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

New Year's resolution

Fasting once a week could help you live longer

The Telegraph, 19 February 2012

Peter didn’t plan to go so long

without eating. He wasn’t aiming

for a mention in the Guinness

book of fools, freaks and unfortunates.

But he had over-indulged,

and so resolved

as his tyre chains bit into the forest

road home to lose the surplus,

shed the spare, kick

the snacking habit, maybe

next year.

When New Year came

he had already been fourteen days

in the belly of a Volvo stalled

at the side of a glacial road.

Stalactites of his breath tinselled

the rear view mirror, a yellow pond

had frozen where Peter’s feet would be. 

The winding windows in the back opened

onto his larder, where

the richness of Swedish vocabulary

lent variety to his diet

of snow.

Peter didn’t know a month had flown

by. He’d seen through the snow

that the sun had risen and not

set again, and now his white

cocoon sparkled like iced champagne.

Since his body quit

shivering nothing moved, and without movement

what is time? His breathing was shallow and silent.

The silence convinced Peter

he was deaf

or dead. When the world

broke through

Peter’s Volvo-centred igloo,

and green and blue

gushed in

with a scorching

pine-laced gale to the rasping

of blades, the breaking

of seals, he had nothing

to offer his guests.

‘Eat,’ he told Officer Nyberg,

‘snow.’

Peter Skyliberg was found awake and able to speak after spending over two months trapped in his snow-buried car on a Swedish forest road. Scientists think he may have gone into a hibernation state in which his body conserved energy by lowering its temperature.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Gloriana

Gilded Barge to be Given to The Queen for Her Diamond Jubilee

London Evening Standard, 12 January 2012

Lord Sterling, who knows how to float

(so rare a knowledge, both bold and

quintessentially cut of an olden

courtly jib) his monarch's boat,

contrives to consort the Jubilant Diamond,

upon a rowbarge hewn from wealden

chestnut greenwood graced with golden

leaf, in Tudor flourish to Richmond.

Lord Redgrave, viz Olympian Sir Steve

to erstwhile peer and liege, shall weild an

oar of forty-four and row the dhow down-

stream this June the third, the river

pinking at the passage of Old Bess

on so sycophantic a pageant of excess.


(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Scraping not the sky, but by

Worst areas for child poverty are in London

The Independent, 10 January 2012

Your eldest brother, whom you'll know

by the dried scent of my tears, awaits

you on the distant bank, my fleeting child;

beyond the towers of Barclay blue

and Citi red, a kindlier place

than those you've known, where floors and walls aren't cold

and damp, where supper costs a smile;

so sweetly sleep and in your dreams

around you fold my lullaby, and warm

fresh tears I'll shed upon that veil

that he who waits beyond the Thames

shall know you for his kin as you shall him.

The rain has stopped, I've heard that frost

is coming to this shadow land;

where no sun lights the grassy cracks no March

could come too soon; we'll feel full force

this Winter's spleen before respite's at hand.

Remember us, oh fleeting child, the wretched

who must hourly bear your loss;

there’s nothing spare to keep the fire

alight, nor sate the bailiff’s avarice;

he’ll have the bed from under us

and repossess these rags we wear;

for bread and wine we’ll take the Eucharist.


(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Roll the final credits

DRUNK HUBBY BONKS TURKEY SANDWICH

Sunday Sport, 1 January 2012

What would you do if you knew that all
was doomed, the credits due to roll?

Race back over the time line, erase
this headlight knowledge from my gaze!
I only bought the Sunday Sport
to check the form and lighten my load
but there, in the midst of bountiful breasts
(the nipple count put them at seventy six)
was a journalistic scoop so bleak
the Greek black hole seemed less alarming,
Japan’s tsunami a minor leak,
Korea’s new leader queerly charming.

And what dire news had so rosied my specs?
The Sport’s correspondent in St Moritz
revealed that world leaders had laid final plans
for the last episode of the story of man,
and like Pat Butcher’s last croak on Eastenders,
the mysterious Bilderberg Group, whose members
include Henry ‘Strangelove’ Kissinger,
Melinda Messenger and the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
is keeping the script a close-guarded secret.
But thanks to the Sport—Oh I wish I hadn’t bought it!—
the truth has been outed. There’ll be looting, utter panic,
when a year from today Earth collides with a planet!

The opposite page gave a glimpse of the depth
of depravity to be unleashed at the death
of the world: a certain Jeff Collins was caught
in flagrante ‘stuffing’ the family turkey.

Well, what would you do if you knew that all
was doomed, the credits due to roll?

(c) 2012 Slush Poet