WITTERING HEIGHTS

Monica came by with her boy.
Hail Augustus!
Tin not tus and a bishop now, she said.
Mitre done worse, I said, but no-one smiled.
He made his adolescent self at home,
Slumped in my favourite chair,
Gaiters on the coffee table,
Phrygian cap front to back,
Picked you up and bounced you on his
Purple episcopal knee,
Tickled your snout,
Lit his own snout
But did not offer,
Made our cave his ashtray.
I saw red but you
Were tickled pink.
They gave our Gus a desmond,
In Carthaginian Rhetoric, you should hear him spout.
Said Monica.
He can effervesce like the rhubarb wine
That you do not possess.
Yes sir! Holy mackerel! she dusted his dalmatic,
To what Elysian heights can our Gus not witter!!
I found them a can or two of Irn Bru.
Let’s hear him then!
He’s a bit shy.
They stayed an hour. She had brought her knitting.
I swear young Gus never spoke a word until,
Maybe next time, she said in leaving.
Yeah! said the boy bishop, stroking your tender spot,
Yeah, maybe next time Tony baby!
With that the rising rhetorician helped
Himself to our last carob.
I was singed by a flaming, fluted flambeau of fury.
Only gradually to be quenched
At good old Ali’s.

A PINK PLASTIC PIG

Who was it gave us that pink plastic pig?
Some holy joker.
A likeness that just failed.
Not pretty pink like you, Piggles, shocking rather,
Unnipped unnubian.
You did not like it.
I did not like it. That made two of us.
What possessed us
To swing it with us in your old swill bucket
Down to Ali’s bar?
I fitted it upright, firm,
Squinting in through the barred window,
Thinking it might scare the living
Daylights out of the dead heavy drinkers,
Thinking it would schmock the sock…. No not so much
Schmock the sock, Piggles,
More
Shock the smock
Off some saint
Or other.
Some hope! There’s Tony’s pink plastic pig! They laughed.
We had not tricked them so I treated them.
You were ignored
You were the pigling who could not play dominoes,
Whose company no one wanted
You gnawed my toes under the table
And sulked all the way home.
Guess what though, Piggles!
That plastic pig is still up there
Ignored but squinting through the window
No one has even nibbled at it
Yet, but you are dead,
Ignored and gnawed.