'Puin' - a poem by Anneke Brassinga

Debris

Asteroid wind? Invariably mumbled with final

words as the first – microbic coagulation?

In curdling sludge admiring itself

among still inarticulate stars. Poetry such stuff?

Cast-iron antiqued colander, on board

woebegone small radishes, waiting in vain for

their pa. Or loftier dreams: flayer-toothed jaws

whose breath is all too rank for fire not

to spurt out. Flit-spray, yes! that’s what poetry is

carrying on inside wardrobes under lock – bugger

off man, had you but stayed a moth-eaten atom...

The close-fitting, cut-in-one meaning worn out

by lightweight crease-linen Sunday-bakers,

being seers of all and more, on own word of

honour. Does poetry keep itself cometically high like

a goose above Ooy? The spark lights up come-down

darknesses, black mendicant nuns piss there

on grey rocks forever floating through the universe

cramful of exalted thoughts on the frailest wee

blossoms. Earth meanwhile lies toiling and

moiling at its test paper while a fat failure

rises to the zenith every day, panting

heavily; our blessèd mummy who purl and plain

knits away at the woolly coms of time.