motorbike

Motorbike

My motorbike has been on the terrace during the winter

 I cleaned it and tried to start it, alas, the battery was

flat so I tried to kick start it but gave up got to get someone

with strong legs and muscular arms to start it.

At this time – spring- in Algarve there are  flowers that

only last a week or so and so delicate that if you pick one

it will become a wizen faced and die in your hand a hungry

child by the gaslight in the slums of Soho.

Some flowers are too delicate for human hands and can

only be handled by angels with fingers soft as a silk scarf.

When I take pictures of the flowers they come up blank

like they belong to a religious sect that does not believe

in idolatry. Splendour should be shared, if you see it alone

it is like being an old man with Mona Liza in his vault.

  

ten Years without my dog

ten Years without my dog

Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

So you do know Fidel Castro? I think I do

that was the name of the mess boy, the one who

had to do the dirty dishes and clean floors

 “Fy” as he was called was older than me and had

a much better education, and I, as his boss felt his

contempt being told what to do by an officer of

working class, roots. But I knew as everybody who

read knows, the little man is but a servant for

the rich, they need someone educated to tell them

what to do; in Venezuela, Fidel jumped ship he was

not missed and we got another mess-boy

who could not read or write because the wage he got

could support his family. The downside was I had

no one to argue with 

do not push it

Do not Push It

I’m like horses do not like the wind today it is northerly and

the sun despite shining free of clouds cannot warm my chilled bones.

Horses turn their considerable behinds against the wind and keep

their heads low. My behind is skinny and does not protect my neck,

but a scarf does. I used to have strong fingers now they are thin look

like a Bangladesh river delta .And to think there was a time I laughed

at the face of frost and if needed would run bare chest across

the unfriendly of plains of opposite Poles, me, the leader of the pack

the man who once met Fidel Castro, a man of great dignity, but my

god he was boring, only had one subject---himself.  

But I do deviate, I’m only an Argentinean horse adopted illegitimately by

a general-major, his wife wanted a foal. The landscape now has hundred

colours of green but it worries me that if ISIS takes world power vines will

rot on my land and when they pass on their pick-up trucks I must wave

a black ,inartistic flag with intelligible writing on. My wife the practical one

will say: after the Islamists took power in Portugal my husband finally got

sober enough to be offered a job as an Imam. 

mice

mice

Mice

Mice in the shed, she demanded

I do something.

I found three mice,

 surprisingly easy to
catch like they

had been saved.

Living on old newspapers and

still born manuscripts

not much of a diet.

Kill them she demanded.

I put them in a shoebox

made a few holes and gave them

some bread crumbs.

In the tall grass, by the road verge

I let them out, that is they would

rather stay in the box.

Finally, they got the message and

disappeared.

I looked up and said:

 “What about it God
any chance to

win on the lotto?

happy years or perhaps not

Happy Years or perhaps not

When I was a child mother worked at a fish factory

she had to leave early in the morning so i had to

brush my teeth and wash my face in icy cold water.

In a house of five families, there was no bathroom and

only one toilet in the basement and it was my job to

empty the chamber pot before going to school.

 From the socialists in power by then it was seen to that

every child got breakfast at school.

 When you are a child, poverty is abstract if you get

enough food like boiled potatoes, fried turnips and

mother’s home made fish cakes. On Sundays we had

– dare I say it- meat cakes with mushy peas and

of course boiled potatoes. The rest of that feast were

mixed together and fried as an evening meal.

Our poverty was lack of hygiene wearing our jumpers

too long and underwear had to be worn until April as we

only had one set each. But as a child I never concerned

myself with bagatelles, it was only in my teens I became

aware of our poverty and felt shame; a profound rooted

sense of inferiority, which made my prickly and on guard.

You are happy yes you know you are, then an avalanche

a mountain of shit hits you and it will never wash off. 

Happy years, perhaps not

Happy years, perhaps not

Happy Years or perhaps not

When I was a child mother worked at a fish factory

she had to leave early in the morning so i had to

brush my teeth and wash my face in icy cold water.

In a house of five families, there was no bathroom and

only one toilet in the basement and it was my job to

empty the chamber pot before going to school.

 From the socialists in power by then it was seen to that

every child got breakfast at school.

 When you are a child, poverty is abstract if you get

enough food like boiled potatoes, fried turnips and

mother’s home made fish cakes. On Sundays we had

– dare I say it- meat cakes with mushy peas and

of course boiled potatoes. The rest of that feast were

mixed together and fried as an evening meal.

