from Insider Art - 60 Unsociable Sonnets


11. CABAD
 
This is not a unique experience
A sonnet by definition is a reincarnation as livid dust
 
All set now for another go with another moniker
These are things that get set:
Stages, runners, cement, pupils, type, jelly and icing
Robert Scott was bi-polar on the icing
 
A dust mite is the lowest form of the almighty
This and thus and that fuss with the trilobite's plaits
The vacuum cleaner on Mars panned the sand
 
Now the Christian name found itself alone
Without an owner it floated beyond the range of answers
Tousled and battered and marked with an E
And put in the oven for 'Enry and me
 
Maybe not a eunuch experience but pretty close
 
*
 
12. AACBD
 
All labour calcifies into eyelids of shell
I had a stash of euphemisms for the Tory boys too
The rider wanted to skirt around the thistle
The donkey beneath him ignored their shared past
 
All labour chokes itself swallowing man manure
The Tory boys trap themselves but always escape
Thrift and hard work and muds of many colours
Some of the euphemisms were a bit rash
 
Let's get a kipper sandwich between lectures
The literary festival chats to the moody labourers
 
The same literary fest takes its hat off to the workers
The workers are not labourers they're skippers
Children abandoned in the forest have to forage for clichˇs
 
Clichˇs are rare when the only thing to skip is school dinners



13. ABDAC
 
I'm going to continue the previous theme here
I won't make a habit of it honest
Children abandoned in forest forage for school dinners in skip
Each skip has a captain clamber aboard
 
The lecturers are not workers they're voices
The literary vessel is leaving the Earth behind
Plimsoll line summoned into the stratosphere
 
Giggling leaks out from behind the bushes
 
The lovers are not labourers they're not even local
Locomotive abandoned in the woods
Anorak abandoned in the woods stretches anonymity
If we're going to continue we need a motive
 
Cocktails in the Arts Centre and sexual poisons
Not everyone likes to take the short-cut through the long grass



14. BCAAD

Bullet hole in wasp dislodged a skinny lemon
One of those lemons that looks like a daft tumour
The jacket of the notebook was a uranium fruit bowl
 
I saw it all on Dara O'Briain's Science Club keep up
My wife says it was the Antique Roadshow keep up
 
It was the film about the killing of the Tsar and his family
Lacy dolls and sailorboys at the bottom of the shaft
'You bastards' shouted someone in the back row
I think he meant the Reds but I'd have meant the Royals
 
One of the princesses lay a Faberge egg
One of the princes had a wasp nest in his belly button
Vampire waiting in Preston Bus Station
A bloody moon rises over the pale Ribble river    


   © Tim Allen
2014