Klepto by Stuart Dunkel
Wonderlust
When does a walk become a hike ?
When does a saunter start to stride ?
Upon how many trails must I strike
Before I get to the other side ?
When does a trek become a wander ?
When does a road not lead to Rome ?
Upon how many paths must I ponder
Before I get to go back home ?
Here Be Dragons
Nothing excites like a fragment of coastline,
A ribbon of mountains, an island arc,
A river’s meander, an outpost upon it,
A highway to cross it, and leave its mark.
Fantasy maps have gotten much better these days,
With histories drawn in tectonics –
With rain-shadowed deserts and cyclonic trade-winds,
And conlangic place-names correct in their phonics.
Readers demand that their continents drift,
On a globe that is spinning through space –
Our increase in knowledge has moved-on our world,
And our make-believe realms must keep pace.
Adventurers trek across accurate kingdoms,
The blanks are uncovered, the borders expand,
And fossils are dug-up of earlier monsters –
The dragons evolve now, and so does the land.
Russian Rush
Is it just my ears,
Or are all these Slavic women baritones ?
Does the need to wrap their tongues
Round angular Cyrillics
Thus somehow feed into their very bones ?
Is it from the years
Of calling for Ivanovic, not Jones,
That ups capacity in lungs
Into those sexy and idyllic moans
They use to answer telephones ?
They always speak their English with a purr,
In a lower register.
Perhaps it’s their careers
As nurses or baristas, or tennis pros,
Or spies in paperbacks,
That slows their speech and drops it down a semitone or two ?
Or maybe it’s my ears,
And not some deep and cunning pose
To sigh like honeytraps ?
Of course, it’s just my vodka fantasy,
And even if it’s true –
The way they talk, their chosen key,
Is not in any way for me –
But nonetheless, I love the way they sound the way they do.
I have always thought that printed Cyrillic looks like it is written in all-caps even when lower case letters are used – perhaps it is the reduced use of risers and descenders, giving them less-indented coastlines.
I had originally called this poem as Deep Throat. It almost worked, but ultimately the leaker in All The President’s Men was very male and very American.
What do you mean, there’s another film which uses that title…
Last Man In
From Derek Niven’s Hollywood 11,
To New York ghetto parks,
Or taking over baseball diamonds
For some old-school larks –
Cricket can be found under the covers,
Hanging out in nets,
With scuffed-up balls and tied-up bats
Amid ex-pats and vets.
And even hosting amateur T20s,
Though you’d barely know –
The sixes fly into a void,
The runs clock up so slow.
As Argentina take on Norway
By the overpass,
With both teams full of Singhs and Khans
Upon synthetic grass.
Kithdred
We look out for our own,
But our own can be more than our genes.
Our neighbours are fam’ly of a diff’rent bone,
While strangers and enemies and inbetweens
Are no less important a-cornerstone
As noisy, teeming teens.
To make it a good home takes all of you,
For blood is thinner than glue.
Like the Wriggle of an Eel
Rivers are boring when they’re straight,
We’ve got the canals for that.
But rivers will race and rivers will wait,
As they twist through their habitat.
They’re in no hurry to terminate,
They meander around, and ambulate,
Through oxbows of a future-date,
Until they’re old and fat.
I used to marvel how they’d know
Which way to go to flow through ev’ry town.
But gravity cares none for to or fro,
For fast or slow,
As long as they flow down.
Rivers are boring when they’re straight,
But once they’ve earned the name of ‘great’,
They carve their many strands through delta sands,
While the hungry sea must wait.
The Groaning Trencher
Sometimes, falls the Burns Night on the number two New Moon,
That will open the cacoon of a brand New Year –
So the neeps and cock-a-leekie get to share the serving spoon
As the beansprouts and the riceballs soon appear.
From the docks of old Kowloon to the mists of Brigadoon,
So it all goes in the haggis, and the bamboo pipes the tune –
As we all sup down together, from New Scotland Yard to Scone,
In a typhoon of lampoons and tartan cheer.
Now maybe I am nothing but a Sassenach poltroon,
From the billabongs of Perth, and through the snows of Saskatoon –
But a shortbread in my green tea on a global afternoon,
And the paddy-fields of glens are very near.
Can I just say what a wonderfully weird experience it is to hear someone read Address to the Haggis in an unapologetically RP accent ?
England without the English
A strange village, this. But why ?
The pub is near the village hall,
The church is near the school.
The pear trees over-reach the wall,
Beside the milking stool.
So where precisely does the oddness lie ?
I think it’s in the accents heard –
But not of locals, rather Poles,
They say “howzat” and “’pon my word”
And land the choice Mikado roles.
No reason why they shouldn’t, true,
But still…they’re more than quite a few…
A strange village this, no doubt.
There’s thatch as far as one can see,
And rolling downs for views.
So why do folks from Italy
Fill Church-of-England pews,
While Argentines keep bees and run the scouts ?
Speaking English, fishing pike,
Or growing leeks and supping beers,
And naming local landmarks
Like they’d known them all their years.
No reason why they shouldn’t, though,
Yet change round here is often slow…
A strange village this, alright.
As mentioned in the Domesday Book
And in the Civil War
Where Indians have found a nook
Behind the stable door.
With a hint of local brogue, but only slight.
And Caribbean morris-men,
And Russian gardens with a gnome,
And Chinese shepherds down the fen –
And yet, so very much at home.
No reason why they shouldn’t, Ma’am –
They’ve asked me round for tea and jam.
You can tell this poem is out-of-date by its use of ‘Ma’am’.
Tartan Tarts
I asked her what was the tartan she wore,
She smiled and told me Smith.
I’d never considered that Clan before,
But fair enough – the Smiths of yore,
The Sassenachs of Aviemore,
The flints in the monolith –
The common Clan for the ev’ryman,
The hammers and tongs of myth.
She asked the tartan in which I deck,
Buchanan, perhaps, or Brodie, or Beck ?
I smiled, and told her Burberry Check.
It seems that the Gaelic word for smith is the origin of the Clan McGowan, but that even before surnames arose in the Highlands, some Scots had Anglisised their profession to ‘smith’.
All Chalk, No Cheese
Cowes, atop the Isle of Wight –
East and West, though much the same –
Victorian and seaside-y,
With boats and seagulls running free.
And not a single cow in sight –
No running of the bulls – for shame !
No fording droves between the piers,
No cowboys showing off their steers.
And don’t come here in Cowes Week, right !
It doesn’t live up to its fame !
It’s not the time when bullocks battle,
Not a trace of rutting cattle.
Why then whet our appetite,
To wastes its strange and lively name ?
There are no bovine sacrifices,
Just cream teas at tourist prices.
I know, I know, despite a spine of rolling chalk downs through the Island, Cowes itself sits atop clay…
Rhyming Couplets 