1
We're not in darkest Africa
and jungles don't adorn,
this little bit of overgrown
that wraps around our lawn,

2
Plants of pretty colors
sit comfortable in there bed,
and about two dozen footsteps
find us at the potting shed.

3
Our potting shed has seen better days,
some parts have been rebuilt
and it's suffering from subsidence
for it's slightly on a tilt.

4
The walls desperately need painting
because the wood has got some rot
but a boring place to come and sit
it definitely is not.

5
Odds and ends adorn the shelves
and the places spiders tread
where the dust has piled on the weight
and the woodworm may have spread.

6
Smells that we first come across
carry the scent of damp,
foul stinks from half empty sacks,
paint tins that have gone rank.

7
An old oil lamp expel the rust
like dandruff from my head
reigning down golden crumbs
that looks like toasted bread.

8
We think that we have found some proof
of what might linger around
footprints so large and evident
that a Tigers walked upon this ground.

9
So while we have been sleeping
and resting through the night
there's been a Tiger in our shed
but he keeps out of sight.

10
We've sorted through many boxes
we've moved some things aside,
looked into shadows with a torch
but we can't find where he hides.

11
Perhaps he's gone out hunting
for an evening meal,
eyeing up the neighbors dog
with energetic zeal.

12
Perhaps he's out sunbathing,
sitting somewhere in a tree
camouflaged with all those stripes,
that's the reason we can't see.

13
I don't know if he's Sumatran,
Siberian or Bengal
and he doesn't ever show himself
or come to me when I call.

14
I believe he stays outside all day
and only hides in here at night
but I won't come down here when its dark
only in the light.

15
He is a wild animal so
one must take the some care
for he could be stalking us as prey
he could spring from anywhere.

16
But we leave the door unlocked for him
and we've made a comfy bed,
and a sign that just reads "WELCOME"
to the Tiger in our shed

Infinitely and often nightly but very quietly
I creep into the garden shed
and make a bed among the flower pots
where those dainty blooms with purple spots
spot me
and open up their eyes to see who sits among the rakes and spades
and somewhere in those dappled glades
my eyes will rest upon a cur-ved apparition and entirely of an auto responsive
suggestion
I will greet her with a midnight smile taped on my lips
and when my heart has done its forty skips and my body settles down
I invite her to come a little close and sit beside me by the oak tree
she
smiles in a light to brighten any night and any day I know would be proud to say
go with the moment it is yours to own
but on my own trapped in a shady place
I face the fact that
this place in the garden shed is only pictures in my head
and I retreat
beat it back indoors where the thunderous snores of all my many days
come back to haze me in some juvenilish way
it's the way of it
it is the way and I have bitten off more than a piece or two
and flown too close to sit upon the heat
of the sun
burned my bridges
burned my ***
and never learnt to hold my tongue
but it is the way
and one day the way will become oh so clear
the potting shed that's in my head will disappear
and in its place
the face I look to meet
will greet me
deferentially I shall shape my tongue to fit around the words I want to say
It is and always has been
this way.

needing refreshment in oswestry,

later rather than sooner,

crept up the chalk painted

staircase, seems to work

well, in this case.

i note the dstressed nature

of the furniture.

this place.

having regular coffee,

a fruit scone will

certainly do,

i listen to the server, who

clasping the china teapot,

tells us revelations

of those who live, who divorce

and warm the ***.

i have to say that

the scone was lovely.

later i bought a potting bench.

sbm.

I found a seed, and I planted it.
Watered it daily
Checked the soil in which it sat
Nothing happened so
I changed the potting,  
Giving it sun,
Made sure it saw the light
Checked it everyday
Did everything right,
Waiting for it to sprout something
Anything even.

But it didn't grow,
because the seed died

See, see the tiny sky
Marvel at its big puce depths.
Tell me, Tony do you
Wonder why the armadillo ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel churned.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your giffengididdle ****** growth
That looks like
A mold.
What's more, it knows
Your pantsy potting shed
Smells of ******.
Everything under the big tiny sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm garlics.

shakin like a bacon eater
takin down a bird feeder
cedar creatures rollin up a doobie
they be suing me for truancy
I shoo a flea from chewin me
a wrap of lettuce fed us
said us fellas sellin head amounts of coke
we oughtta **** a bowl of hope
my soap and rope fill up my closet
I deposit positively. Stop to mop it
cropping photos,potting soil,oil spotting
wrapping lettuce wraps and leftovers in foil
I'm American and spoiled

