The Midnight Owl Parade

The owls are a crazy bunch of kooks,

harping out their melody of hoots,

their beak-ish bonces curling like hooks,

nestling among shrubs, sprouts and the roots.

Bug eyes bursting like berries, wide looks,

they twitter lullabies, guard mice loot.

The owls are depressed by the bright days,

strong sunshine ruffles their feathers up.

They befriend darkness instead of rays,

sipping from a river’s moonlit cup.

Deep in the forests, deep with the decay,

holding their banquets where masses sup.

LAMENT: My Man with the  Tarantula Tattoo

Clotted in a spider’s web

and I feel I cannot get out.

Tustle… and you get tangled!

So trapped that you scream and shout!

Sepia singes photos,

a dust halo on your head,

your favourite food I still buy,

even though I’m underfed.

Money-spiders are good luck,

they riddle every cranny.

My luck is hibernating:

locked in celibacy.

Spiders run up the bath’s side.

Your hair lodged in the plug-hole.

I always start, petrified,

and hope they carry your soul.

Samba

The pretty Petals pivot,

plum-pink plumes pirouette,

blotting the skies like ink splots,

on the plane’s left swirly jets.

A ballerina’s balance,

the Wind: the Petal’s partner,

embracing in Nature’s trance,

drunk in the loss of Winter.

The Petals prick the stratus,

blue and white, cloud-clot backdrop.

Puce hitting blue like a bus,

above a bowing corn crop.

Then the partner lets them down,

as dusk slaughters,

this dancing queen stripped of crown,

they sadly sail to mortar.

Birthdays Blitz

“Blow out the candles, see what wishes you can make!”

We’ll claw back those falling years like leaves in a rake.

A beacon of brightness blights the candle’s wick head.

Yea! Another year closer, until I am dead!

Candle perforations crack the crust of the cake,

and after I’ve blown the flames out: I still see red.

Plaguing me with possessions and cheap poetry,

printed in empty shell cards, printed for money.

Party guests fake smiles, fake honeycomb harmony,

and turn up to raid the buffet because they’re hungry!

Balloons bowing with strain of the festivities,

oh, how I hate this pseudo anniversary!

45

Am I the dirty, old man in the pubs?

Who is too old to disease the dance floor?

I stare at my age spot spackled hand tops,

The classic way that I have my hair cropped,

and the way I still wear a shirt and tie;

I wonder if I should just age and die.

Yet every weekend I go home partnered,

They see my sweet soul and past my dentures,

Some men want more than jagged, ragged youth,

I sip wine in a sex-strung bed as proof,

When they leave I strike on a symphony,

Bars bask, a bounty of maturity.