The Broad

Moorhen fast pedal the broad,
and ducks, mallards to be precise,
like boats with lacky band
propellers, suddenly spurt forward,
and the sun, is white creating a haze,
we lie down together, while joggers
run round the perimeter, and old
ladies with out of condition labradors
feebly throw sticks, and I never touch
you, as we lie down on the grass
in parallel, and I wonder what this
is, and swans float like icing on Marie
Antoinette cakes, the grebes plunge
into the unnatural, the green toxic
algae, affectionately known as gunge,
and insects collect above us, black flies
like specks of paint in Millais's Ophelia
and the dragonfly, the insect helicopter
gunship cruises the bank, the sounds
and sights, the sum of our relationship.

The Bridge

Commuter trains intersect over
a bridge, and below fat black carp
swallow air, and a myriad of
flies, like a single Chinese character
in cursive script, illustrate and
define the black and white river,
reeds in gentle sway escort the
evening, and I watch the frogs
clambering over each other
in imitation of the couples found
and bound in the sports papers,
the moon is in descent, marking
the fall of desire, and rusting
love hotels underline in flickering
red, the pointlessness, as the fish
in piscine fright swim for cover.


         The Temple

Every Tuesday I sit in a Confucian
temple, and I look at the same
tree, sat on a broken pale blue
plastic seat, I look up at the
tree, I don't even know the kind,
I know it is not the beech that Traherne
lopped, nor is it the pine that smelled
of Autumn and Winter, it is not this
kind. nor the weeping willow that
exercises in the breeze, it is a tree,
and in the canopy, I see the effect
of halation, as the leaves mysteriously
disappear, my neighbours change too,
sometimes, squatting with black shoes on the ground,
stripped to shorts and vest, other times,
pulling down the short skirt, bashfully
eating a boxed lunch, and ocassionally
they talk to me, and I point to the tree,
as if it can like the Master tell them something,
about harmony and the Chungyung.
 


Framed

nevermind the motive
because it could be anything
maybe jealousy, maybe money,
maybe just that he had it coming
to him, so could be anything,
from a Mexican hospital
she gets some leftovers from
amputees, not the hands or
any of those telltale pieces,
she makes sure it is fresh,
and still quite warm,
to corroborate with
the possible date of the crime,
then, or maybe before she
buys some fake id, to give
the lump of flesh, an identity,
instead of lump, it is now
Raul, next she goes to his
hotel room, and daubs his
clothes with blood and DNA,
moving quickly she calls up
the police and reports that
Raul is missing, she tips off
the hotel maid Mariana,
and she finds and screams,
the detective in charge
in the LAPD, looks for
other clues, and finds
the lump of flesh, known
as Raul in the dashboard
of the suspect's car,
and now he is murdered
this lump with fake ID
and witnesses come forward
to say that they saw the suspect
with Raul, and he claims, they
all do, don't they, to be innocent,
and unlike OJ, the jury are
rooting for Raul, the poor family
man cut down in his prime,
and she turns, with awful perfection
the murder into a hate crime,
even the forensics, cannot detect
that this man has been framed.
 
written this Saturday afternoon Stephen Pain







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