In third grade, I lived in a white rent house; forever known as the “white house.” It was in the backyard of this house that I played Pocahontas, and Little House on the Prarie, it is also where I met him. I don’t remember his face, or his name, only his age: sixteen, his buzz cut and the fact that he live with his grandma.
I was a quiet girl, with long brown, curly hair falling past my shoulders. I was nine. The boy and I became friends of sorts talking through the chain link; the criss-cross of the metal keeping me from his full face. Eventually our friendship moved from the backyard to the Front yard, where there was no chain link and things blurred together. The two yards meeting in the middle, mirroring the friendship of the boy and I.
Soon a game developed, a new version of hide and seek perfect for two. I would hide a piece of paper, and he’d try to find it. I hid it in the same spot every time, the huge terracotta *** on my front porch: the one with no plant life, only black potting soil with the white fertilizer specks.
I remember staring down at the small white paper as he quickly scanned the porch, not really looking. Then his eyes would latch onto me. He’d kneel before me, and ask the question I would always dread, “Where did you hide it?”
I didn’t dread the question itself, just the after. He would take my hand and lead me over the boundary between our yards. The one that was invisible and mirrored our friendship.
I remember looking down at the green outside carpeting as I climbed the steps to his grandmother’s house, hand in hand with the boy. He took me inside, down a long hallway to his room. His grandmother wasn’t home. I stepped into the room, my tennis-shoed feet sinking into the thick carpeting, which was so very much like my grandmother’s.
He closed the door; I remember exactly how the lock clicked into place before he turned to me, smiling.
“You’ve been a bad girl,” he said “you hid the paper in a place I couldn’t look at outside.”
I told him it was in the big *** outside my ouse then, afraid, but not really sure of what.
“No,” he said, “I check there. Why would you lie to me?”
And that was when he lifted my shirt, exposing the chest of a child, with my baby fat belly, and not a hint of puberty. The pants were next. I remember watching them, red with white hearts, the shorts my mother had made me falling to the ground, pooling softly around my ankles. I never said no, I was only silent, my brother was four at the time, he was the cute one then, so I desperately wanted the boys attention.
I was standing there in my underwear, too tall socks, and tennis shoes. Glancing towards the door that seemed to have grown in size, like the Christmas tree in the Nutcracker.
His hands went to my *******, sliding them down to my ankles, making the familiar swishing against the dry skin of my legs as they went down. He just sat there for a moment, staring. Finally he said “Well, I guess the paper must be out there after all.”
He pulled up my ******* and helped me into my pants. He opened the door, which had returned to normal size, and lead me out into the sunlight, crossing the invisible boundary of our yards. He plucked the paper from the planter and smiled.
“You know if you want to be on the internet all you have to do is show your underwear.”
He turned and walked away then, dropping the precious paper on the boundary of our friendship as he went.

The café rumbles like the belly of a fasting saint,
voices competing with the clanks of silverware.
In the tearoom a boy with a tangle of wires
leaking from an unzipped backpack
struts between tables, billing himself as a "human hotspot".
He wears the same glasses you do;
they slip down his nose as he leans over to flirt with the waitress
in the red apron, who taps her nails against the cash register
and laughs at his bad jokes, she tells me, because
he wears his pants too high, just like her brother used to.

A man with a soup-stained button down and a bald spot
introduces himself as Peter Ling, proprietor,
oracle of the inner city rummage sale,
advisor to the lost and hungry.
He doles out pithy wisdom and lentils into mismatched bowls-
"You want therapy? Try your ex boyfriend."
The four of us hide our grins, and flee
to his cavernous basement. As we go spelunking
through the puddles left by a burst pipe,
clambering past bloated books and warped furniture,
Emma Miller swears that she slept here once-
on a moldy brown sofa crouched like a hibernating bear
among empty Heineken bottles.

The expedition yields four boxes of acupuncturist leaflets
and a damp antique suitcase filled with seeds,
who seized the opportunity to germinate,
their tiny roots searching fruitlessly
in the mildewed silk lining.
Ling says he's going to try gardening this year,
serve up spaghetti squash grown out back by the garage.

We sowed pea shoots and salad greens
in glass jars pilfered from a claw-footed armoire
that lay on its side, defeated, like the last of the saber-tooths.
I named one for you, tucked Eruca vesicaria sativa
into potting soil, and set it on the balcony railing-
tempting fate and gravity, because you always liked a little excitement
with your afternoon cup of rooibos.
I didn't see the girl who knocked you off your perch,
saw only the sun's sharp gleam off the glass
as the jar plunged, graceful as a slow-motion train wreck
on its arc toward the concrete,
and Peter Ling reached up with his big, calloused hand
to break your fall.

‘I am pure, forever now,’
The words scratched on a skull,
That I dug up one morning
In a garden, back in Hull.
I didn’t know just who it was
Or where the skull had been,
The skull itself the only one
That knew what it had seen.

There were no other bones, they were
All missing, neck to toe,
Perhaps they’d gone on walkabout
And said, ‘We’ll let you know!’
The skull was left to rest in peace
Beneath a flower bed,
Where jonquils wavered in the breeze
Above this lonely head.

The bed was bound by sleepers
That were there before the time
My grandparents had owned the house -
Who covered up this crime?
They must have known, had surely known
Whose head it was, deceased,
Before they laid that garden bed
Hacked off the head, at least!

