what’s the score
tell you Watt the narrator’s either a
schmuck stuck in the mud of their own construction sight or a confidence
trickster tryna prove their vision ain’t just a version of everyone else’s but
whichever the route they take both are only groping their way through clouds of
obfuscation to add a detail or a twist in the plot to coin a hack-eyed phrase
as though the world and its events were a length of owl rope they hand you
instead of some scuttling excrescence across the surface of a globe but so much
for abstract concepts butter in the hands of our story-teller or fibber as we
are meant to say their lies lying on some other plain or leaving on a would-be
plane and there we have the alternative to mud perhaps that other feller still
the queer ’un takes an uphill position where soil has gathered above the water
table so shrubs may take root at any time of year & to which oxen haul
themselves yonder to stretch in the shade watching the world go by à la Deus
Nobis Haec Otia Fecit ho-ho or You’ll Never Walk Alone Mate take your pick we
mean the detached view which can still be partial of course but is not
determined by internal dogmas or leashed you sniff my drift quagmired &
sinking in titanic or rather Lusitanian struggle with the inevitable scuppered
from their launch like an actor in an Agatha Christie play hired to say the
same darn lines over & over yet somehow expected to bring them to life or
what have you with little nods or winks cesuras modulations of tone ironies
& sarcasms not chasms troughs or gulfs no nothing a stage manager would
spot & sack them on the spot for even half way through their scene just
itsy-bitsy porkers you may get away with now & then or here’s the biggie
telling the truth as though it were something you just made up & which of
course you would never dare so no one can accuse you of getting away with
murder as rich folks do for God’s sake now ain’t that a fact
tramp-o-war
Rusty making smoke from burning wet
coal her gunwales dipped below the swell
listing somewhat on the starboard beam
target in range
slowly as she goes at periscope
depth the low-down skipper squawking fire
one a specious metal shark unleashed
runs for the kill
till amidship plume of white
water signals piercing
screams of men thrown out of bunks
Hamburgers cheer
then the rowing boats no time
snaps the Jerry protocol
bids them stop & save some souls
heartless his watch
from the engine warmth of ship
to a heaving freezing sea
sailors dreams are turned around
nightmares come real
obituary
the death has been announced of one who as
a youngster stuck their thumb in the yawning gap between the sexually active
female and a celibate Dick Van Dyke though over a hundred years old the sole
Dutch hero had stoked away from fame & the advances of admirers plus
detractors to live in a remote North Sea fishing community where they spent
their twilight decades appraising better lobster pots and refusing to talk to
the Daily Mole while violently repudiating an autobiography written at the
height of their notoriety which had earned them the approbation of celebrated
feminists and chauvinists alike with the exception of Mavin Gutteridge the
Antipodean soap star whose common law partner they soon became before transgendering
multiple times to author a book of explicit nursery rhymes Boy Next Door that
did so much to confuse & sharpen a generation of sex hungry weight watchers
& post modern porridge refusenicks but that later went on to revive the
wise fish monger’s better half at the harbour talking Sense & Nonsense
trope & by whom was predeceased by nearly half a century yep folks it’s
that long since they appeared in West End pantomime alongside you know who
& Watt they are survived by seven surly bairns twenty-three sunny Jack
& Jills plus retirement home for catdog waifs & strays
The Force is yours Darlin
leave them cops to us
Babe just give the word
you were raped the truth
ripped from your breast
get complete revenge
have their balls removed
for a trifling fee
guilt without proof
gaol’s too good their legs
broken homes turned out
faces scarred & bank
balances swiped
no embarrassing
court proceedings just
word of mouth’s enough
fast & discreet
call today your first
consultation’s free
guaranteed results
turn on The Force
the arse about face
Book TwatterGram Instant Rants &
Google Whathaveyou talking monkeys
typing bootleg Hamlets when you’ve got gorillas gibbons baboons & Hobbits
stuck on their eyesore behinds plus chimpanzees lemurs & Pooh Bears this
means you Lahs swilling mugs of decaff OJ to knock out howsyerfathers in
hobnail boots am I being racist speciesist or just downright rude to all &
sundry so what gerralife go to Speakers’ Corner owlster recite your own doggerel
at full blast in the shower whisper sweet nothings to nobodies on the tube
leave notes on bus seats asking strangers to mind their own fucken business to
whom it don’t concern should be your gambit when craving attention how long you
been practicing eh with all this guff it’s like the splatt of zits in the
mirror the scream of spermatoza going down the plug hole rubbernecks crooning
ooooh look at meeeee
sacred pork
name the culprits eh
office holders or
those aware of them
biting their tongues
whistle blowers god
help their flesh & bones
traitors yea but so
what is their crime
fact or fiction first
guilty stories lies
spoken straight of face
black painted lace
