AstuteEyes

Mother You were my first Mother, Parent and Death. How would you feel if I had other mothers, Abusive, gaudy and stagnant, rather than you? They were interior, buzzing away; but I am like a worker bee with no queen, So everything is in vain. Our glass hive has been dropped, And the shards have shredded my Brother's feet. He's almost mute, you know. It wasn't the tumour, but the second No, third Mother why did you die? Is what I want to ask But instead, I accept that you were ill, And that you're hidden in a casket Just waiting to jump out and declare: "Surprise!" But I digress, you couldn't jump, And neither can I.

Unknown I was not yours, but you were mine. My second-mother dead of Cancer. I watched your children burn you, And then bury your urn: Are you a member of the Bone Orchard? It's in season, this year. I've had a bigger haul than usual. Relatives should be interred in Cambridgeshire, Under a willow tree, past the war memorial. Which war? All wars. Some headstones are anon, Aged into craggy scribes. Our bones go the same way, Earth-worm eaten. Not you, though, Oh, second-mother, You are dust, spread, eternal.

Grandfather Have you been joined by dear Sylvia, On your Bridge Table in the sky? "Out out" didn't apply to you. It was liver failure at 80 And then pills til 90. I'd assume Christ doesn't give you them, Your meds, now.   Are you hallucinating with God? Neither of you were Plath-esque. It was Church every Sunday, Rain or shine, but apparently The grave kept you away From enquiring grandchildren. We still want to know, what was D-day like? You never mentioned it: Just moaned about tax dodges and deductions. That was in the 70's, before my time.

Grandmother If life is such a fleeting thing, Then the Botox industry must be doing well. All white and gauzy, laid bare on an operating table We let your dissection begin. Passed away in her sleep, they said: No memory of pain, just a needle mark. Later I wonder what we are becoming when a funeral is just another beauty pageant. Perhaps the corpse of my grandmother will be entered, Unearthed and dressed in pink frills. A 1960's girl, but Catholic, She didn't warm to the Beatles, But brushed off her Bible and warned of indecency. Now she's indecent, She's busy apple-coring in the ground And we're left rotting too.

I I read that "anyone can write" And that intellectual elitism was wrong In a literary journal from 1985. So forgive me for being at university My suburban fiends. I'm not siding with the feminists yet, Just the hippies. They keep trying to sell me drugs To help me work But I tell them "not today" And sit in my room reading. II Maybe today I'll write; But probably just smoke instead. My friend caught a case of the mania, Not Beatle mania, but the sort that Sets you up in a home for life, While she echoes equal rights indeed. III All poetry needs Is a catchy one-liner/ Just ask Anon 2012.

What if Christ made a faux pas? He was told old Lazzy was a good man Of God, but let's not assume They didn't just miss him That rotten child beater, He was a pretty swell guy. His wife did him in, Maybe she should have told Him Then he'd have to dig out His own way. If I recall, they Interred him in Cambridgeshire Or was that just my ancestral home? I'm confusing things. Anyway. Lazarus was dead, Just like me.

How outrageous this old bastard is. Has he still got his head; Or is it mounted in an album of golden hierarchy, Gilded with disappointment? His old man tongue caresses the womanly form Of vigour. I'm disheartened his head is steady, A placard in the public domain of misogyny. His monthly cycle is a hatred of the moon. Her wild face kisses the sky in contempt And lights his wife Mary's cathedral. High, high he curses the Earth's child. No geosynchronous spur will falter, Though. His threats don't reach This lofty madam, this spinster of the night. He had it good before the 50's. This bastard's lonely now, His wife a siren ca

Here you are. Nothing. Nothing but an expanse of empty canvas Inviting us to paint up a storm. Rather similar to the storm accompanied by the Scrawks of those that've been already. Beneath me immediately is an ocean of noise, Though you wouldn't know it to look. Its stumpy echoes drum into my senses, betraying its malice. I think it must be oblivion below my frost bitten feet. An oblivion compelling me to paint. By the cliff edge I mar the canvas with faces so i'm not alone; the whole of everyone must be here. But i'm only allowed to look at the fine print, Hooked on the infinite details of nasal cavities to the brain. My imp

I see the phone's sucked you dry, child. Drained the wax right out, scraped the drum with those strips still hanging from your ears. Did it catch your emotions too? Maybe the wax is it. An accumulation, a blockage of the sinuses formed of all your good thoughts. The wireless vampire has left you empty. Mother warned against calling, she'd known there was no reply, that those echoing incubators would only accumulate a banquet platter of pic n' mix sadness. But maybe the phone only took the wax- globules of soured, gone-off hurt, expunged from inside the drum-beat lobes- and replaced it with it's own. By it's own, I mean others. It's leav

Oh my philistine jock, with your hijab hood and burhka face, do you quake in vain? Samson does not stalk these hills I plucked from the globe; With no Delilah to shore your hair, my scraggy beachhead, you're eroded by Aegean elements. Your tip-toes in Gaza betray you my philistine, they drag abroad homunculi leaden with artillery, and syphon your women, bled dry of oily rite, into magazine clips. So unwind in philistinian might by the Damascus sun, and bind the lens flare to an incandescent face: Get your shot and no-one ever dies.