THE ONLY EDEN

Granny unable to
see

would build me
touch by touch

with her blind fingertips
search for the face

she would create.

Here my cheekbone
coming into being

there an eyebrow
newly born

here an eye
there a philtrum

sculpted from sunlight
hewn from nothing

here blind seeing
fashioning me anew

her fingertips
butterflies

forming this
living portrait

of the face
I own.

Her fingers feeling
for each nuance...each tone

the music of me
plucked from thin air

one moment I am not
then I am

all there.

I made all the more
real.

More realer
that I could ever be

emerging from
her fingertips

as if I were
God's Adam

and this her tiny garden
the only Eden.

TAKE FIVE

what I love about her
was just that

she would never stay
the same self

always morphing into
someone or something else

as when air becomes music
she the classical

shape-shifter-self
always a becoming

she on the journey
to who she could be

changing her parameters
like she would change a dress

either inventing or
discovering a sense

of who she is
of who she was

sloughing off a self
slipping into something

a little more
comfortable

to the who
she will be

always a
watch this space

always wearing
a new face

LOST BALLOON

crawling from the crash
I couldn't have died
if I tried

I had a son to save
laughed
spat in death's face

pulled him from the flames
I forbade him to die
he disobeyed

the car exploded
burning the edges
of the night

I survive
without him
a death in itself

my reflection
does all the talking
I just stare in the mirror

Christmas now
I feel like a lost balloon
sticking to the ceiling

MY OWN PRIVATE PRESIDENT TRUMP

Oh the lies lies and ****
statistics of you!

You tell a better lie
than I can tell the honest truth.

"I didn't say that...I never
said that!"

The Trump...the whole Trump and
nothing but the Trump.

So - help me God!

The outright lies of you
the half-truths...evasions...obfuscations

the lie so
see-through

the Russians have a word
for it - VRANYO.

That is to tell a lie that you do not
expect anyone to believe

the totally transparent
told purely to save face.

Although you do do - LOZH
the straightforward lie.

Or  MASKIROVKA
the "little masquerade."

The Salisbury Cathedral
Spire of you.

The fake news
of you.

Well listen Buddy
I can't spare a mind.

And I've just quit
this friendship.

THE TRUE STORY

The wolf sat on the ground.

Little Red Riding Hood
sat at his feet.

"Well, well, well, so
here we are again!"

said Mr. Woolf in a faux
English accent

he had picked up from watching
Peter O'Toole be Lawrence of Arabia.

"Some apple juice my dear
have some apple crumble do!"

enquired Mr. Woolf of his
fairy story cohort.

"I baked it myself you know
molasses instead of sugar

gives it that dark flavour
oh and a little touch of ginger!"

Little Red Riding Hood
wolfed down the apple crumble.

Sipped...slurped
noisily through a bendy straw

annoying the silence that
gathered itself around her.

There was a piece of apple
crumble on her nose.

For a little girl she
had a big appetite.

The wolf ate nothing.

"We can't go on like this
any minute now a child

somewhere in another
somewhere

will start our story
by opening a book.

I will be called upon
to eat you and Granny up.

I don't even like
grannies for gawd's sake!"

Mr. Woolf had tears that
refused to fall.

It's got...it's...got
to somehow stop!"

Little Red Riding Hood burped.
"Pardon!"

So, when the child I used to be
opened the story once

upon a time it was
simply not there.

There was nothing there.
Nothing but a great big ****** blank.

Somewhere in another somewhere
Little Red Riding Hood

swung on a swing
Mr. Woolf pushing her

higher and
higher into

a summer blue
sky.

"O JEREMY....BENTHAM!"

He called his walking stick
"Dapple!"

He called his teapot
"Dickey!"

He called his elderly cat
"The Reverend Sir John Langbourne!"

He sits with his real head
between his legs

long after he was
dead.

His body preserved
so that it could be

wheeled out at meetings
if his friends were missing him.

At a College council meeting in 20i3
marked as"present but not voting."

Didn't believe in Christian burial
the Church's teaching "nonsense on sticks!"

Thought folks should be useful
both in life and in death.

Tears always when remembering a lady
presenting him"... with a flower in a green lane'

"Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future
– do not let me go back to the past.

THIS TOO TOO SOLID FLESH

My body
disowns me.

Slams the door( making the
little blue china cups rattle on...

...their little blue china saucers ).

'COME BACK. . !
I scream

but it is only
a thought.

The silence
mocks me.

I've an idea
of what to do

but without my body
I can't see it

through. . .

Nothing about me
is real.

How thoughtless of my body
to just up & leave me

like. . . that!

Now I am
just a disembodied thought

floating invisibly
inside my flat

scaring the cat
raising hackles

unable to turn
the **** TV

off....aghhhhh
3 hours of Big Brother.

My body is snickering
just outside

the door
listening to my soul roar

with rage
at being

unable to translate
thought into action.

Oh how I long
for the body's flesh

even...yes...even
its fatty bits.

My body
enters

grinning: "Ok...ok
you're forgiven!"

& I enter it
eternally glad to be

human
this mesh

of spirit
& soul

And yes...yes
. . .flesh!