LOCKDOWN

sleep held me
under tight lockdown

the silent mind
cannot
go crazy
this it might have
whispered
but
I did not hear

unable to wander
make my journey

the sea
mirror calm, but
nothing mirrored here

MAENAD

MAENAD

unless Dionysus,
whose creature
keeps me shackled,
release me

I will remain here
as much as prisoner
as his unwitting disciple
whose dark body
heaves, whose voice
rants, raves
so bitterly unrequited

NEVER DREAMT

no more
chaos from you
Mr Butterfly

on this
day of liberation
she has you
me
pinned, penned

your only flights
flights of metaphor
if you
had time to think,
space to move

battering your cage
your nose
pressed up
against the glass
she
has zoo-reptiled you

like those unfortunate creatures
plucked from tropical lands
you saw
enclosed, withheld,
contained in
a cubicle with a view

which, tragically, comically,
as a child you never dreamt…

JOINTLY FLAVOURED

MUFTI, PUFTI

The Grand Mufti declared
“there shalt be no
more
crude rhymes and
obscene puns”

and there I was
singing “mufti, tufti, pufti”
(and worse)
as they dragged me off
to execution.

OUR LAST

I love
how you nuance the
day to day
I would follow
you here to, had I
your way with
words

but nothing, pray, on
this fascist dictator
ascending the throne
and standing alone

when, in his
supremacy of power, this
sweet poem of
yours

could be
our last.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

since Lennon sang the Walrus
someone has been
pulling the
strings
(not plucking, not
strumming) has
drummed us
into where
we are
now

nowhere men in
nowhere land
our kaleidoscope eyes
looking back at us
from inside
the TV

FOR EVERY MISGUIDED SOPHIE SCHOLL

Oh the students have
voted
expressed their
free will

to kill some words: too
poisonous or
precious

same
game,
same every year, I fear
ten wise and wonderful
textbook Nazis

for every
misguided Sophie Scholl.

WARMING EFFECT

It’s a
pity

ESCOM cannot
switch off the Sun

a succinct getting-to-the-root-
of-it move that would
increase our dependence

since no one
wants to sit waiting
an entire Ice Age
no chance
for a selfie, no
hope for
sexual distraction,

and no mitigating effect of
usual radio or TV brain-
softening soap opera
managing at least (like
propaganda) to
conjure up
fiction with
warming effect

AS IF

AS IF!

scissors, blue
pencil

lines must go

just three acts not five
and no soliloquies
(for what are these but
upmarket parenthesis?)

and no
politicians not
speaking prose
but rhyme

as if!