There's an arrow in my eye 
can't see too good 
feels like someone's put
a hood
over my head,
if
this carries on too long,
King or not I'll soon be
dead.

Jack said, 
'****** me 
Harry's going down in history 
blinded by some blaggard and
his archery'

Well 
sew me sideways in a tapestry 
everyone's gone down in history.

The abbess at the abbey kneeling,
sifting through
confessions or devil dealing, but nevertheless 
stealing precious time to pray for Harold who being on the way to the other side
wasn't really bothered anymore or indeed a King.

wouldn’t it be great to learn Greek
she says
quickly riffling
through the phrasebook
with a thumb and her tongue out
while I try to discover what
‘to speak’ is in Dutch

everyone uses English
you know I say
spluttering ‘ik spreek, jij spreek,
hij spreek’,
trying to nail the pronunciation
like the book tells me to
‘ick sprake, yigh sprake, hi sprake’

but they might appreciate
tourists knowing a bit in Crete
like ‘efcharistó’
or ‘ti ypérochi méra’ she mutters
but it all, literally,
sounds Greek to me
and we can’t visit everywhere

besides, she wants warm weather
but I’d be fine in, say, Sweden,
‘Där är den närmaste Ikea?’
or in Iceland, but I can’t
pronounce anything
the way the phrasebook
wants me to

so Greece is probably best,
and anyway,
she’s too busy
informing me that
‘monókeros’ means unicorn
and it’s 575 quid each
if we book now

In Winnipeg
they dig the winter graves
in autumn
before the sun sleeps
and the ground freezes.

They guess the number
of holes to dig.
They respect the cold
and the winter dead.

Death prediction
is a fine art
in Winnipeg.  


© M.L.Emmett

The night's like a cockroach that crawls up my skin, evil, exciting,
I let the night in.

The stockade has fallen, I'm free on the lam,
what kind is this man that chaos delights in the cockroach? we all know those nights so
don't pretend you can't see
or defend me, but just be one if the stars will allow and accept it
for this is the now.

In this junkyard of existence persistence pays off.

There is the diamond, a mirage floats on high,
a jewel
and my third eye desires the fires within,
more cockroaches crawl up my skin,
I let the diamond lights in.

If I excell at this it is only because the kiss of a madness is on me, badness is in me,
If vanity is to be
then it is surely
the cockroach who leads
me astray.

The government de-flowered me
it stripped me naked and
overpowered me
while the state police sat and watched it
on CC TV,

Perverts.

did we vote for this?

Election fever hits the town like a
dose of chicken pox and when the
fox is in the coop
they only do what foxes do
count coup,
I don't blame them, the
sly old dogs.

and the E.U
is how it's said in Lancashire
with an accent tha' knows
like
eeh you
yeah you know who and we
know who and they know you
and you're ******.

When they check you out for microphones
they're measuring you up for the glue in your bones.

It's a bit of a giggle,
a laugh or two
then the government screws you
and what can you do?

It's an eye for an eye
and swap a truth
for a lie,
they either **** you or
we'll let you die.

Kindness,
a mess
in a pickle.

In the end, when unseen
and the fairy King changes
into the wicked old Queen and
all the cards
have been marked,
my ignition
catches the sparks
and I come to life.

Old men.

Generally speaking in private
when old men are dribbling or leaking
I keep to myself,
safer that way when the window's
the only way out.

Poetry bothers me much
more than old chimneys
that smoke
down in Battersea.

Anathema.

I smoke **** in order to be
insufficiently free of
deficiency,
which is in any case
all Greek to me.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
university educant,
not like me who was
dragged through the secondaries
and modern too,
not much education, but
what can one do?
when the riverbank calls you and the
corn starts to wave and the wind is the music
to which you can rave.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
earns more than me,
but I have more memories,
like sailing off to the sea
like catching fish for my tea
like swimming naked and free,

is educant a word?
and that's the education of me.

It doesn't matter when they're dead
what they said about what
you read about
dead is about the
matter.

Anti what?
what he wanted was a scale model aero,
not a scarecrow and he was that and more.

But the night closed down, the door was shut,
the candles lit, the corners cut and
what they said and
what they said
reverberated in his head,
echoes of the things and dead at that.

It was never going to be the case that this case would be cold, too old to laugh, too old to cry, too old to live, too old to die, but dying was the case and cold at that.

sometime later when the joke fell flat and I fell into that despondent air she came to me where the dead don't go and only the life in the living know and kissed me.


And it's not what they say, she said, and it's not what the living will think of the dead,
I shook my head in some disbelief,
who was the thief?
who took a liberty?


who took the bell?
who takes the road that takes them to hell?

This is just a Thursday and quite normal in the late day and the right way is not always the way we write or the things that she says in the dead of the night,
write it and be cursed
the way I wrote it and rehearsed
the end.

I was plucking out weeds from between the concrete patio slabs. You were watering the tulips and tending to the vegetables.

We could grow enough to live off, you say sometimes, when the whiskey trickles down your throat and the fire licks your belly.

The belly of a man, heavy set from years of sugared, milky tea. From using his hands to build the house we live in. To build the room where I am standing,

with its beech furniture and scrubbed floors, it's nooks and crannies which make it impossible to keep clean.

All those years, washing when the weather allowed. Picking colours from a paint chart. Talking passionately. Loudly and quietly. We even talked about the weather, sometimes. You made poetry out of the atmosphere. But weather changes, rapidly and without warning,

the gentle wind you once called Odin's daughter has morphed into thunderous roars, shaking the walls you so carefully built around us.

we are ******* hard at the sky now, gasping for air. It is raw, unsterilised air, that burns your tongue as you breathe it in,

yet breathe it in we must.

I wonder who we are now. Weather beaten, windswept tourists. Should we have left this place years ago?

We scrub the floors. We mow the grass. We wait for something to happen

next.