Mr Toad in his green, narrow boat
rode the River lanes as if on broken horseback.
Super Trouper searchlight streams
a film from long ago - the Cut,
canoe - fire (and a madman
looking for another madman) port side;
engine purrs, dogs awaken,
‘Alarum! Alarum!’ Not drowning, Toad,
just woken - waving from the porthole
starboard side, Apocalypse mistaken.
When Toady's sober and the party's over
he'd take the tiller from here to Dover
(If rivers were less locks and longer)
instead he pootles up and down,
the Super Trouper beams 'til dawn.
Our Captain scans the banks for harm,
engine purrs...dogs howl
5AM 'Alarum!'
5/2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNWsuzsXccY
Fat Mary
Fat Mary was an ugly old trout,
as old as Loch Ness and seen as often; less,
by the throng from here about.
Fishermen do not want her – they sail away,
up anchor when they discover she was born with teeth,
a smile, a hump back like a whale, surfacing
occasionally, singing Brahms.
Fat Mary was legendary. You could look and look
and never find her – and now, all these years later
if patient enough, and honest enough – quiet enough
and brave enough, from a widescreen window she will leap,
thinking she’s a dolphin and landing like a bomb,
singing an Ode to a Hummingbird, caught in the beam
of a Super Trouper, by Captain Toad’s green boat.
https://thesublimeblog.org/2019/03/06/ode-to-the-hummingbird-neruda/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t894eGoymio Brahms lullaby
“Dear Mary – you never knew how to,
the others had if only you knew cinnamon sprinkled
on their Rice Crispies. Two doting parents,
an extended family network
of various species to tell you
you were cute coot. You are hungry!
You are angry!
Are you sad? Who are you?
Ugly? I am.
I am Hans Christian Anderson.” and he spits in his spittoon.
“Those stories are for grown-ups, Mary!
*
A crash of stumbling beer cans, a can of worms,
a peg leg, the scratch of an old 78 – and in the lullaby
under the water, Mary knew whisky
made Toad’s hate elongated, his verbs
barraging, thronging the slipstream.
Mary a bird? A wife, mother, chick, bomb, hen?
She bubbled – he’d been feeding the coots again!
Mary wrings the soft petalled top waters through her gills.
Until dusk, she was glad he was off balance.
Ancient fish need time, an underbelly the patina of
experience, twirling the flotsam petals
side-stroking the blind. Toad would cruise
for water when the moon was blue
and Mary must catch a ride.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eJiZutTZMk Moving on song. Go Move Shift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELeZmPDdFPE Cover your eyes 5/2020
and if you don’t know cinnamon?
It will come as mysterious as cinnamon,
and if you don’t know cinnamon
it may present itself to you
as apple pie, or mulled wine
- and you will remember,
there must have been times,
there must have been - times
in cinnamon flavours and allspice,
when nutmeg raindrops dark outside
felt like gentle fingers stroking your hair,
until what wasn‘t known, becomes bolder,
asserting itself in unrecognisable moments;
and unrecognised, will leave
replacement raindrops, the darkness, the window,
and many other objects of habit,
living in them, what wasn't known,
until there was cinnamon.
and if you don’t know cinnamon
it may present itself to you
as apple pie, or mulled wine
- and you will remember,
there must have been times,
there must have been - times
in cinnamon flavours and allspice,
when nutmeg raindrops dark outside
felt like gentle fingers stroking your hair,
until what wasn‘t known, becomes bolder,
asserting itself in unrecognisable moments;
and unrecognised, will leave
replacement raindrops, the darkness, the window,
and many other objects of habit,
living in them, what wasn't known,
until there was cinnamon.