For someone scraped those five short words
Bit deep into the bone,
Had used the knife that cut its throat?
Or merely, some sharp stone.
I held the skull beneath the tap
To wash away the dirt,
The empty sockets stared at me
Relentless, in their hurt.

Was this a male or female skull?
I found it hard to say,
The teeth were young and pearly white
I called it ‘she’ that day,
Old Jeb, the gardener came round
And saw, and burst in tears,
‘I haven’t seen that pretty smile
In more than fifty years!’

‘Her name was Clementine,’ he said,
‘A little pantry maid,
Back in the days of service when
We all were underpaid,
When I was just a lad myself
And new into the fold,
Your crusty great grandfather ruled,
Old Ebenezer Gold!’

‘We weren’t allowed to mix back then,
We slept on different floors,
He took a special interest in
The womenfolk, indoors.
He’d stalk around at midnight, checking
Under every bed,
Would threaten us with vengeance from
The Lord above, he said.’

‘I’d meet with Clementine outside,
We’d use the potting shed,
She’d tease and tempt me daily, dare me
Sneak into her bed,
Then one day she came crying, but
She wouldn’t tell me why,
Just said that Ebenezer was
A sneak, a ***** spy!’

‘I thought she must have got the sack,
She simply disappeared,
And nobody would mention her
Their lips were sealed, I fear.
He really had a hold on us
He oversaw the plots,
And said I had to seed that bed
With blue Forget-Me-Nots.’

He died near forty years ago
So Jeb and I agreed,
There wasn’t any point to raise
A scandal, without need,
I told him to put back the skull,
He cried, and kissed it lots;
Pulled out the jonquils, planted seeds
Of blue Forget-Me-Nots!

David Lewis Paget

Simon “Hurricane” Hudson prowls the snooker table
Like any good mixed metaphor would.
A modern day Pythagoras
He triangulates his shots.

Meanwhile his rival, lion-heart "Rocket" Richard,
Not to be confused with Lionel Richie,
Is on his mobile Googling
How to play the perfect “snooker”.
And the two Perfect Pauls
Discuss the latest football,
While “Whirlwind” Wendy sits in judgement,
Knitting the night away.

At long last Simon plays a stroke!!!
And rattles those unrelenting jaws
Of that elusive pocket yet again.

The game rolls on.
But where the hell is Simon?
The clock on the electricity is running down
But where is Simon?
Where is he?
He’s at the bar
Telling barman Nick how Rochdale
Will win The Cup one day.

Hurray, he’s back to play again.
Cascading planets collide into new orbits
As they did in the Primeval Solar System.

We play on,
Safely keeping those precious *****
Away from those black holes
They call the “pockets”.
We try to pick our shots
(At those pockets lol)
But all we keep potting
Is that white one.
Maybe we should switch to Billiards,
Or *** some plants instead.

Paul Butters

The Shed

This temporary transient visited place so common nothing to distinguish it from just a sad hovel. After entering you find the most extraordinary pieces of your history. Garden tools that your mother and father shared you remember their toiling for hours on end with them being enthralled in this simple pleasure. On the work bench a broken flower *** oh how the scent of potting soil rushes into the mind the feeling of the cool black moist mixture as you work with it with your fingers. The flower that stands so seemingly jaunty after you packed it snugly in a brand new ***. It seemed to sense its beauty did it not shoot forth the sweetest fragrance that now you believe you can still smell.

Suddenly a cloud burst and the rain begins to dance on the tin roof in fact the sound has no outward melody but in the heart what pleasure it couldn’t be better what raw power to soothe to voice such serine harmony with such fundamental materials everything comes together in this roar and deafening assault you pray that it doesn’t stop

Has the time sped by so fast now you sit in the quiet darkness and then slowly the wind builds momentum it fairly howls then with unerring aim it finds just the right defect in the wood it starts the most joyful sound as you hear creaking and moaning sounds acoustic wonders surround has the night minstrel brought yet another magnificent performance for your hearing alone. Truly it has enjoy the magic that only the mysteries of the night can produce.

On the wall there they hang in splendor license plates from the grand vacation you took as a family your dad was so proud he was able to introduce ever one to this great country beyond the borders of home and the well known paths that were worn almost to the point of dullness but now when added to the new and grander whole it renewed and made home recapture its true worth.
You step back and your gaze comes to rest on your father’s favorite place here his tools seem to hold the honored spot. How could they be more orderly? And reverently displayed cleaned and oiled ready at all times for use. Then you remember his great strong hands how he held them almost lovingly as he explained there uses to you. He seemed to be always adding new ones it caused you to wonder is he going to run out of room. The question was answered the day he showed off his brand new red standup tool box how he beamed.
It does seem some books and papers have gotten out of hand just strewn about but that only adds charm and warmth to the place. A special place of abandonment setting for long periods no order just fleeting thoughts that appear then dissolve into others as they silently enter this private world.
I could tell you more but after all it just a shed I left the door open why not go on in and set a spell I’m sure you have similar memories in this place truly time is suspended your cherished memories its only reality. The world can be stark and unkind but God saw fit that that within a small wooden structure you could find an oasis. Cool not only the physical temperature but give the mind and soul this delightful respite.

