The Billy Goat and the Troll

Tributes pour in for Bee Gees legend Robin Gibb

Hello! Magazine, 21 May 2012

Chafing at the threshold

of a stone bridge over a ravine

a billy goat samples the headwind

hoping for essence of meadow

and tasting only cheese,

cheese topped with a sheep's pelt,

ancient brie reeking like the creases

in rotting skin, seeping from green stones,

the maggoty festering breath of a troll.

The goat looks left, looks right,

looks back at the denuded field

where he and his brothers once feasted

and fought; and standing apart from it

sees it anew in the troll's pebble eye,

a blessing for one to be staying alive.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Steak and mushroom pie

Cancer: is meat the new cigarettes?

Camden New Journal, 5 April 2012

Let us play detective, like a character

from one of your throwaway novels.

Whodunit? Who sowed those mushroom spores?

Line up the suspects in stripes clutching placards

to their cancer-free chests: the man who blew

asbestos dust off worn brake shoes to save a bob

at Halfords, the man who once breathed through

Golden Virginia as though his pipe were a snorkel,

the man who fingered a thousand paperbacks,

benzene bleeding from every hackneyed cliché,

the man who furrowed a million miles

at the pile-inducing helm of a lead-excreting

Bedford diesel, or the one who fell foul

of a spiteful God. All or none of the above.

Now here’s the twist, the last page reveal,

your final meal will be your butcher’s gift.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet