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.