It was the watermelon diet, he said
That's what killed me

A lie as ripe as the freshest rind

Listen to the man
He was there at my deathbed

Though he never cared for my diet

It was the watermelon diet
not some virus
That consigned me to the Gods

The watermelon diet

Why now do they doubt my exotic pallet?
They've turned a blind eye to everything else
until now

For months, I guzzled nothing but sweet watermelon
Fat mounds of flesh between my greedy cheeks
The sheer volume of water left me bloated
Before I shed an immense amount of baggage

What else could be to blame?

Enough of your questions and on to the cremation
We'll see whether watermelon burns immortal

It began in Africa- no lie there
And comes in seedless varieties
I never planted mine
Though I wasn't want for trying

I can still taste the bitter juices as I lay here in my crypt

An artful coroner smelt a rat
Or a chance- to prove his mettle
Never heard of any watermelon diet
This is Palm Springs not Papa Nu Guinea

A sample of tissue foiled our grand conspiracy
Same thing that got Rock Hudson
But they kept a straight face
Kept to the story, mindful of my legacy

I'm not just any ******
Takes something grand and elaborate to dispose of me

An immigrant farmhand once told me “watermelon cure the AIDS”
And I believed him
At least that's what I'd have you believe

End

Such nerve
To have hurled headfirst
From Alaskan obscurity
And hitherto unheard

This fickle instrument
With dough like ambition
Sought to scratch at an original
And remake it in his image

Pausing
With embryonic futility
You sought to **** at the sun for a soliloquy
Supposing to index yourself to infamy

Thick with insistence
You plunged into significance
Readied for incision
And even wore cufflinks

I’m not averse to diamonds or pearls
But you’ll not wear me as fur

My muddled assassin
Suddenly you came
Puncturing me in one brief spurt

But the world continued to turn

Barely wounded by your graceless aim
Yours was a curious delusion
And your awe cushioned me
Kept you human

I never dimmed
Just pondered
As my reflection unravelled to watercolour
And the acrylic peeled off the roof of my chapel

Suddenly clarity

The ogling Quasimodos gawped in their multiples
But this was no Kennedy or Lennon
You didn’t gift us another Yoko

You lunged with malice
Only to cradle my corpse
Like a lifeboat
Or a lifeline
Adoring me
Like Simba
Trying to absorb my greatness

I’d never felt so loved

That was us wed in pen and ink
Blood and blade
Same hymn book same hymn sheet

In came you with a sitar rapping to acid house
And suddenly I was alive
A whole body of work retouched
Master reborn

I clung to nostalgia
Till your blade came and cut my record
Put the needle on my vinyl
And spat magnificent clarity my way

Hiroshima blew up around us
But who are they to say what real love is?
I visited you in prison
Brought you books and gave you a home on parole

You gave me life
Now featherweight and heavyweight live in sweet harmony
Nothing like ebony and ivory

In prison you wrote poems
You gave me one and I turned it into a number one

Blood stained the sidewalk for months
But they abandoned the vigil
When word got out about us

It doesn’t matter
That you’re not a woman
Or that you’re 19 years old
Love is love

The wedding sheets were beige with age
By the time the crowds gave way
The flowers were dandelions wrapped in yesterday’s chip paper

Hungry for fame, they’d say
But for years I’d been fading
When we crossed on the street that day
And you blew me away

Whatever possessed you?
You’ll never say
The children won’t speak to me
But I guess they’re just at that age

End

13 stroke 14
Or some time in between
An evil angel- having bided its time
Thrusts a pound into an apple

The world grinds to silence

In the brunt of dusk
Lightning struck four chambers
That one by one did turn to mush
And for months to come
There was little else of which they talked

Red run dry overnight
Awash in the moonlight
Though your name peeled slowly
Like a toffee apple painted with gold

And in the smudge of dusk
Infinite eulogies did erupt
Embalming you
Sweeping away all wrong

Enlightened
They carved their condolences into toilet doors
And gawped through stained glass windows
As your shadow did spasms  

An **** of taxidermists
Painted you peach with modesty and
Stuffed you with hindsight
Before blue light ignited

Making you shapeless

They made you a martyr
Your funeral a coronation
- In Technicolor
Though you only ever wore black  

Now history fills you with fiction
Fills you with colour


End

I recall the wonder of discovery and
The awesome Technicolor  
When you , taking me in your hand,
Perplexed the monarch of my affections  
And I was a spinster no longer

My cataracts bent themselves rectangle
As you made primetime of my matinee
Made me pixellated  

The world was square
And the Sky without limits
When I moved you into my private chamber

