Oh My God!

Sweet mother of God,

why do you surprise me?

I open my eyes: you’re wide

with a smile, and a gift on your lap.

What do you have to give me?

An explosion or two, an implosion

would be nice. Cyclists launching

head over heels

and space holidays to the far side of Mars.

You surprise me,

you always do;

so I praise you.

I praise you,

and when your name is not enough,

I scream to the heavens:

Holy Jesus Fuck.

Skeleton

The skeleton in the closet came to the party. It danced and danced and we tried to stop the skeleton but it wouldn’t stop. It was making a fool of us all and the entire family was ashamed. So so ashamed. The skeleton in the closet just kept on dancing and every alcoholic drink in the room was drowned down its sickly throat.

The Zeppelin

(Thanks to Phoebe Halstead for the drawing. Her art can be found here: http://phoebemayhalstead.blogspot.com/)

"Look outside: a bright day,
a bright sky. Clear as snow
plains of the Arctic."

The boy looks and sees
blue cheeks. A sun for a smile,
but the emptiness is a frown.

Empty is nothing.
It is a frozen existence,
and the sky needs a shape.

"What would you like to see?"
Santa speaks and the boy
trusts. He asks for the greatest gift.

So the old man draws a zeppelin:
as light as paper-thin ice,
as sweet as freshwater,

the airship nestles in a colony
of clouds. Little human dots feast
in the gondola: on fish and fruit.

"They will see the world,
towards the East,
and back to the West.

They will visit the mountains,
and civilisations of breadth
you will not believe.

Towers and ziggurats,
marsupials and wildebeests
and icecaps dancing on the sea."