‘ULP!’ I exclaim.
‘tis Imbolc
Tree’s cloaks
Have begun to bud,
No leaves yet,
But that will come,
And every slim limb
Will be dressed in flower.
It’s the year of the Rabbit
Celebrated by
Traditional Chinese spy balloons,
Earthquakes and threats of war.
But the robins in my yard
Don’t care.
They’re only here
For the birdseed.
And I’m only here
Until I die.
My internal soundtrack echoes,
Between my
earlobes,
Inside my
bone dome,
But neighbours
don’t bang on the wall,
Because they
can’t hear it at all.
It helps me
get through doing.
All the
things that I don’t want to do,
But have to
do.
It plays me
snatches of,
Bowie,
Steely Dan and Stan
Webb of
Chicken Shack
They all get
played back.
It’s never
the whole tune,
And it’s not
Always what I
want.
I hoped that
I’d forgotten
Dave Dee, Dozy,
Beaky, Mick and Titch,
But they
echo through decades,
Like an
irritating aural itch.
If you think
that that’s bad
How about a
random slice of tune,
From an
advert for a product
That I neither
need nor want?
But I can’t
shake it off,
I hear it in
here, more than enough.
Some people
hear it colours,
Thus, perhaps
making art,
But that’s
not me.
I’m not
Mozart,
Composing wonderful
symphonies.
Just patches
and snatches.
From my
synapses
Playing inside
my head instead.
It could be
worse
As I’m
Not averse
To sitting
on the crapper
Listening to
Frank Zappa
Singing ‘I’m
The Slime’.
Did god scorn the levant,
Saying ‘I
can’t
Stand these
people any more,
Wirth their
corruption, conspiracies and wars?’
Did he turn
his back,
Making the earth
crack?
Or did the
devil find hell too drab,
And decide
to order a takeaway kebab,
Of human
beings between concrete slabs?
Or does an
empirical explanation
Account for
this terrible situation,
Without any
mention
Of supernatural
intervention?
So, should
we explain and educate
About edges
of tectonic plates
When for the
innocent dead,
It’s far too
late?
Routines are long iron rails.
You may not
deviate from these tracks.
You may only
go where they go,
Unlike a man
or a mule
Picking
their way
Along a
stony track
Or a stick
dependent cripple
Negotiating a
suburban pavement
To avoid
tree roots and cracks.
Routines save
the bother of thought.
No need to
know what next to do,
Decisions are
already imprinted
Deep below
consciousness
But, if
things go wrong,
Panic crawls
out from its corner
Liquids are spilled,
Objects are
dropped,
Missteps are
made.
Routines are
forgotten.
Emergency procedures
May not be
properly enacted.
And the
result can be beautiful chaos,
An unexpected
birth,
Of beauty
and loveliness,
Or, more
often than not,
Just one
more hot mess.
Poetry is shit,
Sometimes it
spouts out
In great
gouts
Of snivelling
piffle
And wittering
drivel.
Elsewhen constipation
of inspiration
Can clench the
situation.
A poet may strain
and strain.
And produce
a void.
As though
dosed up
On opioids
They can emit
no odes or verse,
And what’s worse,
There may be
a sonnet or even a haiku,
Stuck right
up there,
Somewhere.
The one day,
Grunt,
spurt, splash,
The poet
produces
More balderdash.
