Misused, good old Robert Browning,
I had long forgotten his Pippa Passes
and this charming year of spring
as the cowl and the twat fight over centuries
old words before vulgar Americanism
gave rise to the populist non thinker
and easily offended.
Good ol’ Robert Browning, nobody
would dare call him a twit
except some repeated self serving survivor,
the Gobermouch, the misused Nun
who used to bellow my breath away
but now I see for the fool
and has no use for the jammiest bits of jam.
He takes photographs
of places
that I will never see,
he takes photographs
of doors that are crumbling,
its paint flaking off and carried
on the wind
to land on gravel paths and trampled upon
underfoot.
The masonry is cracking
and graffiti winds its way,
spray paint adoringly
in nature’s colours,
along to a point where it hides
the webs of cracked glass
and the solitary red van outside
It is the easy target,
not bullet proof
because we are the ones that carry
around our lives in your hands
and as you consider mass extermination
of the disabled, mass pariah
on a stake, a struck match
that flickers with the rhetoric
that comes out of your mouth, you
want us dead, the shame of memory, the cull
in place that says we cannot live,
despite it actually being the fault of
Government, of life, of life,
what life, you are
the ones who are sick, the cull
My choice of clothes
is mine, I shall not
wear a suit,
suffer a tie around
my ageing neck,
I might stretch
to a cravat, but then
that would be ironic,
me to a tee, I would rather
be damned for wearing
a ballgown
than endure the ridicule
of looking like a soggy stuffed up
potato, full of misplaced
pride, no starch, no starch
at all, not stiff,
put me in a costume, let me be
in fancy dress, clown that I am
You were young and beautiful,
the long red hair, dyed
but not vibrant, not outlandish
or gaudy, just beautiful
which matched your eyes
in a playful, yet stern like feature, a Cleopatra
as she maintained order and brought
generals and leaders to their quivering knees;
you were beautiful and for a while
I was lost in your young eyes
dancing in alert fashion
on the way to Waterloo.
It was only as I went to leave
the bus that I noticed the old man,
It takes an artist of brilliance
to understand the pain
and suffering of living inside a man made rock,
to become one with the shell
and survive a week
and come out blinking out the new formed light
and standing weakly for a while
whilst the legs take back control…
…ask many a politician to come out from under the rock
and see them insist
that they understand the suffering of the poor,
the forgotten and the damned…
I salute Abraham
as I wonder who kicked the other rock over
I remember when the king fell.
I remember being told
of his passing and my world crumbling apart,
no final goodbye, no conclusion
to any conversation that we had
had before, no ultimate
declaration, no absolution
just something that became terminal.
Goodbye my King,
I think of you everyday
however on this unhappy day,
I always endeavour to be the squire
you imagined I would be, a knight
I am not yet worthy, a king
in your place I decline and pass
Your book is taunting me.
Bright blue cover, hidden meanings
inside a passage, inside a word,
an attic inside a loft, inside a castle
and I barely find my way out of the maze
in the garden, secret holes
in which wait to be uncovered, yet
I have neither knowledge nor clue
in how to peer through
the remains of the branches and leaves,
the web strewn across
from spine to leaf.
Your house, a treasure island
built on an estate,
no guards, all welcome
I found you
silent. You had
destroyed your own selfless life
in bitter recrimination and in protest
of an unfair
and cruel world
which abused you
in your absence
and who could not
see, or would not open their eyes
to the possibility
that they could be happy,
more than a survivor.
I am to
be sure
the most
doomed of men
to have found you in such quiet repose
amongst your books,
as I am
the first to have to mourn you.
The fusion that is unexpected
is the most fun. Pineapple
slices on top of a crusty, well stacked pizza
for some is the height of decadence
or at least glittering fancy,
although myself,
I think it is an abomination,
I remove them with disdain if offered
in the same foul disregard as the errant olive,
bemoaning the fact that there should be more
slices of meat, rather than something yellow
or green, making the dish look like a breeding
ground for flavours I cannot abide.