Our gold mine tour of shifts
& tales in [bellowing] Welsh
tones – chopsing – blown by
dynamite’s effect [& all that
glitters – etcs] & that rugged
bugger dug at fools’ stories
under his tourist-flowing pit
of cuttings & blastings – our
jump rod conducted us to a
pitch-black – lit-black [dense
once turned off] & someone
touched me up – afterwards
she said she was scared/ A
kid was less than a candle’s
expense [no more – now we
have tidy days & Hue lights]/
But Jones is furloughed by a
Tory chancer & slumps – dull
hours without his scripts for
ears – he recites them up top
in a double-glazed bungalow
for none to hear – lechyd da!
Tag: language
Bank Holiday – 1912 by William Strang
Watch his eyebrow rise
See its thick arc
He affects such
when reading French
[Monsieur est un crétin]
He will take longer
to delay our waiter
it is his petit way
of being quite superior
[Ma vie est trop courte]
But – I agree with my dog –
My life is too short
for such bullshit
Please order – now
The Duchess
There are kinds of poets who give poets
a bad name – not me guv’nor
Perhaps bejewelled ones in headscarves –
those hosts of salons or saloons –
Sorry – my attention suddenly dimmed
Those who do nothing for our honest lies
in verse – with Mr. and Mrs. Thesaurus –
knocking off – and out – in parked cars
No grandiloquent words for us plebs
Picking Fruit
There must be a word
for that gritty-ish crackling
of a blackberry’s uncomfortable
remnant – unground – jammed –
bloody unsuckable
from your pitted left molar –
stuck among soot succulences
and odd-chanced bitternesses
Seasonal pickers had a word
for every moment of pleasure –
and one for inequal measures –
such piques are now called love
Reading Circles
Concentric – a new whirlpool-word
found in my father’s
handed down encyclopedia –
when images of Stonehenge –
in line-drawn illustrations –
caught my crawled attention
When an unknown word
required my whole body to shift
and find another heavy book –
an Oxford English Dictionary
to finger flick through to trace
between com and cop to find con
and to be infected
by our endless language
Do not leave me alone with Roget