ISTANBULLSHIT

Istanbullshit, Turkey gobbles you up
Spits you out, like sauerkraut
A tower bout with a climbing lout
Drinking stout, mucking about
Dispelling doubt
A hammer, a clout
A prison snout
Solitary confinement, a solitary pursuit
A soloist: their purse, their suit
A mute person, a mute button
Cute mutton dressed as lamb
Hung for a sheep
Creep deep into your heart
Impart intimate secrets, in full or in part
In code, like a cryptic toad
Implode with guilt, wilt
Then recover, rediscover a lover
Cover your tracks
Track things down, play with a clown
Before you drown your sorrows
With a friend who borrows
Behave like a lunk, drunk in superficial company
Accompany someone home
Comb your hair the next morning
Warning yourself about vague dangers
Rangers’ fans bitter rivals Celtic’s arrivals
At football pitches where pitched battles take place
Cattle makes pace strenuous in abattoir terror
Terrorise with terror eyes, looking for trouble
Looking through Hubble with stars in your eyes
Disguise what you’re watching
Scotching rumours, tumours growing
Knowing their way round your body
Shoddy workmanship, a workman on a ship
Finds it plain sailing
Failings, typically human
Like being late and feeling scared inside
Denied fear’s fear that will reappear, crystal clear
Clear as day, day and night
Night after night an insomniac struggles
In darkness, with light
Light the way, way out west
The rest impressed with the best
The best of friends ends this.

FORGET-ME-(K)NOTS

The nervous sailor paced up and down muttering to himself,
‘I mustn’t forget me knots…’
He was anxious about an impending naval test of his abilities as a seaman.
But his peripatetic prattling confused a florist passer-by who was hard of hearing.
‘Yes, yes, of course you may,’ the florist beamed at the sailor.
‘I sell lots of forget-me-nots in my shop on the High Street, by the tailor’s.’
Far from amused by this strange clown, the sailor wears a frown.
‘Go and get knotted!’ He rudely bellows.
This startles the florist and some other nearby fellows.
‘Thanks, thanks a bunch!’ Is what I should have said to him,
The florist reproaches himself later on over his lunch.
At the same time, the offensive sailor ropes in a friend,
To assist him with his knots before he goes round the bend,
There is something quite interesting the said friend spots,
‘Funny,’ he says to the sailor, ‘about you and all these knots.’
‘What do you mean?’ The sailor asks, clearly exasperated with his knot-making tasks.
‘What’s so funny? Are you trying to give me the slip?’
If his friend had noticed the seaman’s unintentional pun he bit his lip,
Then, with a shake of his head, said:
‘Don’t get uptight; I’m here to help you if it takes all night.
It’s just a coincidence that has occurred to me.’
‘Ah, Ollie,’ the sailor sighs. ‘Why are you talking in riddles?’
While Ollie employed the hand in his trousers pocket for semi-erotic fiddles.
‘Alright, I won’t string this out…’ Ollie says slowly, self-contradictory in a way.
‘I’ll explain what I was just thinking about…’
‘Well, spit it out, man.’ The sailor spat.
Ollie could see spray orally jettisoned by the seaman under stress.
‘It’s this thing about knots in general… You can see, I guess?’
But in the silence that followed he knew how hard the sailor was to impress.
‘Knots is the nautical term for measuring the speed of vessels at sea,’
Ollie exclaimed triumphantly.
‘As well as being something for which you have to show your proficiency.’
At this point, the sailor considered severing all ties with Ollie,
Engorged with pride and wearing an expression of psychotic glee.

ASSOCIATION TRIGGERS (BEARS)

Facial resemblances are triggered by green and yellow acrylic koala bear.
Panda bears pander to no one.
Panda cars—now obsolete police vehicles—pamper nostalgic TV viewers watching reruns of Z-Cars and The Sweeney in noisy chase sequences.
Polar bears, solar flares, containing imagery suggestive of various types of bears’ faces, along with flurries of sun spots,
While gunshots in a black and white western add to the mythic exaggeration of North American history: a US creation that’s no mystery.
In that part of the world are grizzly bears,
Standing erect and proud or sleeping curled,
Their furry bulks shift in and out of shadows,
The American Stars and Stripes flag is unfurled.
A bear used to symbolise Russia.
An usher directs a filmgoer to their seat,
Where suffering in the cinema’s excessive heat,
They watch 3D bear animations that are incomplete.
Bare all in the glare from a bear bearing down on you,
While, bearing up under the strain, you strain to wear down the bear.
Bear this in mind, the bearlike faces that you find,
Spontaneously inspired when your imagination has been fired,
Some fierce and growling, others tender and kind,
Bear no relation to a cheese and its’ rind,
Or the other layers for which you truly pined.