THE VARNISHED UNTRUTH

I was about to apply the varnish,

When it vanished.

I had been waiting months,

For a fine hot sunny day,

So that the varnish would quickly dry,

Once applied.

So I set my sculpture up, ready.

And prised the lid off the varnish tin,

With a screwdriver.

Stirred the thick tawny liquid,

Therein,

Which gave off a sweet heady smell.

I dipped my brush,

And let surplus drops drip off,

Then turned,

Brush raised ready to start,

To apply a first coat.

But had gone!

Where was the wood I’d carved for weeks?

It was suddenly and totally absent.

And though I had not heard it fall,

I searched the floor,

And poked in nooks and crannies

Where it might somehow have rolled,

In vain.

Nothing.

And I was not dreaming,

So how could this be?

Were transcendent powers punishing me?

For my vain attempt to fashion

A graven image

Of an idea and an emotion?

What a stupid notion,

For I to try.

But at least I have now learned

A universal law

“THAT WHICH HAS VANISHED,

MAY NOT BE VARNISHED.”

hibernating frog

I dug up a hibernating frog,

When I levered a buried paving stone,

Out of the ground,

Next to the pond.

I imagined that I was an archaeologist,

Or a grave robber,

As I cut away couch grass and weeds

And prised the slab onto its edge,

But as it hadn’t been buried that long,

The only treasures revealed,

Seemed to be worms and woodlice

Scurrying and writhing away

From the sudden unwelcome daylight.

Then I saw the little frog’s

Long legs kicking

As it hid in another crevice.

Sorry, amphibian pal,

To have so rudely woken you.

Spring’s on the way

But not quite all here yet,

So, catch some more kip,

Until the sun’s well up

And the swifts have returned.

ZOMBIE CAPITALIST DEATH HORROR

ZOMBIE CAPITALIST DEATH HORROR (© P.R.Murry 12/03/2017)

The dead bad giants

Are alive again,

Once my father believed

That they had been slain,

Or at least, battered

Down onto their knees;

And that Poverty, Ignorance,

Squalor and Disease

Could no longer crush us

With fear and grief;

But, sadly, that belief

Was overoptimistic.

And like something terrific and horrific,

The four zombified monsters

Are re-animated and undead,

Lumbering into a new century

Crushing those who cannot pay

Smashing all obstacles in their way,

Rewarding wealth and spurning need,

Driven by the power of greed

To ensure capitalism’s control

Of our bodies, our brains our souls.

So now we must dig a deeper hole

to bury them forever.

PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE PAYMENT INTERVIEW (A PARTLY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT)

A Nice Nurse knocked on my front door,

So I showed her up the stairs,

To my first floor flat.

I asked her to observe,

The difficulty that I have

In ascending to my abode,

For it is an overweight and arthritic old man,

Who writes this ode;

And coughs as he does so, remembering,

Forty years of heavy smoking

Plus decades more of breathing,

Polluted city air.

So I pant up the steps,

And sit, wheezing, in my chair,

As the Nice Nurse questions me.

She asks if I can wipe my own arse,

And how frequently I pee,

How I catch the bus or train,

And, how many pills I take,

And when I walk with my walking stick,

What progress do I make?

At the end of the interview, she explains

That in a month or so,

A verdict on my payment will be made,

It could be cut, it could be raised, it could even be doubled

Then she holds up a bucket and says:

“or just kick this now,

Save the government some money and trouble.”

THE BLACK SHOULDERED KITE

The black shouldered kite

Shakes his silver pinioned wings

And does what he has to do

Which is hover,

Then change position,

Slip-slide, ride the wind

And hover again;

Like a feathered helicopter

Over this scrappy, scrubby field.

The black shouldered kite’s red eyes

Know no pity and see through concealments,

To detect the urine traces of

Scurrying mice and voles

Which better had, scurry like mad,

For now the black shouldered kite is god here

And god is not love,

But a grey feathered raptor,

Which wants its dinner

And will feast on saint or sinner.

It will fold its slender wings and drop,

To spear you on sharp-clawed talons,

Carry you to the top of a telegraph pole

And eviscerate you.

The black shouldered kite

Don’t take no shite.

VULTURES

In Spain at Monfrague

Three hundred vultures live on a crag.

I have seen them with my own eyes.

They have seen me and ignored me,

A fat man who gets out of a van and

Gapes up in awe.

Some sit on ledges,

Some perch on edges,

And let go, to fall,

Spreadwings and soar.

They may circle and glide,

Find a thermal to ride’

In spirals and gyres

Higher, higher and higher,

Silently curving, intersecting, interlacing

In a broad feathered dance in the sky

Over the Tagus gorge

Over the valleys and woods,

Up ever into pure azure

High above apes with their words.

COUSIN MARY

Cousin Mary strikes along the seafront at Seaford,

Walking into to the salt wind,

With her red hair streaming behind her.

She’s always dreaming,

So she’s dreaming again,

Of her Ireland of ancestors,

And the country of her heart,

Which is Spain.

She walks along the sea wall,

Past the Martello tower and the beach huts;

“NYAHHHHAYAHYAALLNEERAYHAY!” she shouts,

And then explains, when we ask her why,

That this was a Spanish muleteer’s cry.

Mary ate some mammoth once,

Unfrozen from Siberian ice, then cooked and sliced

At a Royal Geographical Society banquet.

Perhaps the flesh of the prehistoric pachyderm

Lets her access spatial and temporal dimensions,

Where others cannot be.

So there is Cousin Mary in a quiet English seaside town,

Calling out to other places and times,

There she is, we see her there,

But Cousin Mary is anywhere and everywhere.