Sweaty Yeti

Does the yeti get sweaty
in his thick furry suit
yomping over the tall icy peaks?
But you know it’s no joke
when you long for a soak
and all you can smell is your feet.

And there are so many troubles
in a life without bubbles
when there’s nowhere to shampoo your hair.
When his pits become niffy
and give off a whiffy
he can’t just go’ dry-clean his fur!

So what can he do?
It’s below minus 2!
And he’s starting to feel a bit mucky.
He finds a cold mountain river
sits in it and shivers
and plays with his best rubber ducky.

Wile E. Coyote

The long battered muzzle
sickly yellow eyes
and that unintended toothless sneer
are surely the result
of a lifetime of struggle and defeat.

If it is true that God loves a trier
then what better example than he?
Canine cannons litter the canyon
but on he goes undeterred.

Even as he plummets to the ground
he is thinking of his next big idea
which we all know will end

in a long descending whistle
a dull and distant thud

and of course

a tiny plume

of smoke.

The List Makers

What if I were on your list?
The next slippery rung on your ladder
another silver bead on your chain.

I could be a black bottle of wine
lying on the stone cellar floor beneath your house
wearing a raincoat of dust
laid out like a legion of body bags in a cavernous warehouse .

Or perhaps I am your next bullet point.
You in the heavy boots, jeans and black T-shirt.
Those dark green - watching from behind the shutters
of an elevated window - eyes fixing me in the crosshairs.

But here…let me save you some time.
A well place mine on the twelfth fairway
or a man-trap in the sand-trap by the ninth green
would seem a far simpler modus operandi.

And there is the roll call of all those who just vanished
like the frost on a sunlit field.
Those who allowed the tide to take them
or left in the normality of the moment and never returned.

Leaving not even a chalk silhouette
in the hallway, face down
just a few feet from the door.

The Flip-Side of the Coin

Sundays evenings at home
can be like the dentists
waiting room,

listening to the shrill shrieking
of the drill
upstairs.

It is on these nights
that eight hours sleep
passes too quickly.

The turning of a page.
A vase falling,
striking the floor.

Dark mornings
moan in my veins
like smoke.

But not right now.

Now is the time to let
the beads of silver
slip down the beer bottle।

A time to recline deeper
in this chair
and doze

through a movie
where I really haven’t a clue
what’s going on.

Ice Breaker

The simple garden at the back of the house
with it’s playhouse standing in the corner
and the empty bird feeder swinging from the fence
faces dead north.

Which means, if I am correct, that the road
beneath this misted window travels east.
And if the morning weather report is to be believed,
then somewhere miles beyond the end of this street,

out over the rolling slate waves of an icy sea,
is gathering a sandstorm of snow.
A vast swarm of bees,
spiralling in on itself again and again.

A biblical plague of white flies which,
whilst you and I have been playing out the introductions,
has swept silently through this place,
like a deserted spectral train

that screams through an empty platform,
its tattered drapes flapping wildly
through a thousand glassless windows.

Fridayville

No matter where you are
such a place always seems too far away.
A small black dot on the far edge of the map

cut off by thick forests and rivers black.
But in this place the coffee is always fresh
the air coloured with the salty scent of bacon.

The children sit in their brightly coloured
classrooms listening to stories.
And in the afternoons they paint pictures of dragons

insects and far away lands.
The old ones walk in leafy parks.
They eat their neatly cut sandwiches

in the shade of the bandstand.
Then at dusk some gather around
tables of green felt to play some bridge and drink tea.

And by late evening the children curl into their beds
the parks are empty
and the cards neatly stacked in the bottom of the drawer.

Hibernaculum

I do not remember where I came across it.
The word just tripped me like a discarded slipper,
lying on a bedroom carpet in the darkness of 3am.

And now it will not go away.
Like the dog that follows me home each evening,
always just a few paces behind and then lies down on my lawn.

Hibernaculum, hibernaculum, hibernaculum.
I even say it in different accents; I change its tones and rhythms.
(it seems to sit well in American for some reason.)

I know what it means,
but I would prefer to think it was Roman.
A military outpost maybe, 50 miles north of Hadrian’s Wall.

Now a crumbling ruin on a hillside
that shelters a few grey sheep from the snowy gales.
In the middle of these long winter days,

I could easily be an animal
curled up in a dry hole somewhere
with my tail over my eyes.

How nice it would be to put on a few pounds for warmth,
climb in, and sleep out the cold until spring
as the tendrils of pale roots creep nearer.

But from there I would have missed you tonight.
I would not have been struck by the way the air around you shimmered.
How it sparkled every time you smiled.