sleep,

 I’ve just seen, on my computer’s screen,

A sleeping class 

Teaching me all the parts of sleep.

How deep they are

And exactly when you dive into dreams.

Sleep isn’t easy, it seems,

Yet it’s always been that way for me.

I’m out like a light, every night

Unconsciously.

I doze, drift off and sail away

As the radio plays.

I no longer hear my farts

And submit to circadian rhythms.

It would be bliss

To stay in this state

If I didn’t have to awake

At regular intervals to piss

Into a plastic bottle via a funnel

But, once bladder is voided,

Consciousness can be avoided,

I can get back on my own tube train

To go down, down, down,

The deepest tunnel

To nowhere.

flightlessness.

 Now I’m all over my avian envy,

Once I almost cried with jealously,

That I could not be

One of the

Winged creatures that flew over me.

I used to be disconsolate.

That I could not levitate.

And I cursed my creator again and again

Since I could only fly in an aeroplane.

Yet, I attained some consolation.

For my landlocked situation,

Since some birds are flightless too

Emus, rheas, penguins, cassowaries, kiwis and kakapoos.

But I derived scant comfort from that,

As I couldn’t hover over the world below;

I had no wings to flap or glide,

Which used to eat me up inside.

But now I know it’s far too late,

I must accept my earthbound fate.

Descending with wingsuit or parachute

Would never be a substitute.

It would be appalling.,

It would just be modified falling

So, I must await future rebirth,

And just be judged for my worth,

Or worthlessness

Until then I accept

My flightlessness.

 

PIFFLE ABOUT PIGEONS-Parts 1 &2

 

PART 1

Pigeon on the garden path

Looks like it’s experiencing.

Existential doubt.

Walks about aimlessly,

Puffing out it’s splendid iridescent neck feathers,

Whilst bobbing its head.

The other members of the flock

Are busy eating up the birdseed,

Dislodged by parakeets and starlings,

From the feeders on the tree.

 

But this pigeon wanders about

Separately, seemingly perplexed.

Maybe it’s just well-fed,

Maybe it’s bonkers,

Maybe it’s the reincarnation of Immanuel Kant,

Wondering why it’s in a suburban garden.

 

PART 2

I write piffle about pigeons,

Whilst the world falls apart.

I get old and self-centred,

As this planet starts to cook

And.an internet of liars,

Has most of us hooked.

Slime oozes out of my laptop screen,

But I have a pair of

Heavy duty zircon-encrusted tweezers

To keep my braincells clean

And I adeptly use those

To pull spores of capitalist propaganda

Out through my nose

They squirm and squawk shrilly,

About freedom and enterprise

Offering that stuff I don’t need,

But that I could borrow to buy.

So, I take my tweezers,

And drop the spores 

Into the waters of my porcelain throne.

I press the handle and wash them down

Naively believing that they’ve gone,

But they will reproduce themselves,

Deep down on the ocean floor?

Or am I deluding myself

Into blaming capitalism on spores?

When, all along the slimy things

That I extracted with tweezers

Were integral parts of my own greedy brain,

Not alien beings or diseases.

So once these dangerous cells

Are removed and flushed down the drain.

I can aimlessly go back

To aimlessly watching

Aimless pigeons again.

NO DREAM

Aren’t dreams supposed to be

The seeds of inspiration;

To light the fire

That leads to the creation

Of operas, epics, theories and symphonies?

Well, they don’t work like that for me.

I’m in a zoo or a park,

Walking along a sandy trail

Towards two shady figures,

Who are leaving me behind.

When on the path a bird appears

A whimbrel, a woodcock or a rail.

Why is this stored in my mind?

So instead of worrying about

What this might mean,

I prefer it when the slate is wiped clean,

The screen is erased

And I can wake refreshed

Remembering none

Of these stupid dreams.

Entryism

Neither a lender nor a borrower be.

Don’t be a borrowing bee,

Be a burrowing bee.

Make your nest in the masonry.

Make your home

Between the bricks and stones.

Dig out the grout.

Excavate and carve a

Cave for your larva.

Then don’t hesitate,

Put out a buzz to call your mates.

Don’t leave it to chance,

Summon more bees with a bee dance.

Tell them all

To make their homes in the wall,

Then that will make

It shake and fall,

To bring the ceiling falling after

Shattering joists and breaking rafters.

From the ruins some will fly free,

Swarming, homeless debt-free bees.

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.