The orchestra swell
flirts, then fizzles.
Violins down bows
and crane to hear,
the baton jerks
invisible strings,
their faces pucker,
they put pedal
to metal, horse hair
to thrumming wire.
Excuse me please,
with halting palm
spread held high,
too much trombone.
Tutti! A-one two—
and they belch
before the mark—
No! I know that
this is tedious,
but again, tutti.
First clarinet rolls
her batting eyes
and tutts. New
blood, no good.
At last they gain
momentum, get
a clue and accel,
decell and cello
wilts a little slow
but on! Conductor
pouring sweat will
make this bunch
regret the day
they overweened
and missed the cue,
We're done! Go
home you sad
excuse for any
kind of — But
at his words
they drown him
out with scraping
chairs on pine.
In three weeks
time, he thinks,
at least it
isn't my work
they'll be raping.

Club Foot

Club foot my tutor. Poor lady.
Stricken with a gimlet eye,
a birthmark like a jam smear
on the chin, and a nervous tic.
She's big, maybe gained the weight
in school, where I really doubt
she was a raging socialite.
Her big blue bulbous eyes
flick around the room, soft
voice clipping out consonants,
hunched forward, hammy arms
propped on knees, to hide
her huge awkward breasts.
A copy of Austen stuffed with
coloured slips rests on her cords.
She's a fierce intelligence, PhD,
many of her papers published,
but she never learnt smiling,
hedged her bets, chose austerity,
hid behind vocabulary,
went out and bought
some wide, plain shoes.

Unicorn

In the cellar
I found a unicorn.
A jumbled pile
in the dark.
Its skin was seared,
and it stank
of burnt hair.
The eyes were gone.
Two red craters.
The ears torn,
the tongue ripped
out by the roots.
Fractured limbs
folded under it,
blackened twigs.
A bonfire. A pyre.

I smeared a drop
of blood into
its hide with
my fingertip,
and whispered
a prayer to it.
It thrashed,
the horn struck
the radiator
throwing sparks
across the tiles.
The rug burnt,
smoke rose
thick in my nostrils.
I vomited,
but it was milk.
A lightbulb hung
from the joist,
a golden noose.

The unicorn screamed,
levitated, bit down
on the naked bulb
and was thrown
back to the floor.
Its spit dripped
from a slack jaw,
its mouth bled.
My heart beat.
All I wanted
was to gather
its broken limbs
up in my arms.
It shuddered,
nostrils flaring,
gave one last
awful retch,
and its being
poured out
of its mouth.

As I collapsed,
I felt something
bear me up,
and everything
was white.

The tutor scuffs his heels,
dawdling like a child
around the room,
languidly puts forth
a string of platitudes,
hands clasped, lips pursed.

Without a break in step
he lunges across the floor
like a fencing marionette,
stutters out a question
like an evil movie villain,
one quivering finger held
in some poor sop's face;
"How did you like the play?"
The written one or the one
he's just put on?

Behind his armpit beard
and black rimmed glasses
his silent chortle shows
he loves his audience,
the humble drama
of provoking students,
who'll always answer
his vague interrogations
whether or not they
make any sense.

"What do we say
when we say
this is a play?"
Academia's a sickness.
After prolonged exposure,
the brain begins to digest
itself. Impossible to live
and be so self-reflexive.

I used to cry, she says,
most of the time, turning
with a candid twist and nod
to see who's listening,
until maybe fifteen.
The bubbling chat throughout
the lecture hall rises
above our heads,
then swills, drops.
Don Juan steps up
to the podium, puffs out,
risks popping his silky shirt
and whipping out his rug.
Weeping girl is kinda quiet.
His ponytail and sideburns
twitch with every sneer,
this guy's a phenomenon,
thinks he's a muskateer.
In the first row
a mature student crosses
her legs, and my tutor,
a gay Oxford researcher,
fidgets in his seat and all but
giggles as the aging stud
leans forward over his notes,
deriding Shakespeare like
it was small talk on a date,
eyes rolled, conspiritorially
twinkling, an uncle's leer.
Five years ago you could
see him inflating in a club,
sock stuffed down his briefs,
twirling his mustachios,
seducing a Masters student
in his Don Juan duds.

Silence, Night

Silence, Night.
I've had enough
of your bawling,
you floozy, you
red and green
plasticine whore.
Contort and gurn
till you go blue,
yowl and spit
until you fit,
filibuster, sue,
you crazy bitch
I'll gag your craw
to get some rest —
look at what
your carelessness
has pushed me to.

Even in dreams
your nitwit babble
filters through
to scrape and bend
my blackboard mind.
Your sirens and screams
belch from machines
inside my dynamo.
I jerk in circles as
from the window
you cackle and lash
my reveries with reams
of ululating din.

The Joke

Black and violet flush
over the chimneys.
Butter slops in pools
from streetlight torches.
The clowned moon,
gipsy queen
of a pagan rodeo,
rides the wheeling stars.

The joke pants
in the gutter,
with a potty mouth,
an empty belly,
an acid tongue;
swollen evictee
of the never never,
candidate prince
of the undone.

His mealy blabber
echoes the walls
of the lady's chamber,
shivering the paper
with gripe and low
mildewed laughter.
Her correspondence
curls and blackens,
the letters promenade,
spirals & hieroglyphs
burlesque and wink
across the flaming leaf,
signs born of signs
high kick and split,
dazzle and break her eyes.

In the street,
midnight's wise guys
cock their hats
swivel on their toes
play charades and sing
selections from the latest shows.
Collapsed hysteric
writhing in a puddle
the joke at last cracks,
head spilled of sweets,
martyred pinata,
gurgling his secrets
to potted shrubs,
begging papal audience
of a blind old dog.

Stars and paper hearts
whisper and drop
from his damp fingers,
as dawn races
to crown his wisps,
to smother and stamp
his charred remains,
evacuate the spot,
and turn the sticky tide
of midnight's overflowing glot.