ISIS

You kept looking behind you,

Over your spare rib,
Over your back-fat,
Over your question-mark tail.
Was Death following you,
He who had nabbed your mummy
And your mummy’s mummy
And your mummy’s mummy’s mummy
And so on,
In pretty damn quick succession? 

Something black and suspirating was chasing, peeping,

Shuffling, snuffling, running?
Was it Death chasing you all round the caves?
Did he peep at you through the telamons’ legs,
Smiling at the thought of  butchers’
Knives and hooks?.
Did he shuffle through the burning sand behind you?
Did his hot breath snuffle at your rubber bum?
Did Death run in your question-mark tail’s shadow?

Well, no actually. 

It wasn’t Death and Death didn’t.
It was the blessed Widow’s little black,
Archaic milch cow.

Meet Isis, Tony,
After the goddess, not the Caliphate.

Good name for a milch cow, Monica.
She’s half a gaur, Tony.
Half a gaur is better than none, Monica.
She did not smile.
Funny how my Isis follows your little Piggles all over.
She said.

I could tell that you did not find it funny.

You, in your pig-ignorance,
Did not distinguish
Death
From
That little, snuffling, shuffling,
Black, archaic milch cow.

REMISSION

Sometimes, kiddo,

Things get just a little too serious,

Don’t you find?

Life and Death and all that,

Well, I know they’re both important

And not always fun.

Times like that I’m glad I’ve got you to talk to

Even posthumously and

Postprandially.

Believe me! It really does help.

Back at The Hermitage, the Devil came by with some more visions

I could have done without.

The tempting fiend, diobolically transmogrified

Into a monkey-fingered Indian cook,

Curried favour and you, Piggles,

Served, with poppodoms, you,

Sweet-flavoured enough to make a saint spit,

On a spit.

You had been plumping up nicely for a pet

But the Devil, who envies all that’s good,

Disposed me to see:
Four Cumberland sausages for your four fat legs,

A pink pork belly that besought beans,

A ham-acting rubber bum.

It was enough to try the patience.

What saved you this time?

Saint George, bless her!, came by with fish and chips.

Nice piece of cod, Tony!

Passeth understanding, Captain George!

We laughed.

You escaped incommunicado

beneath the table.

You were remitted.

ALI'S BAR

That sand-blasted Sunday morning at Ali’s glummy bar,
In from the desert to find the place deserted.

Just you and me, Piggles!

Home from our holy days

And not a blessed Teague

In sight.

Mass evacuation, Ali!, What?

He did not smile.

No saints came marching in.

Not even a Desert Father to call

Daddy-o.

I was mooding into my Guinness,

Searching for the secret ingredient,

Missing the bimbi

And fantasising about black Fatima’s thighs.

You were pretty glummy too,

Pathetic even.

But what a pickup when church let out

And the dominoes team,

Saint Columba and the holy Teagues, stout fellows,

All saints, bless them,

Fell in like little bits of heaven

From out the sky

One day.

A thumping of dominoes

Followed a gulping of  diurnal Guinnesses

And an elutriation of sand-blown, parrot’s-cage,

Scrawny throats,

And when old Colly told the one about the one-legged nun

And the Taoiseach.

How we all laughed despite the agony.

Tears streamed over our pious cheeks,

Trickled along the ridges of our holy noses,

Dripped down our blessed beards

And splashed into our good-for-gulping Guinnesses

And onto our sand-strewn dominoes.

For one moment

I fondly thought, dear Piggles,

You too were able to shut your little piggy

Eyes to the bloody-awful, wretched, woebegone, comfortless,

Forlorn, godforsaken, miserable

Nature of this weary world.

But no,  you were just shutting your piggy eyes.

   

PORTRAITS

 

 Who was the joker who painted that portrait of you?

Augustine/John?

One or the other, saints both, bless them!

Whoever, he got carried away,
Fell over his easel

Easily done I said
He did not smile.

Then he fed his colours,
Pinks exclusively,
Into your
Piggy image.

You to the life, Piggles,

Pink and pathetic,

Delicately blushing

But no-one would notice.

Suddenly -  ‘What was that falling?’

A shadow of Yaddo?

No, it was the sun.

It was the onset of the sunset.

Augustine/John smiled as

The pink light rubbed you out..

'If it’s there I paint it,

If it’s not I don’t.’

He said.

In the end

You were the pigling nobody needed to paint.

You were the ‘Pig at Sunset’s Onset.’

Subsumed by a pink window,

I was disappointed.

I really wanted that painting.

You, however, were short on opinion.

You did not comment

Which was expected.

STARCHED SHIRT

Suddenly I needed a holy day from you.

I just wanted to be clever alone,

Wanted to cut a figure

Sharp-edged and pigless, white in the moonlight.

Which of the holy bimbi, bless them,

Had starched my best shirt?

Sister Suzy Wong surely?

You trotted behind.

Go away Piggles!

You hung about.

Push off!  Go play with the girls!

You would not hear.

Shove off!  Go snuffle a truffle!

Suddenly you were enough to try the patience.

Piss off, Piggles!

You did not piss off.

You crept beneath my feet.

Pop-eyed and pathetic,

Peeping up at my essential pinkness

Hoping to find your dead and eaten Mum here,

Behind and beneath the sharp edges of my starched shirt.

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.

