POETRY KITe ANTHOLOGY

OH FOR THE DAYS WHEN ‘SPAM’ WAS JUST A MONTY PYTHON SKETCH

Thanks to the internet
my wife is a very happy woman.
My penis is now forty-seven feet long it stays erect for weeks at a time
and it is garlanded by hundreds of genuine Rolex watches
acquired with the millions I have won
in various Albanian lotteries
and the billions generously deposited in my accounts
by the grateful executors of the wills
of innumerable African tribal chiefs
all mysteriously deceased
along with their entire extended families
in improbably gruesome lawnmower accidents in Liechtenstein.
My account with Lloyds has been suspended.
(I don’t have one.)
My wife’s breasts
enlarge and reduce, spontaneously,
as we use our 95% discounted software
to gaze at the pictures of our free timeshare apartments
enjoying continuous multiple orgasms
whilst admiring our genuine Chinese historical artefacts
purchased online from Hong Kong.
Our garden is full of imported rubber.
Not rubber sex toys
or even rubber boots
just: rubber.
I have more free Coldplay MP3s
than you could wave a suicide note at.
I also have Kate Moss Suction Power.
I don’t know what that is,
but I am hoping it may be useful
next time the toilet needs unblocking.
I now know the Cyrillic alphabet
and the Polish for
‘are you embarrased about your size?’
Every morning, a new surrealist word juxtaposition appears in my inbox
as the spammers seek to avoid the filter.
It turk may bake!
Crabmeat be Paris!
Out evoke in robins!
Decomposing lark’s vomit engulf Crystal Palace!
(ok, I mad the last one up.)
And, to prove that truth is indeed stranger than fiction
in our brave new world,
my website is recommended
as one of the top fifty stockbroking sites
on many search engines.

Now that really is Pythonesque.



ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER
http://www.attilathestockbroker.com
http://www.myspace.com/attilastockbroker
.

The Man In The Hospital


At the hospital, there is a man, who walks the corridors
In his nightclothes and in the deadly nightshade
I have watched him from my bed the past five months
I pretend to be asleep. Sleep is where I pretend
Morning will come.

I have come to know the sand paper sound
Of silence broken by his dragging, druggy feet
I have come to know the sound of his mumbling
Stumbling words spoken as he steps
through strips of moonlight, broken.

I hear through the mental stillness the his depth of illness
He walks through the shadow of the valley of breath.
Surrounded by the incoming outgoing air of the dying
Of us waiting to exhale and bated to inhale..

I am tired. So tired. So. Tired.
My bed is covered with fresh grass and night sweats:
Dew, my dog, a red setter, deft and gentle steps through the ward door
she pitter patters her way past the other beds
Hunches her shoulders and dives upwards onto mine.
She stretches by my feet - a nightingale sings
I am surrounded by breathing it is the sound of the sea
He is coming. He is coming I hear his shuffling feet
The rag and bone man with all that’s dated. I raise my eyelid slightly
It takes tremendous effort. The effort of the Egyptians
Pulling the stones to the pyramid at sunrise. I raise my eyes

He’s at the door of the ward facing foreward.
He stares straight ahead. A head. Straight. Stares.
“there is no illness, there is no illness –
No aids! There is no such illness”.
The others wake too, too tired to argue:
to hear the tears in his lies, the lies in his tears;
to see the fear in his eyes through the eye of his fears



Lemn Sissay BBC World Service Aids Concert Nov 2003