Poetic Therapy!
Because it never ends…
If laundry be the food of love
If laundry be the food of love
then my love’s food is abundant,
crammed into its glutted mouth
with potions grim and pungent.
If laundry be the food of love
then I am served with plenty.
May ketchup pour on shirts galore
so my platter’s never empty.
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Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash
When I am old…
I will waft through sunlit rooms
in fun-packed shoes
and sport a batwing like a pro.
I’ll be draped with chunky beads
and memories.
My eyes will spark, my words will flow.
I’ll wear my glasses on a cord.
My hair, fresh-poured,
will breeze like my contented muse.
But I won’t have cats –
stuff that,
will their sneezy fur and toxic poos.
No I won’t have cats.
Stuff that.
Meow. I refuse.
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For some reason I find writing poems like this quite fun… no it’s not normal.
Warning: not for the faint hearted…
The Time Eaters
Snip! And your ear-bones are scraped of their meat
by the scurry-tap-tap of their friable feet,
as you cringe at the swivel of each cold obsidian eye.
The terrible dust of what-never-more-can
trails deep in their wake, and the shortening span
before them is crushed by a clamouring echo of “why…”
Their home is the night
of forever, and there
they will stay, half-hobbled and blind,
if you just keep them out of your treacherous mind…
Drip! And your fear forms a cauldron of bile
as they march on, their mindlessness masking their guile,
devouring the past and the present, consuming the possible.
They are the nothing, the shadows that scuttle,
their abdomens pulsing with malice and muscle,
their skeletal legs scraping paths to the pure diabolical.
Their goal is the triumph
of never, and there
we will end, neither living nor dead,
if you can’t keep them out of your treacherous head…
Slip! Your mind trips as they break through the lies
that help you to sleep. Oh those eyes! Those….
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Photo by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash
VHS Men
When Andrew McCarthy came over all cute
in “Pretty in Pink”, a stirring took root,
When Christian Slater took off his shirt
in “Pump up the Volume”, my oestrogen hurt,
When young Patrick Swayze did shimmies and thrusts
all through “Dirty Dancing”, all virtue went bust…
Real boys were rubbish, so time and again
I spent happy times with my VHS men.
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Photo by Sharon Christina Rørvik on Unsplash
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The techno-launch has become a real cliché. The smart-casual man on stage with a radio mike. The hushed auditorium. The massive graphics yelling “believe” or “because you are” or “we are the we” or some other un-capitalised nonsense.
Honestly folks. It ain’t the second coming, it’s a box of electrical components that’s very slightly better than your last box of electrical components. Get over yourselves.
Forbidden Fruit
We’re here to hear the ineffable plan,
a giant stage, a single man,
the tension builds, the music rocks –
he’s waving a tiny, shiny box.
“Its charging port has been restyled!”
he cries – the faithful crowd goes wild.
Stand on stage with your radio mike,
and show us temptation in pixels and bytes,
Yesterday’s models are obsolete! Dead!
We’ll throw them away and buy this instead!
“The flashlight is brighter!” he says, in tears,
“The camera can give you elephant ears,
and the processing speed has a two percent gain!”
It was worth the sacrifice! Worth the pain
of every twenty-five hour day…”
He drops to the floor. They scoot him away.
Blind our minds with your techno-might,
our needs encased in angel-white…
Yesterday’s dreams are sacrilege! Dead!
We’ll throw them away and buy this instead!”
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Every child is different – of course every child is different. But as parents to an autistic eight year old, and a headstrong four year old who doesn’t see why he should be treated differently to his brother, we have to play by slightly different parenting rules. And we have to get used to looks that say “Oh, just show him who’s boss!” “Make him join in!” “Don’t pander to him!”
But we can be headstrong too.
You Don’t Have My Children
To those who say
“Bundle them in! They’ll soon fit –
they’re kids! They’ll adapt in a bit!”
To those who say
“Make them conform to the norm –
it’s lonely outside of the swarm!”
To those who say
“Just tell them no if they throw
in a meltdown – and never give in!”
To those who say
“Stubborn persistence delivers
the payload of good discipline!”
I say, maybe your parenting skills outplay mine
and that’s fine…
but you don’t have my children.
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About those moments when you reap the rewards of all the crap you put up with as a parent, and enjoy a good gaze at your child…
Mummy-Gazing
I watched you as the sunbeams danced
like fairies on your butter cheek,
my heart was plied, my will was weak,
the clock-hands whirled – I gazed, entranced.
I watched as scary pirate tales
turned real in teetering cushion dens
as through your home-made eyeglass lens
you spied the Jolly Roger’s sails.
I watched you as new thoughts unfurled
and grew like magic beanstalks do.
As each became a part of you,
I thrilled at your expanding world.
I watched you concentrating on
your buttons – oh, a challenge fit
for any knight who’d rise to it!
You overcame. My heart was won.
I watched your earnest little face
tell tales, all sweetly mispronounced,
then watching stopped, as in you bounced…
head-first into my glad embrace.
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And now, a slightly dark and gooey poem for hypochondriacs…
Squelch
I heard the squelch of death again –
or was it just a neutron firing
deep within my boggy brain,
or possibly a cell expiring
down amongst a mucus mess?
It could have been my heart perspiring
(that may be a thing I guess)
or, deep down in the adipose,
the squealing of a fat-lump pressed
to serve as fuel, and I suppose
it might have been a small mutation –
“Pop!” (we get a lot of those),
a bronchiole’s sharp inhalation,
“Hiss!” a membrane’s gooey breath,
a bile-duct’s bitter salivation…
Probably, it wasn’t death.
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Photo by Pierre Acobas on Unsplash