Katabasis

(London, the 21st of November, 2011)

Klop Klop
Metronome rhythm
My own enforced step
Accompanies
My escort’s silent gait
On this melting pavement
He clutches at the dog lead,
The throwing stick,
The slobbered ball
And somehow also has manages to cradle
Hatred’s ugly, deformed body close to his chest
Klop Klop
I am the soundtrack to his distancing
The sharp heel at his back
(And I know for a fact
He abhors the sound
Of my cladded footsteps
On waxed floorboards,
Early in the morning,
A rhythm as unsettling
As a heart beating too fast)
I focus on the assault of cracks and bumps on my sole
In each-others company
The school run
Is a round-trip
To the Underworld
The parting at the corner
His form
Gently peeling away -
Harsh sentence
Orpheus won’t look back
I shake off
The shadow of Hades
And head home

I'm Selling a Life

(London, the 17th of November, 2011)

I’m selling a life
By the railway arches
The chug of the Orient Express
Zooming past our house at 11.11
I’m selling foxes
Meaowing before dawn
When the whole world is absent
And the light dusts the street pink
I’ll also throw in a game of hide-and seek
Behind giant tree ferns;
The unruly grass in lazy summer heat
The first ray of light
Filtered through the back window,
Licking the floorboards,
The sheets,
The walls
And you can also have
The stars and the moon
The colours, the textures, the boiler, the fixtures
The piano trills,
The building maintenance bills
Hand in hand we’ll brave the noise
Outside the womb
Life is change
The rest is
Tap-dancing on a tomb.

Styx

(the 7th of November, 2011)

Hey, little boy
Chewing on mints
Suckling at a bottle of water
You come again untied
Your foot has slipped out
Exposing
A hurried dip in the Styx
The failed protection of a distracted mother
Who let the ball bounce and fall where it may
Who condemned a child
To watch over the world as it turns
Forever pushing spiders up a wall

X-Factor

(By Gub, November, 2011)

Whatever I got..
It ain't it!

The lure of the
Masses
The fake eye-lashes
The pauses and groans
Barbed undertones,
Judges bewitched
Contestants
"bitched"

I love your song
But you got it all wrong
Your hair, your face,
Your nose in the wrong place
I mean I know it's demeaning
This lack of feeling
No dignity grasped, or
Lost in the past
A meat Market of
Mediocrity - no public
Sobriety.

Affected, Half
Evil, freak-dome
Cathedral....

It's just a laff
To watch people's
Belief in themselves
Live or die

Gladiators
Craze - washed in
Blue light - sequinned haze

Was it ever thus
That mortal's die
Climbing Olympus ...

For sure Icarus flies
Too near the sun
And collapses burnt
Underground in Hades
Cave -- where purgatorial
Fires laser deep into his body
Toasted vanity --

I could have been a contender,
Pretender -- more like. For what
Purpose -- to entertain those whose vanity is fear, who shelter from the light that the less thoughtful and foolish burn in their place -- the cathartic fumes of another's sacrifice...

Really -- just a bit of harmless
Fun?

I'd rather watch porn - where fame's a notable negation of shame and exploitation not better no, but more honest for it's visibility....

To an Orphan

(the 7th of November, 2011)

Life is a selfish mother
Who won't share the fruit you say
How foolish to pay
Some Body to warm up the air
Map your gaze on a carpet
And duck the implacable logic of death
Oh, let's melt these snowballs, I plead
Don't you want the Ice Age to end?
But you've long been gone
And thoughts echo
Like stones in a cave
I rattle in my crib
No drums to beat
The silence away