‘Orchestras’ are like ‘organs’

Similar but different

Like ‘Peas’ and ‘Mushy Peas’.

English, French or Spanish,

Words are incurably clannish.

We only feel safe in sentences,

And give each other nuances

For Christmas.

Why be an exclamation?

Risk misinterpretation?

No – find a nice conjunction

To hold your hand and function

As an isthmus.

A trendy new anthology

We shun with no apology.

So its by some sort of savant?

Dicey – and I bet we haven’t

Missed much.

A cancer of Kalashnikovs

To take a thousand lives,

With a callousness of cartridges

A thousand weeping wives.

A murder of machetes,

A vipers-nest of knives,

And the babies rot unburied

While the devil’s foundry thrives.

He works not far from Basingstoke

Northampton and St. Ives.

He’s one of us, you understand,

Plays rugger – good at fives,

Gives to the church at Easter

Replants divots when he drives.

So, for England, he will see that

Every killing field survives.

I have seven days to kill

With second order things. A thrill

Of inner longing will

Envelope me should I stand still

And think of you. I’ll fill

Each vacant second full until ……

I know the hours will pass and I shall do

A hundred things with half of me.

The rest will be a hundred miles away

And occupied unceasingly with you.

The tallest tree is as far as life goes

Unless you count astronauts

Little green men

And my dreams.

I never did what we did

To do what we did

But to do what we did

With you.

I am

Something which even

The mongrel cur

That wanders the stinking gutters

And refuses nothing,

Would be unable to stomach

Vomiting it back

And leaving it

To suppurate

Foetid with the stench of decay

So that you

Covering your face

Would turn away

Retching.

Better a park bench

Than that bed.

Better a long day on the road

Than those awful nights

Better this nothing

Than that nothing

Better this loneliness

Than that

Better an early winding sheet

Than those suffocating blankets

Better the hard clean living sod

Than that billowing white abscess,

That bed of pus and maggots.

All my life I have burnt and cut myself

Now the cold pure wind

Can extinguish

The last charred hacked remains.

Better this death

Than that.

Bleeding the atmosphere

We transfuse our pale minds

With its coloured ether.

The will edited out

By fine-tuned surgery,

Freed from the contagion

Of life’s three dimensions,

Our eyes kiss the grey cheek

Of our benefactor.

We sigh,

Smile,

And settle –

Quarantined forever.