there before our eyes
still we go believe
some folks can’t be wrong
even exposed
evil never crossed
minds of sculpted ice
liquid virtues jokes
chiseled in stone
tabs for the keeping
an empty shopping bag full of receipts I
was going to light the fire with only we don’t do that too often now burning
has become taboo pity ’cos I’d collected quite a few bits of combustible tat
still the kids ain’t home no more except at Christmas & even then it’s not
the same well nothing lasts as the saying goes & yet I can never bring
myself to believe in absolutely nowt how can there be such a negative thing
though it’s true when you’re gone you’re gone your atoms may hang around an
aeon or so but your consciousness is straight off in a puff of white smoke such
a waste & look at all the merchandise I’ve spirited away since I got this
bag yeah it’s true we consume a lot of nonsense are persuaded to part with hard
earned stash for so little worth OK there are fleeting moments of pleasure
unwrapping fresh packs of imported choice or novel foods & soap but
scanning the contents on a label can be dismaying when half the stuff you’ve
bought’s been made with dodgy additives & extra this or thats what I like’s
a true bargain something I want on barter or everyday items from abroad to fill
the cultural stroke commercial gap yes one way or another this shopping bag’s
seen its share of use & offset half its weight in CO2 ’cept for
all the sweat & hot air generated in the process nothing like a having a
good owl whinge at the bus stop is there Mr Hoskins & I’m sure your Sandy
will do fine stacking shelves at Carrefour we’ve all been there in one way or
another it’s a case of start at the very beginning as I’ve often sung in the
shower donchya know
Westminster sunset
bully-coddles from the back
benches blindly stroking necks
kick me hardly often works
miracle cures
let them bounders stir the crows
no such thing as evil just
lower forms of laissé-faire
beautiful warts
fortunes made on nods & winks
deaf the horse & blinkered its
mouth a font of fruitful lies
googly balls
called the cops to hand themselves
in they knew what sense it made
clawing knighthoods from the jaws
amnesty wars
onward soldiers with our deaths
shall ye build a better world
fit for cowards creeps & turds
hip hip the whores
horizons good & low
two or three times now I’ve woken in the
wee wee hours by the drip drip dripping of rain from the eaves but when I rise
at 7am and squint through the curtains there comes no flash of silver in the
cold grey theft of dawn but what precocious scraps of rain that stumbled down
overnight have long dried the street looks as parched as my throat after mouth
breathing through fretful attempts at sleep I feel no excitement for the day
ahead which is unlike me & shameful when you take the children into account
there’s no right of indifference or dismay at the climate I have chosen in so
far as there’s much choice in anything in this life or that willful beast as I
am no I made my bed and lay on it ignore this torrent of clichés free of any
compulsion other than my own laziness & desire to settle somewhere not just
anywhere of course but here where the weather looked so promising the long days
of Spring & vibrant Summer nights the enduring warmth of Autumn &
Winters cold admittedly sometimes bitterly so but often mild here in the
northwest and in the past what buckets of rain we had between the seasons weeks
of it until the ground was oozing our well leaking I had to lay a pipe to drain
it & stop the chickens from drowning dug it in with my bare hands now I’m
sure the water table below the plot has dropped by several fathoms & all
this talk of climate change how will the kids cope with so much evidence before
their very eyes & global warming if not exactly on the curriculum the
weather speaks of it the fickle & inconstant weather now more obdurate than
ever it won’t relent it hardly rains & when it does you needn’t take your
hat & coat the very opposite of what I’m used to wonder what it’s like back
home when this is home from home & everywhere about the same according to
some blinkered & pessimistic fools no folks what have we got against them
the rotten shower give & take is all we ought to say to get us through the
night but what a blinkered attitude with the curtains opened wide at last no
fear
unsatisfying allegories
Victor Slogan writes
life’s bewildering
issues can’t be worked
out on the brain
work & marriage which
hobby horse to ride
politics or church
both if there’s time
plus the gift of free
will the choices curse
seek the doctor or
sleep with the nurse
problems when they’re halved
writhe like conger eels
twice as much the corpse
stealing the hearse
nope reality’s
matter over mind
up a gumtree with no
paddle to curse
echoes
were the Romans right to kick the Jews out of Israel of course not posterity hardly theirs to worry about but remember the righteous slaughter at Jericho when the walls came tumbling down & will they call it anti-Semitic discussing the fact but what is fact when all we know’s the Bible which is merely fable by another name the title deeds to Palestine not carved in stone but written in blood promised like so much bilk & money by one of umpteen thousand gods each of whom the sole pretender to some heavenly throne in whose imagination eh but do the maths Professor Wittgenstein six million wrongs don’t make a single right
 |
| no bull! |
