stochasm (23/May/18)

what’s life but a series of terminal moments with one more terminal than others….
it’s still May… nearly June… half way through the year already… listening to a record from 1980, inspired by hearing a willow warbler in the garden this morning… how did that happen then?… I’m behind the lines, whatever happened to me it’s too late to change now… the clues in the stew, read the floating vegetables as they hubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble… put your left leg out, your left leg in, and with any luck you’ll still be standing… I wrote a thing this morning, now what was it… oh yes… sleep, as elusive as a sheet of sound… … the firmament is far from firm you know, fomenting discontent as it does…
I’d like to end now with a little, idyll, I suppose you could call it for want of a better word though I’m sure there’s plenty, I can’t seem to find anywhere else for it, then I’ll followed by a dramatic pause (re: stage notes)…

catalepsy wakes
flotillas of driftwood
by a nestings of snakes
beside rivers of sticks
where boats fell asleep.

: dramatic pause :

© 2018 robert greig

under the stairs: an Easter treat (1/April/18)

there’s a monster under the stairs
I know it’s there under the stairs because I heard it
I can smell it there under the stairs
hiding in what must be its lair
though there isn’t much space there under  the stairs
I know there’s a monster there, a monster there,
hiding there under the stairs;

there’s nothing under the stairs, you say
and declare with a confident air
and a stare that’s decidedly sure as sure
there’s no monster there under the stairs
but there is, there is, I shout in despair
waving my arms in the air
secretly hidden, inhabiting under the stairs;

but how would you know, you say,
how would you know if it’s secretly hiding
hiddenly under our stairs,
I know, I just know, and I hear it and smell it
and know from its footfall
it’s there hiding under the stairs like a bear
but it’s not a bear and hasn’t got fur;

without any fur, you seem certain of that,
how can you know it’s no fur
the monster you know to be making a home
comfy and snug here under our stairs?
because there’s never a trace of a hair
not a follicle here nor follicle there
no follicles lost anywhere;

but if you’ve not seen it with your own eyes
plain as the day, as the nose on your face
the monster that lives unknown under the stairs
then how can you know, for surely be sure
there’s a monster there hiding
a monster residing, squatting, reclining
and snoozing under the stairs?

I know there’s a monster, a monster that sneaks
when we aren’t looking
when all backs are turned
as silent as light that spills through the windows
from under the stairs and into the kitchen
it creeps with a stealthy aplomb
sating its hunger with biscuits and buns;

sad to say so but I know it’s not so
there’s no monster there hiding under the stairs
I know it’s not so because,
as you well know, we don’t have any stairs
under which we might find
a monster that hides
snoring unseen with its monstery eyes;

well you can think that if you like
while I know for sure and for certain
there’s a monster hid under the stairs
regardless of whether
the stairs are not there
since when would that stop a monster
from living there under the stairs.

© 2018 robert greig

first the gulls (30/March/18)

first the gulls
and then the planes
but I don’t mind the gulls
jigs and reels upon my roof
wearing hob-nailed boots
but the planes, oh the planes
what a pain, oh what a pain
they can go away I say
go away, go away
and don’t come back another day
far away,
away,
away……

but that’s enough verse for now, can’t go all rhyming on you, things to do, people to see, place to be… actually, not much, no one, and probably but no idea where…… seems they’ve started flying again after a brief respite following a Red Arrows jet crash here not a mile from my house… one died, the pilot survived… but even 9/11 couldn’t keep the planes out of the sky for long, which I of course remember well and it was the immediate aftermath that was more intensely eerie when the skies suddenly went quiet, empty of vapour trails, not a plane glinted against the blue, not an afterburner trailing noise and spent fuel clawing at the great blue yonder… it was silence, and only then did I realise what it’d be like without them at all, and how much the air up there is riven with them now……

… it’s the Big One folks, start of Easter, Good Friday, means little to me but to others it’s a keystone date for when as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, the season really finds its feet, and when chocolate bars seems to grow disproportionate to the size of the shop shelves that they perch upon… really?… how big do they need to be, some are almost the size of me and I’m 6 feet tall…… ‘tis a chocoholics nirvana… or in my case curse, being one to some extent which is why generally I don’t buy any as if I do I’ll eat it, which I know is the point but, but, for me it can be too addictive levels which is not a good thing… in fact, I go so far as to say it’s a bad, bad, very bad thing (ouch! trumpfoolery)… so my days of eating chocolate Easter eggs the size of my head are long over, though I did enjoying rolling them down hills and smashing them against rocks or other eggs…… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I do know how to have a good time don’t  I……… egg rock!… I’m sure there’s a dance I can invent for it, like crocodile rock but without the crocodiles……

… but you do have to be prepared when going out and about around here, as in the aforementioned “places to be” part of the conversation, in that you need a strong bladder as all, or most and increasingly the remaining public conveniences have been closed, locked and disused, left to rot, become cafes (bizarrely), demolished for unaffordable housing and sold off by a small-minded, incompetent county council, a staggeringly stupid approach for an place that encourages and promotes tourism….. still, there’s plenty of hedgerows, and lamp posts…

I will end today on a tiny verse…

what kind of bird
can lay a chocolate egg?
although it might be lizards
or could be even wizards!

© 2018 robert greig