Month: January 2015

Logomachy

To say that Damian
was sesquipedalian
would be an understatement
for there was no abatement
in his capacity for loquacity
nor lack of temerity
in his pursuit
of verbal dexterity.

It was precisely this pomposity
mixed with verbosity
which made him describe
Kieran Thomas as “crepuscular”.
Kieran Thomas was also more muscular.

Damian nursed his black eye
and hoped Kieran
might be struck down with
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.

Why the chicken crossed the road

I saw the chicken cross the road,
deep set in contemplation.
So I put my cap on and followed
to end all the speculation.

He ducked down an alleyway,
then suddenly stopped dead
below a sign that gently swayed,
upon which said The Gag’s Head.

On the door, he went knock-knock
“Who’s there?” “Me. Chicken”
He was quickly ushered in
and the plot began to thicken.

I peered in through the window
to get a better look at the place;
the first thing that caught my eye
was a horse with a long face.

The horse was looking at something
black and white and red all over,
while stroking a dog without a nose
who emitted a terrible odour.

Next to them was a big chimney,
smoking in front of his son,
and Pikachu who had missed the bus
because nobody poked him on.

An Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman
were all standing there in a group,
talking to an elephant in a fridge
and a fly doing breaststroke in soup.

The chicken ordered himself a beer
and began a night of boozing
to escape from a joke of a life
made not of his own choosing.

I looked on sadly for a little more
before deciding I’d better split;
the first rule of joke format club
is nobody talks about it.

The Casualty

You look at me as if you know me.

You should.

I was the boy in series four whose finger became trapped in the Jenga tower.
I was the troubled teenager in series nine bitten by the rabid stoat.
I was the aging footballer in series fifteen with the fractured perm.
I was the middle-aged supermarket manager in series twenty-two crushed under cereal packets.
I was the pensioner in series twenty-seven who swallowed his grand-daughter’s lego brick.

But you can never quite place me.

For I am the extra you watch but never see.
The one you know but don’t know.
I exist at the back of your mind, at the edge of your consciousness,
on the tip of your tongue.

I am the casualty.

The Ambassador

I met him at a party, a posh one, in one of those
grand Belgravian buildings big enough to house
a small South American republic. I don’t know
what I did to catch his attention but, that night,
he really spoiled me.

As for the despoiling, well, that came later.

It didn’t take much, to be honest. A hazelnut covered
in chocolate inside a frilly wrapper was all it needed.
These aureate orbs of oral splendour were piled up
into pyramids on platters and carried around the room
by solemn-faced butlers. I, too, was transported.

He had me.

I took to following him around at other functions,
hoping for repeated delights. A meeting with a Bulgarian
trade delegation, a seminar on higher education.
Treaties, charters, handshakes, forced smiles, and me,
a ’49-er panickedly panning the Mokelumne River
clawing at the soil in search of golden rocks.
Occasionally, the Ambassador would reach into his pocket
and toss one my way, eyeing me with comic cruelty.

Of course, I lost my job eventually, and friends and family;
the inevitable collateral damage. And it’s late here,
as I wait for him to emerge outside the embassy gate
for that moment of rapprochement and, who knows,
another ferrero rocherment.