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.