Zero Gravity

A Little Long John Silverush and other Poems

A LITTLE LONG JOHN SILVERISH

I feel a little Long John Silverish having this devil on my shoulder,

taking him everywhere I go, up and down the world over.

He now knows the seven seas like the back of his hand,

whilst I, do not appear to have travelled far,

or if I have, do not appear to be able to remember.

Sometimes heavy as lead, hugely squat, or tall;

sometimes small as a microbe, or as light as a feather

I feel alternately inclined

to over accentuate, overemphasize or

totally overlook his presence.

Sometimes he is suave and articulate, perfectly well mannered (much

my better half)

more often he is dank and malodorous, occasionally grotesque,

or just too plain horrible for words.

In behaviour too he verges on complete unpredictability,

sometimes pursuing each little slight, whether

real or imagined,

with all the unbridled wrong-headedness of human law,

(which venerates the fleet of speech, and hounds to

hell the striking guilt of inarticulateness).

Here too, it must be said, he has his brighter side

when, touched to the core by our finer wiles,

he reaches deep down into himself with

that ever-extendable, elastic hand-cum-hook

to produce that fabled, golden, parting grip

upon which so much business confidence

wholeheartedly depends.

AIR POWER

The hawk at the bottom

of my garden

(who explains away

the feathered carnage

citing the survival of

the fittest

as she understands it)

assures me that

eventually

I will grow accustomed

to the experience

of flight.

She flaunts her wingspan

as if I could not fail

to be impressed.

I hate it

when creatures

great and small

get so smart and sassy

as if the whole of our corpus

of philosophy, economics,

poetry, psychology,

was written with them

much in mind, absolutely.

CLAIRE LIBRA RE-REVISITED