Poems

Our metaphor container ship is dry-docked in Bratislava and our simile warehouse in Wuppertal has had to close its doors.   We apologise. Some figments, we believe, may still be in transit, but there are supply chain fractures due to disputes over paperwork.   We’re so sorry that we couldn’t get the parts but the task has not been helped by a generaldip in the market for lyricism in the West   and in the East by surveillance tactics to curb outbreaks of oxymorons, iambics, and randomenjambment. Rising divorce rates between   couplets has also been unprecedented and manyof the major manufacturers of pathetic fallacyhave changed profession, citing burn-out.

She said she dreamedthat young once moreshe walked a roadthat led from nowhere   into nowhere,and, stopping, placedher name-tagged suitcase down.The question asked   inside her headwas this: ‘Shall I go on,walk on. Or turnand stay a while?’   She turned, and leftthe suitcase standing thereto be reclaimedsome other day   when she would need no proofof who she wasor where she was to go,the handle forming to her hand.

Whit Sunday, blustery heat, and you in three-piece suit to read the Second Lesson.   The day before, I’d excavated Arctic Rolls from ice-shelves in the local store’s deep freeze.   We ate them reverently, like miracles we didn’t quite believe in.   I threw up first and stayed in bed. You soldiered on through hymns of praise   till hot air swayed the church and God stopped leading you in upright ways,   an almighty adjustment that left you face down in the Benedictus, eating dust.

One summer I’d a plague of them –they looked so pretty in their red and black I didn’t mind them fluttering round but then I’d find one on my pillowor leaving smears across the panes.The boldest liked to totter on my fingerthen take me under her wing –it was lined with finest satinwhich she unfolded like a sheet.For months she hung around the windowtill a gust or rumour took her off. I remember the smooth curve of her backand how she’d tumble from the bed to fetch up madly wriggling on the floorhelpless as an overturned coracle.

I thought about going to a support group. I looked into it in the yellow pages and other outmoded data sets. I came upon a strange group of surly Sues and churlish Chads. We sat around and made high-pitched whines for about an hour. It was a pre-verbal kind of vibe. Some of us barked. We were all royally pissed off by something or other but no one was allowed to say what. That was the beauty of it. In Week Two, we harmonised and made a lovely Whingey Symphony. A person from an Adult Ed course down the hall put their head round, looking for their dog, Brian Eno, who had strayed. We went full-scale Allegro con Moans.

Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint.The humble glow. They smile their Sunday best.And everywhere she goes the Queen smells paint.   She’s there for them that is and them that ain’t.Toffs drop their aitches in the jabber-fest.Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint.   Some pilgrims sell their souls to view the saint,her crown more halo than its jewels attest.And everywhere she goes the Queen smells paint.   Jewels outshine cash – imperially quaint,like stars, the wearer’s heavenly worth unguessed.Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint.   Having paid her princes’ ransom in restraint,she pales, as shame starts rising in the west.And everywhere she goes the Queen smells paint.

Where did they flee to? Who wrote off their debtswhen, scuttled back into a gas mantled past,they left just this pair of foxed silhouettes inlaid to the depths of the shadows they cast?Their off-cuts, spiralled and coiled to the floor,were the shirts off their backs they left behindfor the brilliantined thief and the red-headed whorewho gave them the pox and robbed them both blind.   Brought out for the hanging, downlit, strung alongwith woodcuts and etchings from last season’s sale,mocked by a stag’s head knocked down for a songthey pose cock-a-hoop on a gold picture rail,price-tagged in guineas, cockeyed with surprise,sporting sold stickers, all set for their spree,two roués quick scissorwork snipped and excisednow fallen among the haute bourgeoisie.

They need to start believing in themselves.Like the cartoon character who runsoff a cliff before the animatorhas drawn solid earth below they expected more certainty than this.Already out of their depth they hesitateat the edge of the sea and wonderhow it feels to dive into the waves. They gaze at the blue-grey eternitybut don’t know if they can swim.