Belike well known this bean counter,
Full of manure, a mean shouter.' No man
Of the people, i say mount him on a steeple.' Where the brisk winds will turn him..Maybe it might learn him? A blight worse than csn be imagined' his politics
Are so spavined.' Re-start Dommybrook
Fair.' And tar and feather him there.' Better
Still quote this poem, against the way he's
Now going, a foul beast I pursue him.' For
All the wrongs he is doing.' He's not even
Plastic Irish..Plastacine t'would be more like it.'
Old beds reinvent themselves,
as archived hammocks for the distilling
of sweat and foam.
Sprung mattress’ sag like spavined camels,
or twist days and nights together
into sheets stuffed with mental laundry.
Some beds have fallen comatose,
they wilt like boneless owls
in slumbering hollow.
A young boy jumps up and down on his bed.
One day he jumps very high,
when he lands, he is a teenager. By his side
a young girl,
both not knowing what to do next,
until the bed
begins to whisper to them.
Higgins was the worst Math teacher,
and that year I was his worse student.
Higgins had loose blubbery lips.
When he taught long division or algebra
his words were full of spit
and phlegm.
Higgins had big feet and he carried a large
thick-soled sneaker
which he threw at slow thinkers
It hurt
especially if hit by it 3 times in one lesson,
especially since we had to pick the damn thing up
and hand it back to him
especially when he loomed over you glaring,
daring you to be a wiseass.
Higgins was really very big
his massive form always intimating
to young minds.
Mostly I just doodled his form
on my school math book.
Happy to flunk any test of his.
Once I drew him naked,
his fat backside bouncing on the back
of a spavined mule.
Underneath this masterpiece I wrote
'It hurts don't it?'
Sadly he had snuck up behind me
too late
I felt his hot breath
drooling down the back of my neck.
Higgins was hit by a bus,
but that was years later.
When I heard
I felt sorry for the bus.
The Blackpool donkeys have given up,
they have boarded jumbo jets
as emotional support animals.
Once they used to plod between
the Blackpool piers
half a mile up, half a mile back,
day after day,
carrying whooping kids and adults
as they heavily jogged along;
fat thighs clapping sore ribs.
In a dulled daydream the donkeys moved
with downcast eyes,
backs spavined from gleeful bums and knees.
When they could carry no more -
they were trucked away
to be neglected unto death.
Now the donkeys,
when not flying business class,
surfboard in Hawaii,
their Bermuda shorts billow
as if tailored for four-legs.
Those that once rode them
on that uncultured English beach,
now take river cruises
to the more refined European cities
never wishing to see a donkey,
but if they should come across one
I hope that for a moment
they feel a knobby spine
again bruising those broad buttocks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/abused-donkeys-not-licensed-work-blackpools-beaches-572591
Old beds reinventing themselves
as hammocks for the distilling
of sweat and foam
into an archive of dreams.
Sprung mattress’ sag like spavined camels,
or twist days and nights together
into sheets stuffed with mental laundry.
Some beds have fallen comatose,
they wilt like boneless owls
in slumbering hollows.
Beds keep their history recorded
in the brain-stems of a thousand bodily impressions;
beneath lumpy mattresses horror movies clump,
and pornographic images are laid
timorously to rest.
A young boy jumps up and down on his bed.
One day he jumps very high,
when he lands he is a teenager. By his side
a young girl (both),
not knowing what to do next, until the bed
begins to whisper to them.
A nightmare
after something I'd had,
a cowboy film,
the late-night news
and Cervantes at bedtime.
On a spavined jade
the last of all the cowboys
with lean shanks
astride gaunt flanks
rides down
to Death Valley.
The last of all the cowboys
has soon put paid
to enemy tanks
along Stygian banks
way down
Death Valley.
Ever onward they wade.
to the cowboy's last tune,
some joining the ranks,
some jumping off planks
Close-down, lockdown
at the last rally
in Death Valley.
I hope all this
was just a nightmare.
Thinking otherwise
I do not dare.
Feather-weighted by leagues of slumber
old beds reinventing themselves
as hammocks for the distilling
of sweat and foam
into an archive of dreams.
Sprung mattress’ sag like spavined camels,
or twist days and nights together
into sheets stuffed with mental laundry.
Some beds have fallen comatose,
Only to wilt on the branches of time
like boneless owls.
Beds keep their history recorded
in brain-stems, of a thousand
bodily impressions; underneath some,
old horror movies, and pornographic clips
are laid to rest.
A young boy jumps up and down on his bed.
One day he jumps very high,
when he lands he is a teenager. By his side
a young girl (both),
not knowing what to do next, until the bed
begins to whisper to them.
The heavy lead blocks
Feeling completely spavined
Ineluctable
Zymotic gulf like nihilism
Hollow skull starved
Explodes wherein of itself
The wells enlarge
And vomit happy
Under sunken stars
As Baryshnikov they
Perform deep under laps
Enveloped lightly and kingdom come
Pallid as an interwar prostitute
The ball in the stomach floating like a foetus
Intense maladies and ulcer-bile-black night skies
Cross-hair river bed
You could chase me if you
I know where the gunshots fire
I know all the exits
Brechtian how easy into slumbers
A real face to death is an occasional depression
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