A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

A pigeon at the foreign languages faculty
goes to seagull classes out to sea.
As Flamingoes chip away for their exam in ‘Woodpecker up a Tree’
An exchange English crow gets French sparrow tutorials on the streets of gay Paris.

Greenfinches studying ‘Parrot’ do their best
as kingfishers get hooked on ‘Gold-crest’.
As model eagle students soar above the rest.
Mallard ducks take the plunge and take the ‘lesser swallow-tailed swift’ test.

Pelicans learn how to be robins with a Christmas term trip to a quaint little village
As wrens learn how to crane their necks for ‘Ostrich’.
Budgerigars try to gobble like turkeys fattened for the fridge.
Erasmus vultures steal like magpies on a steel bridge.

As birds of a feather flock together for a degree to migrate,
the owl-scholarly hierarchy hawks sit at the top of their perch; and deliberate.

She met him and he met her
on a street called saint lucifer.
But what they did wasn’t wicked;
just a pot of tea and the odd dunked biscuit.

Both would flirt with riskless danger
with childish dreams away in a manger.
She was hitched and so was he.
Both would talk of being free.

Neither of their partners knew
that every so often they shared a brew.
After all, it wasn’t betrayal.
Hardly a crime befitting of jail.

But what went down on Saint Lucifer Street
when one said it was better not to meet
left one of them feeling much the worse
with trust misplaced and a devilish curse.

You can’t even see eye to eye
With yourself in your own mirror.
You don’t say goodbye
Till there’s nobody left to hear.

Every record you have jumps.
Can’t stutter without an impediment.
As a child missed out on mumps.
Paid a mortgage in rent.

Can’t remember names on christenings.
Every bill you get is wrong.
Can’t concentrate without listening.
Can’t sit down to dinner without a gong.

Can’t have a party without guests.
Can’t make a racket if it’s not a din.
You come off worse when doing your best.
Couldn’t get hit without an assassin.

locked padlocked
chairs pushed to them
cartoon characters nailing them up
got the only key to them

u can’t keep them out
u can’t keep them in
they’re all laughing at you
and u think you’re safe as houses

i don’t know about you
but i’m shitting myself
have you ever really looked closely at doors before?
understood them at all?

There used to be balloons.
Rotating girls in revolving skirts to spiralling tunes.
There were stain glass windows in kaleidoscopes.
Climbing acrobats and daisy chain ropes.

There used to be rivers of streets running to the city’s gaping mouth
and compass boats blown like ticker tape south.
There were jugglers and minstrels and jukebox sky-scraping towers.
There used to be heart-beds made of flowers.

What are they doing?
They’re so busy
And I sleep sleep sleep
And I dream dream dream.

Now they’re doing nothing.
They’re so still.
And I sleep sleep sleep
And I dream dream dream.

I wag my tail here.
I want to stay.
And I sleep sleep sleep
And I dream dream dream.

The days end.
The nights send
angels and ghosts.
They notch you up on their bedposts.

Everyone there has a cat.
Some are slim and lean, some are big and some are fat.
Some are white, some are grey and some are black
but everyone there has a cat.

Everyone there goes about their day daily and their night nightly
where things fall heavily or float up lightly
where they let them go or hold on to them tightly
but everyone there goes about their day daily and their night nightly.

Everyone there avoids everyone there.
Everyone looks at everyone behind mirror-glasses they wear.
Everyone folds away a tree and uproots a chair
but everyone avoids everyone there.

That’s how it is.
There’s nothing joining us together apart from cement.
Bricks and rubble as answers to a war-time quiz
that came like a blitz and then went.

So close, we have to whisper.
Walking on tip-toes to avoid a blister.
Family round the wireless in 1939.
Today, so enlightened, we fly up
and crash into the children crossing sign.

Promise me you’ll be there ‘til the end
Or somewhere near like a fair-weather friend.
Promise me you’ll keep your promise safe in your memory bank somewhere.
Promise me you’ll break it if you forget the combination.

Promise me you’ll bugger off when you don’t give a bugger
Or get armed for a hug when we need a hugger.
Promise me you’ll go up the wall when I’m going spare.
Promise me you won’t promise the world
unless it’s an out-of-this-world destination.