April - O Kneel! (NaPoWriMo 2007)

NaPoWriMo 2007 - a poem for every day of April. Here goes nothing!

Don't Tell Joan

as she kneels, sword at side, about de Rais. By all means sing out that his latest bride- to-be has changed her mind, choosing still more money over him, however filthy wealthy, charming.

A Newish Line

D is my guide, meets me on the newest platform of a grizzled station. Even though you cannot miss the venue, I'm glad as I am late, sweating like a suspect, and if he is here, the band

An End-of-Empire Feeling

From an article by Sanjiv Bhattacharya on a swingers convention in New Orleans entitled "Sodden and Gomorrah" (GQ April 2007)

Anni Nubiles

We thunked down in Britain, the massive tyres absorbing the weight, giving, recovering. I'd never been on a plane before, much less as a ribbon on the kite of a real rock 'n' roll tour.

Boadicea

The spiders knew I was back within seconds, eyes glinting eightfold from spyholes. And so they send their champion, who snaps into view like ink on a sail. She enters from above, stretches

Censoring Danger

Animals Gnawing Women and Children Men can be masticated by as many species of wildcat or wolf as there are letters on a mad optician's chart. If so much as a drop of drool

Comparative Tranquility

After a case study of sadist and killer Peter Kurten from Clifford Allen's "The Sexual Perversions and Abnormalities"
Cherry

Explaining It

"My whole life is a series of dummies and breasts." (Subject, case study from The Sexual Perversions and Abnormalities by Clifford Allen)
Cherry

No Surprise Gladioli

"It is impossible to have a proper relationship with women when you want to cut them all up" (subject, case study from The Sexual Perversions and Abnormalities by Clifford Allen, 1940)

Mar-lee-bone

As the doors clunk shut, the glass buffed by subterranean elves in the rare shutdown hours, he sees his mistake whizz by.
Cherry

Those Who Enjoy Repression

So this one's a Valentine to those who crave neatness/ It's understandable! Sometimes a cure seems delicious. Much cleaner than regulating a spot of indulgence with a dam explosion of loans

Zorro

They wheelbarrowed him in, all limbs droozing over the sides like glops of ginger honey. Gangly like a half-spider, he breathed softly, barely needed sedating.

Hypoversion

Cliff tells us of the unseen Blitz buttoned into the city’s trousers. As chambers, ports, libraries crumbled like cake, felled dragons bellowing smoke, silence in the bedrooms.

Lucky Charm

At Five Black ones, particularly the Magic Steps pair the elf next door traipsed through the sandpit the clear plastic shielding the key in the heel scratched to buggery
Cherry

Superman and the Wonder Twins

Suddenly, after silence tough as resin for months this post brings back the dead reinstating the NEW REPLY flag in glorious technicolour. Names tumble over each other,

Koumiss or Shark’s Fin Soup

For Clifford, the white man’s intrigue in eyeing those outside the skin group that reddens and blisters at a sniff of sun can be likened to the mass of arms you order on holiday to impress,

I flick past the suspension photos

to my shame, like Johnny Five without the plea for “MORE INPUT!” bundling the sight roughly from my head only for it to push back through like the contents of an overstuffed cupboard.

That Girl Knows Me

As I weeble, trying to pick a direction to face on a freak free-seat day in the busiest station under London, she stares with hazel lasers, ignores my apology, gets me twitching "she knows me/she know

Pleading Belly

The black cap lay at the judge's hand though the fingers wriggled as I spoke. My plea was not for me, I said, but the innocent inside. Some sighed. Most bellowed.
Cherry

Snip Not My Girdle

Snip not my girdle, Your Honour, should I fall to the floor like a badly leant guitar. Snip not my girdle, Mademoiselle! Hold instead a cheap vial of salts to my nostril.
Cherry

The coffee here is drugged

Send word. Send poison experts with bulletproof vests and superguns and get them to order mochas across the way. Just one and I was charged like a sixty-six inch cell,

Three reasons to love Teedie Roosevelt

1. For chasing the thieves out in Badlands who yoinked his boat, hardly thinking one ruddy, moustached owner, dripping with water, perspiration or essence of double-hard madman

I could have gone on and on

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (Arthur C. Clarke) His face, for the first time in photographs, shows a new expression, one unexpected:
Cherry

Meeting Emma In The Toilets

at last, after four years of howsitgoings; intro seminars sat adjacent when we all ignored the Hi speech before us, panicking about what we would say; spells of not knowing for certain

Gilbert v Gregson

The Zong's name is tethered by a spidersilk pilot line to the legal duellists. Not a goof or poobah, but a ship surrounded by cannonball splashes like huge rain

No Stoopa

The prospect of you leaving for the weekend, it chills me like whip-wind.