White Elephant

I put one word wrong,
then a foot,
then the other one.

I knew I’d made myself a rod,
a steel root
I stumbled back upon.

And thus, like so many others,
I must face
my punishment.

The white beast dished out
to turn lace:
an elephant.

The beast of burden and of shame,
Ensured everybody would know my name,
For it got placed on a long and lonely list,
Made up of crazy, foolish idiots.

I went into a slow decline,
Lengthened by riches
My lifewould become defined
By feeding with an animal from ditches.

My ruin began with a new collection of bills
The cost of this new life of frills:
A diet for a giant vegetarian,
A specialist white elephant veterinarian,


A house fit for the king and his ilk,
Straw-hay bed as soft as purest silk.
I hired a man just to clean up its mess
And to clean the button (under some duress).

A polisher to polish its tusks,
A seranader to serenade it at dusk.
A bather to bathe its wrinkly skin,
A masseuse to massage oils in.

Triple the land to let it stretch its legs,
Plenty of lakes to let it cool those pegs.
I gave it a mate so it could raise a family
At the cost of my own family’s sanity.

A manicurist to keep its nails neat,
A pedicurist to keep well its feet.
A hunter to protect from wild beasts,
Special birds for to on parasites feast.

All these things and a heck of a lot more
Found their way into making me hit the floor,
For when all these things were up totted,
They hit a peak and down we all trotted.

Downsizing in land, downsizing in house,
My family moved on to a more secure spouse.
Until I wound up, as I said earlier,
Firmly in the gutter with my familiar.

I learned the hard way
Not to outstay.
And so I write this down
In the hope you’ll not drown.

So, to stop yourself becoming devoid,
As says the rhyme I’ve been trying to avoid:
Never piss off the King of Siam,
Or you’ll end up as poor as I am.


All this I record in the sand,
Before taking one last swim
Ending with the last reach of my hand.

Tweet Repeat 56 (Safety Waves)

That lot always seemed to undulate round campus:
Never alone, always in groups,
As if they expected some kind of rumpus.

Admittedly there were some dangers,
But the caution in their faces
Grew more and more and ever stranger.

Moving about like sheep or swallows,
They eternally played follow-my-leader,
Within a protective bubble they wallowed.

Sometimes I worry about them now:
Can, will, each survive alone?
Or will they become social sacrificial cows?

Or undulate prettily in new groups,
New jet streams to flow in,
Still able to bloom and fruit?

Rhymes for twitter promotions

To gain knowledge that glitters
Get on to our feed on twitter

Keep in touch, don't become a fritter
Get updates of all sorts up on twitter

Follow us on twitter
And never again be bitter (Keep in touch for all library news)

Become a big hitter: follow us on twitter.

Dance a sort of jitter bug by giving us a twitter hug.

Why have hummus and pitta when you could be following us on twitter?

Don't be a quitter: follow us on twitter.

Ooooh, missed another sitter?
Should have been following us on twitter

Even on the shitter you can follow us on twitter (cannae take the credit for this one, though)

Hear all the library titters by following us on twitter.

Tweet Repeat 55

From the way he stravaged, I knew it was John the Savage,
who had been brought to London and left free to roam, 
far from his warm and tropical home. 

Just as in Brave New World, for him, 
this world was hardly a pearl -
Our conceited pomposity has 
imprisoned him in our unfair city. 
Unable to return over there he finds solace in the outside air:
Dreaming, planning his final escape, 
I hope his is not a grizzly fate.

Tweet Repeat 54

It was a gallant one that saved me, sailing in as if in the navy. Opened my eyes wide like pies and sutured by lugubrious nature.

While you are away, my darling

While you are away, my darling, I stare into the
space in our rooms
And I take and I fill and I arrange particles of
air into rows
And columns and build a perfect image of you from feet to
face and I zoom
To each part I would like to tenderly kiss from
hair down to toes.

But kiss nothing.

While you are away, my darling, I lie on our bed
upon my side
And I imagine you are lying sweetly beside me
bowled-eyes meeting.
I imagine so, that I feel your presence and warmth
upon my thigh
Until, believing you are here, I reach out to
hold you tightly.

But hold nothing.

