Animate Squash Ball, at Large in a Creamery

Self-motivating sphere, hurtling from pristine tile

To white, emulsioned ceiling. Dark, demented blob,

At odds with its environment, seemingly doomed

To infinite incarceration, yet resolved

To make its mark upon an alien, hygienic world.

From marbled working surface to pallid window-ledge

It shunts in multi-faceted trajectory,

Brief points of impact stained by mucky pauses.

Orb indefatigable, ceaselessly transiting

Surface to surface, blotch to blotch, bouncing

Off polished lino to collide with metal shelf,

Arcing in classic swallow-dive to milk-filled vat,

Emerging, an albino projectile, vandal tendencies

Momentarily masked by cloying cleanliness.

Frustrated at a sudden inability to stamp

Its rubbery trademark upon scrubbed solidity

It ricochets at maximum velocity,

Shedding slim globules between lancing sunbeam strands,

Rebounding frenziedly till gratifying smudges

Trace once more its progress round the violated room,

As soggy splot reverts to satisfying thud.

 

A Day of Beautiful Women

 

Today was a day of beautiful women.

I collected them, full-face or in profile, like stamps.

The first at a suburban bus stop, looking anxious,

The second stepping out effortlessly, on a steep incline,

The third whose hair fluttered like a pennant in the breeze.

Two more at work, in cahoots, teasing a colleague.

In lunch-break one steaming through a Soduku

On a park bench, another helping what I hope

Was her grandfather aboard a Hispano-Suiza,

In a secluded mews. There was even

A beautiful woman-in-waiting, hand in hand

With her beautiful mother, standing on tiptoe

To reach the 'Stop' button at a pedestrian crossing.

As I drove home, the most beautiful woman of all

Sparred happily with her boyfriend in a beer garden.

After dinner, when I told my beautiful wife

"Today was a day of beautiful women,"

She raised not so much as an exquisite eyebrow.

 

December in Malet Street

 

Beneath Macbethian skies, a collie breeze herds

flocks of theatre sheep into the warm corral

of RADA's café bar, the Scottish play in prospect

after the customary nuzzling of frozen chops,

ritual baaing of  "Darling, it's been absolutely ages…",

and a marked reluctance to shed fleeces

into the custody of the cloakroom lambs

until a second mocha filters through the system.

Contrastingly, in the neighbouring pastures of Great Russell Street,

eternal spring permeates the heart of the British Museum,

where flowers from the temple of Ninhursag bloom,

stone petals perched precariously on pottery stalks

beneath the toes of copper bulls, to warm the cockles

of a tour party from Penclawdd.

 

Hearts Are Trumps*

* Millais' portrait of the three daughters of Sir Walter Armstrong, 1872( in Tate Britain)

 

As clothes-horses go, they are each wearing enough layers

To lag an industrial boiler. Troops parachuted down to Arnheim,

Dangling under less material than there is squashed beneath

This ornate games table. The age of crinoline must surely

Have been trying, even to the most fashion conscious.

Bustles, half-cages, padded rolls and corsets combined

To closet girls in solitary confinement more effectively

Than all the suffocating moral shackles of the day.

How might a man approach these mobile wedding cakes

With passion aforethought? Forget the condom.

Bolt cutters would have been more use to a determined Lothario.

It could have taken several hours unravelling to reach

The target area, inching past barricades of wire and whale-bone,

Hampered further by the tendency of your intended conquest

To witter incessantly, in drawing room conversation mode,

About the recent discovery of the Marie Celeste, a mystery

No less impenetrable than that facing an exhausted suitor,

Floundering amongst stays and leg o' mutton sleeves

In search of satisfaction.

 

He, Azimov

 

A bulky god in mutton-chop whiskers,

cowboy boots and a bolo tie,

knocking out galactic epics at a constant

of ninety words per minute, eight hours a day.

 

Son of an émigré Russian rabbi.

Taught himself English in a Brooklyn candy store

reading Sci-Fi pulp, thinking,

I can do better than that.

 

Creator of countless spacecraft squadrons,

yet kept his feet firmly on terra firma.

Cheerfully plagiarised the Classics.

Lectured to anyone, on anything, anywhere.

 

Rescued a genre from little green men,

bug-eyed monsters and take-me-to-your-leader.

Bestowed dignity upon the race of robot.

 

A genius and a schmuck, in his own assessment.