Showing posts with label parent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parent. Show all posts

Slack Lining

Heel to toe, heel to toe.
Stepping carefully, stepping slow.
Each foreshadowed print a potential mine;
choose between conflicting signs.
This way, that way, u-turn, short cut,
tunnel, bridge, no through road, shut.
Tight rope, slight hope,
but no sign of safety net.
Height choked, dry throat,
not even half way over yet.
The depths below, glow.
inviting inverted flight, one way,
skimming with fluttering skirts,
nirvana visage no longer concerned,
diverted from diurnal concerted
effort.
The glow below, expects.
Lava monsters, demons, mummies,
Terminator 2, crocodiles and slurry
await you moaning, reaching, grasping.
Sulphur-breath and curses rasping.
Tentacles, tendril, terrorists, Thatcher,
Count Olaf and the Child Snatcher,
Gagamel, Skeletor, Mumraa, Blair
welcome you and take their share.
That glow is far beneath.
Let it remain so.
For now furrow of thwarted thoughts
form saline irrigation forks
and roll into the watering stalks
of eyes stress-blade sharpened to
hunting hawks.
Feel the breeze on your face.
Pick up the pace.
Purposeful placing of heel-toe-heel-toe race,
miss-step apprehension with mistaken nonchalance replaced.
Almost indifferent to the threat
you split and curtsy, pirouette.
Amaze with your ability
to juggle responsibility
while dropping things that they don't see
into the depths below.
Heel toe. Step. Heel toe.
Along you glibly go.
Wider sections provide reprieve
from constant pressure. Ironically
it's from this bit you'll likely fall,
when you paid  attention to the ground
at all.

Not to quote Jurassic Park, but -

My dear fellow jugglers 
in the Cirque du Suburbia,
you may think your home impervious
to encroaching adult themes.
But “Nature always finds a way”
and they’re going to learn it all some day
but it’s probably better in some ways than by some other means.
You’ll all be aware of the endless oughts
that contort and constrict
instinctive care.
Single modern motherhood is
a carousel
tersely tethered with knots.
Will nots and spill nots
and hope nots and choke nots
and try nots and cry nots
and eat nots and teach nots.
The most strangulatory
of these tangles is
expose not
meaning: Protect your child from the darkness of this world
and teach them the strength of enlightenment.
The entitlement of access to the hive mind
-by necessity a skill they must learn,
‘cause coding is the future –
shoots my determined obsolescence right in the maternals.
So to detract from external influence
I knew what to do.
We’d get
a pet.
Landlord clause: no fur or paws
no electricity eating heated enclosures,
no live food, no rodents,
no hooves, smooth or cloven.
From amidst this messy mesh
a loophole
I sagely extracted.
No one had said anything
about marine arachnids.
Fishtank purchased, live plants in
filter on and the process begins.
Background danios Spotty and Stripey
soar and chase and are occasionally fighty
but mostly work as extras in the theatre of the tank.
We even had a red-shirt! For his sacrifice we thank him.
In true tradition we set the stage; when he died the first act was over.
Two long months we’d had to wait for the alga bloom to cover
enough of the surfaces to act as a rider
for our new stars: The undersea spiders!
Or shrimp. As they’re also called
or as some people say, “You mean PET PRAWNS?!”
Yes.
is the answer.
Now. After about a month a strange thing appeared,
at first no bigger than a poppy seed
then as it grew I came to realize
there was more than one stowaway snail inside.
Gio was delighted, I was concerned
about intercrustacean diplomatic relations
but they co-existed peacefully and the purpose was perfectly served.
Until the day these mucilaginous interlopers, now numbering four or five
decided to stage a three-day-three-way-sex-show. Live.
Right at the front of the tank they were!
“Mummy, what are they doing?” “Errrrrrr..
I think they’re making babies, Gio.”
“But there’s three of them!” “Yes, I know…
oh I can’t explain it, they’re snails, I’m not sure-
hey, who’s that in the castle with his face out the door?
Is it Blackfish? Has he made friends with the shrimp?
He’s the first fish to spend time in there I think.”
This happy distracting friendship warmed both of our hearts
and we smiled as Blackfish spent more time in the dark
and the shrimp brought him food and he slowly grew fatter
but everything was lovely and nothing else mattered.
The snails population in the background grew and grew.
We lost count when they got past 22.
One morning I was woken by Gio screaming “Mummy!
The shrimp have got Blackfish and they’re opeing his tummy!”
I raced in and slack-jaw gawped. The violence was alarming.
But more than this; the realization that shrimp understand farming.
Two Medium Shrimp held Corpsefish still, while Big Shrimp did the slashing
and then they gathered round and gorged themselves. Gio, big-eyed watched the action.
More generations of snails came. Then more and more and more
until the monopod population was a problem we couldn’t ignore.
We had to get rid of all of them. We couldn’t leave even an egg.
They eaten us out of live plants. We’d had to get fake ones instead!
It took the final solution. We gave the tank a deep clean.
And boiled the snails in the gravel. And murdered their babies with steam.
Then rebuilt the tank from the ground up and so far, it seems to go well.
It’s more like an eight-year-old’s fish tank and less like the circles of hell.
I think it’s fair to say, in this case
my attempts at parenting were a little displaced
by “Nature, red in tooth and claw”
or, transparent in the case of the shrimp’s grinding maw.
I tried to protect my son from his curiosity and an internet search engine,
but accidently introduced him to orgies, murder, evisceration
and ethnic cleansing.

Yule Be Back

A portal opened in my lounge
sometime in mid-November.
A velvet wrinkle overlapped and
time’s quilt was oddly angled.
Up went the tree!
Up went the lights!
The glorious windows
dressed in party clothes.
Stair rods and banisters
festoons and fragrances
that speak of feasts and warming spices.
Inviting glows and cosy stories
by torchlight.

Outside
conker battles finalise into
en of season skirmishes.
Guys succumbed to elemental distress
and the stench of rotting pumpkin corpses
rang from the town in
jubilant and guttural rowdy shouts
as cold breath caught in
over confident throats.

As a penalty for this
badly ironed chronological coverlet
a fine was set
and the time was taken back.

With bated breath in stasis
the presents waited.
The house waited.

In the missing time a place was found for everything
and having no time to dally in,
everything went to its place.
Reset for rambunctious rabble’s return.
For music and pictures and stories and tea.
For dinosaurs and Harryhausen, Nick Cave and walks by the sea.

Longing for the normal passage of time.
Smooth, wrinkle.


The house waits.