Boring chores

 Sweeping floors,

Closing doors

Smearing ointment on sores

Cleaning the machine

That’s supposed to stop snores.

Boring chores

That I deplore

And then deplore again,

Down to my very core

That’s how much I deplore

Boring chores

Because they are boring

But there’s no ignoring

Boring chores

And I could make them

Even more boring

By making a chore

Of keeping a list

Of chores that I’d done

And those that I’d missed

But that would have

The tedious potential

Of driving me

Completely mental

Since that list

Would continue

As long as I exist

And continue on

Some more

There can be no end

To boring chores

bright white angel

 On the hill outside the surgery,

A man walks by,

Holding a child’s hand in one hand,

And a lead attached to a small dog,

That resembles an animated bathmat,

In the other.

The child is eating something,

But drops a part of this food

Onto the pavement.

The dog wants to eat

The fallen food.

The man prevents this

By tugging the dog’s lead.

Then the three of them move on.

The fallen food remains lying

On a grey paving slab until,

 A herring gull flying by, spies it.

Circles to make sure it’s safe,

Descends like a bright white angel,

Lands,

Seizes the food in its sharp yellow beak,

And, almost immediately flies off again,

Swallowing the food.

Satisfied that the pavement is now cleansed,

I enter the surgery

To give blood.

Gishgalloping codswallopers,

 Gishgalloping codswallopers,

And disparaging apparatchiks,

Bullshit spraying placemen,

Confabulating conspiracists,

Concoctors of word-salad camouflage,

Chefs of illusion, sauciers of  poison,

Hypocritical polecat polemicists,

Ideological concoctors fooling yourselves with

Nonsenses that you intend others to lap up.

Puffers of spurious smokescreens,

Priests of the closed and comatose mind,

Offerers of false comfort,

Constructors of straw effigies.

Carboot sellers of second hand moral panics,

Singers of mendacious elegies

Sometimes there seems to be no one else than you,

But none of this is new,

Lies are as old as Adam,and older.

Baboons lie to lions

And terns feign broken wings to conceal their nests

Even flies lie, pretending to be bees.

So why is the current torrent of untruth

So distressing?

Could it be that I have fallen for my own lies

About my honesty?

the anticharismatic 2

 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.

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.

 

 

©PR Murry

VORTEX

Hypnotised, watching the water swirl.

A lovely vortex forms above a plughole,

Bits of detritus begin to rotate,

Fragments of things that didn’t get ate.

There’s a currant in the current,

Along with other clutter washed off plates.

Trapped and twirled by gravity

Into a deep dark cavity,

Into the black hole beneath the kitchen sink;

Spun round, sucked down, gone in a blink;

Down through the pies and drains

And it’s never coming back again.

Or is it?

I have a suspicious misunderstanding

Of all this physics.

The planet I live on is rotating in space;

For all I know, it’s changing its place;

It might be one fragment in a massive whirlpool,

Irresistibly pulled into a cosmic plughole.

 

 

 

 

MY NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

 Once I could walk to Darwin’s cathedral,

Which was not my father’s house,

But was nearby.

My aunt aught me to pray

After my mother died,

Which was some solace

Or comfort then.

Yet my wishes, whatever they were,

Remained ungranted.

Ancient words learned by rote,

And misunderstood,

Did not fill any void;

But inside Darwin’s cathedral

I could sometimes walk alone

Along the echoing galleries,

Where the skeletons were displayed.

So, similarities were shown to me

I could see that a fin or

A flipper, a wing or a hand or claw

Were the same beneath skin,

Scales, feathers or fur.

Unlike the words of forgotten prayers,

That has stayed with me

All my life.

Sunlight Laundry

 Aged seventy-three,

I now can see

That the muse inspiring my poetry

Has always been laundry.

Ever since my first paid job

In a building named ‘Sunlight’

In Sands End

Beside the Thames

Where vans brought

Dirty sheets from Chelsea hotels

That I loaded

Into vast rotating iron cylinders

And unloaded the laundered result.

Unless the vast rotating iron cylinders

Went wrong and produced

A massive knot of wet linen,

That needed to be pried apart

With crowbars.

Ahh, those weren’t the days!

Now I just blunder around my bathroom,

Like a dalek without a death ray

Picking up little bits of laundry

With a plastic claw.

 

Logos and slogans

Logos and slogans get washed away

From where they were once proudly displayed

To be seen emblazoned on garments.

Once they were badges

That used to say:

‘I am this type  of person’.

Or that ‘I like this music’,

Or that ‘I believe in this cause’,

Or ‘I can afford to shop at this shop.’

They could even say

‘Don’t look at me, I’m so ordinary

That I want to wear the same logos

As everybody else.’

But the washing machine of time

Keeps on repeating its cycles;

At first it eats away the edges

Of logos and slogans,

Then maybe a letter or two

Until logos and slogans

No longer say

What they were intended to say

May be reflecting passion

Decomposing into uncertainty

‘Sto the Wa’

Doesn’t have the same ring anymore

‘P’ and ‘R’ have gone down the drain.

They’ll never be coming back again.

WHAT A TAIMEN IS

 Yesterday there was a cold grey sky

And I stayed indoors hoping

That winter was dying,

Or at least, starting to die

Because I saw a magpie fly by

With a stick in its beak.

It was staring to build a new nest

In time to rob other nests,

Whilst I coughed and wheezed,

Snivelled and spat

As I sat in a cold flat.

But at least I learned something new.

So now I know without a doubt

That a taimen is

A large carnivorous Siberian trout.

 

 

 

Semi-detached vans

There are people living on this street,

Who are not living in this street.

