Farm Girl

There she goes cleaning the bathroom
Bending and spraying and wiping away
Grease falls from the tiles the sink
The warm water shower washes it away

Before this she was hoovering, tidying
polishing, picking up pieces
Like foraging, gleaning, until the carpet
furrows were clear
Until the fallow field could be left
Til next year
Farmer girl in the house
Keeping home, keeping mum
Keeping the mouse
And the tiger together at bay
Keeping order in that Sunday way

Meanwhile I was washing up
Just wiping the dirt, squeezing
The bottle
Squirting the liquid, herding the bubbles
In and out of every corner of the corrugated
Plastic lunch box
Around the sides of cooking pans
Up the walls of the stainless steel sink
That had turned orange with Bolognaise
And arranging the clean orderly utensils
And containers, in their rack to dry
It is the least I can do
And honestly also the most too
Right now with my knee.

The writing on the wall

Walls that divide and walls that protect
High Walls of pride you may fall from and risk your neck
Walls that conquer and walls that control
Walls where Willy Wonker nearly lost his soul
Walls of esteem and walls full of bullet holes
Walls that cut up mountains and block up streams
Walls whose only purpose is to break other's dreams
Walls full of murals or of protest
Walls that are cure-alls walls you come to detest
Walls you love pasted with posters
Walls of past lovers full of ears and ghost stories
The wolves in the walls
These four walls you stare at, at night
When the evening falls
You can talk you can whisper
You can shout you can scream
You can beat them with your fists or
You can scale them in your dreams
One thing is for sure
Behind every open door
They'll be a wall waiting for one and all

Hair of the Dog

I badgered a rabbit
Who was rabbiting on
He was dogging a hare
Whose hair had all gone
But he took the hair of the dog
When he sang his swan song
I soon met an otter who was beavering away
He was playing in the reeds
While I was reading a play
And an owl was hooting
Calling to his mate
His mate was shooting
Pellets at a plate
And the Platypus lay
Asleep in the hay
Full of nature's platitudes
In a latitudinal way



I went on a speed date with a ray of light
She was fast and loose
And waved me good night
But in a particle way so she had an excuse

Approaching the speed of light
It became horribly obtuse
As if all my energy were matter
Time itself seemed to slow to a stop
My mental processes worked with the speed of a mop
I think my impression not a good one
My mind in confusion
And like Icarus
I never had
The Sun on the run

Two crash test dummies were on a speed date
It was important they broke the speed limit
When they broke the ice
Unfortunately, she broke her neck
And he lost his eyes
But he thought, what the heck!
Another date tomorrow night?
She just played dum
By which she meant - Why not Hun?
You only live twice.

Illustrations website

Please have a look at my illustrations if you like, thanks
https://www.chrisscullyillustrations.com/

Push and Pull

He began by pulling my leg
But ended by pulling my hair
I was glad he was pulling my leg
When he said he would pull my finger
He had pushed me far enough
Nearly pushed me over the edge
It was a case of push and shove
And being dragged backwards through a hedge
Someone was pulling the cart
Another was pushing his art
But it was all being pulled apart
By the time she took off her pull over

Archaeopteryx

The trees are awake
The fields in furrow
The brown salty earth
Is dug from the burrow
The rabbit makes his home beneath
Where vineyards grow
The wind has teeth

Then opens out the fertile plane
Where land has lain
The fossils remain
Of so many millenia ago
Epochs, eras our clocks cannot know
Of a time when dinosaurs roamed
Now slip-silted down muddy loam
It fell and slipped down a loamy flume
Within minutes the flow had covered its plume

Archaeopteryx half bird, half beast
The link between these two disparate cleats

For the benefit of those who don't know
this dinosaur had feathers
His beak did crow
Even from the other parts we know
This bird had claws from arm to toe

Unlike anything that had gone before
His skeleton opened up many a genetic door
The missing link, the piece of the chain
That would tie down Prehistoric Adam to Cain

What memories of a terror-bound world
Would be released if we could read its skull?
If the tracks and times, and minutes
Were laid down like tree rings
Or the braille-like markings of a limpets shell

Of what world might Archaeopteryx speak?
One of unimaginable beauty, one where terror peaks?
Palm trees as tall as two story buildings
Jungles alive with giant insects and snakes
All creatures inhabiting a godless ocean
With razor sharp teeth leaving devastating wakes

How might he have lived?
What aerobatic skill?
To evade the predators clutch,
Or to make his own deadly kill
How did he hone his technique?
Where was his school?
At what did he pique?
Were there extremes in plenitude?
Mountainous relief?
Did he witness an earthquake divide and fold?
Did a volcanic eruption turn his world cold?
Were there rains for days, did it hail stones?
Was there room for beauty or mere survival alone?
When and how did the butterfly come to be?
How did such a delicate beauty from the beast flee?
What of the flower, why is it here?
How can an hour be heard to chime in its ear?
What possible claim do we have to this earth?
How can we name it ours?
By whose power do we say we have worth?