Cousin Jack’s Oggie

‘Pastygate’ reaches fever pitch

British Baker, 30 March 2012

First, there’s her gravity, the pull

of the underground, many a miner’s

been drowned by the weight of his lunch.

Then there’s her heat, best handle her like a potato

as thinks she’s a coal from the fire.

Tuck her in your overalls, feel her bulge

against your thigh. Drop her down a well shaft,

skim her over water, hurl her like a discus

for the sport of it, or heft her like a breezeblock.

Tap her golden skin with the back of a pick,

her crust caving in like the shell of a hard-boiled egg,

or resounding with a hollow thud like the ripest melon.

Tickle your fingers down her twisted spine.

Bite off all you can chew

and lustily grease your chin

with her unctuous short crust pastry

with just a hint of tin; crisp nickels of turnip

and spud that shove ha’penny over your palate;

steak or venison in peppery gravy mud-sliding

over your tongue to settle like ballast,

filling your cavity, reasserting

her kinship to gravity.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Ways of coping with loss

Death and disasters don’t make much difference to Lloyd’s of London bosses

Simon English writing in The Independent, 29 March 2011

A city tailor's clients sifting beans in the old

Lime Street coffee shop get misty eyed.

That great collapse of 2011 was when

we last felt alive, we mattered then —

shat ourselves in the fall, but made a killing

when the dust had settled. This new lot though

make 9/11 look like an act of God.

You can look away or lend a hand,

an ear or a voice, you can pick

over the bones of the fallen,

try on their shoes, make hay on the cheap

meat, hold the line or let it slip

through your fingers, become inured to it all

or insure it away like those men in fine suits.

Christchurch shook us, all that rubble,

it could have been St Andrew Undershaft,

and their dead looked just like us.

Not like Thailand, a sodden orange rag

snagged on a wallowing log shaped curiously

like the Buddha, (karmic comeuppance

for sex on the beach?) or the Japanese

fishing boats dry-docked in villages

landlocked by salt lakes that once were paddies.

Three billion pounds the lot, paid out in full

at a loss. Corks are popping nonetheless

in city bars because, like those fortunate

unfortunates, the suits are fully insured

and assured an excellent vintage this year.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

AF4590 F-BTSC

‘Son of Concorde’ may get off the ground

Evening Standard, 28 March 2012

From here she seems a thing of most

savage beauty, a kite, braced on an updraught,

outstretched talons clutching a glittering

shard, her laser eyes on the shiny prey,

her hazy tail a plume of fire.

I want to cry, ‘get down, get down,

it’s safer on the ground than in the sky’;

but never imagined she’d come to roost

on the roof of the Hotel Gonesse.

Two great nations wept when her wings

were clipped, but in my mind she flies on,

outpacing the sonic boom of her renown.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

A siren sounds over Astra town

Threat of closure revisits Ellesmere Port

Financial Times, 26 March 2012

I

There’s a siren sounds at the turn of each shift

that we set the clocks by in our town.

Nothing much else disturbs the peace

at least till the landlady hollers time

and those who’ve spent the day guiding

seats onto runners, bolting alloys

onto hubs with pounding pneumatic

spanners, burnishing livery badges

(admittedly with greater pride

if it’s a Vauxhall, though few now are),

down their Stellas, their Speckled Hens,

with a thought for the poor sods turning nights.

II

There’s two and a half thousand workers

on the Vauxhall merry-go-round,

and many a publican, butcher or bookie

along the road home through Hooton

(which was base to the 6-1-0 squadron

during the war). But news from the front

(no Enigma required, it’s all in the papers)

says the Germans are scheming, again,

aiming to close down the plant on efficiency

grounds, too many tea breaks they claim

(some might say they’re attacking our Englishness).

Detroit looks on, promising fairness:

‘materials, markups, then labor,’ they say,

but an Englishman’s labour is the price they pay.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Vow

