DOOMSDAY

DOOMSDAY

doomsday? I can just imagine being asked in 20 yrs time: "where were you on Doomsday?" "Well I was in the garden turning the carrot seeds over with a hoe when there was a sudden bright flash of light and that was basically it." "Then an alien craft appeared and aliens got out of it but they all looked exactly like Sarah Palin and Joe Bidden, so it wasn't Doomsday but things subtly altered afterwards. I mean we had the same technology, the same books but things were never quite the same ever again. When I ask friends about it they hardly ever say anything. They think I should move on. I think in basic terms being part of post-Armageddon society is vastly over-rated."

THE MESSIAH OF TOADSTOOLS 

Everywhere mistranslations slow in coming, everywhere
A fenced in monologic, petrified, fossilised, heated, embalmed.

I am everywhere, I am Lucifer and Jesus, I am Nietzsche and Krishna
I am Lenin and the Tsar: for I am everywhere, a mistranslation of 'tribe'
'fate', 'quest', 'invader', a heated homonym - bark, there.

Shoehorn days, interminable string of invertebrates
beached on a dank shoreline, scuttling life
intensified to the pitch or key of yellow, red or green.

I am the Messiah of Toadstools and yet unevolved, riddlesome
shorn of respect or fear like Schopenhauer's baldness or Kant's
respect for orderliness or Nietzsche's fear of heights or women.

an egg they said was unbreakable yet broken a thousand times
dark mutterings of the Sybll intensified in my mind to a vista or flattened perspective
surrounding an egg-shaped bay with roads made of horn. 

THE SUN RISES OVER ARSENAL, NORTH LONDON 

The sun is a bad inkblot, anti-art thrown out of college
A big plastic arsehole farting swirling chaotic matter
About the sky. That inkblot floats on the bathwater
All the dreck of yesterday, a scum or crust of spume.

I want to tell you about loneliness; squared on square
Carpet tiles, dirty at my dreams edges. The sun is screaming
All at my window, wanting to let me know that all the sad
Blobs are people, not lettuces, rows of shirts, CDs,

Wallpaper, helicopter training manuals, filthy magazines
Infested with exploited. It smells like rancid skin
It all peels off when you touch it, you peel off the sun.
Your hideous skin burns to the touch. You need to know?

Look up at the nuclear edges, blame its creation
The hollow portion of a rindless orange
A collage you would have despised to create.
I know I suffer, even vermin and field mice do.

LIVE IN AN EPIC

Epic of Gilgamesh

'I couldn't understand why Gilgamesh wouldn't serve cocktails after 11 PM.'
woman - Newcastle

Beowulf

'Laugh, I almost cried. In the middle of dinner, Beowulf and other warriors drinking and urinating on the fire.'
man - Manchester

The Iliad

'A very nice drinks cabinet.'
man - Liverpool

The Bagavad Gita

'A wonderful after dinner cabaret except for chariot horses invading the toilet and spreading menure on the mirrors and cosmetics.'
woman - Glasgow

Dear Sir,

sum of my pomes.

best wishes,

Ronald A. Twit



Li Po composes lines on death while staring into sun

red panda. confucious he say red panda chomping bamboo shoots. li po born. dies. sundown. red panda shits in river. time is river. red panda shit like time. transitory. Mao is born. China is better. all thinkers sent to the fields like red panda. jenner publishes poem. relieved of beer money throws himself in canal. believes and is re-born as red panda shit floating down river. all living things in cycles of re-birth and death. 

THERE´S A GIRL FROM SZCZECIN 

She hangs off the tower 
Turning and turning her hands inside and out. 
Then she runs around the parabola 
To the point of exhaustion. 
I saw her face raining tears askew. 
I asked her for just one moment 
As she runs into the distance. 

WHO KILLED RUDI? 

Was it the wind in Moluccas Street
Or a giraffe in the zoo?

Was it the tell-tale stains on the back seat
Of your BMW kalamazoo?

Was it Frank, Mike or Steve?
Was it the 1960 Trabant

You owned for a day then banged
Into the boot end of 1962?

Was it anyone really, was it me or you
And what if it was?

Can he feel it now, cold, dumb, dead
Can he really come after you?

Is he dead really or merely pining?
What if he died or didn´t die?

Can he disrupt your stag night
Or interrupt your first night

Of onstage delirium, can he fly
Past your window or settle cat-like

Licking ash from your window pane?

Rudi is dead there´s no doubt
Never to come again.

There´s ice and snow tonight
And Rudi is dead. And Rudi is dead.

PIGGIES

I saw a choiring flock of animals over Hampstead...

that doesnt quite work, does it?

I am a choiring piggy angel flowing freely
Inbetween the quantum chinks in matter/anti-matter.
I choose to hover over the recalcitrant Irish dittyauthor Murphy
Espied upon the Heath wreathing 'Rebecca'.

Upon the moment Heath and all upturned were
Became a boat stranded in a storm
A veritable Ark of piggies out at sea
Dressed as for a dog's dinner.

Pirates we, our leader Murphy
With his great red beard, his pair o'pistols
His neat parakeet, his velvety bootettes.
A storm upturned the boat, we

Turned back to Truro: many miles short o'
The Indies: slavey Murphy rose up one day
Navigated the currents 'nd shoals o' fish:
Espied an Insel green mistaken Ireland,

Voted Merkl, the storm died. A great
TV mast stuck in the lee of th' island
Transplanted there. 'Wahl' I said, frothing
Forth, but meaning 'Wann'. The crispy

Barbecued forearm of a Cyclops sailed
Past me nose. Baked in advance, with clotted cream
'n suet. Those clever bastards, thought I
Knew what would happen, (my mighty forearmy

Trained for 7 days and nights in Dave's Gym
Round the 'Hack, further lessons in barberous
Archery hatched in 'Ards, a template of a place
Ensconced backwards of the Sligo Towery,)

(Another place we hadn't been). Thence to Circe
An arrogant little bitch who lived in Dundrum
The Ardglass, awful places 'cept for the good lobsters.
She'd slept with DeLorean then fizzled out

In our dreams by day, a shining factory in the west
Producing cars with wings, or great thundering
Silver space-age mobiles, to hunger for the m'way
To hunger for speed, and lots of dollars.

Fools, just monkeys, relieved of our beermonies.
Deservedly so, I spun the platinum disc
So that Circe could boogie woogie.
'I can't abide your friend Terry, he pesters me.'

I said, 'he's merely a Theban prophet, suffers
From glaucoma.' 'Probably failed to see you.
That's all. Not everyone's a pervert!'
'They are.' said Circe, her ringletted hair

Trapsed on the dancefloor.

Paul Murphy