Our poverty was lack of hygiene wearing our jumpers

too long and underwear had to be worn until April as we

only had one set each. But as a child I never concerned

myself with bagatelles, it was only in my teens I became

aware of our poverty and felt shame; a profound rooted

sense of inferiority, which made my prickly and on guard.

You are happy yes you know you are, then an avalanche

a mountain of shit hits you and it will never wash off. 

emancipation

The Dream of Emancipation

This little town was run by important women who had leadership roles

within state and finance sector and no children played in the streets,

they were playing in a park made of foam and rubber.

Women in this town due to important work and long education,

tended to marry in their late thirties and usually with young shadowy

men who had no domestic role other than sleeping with them and

looking handsome in a suit.  

In the park created by anxious mothers, a boy found a hole in the fence

squeezed through it and came into a world  that had sharp corners and

hard ground, a place where animals are not toys and dogs bite when annoyed.

Curious the boy kept walking till he came to where the town ended and

the poor lived in pre-fabricated cabins and roads were only swept by women

outside their doors. Children played in the street, they were a noisy lot he soon

 joined in games and had great fun and when he fell and scraped his knee cried

a little, the other children laughed, this is nothing, and he soon forgot his pain.     

The boy had an epiphany, he and the other children in the foamy park were

prisoners of their over fretful mothers. He walked back to the bogus park

opened the gate wide and freed the other inmates from mothers crushing love

and guilt over not having time to nurture them.

the boat trip

the boat trip

The boat Trip

 I had bought a crate
of beer, my friend and I was going

 out fishing, he had a
motorboat in the middle of the boat,

 a smelling thing but
it brought us forward.

Only he had devious other plans, came with a girlfriend and

her friend too and I was stuck with the ugly one.

We crossed the fjord and in a bay on a small island sat

drinking till the crate was empty. He went ashore with his

girlfriend to have sex behind some bushes I sat there

and was not romantically inclined to flirt with the girl who

only a mother could love but not an eighteen- year- old.

The silence of us two on board was deep but not meaningful

I felt rancorous and she perhaps felt the same.

But I remember we were drinking Heineken and for some

reason the beer was called Berlin, I still wonder why?

cracks in the Mirror

cracks in the Mirror

the seal

The Seal.

It is a long time go in a bay somewhere on the Algarve

The road to get there was narrows and dusty and

I got annoyed with my girlfriend at the time to drag me

away from safety of my house and the communal

swimming pool. It was a secluded beach were women

could swim without the great hindrance of a bra and to

think she had dragged me here to get her tits sunburned

she could have done that in my back yard.

I went for a swim the water enveloped me like blue silk

And I floated with the lightness of a sea lion it was then

I saw here, just her head, a mermaid and her head was

bobbing gently up and down and she was the sea

the home of all beginnings....

So they did exist and not an illusion, a tale told by lonely

sailors; and how typical that wondrous women, are seen

by those who long for female company, but a voice

from the shore called me, the one who was tanning her tits,

was getting restless wanted something to eat, fried chicken

salad and a half bottle of chilled white wine. 

my daughter, the breeze | Write Out Loud

my daughter, the breeze | Write Out Loud

Balls and Balls sonnet

Balls and Balls...Sonnet

At the posh supermarket in Albufeira, it sells Icelandic fishballs harvested from

ten- year-old cod. They are white, and round just like other balls in size, say,

meatballs, but they taste salty and tangy, perfect with chilled wine, almost like

eating the Portuguese dish bacalao de nata the way they make it in Alentejo.

The wine at this supermarket is overpriced, but some of them have fancy names

on colourful labels as to make them more appetizing like we were going to eat

the labels too. 99% of the shoppers are British and struts around patronizing us

locals who came to gaze at the wonderful frozen food one can buy here as

 the English housewife cannot cook and take great pride in her incompetence.

Men are hopeless too, that is why they go to British restaurants to eat pie with

chips and  mushy peas.

I had friends, British – can you believe it- who lived here for years, when they

needed cancer surgery they went to Britain to have it done, the waiting list was

so long, that both died; the Brits do not like being prodded by foreigner. 

So what was I doing here at this posh place? I had been told they sold smoked

ox testicles here it was good for my flagging potency when I asked around

the shop fell silent. No one knew. Insipid fishballs, but I saw men putting on their

reading glasses for a closer look at shelves that sold foreign food.

