war of the roses

August 10, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

I’d just come in from helping dad weed the roses in the garden
when my brother mick said: hey, shithead – here’s a hard one:
what’s the fundamental purpose of a rose?
I said : to look and smell beautiful I suppose
no, he said. dummy
you’re so funny
no. roses are there to make other roses
it’s got fuck all to do with human eyes and noses.
that’s it. that’s all there is. basic reproduction.
it’s a little thing you might have heard about called evolution.

it upset me at the time, and still, quite a bit
I was fond of nature and he was spoiling it
like he’d stuck a pin through my chest and put me in a cabinet
with a latin name, a label, and I just wasn’t having it
I mean – it was sad and insane
was life really just a numbers game?

it was like asking a gardening robot a logic bomb
a rose to make a rose and on and on and on
till its circuits smoke and its eyes glow red
and it crashes face down in the flower bed

I LOVE roses. Still – I admit it
I wanted to rip one up and hit him with it

a rotten truth

August 4, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ 4 Comments

these are the guys / that wear the ties
the greys and blues / and shiny shoes
that follow the rules / of the public schools
to swell the ranks / of the boards and the banks
the traders’ hubs / and members’ clubs
and shake the hands / and share the lands
and sign the deeds / and pedigrees
of title & worth / blessed at birth
fed, protected / securely connected
to rich placentas / in city centres

these are the rest / that do their best
that follow the norms / in uniforms
of jeans and boots / and cut-price suits
passed through the system / so fast you missed ‘em
the makers and breakers / the tryers and takers
the leavers & schemers / the weekend dreamers
who feel the bite / when margins are tight
confined, dependent / resigned, redundant
the first to burn / when they finally learn
their messiah was deaf / and it’s prophet with an F

no dog walk

August 3, 2019August 3, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

poor Lola
stress yawning
losing three molars
and a cyst
at the vets
this morning

she lies on the sofa
in a post-op stupor
wearing an old t-shirt of mine
(I didn’t mind
it was kinder than a cone
and wasn’t the nicest t-shirt I owned)

lying in that rumpled T
she looks a lot like me
before first coffee
staring mournfully
blinking slowly
each eye working independently

worryingly

she watches me put my boots on

I feel bad
she looks so sad
like I’m the Great Betrayer
grabbing my camera bag and phone
about to go on a walk on my own
saying
good girl see you later
phony as an alligator
wily, scaly, lowly
backing out the back door slowly

I thought I might go somewhere new
but somehow end up walking where we usually do
across the recreation ground
over Broken Tree Hill, down
to the stream with the ruins and the ferns
up the rooty path that turns
by the field with the cows and the crows
where the warm wind blows
through the high summer grass
to enter the wood at the broken fence
by the fallen chestnut and the badger setts

and for a moment I think I can see
Lola standing there, waiting for me
like she often will, her nose in the air
and the moment she sees me there
she turns and hurries on into the shadows

and I follow

IMG_0933 (1)

hanging around

July 29, 2019July 29, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

On the third or fourth day of our honeymoon in Sicily
we took a bus out to the Catacombe dei Cappuccini
a place where a bunch of mummified cadavers
– priests, princes, painters, whatever –
had been hung on the walls in their various vestments
in an early kind of tourist investment

A yawning attendant took our euros
We shuffled past the curios

I’d been quite nervous about the trip
what if I saw all the bodies and flipped?
unable to cope with the presentation
of DEATH in all its manifestations
but it’s funny how quickly DEATH loses its sting
when DEATH is literally everything
the rows of children in dusty smocks
a gaping priest in an open box
huddles of monks with their hats on a slant
a shrunken admiral; a desiccated aunt
men in suits, women in shawls
lines of musicians hung on the walls
playing their drab and wormy violins
with empty sockets and vacant grins

and really, y’know – we could do without it
we quickly got quite blase about it
Death the Destroyer; The Great Unknown
It all comes down to a souvenir of bones
‘What will survive of us is Love’
(and a green frock dress and a calfskin glove)
so we hurried past the painter, the corpse with the hunch
and thought about an early lunch
hurried out of the Catacombe dei Cappuccini
and crossed the road for some fettuccine

invasion of the body politic snatchers

July 25, 2019August 13, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

There’s a greenhouse
back of the White House
long, blond tables
trays of dollars & roubles
planted with presidential cuttings:
a golfing pin
a toenail
a cufflink
really – anything’ll do it

shut the door and I’ll talk you through it

once a month
President Trump
meets with a secret scientific team
of the highest horticultural esteem
with micro-harvesting machines
everything scrubbed & clinically clean
for the collection of presidential material
animal, vegetable, mineral
from the screaming chief imperial
which they spray with a potent, patent POTUS solution
then take to the greenhouse to grow in seclusion
row upon row of orange seedlings
(warmed by the light of FOX in the evenings)

and the strange flowers grow
& swell into pods in portly rows
red leaves on top
tendrils that flop
until they’re fine and fat and ready to pop
when out will drop
a line of half-formed Trumpettes
blind & bland as a bunch of courgettes
but ready to take on the exact dimension
of anybody you happen to mention
(all you have to do is plant them in a bed
with access to the person’s head
a little water, a day and a half at best;
the trumpy tendrils will do the rest)

