Category: s13 january 25/26

the yaktrax

a pointless punishment 

for my eczemic fingers

janurian resolvers avoid 

pavements rinkish 

speak to the sun, the sky, 

the sea and the trees

mass palomas fly, 

sneeze around disease

rife and virulent, 

bring us to our knees

re-shorn past the 

pine scent xmas ceme-tery(eee) 

my fingers were sore from the cold. the streets were asheet with ice. i bought myself some yaktrax, remembering them from a personal injury legal report. but the ice was gone before i got to wear them. meanwhile, people were throwing out their christmas trees, fed up of love and goodwill and all that sort of stuff. 

reverse engineering

every poem, novel, recipe 

and joke 

exists quiet in the ether

the poet doesn’t create 

she discovers; 

with a notebook she uncovers.

a subterranean homesick miner,

reverse engineering the blueprints

of a universal designer

in a universe without life, does maths exist? does moral philosophy? do poems only exist after the are written? or are they just waiting to be found?

reus brexitus 

brexitus rex, a fencepost; 

no entry for french blokes 

yes hello we are here 

it is act two of don quixote

or quixote like quick’s oat

(though i prefer key oh tick, 

like chaotic)

in which we ask,

will the windmills we recall 

from the first act charge back?

in which we find,

that windmills

don’t charge on poets

happy new year.

i started publishing the poem a year after i started writing it. and as i published, i continued writing, but within a new context. in cervantes’ don quixote, book two was written after book two was published, and don quixote’s resulting fame was part of the story – the other characters he encountered has already read the first book. the first novel and the first example of metafiction. so if you are the sort of reader who throws the book at the wall when the author is introduced as a character, i’m sorry to inform you that this has been part of the challenge novels present to readers since the start.