labyrinth that awaits your decision.
Paper is a cardigan that’s seen better days.
Floorboards are skintight jeans that bounce
when you wear them.
Towels are fish fingers hot and steamy.
Whispers are hollows in the earth
made by brocks under threat.
is a bricked up
thought that needs opening.
Fresh air is poison disguised
with a mask of benevolence.
Grass is indecent hitching
up it’s skirt in public.
Bones hold up lorries
with a “Your flesh or your life.”
Flowers dirty pavements
with their refusal of the concrete.
Gusts are a blessing against dry
stone walls decayed on the hillside.
Keep a closer eye
Keep a closer hand
Keep a closer ear
Keep a closer nose
Keep a closer cheek
Keep a closer finger
Keep a closer breath
Keep a closer sigh
Keep a closer stroke
Keep a closer rise
keep a closer fall
Keep a closer warm
My palm sweats tsunamis
as she leads us off the transport.
“There’s a seating problem.”
She shows us the door
outside which armed guards
have arrived. “What have we..?
A guard raises his hand,
“Please, Sir, please understand
we do not do this lightly.
A person on the transport
said you spoke the language
of suspicion, and dressed
as you are you must recognise
we had no other alternative.
I could ask you to remove
your attire, but common sense
dictates you have not thought
to bring a change of clothes,
So you may leave the area
now and no more be said.”
We worked our way to a taxi.
I was shocked. I did not realise
the ban was on suit and tie.
on trend,
upgrade
style conscious,
fashion,
old school ,
obsolescence,
need not want
is invention
to makes me buy more.
There was once only one
suit, tie, shoes,
golden age that never existed.
I’m suggestible to better,
faster, cleaner, sexier,
leaner, easier.
Pure impulse. I kid myself
it’s all deliberated,
considered, thought through,
that I’m reasonable.
I need control,
but,.
can’t help myself.
They exploit this need too.
I buy it.
Splits the abdomen open,
uses a sharpened pair
of watchmaker’s forceps
carefully removes all the organs,
smears each organ across
a piece of glass. After each stroke
checks whether it has an effect
on a nearby ant colony. Smears
organ after organ: the poison gland,
hindgut, the fat body have no effect.
Finally finger shaped Dufour’s gland
excites their antennae, a fragrance
of piss they dutifully follow. The animal
experiment has worked. How scientist
and insect find their way.
My reason is a fantasy.
I’m manipulated by advertisers,
massive companies public relations,
into choosing this, buying that,
living here, eating this,
believing that.
They take advantage
of my irrational responses.
Even this state of scared
may be what they wished.
I am an irrational being.
of her knees more sharply,
and without due care
sprawls her across the zebra
in the way of the impatient.
Age makes her fall without
notice in public places,
pelican gobbles her respect
until she fears outside is a zoo,
and she is the major attraction.
is well pleased when the loot
of a day’s shop is pushed onto her,
and she doesn’t have to use
leverage or elbow grease
to gain what is lawfully hers
by right of possession,
bend the other
person to her needs.
as he requests to be turned
over on the spit
so he can get evenly roasted
for his adamant belief,
flit across the night sky
from the radiant
of Perseus, a trail of debris
left by a comet that passes
through our spin of planets
every 133 years.
The Wombwell Rainbow 