FISHSCAL’ POLICY

Depression was rife on the tropic reef.

The Coral Bank threatened to collapse

because of the inflationary pressure

of water heated and acidified

by climate change, eroding soil

and overpopulation with small fish

demanding constantly to be fed .

Plankton prices were rising

and krill was in short supply.

Several fishenomic schools proposed solutions

ranging from restrictions

on the supply of marine nutrients

and dissolved oxygen so that

rates of unemployment among highly prevalent

parrot-fish and epidemic rays

would decrease to manageable levels.

The octopus was asked

to shut down three of his tentacles

and whales and dolphins to seek employment

in marine parks where alternate sources of currency

might be found,  taking pressure off

the monetary pumps.

Takeover bids for sectors of the sea bed

were made by predatory sharks

who considered individual survival to be all.

But rescue came in the form of

new taxes invented by rainbow fish

based on the count of scales upon a fish’s skin.

Scales served as proxy for piscine wealth.

and a policy of fishscal’ tax saved

the marine economy from collapse.    

      

EXECUTIVE ORDERS

I was surprised

how mundane the institution,

impervious to conversation,

inexorable, impersonal,

preparations and transport

were for my execution.

Led in cuffs  to a jetty,

then into a small boat

with four handlers

bound for an island,

my escorts studied

paper forms, not me,  

doing their job

in a bureaucracy.

The firing squad kneels in front,

stands behind.  “Take this target,

pin it to his chest,”

the corporal says.

Orders followed.

Over in a minute. 

EXHIBITION

She lent across and right there kissed his neck

in the queue to see Francis Bacon.

What the heck?

These chances are there to be taken.

I was standing behind her behind

as he gently patted her there.

He seemed very kind.

She had soft brown hair.

We entered the gallery of pain,

of Bacon’s suffering and death,

love’s falling as acid rain,

twisted faces and terminal breath.

Was that them I saw in the room,

Bacon’s truth sliding easily by?

His love starts in the womb,

is born, distorts then runs dry.

‘Bacon’s art is the work of a genius,’

the guide said as she led us about.

‘Just look how he’s painted that penis!’

Indeed – bleeding, erect – not in doubt.

I looked for the couple to see:

any effect on their easy affection?

There they were – holding hands he and she

paying torture and death no attention.

Will today’s soft kiss and their touch

transform in the years ahead?

Bacon doesn’t offer them much:

but then, he’s dead.

MOVING PICTURES

Time to move the stack of paintings

from behind the lounge where they lent

like pensioners against the wall

clad only in a shroud.

No sign of life: all dead?

Time to rehabilitate or bury,

hang them or put them in the shed.

One was a rural scene

into which you might escape

on a morning when the porridge

has horrible lumps, the coffee is weak

enough to make you weep,

the rain sogging

the thin tissues of poor sleep.

Another has a badly broken frame.

Painted decades ago in oil

it’s of a Parisian boulevard

that he and she may have walked

or maybe not – if only just

perhaps a dream –

a painting for the lost.

A third, disheartening in its loss of colour,

was of children playing on a beach

in swimwear of the ‘30s. 

Does it really matter

which wall, which shed?

the fact is very simple:

the children like the pictures are all dead.