Greek onions and daffodils
sciatica and nods of greeting
—and what about these last three years: to think
it took me five to frogmarch my previous lover to the court
only to be ordered to pay off all her gambling debts, and she
is still drinking tequila, and I am still the man
in the turnip mirror, my pale blood pouring
into hollow cores of red soil—
worm juice, salt and lemon , my go-to prophylactic.
And omicron, oh omicron, another mutation on the rise
which basically means that there is now no need to pair the socks
now that all my might-be, could-be, carefully curated lovers
are in lockdown; behind open windows, incommunicado.
Wave but do not touch.
And I am the writer. And I am the reader. And the critic
in my own ivory tower, far above the ballerina’s sting
and the cabbage moths, spoiling second-hand expirations
And I’m chancing a gasp from a brown paper bag. Irony: thinking
what if I penned the most elegant of poems, on this, the End day. Period
Full-stop—only to find that all poetry readers were dead
dead and dead, and upon a table, hewn from dry rot parochialism
there sings my two pages of A4, curling elite.
and I’m back-slapping myself with gin and tonics:
too proud to be a ghost, rather be in the ground
…blood and bone, rough unshaven. And I am the turnip man
weeding and mulching rejection slips
now gathering heritage seeds
filling my denim pockets and come the season
of the coffin, they will die or they will flourish,
colours of rainbow, nuanced but non-esoteric.
Slow yanking on commas of sciatica, I bend
plucking verse, chewing garlic
marshalling my army of terracotta pots
chanting in vain, to conjure just one love to the blanket
neatly spread each morning upon a mint scented lawn
and I am the turnip man
isolated, pining — in this bitter soup, almost sweet.
