Sung, Dug, Danced, Planted

(for Mum and Dad)

Sung by things dug up,
the clay pipe with harp,
as natural as oil.
No destroyed civilization, no shocked discovery
of bust statue of liberty on the sand.
Rust on an old broach,
sweat on summer’s ancient evenings,
the spattering of brown optimism

Danced by planted bounty.
Black plant pots of leeks,
ant highways and aimlessly industrious beetles
ignoring like calmest parents
the lanky greens plopped in dibbed holes
after Mr King, à la veteran
of killing and growing fields.

Eight-tined garden fork leant by gate,
warmed and polished handle,
living stem
muddy, magnificent,
moulded to the rhythm of vegetation
and allotted growth.

May Sketches

From Simon’s 7th floor we see fullness of trees.
We send our precisely cautious understanding,
the balance of our mind
like a paper plane towards creamy smoke
from 2 chimneys over near Dongen,
distant other-industry.

17 letters are branded on the skyline above Koopmans,
logo in the sky with dyads, dripping graffiti, crucified for pride
and bucking under-renown.
On the site of the Chile mural, FEB letters,
indestructible,
like the stuff the bad cyborg was made of
in Terminator 2.

Prisma glares sagely at Warande, insect-frame roof aerials tickling
complex air, smell of tyres, cheese pastries and oak leaves
in the atmospheres.

Plains of pebbles unite UvT roofs.
but unique debris defines each
(a smashed coffee cup or two on the roof of the SSC
and Mr Fantastic’s long dried-out husk).

At ground level, medleys of jeans
and this season’s boots and Birkenstocks,
student hairstyles in evolutions not revolutions,
gentle plagiarism of genres.

The wheelbarrow man wears denim too but he’s a hole in his left thigh
from hauling sand from the side door to P’s koffiekamer
to the entrance to the Univers.

In C17, Marga opens a brown envelope with a class list
but the sender has forgotten to sign it.
The fountain holds its note though;
its tripping splashing warms faces.
It’s May.

Free Ranging Pig

The teddy bear is from the 1950s,
rescued from a rose garden,
judiciously pruned,
softening the trotter trail,
bellowing false laughter,
piglets hanging onto teets
for dear life
and for the sake of blooms.

The trimmed toothbrush
is caked with salty paste,
granular as river water
glinting in the new digital dawn,
capital lettering branded
on its muscley blue stem.

The jeans you're wearing hide satin,
waxed tints and a damp low tide
dangled from the mouth's numb kisses
and eleven o'clock oaths,
the disappeared haunts of monthly mayflies
and pushers.