‘That’s eight now,’ said the angel. I was whistling,
making mind maps of the places I should visit
if I did had time. Death’s scythe persisted chiselling
at the stump of my lifespan in a rhythm to elicit

a shiver with each chip. I was not buying.
‘It’s a dream,’ I told the angel. ‘You and Death
aren’t really here. You two have not been allying
except in those gory stories like Macbeth.’

‘Till now,’ said Death. Death grinned without a face.
‘There always is a last time,’ the angel added.
‘Don’t you mean “first”? I asked. They both embraced
my pedantry a moment. Then Death patted

my arm, that froze, and said, ‘you’re down to four.’
I sang a childhood song to show sang froid.
Death said, ‘This does not seem to be your year.
You’ve lived your life as if it were a schwa;

neutral, muddling middle, bland, unstressed.
You’ve not done aught that you must answer for
so question time’s not needed. Face stage left,
adjust your collar, try for debonair

as we get in step and march. You’re down to two.’
The angel turned the parchment page and said,
‘Well bless my soul, it was years!’ (Death withdrew.)
‘What will you do from now until you’re dead?’

makes Schnidly head of his Sixth Form’s
poetic blunders study
where his mix of misty metaphors
has drove his tutor nutty.

He lets the runner in his ode
fly to the Finnish line
to stub his toe on Maginot
and tentatively entwine

his privates with his general quarters
whilst striking up the band
which gets him reprimanded
by a mandrill Genghis Kahn.

Schnidly is three wines into Monday
when elevenses are served
and he’s sure the Candy Stripers
on his ward think he is perved.

He enrols in near-rhyme sonnets
cause he’s been banned from dizains
and he craves Alsatian curry
when he gazes at Great Danes

like his Hamlet who’s been hamstrung
by Schnidly’s lame production
of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy.
He has brought the Bard destruction.

Young commentators analyse your words,
and underscore the syllables you used,
as signs to rustle thoughts you kept in herds.
They’ve cowed you now. The branding’s left you bruised.
Old analysts trawl gems they make absurd
and quarter your last hobbyhorse. Amused?
Retrieve your darlings. Loose them in those cold
and empty places dreams can still take hold.

TFP (today’s featured poem) of 19.9.2011

With women it’s not difficult at all
for me, forgetting contest, to enmesh
myself in every maybe, chase each turn.
I watch with them the bowler, not the ball,
am often stumped by simple toss, and try
too hard, too often, and to no earthly use
to plumb for meaning in their wished-for smiles.
The men I see I don’t see save as signs
of what can be achieved or understood.
With girls and wintry ladies I suspect
the universe’s reason to exist.
And find it. Then the gardener drains the pond
and tracks my insights homeward on his boots.

not only from cricket and leaders in war
but because it rhymes nicely with ‘orange’.

The policemen took lumps while the Sylnog took two.
Unlike them, he dropped his in his tea.

A broadsheet account gave the Slynog a clue
on the heights of pols’ audacity:

He twigged now how bravery among politicians
comes after the fact, and the skirts

among which they hide till the shooting dies down
are the curtains from whence they then flirt

with the Owners and Losers, society’s classes,
of which pols pretend they are lords

while knowing they’re not, and in fear of the masses
of both groups: their stones, cash and swords.