mark-armstrong - Hello Poetry

Mother Nature is a nihilist sitting with friends Around a poker table in the dew drop inn Playing Nasty Canasta and the loser draws a limb On a voodoo hangman, the cut of her kin The high-wire committee say she’s way out of line So they’ve sent in a crack-team of their most earnest faces To blow 40 shades of blue, red and lime From the very corridors our Mother paces She croaks through the smoke “the first sons a novelty The rest are just relics of muscles unclenched Too smart for their own good and that doesn’t bother-me But the reaper is hungry and hustling for rent” Lackeys line the lawn, flunkies on fleek To cover the crack of her chunky cheeks “To stake lives may well seem immoral and bleak But to play for cash prize seems horribly cheap For a Lady of her esteem” But the crowd spoke, she hung up the wardens trunchbull Left the skeleton key within reach of the cells “They’ve aired their opinions and I’ve had a cunt-full Let the hungry ******** impeach themselves I’m sitting this one out” “And I’ll hide, while my dead snake wriggle persists, On Elba with hairy pits, freckled wrists, Openly practicing romanticists And other hapless things that can’t exist In these times” Every second Sunday, the search resumes-led By a dawn-chorus of confetti festooned-plebs She can dance the devils limbo cos she’ll not be presumed-dead While we’ve Holy Grail Package Holi-vows to renew-said The green eyed usher on the door The newsstand screams “Mother Nature was a fascist Sher natural selection was the **** manifesto” And they’re pedalling placebo to the shell-shocked masses While the editor shoehorns a scotch into his amaretto Yeah the world has been orphaned and the orphans smothered But go easy on her sordid soul cos that’s our mother, after all

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Jun 5, 2018

Jun 5, 2018 at 6:26 PM UTC

Mother Nature Was a Fascist

Mother Nature is a nihilist sitting with friends Around a poker table in the dew drop inn Playing Nasty Canasta and the loser draws a limb On a voodoo hangman, the cut of her kin The high-wire committee say she’s way out of line So they’ve sent in a crack-team of their most earnest faces To blow 40 shades of blue, red and lime From the very corridors our Mother paces She croaks through the smoke “the first sons a novelty The rest are just relics of muscles unclenched Too smart for their own good and that doesn’t bother-me But the reaper is hungry and hustling for rent” Lackeys line the lawn, flunkies on fleek To cover the crack of her chunky cheeks “To stake lives may well seem immoral and bleak But to play for cash prize seems horribly cheap For a Lady of her esteem” But the crowd spoke, she hung up the wardens trunchbull Left the skeleton key within reach of the cells “They’ve aired their opinions and I’ve had a cunt-full Let the hungry ******** impeach themselves I’m sitting this one out” “And I’ll hide, while my dead snake wriggle persists, On Elba with hairy pits, freckled wrists, Openly practicing romanticists And other hapless things that can’t exist In these times” Every second Sunday, the search resumes-led By a dawn-chorus of confetti festooned-plebs She can dance the devils limbo cos she’ll not be presumed-dead While we’ve Holy Grail Package Holi-vows to renew-said The green eyed usher on the door The newsstand screams “Mother Nature was a fascist Sher natural selection was the **** manifesto” And they’re pedalling placebo to the shell-shocked masses While the editor shoehorns a scotch into his amaretto Yeah the world has been orphaned and the orphans smothered But go easy on her sordid soul cos that’s our mother, after all

38

Rapt by prognosis, sterile elocution Acute halitosis, banal delusion Digital notice of distant retribution Thrombosis will move you before revolution Brash adolescent right-side part, Strand obsolescence, abstract art Pinstripe filaments, two turned backs Bowed in benevolence, borrowing slack Hieroglyphic ruminations, Plastered protestations. Muscle memory incantations, Aquifuge of patience. Future shock, feminists ride-centaurs Skin-tan hedonists reside-indoors Tin-can telephone spinal chord, Sings-an injured semitone final word 40 years since you were a punk

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Apr 15, 2018

Apr 15, 2018 at 6:01 AM UTC

Thrombotic Erotica

Rapt by prognosis, sterile elocution Acute halitosis, banal delusion Digital notice of distant retribution Thrombosis will move you before revolution Brash adolescent right-side part, Strand obsolescence, abstract art Pinstripe filaments, two turned backs Bowed in benevolence, borrowing slack Hieroglyphic ruminations, Plastered protestations. Muscle memory incantations, Aquifuge of patience. Future shock, feminists ride-centaurs Skin-tan hedonists reside-indoors Tin-can telephone spinal chord, Sings-an injured semitone final word 40 years since you were a punk

