Poetry

Preferences

Rod Usher

Timber undressed, lightglobes naked

riot acts unread

heart beating mississippily,

palpable below head.

Leading tripily to wine, without the h.

Benign be my ts and if you please

only suckable lifesavers.

Maidens of The Oval kind

no batting eyelids.

When it comes to offspring

other people’s kids

offer the option to unbring.

In foetal-bent dreams I rem to see

holyhocks, toast, dogs, whales

avocado trees heavy with breasts

chatterly bottoms, tropical vaginas

tumescent mangrove fruit ...

um, for homesickness you can’t best

sulphur-crested cockatoos.

Banned are sharp steel, pursuit,

chuteless freefalls, sharks ...

I’d eliminate, if one could choose,

terror of dactyls, enjambment

(isn’t that when one’s stuck in a lift?)

gangsters, punsters, those who proselytize ...

 

Guilty. Idiosync ifonlys. Yes, I realise

and flee to Preference No. 1

which remains you in hand, small bird,

my luck to wake two-spooned

tuned to your calm seashore breath.

With lightfingered kisses

we break and enter another day

once again hotwire death.

Whereupon (a preferred word)

yours unruly

swings out these thin hairy legs

yawning, slippers downstairs.

Juice, coffee, freud eggs.