Girlfriend to wed slain French soldier posthumously

The Times of India, 25 March 2012

I will dress his wounds

as if they were skin

deep, nurse the flesh, keep

my prying, searching fingers

from running to the fleshy lips

of his entry wounds, retracing

the path the bullet ripped

through to his fluttering heart

and beyond. There is no ring

on his hand to pair with mine,

just a number tied with string

to his middle toe. And so

I will dress his wounds

as if I were his wife

and held the rest of his life

still in my hand; and if

I can not hold even this

seeping body, but only

memories of our wedding

plans, and must desert him

to the earth and go

home to his ghost, let me go 

in law as I do in flesh

as his widow. Amen.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

A quantum perspective on splitting the nuclear family

Why failed Romeos turn to drink

New Scientist, 24 March 2012

I drink to forget:

my mother standing beside

herself, watching the slow disintegration

of her favoured son upon an ice-lapped beach,

her faith breached beneath the waterline;

returning in darkness to an unlit home

where the cowardly letter I'd left would be neither

read nor unread before I’d lifted the house's lid

to see if the cat was alive or dead, and because

the cat lived, her kittens had to be drowned one by one;

my father's glass eyes seeing through

small consolations, numbly asserting his pride

for the very first time, and this on a day he has none.

how loving me causes pain.

Best people just say, ‘he’s started drinking again.’

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Spring equinox

Spring — time to stand a raw egg on its end

Los Angeles Times, 20 March 2012

On such a pivotal moment as this, the date of your birth

(put off already a day for Saint Jude)

surely the absence of bunting, of incense, of chanting,

of licentious revelry means, well, something?

Stasis, they say, pervades the equinox: needles and pins

stand erect, your stories stand scrutiny;

the scales of justice balance, your bank account, too;

your slippers are where you left them, your bed undisturbed.

Celebrate then the start of the second half of something great,

a moment of perfect symmetry, life and loss in equal measure,

be it half a lifetime . . 52 down, the same to go;

or half a marriage . . you’ll buy her rubies yet;

or a half-dug hole . . you’ll dig into your eighties

   before your bed . . is made.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

The martyrdom of legitimacy

Protests in Morocco over ‘rapists’ licence’

METRO, 19 March 2012

for Amina Filali

More than her honour was taken

at the point of a dagger,

yet by what passes in Morocco

for justice this innocent maiden,

by the name of Amina,

found herself indentured to wed him

who had raped her, the bloodstained bed in

which she was martyred

to become her God-sanctioned prison.

Is it to the western mind more shocking

that her own mother, Zohra,

was the person most loudly exhorting

her daughter, a child of sixteen,

to accept this bazaar

imposition simply to keep folk in

their village from idly gossiping?

But Moroccan law

lets the vilest predator go walking

free as due reward for a token

proposal, and, insha’Allah,

many an angel must choose between Satan

        and, like Amina, the liberation of rat poison.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Note

In Morocco, a rapist who is prepared to wed his victim may go free if her family accepts his offer. Meanwhile, the anonymity of the rapist, but not that of the victim, is protected by the state. Amina’s unnamed attacker will now go unpunished.

White smoke live final

Archbishop of Canterbury's resignation sparks speculation over successor

The Guardian, 17 March 2012

Bearded men in crimson frock coats

shuffle along in orderly lines that

might be mistaken for processions

were their rivalries better disguised.

Not for the first time they sign away their

arses, swearing oaths of allegiance

to Simon Cowell, Lloyd Webber, Lord Sugar

in bile-inducing VT bios.

First the medicals: cold hands cradle

withered private members, beards fool

no one, women must be rooted

out before round one commences.

Auditions get the party jumping.

The most effete contestants stumble

never to see boot camp, judges’

houses or the prime time live rounds.

Palms get greased and fists get bruised,

reputations made and spoiled,

careless oaths and foolish ruses

aired on live TV. And all the

while we watch as in slow motion

a replacement Santa Clause is chosen.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Flytrap

Swiss bus crash kills 28

Disaster News Network, 15 March 2012

It’s the static-charged thunderhead of anguish

that drives them wild,

the helicopter crashing on the set of John Landis

all the more poignant when the victim is a child.

Imagine then the frenzy

in the press-room when the body count gets unveiled,

the unexplained mountain crash, the gory disassembly

of 28 Belgian kids,

the trauma of survivors, the wanton sycophancy

of reporters hounding them in their hospital beds,

then beaming from the backlot

their grief and mourning direct to where you live,

bringing the shit to the maggot.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Note:

The actual headline attached to this story was ‘Swiss bush crash kills 28’.

http://www.disasternews.net/news/article.php?articleid=4515

05:11 am EDT, March 15, 2012

Ministry of Corrections

Who are the Commons moles changing Wikipedia entries?

The Independent, 9 March 2012

The Member for Shipley never told the Sun

that Muslim vandals should fuck off. His words as re-spun

are online and exhibit exemplary tact,

and no one knows who has altered the facts.