Balls and Balls Sonnet

At the posh supermarket in Albufeira, it sells Icelandic fishballs harvested from

ten- year-old cod.fish They are white, and round just like other balls in size, say,

meatballs, but they taste salty and tangy, perfect with chilled wine, almost like

eating the Portuguese dish bacalao with cream the way they make it in Alentejo.

The wine at this supermarket is overpriced, but some of them have fancy names

on colourful labels as to make them more appetizing like we were going to eat

the labels too. 99% of the shoppers are British and struts around patronizing us

locals who came to gaze at the wonderful frozen food one can buy here as

 the English housewife cannot cook and take great pride in her incompetence.

Men are hopeless too, that is why they go to British restaurants to eat pie with

chips and  mushy peas.

I had friends, British – can you believe it- who lived here for years, when they

needed cancer surgery they went to Britain to have it done, the waiting list was

so long, that both died; the Brits do not like being prodded by foreigner. 

So what was I doing here at this posh place? I had been told they sold smoked

ox testicles here it was good for my flagging potency when I asked around

the shop fell silent. No one knew. Insipid fishballs, but I saw men putting on their

reading glasses for a closer look at shelves that sold foreign food.

the day of the dead

The day of The Dead.

 The cemetery in Loule is on top of a hill, today

early spring the steep hillside is full of luscious

yellow flowers. Not like ripe lemons, more like

Swiss butter, from the rich milk of cows will bells

and horns; sturdy feet able to carry big, rose-pink

udders and be milked by smiling maidens with

strong arms creamy white as a Valkyrie’s bosom

What you didn’t see- all this life- when blinded

by the intensity of every sun lit flower came

 from a rotting coffins, the few day in early spring

when the dead are let out, sway on a hillside and

soak up the sun.

intrepid struggle

Intrepid Struggle a Sonnet

Must of us who struggle to be heard on the internet

and other poetry sites. We are dogs with lack of melody

barking at the moon and la Luna keeps on shining

whatever we do. Let us face it the vast majority of us are

dreamers we have no talent there is no best poem that

will secure our fame, simply because we lack the echo

a truth and feeling that reverberate in mind of the masses.

We lack musicality and the true emotion that sings of truths.

We are the myriad a babble singing our song, but our tune

does not catch, we are like argumentative wife married

to poetry and failure, we never give up, one day when there

are two moons on the night sky will we get the laurel

the adulation from masses we so in our narcissistic dreams

and our intellectual secondarily deserves.

accidentally love story

Accidently love Story

Some of us are slow learners well I’m one of them.

There have been many women in my life and sometimes

I even thought I was in love.

But must women left me when seeing i was not serious

in my endeavour to be charming they knew all I wanted

to “Have a leg over” as i got older I became a butterfly

with exhausted wings and I was glad to go home alone

Thinking about it all those women I had met and loved

were nothing more than a dual masturbation.

I met this woman of full years, the first she said when we

were having dinner was that my nails was not clean.

Bloody cheek.

I took her home and my dog fell in love with her, for twelve

years the dog and i had been together but in the morning

she preferred to make up my wife and follow her to work.

and waiting outside her office.

Yet the dog did what I said but only because I was the boss.

Enough! The dog died and I cried.

Then one day I was 70 and it had taken me a long time

to understand that I loved my wife, she can’t even cook,

but I would not dream of saying so 

the meaning of equality

The Meaning of Equality

More women in

the boardroom and fewer ones

in the bed. (you can laugh or grimace)

Not that I care

I need a nurse and most of them are women.

In Norway, the enforced a quote

50/50 and that was right,

only some women were promoted to work

the were not competent to do

and the tended to give families friends

employment...

but life has rectified this by making

many admirals, generals and police chiefs

pregnant and taking early retirement-

old age retirement is 70 years in Norway

now it is upped to 75 .ok.

but the thousand of early retirement

we see is by the middle classes

that knows how these thing functions.

What is the point of this tale?

The point is that we have to redefine

what equality is. 

early morning sonnet

Early Morning Sonnet

Woke up at four, no moon or stars, stygian the night.

I switched on the tablet to read the papers, but

the light disturbed my wife who objected, I switched

it off. Then I thought about sex and if there was

a position i had never tried....could not think of any.

 And what should I do if i met a woman who showed

sexual interest in me? I could carry an artificial penis

take from behind and slip it on.

I then turned my attention to death, dealing with

something that is for sure. When it came for me would

I scream and say it has got a wrong person or be brave

and sardonically laugh. I have lived a life not knowing

many people it would be so embarrassing if no one

came to carry me to my allotted place.