The Concrete Lampost

One tooth protrudes 

From my lower jaw

And there’s no evolutionary reason

For it to be for.

It does not enable me to

Spear or shred

Some special food

And I am not a unicorn

Nor no narwhal neither

So my tooth does not protrude

For sexual display or foreplay.

What it is is

A small yellow ivory monument to mischance.

One day,

Maybe about

My thousandth one alive

I walked along

Looking about

At the brave new world

When a great big concrete lamppost

Leapt up through the pavement

I looked to one side

And it sneaked up

In front of me.

SMACK

My consciousness was impacted

By its very first fact.

The moral of this sorry tale

Is to crawl slowly and slimily

Like a snail

Don’t strut or run

Like an ape or an antelope

Or you will get smashed in the face

By a concrete lamppost

Like a hammer hitting a melon

Or a heavy goods vehicle

Running over a lemon.

THE DRAINING BOARD

I used to fly,

High above the world,

And float free of time,

Like some starwinged eagle;

But I was just

An ape opening an atlas

To see

Maps of the tides of history.

Tribes and empires;

Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns, Alans

And Picts depicted

And printed on paper plans

Denoted and defined

By differing cross hatchings.

On each new page

A new era

Now I don’t even have

To open a book.

Whilst I wait for my tea kettle to boil,

I look

At the bloblules and globules

At the rivulets and dribulets

Of water in the indentations

Of a kitchen sink draining board.

Gravity and history make them coalesce and flow

Like tribes and empires,

One among many

May suddenly gain momentum

And surges on

A rampant conquering superblob
Absorbing all others
In its path,

Until it mostly careers

Headfirst down the plughole

Leaving scattered remanents behind

Like a kingdom

That once was

And now is gone.

I pour water

And some spills

Onto the draining board

So history starts up

All over again.