Politrix

As I lay me down to sleep 
I find it difficult to keep

my thoughts in order, want to weep,

but know I’m in it far too deep

to warrant standing on straight land.

Yes, it’s by my own conniving,

cadging votes while always striving

after contacts, bent on thriving

where the high-ups go on driving

home the point of each one’s brand.

I cast aside the things that matter,

turn to daily in-house chatter,

rattle out the worst of patter

to heap the Party’s utter splatter

on those whose benefits got canned.

Neat as nous my skirt and jacket

when my turn comes round to smack it

hard to bench-flops, so I whack it

ever onwards. Balls! They track it,

note my script runs like the sand.

Undeterred, I dribble forwards,

stuffing time crop-full with more words

till the Speaker claws me floorwards;

snatched back from my soaring core words,

please don’t think that I’ve been panned.

I know why I’m tossing sleepless;

dread those thoughts that wander keepless

down my brain. I would weep less

if they hadn’t sunk so deep.”Less,”

they groan, “O, less, she’s out of hand.”

Caricature of Theresa May by Christopher Sharrock ©
 

Chill

Earth slithers under drizzle,

mud, tussock and squelch

as the winter colour of mist

rolls over cherubs,

no laughter with toast,

butter dumped by the plate.

Cold eyes meet cold stone.

Cold bones moulder under.

No Escape

It’s here: the split

wind rattles

the warped door.

There’s Orestes,

wits away

with the Furies, flitting

the drained fields.

I need to escape

with you, my battler

brother, unfetter

the home’s bond,

hearth-wood fretted

and beating behind us.

The days are down.

I saw my father

pitted under

the ribs, breath

sputtering up

in the gore, her knife’s

flash in the slit,

bath clotted:

tunics glittering

red in the breeze,

mother and lover 

spitted, pallid

in blood’s clutter.

Revenge splashed

family-thick.

Bitter, the wind’s

edge; keen,

the howling down 

in the stoa. You,

my brother, brittle

before the whirl,

leave me hurling  

after you, panting.

Halt and slumping,

slump and gathering,

gathering red.

The bodies will burn

back in the palace.

Iphigenia’s still dead.

All Beginnings Thrust

The needle before the knitting, sheep shorn before the wheel, that puff of fibres

clotting along with the Moirai - those dames and their everlasting spin, span, snip!

Bread yeasting up in the bowl, a dome of disparity. Ingredients fuddled, it’s bigging

to bake. Pain on a crusty chew; disintegration, via enzyme, into cack again, I fear.

The carve of the small: woodblock solid before the final figure’s chipped, straight

and crooked. Don’t forget the halt and the lame; they, too, will be forced whole.

Plans hold, though, else they’re found in the making. What was before the map,

the scouring of distant seas, the rumour? Backburner stuff, a melt pot. Plan? Pah!

Where was I before this point? Flops and frustration turned to the watch, waiting

for this thing buzzily hulking, bursting forth ex nihilo, sans shine, or so it seems

when out with the stars. Those tips of light, pre-numbers, dip, a flickering counter

to dark. How names? Terms, patterns from the heirs of Enlightenment, their God lost.

Something out of Something, perhaps? There is no void in us; not one we easily see, I think. 
Therefore, on a good day, I seem to be, atoms, fusion ignored, which is woeful.

Right! Smarten up roundabout there! Bootstrap jerk time and bombs internally at dawn.

Es muss sein. Dresden and Coventry will be rebuilt. I fumble about my widgets’ work.

Chaos, my life! Are you OK with that? Tohu-bohu all topsy-turvy, potentiality a-flip before

the beginning. Forever and ever? There’s a happy trip, then, into, out of the unknown!