Sandra Tappenden

The bookcase of the wood of the beauty red

You will want it because it connects

a desire to escape the dumb forest with

a recognised concrete form upon which

an idea of civilisation can squat like a

family or genius and although you can see

it is only £9.99 currently and the cost of

shipping from China would pay for a

week`s residential course in carpentry

somewhere less exotic you can still

pretend burning books is an option

while underneath the simple need to house

paperbacks that testify to the fact of

grey cells doing their thing there is a smudge

of horror or boredom or stupidity

felt like a mild attack of indigestion;

you go to bed at night to dream of being

lost in a bloody conflict of branches where

the back of Red Riding Hood is always

two steps ahead and Black Beauty waits in a

field you can see but even walking for hours

brings you no nearer to and the i-dears

get all maudled then you wake up heavy

with a nudging wish for things to be

catalogued in neat rows on something which

is aesthetically resolved and a bargain to boot,

something solid and beautiful you can polish.

Ease

Ducklings tug both shoelaces. In time

a dragonfly will land upon my knee

and I shall hear it do so. On the hill

across the water, light lolls in a swing

of trees that neither creak or hate their work,

although a smudge of breeze is going `yes`.

Just one weird cloud. It doesn`t move, and yes,

I`m thinking of the three-toed cat that time

I stopped for coffee on my way to work,

the x-rays that were fired through my knee,

which crunches and is too painful to swing,

and whether radon`s leaking through the hill.

The topography of thought`s a contoured hill

of slippery grey terrain, where every Yes

is over the next ridge. I want to swing

the lead, become the hippest thief of time

that ever had a disease of the knee,

although I`m not quite sure how that would work.

There are of course arguments pro-work

but most of it is pushing rocks uphill.

If there`s a problem, it isn`t the knee

that`s making mountains out of saying Yes,

it`s being stuck inside the mind, in time,

like some demented budgie on a swing.

Now the ducks slide through still water, swing

out, leaving a curved wake as they work

their way to somewhere else, but why? The time

is four p.m. A movement on the hill

becomes a silhouette, then concern; “Yes,

I`m fine, really, just resting my knee.”

The complex mechanism of a knee

is far better understood than the swing

of mood. I don`t have to go back, but yes,

I have to go back. Nothing else will work.

I`ve lain here all day, hidden by the hill,

pushing mental rocks to buy some time.

A dragonfly kissed my knee! I`ll yell at work,

and watch the clock hands swing loose, while the hill

behind the power plant, yes, freezes time.

Shame

Muses are not ten a penny. They cost

lots, like selling your self-respect

down the river, like a boot-trader

trading from a unmoored barge

on a greasy Sunday where the sun

is held overhead in a dirty bag

like an old pasty. It ought to be

brighter than this. It probably is

in that world where the Muses live

as if they were just people

with nervous tics and dirty socks

instead of bringers of loveliness

or destroyers in understated casuals.

If only I could stop with the

pedestal nonsense; your average Muse

is tone-deaf and crap at balancing.

O Don, you said choose someone

who hates you, and I did, several times

and totally, but now you have lost your hair

the trust has gone, and I`m alone again

with the shame of wanting anything

to turn out better than wrong;

with a history of ridicule and this

priceless marble column.