LOCAL LOCUSTS

I remember lots of happy local locusts. 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks

And two short planks.

But happy certainly.  Eating their greens,

Enjoying each others’ company. 

So happy they didn’t know they were happy.

One holy day we watched them swarm,

Shove off, scarper, push off, hop it, skedaddle,

Buzz off southwards.

The locusts were leaving the locality.

When they swarmed they ate the sun,

Made a someone-scored-for-England noise.

One moved they all moved

Southwards.

No locust any otherwards.

Which had me thinking deep and clever thoughts,

You, let’s face it, Piggles, could not share them,

About the unfailing logic of the earth.

You sat on your question-mark tail, waiting for supper,

Thick as a dozy locust but less happy,

What were you good for?  I asked myself.

.

GRAND KARNAK

When was the next time you were pathetic?

That picnic at Karnak with the girls?

You and me (or I, -  a saint may choose,)

With the hamper

On our defective tilting humper?

Four legs being better than three, Piggles,

Especially with camels.

You were pretty dizzy.

It was just too big to put in a poke,  that temple,

Just too grand for a nauseated pigling.

It was just too much.

We squinted up at the inadequate ceiling,

Miles above my tonsura

Miles above little Laura with the aura,

Miles above the glowing nimbi of the holy bimbi,

Miles above your quivering pink snout,

(Well, maybe not miles!)

And you were literally

sickened again.

I know the guide we settled for didn’t help

Much.

Startling teeth,  princess shoulders,

Bottom of an Irish cook and the smell of Nubia.

She reminded you of your mum,

Gave us some Theban tedium,

Not one joke!

You, nip-conscious,

Kept out of her way.

For me the highlight was the belly-dance.

BOUM BOUM!

Saint Fatima,  bless her, big and beautiful,

Thighs like a glass of Guinness,

Livening up the picnic

With two tassels, a fig-leaf

And that fat scarab in her bouncing navel.

BOUM BOUM1

You weren’t too impressed. (Surprise, surprise!)

Dare say you don’t remember much,

Being these days very

Dead.

But I have only to close my eyes:

BOUM BOUM!

THE 59 MILLIONTH FROG

We counted frogs
Like they were hopping out of fashion,.
I manned the abaci, you just strung along.
Your basic skills weren’t up to much.
You ate a few , though,
Whole.
Those plaguey frogs got everywhere.
The desert rocked.
The Nile turned green.
The Sphinx thought..
But who can know what the Sphinx thinks?
I thought she thought:
Holy Moses! There’s a whole lot of jumping going on.
Everywhere frogs were jumping
On saints and saints were jumping on frogs.

Mimi of the petticoats, bless her,
Stacked away skyhigh frog thighs
In the convent freezer.
Affaires sont les affaires, Toni!
The other girls just hopped about
Looking pretty.

Did we sleep?
Not a lot with all that hopping.
You lay there throbbing,
More pathetic than usual,
The frogs hurtling to and fro
Inside your belly and hurtling up and down
All over Egypt.
I did not understand
That the frogs had to alight somewhere
And again alight somewhere, and had to be kept moving,
And had to be rested
Temporarily somewhere.
Well, actually, Piggles,
I still don’t altogether
Understand.

THE FISHING BRIDGE

You and me and some other felucca,
Floating, grammatically precariously, down the Nile,
Me taking holy day snaps,
You, a pink rosebud, curled and naked,
Peeping with piggy eyes at the sun’s dazzle.
Were you for once maybe nearly happy,
Almost not too desperately pathetic,
Perhaps even smug?
I was snap happy,
Catching the sisters, Mimi, Fifi, Fatima and little Lolita
Suzie Wong and Laura with the aura,
Hopping about the deck
In their pretty black and white bikinis,
All saints bless them!,
When some crafty thieving Theban fishing from a bridge,
Managed to hook your other pink pig’s ear,
The ear your mother had not nipped.
Suddenly you were an angler’s dangler.
You were the squealing fish that no one expected to catch.
Was there nun to help you?
Only bouncing bikini clad Saint Mimi, bless her,
Captain of the netball team,
Leaping for your rubber bum, saving your bacon.
From its ascension into oven.
How we saints all laughed!
But you were pained.
You were terribly, terribly hurt.
You were no longer nearly so nearly happy.

Believe me Piggles,
When, in the course of time,
I found myself looking down on your very
Dead
Carcase,
Many
Tears fell upon those ugly
Tears
In your dead, deaf pig’s
Ears.

THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

We left no stone unturned.
What were we hunting for in those dark, smelly, empty tombs?
Were we looking for your lost mummy?
All the other mummies were somewhere else too,
Making an exhibition of themselves in the big city.
There wasn't so much as the smell of a mummy.

Yours was the miserable snuffle
Of the pig who finds no truffle,
Only a few dusty, highly toxic
Serpents, cockatrices, scorpions,
That sort of thing.
Call this a holy day, young Piggles!
I said. I’ve known more fun reposing
On my bed of nails.

You were really miserable,
Suffering the pangs, the anguish,
The agony, the torture, the torment.
The slings, the arrows
Of altogether the wrong kind of mummy.

Did that valley once full of very
Dead kings
Remind you of how
Death
Seems to scoot along in your family?
Maybe, maybe not.
In any case, Your proclivity
To be
literally
sickened by it all
Was manifested
Yet again.

THE FISH

Who was the saint who sent us fishing?
Was it that joker, Peter, bless him?
We – you and me, Piggles – standing
Ungrammatically on Africa,
Doomed to disappointment,
Angling for discomfiture,
As per usual,
Watching our piteous
Float float
Down the excrementitious,
More laxative, surely, than astringent,
Nile River.

Were you still with me when,
Against national
Loddery otts, no, not so much national
Loddery otts, more national
Lottery odds
I caught
The fish,
Or had you already wandered off to wallow
In the all too literal mire?
We took it back in a jam-jar,
The fish not the mire,
To show to the holy bimbi,
Mimi, Fifi, Fatima, Laura with the aura &.co.
All saints, bless them.
It certainly was an underwhelming fish,
An exiguous, shrivelled, rubbery, flexile tiddler.
Little Saint Lolita, bless her,
Fed it to the convent cat.

You laughed!
The only time I caught you at it.
No, really you did.
A kind of unrhythmical, spasmodic squeak.
Still echoing now you’re doornail
Dead and ingested
Mostly.

THE BIRD

Remember that candyfloss,
Nilotic sunset and the frog devouring bird
With the bright black eyes
And the long gracile legs?
No Piggles,
Not little Saint Mimi of the petticoats, bless her.

Step by step. beside it,
I stalked, storked even,
Copying its stilted strides,
Knees swinging from the hips.
While you, on your four pretty
Trotters, pink all the way up,
Lolloped alongside
Perfecting the lurch of our humpy, defective
Camel

The pink Sphinx,
Watching our progress,
Our two, three, four legged funny walks,
Might have been thinking,
Or not.
Who can ever,
Ever know?

Weeks later, munching a
Bacon sandwich,
(O Ali, take away this sauce.
It’s much too sanguine. Have you nothing browner?)
I recalled our incomplete camel’s three
And that hungry bird’s two
And, not
Least, at least
One
Of your delectable
Dainty legs.