Blockhead

A motley fool in well-worn rags,

rip-torn and bejewelled

in bells and baubles,

rides by astride his hobbyhorse:

“I am”, he cries, “a thing of wood,

a Marotte stick that has no feeling.

The Tree of Life’s own loggerhead

with seventy-seven buds, all sprouted.”

“I have no wants of this world

and laugh at its prince. I drink his dregs

and dance his jigs, for they mean

nothing to me.”

“Let the Devil play his trump.

I shall play the Fool for Christ --

and Shakespeare too --

for both know I know nought.” 

With one foot bare and one foot shoed

he canters down the ciphered trail:

"Tarry 'til I come again", echoes

through the Christ cursed years.

A Railway Stitch

With a clickety-clack we sit untogether
like jazz inharmonics in a syncopated yarn
pulled along the lines of Granny’s knitting needles:
she’s knitting knots of might-have-beens
in each stitch of a pattern she’d once worn
a year before the War when wool was cheaper
than lives unchained, cast-off, unpurled;
before the death of her father drowned
in a field of mud with seeds of bloodied bullets,
and before the now of clickety-clack halt:
another stitch dropped at here and gone station.


First published in The Flea, August 2011 - Broadsheet 18

VI: The Lovers

"The only thing I ever got from you,"
he sang along to Bowie in his headphones:
"Is sorrow"
sang the blond-haired girl beside him;

"Sorrow"
they sang together, looked at each other
and smiled.

Tarot Senryu: Popesse, Juggler, Fool.

The cleric cries:
She is all that faith denies!
Curse her, and her kind.

A wizard, this player:
he'll make a penny a pound
of nothing.

A pound of nothing
is a heavy burden:
Poor fool -- stripped of all.

there was evening --
stars eclipsed by thunderclouds,
and there was mourning:
one more day and god alone
who saw that it was good


A little bit of Turkish: Akşam (Evening) Karşı (Opposite, Contrary, Against) Gitmek (to go), Tan (Dawn) Yatmak (to lie down, rest, go to bed, pass the night, be imprisoned) -me/ma (suffix of negation)


Akşama karşı gitme, tana karşı yatma.
Go not against the evening, lie not against the dawn.

doggy-style dowry:
unable to face the nose
she paid through


A little bit of Turkish: Burun (Nose)
Kılavuzu karga olanın burnu boktan çıkmaz.
If your guided by crows you'll end up with your nose in shit.