Mr Burke from Battersea has an early start
Up with larks, ensuring binmen do their jobs
If you spy him circuiting the park he is warden of, and try stalking past him
He will shout as if you had not seen him and were keen to stop and talk
He bellows about battle
Overseas retreats he calls maidenly, mad ground abandonment
Baulks at men up the town, who have not signed up or planned to
Old of course, beloved forces will not endorse a frontline position
Insisting he desists seeking permission to form home battalions, for what he terms ‘covert missions’
On Saturday mornings practises in his garden goring sandbags
In case Gerry dares show face around Shoreditch
He lives in number thirty
Cluttered with fluttering flags and buttercoloured signs advertising war bonds
And a lawn sign which says NO MISERLY KAISER NEED APPLY
Foremost considering himself Saxon, with bitter and baccy bits before him he happily waxes on about it
His son Tristan is fighting Turks in Gallipoli, where fox-sly sea lords and derring Aussies advance daring plans for swift victory.
Sometimes less said better, brevity in nib and throat a writer’s oath
Other times more said serves
Better lay it on thick for one truly loathsome and wholly owed it, utterly deserving
Enjoys Kipling’s demotic work, considers liberalism demonic work
Prides glinting public works, claims his granddad boxed, and beat, a Gurkha
Sort who, before speaking publicly, must be given a certain look
Type who, once his mind’s wet concrete sets, cannot be hook or crook
Stopped or brought to alter course
A fuddy-duddy ruddy-cheeked tweed type, wet pipe end his stipend ‘til life’s end
His wife once Cynthia Betjemen McAuliffe now Burke works in the maternity ward
An hard old nut to crack, a walnut you need a sword for
All coarse exterior and caramel interior, of course
Changing much these months from rectitude to frailty, her angstbitten nails
Formerly prudent, a student of sophists, she cries a quiet, bitter lake
Each night a grave snipe alights there to slake, speartip lips dipping
A knight ahorse stakes it, skewering it on his lance
His dipping head whips his visor shut
She hears muttering, then nothing.
The house a dungeon she cannot take much more of
Attic door slid back one inch and through that bore imagined an unwanted portal was born; some miasm given life, a pulsing orb come forth of misfortune
Mr Burke grasping her shoulders kisses her cheeks
She is one year older, forty one today, looking fifty at least
At her private birthday luncheon took no bite of mutton
She seemed without function, anointed by numbing unctions
Mr Burke of course abhors waste
He by every sloppy verb slurped up unctuous gravies until his plate was clean
She grasped her son’s photograph until his image lined, suddenly screaming crying a child again.
Mr Burke arrives home, hangs his coat and says hello in his way
Sees his paper on the welcome mat in lazy bed ridges, seizes it
Whispers Jesus as his knees wheeze
Turns, no tae on dinnertable but last night’s bridge game not yet cleared away
Moving through box-made maze, shunting aside
July twenty eighth today but calendar reads May
Lunula-shaped fingernails cluster on her floral dressfront
Have you sat there all day?
She winces when he poises to turn the radio dial, threatened by news of the western threshing
Teased constantly by death’s mention.
Her every breath given over to prayer
Preening birds styling hair in ominous warning
Every foot striding up her drive a colonel carrying news of Tristan’s demise
She is become a bedesman, kneading a rosary’s threaded red beads above her knees
Releasing them to breathe, realising she has forgotten even to endure
A teasing breeze stirs ash tree leaves
Draining her enamelled teacup, resplendent with gold-bordered duck hunt scene
Divinely damascened by Chinese artisans
Swirling then reading leaves, tea’s streaks known to host prophecies to eyes which see
Damp-furred anchoress, lank-haired enduring duress as she begs Her Rosiness for mercy.
Tristan’s daddy wrote but cannot say his few words
Curses, only once, blurts out in hurt Christ’s name at the regiment’s filing in coffin overshoulder
In his funeral suit longer than his khaki
Turned to soup in a dugout booth
Did not die with his boots on
Hellsent shell burst through the roof above his bunk and exploded
Puffs of blood-dyed flames, red as the whore of Babylon’s hair, tossed excitingly from a smoking bore.
Mr Burke and wife Cynthia count one fewer blessing
Staring off as if in wonder
Minds forever wandering, pondering alternate timelines
Use-wrinkled couch arms sporting ashtrays mounded with stubbed Bensons
Tabash as might sash a volcano’s front months after pyroclastic flow.
Alchemisland 
Leave a comment