The Member for Enfield never flipped her second

home for pecuniary gain. Instead it’s reckoned

her expense claims were both ethical and exact,

and no one knows who has altered the facts.

The former Member for Birmingham Ladywood freely

admits to repaying a paltry amount mistakenly

paid her, but whose mistake is not recalled

and no one knows who has muddied the record.

Someone inside the House has been busy redacting

the past. The question is, for whom were they acting?

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

According to The Independent:

‘An analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent has found that MPs and staff working in the House of Commons have been responsible for making nearly 10,000 changes to pages of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.’

Six attempts have been made ‘to redact a passage detailing a comment given by the MP Philip Davies [Member for Shipley] to the Sun for a 2006 article claiming that Muslims had been responsible for an act of vandalism. Mr Davies had told the paper: “If there’s anyone who should f**k off it’s the Muslims who do this sort of thing.”’

‘One of the most persistent and successful attempts to edit information was made by Joan Ryan [Member for Enfield until 2010] ... At least 10 attempts have been made from computers in Parliament to remove information about her expenses claims...’

Clare Short, former Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, told The Independent ‘her staff were “angry and protective” about inaccurate and negative entries on her Wikipedia page and said it was quite possible that they have been responsible for the changes’.

What the meteor foretold

Massive solar storm heading for Earth

The Guardian, 7 March 2012

Three days ago did three wise men

evangelizing from the pulpit of their renown

diversely divine what lay behind

the sight of the sky above England’s darkness

ripped by a foundry-white

and fire-spitting meteorite.

The first wise man was keen above all

to dispel all doubts of a second coming.

To an accompanying choir of altar boys

and backed by a posse of celibate priests,

all asserting that God wouldn’t be so lame

as to use the same ploy twice, his holiness laid

the blame for what was surely the end of days

on the sinful bonding of loving gays.

But didn’t the Lord already do that,

the skeptic retorts, to Sodom?

The second spoke more levelly and was brief.

Shooting stars, he said, always come to grief.

Remember Bill Haley, remember his Comets?

One fly-by and whoosh he was gone.

This one again augers nothing, the brilliance

of my smile shall continue to light the airwaves.

The third looked out from his ivory tower

and beheld the sundered sky.

Then he looked down, on the ground below

was assembled a host of reporters.

He greeted the Guardian, threw out the Mail,

gave a long, troubled stare at the Mirror,

finally spotting with literal tumult New Scientist

standing alone. Why are you here? the guru asked.

Because Brian Cox cannot be found.

But have you not searched the sky?

That is where he resides.

Now the wise men are silent, their prophesies

undone. Albion mounts an around the clock

watch for a rock, not for a messiah.

Strange lights in the northern sky illuminate

nothing. The moral compass points East,

the arrow of time thinks it’s

a boomerang. GPS too is off-kilter, I see cars

driving backwards down rutted tracks,

the drones of war have strafed with friendly fire,

a West Coast train arrived in Carlisle

before it left Euston. The lights have dimmed

so my toilet won’t flush. A satellite streamed

pay-to-view porn freely into

the hyperlinked minds of babes.

So now we know, that burning light

in the sky, it wasn’t a meteorite,

but a distress flare lost to the night.

(c) Slush Poet

Made in Japan

Nissan announces Sunderland jobs bonanza as new model is unveiled

Sunderland Echo, 6 March 2012

My small hands held the present like

a beating heart in a jar. I placed it on the hearth rug

and peeled its shiny layers away. My own space capsule!

(Batteries not included. Made in Japan.)

My small town had two museums

where the tourists went. They came with cameras

fixed to their faces. They took their money back to London.

(They had long lenses. They came from Japan.)

My first car was a Datsun which I drove

into the ground. It turned to rust on the street outside

and I had to pay the scrap man a tenner before he’d tow it away.

(Replacement parts were cheaper from Japan.)

My small corner shop would collapse without Nissan.

The wages my customers spend are sent from Japan.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Dave Allen at large

Gay marriage is like slavery, Catholic leader says

The Telegraph, 5 March 2012

Did you hear the one about
the priest whose ranting left him hoarse
so he heaved a hateful dogma out

his arse?

He said, God gave Adam Eve to care
for his children and his every wish,
and lest she wander had her wear

a leash.

It’s plain the man should dominate
in marriage, and for that a woman’s
an essential extra to abate

confusion.

And in the end your bottom’s not for sharing,
but to give the word of God an airing.


(c) 2012 Slush Poet