ASYLUM

after Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

 

A woman knocked at the door of my dream:

it was an open house. She took my hands, kissed them.

Her lips the scent of painted strawberry.

 

Face haggard as a hunger strike, bloodless

like a flag’s white stripe. Claimed she knew my kind, knew me.

I sensed a long escape from some black state

 

beyond recalling. Is there work to do?

Sorrows more than folk can mend, I answered truly.

At that moment, when fear turns into trust,

 

we shivered at tomorrow’s brink; saw how

doubt is not the privilege of one complexion.

Come in, excuse the mess, the stove blown cold.

 

I’ve logs to split, an axe to find their grain.

Her wordless hesitation, the length of no breath

between in and out, spoke. Said we could bridge

 

any abyss, but only in a single leap.

So - for coming winter months - we began to lay

the kindling of shared vocabulary.

 

iv. 2023

THE GREAT BRITISH BUFFALO

In my 'unicorn kingdom'

all creatures shall be sovereign,

whether feral or domestic,

imaginary or real.

For I am crowned with backward horns

and a fuzzy wig between.

 

You will enjoy (and fund)

a tax-light, start-up ecosystem.

Beneath the sway of my tail,

beetles will breed high-growth companies

in the magical – and all too often

unattainable – dung.

 

While I gaze at the vanishing grass

oxpeckers eat my ticks;

may pick fresh wounds to drink the blood.

Unless they pierce my soft belly –

heavy with wealth – I shall not care:

for they have sworn allegiance.

 

Monarch of the swamp,

ruler of these rising waters,

I might not be the overlord

you had hoped for.

Seventy years is quite some age to loiter,

waiting to be anointed.

 

 v. 2012

Dungheap Cockerel July 2023