Do you know what time it is?

Is it springtime?  It tastes like springtime in every word I wish I could say to you, but I choke on petals and potting soil in the meantime.

Is it Sunday morning?  It tastes like Sunday morning every time I speak your ancient name that led me out of Egypt.

Is it naptime?  It feels like naptime in every toss and turn I take, even though when we lay down, we don’t usually rest.

Do you know what time it is?

You don’t wear a watch.  But if you did, it would probably be a Casio watch.  Because you’re subdued and kind of smokey and there’s nothing shiny about you

Until you laugh from the pit of your stomach and I feel like I’m home.

You don’t wear a watch.  And I’m glad because it shows off your arms more.  You don’t need to cover them up and you actually don’t need to cover anything up, ever.

Wait.  Is it naked time?  

Do you know what time it is?  

Is it dinner time?  Like the time when you smeared barbecue sauce on my face and got away with it?

Is it wintertime?  You make me feel kind of warm inside.

Is it bedtime?  Because even though your eyes are the color of ice and your spine is made of steel and your biceps feel like bricks, you are the softest and gentlest person there is.  

I’m afraid that the clock will strike twelve and you’ll see that I’m just a maid in rags who has mice for friends.  And that I am actually not a princess.  

I’m just a girl with a funny name who has completely lost track of the time.

.all in all: pro bono persona non grata... but it's nice... the dodo of excavations because douglas murray citing t. s. eliot... is... such a pristine... welcome... caveat; it's such a stark-naked revisionism of the concept of pink... outside and beside having scotch-notching of the bristle... this... fidget and all that's the forever the anglo-sphere of solispism... the unsavoury redeemer of europe... napoleon (1)... ****** (2)...     the pauper states and the ottomans... take... three? hell! when england is fidgety about being an island dwelling folk (in europe) and a "diaspora" when something a bit like... h'america and australia... comes along... the best gay is the old gay is the no-new gay and the no-old... and gay... the 5pm stubble intellectualism... hot and bothered given there's not grand admiration for an ethics without a joy-ride of an expelled peoples... that the future is: having made... a people... local! for those being made to make digestion: focal... and immoveable... pawn strictures... post racial and thereby new scrutiny: grammar... or... lah blah l'ay lo bo'go'h zupp'ah crispy ****** ****** fue fue and few! this the "neuweil"...

     it's snooker and not chess...
and because snooker can
be televised...
    in that it's not a private affair
of "i.q." strain of a sudoku...
it's still purely optics...

   red = 1
             yellow = 2...
                   even if the pawn
were to = 1...
       you can't fathom the affair
with 3rd party spectactors without
a necessary lagging...

but it's a televized sport...
but it's unlike bayern munich
trashing barcelona 8 - 2...

          there's that theatre of
red is 1...
        all gyst of what remains
the doctrine of spheres...
      perhaps the pawn = 1 = red...
the blanket...

the metaphor of... the cue ball...
like a lion or any other
predator picking out the lazy
angle the weak pack of the herd...

        how doesn't one welcome
a sport of such befitting attire...
savile row -esque rummaging
to tie with a librarian monstrosity...

it's so much easier to stomach:
all spheres...
   the vast confines of limbo green
of what's pitch-black
vacuum of space and eternal
glue fabric of the orbs...

         now agitated in a sneaking
parody of bulldozer
a cue-ball an asteroid...
a football match
with so much fervor...
the chanting, the shirts...
the agony of the whole affair...

   never the stressed individual...
in a sport so much talk of
fluke and chance and: the gods
of snooker... oh indeed:
the gods still watch snooker...
chess is too much noir et blanc...

   snooker is a...
           why so much of everything
has to be wrong with love
in what's wrong with love
to begin with:
the idealism of males invested
in the project under
the pseudonym: stendhal...

          then there's the other comparison:
if snooker is not chess
then... perhaps it's... boxing?
such a brute sport...
it's bothersome enough to be eating
a diet of beef and tenderloin
poultry hearts in a broth...
to have to entertain the brutality
of boxing...

   i watch snooker i envision
myself coughing into a napkin...
i imagine... fencing...
another great expansion of sport...
selective sport
that's still somehow physical...
unlike chess because chess...
is not to be televized...

                   oh truly: these favourable
ideals of hot-topics for poets...
the ideal love...
"you" the "ideal" and "lover"...
never the one potting
a perfect 147 jerking off...
i tried myself with prostitutes...
it's a harsh reality
when both parties are playing
a poker of pretend...

   snooker is unlike any other sport...
to boast to blame to glisten
and to subsequently **** a suffocating
throttle of an exercise in...
agitation... whimsical! whimsical:
i dare you! please!

    it's unlike a football match...
       golf can **** my big toe xerxes...
the contraints...
i once anticipated this meditation
with tennis...
a game of... moon...
and... 7 rectangles and...
          the umpire and...
                        10 judges...
and... 4 ball-boys...
                             tired sport of
professional fluidity...
    
