It is not a blancmange
on a fridge shelf.
It is a blaze that the palm
of the earth gradually darkens.
Month: July 2016
The Celestial Hovel (3) Rag And Bone Man Pedlars Old Tropes
Any old iron! Any old iron!”
He shouts and his horse whinnies,
as they turn towards the lopsided
cottage and hear the to do.
His cart trundles four wheels
each with a name: Yin and Yang,
Life, Coincidence and Fate
up the old straight track.
The cosmogonic waistcoat
rocks an unchopped log
like a chair with his guffaws.
His wife in full harangue
raises a meteor like rolling pin
above his head. “Good day kindfolk.”
says the pedlar, as he sweeps
open his coat. “Perhaps,
an “I can explain.” or
and “You can still make choices.”
“Your horse looks knackered.”
says the woman. “I’ll fetch
some water and a bit of grain.
Nowt original for sale, again.”
“Tropes are never original.”
answers the pedlar. “It’s why
they’re tropes.” “Ha.” says
waistcoat “You fall for it every time.
She yanks your chain o’ being.
You’ll not forego supper with us.”
And smartly trips over the log,
Christmas angels the dust,
rises brushes himself down
and his laugh echoes all around.
The Celestial Hovel (2) She Irons With Dark Energy
(Hubby outside dices logs
she dusts, washes and irons
in a metallurgists scorched
earth leather apron
beneath ship’s oak trusses
a hazy orbit of stars and debris
dances round her busyness.
Above, nebulonic britches flap
pegged to golden string with split ends
between shiphull rib rafters
as she irons with dark energy
dimensional creases,
flattens 4d to 3,
2d to 1, grumbles
as what dimwit folded
the material, or thought
taffetta a sensible choice.
curses as a black hole appears,
bawls out sunblinded window “Oi!
Time you did the ironing again!”
as his adze end shatters the window
with a big bang that lasts millennia.
Ripple, Wave, Swell
Found.
Simplest difference between
ripple, wave, swell,
word, sentence, poem,
tongue, lip, thigh,
love, sex, work,
blemish, wound, sore,
siblings, children, death
is the time between each crest.
There are times when there are
ripples on waves on swell.
Your Damned Earring
Tell my wife before she goes out,
I’ll hoover, then garden.
Vacuuming her dressing table I,
accidentally suck up an earring
and spend most of the day
my finger up the thin hole
of the bag until it drops out,
and I am covered in dust,
empty peanut shells, feathers,
cat fur and damn my OCD.
My wife returns and says
you didn’t do the garden, then?
The Celestial Hovel (1) Nine Planets Of His Hands
Straight as a loaded die
beside the ups and downs
in a lopsided house awkwardly
he axes logs in a mismatched
cosmogonic waistcoat and ill fitting trousers tied up with frayed string
nine planets of his hands
swings the sun’s arc
and his adze loses its sharp end
breaks another window into fractals
he’d recently replaced. “Day
can only improve.” He laughs
He Would Start His Novel
Even as they held hands and walked in unison down Hope street to their front door all Faith could see were the stains he could not remove on the tea cups his mother had bought in Ripon Cathedral on one of her days out with her friend who knitted hessian baskets for Help The Heroes, after her son died from lack of proper equipment.
…the doctor said it was not stomach cancer as she had insisted but the wrong medication she was on, and that she needed to eat properly…
He would start his novel: “Old people despised experts and believed what they wanted to believe.” Then the battery went on his phone and he wished he had learnt how to write with pen and paper.
He Sculls The Plicas
Sits down between the rimples of a freshly ploughed field, grasps his wooden oars and sculls the plicas. Hopes the turned soil will not capsize because he can’t swim great distances. His broadcast seed fell below the surface of the waves he walked as now his wife and child bob up and down between these dry rucks. His oars are flower petals.
Life In A Raindrop
Opens his double glazed door to inhale the perfume of the petal that rises before him.
Sun rises and sets over its white curve. An approaching buzz makes him hurry back inside the door of his globule of water as his boiling kettle sounds like the fall of rain yesterday. A bees proboscis sucks up his home as he grasps the stalk that rises like a chimney out of it.
Hole In Her Stocking
Tentatively she examined the hole in her black stocking clocking the eyes of young men who tried to look askance while she remembered grapes needed adding to her shopping list and her mother’s pigeon feet
walking Hadrian’s Wall in the photo she’d sent from The Great Wall in China.
The Wombwell Rainbow 