fat balls.

CLOCKS GO BACK TODAY

November’s nearly here,

The bones of the street trees start to show,

There’s a cruel sharp cold edge in the air,

so I sit on my suburban front doorstep,

handling my fat balls.

But the neighbours don’t phone the law,

For I am not a weatherproofed pervert,

But the respectable owner of half a house

Who is unpacking and storing lumps of suet,

To feed his garden birds,

Through the winter that now begins,

But these birds aren’t really mine,

They’re not even my feathered friends.

I pay them with food hung from garden trees,

To brighten the air above,

A small, bramble-infested, eden.

CHIP SHOP FIRE

CHIP SHOP FIRE

A wall of searing flame

Roared through the “Happy Plaice”,

The saveloys were turned to ash,

The pasties brightly blazed.

What should be crisp and golden

Was charred and burned to black.

Fire almost cooked the owner,

Just like the doner kebab,

which had sat behind the window,

for just as long as he had;

but he escaped the inferno,

he ran across the road

to stare in consternation,

as his life’s worked combusted,

in a sudden conflagration.

His tears were salt and vinegar

And he cursed the firey fate,

 that burned his rock and cod,

and overcooked his skate.

Streams of water from firehoses,

Could not assuage his pain,

but he bottled up his grief like tomato sauce,

and vowed he’d fry again.

marvelous monstrosity.

I’ll use every trick I know,

Every device that I can muster;

Persuasion, reason, promises,

Shouted slogans and spluttering bluster,

Soaring metaphors, silly similes, fake indignation,

And, above all, articulate avalanches of absolute alliteration.

So why am I deploying

This tsunami of pompous verbosity?

It’s because our language

Is a marvelous monstrosity.

Priests, preachers, politicians, poets, playwrights, persuaders all

Spray us daily with this stuff,

I was going to say “don’t listen!”,

But I just can’t get enough.

3 DIMENSIONS AT THE PIE FACTORY, MARGATE

A cetacean swallowed eighty plastic bags or so,

A white whale  swallowed eighty plastic bags or so,

then threw up a few more too late.

He was stuffed with

So much indigestible human made detritus,

Mistaken for nice juicy jellyfish

Or nutritious squid,

That he had no room left for food,

and starved.

Ahab and Queequeg

Must be turning in their graves,

They need not have sailed on the Pequod,

Hunting for Moby Dick,
Across storm lashed seas,

Or ventured out into

Vast swelling waves,

Standing braced in the bows

Of flimsy whale boats,

Poised to hurl heavy harpoons.

They were born too soon,

If they had been twenty first century men,

They could have rested on deck on sun loungers,

Eating snacks;

Or on stormy days, dined in the ship’s restaurant

And if they threw their food wrappers overboard

Together with any other plastic packaging ,

That would have seen Moby Dick off pretty quick.

No more need for heroics, mad obsessions,

Or hurling windswept curses into roaring gales,

We’ve just gotta keep throwing stuff away,

And soon there’ll be no more whalesong,

Echoing long,

Around the oceans of our world.

feeble consumer resistance

Sainsburys, oh Sainsburys,

Great grocer of Great Britain,

You sell me many things I need,

Such as paper to wipe my shit on.

You sell me carrots, you sell me soap,

And toothpaste, wine and fish;

And I could add item after item,

to this mundane list.

I’m not unusual, I am sure,

Some may buy less, some may buy more,

And when I read the words on your packaging, I doubt if I’m alone.

But recently that’s what I did,

whilst sitting on my porcelain throne.

“we’re sure you’ll love this product”,

Were the words that were inscribed,

on the unnecessary plastic wrapping

With my toilet paper inside

Now I love my relatives,

And I love my friends,

I love hearing swifts screaming in the sky,

I love watching poplars sway in the wind

And bright pebbles that please my eye.

It’s for me to decide

When told by my heart

Where I will direct my emotions

And I will not feel what I’m told to feel,

By a large and powerful grocer.

So Sainsburys, I’ll buy your produce

But I will not sell you my soul.,

And I’ll wipe my arse on your arsewipe,

But I’ll never love your toilet roll.

THE VARNISHED UNTRUTH

I was about to apply the varnish,

When it vanished.

I had been waiting months,

For a fine hot sunny day,

So that the varnish would quickly dry,

Once applied.

So I set my sculpture up, ready.

And prised the lid off the varnish tin,

With a screwdriver.

Stirred the thick tawny liquid,

Therein,

Which gave off a sweet heady smell.

I dipped my brush,

And let surplus drops drip off,

Then turned,

Brush raised ready to start,

To apply a first coat.

But had gone!

Where was the wood I’d carved for weeks?

It was suddenly and totally absent.

And though I had not heard it fall,

I searched the floor,

And poked in nooks and crannies

Where it might somehow have rolled,

In vain.

Nothing.

And I was not dreaming,

So how could this be?

Were transcendent powers punishing me?

For my vain attempt to fashion

A graven image

Of an idea and an emotion?

What a stupid notion,

For I to try.

But at least I have now learned

A universal law

“THAT WHICH HAS VANISHED,

MAY NOT BE VARNISHED.”

hibernating frog

I dug up a hibernating frog,

When I levered a buried paving stone,

Out of the ground,

Next to the pond.

I imagined that I was an archaeologist,

Or a grave robber,

As I cut away couch grass and weeds

And prised the slab onto its edge,

But as it hadn’t been buried that long,

The only treasures revealed,

Seemed to be worms and woodlice

Scurrying and writhing away

From the sudden unwelcome daylight.

Then I saw the little frog’s

Long legs kicking

As it hid in another crevice.

Sorry, amphibian pal,

To have so rudely woken you.

Spring’s on the way

But not quite all here yet,

So, catch some more kip,

Until the sun’s well up

And the swifts have returned.

ZOMBIE CAPITALIST DEATH HORROR

ZOMBIE CAPITALIST DEATH HORROR (© P.R.Murry 12/03/2017)

The dead bad giants

Are alive again,

Once my father believed

That they had been slain,

Or at least, battered

Down onto their knees;

And that Poverty, Ignorance,

Squalor and Disease

Could no longer crush us

With fear and grief;

But, sadly, that belief

Was overoptimistic.

And like something terrific and horrific,

The four zombified monsters

Are re-animated and undead,

Lumbering into a new century

Crushing those who cannot pay

Smashing all obstacles in their way,

Rewarding wealth and spurning need,

Driven by the power of greed

To ensure capitalism’s control

Of our bodies, our brains our souls.

So now we must dig a deeper hole

to bury them forever.

PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE PAYMENT INTERVIEW (A PARTLY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT)

A Nice Nurse knocked on my front door,

So I showed her up the stairs,

To my first floor flat.

I asked her to observe,

The difficulty that I have

In ascending to my abode,

For it is an overweight and arthritic old man,

Who writes this ode;

And coughs as he does so, remembering,

Forty years of heavy smoking

Plus decades more of breathing,

Polluted city air.

So I pant up the steps,

And sit, wheezing, in my chair,

As the Nice Nurse questions me.

She asks if I can wipe my own arse,

And how frequently I pee,

How I catch the bus or train,

And, how many pills I take,

And when I walk with my walking stick,

What progress do I make?

At the end of the interview, she explains

That in a month or so,

A verdict on my payment will be made,

It could be cut, it could be raised, it could even be doubled

Then she holds up a bucket and says:

“or just kick this now,

Save the government some money and trouble.”