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.

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.

OUIJA

Some of the saints came by,
Bless them!,
and brought the board.
Adulf was there. Sieg heil! He did not smile.
You know, mein Freund, the etymologish
origin of this Wee yah?
Hau ab, Adulf!
Columba, Brendan and some Holy Teagues came by.
Stout fellows!
Arrah! Begorra! Holy Mother and all the saints!
And isn’t it terrible bad luck, you know it is now,
To see an empty glass
This time of the evening?
And upside down too, bejasus!
Here too, Monica, our token woman,
Despairingly depressed, pathetically and pathologically
Dull as a beetle,
Generally out of sorts, spoke staccato to the click of the needles.
It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going!
She said. We launched the glass. Away we went
And summoned a spirit as easy as catching
A three legged camel’s
Stool,
But the Devil,
Who envies holy Guinness drinkers,
Sent us a baddie. A mean spirited spirit.
The glass began to prowl
Under the fingers of liplicking saints
BACON SANDWICH.
I looked for you but you had made yourself
Scarcer than nooky in a sandstorm.
The glass prowled on, vindictive in its emptiness,
Fractious in its upsidedownness.
PORK-PIE AND HP SAUCE.
You kept your snout down, did not show up!
For the lads
I found a plate of locusts,
Of both kinds.

PORKER

A good Sowe was ther of bisyde Bathe,
But she had lost her tayl and that was scathe.
Lusty she was, with hipes large of caste
And nipples ech more lufsom than the laste.’
That sort of thing. I spouted and your snout
Hardly flickered.
It’s Geoffrey Porker, Piggles,
Seminal pig-poet.
You munched your turnip and you did not care
For literature.
It rhymes. I said.
I waved my arms and gave
My sostenuto rendering of Porker
The all, but you were not impressed.
You might have been
Ted, the late lugubrious donkey
Who turned the screw,
For all the fun you were.

Peeved,
Was that my first moment
Of flagitious thought,
I loved you, Piggles,
Enough to eat you?

NUMBER 22

I dreamed I took you home to Thebes to meet my Mum.
Another mecca for our pigrims, Piggles,
Pigrims (sic) that is.
I see them stepping from the 80 bus,
Some sick some not so sick,
And queueing up at number 22,
Their scallop shells of quiet in their hands.
I dreamed my home but strangers live there now.
I dreamed my Mum but she’s long dead and gone.
Come in, she said, and wipe your muddy feet.
It’s nice to see you Tony. My! and you
Saint Tony these days, bless and save us!!
Our Toe a saint! My! Fancy that!
Just like that Paul McCartney. He’s done well!
No Mum, I said, He is a sir, I said.
He is a sir and not a saint. It’s not the same.
But is it better, Tony? asked my Mum.
Not better, only different. I said.
I whipped your poke off so my Mum could see.
Who’s this then?
This is Piggles. She’s a pig
From Nubia, Mum. Mum stroked your pretty head.
Good name for a pig, Tony.
You blinked and saw the greasy, tacky, smelly,
hutch of a kitchen. It confirmed
Your idea of Theban Life.
I’m glad that you’ve found someone after all
These years. I told your Dad you would.
Said my dead Mum.