                         to appreciate is best
to not play it...
from the t.v. with nostalgia...
an itch a view of a
famous onlooker...
   none other than
the iron maiden drummer
    at the sheffield crucible...
                     nicko mcbrain...

yes: me right now...
a matthew arnold take on seeing
liszt play and all the girls
having reached beatlemania fever pitch...
d.n.a. score...
it usually took two to tango...
i don't like the idea
of the man being burdened
with a d.n.a. progression
of "passing-on"... the... "details"...

              i'm very content taking
the solo walk home...
because... come to think of it...
i am not impressed with the arguments
to counter my: will...
i'm not willing to make either
sacrifice or sacrilege...
                        i'm more than willing
for the entire lazy abode to jump
in on early on the nibbling prospect...
not out of: some high-praise of self-worth...

what would we be talking about...
had i not the capacity to take
snooker to sleep...
   and i was a east-end
millwall "hooligan" cabbie...
                   it's snooker...
it's not woah-kitty science... is it?

too much of perfect love went
into writing - perhaps a toll of mine -
and not into the exploits of
the day-to-day living out the grit...

tolling losing affairs with
english like the long lost cousin
of a bavarian misantrophe...
should there come an ease!
with a entymological scrutiny...
idiosyncratic as that old
borrowed & blatant saxon...

   fudge-packers of the world unite!
the broad and the default...
the skittle blisters of skim-rhetoric...
the lobsided slob...
beginning with etymological
genesis:
                  fudge-packing
           fudge-packing
                 either side
of the propaganda machinery... glut...
no glue! all the glut but no glue!
fudge-packaging:
the beside "question" of...
              a straight banana
                                 syndrome...
because: no new "wonder" analogy...
            beside "that" one...
                                  
   to be humbled is not, to be...
humiliated...
   how can... the tolerance
of humbling being made
synonym of being a meaning
of humilitiation?!
*******! asylum!
   proto-****-sane-"metaphysician"!

to abhor liberals is to somehow love
homosexuals...
to test the competency
the phallus
in competition the joy-*****...
           and such that...
there's no new morality...
only the old europe
with the europe
of the "rejected" yews...

clear-me-up-on-the-kippah:
forthright on the ***...
no new shlang...
    this... archaic... this...

primordial ****... and never...
the proxy bilingual...
you... basic... ****-wit and...
  comma!

   and... the gay-"dude"...
the argument...
the boxing females...
and the still intact...
***** industry...
   like... carpentry with
carpet tiers...
like...
    **** with stink...
like... metal with... ore
and... rust...
like: forget me whips...
and i'll flake you another; boss stephens!

to have to stiffen-up
over a... this logistics of gloating...
the west gloats...
a history of gloating...
whether the mongolian recession...
of the soviet nudging death-queue...
gloat... the ******* feeds off gloating...
i'm tired of gloating...
given... after a while...
there's no more a winning
or a losing: gloat
or party to feed off...
a supposed serenity of...
an otherwise...
nihlism & *******!

- you ******* ginger-bread flims!
finicky bypassing wording...
           ein-grab-beste-"oops"-

and thus: the name horowitz...
barking...
          ottoman....
    rotherham...
   ­           roam-befitting: "future"...
          there's the closure
with upmister...
            the the blessing...
all creasing with copper-skinz...

ONREPEATZ... ONREPEATZ...
same old replica...
           towing the jew
in a spiderweb...
like a gravitational pull
toward a moth and
scuttling h'americana

  best be broken h'americana
cain chess of the limbo
continental...
                 abel my abel...
my liquidating sod...

                      it was never to be
a prized event;
of good... to have cleaved one
to a momentum...
god.... the usual bollocking riddle.

“YOU’RE NOT REAL” I screamed even as my knees buckled and I collapsed fingers gripping at the sides of my head as though I could make it all stop if only I could break through the fragile casing of my skull and force my finger tips deep into the softness of grey matter trapped within.

I cried then in the way that only children seem to be able to, I cried as I have never cried since that day with heart breaking sobs that made my chest ache even days later.
Days that I do not remember.

I know I stayed there for what felt like a life time, my body crumpled against the unforgiving wooden panelled floor shaking with each new sob that tore at my throat until I was sure that I might soon see blood as well as tears staining the fabric of my little blue jeans.

There were hands then, though I never saw them.
Large and rough with years of labour, they smelled of cigarettes and potting soil… saw dust and engine grease.
Those hands came and closed slowly over mine easing away the pressure of my tiny fingers now tipped with blood where my nails had partly broken the skin leaving red streaks through the tangled mess of sun bleached strands.

