The garden sunlight plays tag
with our fat ginger cat.
Dad watches World War Two
he grinds his teeth
a general forced to take a back seat.
Mother is in the kitchen
not her natural territory.
She opens cupboards exploring contents.
It is a blue and white kitchen
made of trees that died in 1974
along with linoleum dreams.
She shakes a martini like a
blind cardsharp. Her wrists
are heron bones
that click a gold-toothed charm chain.
Flashes of recollection -
they follow me up beige carpeted stairs.
Small bathroom-toilet to the right
where once I saw mum naked.
Oedipus lives down the hall
as a young teenager.
From my window
I see the long narrow garden
with its back gate.
Passion-flowers entwining pine boards.
When the Nazi Storm Troopers come
I will fire down at them, lobbing hissing grenades
that land like angry cats onto their fleeing backs.
A knock on my bedroom door.
I can hear myself breathing heavily,
a teenager desperately yells: 'Keep out!'
Mum pauses to catch her breath.
She is out of uniform,
and speaking
to a camera in my head.
Limericks crochetés: Once a cardsharp comic called Don Dump
Once a cardsharp comic called Don Dump
Made father’s money jump during slump
Dreamed of ruling this earth
Joined campaign (in) stand-up mirth
Made people laugh without using trump.
He played to the gallery hirsute
Soon his jokes turned sauerkraut through soot
Before long they cried : Heil !
Jackboots clicked, people wail
In goose-step, give : Sieg ! Heil ! salute.
Moral : « Listen not to funny man Dump !
Migrants all know how to scale wall jump.
Ten million there love US
Minus some (who) think like louse !
Live not solipsistic world on rump ! »
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016
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