I’ve watched a procession of military crates
shipped at night through the White House gates
to target all those countries and states
that have the gall to celebrate
all the things they hate

I’m telling you man
It’s a world-wide plan
the patriarchs and oligarchs have hatched
with Trump at the heart of the vegetable patch

and

THEY’RE HERE, ALREADY! YOU’RE NEXT!

(inspired by & last line quote from ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers‘ 1956)

skipping nightmare

July 22, 2019October 30, 2024 ~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Here comes a figure with a low-slung cart / long white fingers, coal black heart / hauling his load down the dark city road / spits to the left, spits to the right / stops at the cemetery gates at night / takes his shovel, takes his sack / digs all the bones and throws them in the back / there’s a pelvis, a femur, backbone and humerus / tibia and fibula and others too numerous / he works all night by the light of the moon / then he takes all the bones to the catacombs / where he stacks them high, he stacks them low / the skulls in a line so they’re all on show / one’s the pastor, one’s the clerk / one’s the gardener who worked in the park / that’s the doctor, that’s the king / and that’s the end of my skip-ping

dream bucket

July 17, 2019July 17, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

:::: coming out of the shower, I find James Earl Jones holding a towel saying “nice musculature”
:::: a truck driven by a polar bear pulls up beside me at the lights with a driver strapped to the grille
:::: what I think is a parachutist landing in the garden turns out to be a giant puppet
:::: I’m with a crowd at the zoo watching an octopus struggle to put in a contact lens
:::: Vladimir Putin shows me how to chop a courgette whilst singing the Baby Shark song
:::: it’s only when I take a selfie I realise I’m actually someone else

an instantaneous, automotive love bubble

July 16, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

the guy had been tailgating me
the last ten minutes
his bonnet so far up my exhaust
I was practically sitting on it
I couldn’t take it any more
I stopped
he stopped
we sat there awhile
then both jumped out
and strode towards each other
and do you know what?
it was a beautiful thing
he said he was sorry
but he’d just been overcome
by a sudden and irresistible sense of connection
I smiled at him
I felt it too, I said
we both sat down in the middle of the road
to explore this wonderful thing further
the other drivers driving round us
shaking their adorable heads & fists
the sweet sound of sirens in the distance
what did we care?
we had stumbled into what I’ve since
come to understand
was an instantaneous, automotive love bubble
we sat there on the blacktop
stradling the double white line
gently stroking each other’s beards
mutually admiring their sheen and vigor
he ran his hands over my arms
nodded approvingly at the tone and form
I did the same – and – honestly?
it was like feeling myself
we talked about things we’d done lately
that made us cry
he said when he was ironing
some white polo shirts
and listening to Nick Cave;
I said when I woke from a dream
in which my dead father sold me a ticket for the ocean
he laughed as if it was the sweetest
saddest thing he’d ever heard
I appreciated that
a police car skidded to a stop behind us
we helped each other stand up
and held hands as the officers
approached, advancing with tazers drawn
‘Do you know I smell lavender?’ he said
suddenly glancing over at the verge
‘A little cloying, perhaps, but SO good for the bees’

isaiah 6 thru 8

July 16, 2019 ~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb / and the leopard shall join them via web cam / and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together / whatever a fatling is / and they shall do the biz / and a little child shall lead them / and the fast broadband shall speed them / and great shall be the multitudes of followers thereof

And the cow and the bear shall feed / each according to their need / the cow unto pastures sunny / the bear into big jars of hunny / and their young ones shall lie down together / on disreputable but comfortable sofas of leather / and the lion shall eat straw like the ox / in a big cardboard box / because the lion hath been behaving most strangely of late / but all interventions frustrate / making for a most uneasy kinda housemate

And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp / which shall make all around him gasp / his collar grasp / and they shall pull him away pretty fast / and tell him most sternly this is the last / time he cometh to the petting zoo / if this is the kinda thing he doth do / and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den / and the whole damned thing shall start over again