gravitarse

 I lack gravity.

But it still keeps me down,

I have no dignity,

And I’m stuck on the ground.

I can’t soar,

Like an eagle or a seagull

Nor float,

Like a huge balloon,

Even though I’m full of hot air,

I’m still stubbornly stuck down here.

I dream daily and nightly

That I can fly

Yet I’m stuck to the floor.

Which is something I deplore,

As I feel that there has to be more,

There has to be another angle.

I been trying to be good all my life,

In order to become an angel;

Yet I seldom, refuse

Any chance to sin,

So that’s why I fallback.

On land locked failure.

MONITOR

 How do I know what my body is doing?

How do I check if my glasses are slipping down my nose?

And how does that feed into the decision

To alter the position

Of my eyeware?

Do I have a monitor that is monitoring me?

Is there a large carnivorous lizard within me?

Watching me with expressionless reptilian eyes?

Does it sinuously move

Its long scaly tail inside my guts?

Is it waiting to exit me?

When I no longer provide it enough sustenance?

Or when it gets bored with assessing

If my spectacles are slipping?

I hope that that is so.

It would be a good way to go,

Instead of being laid low

From the inevitable impending heart attack,

It would make a change,

To go into A&E

And have a six-foot lizard burst out of me.

I do love the NHS,

But my monitor could create

Such a beautiful bloody mess.

imbolc

 ‘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.

boomerbox

 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’.

earthquake

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

 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.

turd

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.