The snowflakes are coming

 

Why is a person of wisdom and taste

hanging out in this sleazy bar

this cess-pit of ignorance?

Let me tell you why.

 

I have zero tolerance for beastliness

I am here to lampoon.

your low-wattage intelligence

I am your keyboard enemy.

 

I may seem mild in manner

but my power is mighty. See how

I can raise the temperature of the room

with a slightly raised eyebrow.

 

Good manners are not in fashion

but I have superior compassion

and the trusted weapon of irony.

I Twitter regularly on Bluesky.

 

People like you are ruining this nation

Well the snowflakes are coming, my friend

We aim to bury your kind

in an avalanche of mild indignation.

 

We will settle on your roof, break through

and smother you with our disapproval

How does that make you feel?

Be afraid. I am a ninja in oatmeal.

House arrest

 

I could go out, but downstairs scares me

It’s a frozen tundra with gun towers

And barbed wire – the gulag archipelago

I know it’s a gross failure of desire

 

To see what’s outside. I simply don’t want to

The bars are imaginary by what can you?

You see, I have lost all volition

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

It’s been like this for years and years

In fact, ever since I retired

Visits from the family on Sunday

Tea, cake, awkward conversation

 

I might get myself a new tattoo

Bird, jail, choky, the clink, jail

At least I can get email

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

The geraniums on the window-sill

Are struggling to be free

They don’t know its winter

They have no seasons, you see

 

They are pushing out flowers

Like tiny red fists. Bless them

I admire them. That’s ambition

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

Hope is what keeps me going

Home-made hooch, colour TV

Sunlight glints on the horizon

I imagine walks to the museum

 

Flowers. My favourite tree

I know it’s the human condition

I’ve read Sartre’s existential exposition

I’ve made my house into a prison!

 

The fall

Like a blushing timebomb it parachutes
when its time is up. It is dying already.

Its brittle skin and ice hardened arteries
map a spiral of luminous decay.

This show of futile gallows defiance
should be a warning to all of us

and yet we praise the dissolute beauty
the sang-froid of its gaudy silk waistcoat.

This hostage to gravity has lost its grip.
After the fall, its final ignominy

is to end up as sullen pavement slush
an inconvenience, a broken hip

Semi-shade

 

Happiness is fading as the nearly sun
throws its half-light across the garden.
Invisible pressures form our horizon
like the bars of an open prison.
This seeping greyness will persist for days.
The sun came out briefly. It’s raining now.
We have a word for it – semi-shade.
Many words. it is our Eskimos’ snow.
Our only certainty is ambiguity.
How do we feel? ‘Oh, not bad’, ‘you know’.
Shipping forecasts map our moods –
‘New low moving across Southern Faroes’.
Summer is a friend who promises to visit
so fleeting that we might miss it.