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?

torquay

 At Torquay, on boxing day,

People process to and fro,

Taking thoroughbred children

And thoroughbred dogs,

On leads with them as they go.

In Christmas present boots and clothes,

They promenade the promenade

Beside a silver grey sea

Beneath a silver grey sky

Past the wooden benches there.

Without one glance, as they pass.

Each bench has small brass plaque.

Firmly fixed, so all can see.

High up on its wooden back

On each brass plate

There is a name,

Like Brian, Mabel, John, or Keith

And carefully inscribed beneath

Dates of birth and death are shown.

Their ghosts look outwards to the sea

Through the heedless passing parade

There are no skull dolls, fiestas or music at all

Here no one knows how to show respect

Metal labels have to do instead

So, polite conversations

Fill the fresh sea air

On the English day of the dead.

 

 

 

tunguska

 The Tunguska event was a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons^[2] that occurred  on the morning of 30 June 1908.^[1][3] The explosion flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of (830 sq mi) The explosion is generally attributed to a meteor air burst, the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres (160–200 feet) wide.

Never be beneath

An exploding asteroid,

If you can help it.

It would atomise

All your atoms and

Few people have been unluckier

Than anyone who was under

Tunguska.

Unless they are

A possible candidate for messiah

Living within reach

Of some psychotic tyrant

Who only believes

In blood iron and fire.