Blunt

These day-in day-out mis-typings
of small tap-tap-tap screen pokes –
which I commit as my bad habit –
weightless stabs in this landscape
to stall that mental keel

warned of by my desk-set consultant –
My thoughts are in a dark waiting room
without a fixed appointment for entry –
sat for a last hurrah
before the freeze

I greeted her breezy – How are you?
with an unfair response –
I use this screen – my handheld shield –
for honest words – about everything –
I’ll always dig for verse
in this spade-blunting field

Seventy-Six Percent

To take this decision –
to take this life –
Off discharged thoughts
but it is my choice

I wake disturbed
by a scratched record –
Will this be the day
when I feed the birds?

We scared males –
curtailed in acuity –
will swing from the beams
far too easily

This tear-stained rope –
now held in my hands —
I am throwing it up
into no man’s land

The Perpetual Curate

Here lies the poor
perpetual curate –
he lived a low life
on the stipend they paid —

The beneficiary of
a lost monastery lease –
he was appointed to
this chapel-of-ease —

He could not marry
on the wages of God –
with such low standing
he chose to shun love —

Queen Anne’s Bounty
was no saving grace —
He died malnourished –
inhumed in this place

www.mikebellpoems.com
@wordsbell

The Remained

Even in the unfair fall
of rain on the night – of
discharged un-loadings –
after the torches lit
the memorial bonfire –
the three wives of war
will be still – to remain
without any complaint
about huge losses to
King or Country –
or other such standings
of the state’s manhood –
that stupidity of men –
Keep back from
the lightings and fusings
of the electrical lines –
It is as if God was unable
to save the widow wives

Units of Measure

It is this moment – a problem of
mine – in my stumbled-to-stand –
when I rise to a lowered sobriety –
to another false swing of swagger
into the blind tight turn to corners
of sharp right-rights and then-thens –

I am stuck still – counter-stopped
at the gloss-bald white worktop –
to find-and-twist – to dead-head –
another French label – volute –
from contorts in cellars – such snobs –
at eighteen quid-ish of so much –

So very much more – bottled up –
Another grip on her narrow neck –
she opens up to a wine bled red –
a gutting-burn of drunk guilt
as I surrender to my mild hangover
which is my waking anal fist

Kurt

So it goes – from the
slaughterhouse cellar
under Dresden –
At that safe depth –
with Werner Gluck –
his half-relative

An unholy war
as narrative – but
it has no time line –
it makes no sense –
until historians
claim a victory
from those events

Grandpa stood
with the PPU –
he fought in fields –
not foreign felder –
he eyed the loam
from his pacifist shelter

On the other side
an enlisted man –
my dead grandfather –
shelled on thin sand

Prompt Notes

Lugenpresse – the cry
of the untruth brigade –
in the theatres of hate –
of cheap bit players –
they bay in loud heckles
and kick at the presses –
they stick it to foreigners
and Islam – like zealots –
they spray the synagogues
with graffiti and guns –
they are The Minority –
but represent everyone –
they find no favours
from CNN –
they shout loudly on Fox
about everything –
The lying press – their cry –
as they confuse the news –
spewing up rhetoric
as they twist their false truth