THE LITERARY LIFE

Hildegard of Bingen cruised in,
Great saint, bless her!, great poet!
Herself a luxury-liner, nun better!
Doing the Nile with the Herrenvolk.
Her face, a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte mit Sahne
On a big white dish. We waved
And climbed the narrow companionway
To a , well!,
Seen one, seem them all,
A nun’s cabin,
Crumpled sheets, fag-ends, empty gin bottles,
More littery than literary.
Sieg heil, Hildchen!, she did not smile,
I showed her some of my best poems,
Really good ones.
Her voice, the dithyramb of an impaled herring-gull:
Who wrote these then, Tonio,
You or your pinky fat friend?
It was you she meant, Piggles.
I took the point of that ‘who wrote these?’
You took the point of that ‘pinky fat friend’.
You squeaked
And tipped yourself out off her
Bun’s nunk. No, not so much
Bun’s nunk, Piggles,
More
Nun’s bunk.
I grabbed back my really good poems.
Fat yourself, sister! The rapier wit struck home.
I carried you down,
Shivering, shaking, squealing,
Pathetic as per usual,
To our quotidian cuddle.

Later, when you were very
Dead, Piggles,
A postcard made its long journey
From the Vaterland.
Hildegard thanking me for the Schinken.
Nice pig, Tony! she wrote.
It was you she meant,
Piggles baby.

2 CROCODILE CLOSE

Saint Thomas Cook, bless him, came by
Pyramid selling.
Need some holy days Tony?
Can you doubt it, Thomas?
One holy week, selfcatering, El Giza,
Nice cave, pets welcome,
Convent of the Holy Bimbi
Netball team of none but
Nuns, all saints bless ‘em, just up the road,
Caravan at your disposal, well, not so much a
Caravan,
More a camel.

Wonnit?
We wanted it and, to quote the poet,
We got it!

2, Crocodile Close,
One more poetical address for those sic
Pigrims, Piggles. Number two too,
Even
More poetic than number one. Twice as poetic perhaps and not so
Odd.
2 Crocodile Close, I said
But not too crocodile close, Eh Piggles?
You did not smile, which was expected.

We rolled up and rolled in
To my black sack, you and I.
I was holy in my holey nightshirt.
You were wobbling and bubbling for a change.
We cuddled
A lot. You were my cuddly, wobbly, bubbly Piggles.

O yes and then?
How did we come to walk our camel too crocodile close
At sunset by the Nile River?
The crocodile smiled.
She wept her fabled perfidious tears
And then she bit off our camel’s best leg.

It made me think about death
A lot and made me think that you were thinking about death
A lot too and made me think
The inscrutable, sunset pink Sphinx, was thinking about death
A lot too.
But then who ever
Ever knows what the
Pinx phinx thinx,
Piggles?

CHILD'S PLAY

What for, in the name of it’s father,
Did you need to savage
Young Brigid’s baby?
As if being a single mother wasn’t trouble enough
For a nice, redheaded, Irish girl,
And her a long way from home
And a saint too, bless her.
Life is bad enough, Tony,
Without little Gerry being pignipped
Under the table
Whenever I come by?
It’s enough to try the patience.
She said,

Your homicidal fury had to be quenched.
I spared the Guinness and fetched the fire-bucket.
She clasped the wretched, once bitten child
to her fetching bosom.

You were soaked to the core of your Inferno.
You breathed water.

Next time some blessed ginger baby
Wants to play with your curly tail,
You just close your nippy mouth
And your piggy eyes
And think of Nubia, okay?
You squeaked but not in reply,
Which was what I expected.
Perhaps you already knew in your
Coggles, Pickles. No!, not so much
Coggles Pickles
More
Cockles, Piggles,
That there would be no next time.

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.

CRYSTAL GAZING

Adulf had only got one
crystal ball.
He peddled it round the caves,
passed among us saints, bless us!,
muttering his Zauberspruch,
Hocus Pocus Fidibus!
(Hau ab Adulf!)
And set up by the barber’s shop.
Roll up!, roll up!
To be bamboozled and hornswoggled.

Now and again though, he got it right,
Foretold the odd martyrdom,
Upside down crucifixion,
Sideways ditto,
Oil-boil, wheel-break,
Red hot poker up the backside,
Disembowelling,
And once the winning camel
In the King’s Cup at Luxor.

You were the pigling who wanted to know
Too much. You clambered up to gaze,
Your pink eyes blazing.
Well!, blinking rather than blazing.
Would you see the cold ham bones
Embedded in your hot body?
I disapproved.
I grabbed your plump rubber bum.
For your own sake.
I floored you, squeaking.

Alas! I should have known,
You had only to see your self
Mirrored in my big, shiny frying-pan
To know your whole Fate.

THE JERBOA

Hippity-hop!
Down hopped the woolly jumper of the sandhills,
Tickling the telamons’ toes
With her tail,
The jolly jerboa, disorientated,
Was heading for our cave like she’d been invited
For supper.
I reached for my tucker-bag and whistled
Waltzing Matilda.
The bright-eyed yellow rat studied me -
Me, I, me, ?
- A drooling saint who sees both kinds of locust too often,
And not a lot else.
She did not hang about.
They never do, I find. I’ve yet to bake
One in a pie.
Hippity hop! back up the sandhills
Not stopping even to thumb her nose.
You were impressed. I watched you
Flex the metatarsals in your hind
Legs, test your toes.
My six-month pigling was suddenly the jerboa
That could not jump.
I whistled nonchalance.
You eyed my tucker-bag
As I eyed you.

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.