Which at first glance

Seems like a neat street,

Lined with houses that are discreet,

Semi-detached almost identical

Painted white or cream,

Gable ends ornamented

With pseudo-Tudor beams.

And plenty of shiny new cars

And four by fours

Parked outside or on driveways.

And then there are the second-hand vans,

With old, faded logos on the side

Left over from when these vans

Were used to deliver

Bread or jam or glue or shoes.

Vans parked in different places

On different days.

Homes outside houses

But one small step up

From a cardboard box shack

In a shop doorway;

Or a tent under the motorway.

But anyway,

A cold and lonely way to get by

Semi-detached from the semi-detached

Semi-detached from society

By an inhuman human economy.

DODO MODERN VIDPOETS 13

 VIRTUAL DODO 13

 WELCOME TO VIRTUAL DODO THIRTEEN - JANUARY 2025

Welcome to the 13th virtual show from Dodo Modern Poets. This programme takes our tally to around 320 performances and contributions since launching in April 2020. We thank everyone who has supported and enjoyed the project along the way.

Our featured  acts this month are Heather Moulson and Steve Tasane, both excellent and entertaining exponents of the spoken and printed word. We are delighted to introduce Virtual Dodo 13 with their fine readings. 

https://dodomodernvidpoets2022.blogspot.com/

VIDEOS

Zolan Quobble

Sue Johns 

PR Murry

 Julie Stevens

Patric Cunnane

Pauline Sewards

Graham Buchan

Frank Crocker

Nick Goodall

Kevin Morris

Joolz Sparkes

TEXT

Joseph Healy 

Max Fishel

John Sephton

MALINGERER?

Framed in a toilet doorway,

A ragged man stands

He wears old shoes,

Sand stained,

Salvaged from a builder’s skip.

He watches the traffic of people

Scurrying along

The hospital corridors.

One hobbles on crutches

Another walks with a frame,

Some are pushed by porters

Riding prone in beds

Or seated in wheelchairs.

The ragged man waits

For doctors and nurses.

When they pass

He staggers

But does not quite fall

He shakes his arms

And head convulsively.

Doctors and nurses

Hold and support him

Place him in a chair

Cover him with a blanket

Cause sandwiches to appear

The ragged man eats the sandwiches

And begs for more.

He rests for several hours

But doctors and nurses

Eventually decide

That he must return to the cold

Outside the warm hospital

Where he wants to stay

As more and more people

Limp, hobble, stagger,

Or are pushed and  carried in

Wishing they could be

Somewhere else

Wishing they weren’t here

Where the ragged man

Wants to stay warm and fed .

DOWN AND OUT IN DOLLIS HILL

 It doesn’t take much

To crack a bone,

I realised, lying prone;

Bathing in waves of pain,

Beside the dustbin

With the blue lid

For plastic, glass and tins,

Which I was about to

Put stuff in

Until I slipped and tripped

And could not regain

A standing stance.

So, I advanced down,

Shoulder first

Into some hard, hard ground.

Then I wondered how this was

Happening to me now

When once I had ascended

Vikren,

The highest mountain in Bulgaria

When once I had run

Over boulder fields,

Cycled across France,

And it might not quite be

‘Attack ships off the

Shoulders of Orion’,

But I’d seen a great bustard,

An imperial eagle

And a red kite.

Now I grovel on a concrete floor,

And cannot regain my feet.

I must be grateful that it’s summer

So, I can involuntarily sunbathe

Whilst waiting in pain

For an ambulance to arrive

At my suburban driveway.

Bones can break

Bones can break, snap, fracture or crack.

The calcium and collagen scaffold,

That keeps our mortal flesh mostly vertical,

Is vulnerable if smacked

By sudden hard impacts

And the fact that these

Are relatively rare

Is due to trust, fear, luck and care,

And the navigations

That we everyday apply

As we go through

Our physical situations

Using memorised maps

Stored in squishy on-board computers,

Contained in sometimes hairy

Bone domes balanced on

Spinal columns made of bone,

At the centre of our skeletal bone homes.

So, we are very inflexible.

We can’t squeeze through

Small holes or cracks

Or minute apertures

Like other creatures

Who lose their shapes

And get them back.

If octopuses could laugh,

Oh, how they would chortle

At such silly rigid mortals

And their submarine cephalopod merriment

At the results of this terrestrial experiment

Would echo around

Oceans and seas

As humans stumble around

On the ground

Breaking arms, legs, necks,

Fingers, ribs, toes and knees.

LAUNDRY

 I am enraged

That I am not engaged

In writing a magnificent poetic work

Of incredible lyricism and

Transcendental significance.

Instead I am hanging up wet washing

Underwear of the sort

That nobody knows I wear.

But these damp textile tubes

Have got to go somewhere to dry

In what passes for air here

So I sigh, ‘Why do I

Have to deal with their placement?

It’s a disgracement and a wastement

Of my time

Which every day seeps away

Like waste water from a washing machine.

And I thank Ford for that

Bit of kit.

Because back in history

Poets could be

Cranking clothes

Through mangles

And inevitably getting entangled.

Or, if we go back

Seriously older

Thumping garments

On streamside boulders

Instead of scrawling scrawls

On firelit cave walls.

genes

 What do genes mean?

Do they wipe the slate clean?

So that no blame

Attaches to our name?

Because they make us do the same

Again and again and again and again?

The same as our fathers, or our mothers?

Or our sisters, cousins, aunts

Uncles and brothers?

And more distant ancestors

Backwards through time

As far back as the primeval slime?

Does it matter at all

That everyone could be

Two percent neanderthal?

Or that a banana shares some genes

With my Auntie Elsie?

I eat bananas but not Auntie Elsie,

So does this mean that I

Am uniquely free?