THE BLUE SUEDE SHOES

I should never have taken you to that Easter hop.
I thought all was okay with your life.
I took you for grunted.
You were the skateboard I glided on,
Psychedelic pink,
Horizontal and generally low-slung.
God had made you speedy and plump
And fun on Sundays.
I should have known
Saint Elvis, bless him, and his Blue Suede Shoes
Would pull in the cave-crashers.
They swarmed like hopping locusts
Down from the rocks, as squiffy as bishops.
It seemed a good way to spend a holy day.
The Cavern was sardine-packed
Sonorous with a sounder of saints when they,
Nightshirts to the wind,
Tiddly, stinko, blotto, sozzled,
Came marching in.

For you it was a horror
Of pounding, apostolic
Naked feet.
Your snout turned green,
Your curly tail seemed pathetically tiny
And everyone remarked on the prophecy
Of your hope-you-don’t-mind torn ear.
You looked to hide but I saw you,
Coward (sic) (very sic) in a corner.
I saw the pathetic pigling who wanted nobody to dance,
The lonely pigling who too soon would be

Sausages &co.

FLOUNDERS

Was that a happy day?
Fishing for flounders from Felix’s felucca.
Felix, Fisher of Fish and Flora the Wise,
Saints both, bless them!,
Laid on a holy day for us at the seaside.
We sunned on their sand but that was no novelty
And collected crabs’ carapaces
Or shells,
A saint may choose.
Let’s go fishing for flounders! said Felix,
Right you crazy felucca! Let’s do it!
( Wise Flora waved us goodbye.)
We rowed and rowed.
We anchored off and shared a fag.
A boat came by
Out of Alex, full of pigrims (very sic)
We boiled in its wake’s bobble.
You wobbled plaintively in the sheets,
Less pink than usual and ill at ease
While Felix and I showered you with
A gleaming shot-blue, sheen-green hail of dappled arrows wrenched
From the gloom-rich depths.
We flung onto your rubbery bum
Holy mackerel! A miraculous draught!
Like Guinness! Felix said.
How we laughed!
It would be fun to find some flounders, Felix.
Mostly mackerel here, old mucker!
But fishing for flounders was what you said, Felix.
So alright! Okay! Yes!
Feluccing fishing for feluccing flounders
That’s what I feluccing said.
Just write me down
As an apostolical alliteration-addict, alright?
We laughed some more as a few million
Mackerel hit the bottom boards.

Me, I was so happy I could have walked on water.
You, looked a bit pathetic,
As per usual.