Listen, mister
Honk all you like
Leer and stare
Yell whatever catchy
Obscenities you feel
Are needful
As I cross at
My own pace.
After the eight-legged
Ninja monstrosity I just
Dismembered and
Flushed down the drain
Your four-limbed
Feeble annoyance
Poses no challenge.
So go ahead,
Try me.
Month: July 2013
So-and-so used to be famous. I wonder what happened to him…
The face of an eighties screen god
Lately gone to seed
Proclaiming his perseverance
Propelled by a pressing need
To find his image one more time
Promoted to the heights
And finally be recognised
Back where he spends his nights
He sighs and sips his coffee
His shades kept on inside
In hopes of being spotted
By more than spousal pride
But doomed to disappointment
No autographs are sought
He finishes his drink in silence
Of a pregnant sort
And slipping past his escort
He slouches off to pee
Still unacknowledged by the crowds
That queue to buy their tea
He passes by the waitress
With no more than a wink
She fancies he’s expressed his thanks
For more than just the drink
Over Heated
The girl on the desk
At the swimming pool
Did her job to the letter
To keep out the riff-raff
Insisting he prove
They had made him an offer
Their kind invitation
A member plus one
Gets in free this week
For the duration
Of the heatwave
But the generous proof
Remaining at home
In his humid back pocket
He declined the demand
And slunk away
Foul-mouthed consonants
Heating the air
Climbing the hill to home
With the girl
Who wasn’t good enough
For his gym to admit
To work off his sweat
With a body count
In the higher pixels
From the padded throne
Of his living room couch
He is still shooting aliens now
But in time she may
Venture to mention
The shower upstairs
Appears lonely for company
As she adds subtle cubes
To his dinner glass
And pacifies the cat
My Big, Red Button
I could never be a world leader.
The world is full of wonders,
Filled up with far too many things
That make a big, red, shiny button
Too great a temptation.
For my own fuse, slow though it may be,
Once lit, I speed to anger faster than a bullet
Or a trans-Siberian express train
Trying to outrun an avalanche.
When fuelled by the flash of offense
In a truly selfish moment
Injustice swells to tear at my senses
Like halitosis in a lift.
I watch the last straw floating
A feather in the wind, waiting to settle,
Wanting to tip the scales.
I inhale, slowly, deliberately. Taste the poison.
At this point I am calm enough to kill.
Dispassionate, serenity masks the inferno within,
Stoking my fury to incandescence
As I clutch at sanity, taut as a bowstring.
All at once the straw lands, the scales tip
My fingers itch for a weapon large enough
To slay my nearest demon, wreak bloody
Vengeance to destroy the world that wronged me.
So despite my fondness for launch codes
And shiny discs marked ‘do not press’
For this reason I consider myself ill-suited
To the narrow corridors of power.
Also, I dislike crowds, helicopters and
Tedious, formal banquets with too many forks
Having no great need to pretend a liking
For dogs, pretzels, or other peoples infants.
The eBay Asshole
Wow, I got a bid!
How great, I have five views
Another two still watching it
A message! Shit, bad news.
Their grandma died
Their dog is sick
And needs a doctor
Double quick
Their homework’s due
Their rent is too
They want to lay it
All on you
A discount!
Gimme!
A freebie!
Damme!
They read the rules
They saw the prix
And now they find
They want it free?
Can’t wait to get
Their paws upon
The item listed
For a song…
So do I dare
Try holding them
To what it said
At auction’s end?
Instead of
Caveat emptor
It’s ‘Careful, Seller…’
(What a bore!)
In public forums
Such as this
The feedback, ratings:
Kill, or kiss.
So what’s to do?
Retry? Relist?
Or take what’s offered
Shorter shrift
And chalk it to
Experience
The world is short
On common sense
But if online
I hope to flog
More goods, I’d better
Humour Sods.
