Saturday, December 31, 2016

Wagtails wag their tails warily,

Wagtails wag their tails warily,
Stonechats chatter,
Storks talk about it,
And magpies natter,
In both Eurasian and Iberian tones;
but, these species are not alone,
And down on the strand,
Things are getting out of hand.
Turnstones have turned every stone,
Sad sandpipers pipe despairing laments,
Grebes, shag and cormorant all duck and dive,
But snipe do not snipe,
They swerve, dodge and sneak away,
Through reeds and sedge at the water’s edge
Gulls rise in skeins
From the slipway,
And ride the wind out over the cape,
To join the wild geese,
Far, far away
For exile is their destiny.
Since none can cope,
With prying bins and scopes.
Birds are themselves,
And do not exist,
Just to be ticked off,
On your list.


Monday, September 26, 2016

Orange Fly

Orange Fly

A ten millimetre fly
flew onto the window at
fifteen hundred hours
as from its rest in Ashford Kent
the blue train moved

the fly
head legs
back belly (pale)
proboscii (paler still)
and wings translucent
was in fact all over orange

as we increased speed
the fly seemed to position itself
aerodynamically
head forward
feet clutching the window
resolutely

history
evolution
I put on my spectacles
science of flies in extreme conditions
there must be a name
for this determination
to hold on

as the wind strengthened
so did I’m sure its tiny adrenalin
how would it breathe
battered by motes of dust and pollen!
and its grip is slipping

let go I shouted
in deafening silence
so not upset fellow passengers
who might have had
seizures of anxiety
had they come aware
of the perilous predicament
of the orange fly

unaccustomed
to the seismic new
technologies of travel
(no longer the slow gait
of plough and carriage)
as it searches pastures new

and now as the train
accelerates again
its eyes are closed
its cheeks rippling in
the ferocious slipstream

Oh two of its legs
have lost their purchase
Let go I cried
soundlessly again
my body arched in sympathy
my hands clenching
the seat in front
and moist eyes
reflecting round its tiny form!

now clinging
by two legs only
go home!


and it was gone.

(©Emile Sercombe)

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Eel

You make me feel
Just like an eel.
And I want to wriggle out of it,
I want to squirm away
I want to slime away
I want to crawl away
I’d even travel over land if I had to,
Until I find the rivulet that leads
To the stream of my dreams
And then I’d be following my nose
I’d go with the flow,
I’d have a current affair there
Until stream become river
Fresh water turns to brine
Then I’d ride the tide
Out into the sea
And on across the ocean
Going where I have to go,
All the way out to
The strange Sargasso.



Monday, June 13, 2016

Because I am an owl.

Do not rub your wet body on me,
For I am not your towel;
I hang around at night and hoot in trees,
Because I am an owl.
Don’t do your carpentry with me.
As though I was a wooden peg
I see things that you do not,
And I am not a dowel;
I hang around at night and hoot in trees,
Because I am an owl.
I’m no kind of gardening implement
And I dream all day of eating mice
Which a trowel just cannot do,
Then I fly in the dark on silent wings
And occasionally hoot.
Furthermore, I’m not a sound made by a wolf or by a coyote
If you think I am, then you must have been
Consuming too much peyote
I am certainly not a howl
I hang around at night and hoot in trees,
Because I am an owl.
And I symbolise great wisdom
In my few spare moments
And fly away to sleep all day,
When the night is over.
I never make angry doggy noises
Since I am not a growl,
I hang around at night and hoot in trees,

Because I am an owl.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

The anti-charismatic

Hello, I am a slug, and I’m crawling out tonight,
Leaving a trail of slime, because I’m going to unite
With the headlouse, the woodlouse, the weevil and the rat,
And also join up with several other species that
Are anti-charismatic, in the public eye,
But this is an injustice which we seek to rectify.

None of us look striking posing on mountainsides,
Migrating across savannahs, or singing in the sky,
We don’t dive or leap majestically out of the ocean
Fine artists don’t paint us to symbolise emotions,
Or patriotism, freedom and other noble notions.
We don’t roam in rainforests or on tundras,
We were stowaways on the ark
And where we live is called infested
Never made a national park
No one will cross the world to see us
But to hear a gorilla fart
They’ll fly all the way to Africa in a polluting jet plane
The gorilla farts, they gasp in glee
And then fly back again.
We won’t sell you anything
With cute faces or appealing eyes
The means of our own deaths are what we advertise
Since a picture of a cockroach sells tons of insecticide.
We are vermin, pests, pariahs, carrion eating parasites
 But when it all ends, we’ll cut you down to size,
Because the corpse of one lion will feed a thousand flies


Sunday, May 22, 2016

Sabotage

Sometimes underrated,
Sometimes understated,
And sometimes squished into dog poo.
But the interface of foot and planet
Is the domain of the shoe,
Or more truly that’s the place of all footwear,
It could be a boot, or sandal, or clog
That’s located down there.
And, though I’ve no wish to be rude,
I do have to tell you, that feet can be nude,
Exposed to the elements,
To sharp thorns, to cruel broken glass
Or the bite and sting of beasts
Who lurk in the grass
But Footwear can show status, or betray poverty
Be high or low heeled, be hidden or be seen,
Be dreamt about by fetishists
Or be marched in by fascists,
But if you study history
You’ll see that footwear’s destiny,
Is not to shield feet,
Nor ornately display them,
Nor keep them camouflaged,
But to break the machine
Like the hurled workers’ clogs.
The true purpose of the shoe is

