The Wasp Priest, Synopsis of Life & I Grew a White Hair Just for You

The Wasp Priest

I watched wasps caught in a
Jam jar filled with cola today;
They fought for their lives ruthlessly;

Climbing upon one another
And drowning each other
They futilely tried to stay alive.

I felt a surge of pity for the cretins
And then felt it no more
As I realised they have no feelings;

Only sensations; that of clambering,
That of falling; and a will to life,
But no sadness when it fails them.

The jam jar filled with cola’s a paradigm
For him ‘tis for the deadly sin, avarice,
For I a simple symbol: ‘So is life.’

I would be a priest
And take the vows of celibacy,
But I have not the faith.

I would move into a monastery,
If only I wouldn’t be conning
The kindly, quiet people there.

I do not believe in God,
But I do believe in love;
The less likely of the two;

Love is that jam jar filled with
Seven dead wasps and one struggling
To remain intact, drunk on the intoxicant

Syrup of the sugar that fills our stupid hearts.
A feeling tops the sensation for us, unlike the lucky
Wasps; I realise human is the lowest form of life, thus.



Synopsis of Life

Churn … appropriate … amalgamate.
In turn … each perm … coagulates.
Process … process …progress.
Mince … pulverise … tenderise.
Bash … smash … obliterate.
Kick … punch … head-butt.
Fancy … infatuate … masturbate.
Change … forget … shrug.
Glug … inebriate … escape.
Recur … recoil … collapse.
Jilt … jade … dupe.
Number … toll … tally.
Produce … align … destroy.
Target … market … allure.
Pause … think … continue.
Dress … undress … sleep.
Birth … death … and the in-between.
Rise … fall … pray.
Dream … wake … cry.
Defend … attack … ceasefire.
Define … abstract … ridicule.
Smoke … cough … cancer.
Order … disorder … leave.
Cancel … affirm … interfere.
Crawl … walk … run.
See … block-out … react.
Write … read … illiterate.
Hesitate … heedlessness … abate.
Join … unsubscribe … abscond.
Celebrate … party … pass out.
Imbibe … insufflate … addict.
Impress … depress … duress.
Coronate … defect … abdicate.
Marry … divorce … elope.
Begin … reflect … stop.


I Grew a White Hair Just for You

Did you see their beards, white as sheets
And long as horses? Confucius and the rough
And tumblers, and gaunt Beckett’s hair and skin
As ashen as any grey day under England’s skies.
But mine; just the one.

Stranded bleached beached in auburn streets
He stands alone, albino tone, weighing the
Weight of us; wearing the waited out, the
Sweated out, bones of you v. me, semelparity;
You used to say ‘let me tie your hair in knots.’

One hair on this face is all yours; your doing,
Your construing and consuming, your ever-
Present absence, your aging and totalling,
Tolling and confalutin’, your piercing grip;
I want not to gain another for them.

A greying grappling-hook in follicular stave,
Or a whitened panoply of Penelope’s folly
Which I travel in and ravel in, because I have to,
And want to believe, in Clarence and Alabama,
Anthony and Cleopatra and ensemble…

I’ll wear those castors of castigation, and skate;
I’ve fooled in love last and consecutive retrospective
Years, but it wasn’t enumerated annums that whited
An heir to this throng; I am Mordecai; abducted colour
Spilled from awn into our air, painting life, don’t look twice.

Trauma tantalises our wishful thinking, titillating
The tilted mirror in which we’ll sheer phases of
The stages passed in white strands emanating from
Chiselled chin, pinprick dimpled crimple of hair, there,
Grown in singularity to aggregate. I am my sole mate,
But I grew a white hair just for you.