Noisy neighbour
Bang! The childish adult kicks the ball
It Bang! shakes the fence Bang! and
Scatters the Bang! birds from their
Treetop nests. Bang! He is bored, this
Bang! boy child whose body out Bang!
Grew his mind un Bang! til he was
Shut inside Bang! with the other misfits.
Bang! The rose petals fall Bang! covering
The Bang! grass with their Bang! broken
Blossoms. Bang! The nurse calls to
Bang! shake him from where Bang! ever
It is he Bang! goes when the mood to
Bang! kick has over Bang! taken his
Desire to bounce Bang! on the squeaky trampoline
Or Bang! to pee on the syca Bang! more
Tree asserting his Bang! dominance over
Bang! deceitful foliage that Bang!
Whispers secrets Bang! for only his
Bang! ears. Twenty seven. A
Magic square. I wonder if he knows…
Bang!
Love poem to my hands
These small scars and subtle lines
The marks of canula and razor blade
This triangle of raised skin from an
Unlikely first foray at false nails
Tell my story better than palmistry.
Strong hands, cast in my grandfather’s mould
The broad span of a peasant-pianist
Clasping my mother’s work ethic
My grandmother’s curved third joint.
My hands are rebels, weatherbeaten
Eschewing my father’s manicured elegance
With overgrown cuticles, nails kept short.
Functional fingers, well-muscled
And only two permanent ink stains
On the right hand, unmoved since school;
The wart on my left a source of teasing
My witch mark, mocked
By ignorant children. I would not change
The fine hairs on my fourth knuckle
Hidden by the ring I sometimes wear
For the world.
The cult of youth
Young, strong, slim and glowing, healthy
Set in mind and body-wealthy
Faces fortunate, not frail
Flaunt our features, wear them well
Snigger at the lesser beings
Those whose ill-health, meaner means
Has brought with clear, defective genes
A sentence: life – no more than peons
They’ll not amass our hills of beans
Content must be with smaller dreams
Cannot aspire to join our schemes
No matter skills or knowledge gleaned
For visible, we’ll not give quarter
To an ugly son or daughter
All we want is what you see
To know we are still young, carefree
Our cult of youth looks outward bound
Designer footwear cushions ground
From god-like strides as effortless
We turn from age. Though Time’s caress
May touch our tanned and flawless skin
None will to Nature dare give in
We’ll cut our bodies on a whim
Reshape our figures, smooth our skin
More pills and potions will we try
In hope, perfection we can buy
As proof against that living lie
We cannot teach ourselves to fly.
Yet all who crawl upon this Earth
By careless accident of birth
(In view of those who lack their mirth
And little know their fellows’ worth)
Will in the end find more than looks
Do tip to balance Peter’s books
And leave the shepherd to his crooks
Whose vanity bred cock-a-snooks
When end of days takes pride of place
Beribboned, scarecrows, clad in lace
In horror may all stand and face
Their judgement day among the race
Of riff raff we thought far behind
That caught us up, and being kind
Did not disturb dysmorphic mind;
Self-satisfied, perspective-blind
But pitying deluded state
Ephebophiles with much self-hate
Resemblance to their idols late
In clothing only – such is Fate
This cult of youth is futile jest
No man’s immortal, nor can rest
At favoured age – we all are pressed
By march of season, bib to vest
Published by Poems Underwater
Three of my poems have been published by Poems Underwater.
Laura Seymour and Kirsten Tambling, the authors of the Poems Underwater blog are conducting a project exploring mermaids through poetry and artwork.
Please do click the link below to find my poems about mermaids published on their blog alongside a brief explanation of the meaning behind my words:
You can pre-order their anthology here:
Sepsis
Who are these shadows?
The thundering train
Whose rattlings roar
Through my pages again.
Whence came the ladies
In bombazine skirts
To tut at my bedside
And shush when it hurts?
Why must I see them
When others do not?
When fever starts soaring
My visitors flock
All measure of ‘ill’
May be summed in a word:
Delirium –
Visions. Increasing. Absurd.
Katherine Shirley 