A prayer

You look the same as you did

yesterday when I woke before you

and had to still my thoughts

before I could see the rise and fall

of your twice covered chest

and had to hold my breath

before I could make out yours

coming ... and going

and as long as I leave you

undisturbed I can still imagine

you are snug beside me, shrouded

beneath your drawn up sheet

© 2013 Slush Poet

Weed

lordly

like a whoremonger

over the brittle

strawgrasses

whose roots’ tendrils share

the strewn boulder bed

trackside

weed

thinks itself

a tree

a pepperpot tree

it might as well

ponder how

it broke through

to open sky

it wasn’t there last week at all

Cut it down to size

show it for the weed it is

remind it whose realm this is

—whose tracks

—whose terraced streets

—whose jobs fill these wagons

A train rolls by prostrate with limbs

of a diseased forest

felled in Wales

and you’d think

a weed could take the hint

© 2013 Slush Poet

Ham & Emmental Sub

First class fare served up by Virgin:

wheat flour, water, semolina, rape

oil, yeast, salt, E300; slit with a knife

lengthways using a horizontal slice

arranged back by back and spread

with mayo: more water, more rape

oil, egg yolk, sugar, white wine

vinegar, Dijon mustard, E1422; salted

once outdoor-reared now dead

pig posthumously gorged with Es:

E450b&c, E301, E250; Emmental

with E160a (and presumably cheese)

382 calories after dressing

with rocket and, once bitten, dribble.

© 2013 Slush Poet

An instant lucid

At the bank

Two eminent gents of Threadneedle Street

(their names sewn into their linings of silk)

play backgammon with fresh-baked cupcakes

topped in real gold and silver vermicelli.

Around them a phalanx of red-faced men

in striped shirts swollen like circus tents

tethered to earth only by their braces

scramble to place wagers, knowing

each and every one a sure-fire winner,

the stink so pungent it seeps through glass.

A child with her nose pressed to the window

mistakes the whiff of greed for that of dinner.

© 2013 Slush Poet

Diez before Dada

after Tzara

Take the first line of the first in line

were you whom you purport

to sign their names

in spring, or waited

a chamberless inn

when we braved the terrace

How I trembled all the more

to burst upon surfacing

It was the same with Diana

of course, Starbucks—

and neither did She turn to me and say

that I was any less an arachnid

© 2013 Slush Poet