Open and Shut
Open and Shut

Shut

Binary yesterday

Re-set

Today

The network is pregnant again

Open and Shut
Open and Shut

Open

It’s beautiful, Beta
Such beautiful flowers there
Excellent place, five star hotel-kind of  
You don’t want to know how high it was
Such a kind man helped me come down
My legs were hurting too much Bita
That gadi no good what did I tell you  

Ha Mummy
(lips spin into jalebi smile)

Whole new world open up,
Baaji so tired
You would not believe me, he did it didn’t he
Yes, took Baaji a lovely cuppa tea
Just the way I like it
You know I didn’t have no cake because of my medications

Ha Mummy
(cheeks go RAC orange)

I must go there again Beta
Go on
Book it for Baaji
Go on  

Ok Mummy
(cheeks go coconut burfi pink)

¡Ya!
Prepare the barco,
Empújalo through the scrub.
‘It’s not much further now,'
His voice sugar-coated with expectation:
The flap of the jib, the slippery release into
El agua negra.
Summer sun has baked the avenue of grasses
Into wiry nests.
‘Do not open the gate,' he fulminates.

Waiting for the tren to pass
The gaze of the pasajero
Picks him out against the lights.
Wait, cross, check, shut the gate like you kiss
A un niño.

She pulls truculentemente against his bodyweight,
The smell of greased wheels
Mixes with the **** of ducks and burgers.

Canta ella:
‘It’s many the time I’ve sung this song,
Though the wind blows like a gale’.

How many more times can he set sail?
Before he is buried in the fango
And the sea shanty disintegrates
Into the
Trees?

Schizophrenic Rain
You hurt my brain
Please refrain from staking claim
To tiny changes in the blame
I’ve won for myself
To tame
The cats and dogs that
Preen and scratch in my outrage
Spitty spots of ***
Blushes and rushes of blood to the tips
Of fits of that’s so unfair

Rain

You foist your stubby fist into the tryst
I’ve got with Him upstairs
He hears
The sacred notes of ‘who actually cares’ if I’m
Low or high or mashed or smashed
Some sorta daughter-enforcer
Your pifflely drops
Tingle my locks

But  

What starts and stops,
For missy chubby chops
I’ll say  
If today’s tides subside,
Or turn me flip flops
Insane
Rain

‘That would be nice,’ you say,
So, we cross the quicksilver city.
We step, like tipsy teenagers,  
Into a basement of Kisii and Kikuyu,
Sunshine dresses
Swaying to the Benga music,
Like cruise ships.

Oh, exuberant one:  
The fire in your heart spills out sparks
As you spin and turn across the floor.
‘Dance for the children,’ you say,
‘Dance for the future’.

Magnificent Mercy,
With your intergalactic smile,
You make all the sense in the world.

Stop all the cars.
Shut down the coal.
Prevent Big Oil from dumping its ***** load.
Shake up complacency
And pull out the stops:

Let our leaders lead.

Nature,
You are North and South and East and West;
Our sanctuary
At God’s behest.

The time is now to transform our ways,
So warming ends,
Now and always.

Simon Piesse

Dear Don Alberto
Flamboyant Octogenarian
To a pair of weather-beaten families on the Camino
And to Backpacker Bridget from Granada via Barnsley
And to all who seek shelter from the Galician downpours
You sound
Like an Angel
As you hold aloft your otherworldly radio
And play for us Tina Turner’s
Simply the Best
On happy repeat.

Dear Don Alberto
With your doggy entourage
To a bunch of Ryanair Refugees on the Camino
And to uber cool Bridget naturalised Granadina don’t mention Barnsley
And to all who seek sanctuary from the Galician heatwaves  
You taste
Like a rustic slice of empanada
Rich deep and
Eternally replenishing itself.

You weren’t ever on our map
Don Alberto, were you?
The ID cards you offer up for inspection
Make us laugh at the farce of our controls and borders.

And so
To us make-shift pilgrims on the Camino
You show us how to journey properly
Dancing the salsa
On every roundabout.


Simon Piesse

After the beer-can disappointments
Had foamed into
An effluence
No longer traceable
She drifts,
Ballasted by
Thin fragments of DNA
Lodged in the brain,
Like pebbles.

Who? What? When? Why?
The dissecting guilt of
Foreign judgements;
Intravenous drip, drip, drip
Of others’ expectations:
Expunged.

