The Card

The morning city bus:

She squeezed past me to alight

leaving behind a book,

well read, I judged –  

unusual as most commuters

sit or stand comatose, ears plugged,

in the world of Android.

The traffic sludged to walking pace;

we were nearing the terminus.

I saw her on the footpath,

walking fast to catch the bus again.

She returned to her seat.

I handed her the book.

Quickly she checked and found a card in it.

I’d seen it but had not read it.

She thanked me,

smiling with moist eyes.

“It’s from a dear friend,” she said,

“It keeps me alive.

I don’t have long to live.”

Obstruction

Tell me, doctor, what to do

for blockage in the tubes

that nourish and remove waste

from the gut-loop

that creates and excretes

poetry.

There’s something wrong this week:

I write no rhymes:

all that I scribble is captive

to the laws of prose.

Has an important digestive enzyme

gone missing?

Or is this a case of literary gall-stones

at pains to stop the flow of bile?

(How can you write poetry without bile?)

Or appendicitis?

(I meant no offence with the parenthetic ode,

or the semi-colon.)

Google-Doc suggests a dose of Joyce

or tincture of Eliot. But you’re the expert

so tell me what to try. 

Maybe IV enthusiasm:

the Royal Wedding has drained me

(especially the sermon) so fluids? Yes, OK.

But what’s that you say?

“More sleep.” 

I waste so much time on sleep –

and then there are the dreams.

You are a hopeless romantic to suggest that

“Poems are made of such things.”

The Exchange

Will they meet in Singapore,

Trump with his VERY, VERY Big Macs,

Little Rocket Man

with his plate of noodles,

and each each with their buttons?

Will they will exchange gifts,

Trump offering geraniums,

Un a basket of rose petals

or a ticking parcel

of enriched metals?

  

Will they hammer out a deal  

to meet again,

to keep the earth alive till then?

Might Un go to Mar-a-Lago,

lose a game of golf and announce

“The deal’s a no-go” ?

This may be the end.

The afterglow will keep space warm

for millennia or more,

the most incandescent  tribute

to screwed up science

the universe has seen.