While you are away my darling, I play dangerously
with my mind.
It fills the voids with substance, with radiance, light:
fairy lights.
And it clouds my judgement by tricking my senses:
makes me blind.
Until I inflate it up ‘til it bursts once the bubble’s
far too tight.

And I’ve nothing.

When you return, my darling, I shall build for us
A hundred mattress high bed to set us aloft, apart
And, in your true form, we shall lie together
Content to be lying, meeting eye to eye, forever.

I’ll have everything.

---

Written for entry in The Bridport Prize, 2012

I Hear Only Her

I was sure I could hear the sound of her froufrou
Above the whistling and the bustling and the choochoo-
All the station noises seemed to disappear
As she walked to toward me, ever more near.

The way she moves, ever elegant is her gait,
The twinkle in her eye shows my glorious fate-
With her return there is nothing now to fear,
As through the crowd for my sight she peers.

Together we move off through the crowds,
Again it is just us, no sound quiet or loud-
Except for her voice whispering into my ear,
“Thank God I made it, everything is here.”

As factotum

As factotum I’m required to do everything,
And, sometimes it seems, everyone.
From mustering up some hearty dindins,
To polishing the platters once its done.

I wash the bird muck from the castle walls,
I dredge the moat for anything that falls.
I test only the most disgusting foods,
Like cat’s spleen, dog hair and rat stools.

I stand and take blows to the chest,
For fun, to fill bored time and space.
I am made to pose and walk in dress,
Following bouts of alcoholic excess.

I’m sent to hide in hide and seek
And am not found for days on end
I’ve stood as a scarecrow for one week,
And got punished because my odour offend-

ded- whenever I test the toilet pole
It always breaks and downward I fall,
Whenever I go out to catch moles
I nearly get hit by cannon balls.

And once I was sent out to find a fishcat,
They like to play tricks on me like that.
The sort I don’t quite get for some reason,
And to question only gets called treason.

So unquestioningly I carry right on,
Hoping day each for nothing too nasty.
For I doubt I’ll ever get my fight on,
Or raise my voice ‘til it becomes raspy.

Because I am slave factotum,
Because I make up the bottom.
For me rights have not been invented,
I wait for the world to be inverted.

Tweet Repeat 53

His endless attempts at being jocose left me extremely comatose. I was too far gone by then, ready only for the gaga pen.

Goblins can be a nuisance

Goblins everywhere,
Goblins in your hair!
Busy making nests
Deep within your chest.
Creating lice and nit farms
Upon your legs and arms.
Mining for green bogies,
Right at the top of your nosey.

Goblins can be a nuisance,
When goblins show their puissance.
When they lord it over the weak
And turn them into Goblin Peak.
Fear not, though, I know the secret
To make them more than just discrete:
To get rid of Goblins, vicious or wild,
Spray them with any sauce that's stronger than mild.

Tunnel into Darkness

Crawling through tunnels, I found darkness
Beyond that expected, of a different sharpness:
Another world beyond and below,
Ruled by the meanest of all fellows,
Who greeted me with a marvellous grin
And a welcoming drink of tonic and gin,
And closed the door firmly behind me,
Which didn’t strike me as particu’ly friendly.

That place I have made now my home:
I’ve even a fiery and demonic gnome.
Beyond a moat made of lava
And a hedge of burning cassava,
Stuck forever under evil house arrest
Dressed only in an acid vest,
I lie in the bed I made when I killed Nell,
Consigned forever to the depths of hell.

A jabberwocky

A jabberwocky : In a pin-striped leather frocky : Over by the cushioned rockies : When I wore long curled lockies. 

Stood upon its head : Pretending to be dead : The colour of a book I’d read : That weighed as if made from lead : And filled me up with dread. 

As did this great beast : Waiting to make me a feast : Or brew me up with yeast : Either way it would not be neat : For my head, my middle or my feet. 

“No, sir, I’m not dinner!” : “Aah, human girls make me thinner: With you I’m on to a winner : For to impress my love, Regina : I must shift some many a concertina.” 

“Well, then, I can help : I can get a smaller whelp : One as wholesome, healthy, as kelp : As fat and juicy as an elk : Yes, I can give you my sister, Shelp.” 

I gave him a china dolly : Which he gobbled down after saying, “Golly!” : But it stuck, got crushed and cut most unlike holly : Making him bleed to death and be less than jolly : Which was how I killed a jabberwocky.