Tuesday 14 April 2015

3 things I hate


I hate gorillas because
they bash old ladies
over the head
and steal their handbags
containing their life savings 
leaving them only with lonely tears
and haunted by endless nightmarish nights
full of fear and moths

I hate moths 
because 
they masquerade as wardrobe-friendly bankers
and shamelessly nibble away
at people's good clothes
in the darkness
and when they have eaten all the best fabric
and also the house
they have the brass neck 
to demand another fine meal 
and another fine meal
 and yet another fine meal
which the mealworms will gladly provide

I hate mealworms 
because
they masquerade as silver-tongued politicians
and go through four stages
of development and growth
and are pests
 that is to say they are pests 
unless you happen to live in China
in which case you'll know 
that mealworms make a fine meal
  in Beijing they eat them 
fit to bust.



14 comments:

  1. Beautiful.I shall come to read it more.

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  2. Thanks you Yael. I have just finished the final edit. I'm almost as pleased with it as you!

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  3. I like the idea of this poem but I’m not sure it works in its present form. Well it works. But I think it could be better. The second two stanzas are tied together by the mealworms which appear in both but the jump from gorilla to moth is a big one. I might make the first stanza a poem on its own or the start of another poem and maybe see what else I could put that leads us to moths.

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  4. Thanks Jim, following your hint I've taken out the reference to monsters and replaced it by nights of 'fear and moths' to make the connection to the second stanza.

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  5. A few bits of useless information for you Gwil:
    I have moth phobia and cannot bear to be in the room with one, however small it is.
    I feed meal worms to our blackbirds and robins - but after you suggesting that they eat them in China (??) I may very well cook up a few!!
    Your photo of The Bard on the Run suggests that you may like bananas - in which case we have something in common. They are my favourite fruit and I eat one each morning for my breakfast.

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    1. Bananas always remind me of feeding stations in marathons. A banana is the original energy bar, and cheaper too!

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  6. About your comment in my blog- I remember the name Gwil from the book "How green was my valley" which i liked so much many years ago.

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    1. I have read it a couple of times and also the sequel which is called Down Where the Moon is Small and is about the exodus of the Welsh mining community to Patagonia where they became ranchers, which is why you have people with names like Jones rearing Argentinian beef today!

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  7. I like the form and idea of this poem.

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  8. Thanks Kass, the mealworms are busy burying the latest bank scandal under sheets of black paper, and so it goes . . .

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  9. A really good poem. Should be broadcast on TV over here in place of the current crop of party political broadcasts.

    Does it need "wardrobe-friendly" and "silver-tongued"? I'm really not sure - I sometimes think I have a tendency to pare things down too far. There's a case, though, for saying dropping them sharpens the poem's surreal edge.

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    1. I thought of doing that but I couldn't because I wanted to leave in the masquerade or the idea of masks, which in the case of the gorillas does not apply because the gorilla is what he is and more honest in a way as he is not masquerading.

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  10. I thought I liked gorillas but ... here we seem to be being invaded by ladybirds.

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    1. I like it if one lands on the back of my hand. The butterflies too. Maybe it's the salt they are after.

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