Desert Island Discs

With nothing to eat but Kettle Crisps and Spam,

Salt on a salted sea, open always,

I floated along on the wreckage of a Spar,

Partly hydrogenated, like the waves.

What is this shore on which I’m beached? What are

These alte cocker spaniels doing here,

Beyond both bath and bed? I know the sound.

It’s 50s rock n roll up in the trees.

Chestnut is what I think, but I’m not sure.

I hope it lasts. And me. The saints preserve

Berry and Little Richard. Little I

Know of nesting among the spanielled crowd.

Never too late, doo-wop doo-wop, I pray.

Mr. Bones & Attendant Flights

I was thinking Bones, probably thinking
Like Henry. Happens sometimes. And I'm sure
A stewardess is falling, falling, now
A flight attendant, now a slight depression.
They talk back in patois. They have their ways.
They're violent and clinically unsound
And deader than a deaf door jamb. They're closed.
I think of them, though, waiting in the dark,
Collectedly insentient. Such bones
We use for soup, grow strong & tall 12 ways.

When I became a man, I took such bones,
Plucked free of noodles, cast them in the street,
And read my riddles, almost knew the truth,
Although a blue Imperial, false spare
& painted whitewalls, ran them down like dirt.

Spread Sheets

The cash alone was not enough.
It made the flagstone terrace slick
And all the shutters red and bright;
But consciences are black at night, 
And cash does not afford a light
When even sheets and spreads are rough.
The dead are still, and eke the quick.

Gelt not so much. The dead forgot,
The live forsworn: but in the dark,
Where they go on, but you would not,
You can't buy room. There is a lot
Of that in Zion Perfect Park,
Home to the absent. They were all
Live on the margins. Came the call.