Then? What then?
What about the
Bare legs
Seeking address
Wait. Be a snail.
Then the hours
Began undressing
And then?
Wait.
No unleashed
Impulses.
The earth tilts
Towards the sun
Here in India
Dusk thickens
In California
Legs in line
Mostly bare
For the dancing hall
Sea and seagulls
Some vultures too
Mingled with the
Moneylenders
Waves and wavelets
Tipsy and tottering
Hard orange pieces
In pursuit of
soft ones
Twilight in the bottle
Exuberance in deluge
Here the legs
And hands
Raise the curtain
Bread and butter
Poetry and Mathematics
Computers and
Greenfields
Fish and mutton
Then? And then?
Then? What then?
The Fable of Jesus
Jesus was skeptical of his tribe, he didn't
whether he was a Semite, his father, the renowned
the wood craftsman had green eyes and knew
a few phrases of gallic monks had visited until
the Rome administration banned them
Jesus, to please his father, built a bookshelf, it was
It was so bad his younger brother had to take over
Jesus took umbrage and moved to Jerusalem, where
he hung out with radicals of his time
he was good at talking and soon became their leader
there are a few girls in Jesus's fellowship
one of them was Magdalene who had the hots
for Jesus, tall and elegant back in his youth
Jesus became famous when he threw moneylenders
out of the church, many more people joined his flock
He thought he was powerful and took on
the Rome colonial administration and arrested
they mocked him and gave him a crown of thistles
egged on Haiku
y the hateful priests, was crucified
During the night, women got him down from
the cross, hid him in a cave till his wounds healed
A fisherman called Peter smuggled him and
Magdalene to France
they had seven children, and he ended his days
as respected goldsmith
ODE TO MONEYLENDERS
Oh, what designs can one possess
Lending succour to those with naught
Such desperate need one must confess
And how hard one must have fought
When courtesy has no more currency
With those to whom one is indebted
And there is a sad loss of coherency
Then additional loans must be netted
Limited choices never were the best
Yet lenders all may seem attractive
In selecting just one from all the rest
One does have to be quite proactive
Yet each time, the first steps are easy
Later payments getting ever harder
Mounting dues can make one queasy
It can be hunger and an empty larder
Interest becomes the pound of flesh
With debts spiralling out of control
Raw need and sympathy never mesh
As timely repayment is ever the goal
Whether institutional or private loan
More than money may be involved
Property as capital soon sets the tone
And any timely exit is rarely solved
Pleasant outcomes appear quite rare
Borrowing is always a slippery slope
With risk of ending in a pit of despair
And yet for some, there is still hope
Modeled by the skilled and clumsy hands
of artists and artisans into an ideal state of she-ness,
a penniless waif appears on a stool
last week a stranger called her Mona Lisa.
Statuesque upon the betrayer
warmed by the lemon-lolly light from
bays of north facing windows, blinded;
she can but blink.
Surrounded by a
cog-notched cyclical wheel of nubile artists—
blooming buds of wildness, vertical sprigs
flail softly on the breezy bounty of
illumination.
Brush and trowel, thick and thin,
the artists stoke her—semblance
canvased by millennium brush biters
maudlin Mary is returned to the pre-historic stew
by the likes of Claude
polished to a pearly perfection
by type A, Hieronymus’.
They were all strangers to her posers,
every bit as much as she.
Royal pretenders in a world
where only the artless
are paid.
Moneylenders rise on their discarded carapaces
beauty sucked dry by the doers and shakers
who spread like choking bittersweet through
the lollypop-light from the bay windows facing north
consuming Mona.
Julie ford Oliver - Famous Models
Ekphrasis
First Appeared in Illumen Magazine Fall of 2014
They used to flock here
Of a Sunday
For worship and prayer
Lost in a world
Of private contemplation
Now they come
For that first Sunday pint
Praying for an end
To splitting headaches
And that endless ennui
The wafer and chalice,
God's own flesh and blood
Have given way
To Bacardi breezers
And two for one burger deals
No need for a collection plate
To pay the poor priest's bills
The greedy owners rub their hands
As cash flows into the tills
A couple of miles away
Young couples arrive
For a peek around
St Michael's showroom flats
The baptismal font
Of property awaits
If they stump up the cash
And take a leap of faith
Mortgage advisers
Wait in the wings
With chequebooks open
Ready to earn their corn
For this is modern Britain
Born of Thatcher's greed
And moneylenders in the temple
No longer brings scorn
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