ANDY MULLIS
TERMINATOR
Sleeker than Schwarzenegger,
But as relentless, the glib feline eyes a feed,
Computes conscienceless,
Pounces, toys, tears
Fur from tissue
Slicks back her pure-bred coat.
No evidence that evening
As, beside the fireside,
She makes her dowdy mistress glad,
Rumbling throat-tickled content,
Lapping daintily the white liquid
That is the reward for her goodness.
Seamlessly after sweet sleep,
She stretches and glides from hearth to kill,
Her grace insouciant,
Her eyes occult,
Her need, like her facilitator’s, raw.
BACK WHEN COLOUR BEGAN
I tramped for miles with you, inwardly.
I never reached any place to speak of,
The wind whispering, tender on my face.
I wanted to lie down, and we did,
On a poppy bed, under clouds
Manufactured by circumspect gods.
I sparred a while with you,
Weary with determined paces,
Waiting to fall, dizzy, into Oz.
Then, knowing I always had a heart, a brain,
Courage and a thousand questions,
I woke to find you still beside me;
Eating mountains of pasta,
Exploring the quintessence of things,
Remembering the eighties over a drink,
Insisting your cuddly hedgehogs are alive,
Making love to me, pottering about and tidying up
Before you took your Kansas-bound balloon.
I may parade a medal and a scroll now,
But I've handed the ticking heart over to you.
MIDSUMMER MURDERS
Summer nights are cool and slim and shady,
Are punch like pop and dancing and arousal,
Are shivering grass and snakes and shrieks,
Are pagan and poetic and mystery
And mean loan sharks and bad karma
And blister with the static
Of the rustle in the undergrowth
As silken as the sap
Steaming from the grave
Determined hollow in the woods.
You mark my words:
Bergerac’Il be round inquiring on the morrow.
SPACE
This stuff that clutter is not
Is, I guess, the number nought,
A handy fulcrum,
Epoch making staging post.
A week ago you went away
With all your paraphernalia,
And with, I suspect,
More than a few bits of mine.
So my quarters are cacophony,
Not pivotal to meditation
Or pregnant with opportunity.
Space takes the piss and biscuit.
It's a hundred millipedes
Ranging over a bound body,
Stinging red-raw clutter:
The walls beyond,
Impenetrable forest.
FREEDOM SONG
Sing a song of liberty
Sing a song of life,
Away, you flibberty-gibberty
Pall-bearers of strife,
Go play your screeching violins
In dirges dire and drear,
Or in some frantic ghostly dance,
But just get out of here.
If you come back a-knocking
You'll find my door stays closed,
My ear deaf to your death-knell
My heart and mind composed,
I toast a song of liberty,
See coloured flags unfurled,
Drink in the vintage quality
Of living in this world.
FORKED TONGUE
I would have wished to find a voice,
To have it fly: sibilant
As a waterfall or brook.
But I speak with hissing lisp the while,
Eyes kaleidoscopic with
Information, illusion, decision.
So I babble and trip along
Any old path, disrespectful;
Slurping at clear and brackish springs,
Shyly, slyly flicking lighted matches
At hellmouth tinder as I sidle by.
WISH I WASN'T HERE
Quiet in August.
Jet planes delivering
Packages to the beaches.
Coffee cools as I sit:
Aimless breeze a compliment,
Wasps for company,
Lack of money,
Vinegar as salve.
AI fresco table
In my grey town centre:
The normal busker's
On some riviera,
Dues paid for his pleasure.
My mind does a bungee jump:
Not quite elastic enough to offer me
The splash of hotel pool water.
ALMOST THE WORLD'S BEST CENTURY
What if Wat had won
And Richard come second:
Craziest crook in Kent
Bending Britain over backwards,
Inverting the natural order.
After all, there'd been buboes,
Followed by ubertax under
Incorrigible government bloaters.
Just think: commonly owned
Free Marxist Utopiac
Green and Pleasant Land,
Inculcated by this peasant band.
I wouldn't be scrabbling for pennies
Under Welfare to Work:
Technology wouldn't be anti-social:
Global capitalists wouldn't have even
Registered a twinkle in anyone's eye.
The end of the world mightn't be so nigh.
Ah, well. Better luck next time.
OVER THE HILL
Over the hill is a pleasant land,
Beyond up over the scree and shale,
Of milk and honey and laden vines
Wolves that nuzzle in the lap.
Over the hill are waterfalls
And valleys more verdant than here.
A panorama of fresh fields,
Of sunshine and balmy breezes,
Bright stars upon the night.
Over the hill no shadows fall
And lake and forest hold no ill:
We lift ourselves on up the slope
To live and breathe
The other side of the hill.
THE WANDERER
To travel and to not discover.
Hedged in amongst the mountain heather,
Canyons of the mind in caverns,
Opaque glasses in each tavern,
Cityscapes as flat as pancakes,
Suburban spaces played by mummers,
Crossword clues as ink black letters.
Chocolate boxes locked and fettered,
Fortunes lost to spend a penny.
Cracks in walls as sanctuaries,
Thunder when there isn't any,
Rains that drive, sun that scorches.
Wishing to be there not here,
Clouds which squat unbroken,
Which once were wispy in the blue,
Yonder ever grey and unforgiving,
Thankless dankness in the tropics,
Mudslide vapours clinging to the breath,
Combat issue shirt haired with sweat.
To always wander,
Jew boy:
Marked, the sights of heaven's sniper
Permanently trained.
LOOKING FOR NOBODY
Taut in the flat with yellowing posters,
Frayed nets, shelves judged dusty by winter sun
And, somehow, polyfilla'd hall walls,
Sits Sarah
on her twelfth cigarette,Almost ready to remove herself into town
To fetch the Dove, the beans, the fish fingers,
The middle-range bog-roll and the Impulse.
It is a familiar weekend,
But notice she courts a glance as she goes.
Imagine her mind games: quirkily pretty,
Single income no kids, looking for nobody.
See? Thirty-something-legal-secretary,
Quarter of a social life, dumped eight years ago,
A child who never saw the light of day,
Friends who've
trickled slowly through her fingers.This evening, after playing out the funeral again,
With its belated appreciation and remorse,
She oversteps the mark. After the pills,
Fear and guilt peck cynically at her girlish soul
Until oblivion shrouds any hint of relief.
Mum sounds the alarm after a week.
Responsively, the police hammer at the door.
Quietly, Sarah points out her achievement from the hall floor.
IMPLANT
I swallowed a foreign body.
First aiders couldn't help me
Choke it out. It lurked about
Shooting up my antibodies.
The medics were amazed
When they finally hoiked it out.
I lay there wondering what
The hell had made it sprout
And shout, and flout accepted
Wisdom, willing to have me
Chained and bound for it's beliefs.
Honestly, I'm not mad,
Just a little sore, prey
To a strange cosmic appointment:
Left with a questioning mind
And a body soothed by ointments.
LONDON
Site of swagger and savvy, hub of hubbub,
Base of brand leaders, money master,
Purveyor of delicacies, of decisions with repercussions.
In step, on line, style-spawning techno-suss giant:
Or, palsied, defect sibling of the streamlined,
Silk-tied, bright-eyed go-ahead New Man,
Paunched with sprawling estates and bad schools.
New London, vigour and vim, once with
Golden Streets glinting through pea soupers
For the wide-eyed traveller from the sticks.
London. Doctors spinning national health on mobile phones,
Inflaming, not treating, the canker in the bones,
Of gentle, rambling, inconsequential Middle England.