17

Are you listening to the whispers? are you feeling scandalised? Harbouring ***** little feelings that you wanna sanitise? Walk through the swinging doors of a catholic franchise Ask em for that sailors knot a black-n-white man-ties To the pairs of prying eyes his practical rebuke Is a marital disguise and a tactical puke Throw the garter ‘mongst the pigeons, the voluntary victims... Whose single minds are filled with matrimonial conviction Paired up poets pool their miseries; the price of art Each miserable synergy - the sum of its parts Did he swear that he’d hold you ever dear to his heart? To love and to cherish til your knees did part? If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another? There she stands on ceremony all silk and sinew While the vow evicted from his Adam’s apple continues To stutter as the panic builds like stifled farts Til it splutters its devotions on her lady parts Her eyes sentence you to sit though your neck-hairs stand She’s the ****** ****** written in the lines on your palm Old scores squeeze sideways through her gritted teeth And he takes on the debt of every promise she believed Hide the love-bites in a polo-neck, your love life in a Rolodex When the ***** hand of happen-stance runs its evil down your keks Cos like the indelible digits on your bathroom mirror Love is for life until you dress it with liquor If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another? We are but experiments, seven billion shades of wrong The clever ones stay celibate, the others pass it on That’s an easy line to settle-on in present company Single-riders in the peloton to pick up the debris

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Mar 7, 2018

Mar 7, 2018 at 5:43 PM UTC

(You Will in Your) Holy Matrimony

Are you listening to the whispers? are you feeling scandalised? Harbouring ***** little feelings that you wanna sanitise? Walk through the swinging doors of a catholic franchise Ask em for that sailors knot a black-n-white man-ties To the pairs of prying eyes his practical rebuke Is a marital disguise and a tactical puke Throw the garter ‘mongst the pigeons, the voluntary victims... Whose single minds are filled with matrimonial conviction Paired up poets pool their miseries; the price of art Each miserable synergy - the sum of its parts Did he swear that he’d hold you ever dear to his heart? To love and to cherish til your knees did part? If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another? There she stands on ceremony all silk and sinew While the vow evicted from his Adam’s apple continues To stutter as the panic builds like stifled farts Til it splutters its devotions on her lady parts Her eyes sentence you to sit though your neck-hairs stand She’s the ****** ****** written in the lines on your palm Old scores squeeze sideways through her gritted teeth And he takes on the debt of every promise she believed Hide the love-bites in a polo-neck, your love life in a Rolodex When the ***** hand of happen-stance runs its evil down your keks Cos like the indelible digits on your bathroom mirror Love is for life until you dress it with liquor If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another? We are but experiments, seven billion shades of wrong The clever ones stay celibate, the others pass it on That’s an easy line to settle-on in present company Single-riders in the peloton to pick up the debris

32

Too old for a visa, too young for the farm Too straight for the army, too gay for the guards If you’ve got no calling, no fella, no wife Have a bunk in the hall at Cape Christ Walk a dowry down the aisle on a leash and a promise Hand on holster handing over the hostage On a dotted line date with a beard-slash-bride And need a Roman ransom? Think Christ If you’re sick of the same ***** giving you grief Don’t lower yourself, turn the other cheek And if he breaks your jaw, then my advice? Don’t come running to me, blame Christ Give the devil on your shoulder a little nibble Every now and again to keep things civil And before the tread’s worn off your conscience, right... Draw a cross in the air and call Christ What do you sell the man who’s seen it all? Ketamine, bath salts, Adam and Paul If sir needle and pipes says he needs a new vice Pull the spiritual card and play Christ When you’ve just reconciled yourself with death And they want a labrat for the time you’ve left When the doctors too fond of his own **** voice **** the medicine man, choose Christ Have you been leading death on a wild goose chase? Trying to buy some time to clean your slate? Call a priest around, he’ll set things right When you’re ready to croak it, plead Christ The Word rattles in the chests of the last clergymen Who drop dead like the devil overheard-ye-and The women look willing while the men look bored But they couldn’t trust women with the Word of the Lord Unless the Eucharist feels like chiselling a nick Off the philosophers stone and swigging it quick-ly Down with a bottle of B Then I guess it’s not for me