The pause button, having broken
Made us live in the moment  

Every sound wave a fluttering falsetto
That we dare not turn the channel over

You came to me in flat format
But you were the set top box of times now gone
I longed to open you up
And absorb your teletext- the sonnets of old

Primetime was a kaleidoscope
As I lay there in bed with you, my precious television
Suddenly this slim rectangular riddle, when switched on,
was a philanthropist without shackles  
The infinite gift that kept on giving

Mid-way through Holby City
20:20
Vision slipping
I lay there captivated by the elements of some fictional dame
And her fiery mane as it lights up the screen
The screen flickered 24 frames per second
And with it I slip into a familiar abyss

Ah, the reassuring comfort of my companion  
And how you lulled me to sleep  

Every press of the remote was a celebration of my admiration
Groping and clinging to it like some wilting tradition  

Night after night you kept me company
Breathing warmth and pointing your aerial towards me
As I begged Mr Murdoch to
Open my eyes and fill me with information

Nothing dared distract me from you
Though there are those that tried
Those who found themselves muted

I was glued
And when the schedules faded to shopping or teletext
I’d switch you off
And listen to you on standby
How your heavy breathing would soothe me

The red on/off light that burns brightly into the night
Lets me know that you are alive

I hide the remote from prying eyes
Beneath the pillow that, on top, sit’s the TV guide
My encyclopaedia to the stars  

How you have pleased me endlessly  
Illuminating me
Filling me with light

I swift you off and reach for the plug
When suddenly a shock of electricity runs through my body
I feel it in my bones
You are possessive
It reminds me that I am alive

End

The world’s a chore when you’re sixty four
No sign of respite
The clocks go backwards every night
Telling you you’re eighty five

Then suddenly
The charcoal smog that has absorbed you slowly
And blackened your kaleidoscope
Has ****** you some place shy of midnight

Breakfast was a trench at best
When only bed makes sense
A world dragging me to war with myself

Time, having deprived you, will make you into a grinch
Make you selfish and resentful

My sight was failing me
But I remember him clearly
Stood on the balcony
Dangling his car keys at me across the moat
Swinging from the chandelier
As I gasped for a hearse in despair  

The moat was old
Every paddle a javelin
The two minute journeys that turn your legs to waste
Summer on a respirator
Winter on a drip

Heavy going being sixty four
When your scarcely twenty four
And the clocks are moving forward

I’ll remember you
When the time eventually comes
How I locked you up
Kept you an embryo

End

Eight long years I fear you have been here
Behind the scenes
Do you ever intend to leave?

Overwhelmed
You’ve eight legs to my pair

Nowadays you spin in clear sight
But it wasn’t always like this
You were once a reluctant plunder

And I confess that I often walked into your web
Wiped the silk from my face
And went about my day without so much as a thought

You are the covert cartographer of minds
Is there an area of mine you haven’t mapped?
In your decade long survey

I never did give you planning permission

**** at me like apres ski, if you please
‘Tis a slippery ***** this road

Those pills the doctor prescribes me
Cool you for a time
Then the next day you are resurgent
electric

I’ve put up with you for too long
You’ll never truly be gone

I’ve told myself once, maybe thrice
How the sticky honey of hindsight will beguile you
The silky doubt that cushions you
And turns you into tiramasu  

The eggs you have laid, having now hatched
Make me their colony
I feel movements inside
Hear voices day and night

They tell me there’s nothing there
Even as your spawn presses against my temporal lobe
And I forget more and more of what the world was before

Sorry if I am a bore
I can barely hold a conversation

I pray to God that one day you’ll relent
Tire of the climate and
Chase after some skirt seeking happier times
But I’m pregnant with your venom
And always will be

But I refrain from aspiration
It’s been eight years to the day
And I see no sign of change  


End

How I have longed
From the moment I first heard you had two middle names
For you to make me your pronoun
Take me to the Gilded Truffle
and share with me your surname

GLUTTONY
I fed you verb but kept my soliloquies close to the bone
Wrote your name on a scrap of paper and
Scrunched it up tight in my hand
Kept your scent hidden in a shirt under the sink

You are maths and history in plain English
And unravel only into tangles
Light travelling at the speed of sound
Or so I have led myself to believe

A third middle name would have surely driven me t'wards insanity
Though I doubt you know my first
Doubt you know my name

End

The pleas of desperate pilgrims
Desperate relics
reverberate day after day ‘cross this grassy plain
I've spent many a decade here
Watching, wasting
Waiting for Bernadette to appear

The world is a jilted love where the harvest always fails
and the moon is never full

Years I've waited for you to carve my name
In some hallowed place in that black forest of yours.

We once gorged on amber gateaux.
You'd stick your tongue in my mouth
And become a carnivore

Abandoned, you left a quill on a pillow
Still fresh with your dent

Now language is my master.

