Innocent spiders close down schools When ignorant humans panic. Why the hell are we so prepared To see them as Satanic ? We wonder why our schools are broke, And all our nerves are fried – Yet choose which phobias we’ll stoke, And wear our hates with pride – It only takes the merest sight To send us shrieking with delight. Our fears are learned, and screeching Just ain’t what our schools should teach in.
Far, far better we learn to love The harmless ones, at least – Let our babies play with monies, Let our kids embrace the beast. Rearing spinners out of eggs, And never let the wolves repulse – Daddy, bring a daddy-longlegs, Mama, bring a widow-false – Or better yet, we should be shown To watch awhile, then leave alone. And maybe then, here’s hoping, Then the schools can all stay open.
It was late o’clock in late October, I recall, As I buttoned up my coat and set off home – My hours in the library had still left no trace, The depths of my mind were whipped to foam. So, keen to sooner reach out to my waiting bed, I took a shortcut past the ancient church – And in my barely-woken walk I stumbled through the graves, As I fancied how their folks might up-and-lurch.
But I never thought they would… But I never thought they’d push the slabs aside… And yet, here were their skeletons Just walking round as if they’d never died ! Good thing I was overtired, Or else I’d surely have to scream and hide…
Paralysed by shivering and weariness, For the sight of all those bones had rattled me – But most because I’d spent all week to memorise On the finer points of man’s anatomy. And as I looked in horrified astonishment, A prayer had made its way onto my lips: “The head bone is connected to the vertebrae, And the metacarpals to the fingertips.”
But I never thought they could… Yet I never had the chance before to watch the dead. And yes, the hour was very late, But then, well, so were they ! Yet there they tread – And right there in the flesh… Or, excuse me, out the flesh, I should have said.
I saw upon those skeletons the marks of busy lives, Like bones that once had broken and re-set – I saw some more with fractures, some with cancers, some with spurs, In a lesson I could never now forget ! Their joints had lost their cartilage, yet showed no trace of arthritis, Where bones were grinding naked onto bones, And osteoporosis having tapered some so thin, Yet so carelessly they danced around the stones.
And I’ve never understood… But I suddenly remembered ev’ry word I’d read – These visions were impossible, Because of ev’ry fact that popped-up in my head And I was overcome, And I dropped down in exhaustion on my grassy bed.
And when I woke up, slowly woke up, propped against a gravestone, Quite alone in my new neighbourhood – Well, I dusted off the dew and I made my way to class, To a test I had to pass – and knew I would. Now I cannot expect you to believe a single word of it, Yet deep down in my marrow, there’s a shred… Though I looked around the churchyard on that morning as I left And saw ev’rything was still and very dead.
But I never said you should… Don’t believe my ev’ry no-word-of-a-lie – And as a trainee-medic, I will always trust in science till I die. But whatever did occur that night, I’ll always know one thing – dem bones ain’t dry !
I am a little bit embarrassed to admit that ‘arthritis’ above needs to be stressed on the first syllable instead of the second to fit the rhythm, but I can’t be that embarrassed since I haven’t removed it.
Pumpkin, oh plumpling, oh hideous mutant ! The hothouse of Hades is where you were born ! Nobody thinks of your yellow-starred flowers, They only remember your potbellied spawn.
An fragile annual, a delicate diva, Confined to the plots of the greenhouse and garden. You won’t survive long in the wastelands and margins, Where squirrels will eat you before you can harden.
Sclerosified skin in an orange-palled jaundice, With five-fingered leaves and with deep, sucking roots, And a hunger voracious to fatten grotesquely Your thickly-pus’d tumours, your Frankenstein fruits.
So pump up the pumpkins, fatter and fatter, You’re nothing but water and tasteless matter – Your heads then trepanned to scoop out your cortex, Yet still you’re invading our legends and doorsteps.
Yet many won’t make it – mistakes of blind nature, All twisted or stunted, or rotting while still on the vine. And if they’re not ripe by the first frost, they’re lost. Oh Lord, what have we created ? Oh monstrous design !
Have you heard how crime is falling, Muggings at an all-time low ? Murders, rapes, are miniscule Compared with fifty years ago. So when you’re walking back tonight, The odds are very much in favour Of you getting home alright.
So when the shadows rustle And your heartbeats dance a jitterbug, You’re almost surely not about To face a psycho or a thug. The cold wind sighs, the lone fox yelps, But rest assured you’re probably okay – I hope that helps.