She looks like a Peter Doig painting:
Caked in paint as thick as tar
Peering into a lake that echoes its own
Emptiness.

Where is she headed?

The Kingfisher sun
Bobs and re-bobs its head
Into the rusty waters;
Yet, she
Drifts,
Taking soundings from
The bric à brac of
Homeless and factory workers,
Whose zero-hour cigarettes
Smoke up the factory stacks
As voluminous as pipe organs.

Don’t turn back, now, Drifter,
Don’t fall for the life
That clogs your veins and numbs your breath.


©Simon Piesse

To Rico

11th hour
11th day
11th month
All units from Tango Charlie 2
Urgent assistance required:
1x IC2 male: white surplus tie
Scholars’ best
Suspected faint
Tomb of the unknown solider
Heron gowns swipe  
1x nurse in attendance
Rose hair Bisto heart  
Male unresponsive nurse giving kiss of life
Cindy Crawford dorm
Tango Charlie 3 be advised
Epaulettes flurry Jerusalem Chamber
West Door now open
Dignitaries' B minor fugue
Poppy air bite

I’m your addiction
Strength 3
Get real
I’m stronger than that
Robusta
Strength 5000
Breakfast blend         
I’m your one cup cataclysm  
Though you plucked me
Though you gouged out my fruit
Though you drowned me and dried me out
Though you packaged me up, purchased me
Compressed me
Boiled me alive
I seep into your skin
Defibrillate your heart
Fair-trade
Overthrow your brain  

History will absolve me before Loose Women

Forty yards from Haribo Heaven,
They took flight,
Mocking the clouds of traffic:
Faster and faster,
Faster and looser,  
Faster and freer.

But then the Saxon ground
Came out in revolt,
Saying
Their covenant with gravity had been violated.

All sound was muted.

Heads struck at thirty-three yards;
Backs cracked the soil at thirty.
In his heart,
It was her finger that he felt,
Arching over the G string of her violin,
Like the neck of a flamingo.  

He mused:
After the sound came back,
Would she play a gigue or a dirge
To accompany
This ignominious moment?

When her sullied, muddied, mossy eyes looked away from him,
To her, had he become a lesser man?

Faster and faster
Faster and looser.

Had she now glimpsed a father’s struggle
To piece together what he thought he knew?

The doctors said you weren’t allowed
To see Mum in her final hours;
It wasn’t safe to will her on
Nor wet her lips with stolen snow
In case the virus you’d bring in
Might claim asylum on the ward.

Behind her mask Mum couldn’t tell
The story of her party trick:
Apple Pie with packet custard
Baked to death and turned to cinders,
Fed to Dad with stoic humour.    

No doubt it’s best you hadn’t seen
The carnage of the resus room
The febrile pumps of hand and nail
The gasps of good-intentioned strain
That reached a pitch at ten to three
And then from shrill went monkish silent.

On Barn Hill snow is falling thick
The Gaderbrook is filling up
The numb routine the porter starts
Now takes disfigured life away
And Northwick Park can breathe again.

Today, I’m well.
Yes.
Good.
I’m good,
I should say.
God?
God, no!
Good God!
Good.
Up-welling of wellness.
Bow tied:
A bow-tie-kind-of-day day.

Sun furtive.
Won’t be long.
Shouldn’t expect she’ll be long.
Yes, she.
Ephemeral.  
Resplendent.
Sheer she-ness.
Just a Walkers crisp of a bit longer.

It is possible, I might add,
She’ll appear a fraction different
To what one can reasonably be expected to remember.

Good!
I’m good.
That is how it is said, in these parts, isn’t it?
Are you good?
Are you…
Competent?
Up to the task, I mean.
Fit to fly.
Work-ready.
Which sort?  
Wearing odd socks, again.
Accentuate the good.
Try to.
Left and right; or the other way around:
Right and left.  
Or could be both… fancy that!
Cream and chocolate, hey, superb!


Today is a wooly-hat-kind-of-a-day day, is it not?
Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Lest there be gales.
What? No! Disaster!
Now, wouldn’t that be…
Wouldn’t that scupper things?  Do you think not?

I love my wooly hat.  
He’s got a name, you know.
Ru-pert.
Stitched with love.
Pompom-topped.
So warm, it is.
Ready for jaunts.
With Rupert.
Up Horsenden Hill.
Too hot, soon.
Best to toss it in the bushes.

