Author: Mike Crowl

Around the time Jesus was born, those mothers who had given BIRTH
to boys of a similar age, saw their precious darlings SLAIN
by Herod, the supposed Great, a man jealous of power, but not hot
on ETHICs;
when it comes to power, corruption seeps in, and makes all vile men ALIKE.

[So graphic was the original painting that many of the slaughtered children were painted over in the early 17th century so that they appear as bundles, or food on the ground, or even animals. The alterations have been left in subsequent cleanings since they are now regarded as ‘historically significant,’ though they reduce the impact of the original considerably. Notes from the Royal Collection Trust.]

The bloke who comes to add the GROUT
is, truth to tell, a little STOUT.
He bends like an elf with RIGOR
Mortis, and tells me that his name is RALPH.

Some politicians would sacrifice their VOTERs
on the ALTAR of expediency, politicians who are
SLEEK in style and
TRITE of tongue.       

I BLUSH that we, as humans, easily accept the
WHINE, the relentless head-drilling drone that
SCOURs our ears of Nature’s sounds as here we
wait on the frigid East Wind-facing hELIDEck.       

The
sudden PLUSH of rushing shower water
CHUTEs down on me, and shoot! suddenly
I’m SOAPY. It’s too much. The plush and the chute
make me QUASI, or some might say, queasy.

The
DEUCE! My once perfectly-structured
CHEST has grown, or rather my tum; I cannot get my
PARKA on. My wife, she says I am a foodie
BEAST, a bottom-feeding sluicer-upperer, a garden
SHRUB that spreads beyond its designated space, a
SPINY anteater of a man, sucking up everything on my plate.
NOISY! She says, as I eat, holding her ears. My  
CREDO is: ‘A man cannot fully grow a  
BUSHY beard without food and food abundant.’ A
YOUNG child would see through this nonsense, a child
BELOW three even. A sticky-faced child seated in a high
CHAIR. The deuce! I cannot get my parka on!

[The result of unexpectedly missing two days]

Sans
FALSE teeth I feel anything but
LUSTY. My mouth is a vast space, an
EMPTY place. My tongue whips round gummy
FLESH usually hidden away during the day.  

I ARBOR ironing. I hate it with a burning passion. I’ll
IRON Your shirts one last time, then that’s the
LIMIT. You’re big enough, long past your antic
TERRAway days. I loathe ironing. See to your shirts yourself!

The
WARTY, naughty boy, a miniature
KNAVE (with barely a skerrick of
PUBIC hair) determines – inadvertently – to
SEVER several fingers in the mincer.           

Probing with the tine or PRONG
of my fork into a GLOBE
of somehow suspended JELLY
I expect a perfect explosion of wobbling, congealed solubles.