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Feb 8, 2018

Feb 8, 2018 at 5:37 PM UTC

The Chaplain’s Chisel

Too old for a visa, too young for the farm Too straight for the army, too gay for the guards If you’ve got no calling, no fella, no wife Have a bunk in the hall at Cape Christ Walk a dowry down the aisle on a leash and a promise Hand on holster handing over the hostage On a dotted line date with a beard-slash-bride And need a Roman ransom? Think Christ If you’re sick of the same ***** giving you grief Don’t lower yourself, turn the other cheek And if he breaks your jaw, then my advice? Don’t come running to me, blame Christ Give the devil on your shoulder a little nibble Every now and again to keep things civil And before the tread’s worn off your conscience, right... Draw a cross in the air and call Christ What do you sell the man who’s seen it all? Ketamine, bath salts, Adam and Paul If sir needle and pipes says he needs a new vice Pull the spiritual card and play Christ When you’ve just reconciled yourself with death And they want a labrat for the time you’ve left When the doctors too fond of his own **** voice **** the medicine man, choose Christ Have you been leading death on a wild goose chase? Trying to buy some time to clean your slate? Call a priest around, he’ll set things right When you’re ready to croak it, plead Christ The Word rattles in the chests of the last clergymen Who drop dead like the devil overheard-ye-and The women look willing while the men look bored But they couldn’t trust women with the Word of the Lord Unless the Eucharist feels like chiselling a nick Off the philosophers stone and swigging it quick-ly Down with a bottle of B Then I guess it’s not for me

36

Someone’s sacred promise broke her way An ancient conquest wrote to say You can turn your back to the rain but not the season So she held the wire beneath his feet, His promises between her teeth And doubted him when thousands would believe-him The acrobats said name your price And quicker than she could bleach her lies The tension in the line Gave way to treason The first stone ***** its holy wings From the hand of the first man without sin She never could look twice at him Now sweet revenge deceives-him Domesticated son of the beast he hides In the wilderness behind his eyes The chains rattle by his side Til the voice of his mother says sit She hides her back with the wall and lends Her face to the rack and pinion men Then hovers in their silence as they wait for her to turn again Pink clouds stretched over the dying light Like skin on the ribs of a crying child The rising wind pulls them apart like the big man pressing send Seeking solace in her skull, her pupils reverse Talk moves slow like her lips are cursed To **** and roast each honest word She can snare behind his prayer Mallet drops sudden as a ****** nose The girl must die for the life she shows Her frightened sisters who’ve come in their droves Death sells and *** collects the fare Domesticated son of the beast he hides In the wilderness behind his eyes The chains rattle by his side Til the voice of his mother says sit Only he knows how close he came to it

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Dec 9, 2017

Dec 9, 2017 at 7:49 AM UTC

Death sells, *** collects

Someone’s sacred promise broke her way An ancient conquest wrote to say You can turn your back to the rain but not the season So she held the wire beneath his feet, His promises between her teeth And doubted him when thousands would believe-him The acrobats said name your price And quicker than she could bleach her lies The tension in the line Gave way to treason The first stone ***** its holy wings From the hand of the first man without sin She never could look twice at him Now sweet revenge deceives-him Domesticated son of the beast he hides In the wilderness behind his eyes The chains rattle by his side Til the voice of his mother says sit She hides her back with the wall and lends Her face to the rack and pinion men Then hovers in their silence as they wait for her to turn again Pink clouds stretched over the dying light Like skin on the ribs of a crying child The rising wind pulls them apart like the big man pressing send Seeking solace in her skull, her pupils reverse Talk moves slow like her lips are cursed To **** and roast each honest word She can snare behind his prayer Mallet drops sudden as a ****** nose The girl must die for the life she shows Her frightened sisters who’ve come in their droves Death sells and *** collects the fare Domesticated son of the beast he hides In the wilderness behind his eyes The chains rattle by his side Til the voice of his mother says sit Only he knows how close he came to it

37

There’s a man off his chops selling tough for a tenner But the mercury drops in his ugly temper And gets lost under Victorian modesty When faced with their war on fallopian sovereignty Girl wears her mother’s mittens for earmuffs Until they’re far enough upwind “See they’re paraphrasing Jesus dear-but I’m not so sure that’s what He meant”!

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Nov 17, 2017

Nov 17, 2017 at 1:48 PM UTC

Victorian Modesty

There’s a man off his chops selling tough for a tenner But the mercury drops in his ugly temper And gets lost under Victorian modesty When faced with their war on fallopian sovereignty Girl wears her mother’s mittens for earmuffs Until they’re far enough upwind “See they’re paraphrasing Jesus dear-but I’m not so sure that’s what He meant”!

8