                        -------


Perhaps I am under-dressed?
Am I?
Hard to know.
I’ll wear my bow tie again.
Yes, I’ll wear my bow tie when, that is to say, Assuming
The rules permit it.

God permits us
To revel a bit. Kick back.
Do you think God likes to laugh?
God, grant me the gift to laugh.  

                        -------

Oh,
Now,
Did you hear that?
Heating broken,
Not a peep.
Closed valve cylinder, limited warranty,
Manual unfathomable.

But,
No viable option.
‘Northfields Community Library Welcomes You.’
The toilets better be warm!

Beyond the shimmering window sashes 

And Santa-dashing  

Of Dean Street 

Darling  

Your eyes 

Anchor me

In a hot bay of 

Brandy butter. 

Your flashing emerald eyes  

Splash 

Their 

Emerald ice  

Onto my stunned salmon.   

As you slip back into Soho 

Will this moment

Spill over into now

Beginning   

Or like a thought 

Keep on spinning 

Spinning?

Bashing
Crashing
Smashing
Clotted-cream tongues
Lashing
Cathedral hulls
October’s chop
Out to get
Lifejacketless him
Cityboy him
Neither’d gone beyond
His breezy smiled
Awrigh’ my lover
Up to their eyeballs they’d got now
No chance now to break
The awkward ice
Outside the breakwater
Never ought’er  
Hunker down
Turkeyland yelled
Ride the swell
Cradle orphaned beef
And if you don’t  
Incubate the rough
Earthed nests of wine-drowned potato
And proper job swede
And if you don’t
You won’t make it


*


Oggies  
Never take’em to sea
St Anthony’d decreed


But Master Herd, he hadn’t heard
And he’s too emmet to question.

Portoviejo
Puerto Muerto
Lowland Laggard
Salsa eco
Trato hecho
Sweaty ****
Covid Carcass
Social trecho
Bloated pecho
Rented lecho
I laid my head
En Portoviejo.


Simon Piesse

The ***-bellied Mercedes squealed
As Meursault withdrew and
Marvelled at the flames
Licking
The air
Like marigolds on Ritilin.
'Raymond would have no reason not to admire this act.'
He stopped by a shimmering sea of Ubers.
The scrape and drawl of siren made no impression on him.
Leaking smoke reminded him of
Snow White’s Cottage
Where he had taken Marie when Lucie was born:
The place where he would go out at dawn to chop wood.
He liked the way her roses played
With the restlessness of children.
Then he thought: 'if only mother could see me now.'

No service to all westbound destinations due to flooding . . .


At Ravenscourt Park, it rained apocalyptically.

Then, God said:

‘Let go of point-to-point.

Paddle properly, like you mean it.

Hear the gentle song of the hummingbird.

Sip the sweet cup of the orchid.

Steer clear of the piranhas that are possessions;
Swim away from the caiman, who can drag you under.  

Take it stroke by stroke.  Do not splash about.

Go with my flow.

When your meanderings meet the mighty ocean of my love

Be ready.

This is just the beginning.’

Said the gull to the Helter Skelter:
‘Did you know, when the oak was felled
You would, one day, delight a girl
With raven eyes, who’d lost her way
And wound up starting fires?’

The gull went on:
‘Did you know, when the oak was cut
This wayward girl would grab your mat
To climb the stairs of our own prayers
To outshine all the spires?
And, did you know, when boards were made
A dusty offering to the lathe
You would, one day, tease out the sap,
The wildwood sap within her bones
Confounding all the liars?

So, you should know, when planks were bent
Twisted, slotted, primed and painted,
That this lost girl would one day jump
Up higher than high flyers.'

Walk in familiar slippers
Walk when walking’s spent
Walk on hollow highway
Walk in a birthday dress
Walk under frigid stars
Walk with ancestral song
Walk with right
Walk with wrong
Walk in spite
Walk in pity
Walk in the backstreets
Walk in the news
Walk in borrowed city

Home is leaving
Home is a journey
Home is coloured pencils
For a distant classroom
Home is a wilderness
Home is an army
Home is inquisition
Home is another way
Home is a haven
Home is a promise
Home is a rose bed
Home is tomorrow
Home is hard
Home is good

Simon Piesse