Category: MikeCrowl

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.         

‘I’ll gently PROBE your MOLAR now. Hmm, I’ll have to
PURGE it of its gunk, wash, then make it DRIER.’
I say nothing, think of the CHEAP LILAC I bought for
my wife, OPINE the pain that she has BORNE.      

[Catch up time…]

My DENIM trousers being at the
NADIR of their wearfulness, I’ll
ASSAY a nearby menswear shop and
SLANT my weary frame in its direction.  

A
FOGGY brain when faced with four days’ worth of Quordle words is
QUASHed by choice: Too many words! The brain goes numb, sits at its
BENCH like an illiterate child in primer school, picks up its
SLATE, sucks its thumb, and wonders what this hard black board is for.

If I hadn’t been under my father’s THUMB
I’d never have known the complexity of CHESS.
It started when we stayed at a hothouse HOTEL –
I was given a dank green drink, like SYRUP.
When I surreptitiously stuck my THUMB
In the stubby smoke-shaded glass of SYRUP
It came out green, my father wondering later at CHESS
At the significance of his green-thumbed son in a gardened HOTEL.