Strong arms lifted my body that felt too small… too fragile, like a hollow egg shell that has been pitted against a brick.
That was how I felt then just a shell trying to keep the world at bay.

I remember the dull sensation of eyes staring, burning into me as those strong arms cradled my shell the blur of red against the grey shirt that covered the chest that felt more like a mountain… a fortress that could hide me from the world.

There was no other sound to me then but the footsteps of my human fortress carrying my shell of a body out of the room as my pained sobs cut through the air and buried themselves deep in the psyche of every being there.

I knew somewhere in the back of my catatonic mind that I would never see that room again or the other children and their frightened glances that were always cast in my direction whenever I was caught speaking softly to the man that  paced the halls of our Sunday school.

I would never see the haggard face of our tired teacher, the horrible accusing look he always gave me when I insisted on the pacing mans existence before being sent to stand alone in the farthest corner of our class room.

We passed through the narrow doorway where above there hung a sign.
Fat sprawling letters written in a child’s hand so thickly coated in a smattering of different colored glitters… Jesus loves you.

I closed my eyes.

the only thing that i care for
i ran it off
like a tabby in a window begging for a plate of fish
like a beautiful bloom i adored
and never watered
like an open door
steaming in rays from a cresting dawn
thats slammed shut

i keep the plate out now
waiting for a menacing meow
i pour water into the ***
hoping a sprig would spring again
all the doors are open now
even the cabinets
all in vain

god.
now im living begging to be annoyed
wasting potting soil
blinded by golden pain

See, see the judgmental sky
Marvel at its big green depths.
Tell me, do you wonder
why mother nature ignores you?
Why its feebly stare
makes you feel lazy.
I can tell you, it is
worried by your distorted ***** growth
That looks like
A mold.
What's more, it knows
Your shtty potting shed
Smells of peas.
Everything under the big judgmental sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm shts like yourself...

so what's going on here?
anyone determined a possible
motive or suspects yet
the guy across the street is looking like a potential candidate

the guy waters his flowers and trims his hedges for a living
he throws some sort of odd fertilizer on the ground and then he walks inside
his shirt is discolored at the bottom from sweat and potting soil, some would attest to the fact that he wears the same outfit everyday, kind of scary if you give it some thought

or maybe the transvestite that moved in a few doors down
i suppose you never know what they're up too, huh?
it's all very confusing and i need a lot of help

let's go get coffee

It stood by my uncle’s hatstand for
As long as I can recall,
This ugly wooden carving, leering
Staring out from the wall,
My mother would say, ‘It’s evil,’
That it wasn’t fit to see,
Not for a young impressionable,
By that, she just meant me.

It used to give me the shivers
Every time that I passed its way,
It had a glare of malevolence
I felt, in a mute dismay,
My uncle brought it from Africa
A memento of his time
Seeking out the Azuli tribe
Who lived in a tropic clime.

‘I think his name was Jabuka,’
My uncle said to a friend,
‘One of those baleful spirits that
Was said to torture men,
He’d pluck your eyes from their sockets
If you saw what you shouldn’t see,
And infected men with a virus
That would **** their family.’

For years it sat in abeyance,
Whatever the power it bore,
There was never a hint of impatience
As it sat, and stared by the door,
It wasn’t until my uncle hired
A sultry African maid,
That evil entered the atmosphere
Of the house where I went, and played.

I think it was then that I noticed
There was something strange at large,
My hair rose up as I walked on by,
An electrostatic charge,
It prickled in all my fingers
Ran up the hairs of my arm,
I’d lie if I should deny that day
I felt a sense of alarm.

While little dark skinned Mbutu,
Would bow when she’d dust it off,
Would mumble some words in Zulu
That I could make nothing of,
I saw the fear in her eyes the day
I glanced off it in the hall,
‘Never to touch Jabuka, son
Or him rage is fearful!’

It must have been close on midnight
I heard, when over and done,
My uncle came on Mbutu
Stark naked before ‘the one’,
It must have been some strange African rite
As she danced, she gave weird cries,
But then next day, my uncle lay
And bled from both of his eyes.

My aunt then died of Ebola,
No more than a week from then,
The virus grew, then Mbutu too
Was lost to the world of men,
I sat by my uncle’s bedside
At the hospital by the park,
When he said, ‘Oh Ben, I’m a fool,’ and then,
‘God, but this room is dark!’

He told me to take Jabuka
And carry it out that day,
‘But while you carry that evil thing
Be sure you’re looking away,
There’s petrol out in the potting shed,
Though barely a gallon or two,
Make sure you douse it over the head,
You know what you have to do.’

I watched the flames as they roared and claimed
The wood of that idol’s gaze,
And felt the surge of an evil urge
Attack, in so many ways,
I knew I’d watched what I shouldn’t see
As I felt it rise in my hair,
And lost one eye as it bled bone dry,
It’s lucky I have a spare!

