Appropriation Art #003: Lines Lifted From Other Sources

Dear friend, I sense a darkness settles in.

I want you to reach out, to take my hand.

You stare, nod, pretend to understand;

your eyes dart anxious as a Robin.

Though darkness dwells to keep you from the light,

I clasp this moment as though it were a bird.

Till darkness claims the timbre of my word,

this vacant folly beats its wings tonight,

my skull a boneyard destitute of dreams;

yet what is dream if not a sleeping state?

A tangible theme in your quest to create?

I sink at dawn in vague subconscious streams

awash with everything we’ve left unsaid,

this sonnet cutting crosswinds in my head.

Swidden

I sail my paltry craft across the sea

to search for footprints on the morning sand,

to faithfully obey her faint command -

her siren call a message left for me.

My passion’s fuelled by fading vapour trails,

my rhythm’s measured by a quiet heart

yet from the Doldrums suddenly I start -

a single breath is billowing my sails.

A single breath upon a tiny spark

may burn a mighty forest to the ground

and so I sit and watch the flames spellbound -

my meagre craft burns till the fire grows dark.

Then, from the ash, a poem flourishes.

I realise her burning nourishes.

The Mouse

It’s okay for the flag you wave

to make no sense

or for the universe to stop

for the twitched whiskers

of a mouse. 

It’s okay to write your love letters

in water with an idle finger.

It’s okay to draw a blank.

Sometimes we wish we were robots

or Mozart

or the Great Wall of China.

Of course we do

but late at night

our bodies are so narrow

that we must not ever be loved.

Where is the universe then

as the timbers moan and

our windows fill with rain?

Where is that child

who could lift us so high

in our own strong hands?

In the day, our bodies

collect iron ore from

sulphurous depths.

We drink the boiling ocean

eat handfuls of the sky.

We are Eleanor Rigby and Dick Turpin,

separately hunting

the same Bengal man-eater.

It’s okay.

It’s okay

sometimes 

for a clever mouse to turn

to the swollen, howling sky

and say

‘Sometimes it’s okay to stop’.

We all need more than we have when it comes to love.

The Hole in the Middle

And all around

these people come and go,

dim shadows in

unending shadow play.

Peeled nerves

of teenage hurt

each fucking day.

Sad spinsters

finger out

a dull rondeau.

This waterfall of words

won’t rinse away

the stink of mediocrity

I fear;

lives lived in a

perpetual first gear,

searching for the next

heartfelt cliché.

Your mental health’s not great.

You married wrong.

You’re facing midlife

with a rictus grin.

You’re writing for an

audience of one.

What happens when

that audience has gone?

Will I understand

and take it on the chin?

Does it matter much

when all is said

and done?

Headless Chicken

The following is rather gory

but I think you’ll enjoy the story

of Lloyd P. Olson and his bird;

the strangest tale you’ve ever heard.

When Lloyd cut off a rooster’s head,

he noticed it was not quite dead:

the chicken jumped and flapped and danced.

Old Lloyd applauded, quite entranced.

His bird had risen quite Christlike

but Lloyd just named the chicken Mike.

The next day Mike was still alive.

The year was 1945

and Colorado farmer Lloyd

knew what he had and so he toyed

with dreams of local sideshow fame

and so gave up the poultry game

and Lloyd and Mike took to the road

and quickly found the money flowed

wherever freaks and geeks sideshowed.

Lloyd’s rooster was the motherlode!

Lloyd’s wife Clara joined the team

and helped with Mike’s daily regime

of droppered water, liquid food

and getting rich and being shrewd.

They had to keep their fowl alive

if their careers were to survive.

Knowing Mike was their paycheck,

they suckered mucus from his neck

with a sterilised syringe

and though that image makes you cringe,

I wonder just what you might do

as moolah started to accrue

with all the sideshow ballyhoo.

You’d baste that rooster mucus too.

For eighteen months from state to state,

with their decapitated mate,

Lloyd and Clara lived like kings

until, in Saratoga Springs,

awaking in their hotel room

they found Mike’s neck all full of spume.

Lloyd freaked but Clara freaked out more!

Lloyd searched their bags. He searched the floor

but only found they’d come a cropper.

They’d lost their mucus-sucking dropper!

Clara watched their bird conk out

and, panicked, waved her arms about,

truly gutted, truly stricken,

flapping like a headless chicken

and so the miracle met its end.

Poor Lloyd P Olsen lost his friend

as Mike went up to chicken heaven.

The year was 1947

but Headless Mike is not forgotten.

No, though his fame was misbegotten,

it endures still until this day:

In Colorado, every May

a festival is held for Mike

where people, young and old alike,

celebrate their prized halfwit.

I recommend you Google it.

This poem is a formless mess.

It’s lousy and pure silliness.

That’s plain enough for all to see

but hopefully you might agree

it may not glitter but it’s gold:

The Greatest Headless Chicken Story Ever Told.

Birdsong

I stretch my hands - what will I have of you

now sweet November races to its end;

this month of holes that I keep falling through,

unable to reach out to you, my friend.

For now I know the silence loss can bring,

how empty days will fill with nothing much;

how, brokenly, I lift myself to sing

and feel the press of words I dare not touch.

Then yesterday I heard an old songbird

whose chicks had lived and died or fledged and flown.

She sang the sweetest song I ever heard;

a song which told me I was not alone.

My love, for now, let’s stop our sorrowing.

Let’s find a branch to lift our beaks and sing.

Hand Prints

On the cave’s envelope

your hand is pressed;

sent on its mission into mine

Your shy woad star

a perennial gentian with

fingertips of red ochre.

A joke that no-one laughs at

blown through hollow bone,

a shape that only I can see.

Side by side, apart they lie;

to be covered, lost,

brushed and excavated

Some day a soul may see

two hand prints almost touching,

tell a story that we

never dared to live.

Attack of the Killer Mouse Mat

The house sat quiet.

Feeling flat but inspired,

my mouse mat conspired;

he had fiendish plans

to eat one of my hands.

At Easter he struck!

The beast started to suck!

He feasted, the schmuck!

He ate my right fist

right up to the wrist.

Thank god my house cat

pounced on the mouse mat,

trounced it in combat!

An unconventional end

for my two-dimensional friend.

Thunderstorms

“My soul is split in pieces”, she said,

overturning our unfinished game of chess.

“You could kill me with a shout

at the water’s edge. You could

kill me with a clematis flower.

It is called The Queen of Climbers”.

Her hands rested on well-toned thighs.

“It’s thunderstorm weather”,

she said absently.

I told her I loved her.

“Love is an occult power

that should be exercised responsibly.

You wield it like a billyclub”.

We drifted noiselessly just then,

two corks on the ocean,

each in our own scoop

of sunlight.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again”,

I called.

“Let’s meet at the horizon”.

And so, with the winds gathering

and miles of dark water

beneath my feet,

full of her

and full of the occult magic

of thunderstorms and love,

I began to swim

and I began to sing.