gas-bill

Can’t see close any more,
never could see far,
varifocal glasses
beckon
like milk-bottle arses.

And my eyes are having
one last pre-new prescription joke
at my expense.
This morning’s gas-bill
I read as
Your gay statement
and consequently couldn’t make sense
of
volume conversion factor
and
calorific value
of
standing charges
and
credit carried forward

But
it all seemed rather cheering somehow,
after all those monthly payments,
to see
a whole life celebrated
in the final lines
with an
outstanding balance.




© James M Nash

short cut

With the confidence of the very drunk
I claim intimate knowledge
of a short cut. 
We clamber over a corporation stile,
self-consciously authentic,
and the salad green of young hawthorn leaves
brushes our faces.
Suddenly the stars make sense
now we are in the landscape.
The hedges grow as they have always grown
separating ancient fields.
Houses and factories disappear.
Some distillation,
like long stored country wine,
is in the air,
the breeze,
the soft-crushed grass. 
We hold hands like children in a story-book
clutching each other
with thin laughter,
old fears bursting our urban skin,
as large animals
rise from the ground,
lifting themselves like giants’ feet,
and lumber off snorting
leaving only their heat behind. 




© James Nash (Deadly Sensitive) 1999