David Lewis Paget

decorative flora thrown to the sacrificial pit
pity shivers on the fringes of my identity like springy roots
out from the warmth and wet
of potting soil

not brave, just lucky
not impressive, still growing
just let me broaden my garden

in league with lofty new age decision rooms
to air strikes and precarious ties, not hiding in the sky!
shivering to rotten hospitaled justice
up all the way through that cold toll of some bell of betrayal.

planted like a whisper
seen at stops at the park and weddings
the cute moments of acceptance we have
and things i could not and would never want to take from you

the very fact of you seems to poke a question into the sky

My grandfather was not a boxer
but he loved to fight, throwing
punches at the faces of hard men,
left and right hooks, uppercuts
in barroom brawls and alleyways,
with hands the size of iron trivets,
forearms cut with ropes of muscle.

Eventually, after decades of stitches
and bruised knuckles, after his hair
turned white and his eyes clouded,
he would shadowbox in the garden
behind the dilapidated potting shed,
swinging slower, less light on his feet,
but safe in that manicured square
ringed by boxwoods and evergreens,
the bees in spring buzzing applause.

My grandmother would watch
him from the kitchen window,
in a sweater she always wore
regardless of the weather,
and wonder what he was fighting
against, or, perhaps, fighting for.

And that’s how my grandfather died:
throwing a final right cross in the air
before dropping to his knees at last,
knocked out on a mat of green grass,
washed by an unexpected downpour,
water collecting in opened red tulips,
loving cups in full bloom, the first
ten drops of rain counting him out.

Standing in that garden decades later,
I know I am no fighter.
Approaching old age, hands in pockets,
I watch for signs of unexpected weather,
worry about things beyond my control:
car crashes, cancer, electromagnetic pulses,
the minutiae of a thousand apocalypses.

Is the future drawing back
a left hook I will never see
coming? Will a haymaker
hit me like a hammer,
unmaking my family
before the final bell?

And suddenly I realize:
maybe I should have
learned to throw
a ******* punch.

The oils she rubs into me makes me smooth and so slippery,we indulge in some frippery and we laugh quite hysterically.
The bath is our swimming pool,she swims and I play the fool,maybe it's not too cool but what do we care.
The bedroom's a boom or bust,we're old and we have to trust that what happens there are things we must
accept.
The kitchen is her domain,that, I need not explain.
The garden is my empire from the potting shed to the compost fire and I desire no more than this, a cup of tea and a bedtime kiss and all points in between.

should i be more mistaken  and more impressed by
a readership, or by the general
population of the world? can everything, literally,
that i touch turn graphite into diamond?
      we, who have magpie
value, are really under-dressed
for the peacock parade...
but wouldn't you
love to kiss that pretty sheen
where the sun don't skine...
i can't be east end, i''m
essex bound... farmer out of his
comfort zone...
next tier come the cow ****...
and if that ain't a bear-knuckle
fight, i don't know what is
drinking home-made wine, with
all that fog and murk, and
everything i wish i could never bring
myself grievances over...
   like a tightening of the ansus,
of losing virginity via the age of 16...
i don't know, you start to
fake the more you age, but since
i'm not reallt ageing, i'm bound to be
one of those: sinister dogs
thrown into the kennel of the streets,
all because i said:
hush your pretty mouth,
we're boundless in knowing who might
kiss it again...
  i mean: dumb as ****, but then again
i kept neithe friend, nor onspirator
akin to Guy Fawkes...
   then you had two children you wanted
to boast about, and i had 20 bottles of wine
i wanted to boast about...
the two never seemed to congregate....
and i was left barren, and said:
and deserts need to exist,
and you said something about
rainforests, and how you needed more squashed
wood for paper for the office -
     toilet cubicles, because the koala
paper was running out...
and ******* a **** out
with grit and sand-paper was no way
to go about wiping your ***....
even if the eastern europeans...
just about the time you deemed my ethinicity
vermin... just about then i turned
all königratte on you...
and said a quiet allegiance against the "free" world...
so said about "free" people, i say: about as free as
your need to maintain a routine...
  and counter wind-farms with
hamster-treadmills...
                            oh man, if you
didn't mention my ethnicity as being bound of
rats... if you only forgot about my baptismal excuse
relevant to the schwarz pest -
    that's so uncool man...
  that's like a Jewish joke when only
Jewish mothers laugh... it's like a joke about
being circumcised... and then having to really
give it your all for a ****... because with your
******* missing... she had all the gags with
her *******, who she nick-named Dorace...
and that like... ****... a keeping a plant
that belongs in the Amazonian rainforest
inside a potting urn... for no better word for it.
but hell, me being an ethnicity bound to rats?
what does that make you clean shaven,
axe-weilding, metro-****** super-gnat?
no, i can see big ben tic toc tic toc...
     i just can't see you making up the cavnas...
talk about reclaiming your capital...
        that sure seems like all the war movies
are obsolete these days, meaing
it's all about a coach trip from Debry to London Victoria...
meaning in the real world...
meaning getting any education at all
was a bit pointless...
   arm wrestling in the cantine would have made
more sense than being taught darwinism...
   darwinism can, somehow, undermine
your natural bully strength...
    and there i was duped into thinking:
survival of the fittest... call it what you like
in theory, in reality it's called:
mind the ******* pedestrian!
   the granny, the pregnant woman...
oh sure, get rid of god, i'll also yawn...
but why give so much prayer / thought toward
a system that can't incorporate you as ruler,
when every parasite is bound to scheme a return
to the privilege of a tapeworm?
don't get it... tell me how that sort of politics works
while i see hurricane katrina in replay...
            mingle the omni rhetoric with
a mathematical rubric, and then couple that to
egocentrism... you basically get the western civilisation...
so much for protest... and so much for everything else...
i lost count trying to keep up with the perfected
chinese... the truest nature adherents...
                the easiest way to control god
is to argue he doesn't exist... well, **** yeah! get a tattoo!
a bit different when you have to argue
against parasites... to later equate them with
the emergence of new technology and the excess of
libido and the unemployed...
                i have absolutely nothing profound
to say... but why obliterate the reason to
find an escapism in a god, when all we're given
to replace theology is: sky, believe in better...
or disney, i.e. dream in technicolour...
                the main point though?
it's war when you equate my ethnicity with vermin...
not enough **** in your system to know better?
wait wait... this is post-colonialism, right?
    mater rus turb...
turbanus sikh vanus... either way ya plonker...
we can add that you eat the same breakfast
7 times a week, and on the 6th day i ate the *****
of having ate breakfast on day 5... and hence
the seagull was born.
    what a caged ******, it almost seems like
the englishman was born to remain abroad,
or better still, along with the tabloid
avenue of recounting his stay in Ibiza...
where he was all hail mary for no one to see!

