Life is, I hear you say,

life is like

cyber mice eating cyber cheese

‘The nourishment just ain’t there

Matey’.

 

The cabbage turns a leaf towards me

and says ‘Do not mind my muddy feet

fair Squire, only please take my dainty hand’.

 

Red sky and bearded horse

clip clop down the lane

and bay leaves smell the air.

My skin turns reptilian red

and dry scales flee my body in the breeze.

 

The taste of honey syrup too will pass,

chased away by lemon drops on plastic trays

– teamworked lions hunting hapless zebra.

 

‘I hear what you’re feeling

Babe –

Can you smell how I look?’

 

Mathew flourishes his flowery cape

pencilled eyebrows highway straight

glares and fumes

hopes I’ll shrink

‘But does a cyber mouse need any nourishment?

And what is nourishment?

Let’s define this curious sound’.

 

Poor Mathew, listed first

confuses chalice with the wine,

thinks to drown my ego

in his challenging remarks.

 

But my wave front is strong

and I vector him to hell,

and will not be spoken to

in a manner such as this

by a bunch of atoms

insolently swirling .

 

‘If a Buddha can stand to peel a grape

then I can drink the wine

grid-bound though I be.’

 

The moon rises

and the tendrills of its madness

gnaw at my nerves

‘Pou pas paidaki mou pou pas?’

I wish I knew where I was going

Then I’d put the old mother at ease.

 

The meliflous rodents of my super-ego

gleefully announce

‘His bilges are open.

Give him more syrup!’

 

But I fling my wand of ambiguity

in the gap between the words

and jump through to more exotic

Ornamentals

 

A nanny smiles at a child

like a Baraccuda eyeing a shoal of fish

and the Pharaoh

still mysterious

will soon devour his people

 

The confident table

is unmoved

and his friend the chair

whispers to me

‘Just sit on me and make him happy’

The pen cries out

‘Write with me, with me’

 

And I plough the paper.

And the table winces.

And the bed tucks Mathew into the sheets.

And the iron rusts

Beyond redemption