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?