Watch with Mother,

but Andy is waving goodbye
to Bill and Ben,
who are in the potting shed
at the **** again.

In between the delphiniums
and the hollyhocks.
Beside the potting shed
with creeper walls.
Rested the old wheelbarrow
dented rusted and aged.
Thoughts of my childhood
when I was  just a girl return to me.
Daddy would sit me in the wheel barrow
and give me a ride.
All around the garden
as I squealed in delight.
suddenly I am overwhelmed
I have a need to see
his kind eyes once more.
Hear his soft gentle voice
so mellow and kind
so sweet to me.
I want feel like
his little girl once more
safe and secure.
The need to find him
is beyond anything.

I look all over the gardens for him.
Then I see him stood by the maple tree.
He is wearing his old knitted sweater
that Mom knitted for him.
With  his corduroy gardening pants.
In his mouth his sweet aromatic pipe
that was always an extension of him.
the smell fills my soul.

He said softly
"Hello Kitten"
my eyes misted
no one but my Daddy
ever called me that.
I said Hello Daddy he took his pipe
from his mouth
His smile lit up the place
For a single moment
I felt secure and safe.
I was six once more but he faded.
into the ether of infinity.

My childhood was long passed
replaced by my womanhood.
All that was left was the
indelible memories
of long ago  times past.
Tears fell from my eyes as I
wept to go back,
even for just  one moment.

Then a noise as I looked around
at the arrival of the new owners.
A young handsome man and his wife
with thier  little son.
Who shouted in delight.
"Daddy there’s a wheelbarrow,
can I have a ride?"

it's never too early to pack up your whole life
of memories and hopeless grudges.
Pounds of paint
scraps of metal
half read medical books
screws and nails

I'm moving out tomorrow  
and boy am i excited
to pack up my belongings.
I'm excited to stop crying in this room
about a future that's unforeseeable
and a past that's unchangeable.

I'm excited to experience a ****** in my next bedroom
to christian the living room couch with my ***
to ***** the backyard with my hands
with potting soil and seeds

"Oh, tranquility
Penetrating the very rock,
A cicada's voice."
Matsuo Basho

I was broken, how much do I have to say?
my first taste of the air, a tornado
I wear my mind full of cracks, of strange attractors,
the chaos of the blue lives there,
some collage of potting soil and beauty
my tears are round like an explosion
my hips an extension of tenderness
I was broken beyond despair beyond repair
white birds in my smile going to far away places
in search for their shape
when nobody sees me my hands are full of laughter, of dance, of forgetting, no need to take myself too seriously

I am broken and I like to feel
my fragments caressed by
the morning air, by his sleepy hands,
or the passersby's careless looks

What do I need the church bells for?
Monday tomorrow reminds me it's Sunday today.

The faithful pray
the innocent play
the guilty pay
it's Sunday today
and
I'm staying in bed.

well
that was the plan
but
sadly I woke as a man
and put this great
notion behind me,

you'll find me in the potting shed
pottering.