Issue 7: Carl Griffin

Unsuitable

It is ill-fitting. The emotion

one can cover in a single breath

is neither here nor holed up

in the dunes or warrens.

I'm fully clothed. Considering

the heat, it is in bad taste.

I'm afraid of countless feats

but these are the obstacles

I mull on as a rule. My trade

is to comb the wastelands,

for scrap, in the smoke of bonfires,

and my best friend is a ghoul.

Petrol

Pique buckles mien, until clifftopward

trek the irenic anarchic. Is there reward

in outliving victory? Not born quitters

we age and are drained of doggedness.

Contaminate a man’s tenacity

and he samples lunacy. Finding an ally

we divvy up enough lionisms to trek back.

No one has bleached the sink or stocked

the refrigerator, but we’re buoyed to be indoors.

You might have joined us being lost,

overseeing quagmires and other graveyards,

but we’ve rechristened nearby trunk roads

and encroaching swards, though visitors

braving the desolation now all bring cameras.

Digging With Spoons

Tract irrigation, or two striplings

with scuttles, swamping scuffed grass

with stream water. A scamp, sucking

woodlice from tendrils through a straw,

simulates his view: God kicking in motion

the Big Bang then jump-starting evolution.

With maturity we bin his input,

both advocates shaking a stubbled head.

A picnicker’s preference, a tandem spot,

is now thawing muskeg. Observe either

for decades. The artistry of this planet:

The natural disasters which obliterate it.

Just as Christians are cynics

regarding science, though technology,

like medicine, like the hydroelectric,

may be a baksheesh, might be divine.

The scamp keeps tabs on the striplings

from a trackway, like waxwings

or endangered setts, venting if The Deity

doesn’t re-flood the globe

we will, albeit DIY, slipshod, inadvertently.

Carl Griffin is from South Wales, and has had poems published in Magma and Pulsar, among other magazines and e-zines.

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