Inbetween days (a work in useless progress)

 A bunch of stuff (a work in useless progress)

 

All the books the ceramic hooks

They’re all a bunch of stuff

And decks of cards without these shards

Are all a bunch of stuff

When down below you sip your tea before the fire side

The radiator’s got my back

And laptop wires and shelves of books await my eyes’ attack

The titles and the memories of memory itself

Are stacked like figments of a dream

That once described the self

The desk its grungy patina

A map of my endeavours

The saucer’s eyes are on me now

The skylight sending weather

From vistas far and far beyond my tiny brains snow globe

A festive trope for everyone and everyone’s bath robe

Pockets full of mystery and nameless empty fluff

Because the flames nuzzle your knees

It’s all just a bunch of stuff

 

The boat is in the doldrums upon a glassy sea

Expecting the horizon any day now

One two three

The poetry of Santa

Will Satan’s wisdom be

Once we have sailed over the line into a fantasy

That we have all agreed is good and morally correct

Yet within the seventh orbit we will find it all suspect.

Abandon hope but stay positive

Said the message in a bottle

& start the engines icebergs ahead

for we must drive full throttle

The sea the sea it’s all we have this week

And then beyond we can relax

A feel the winds coax the child to the pond

Where he’ll sit with rod in hand

And point it to the future

But before then while there’s no breeze

We’ll explore the karma sutra

And other Sanskrit chimes of truth

That ring a ring of roses

And fill the glass with moonshines draft

Before the window closes

The boat the boat we sail within

Is creaking in the stillness

And we’re adrift til we begin

To inoculate against illness

The phial is on the poop deck

And the captain’s feeling low

But the clouded skies sing who the heck?

And no one wants to know

Wants to know that we are cut adrift

And living off the dead

Oh dear she thinks did I say that?

Please pass the matron’s leg

Our raft was twenty meters square

Enough to last a life time

And some old lag will rescue us

Until then we’ll play games and sing sweet rhymes.

The passage between the manger and the horizon is now clear

Like the smoke from yonder island where the natives feel no fear

And yet our poisoned blankets will wrap them up like pigs

While we the poisoned figs will eat

And Robinson graves he digs

.

The waves retreat into the deep and ease us to our meeting

With the folks that we all shall become

And in-between we see a fleeting

Vision of a baby ape evolving to a man

His face lined with his satire’s wit

The idea of a plan

Forming on his touch screen device

While his doubters no doubt burn in hell

And he alone can understand the grids of his excel

 

The advent crown is smouldering

The fire-resistant tinsel

Wrapped around coat-hanger wire

A serpent feeling sinful.

Up on the cliff behind us now

A tragic lighthouse of the Pharaoh

 

Can we swim back you ask and cast a backwards glance?

Perhaps but don’t go there though

On and on two dozen sevens

A tidy sum dost make

And you and I can see the shore

We’ll row our backs to break

 

But wind formed columns do break the line

And finger post to the progress

The wind is sucked out of our sails

And fills the clouds with useless

Vainglorious announcements

And the stuff of dreams that we forgot to summon

A bunch of stuff is floating past

Our presents are now jetsam

 

The hours pass we plot the course

Hiding below the horn

And hope against hope we can help

Reason to be reborn

When we return to cheering crowds

Expectant of a tale how

We found the missing route

And survived a deadly gale

That blew inland from the occident

And the men will throw upwards their hats

To hear about garlic garlands that ward off vampire bats

From the manger to the horizon

We’ll steer a steady course

For it is human nature

We all know that of course

For the mind shall be tricked no more

Beyond a certain ripe old age

And reasons fantasy we score

To lead us page by page

The end