Home Truths

(Ambit Magazine Issue 202)

The Dogon tribe eat onions.
Chickens have been known to lay eggs.
Arthur Scargill, top dog of trade unions,
a square hole on a wicket of small round pegs.

Grandmothers take terrible photos.
Children should not eat liver.
It hurts to sit like a lotus.
The royal family is not especially clever.

Guinness is a form of stout.
The world is divided in two sections
of those who do and those who don’t care about
Africa and its elections.

Egyptians drive rather fast.
Men in France wear too much cologne
Diagon Alley is the last
place you might find a working phone.

China makes cheap versions
of the things you really need.
Ravel once asked George Gershwin
how he wrote with such success and speed.

Fifty thousand to a hive.
Counsellors say “How do you feel?”
Lord Lucan is still alive
Braveheart is not for real.

We all have our heroes
who we may never meet,
some beyond the ice floes
or just walking down the street

People float on the Dead Sea.
My best friend used to snore.
It was he who once told me
The World Trade Centre is no more.

February

With a single
blow

the man ahead
chops

his out of season
asparagus

spears
in two

and tells
me of his

colourful life.

On the way
home

I step aside
to avoid

the neat
sausage of

dog turd
that leaks

thoughtfully
into its icing

of snow.