That moment on a sleepless night Whose darkness isn’t quite as pitch as tar, All thanks to the full moon’s eerie light That serves to point out where the shadows are –
That moment when its gloomy shaft Is broken up by something on the wing, And underscored by the whistling draught, As the floorboards knock and the radiators sing –
That moment when a rustle sighs, And somewhere else a big clock ticks too slow, And the nearby buzz of courting flies, And the distant screech of an owl, or maybe a crow –
That moment when we feel a chill, And sense an electric tension in the air, And it always takes an act of will To tell ourselves there’s nothing really there –
If you should ever find yourself Eye to eye with the Devil himself, If you should ever find yourself Face to face with the face of Hell, Then hold his gaze as long a spell As you can hold that gaze. And when you blink, (you will blink first), Then do not think your chances cursed, But show him as your eyelids rise A pair of still and steely eyes That stare out straight and sharp and wise, That no reflex shall maze.
Please give me someone to hate – A politician to despise, To slander and dehumanise And make a monster in my eyes.
Please come and stoke-up my hate – Give me a minister to stone, Legitimise my constant moan, And whistle in an undertone.
Please let me bask in my hate To justify my diva tears – I’m longing to believe the smears, I’m relishing exquisite fears.
Please let me trumpet my hate, And wear my spite with friendly pride, And close my ears to the other side, And let no compromise abide.
Or else, let me calm my head, And tell myself its only politics, And tell myself its only bate and click, And tell myself I’ve fallen for the Devil’s oldest trick:
For the greatest lie he ever told Was telling us that he existed – Yet his realm is deathly cold, And human nature always twisted.
What I’ve learned is true, From the playground to Big Ben Is that the evil that men do, is done by men. (And these days, women too.)
So show me a politician And I’ll shake them by the hand As I tell them of my mission To frustrate their wonderland –
And if I lose, I hope that I Can choose to walk away before I lie And cheat for the greater good, And lose my common brotherhood.
For ev’ry politician is a person, Not the enemy – For even as we fight them, we must love them, Show them dignity,
Or we shall never understand their motives, Why they’re voted in, If we’re convinced they’re purley evil And their public steeped in sin.
We must, we must be better than this, Resist the overwrought and thunderous – If we believe in demons, then we fall to the abyss Where the only savage monsters will be us.
Gaze into the gaze of Medusa And be forever transfixed, Petrified by our seducer, And the slither of her hips: Just a flick of the tongue and a hiss of a smile, Is all she needs to beguile her prey. With her sleek, sleek body and her big, big hair, And her cat-eyed long, long stare –
Back when slow-worms still had legs, Asklepios, a shy young god, Adrift without a cause or temple, Just a toga and a rod, Was blundering through Sarpedon, Up the valley, down the scarp, and on In search of sacred streams. And there, within a cave, it seems, While carefree and quite unawares, He found the girl of his nightmares and his dreams…
For they say that young Asklepios Had never found his way, Until he gazed upon Medusa, Fell in love that very day, And swore to heal all those who pray to him, On her behalf, And swore to ever after bear Her symbol round his staff. His temple was a shrine to her will, Where serpents freely slinked among the ill.
But these days, preachers rarely praise The grass-snake in the grass, The serpent in the Garden Isn’t welcome at the mass. Saints were crowned for banishing and slander – Or even worse, The mauling, groping, serpent-handlers, Just to prove a single verse – Snake-oil merchants, hick-wood hacks With diamond rings and diamondbacks.
But we who gazed upon Medusa, Goths and metalheads and geeks, Who don’t recoil from fang and coil, As steadfast as those ancient Greeks, Are blessed forever with her curse – To see in ev’ry child of hers Her beauty – deadly if unwise – In never-blinking eyes.
Dammerung Dasching: A girl with one hell of a heck of a name ! It’s hardly her fault, of course, She didn’t choose it – Her thunderbolt handle is barely her blame – In fact, it’s absurd, But her parents once heard Of the power a moniker has on its wearer, And children so labelled Were feted and fabled, Endorsing their promise upon their proud bearer. And so she became An incentive for fame, Did Dammerung Dasching – the girl in the frame. For nobody ordin’ry gets to be called that – She’s in for a lifetime of being enthralled-at It’s hardly her fault, of course, She didn’t choose it, But hers is the force, And she cannot refuse it. The muses are summoned, The devils the same: Now they are the players and she is the game – With a flash and a flame From a passionate dame, She’s Dammerung Dasching – the girl with the name.
The spy cried as he killed her, But the job had to be done. A shame, but the nation’s guardians Must sometimes use the gun. She wasn’t an enemy agent, Just an unintended friend – Precisely the kind of citizen He’d promsed to defend. A bystander who stood in the wrong place, Open eyes in a pretty face, A mouth that might just blow the case. He wept for her at the end.
