A Life Raft of Books

This year I made myself a life raft.

I built it from books:

Added touches of glamour

                             and largesse,

Using, sparingly, expensive bricks of

                            fat new paperbacks,

Still with the tangible thrill of fresh,

                                           ink and print.

My mainstay was the sexy enigmatic chic,

                                   of bohemian second-handers,

All bent corners and creased spines

                           from a previous, perhaps dubious, life.

Of course I needed the practical, uniform,

                                           files of e-books,

Proportioned as lightly as wardrobes,

                                  with hidden worlds.

I took my raft to sea

Or perhaps it took me.

Through familiar scenes of:

                          Tokyo subways,

And elegant cups of tea.

To the foreign vastness of Ivy,

                                 League intellects,

In the empty states of the New World.

Allegories of our souless consumerism,

                                          in fantasy lands,

Where war and terror still link hands.

Hot African countries I've never seen,

       Full of sun and foods and family dreams.

Of course, as an aside, all the women,

                           Found meaning through men.

So I've travelled through seas no stormier

                                               than any other.

Learnt new language, new skills and rediscovered.

Next year I think I'll make myself a life raft.

I'll build it from books. 

The Crows on the Road

Splayed and splat like mud flung fast from a tractor's wheels,

One matted wing grasping outward,

The only discernable sign.

I drive cautiously through the sordid scatterage,

Not wanting to feel the sickening, soft bump through my wheel.

The abandoned crime scene dressed as a hit and run,

On an implausible victim,

An immediate giveaway.

Murdered scavengers shot at the scene and moved,

Laid like a warning to all; don't take what you can't afford.  

My Fit Lemur

A little obscure but I was inspired by a picture of a man in the rubble in a small town, Namie, within the nuclear exclusion zone in Japan. In the foreground is a coffee shop sign: My Fit Lema. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2013/mar/11/fukushima-abandoned-towns-in-pictures#/?picture=405181746&index=5

My Fit Lemur

We're two years in,

And still no Spring.

The Matsuri resurrected,

New P.Ms elected.

While cast aside,

I did not die,

But in the shadows reside:

Me and my fit lemur;

A social stigma,

That marks me out,

As contaminated.

This time no allies,

But our own side.

Were we decieved,

Or did we fail to believe?

There is no leak.

Even as the hydrogen exploded,

As our futures corroded,

That dice was loaded.

With two years gone,

The world's moved on.

But as the ghost towns sit,

Making the country sick,

On radiation and the bitter row,

Over what to do now.

Remember: my lemur and I,

We did not die. 

The Owl with the Broken Wing

He knocked once and came on in,

The owl with the broken wing.

It had been a while since he'd been,

We exchanged tales of what we'd seen.

As he settled down in the brown armchair,

Removed his glasses with a weary air,

I brought him tea and a custard cream,

But he was gazing ahead as if in a dream.

I sat opposite on the blue setee,

And asked softly what the problem might be.

Oh it was nothing save a few odd words,

Struck him as strange this old, broken bird.

He'd met a man at the Gatekeeper's Inn,

Who numbered in hundreds his kith and kin,

But told my kindly listening friend,

He'd achieved nothing at all, in the end.

The tawny fowl gave a large sigh,

Said he'd accepted long ago we all must die,

But his sadness was the man's unreadiness,

That he hadn't been shown what mattered less.

He had achieved it all and I told him so,

Said my clever old owl as he prepared to go.

Thank you for listening he said as he made to depart,

It is true that a good friend will lighten your heart.