Fighting Fish

Fighting Fish: an Extended Metaphor Poem

You & me

we’re siamese fighting fish

territorial as hell

in this fishbowl

of love.

You say,

I am taking every inch

of yr space;

I say,

huh, you are crowding me

but most of the time

we get on swimmingly

*pic courtesy of pinterest

The Catastrophist

You better watch yourself.
 
You’re becoming a catastrophist.
 
That bbq pack in the backseat, for instance,
is not going to wreck the suspension.
Cars were designed to carry weight.
 
And , no, no one’s going to break in and steal it
when you duck in for a coffee and cake.
 
And as for that brandy and dry offered just before dinner
it’s not going to play havoc with your digestive system
if you have it before your standard glass of red.
 
It’s a cold day. Loosen up for f*&&^% ‘s sake.
You’re driving everyone batty.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Them

You can’t swat them

with yr hand.

                       spray them

with disinfectant.

                                      or repel them

with incense coils.

They won’t buy it.

And you can’t

                      shut them out.

Not even

                                                          in yr room

at night.

Bite.    Bite.       Bite.

They whinge and they whine.

Those old anxieties, What ifs?

Those mozzies                     of yr mind.

As Soon As

As soon as you stand outside someone’s place,

whip out your mobile camera and start taking snaps

of something in the street,

jacaranda flowers, for instance, carpeting the verge,

an ibis making love to a TV aerial,

a drunken, tilting fence,

someone starts singing loudly in a bathroom.

conversations break out in the hallway like a rash.

windows open or close,

to let you know they’re onto you

when all you’re doing is trying to compose a poem.

When did people start growing so suspicious of poets?

Losing One’s Lid

My rubbish bin has lost its lid

& asks me what to do..

“How would you feel if your Id,

was exposed to full view?

All that rancour, all that passion,

the outright lies and fibs

You wouldn’t want someone peering in

the trashcan of yr Id.

And what if the rain should tumble down?”

“All right,” I say, “all right, don’t be such a squib,

I’ll phone the local council up.

You shall soon have your lid.”

Everyone should have their lid,

pleasant though firmly secured.

The Id is not a pleasant spot

& should not be long endured.

The King and I

Like George V1, the king

subject to stuttering

I had a speech therapist too

who taught me how

to word switch

to philander with synonyms

I could slip into

how to pace myself

and summon the scribe

of stutterers before me

Lewis Carroll

Neville Shute

Updike

& dear old Aesop whose thoughts

often outran

the tired tortoise of his tongue.

… back to the start

I’ve been wandering a little

My ego’s so brittle

My plasma is coming apart

It’s so debilitating

When you’re disintegrating

I’m going back to the start

Colonize

Please don’t try to colonize me.

I’m not unclaimed territory.

I own me.

*pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

A Very Heavy Ten Minutes

between

1.10 and 1.20

on Saturday afternoons

he pumps out

Polaris

Parkway Drive

Bring Me The Horizon

from his tiny unit

by which time

whatever he’s got

in his system

he’s got out

or whatever he hasn’t

he’s got in

 

• pic of Metallica onstage in London courtesy of Wikimedia Commons:

Little White Horses

 

 

I was tearing along the coastal route

The little white horses racing into shore

When this song came over the radio

And galloped into my heart.

I pulled over onto the shoulder.

I was transported.

I closed my eyes and let the music

Take me.

8.30 seconds later I was released.

It was good to hear Derek and The Dominoes again.

It was good to hear ‘Layla’

 

What songs stop you in your tracks, transport you to other places? What songs do you pull over for?