Absurdity and Anatidae

Sometimes, I have deeply emotional discussions with poets, sometimes I natter with Helen Ivory and this happens...

Painting waterfowl

If you’re sloppy with your brushes
by the lakeside rushes,
rein in that compulsion
to daub dabchicks with emulsion,
‘cos slapping Dulux onto ducks,
turns quacks into clucks,
teal into chickens,
makes wigeon into pigeons,
and the smew begin to coo,
for when you smear the hydrophilic
birds with wet acrylic
you’ll feel Attenborough’s rage
for each mandarin now beige
and though oiliness of feathers
keeps fowl safe in all weathers,
and though we know that mallards
are gang-bang sexual blaggards,
keep it on the canvas,
not on Anas platyrhynchos,
‘cos it doesn’t mean that you
can slap on Prussian Blue,
or slather geese in scarlet
like aquatic avian harlots
and the swans all plumaged white
don’t need wing and tail highlights,
so hold tight to your gouache,
egg tempura, inky wash
when you’re by the pond or river
and a grebe sends spinal shivers –
for a challenge with your easel,
why not try to paint a weasel?

All aboard

After several weeks of writing on some fairly heavy topics (WW1 & macroeconomics in particular), here's a little bit of dirty doggerel about the introduction of a bus run on biogas from human waste and thrown-away food, a short and silly piece about the value of waste which I used as light relief to finish last night's Show Me The Money exhibition-related set.

Poo bus

Humanure and dustbinned food,
fermented dung replacing crude,
unwanted BOGOF don’t just bin it,
join the waste race, better, win it.

Come passengers, roll up investors,
see the new bio-digester,
fed with passed organic crap,
pumps out methane, sewage gas.

Let lorries, coaches, vans and cars,
even speedboats run on farts,
CH₄ in every vehicle,
Fuel of the people, faecal,

Our motions give its motive power,
use the rest to grow rose-flowers,
be proud to flush a well-formed do,
and hop aboard the Number Two.

NPD not-blues-but-confused

So, today is National Poetry Day and the theme is rememb...
hang on, what was I doing?
Stewing strong tea or Englishly queueing,
chewing on mischievous thoughts that are brewing,
eschewing Westminster edicts, pooh-poohing
them blue in the face, or crewing
the Good Ship 'Amnesia', post-it notes for renewing
library books, and that firewood needs hewing,
maybe scrapbook gluing for future reviewing
with synapses ruing the passage of time
and losing my m... when's national Poetry Day?

Chrome poles and foxholes

With the West now bombing Isis, whatever good that will do, I couldn't help noticing that Southampton has a lap-dancing club of the same name, and so a little satire was born - currently a work-in-progress...

The day the West dropped bombs on Isis

Cash in the wasitband’s medieval,
objectifying, shallow – yes, but not evil,
seedy, that’s true, thoughts unclean,
small uprisings, some scenes are obscene,
barbaric acts need reprisals it seems
but such punishment’s too harsh, in extremis,
high explosives used on unarmed ecdysists,
the day the West dropped bombs on Isis.

Some general somewhere, deep in the Pentagon,
bullet-headed, a limited lexicon,
lost by long words, confused the terms
Terpsichore and terrorists,
gyrators and jihadists,
shaking their fundaments
doesn’t make them fundamentalists.

Military Intelligence didn’t check their facts,
planned the attack using Google Maps,
managed to mix up bunkers in Iraq
with a slightly cheesy city-centre strip-shack,
as dancers wiggled on laps and tables,
missiles were launched from a secret Naval
base, seconds later, dumb target’s struck,
one interrupted a private booth-fuck,
shenanigans costly, rude, uncouth,
the other hit the dancefloor via the roof
and exploded, scattering sequins and G-strings,
middle-aged men who seek releasings,
ripped by lip-gloss shrapnel, no more sleazing
at the go-go girls blown through the ceiling,

peeling off layers of lurex and rubber,
shredded epidermal cover,
no teasing rhythm to this stripping,
as club-beats are cut,
lust lies bleeding,
all gone Pete Tong, gold thongs
hang limp from rubble,
lager and worse dripping
from stag-night posses caught, gaping in fishnets
and rags of High Street smart-casual,
congealing as the dust settles, dead confetti,
flakes of foundation, orange as amaretti
no longer concealing crisped skin,
smoke black as Kate Moss’ caked mascara,
Rimmel’s London Blitz look,
billows from kitsch curtains
and pink satin pillows as they shrivel,
shrink like recreational dental-floss knickers

and the emergency light’s first tentative flicker
illuminates a lone perspex platform stiletto
lying on its side, still clasping something varnished,
chipped but glitter-sparkling,
part of a daughter of Isis,
goddess of slaves and sinners,
mother of Horus,
who could not be protected by doormen
or hands-by-your-sides no-touching rules,
all just damaged collateral,
another day in the death
of the War of Error,
mongered by fools.

Choice is everything, and mine alone

I don't have a 'living will' but my nearest and dearest know what to do if I'm ever unfortunate enough to be rendered incapable. Not a cheery topic at first glance, but still room for a little gallows-humour, and no, I'm not looking for a debate on the ethics of choosing when to check out... others feel differently and that's fine for them.