Sabotage

Thursday, May 12, 2016

LONG LIVE THE SUICIDAL WEASEL

LONG LIVE THE SUICIDAL WEASEL
The weasel that bit through the cable
At the great hadron collider
And died, fried
Was a heroic guerrilla fighter
Trying to make the world righter
And stop humans playing
At being gods
Since we, being silly sods,
Full to the brim with
Vanity and insanity
Will wreck this planet
And make it unfit for all to live on
The weasel, the human or the gannet
Or orcas either,
Or even the beaver
If capitalism gets its way
We’re going to inhabit a huge ashtray.
So let’s raise our hand, our beaks, fins and paws
To the weasel who died, fried

For a noble cause.

Saturday, April 30, 2016

mousedeathode

I arranged an assassination
Of a visitor to my home,
But, I’m no modern Machiavelli
Or player of a game of thrones
So I must stress
It was not a guest,
Who died on my floor alone.
My victim came in uninvited,
I was not a jovial host.
He or she ran away
In a streak of grey
So I thought, at first, it was a ghost.
But in the end through over confidence
My visitor showed its true form
Pointy at the front
And incontinent at the back
It shat all over my floor.
Now I’m no benign Buddhist mystic
Or smiling tolerant sage
So scattering mouse turds all over my place
Caused my anti-rodent death rage.
But when I took the limp corpse out
To throw it in the bin
The Mouse god started planning a vengeance
For my rodenticidal sin.

Soon I know that I’ll be offered
Something I cannot refuse
A free holiday forever, or a return ticket to youth
I’ll tread on the trigger to get it
Then the man trap will smash into my back
And I’ll become reincarnated
To scurry for crumbs
In the corners of some fat bloke’s flat.


The great auk is gone,

The Great Auk is gone,
So we’ll never know now
If it cried “Awk”, like its own name;
And Steller’s Sea Cow
Has gone too,
So we’ll never again hear
Its maritime moo.
The Passenger Pigeons’
Great commute is done.
And the thylacine,
Who can say?
It could still be around today.
That’s what we’d rather believe
Than face the fact
That we are butchers, who loose little sleep,
Then wake to kill and kill and kill

Only then do we weep. 

2 leg chimp

I am a mortal thinking ape,
I can play memories like a tape,
Or a file, or disc, on a machine,
That I can view on an internal screen;
But when I do,
There is no re-run
Where I can change what I have done,
To what I should have done instead
Or erase
What I shouldn’t have said.
Unlike my cousin, the chimpanzee
Who can hoot and swing
Through trees,
I’m bipedal and when I look behind,
With my eyes or in my mind,
I see my track
And I went where I went,
And I cannot take it back.


Friday, January 22, 2016

2 POMES JAN 16

THE AVENUE OF THE LIVING DEAD.

I walk along the edges of hedges
Staying strictly on my side of the boundary walls,
That divide the public from the private
In this suburban street
I respect private home owners protected by privet
And do not pry
As I am only a spy or a secret agent
In my dreams
Which means that I never try
To look through net curtains
Or see behind
Trendier bamboo blinds
I don’t know what happens on the other side of their windows
And I don’t care what they do in there
Although imagining unlikely orgies
Or strange rituals
Is some solace to me
Passing the time,
As I pass each separate silent house
And walk alone along
The avenue of the living dead.



BIRDWATCHING

Wetlands are not what they once were
When beside lagoon or lake
The only sound was the wind sighing
And the calls of crane and crake
Where rails could rail
And waders could wade
Only harried by marsh harriers
Now meres that were swam on
By phalaropes
Or angled by fishing herons
Are gazed at by men with telescopes
And women with high powered lenses
And there is no corner of bog or creek
Where camoflague can blend in
So egrets egress
And bitterns get bitter
Because they’re sick of being peered at
By crowds of prying twitchers.



Tuesday, January 12, 2016

DODO MODERN POETS FIZZING FEBRUARY

DODO MODERN POETS
 FIZZING FEBRUARY      
Join us  on Friday 12 February for the opening show of our new season at the Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden. Expect stellar performance poetry & music from a strong and varied bill.  
PROJECT ADORNO     
 Sharply-tailored songs performed with wit & wisdom   
 AGNES MEADOWS        
 Gifted poet & organiser of 'Loose Muse' women's writers nights   
AMY McALLISTER & JASON ASHFORD      
  Sparks fly in joint set from masterful slam supremos       
 PR MURRY  
  Artist-poet targets the insanities of modern life                
Friday 12th February  2016 8pm
The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, WC2H 9BX
£ 8 &7 concessions, MC Patric Cunnane
Info: 01303 243868patric.poet@zen.co.uk
Covent Garden/Leicester Square tube.
dodo modern poets letting fly with words