Circus: Poems In English

Not my Circus, not my Monkey (Polish Proverb) Not my Circus, not my Monkey I live in a totally different country Where even the Cheshire cat is chunky And every dustman owns a flunky Where mice are huge and giraffes are stumpy Porridge is spicy and tramps are swanky Jottings for a Noctuary The darkness of the dead hours Chills all night musings bitter to the bone An owl floats, wings like rippling velvet, Across the moon's stark face In somebody's house, life Gutters like a candle Someone's Adam's apple Rattles like a snake A teddy is slumped, wall eyed In a yesterday house I lived in long ago It was never really my teddy,but I pretended ‘It's your brother's, ' mother told me Though he was fourteen, smoked and went with girls My shadow is hunched on the bed Like a kicked bean bag It never learned the knack of charming others Softly, softly, like owl-breast feathers The snow drifts down, Into the waiting arms of the frozen world Gerard Rochford,i.m. December 2019 He may have gone away, His home be dark and cold, His words will always stay. His life was never grey From Worcestershire's threshhold By Hong Kong's rich array. To Aberdeen'shighway A Dead Good Poet, bold: With much of worth to say. His poems were global, stray Against all war and ill Such poems are here to stay He has not gone away Mare Solemnis: inspired by a totem carved by Martin Raynor The North Sea totem is crowned by a cormorant Shaggy wings outstretched With a golden fish in its beak Suddenly snatched by death Beneath its claws, the head of Aeolus God of the storm winds, cheeks Puffed out like a clouds from a pressure cooker Or an angry Highland piper The mediaeval sun shines out Over a nude girl, menstruating Representing the ebb and low OfNatural cycles Two seamen dance attendance by her side While in a boat below Sailors row ferociously off to nowhere Three magnificent ship's cats Ratters, from whiskers to tails Gaze out on the glassy horizon Of the gallery floor A suitable totem for a Sea Port City Scottish Kali: inspired by The Age of Kali by Stephen Bird Scottish Kali confronts the bemused observer She is blue as Krishna's skin Multi-faceted, many headed Her profusion of legs, dangle From Celtic kilts, like a spaghetti junction Of Highland dancers' kilts Ceramic Kali, Celtic destroyer Crushes men like walnuts underfoot She is making a clean sweep of the world The Eastern Spirit of the Apocalypse On Ageing The years have fluttered off like moths The moonlight casts a sickly glow My sheets are cold as winding cloth I'm like a scarecrow grey and wan Watched many seasons come and go I wake surprised to see the dawn And all around us is so changed Now I walk tentative and slow The climate curdles, grows deranged People are now attached to phones It is the winter of the crow Skies fill with predatory drones Forests are felled, mile after mile Once they were home to bird and doe Mankind is driven to defile The very air, once rarefied Is rank, where noxious gases grow Ice caps and habitats destroyed Seas, choked with plastic turn malign Destroying cyclones wheel and blow While governments ignore each sign Soon earth itself may be a ghost Into oblivion, gone tiptoe All native beauty squandered, lost Across the world wars suppurate Whole populations, aimless, go The victims of the Gods of hate I have grandchildren. Will their fate Be compromised, a cruel cost? Will intervention come too late? Soon, I'll be dust, part of the dew Of this small planet, tempest tossed Earth, what have we done to you? The Mouse in the Corner I am the mouse in the corner Clicking and clacking, skeleton's teeth My worries scuttle under rocks Trying to stay out of sight My masks change frequently Mechanical as clocks Time ticks by. I don't do family quarrels I'd rather stand alone and watch the rain I grow afraid of steep stairs, slippery ice, But I remain as punctual as a train After happenings I need a day to recover For the sediment to settle I dislike fuss and bother Life gives no chance to edit out mistakes Grief has no grave, it dogs me constantly Daily tasks are my little pegs of normality So late, so late I learn what I should have held dear I am the mouse in the corner Knowing the cat draws near Dreams Written by the Tea Tree in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens I dream of a nub of ginger I dream of a pinch of spice I dream of a tea plantation Where the pickers dine on rice I dream of the great god Ganesh On his shrines in Sri Lankan hills I dream of the fruit bats flying Where a slope with darkness fills I dream of my kinsman crossing The coolie lines to wed Who left their wives on retirement Sailed home to a single bed Standing in the Queue In 8 minutes the school bell will ring In front of me, a dithering puffball Of a woman procrastinates 3 times she lifts a bag of peppermints 3 times she puts them down again To buy or not to buy Does the shop stock Maltesers? Down in the stockroom? She's happy to wait, they're nice After all, they've rung up half her purchases I flex my fingers into a kneaded fist I grit my teeth I will her boiled in lava I would like to smother her with her woolly hat In 3 minutes the school bell will ring Now it's lottery tickets she's after Not one, but ten. The lottery machine Jams, stutters, spits out what it should swallow My blood pressure's off the scale In 20 seconds the school bell will ring I leave when she takes out a sack of her Xmas mail I haven't bought anything A Chronicler of Our Age Inspired by Aberdeen at Leisure, a photographic exhibition by Martin Parr at the re-opening in 2019 of Aberdeen's Art Gallery The Hummer Daddy Limo Catch the mood of a hen party A tipsy granny, bleach haired and spray tanned Clutches an inflatable male nude Penis erect as a cucumber An onion as large as a beach ball Is reflected in its prize winning cup At the Duthie Park In Exodus nightclub, a couple Dance like dervishes in the mosh pit Their hair spins like seaweed in a whirlpool In Craigiebuckler kirk 39 OAP ladies strip the willow With 11 OAP men, Death having thinned their ranks At the Castlegate, Members of the City of God Shake wigs, dreadlocks and bums Drunk on the power of love 23 female ramblers stand smiling in puddles Beside 2 men of the species The others having ambled off to The great hill walk in the Sky By Burns Statue on Union Terrace Hairy legged runners flex their aching muscles Cheeks lobster-red with sweat At Pittodrie Stadium Supporters are snapped mid-cheer Exposing pendulous tonsils And irrefutable evidence of dental decay In the Ashvale Chipper lures folk in with its smell A whale of a haddock lies lathered in battered Lolling beside a bed of chips and pies R V Jones The genius who was R V Jones Had science intelligence deep in his bones ToWestminster Abbey his corpse hasn't gone He's buried in Corgarff in Strathdon Presences Owl leaves her boudoir on silky wings Hocus pocus, she's gone in a blink Slashes she leaves in air flow seamless together The child leaves her warmth in the bed A crease in a sheet, after she scampers off Two hairs on the sofa reveal The family cat's been round