Trashmir
Glimpsed in a shiny book in a waiting room
is a land of wonders, created by the lazy
imaginations of overgrown schoolgirls,
strips of dead wood, old planks painted yellow
or stencilled by women with porcelain jawbones,
bleached hair in turbans, and dungarees.
A blonde goddess in wellies and pink angora
poses with her impossibly pristine goat
in grass that is polished clean and edible,
its balm, borage and lavender ripe for foraging
near dwellings of rustic chic and new vintage
bathed in soft light as waves lap against Arcadia.
The natives quaff kimchi and chicory tea
to combat ailments devised at great expense
by specialists in holistic medicine, or post
advice on mental health, wellbeing or the baking
of laverbread and brownies. They also expend
much energy in looking fashionably scruffy.
Armed with caustic soda and flames from fire pits,
a few intrepid explorers have blazed a trail,
establishing traditional customs - the hot tub,
skincare, the making of books and podcasts,
teaching yoga, driving a more sustainable SUV
or selling dirty misshapen beans in a trug.
Everyone in Trashmir is beautiful. Their children
are called Toby and Tabatha and their dogs
never crap on the carpet. Nobody is ever poor.
I will arise and go now and go to Trashmir, though
I am told it may only exist in ersatz photographs:
I will begin by purchasing this rather colourful hat.
Tunbridge Wells In The Rain
that fills the well spring
and feeds the ancient spa
and casts off the litter
splashes over builder’s rubble
drops like tears from scaffolding
runs down the uneven paths
to swirl into blocked gutters
and spill across broken roads
to trickle into potholes
in this garden of England
flooded with latte containers
eddying around the drains
dripping down the overflowing
culverts and lapping the shells
of abandoned retail units
but block out the buskers
skirt round the uprooted pave
ment step over the dog shit
avoid the alluring gaze
of the ludicrous mannikins
in the posh department store
and you may still parade
from Pantiles to Calverley
in your Gucci and Jimmy Choos
alighting at a coffee house
to remark on the human flotsam
hunched in the bus shelter
and by walking on tiptoe
with your head in the clouds
you can still taste the water
His Own Works
(‘A man should rejoice in his own works - for that is his portion.’ - Ecclesiastes 3:22)
Avoid damnation. Worship God
with hymns and prayers. And bless the church.
Give what cannot be known its due -
then let your layman’s language lurch
with earth-sprung sounds to praise Creation.
Then scythe the furze and devil’s bit,
and thorns, to bawm the mother-die.
Destroy the ramps and bloody tongue -
but leave the sallows perching high
by piddle, rhyne and flooded spurs.
Your spud must shunt the boggart’s turf
and rip the neaps from slough and quag.
Black devils crawl in slack and mire -
now scoop the blood and shit from bog,
now farrow swine, and kill the runt.
Aye, talk to God on Sundays. Soon
the time will come for pissabed.
Your snottygogs will ripen, rot -
with stinking willy left for dead.
Now shift your arse. We've got a job on.
Flights, Issue Thirteen, August 2024
Flight of the dragonfly 