

Which means that I never try

To look through net curtains

Or see behind

Trendier bamboo blinds

I don’t know what happens on the other side of their windows

And I don’t care what they do in there

Although imagining unlikely orgies

Or strange rituals

Is some solace to me

Passing the time,

As I pass each separate silent house

And walk alone along

The avenue of the living dead.

BIRDWATCHING

Wetlands are not what they once were

When beside lagoon or lake

The only sound was the wind sighing

And the calls of crane and crake

Where rails could rail

And waders could wade

Only harried by marsh harriers

Now meres that were swam on

By phalaropes

Or angled by fishing herons

Are gazed at by men with telescopes

And women with high powered lenses

And there is no corner of bog or creek

Where camoflague can blend in

So egrets egress

And bitterns get bitter

Because they’re sick of being peered at

By crowds of prying twitchers.

DODO MODERN POETS FIZZING FEBRUARY

DODO MODERN POETS

 FIZZING FEBRUARY      

Join us  on Friday 12 February for the opening show of our new season at the Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden. Expect stellar performance poetry & music from a strong and varied bill.  

PROJECT ADORNO     

 Sharply-tailored songs performed with wit & wisdom   

 AGNES MEADOWS        

 Gifted poet & organiser of 'Loose Muse' women's writers nights   

AMY McALLISTER & JASON ASHFORD      

  Sparks fly in joint set from masterful slam supremos       

 PR MURRY  

  Artist-poet targets the insanities of modern life                

Friday 12th February  2016 8pm

The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, WC2H 9BX

£ 8 &7 concessions, MC Patric Cunnane

Info: 01303 243868; patric.poet@zen.co.uk

Covent Garden/Leicester Square tube.

https://dodomodernpoets. wordpress.com

dodo modern poets letting fly with words