My dignified choice

I’m a cerebral being, live by cogitation,
won’t become burdensome vegetation,
or killed by creeping senility
eating away at my mental agility,
I’d rather die than lose my wits,
dribbling in the corner, sitting in my own shit,
not remembering who the fuck I am,
brain turned to jelly and strawberry jam,
so take me away and euthanase me,
I don’t care how as long as you slay me,
catapult or trebuchet me
at the House of Commons, load me up and aim me,
roll me in a carpet and underlay me
beneath the patio, when I’ve gone a bit gamey,
put me in the compost and decay me,
one day I’ll be back as potatoes in gravy,
if you think souls are sacred, feel free to blame me,
I’ll risk there’s a God who’ll judge and weigh me,
the laws that say I can’t are cockamamie,
nuttier than a packet of KP –
just don’t get caught when you terminate me.

BNP, then EDL, now this...

After the BNP and EDL, now we lucky denizens of Britland have Britain First (whose loathesome webpage I'll not grace with a hyperlink) pretending to defend us. Just the latest far-right bunch of fruit-loops ranting about brown people and Muslamic Rayguns, they differ only by wearing bin-liners and flat caps instead of the usual Nazi memorabilia, piss-soaked sportswear and tinfoil hats. Here they are mocked appropriately in verse. I await the usual incoherent rage and impotent inbox abuse.

Blithering Fringe

BNP fragments
begin faulty
binary fission,
breeding fools
bleating formulaic
belligerence, forming
Britain First,
bottom feeders
belching forth
bulldog faeces,
barking fiercely
‘ban falafel’
but finding
burqas frightening,
‘bloody fatwas’.
Being fervent
baby-Fuhrer
Belsen fans,
bullyboys foster
brownshirt fetishes,
bugle falsehoods
blindly from
behind flags,
broken Furbies
becoming furtive
beacons for
bitter failures,
bunglecunting fucknuggets
breathing fallacies,
believing fearmongers’
brittle figments
because fables
bolster fragile
bigots’ feuds
by feeding
bad feelings,
blaming foreigners,
blackening friendships
between faiths.
Bastards. Further,
boasting fake
bonhomie for
‘brave fallen’ –
big fail;
berks forget
battling forefathers
beat fascism
back – flaunting
bullshit finds
barely flinching
Brits feisty,
bringing fisticuffs.
Benevolence foremost,
better find
bloodless finale
before fights,
boots, futile
beatings, faces
bruised, fatalities.
Benevolence foremost,
brew fruity
beverages for
bozo foes?
Bake fairycakes?
Build friendly
Bollywood festivals,
blending families
by familiarity
bridging fear,
brown-flesh
blinkers flung
beyond far.

Britain First’s
brown-trousered force?
Brief farce,
best forgotten.

Cogtastic shenanigans

It's possible I've been listening to too much Professor Elemental (should that be possible)... here's something recently performed at the ever-lovely Art House - enjoy the warm steampunk goodness!

World Exposition Cog Jamboree

Crinolines and bustles, toppers and tweed
snake across the lawns of Turnham Green,
Olympic-standard queueing, an English scene
to see mechanical contrivances driven by steam,
captured lightning, electrical streams
streak between terminals as whistles scream,
tea pavilions, scones, jam and cream –
it’s the World Exposition Cog Jamboree.

A great glass hall, wrought-iron beams,
cathedral to inventiveness, mind’s-eye gleams,
keen teens weaned on cunning schemes
by artisan teams weaving clockwork dreams,
difference engines sew numerical seams
in between dimensions past the usual three
where esoteric airships soar high above trees
borne aloft by formulae with strange phonemes

sung by thaumic mathematicians on bended knees
while crowds cheer to see the springs and keys
of modern technomancy, vast brass machines
from automaton insects to submarines
and odd extremes like talking monotremes,
platypus enhanced by neurochemical means
deemed unseemly, what next, walking anchovies
or chickens laying eggs full of French centimes?

So let’s relax at Old Hakim’s
Coffee House, styled like a hareem,
with rugs, hot beverages and fine ice creams,
praline, tangerine and mangosteen
served on voluminous cushions of velveteen
by metallic waitrons Tesla 1.3
instead of odalisques in diaphanous sheen,
then a tot of green fairy keeps your palate clean

before a zoetrope film of the Sistine ceiling,
3D screen backlit with fluorine
lamps through lenses of tourmaline,
a show heart-stopping as atropine
watching seraphim dancing on trampolines
sipping poteen from gold tureens,
afterwards a visit to the Black Museum,
secrets gleaned from reams of long unseen

tomes illustrated with obscene themes,
unredeemed, lean in, hear tales of esteemed
adventurers visiting warrior-queens,
selling London Bridge for magic beans
pursuing idols thought lost for sixteen
centuries in deep Polynesian seas
presented to delight in huge marquees
at the World Exposition Cog Jamboree.

When tiny dinosaurs attack!

Flippancy reigns supreme today on the topic of some friends' maybe-friendly-maybe-evil-depending-on-mood African Grey birdy...

Ornithoraptor

Pinprick-pupilled beady eye
tempts fingers closer with a tweet
and a look that’s reptile-sly
come friendly digits, you shall meet
a living pair of peanut-pliers
as beak and brain plot and conspire

to peck and pry at the unwary
whether foe or tickling friend,
wings to fly but no fey fairy,
mandibles to tear and rend
flesh, this herbivore’s vampiric
but her parrot-victory’s Pyrrhic

for now she’s on the naughty perch
with fewer chums for strokes and kisses,
gruel for tea and name besmirched,
known as wicked, biting Missy,
yellow card, last-chance saloon,
play nicely or play on your own!