You, I'll trade you this blood diamond
For some magic beans
The one he gave me before he disappeared

But I am not Naomi Campbell
Minerals do not appease me

I turn the television on- Aladdin. Animated crap.
The Arabs chop off thieves' hands
You stole my heart but your hands are in tact

I wonder do you use them-
Carpenter, perhaps. Cartographer of souls.

The world makes me laugh

My lungs ought to have run dry.
Crying as I have done, uninhibited into the night
Undignified

Are you in my orbit? I wonder
Or did you prise me from your atmosphere
He who reduces me to naught but bones and
Turns me into a martyr

I summon Bernadette at the front of the grotto
Waiting for her to appear
To cure me

I know she will never come

End

I wrapped a scroll around my ankle
It was red with intent
The scarlet letter for he who had no name
I left mine at the door- they insisted
A blank canvas
It jingled as I walked- or stalked
The catacombs, the halls of a mental hospital
Dingy and dilapidated as they were and
From promise dispossessed
It rang around my ankle like the bells of Notre Dame
A call to arms for a tepid Esmeralda
Anchored
It weighed me down when I reached for the clouds
Kept me grounded
Mindful of any pending union
I threw my gauntlet down
Adjusting my toga to mark myself out
From the ogres and the rogues, the unknown
And upwards towards thirty doors that lead only to compromise
The scorching sauna where resentment festers
The unfamiliar face that raises the temperate
The risks you see them taking in all directions.
Violations.
A jacuzzi of fools frolic and debase themselves
Water leaks through the ceiling
Dripping onto the naked shoulder
Of somebody who hasn't been touched in years
A journey wasted, thirst unconquered
A man masturbates at a computer screen as you check your emails
Inbox empty.
Familiar omens grace the scene- disgruntled punters
The same faces circling each other to no avail
Thirty open doors and from the closed one- only snores
Perhaps if I tucked my ***** between my legs and pretended to be a lady
Somebody would look up
Staff sit listening to the radio
Immune to my farce as the rest are to my charms
Stone steps lead the way back to a dulled reality
Just like the steps of the famous Boston bar on TV
“Where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came”
As the theme tune goes
I left my name at the door
Put aside my history to take a stab into the unknown
Desperation will do that to you

End

Life is not a grassy maze
It is a cul de sac
Masked as a labyrinth

A rich tapestry of bitterness that promises Pandora
***** you in and then delivers
Nothing but bones
Misleading, all along

It is a tragedy,
This travesty
An infinite loop that bends you reticent and
Makes-of you- a fool

Nobody sees that I am forced to play monochrome  
I try to make them see
Try to make them hear me
But do they see me?

Do they hear me?
Whichever guise I take
I am debased
My blueprints shrivelled

They tell me I’m no jazz musician and
That my graphic novel is a work of fiction  

But God challenges me to be the best
That’s why he obstructs me
Wraps my voice in barb wire and makes me

Strive

Why he makes me stand on yellow pages
And like Icarus, reach for the sun

The burden of want strangles these lungs
Restricting me
Stapling my wings to the fringes
Forcing me to the less than I ought to be

Oh this omnibus !
I stroke the Queen’s Nose and want for Bernard’s Watch

And It only curdles,
This urge
To grab the map and wrap it in verse
Introduce colour to a puddle
And watch it blunted by the current

As I’m stuck  running semicircles
Whilst the earth does a full turn

End

Somebody’s sister scratched me sterile this morning
Today being the second Saturday of the first month
When the sun never shone
And with it my enthusiasm flattened and thawed

Dawn was unkind to this infantile as he plunged into the unknown
There was no respite from the **** of the cordial and the sanitised
From the farce that awaited in the timid mid morning

Soup of the day was feigned appreciation
The coronation of a never-known martyr
And placing of a Plasticine halo

The one without frown lines had nothing in her eyes
And Red, I felt, burned with the soft soapy rebellion of a mute fool
A wishy washy revolt of none
As I sat there wilting heresies at the extremities
Calling for the clown car that never come
Daring myself to say “he hated his sister”
To break the mould
And mute the truce
Splash Windermere in their wounds and watch them run for cover

End

Mother thought the world of you
When you were in the womb
You were the charcoal blur that rocked the world
Pride of place on the refrigerator
Seemingly indifferent but people saw different
They looked at you and drew the moon
And from the grey extracted something peach and empty
In the days when it was okay for you to be empty
Before the weight of the world drained the colour from your face
The milky glisten that shrivelled
Diminished
Turned you invisible
Now show them all that you’re not afraid to **** at the sun
Once the door is closed
Let that ultraviolet umbilical cord to the underclass make you golden
Make you glow once more