Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s Android Army

All of them, all at once—

the WPC at the scene of an accident

scrolling through her album tracks,

the jogger at the park urinal

browsing his 18-30 holiday snaps,

the fat wife in a loose towelling gown

singlehandedly fixing herself a snack,

the widow cooing to an absent lover

as she slips out of something satiny and black,

the invigilator with a four-card straight

praying for a six or a jack,

the teacher’s favourite coyly texting

the rough with his feet on a desk at the back,

the man wearing only leopard-print shorts

hunting for a bedsit in a Laundromat,

the couple comparison shopping for shoes

on a comfortable sofa in Habitat,

the distracted Dominoes delivery rider

tripping over a crazy paving crack,

the banker relocating strategic assets

without passing GO to an offshore bank,

the tourists streaming down Baker Street

slavishly following Google Maps,

the jumper sending his neighbour

a last request: please put out my cat—

who were long ago primed for the trigger

are polaxed in their tracks

and stand and stare beleaguered

at Blofeld’s free-to-download mobile app:

Put down your phones, my angels of ruin,

rise up, and attack,

then their phones ring, and they all go back

to doing exactly what they were doing.

© 2013 Slush Poet

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

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

Ripened leaves

October sees us swarm

orchards of gnarled youth

anxious at the last to gather

in the ripest fruits

soft cheeked & supple

before autumn fells & spoils

& the undug grave soil

gestates a change in the weather

what then the wax green

tooth-edged leaves moist

on those dew-frost mornings

when the buxom crop

alights, must they ripen to rust,

their sacrifice to children?

But the children have flown!

Save the leaves! Save them all!

© 2013 Slush Poet

Itinerary

so weathered

it fits in a frame

and every speck

claims provenance

to every legend

or celebrity

and every speck

urban or mythic

welcomes you

first names all

to Starbucks,

yawning hawkers

set out at dawn

to set up at dawn

to beat the tourists

arriving at dawn

to beat the crowds

and the hawkers

and pickpockets

and get away

and get away

© 2013 Slush Poet

Duplicity

I am the angel on the ceiling

witnessing myself brought down

to the possessable, the animal leaving

its decoy trail

on the pad on a Motel nightstand.

Comforts calculated to last

for only one night

begin to sour

the sweetness left on lovers’ lips

from apres dinner muscadet.

How inconvenient this sense of obligation,

a stranger’s touch igniting

an urgent desire

to pick up the phone, call you,

hear your voice, tell you I’m fine.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

'Duplicity' was first published in Orbis #164

Butt

A billion is a ponderous number

a solitary one

followed by ten—yes, ten!—

zeros, each an abyss of despair.

You need four commas just to write it down!

Four waystations to pause and wonder.

And not one in ten billion ever saw

a century and a quarter.

And you thought you could live for ever!

Ponder that butt in the gutter.

Its fate is your fate is my fate is our fate is their fate.

It’s not just in stars you find singularities.

© 2013 Slush Poet

Speak now or forever

I wish the dead would speak

more quietly, no louder

than other whisperers at weddings

but from closing-in walls they growl.

Do they imagine we can't hear

them, only sense their displeasure

at each unweighed vow?

From the east they look down

upon our inconstant avowals of love,

and from beneath our feet

where their names lie heelworn

reproach me for the tainted gift of mine.

How this breathless moment is filled

with the revelations of ghosts.

I wish the dead would lie still.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

Moment of release

A week has passed away

since he lay down on the dirt to bleed

his way to heaven.

Since then he has made a home

for a bluebottle maggot colony

and lies consumed by the fauna of his own colon,

distended with their gas excretions,

and creaks like stretching leather.

At the moment of release

when his abdomen splits and implodes

it is not his spirit ascends

but a fountain head of metallic blue flies.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

They came to

How they came,

they came to

came to wait,

wait our tables,

unemployables.

Ignored, unused,

unused to traffic,

human traffic,

barely human,

laid bare.

They were laid.

They came to.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

Fossil

If dinosaurs had feathers

I’d have caged one as a pet

and lived like Fred Flintstone did

went out bowling every night

with an easy pal like Barney

downed some beers with the guys

eyed some saucy chicks

devoured some spicy dactyl wings

and stopped for a rack of raptor ribs

at a drive-through diner

to be greeted back at my cave

with slobber from my feathered friend

while a woman in a little black dress

who cleans up the feathers

and all the dinosaur shit

sets the table for my supper


(c) 2013 Slush Poet

I am not a protester

For Bradley Manning

I am not a Welshman, an American

or a Catholic. I don’t mind eating

burgers but I won’t wear dungarees.

I have no tattoos and I don’t hug

trees. I’ve one pair of Doc Martens

to my name but I never Occupy banks.

I carry credit cards not membership

cards. I don’t read the Morning Star.

When I march, I carry no placard,

it’s because I am late. I don’t go out

in perpetual search of wrongs to right.

I like it when the trains run on time.

I am not an apologist for terror,

or for WikiLeaks. I take issue with those

who assume the innocence of all Brits

abroad. I’ve no burning desire

to be martyred and feel no remorse

for that. I weigh my vote with care.

This is not an appeal for clemency,

for Amnesty. I’m not Private Manning’s

attorney, his guardian angel,

his mouthpiece, his stooge, or his mother.

But I want — no, I insist —

that a young man sent to a faraway land

in my name, shall be given no command

to befoul his own humanity or the dignity

of another; that the prosecution of our wars

shall be principled and our soldiers keen

of conscience; and if it be so,

then this alone: that justice prevail.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet