Alan Gould: Two Poems

Captain Armchair

 

When I was Skipper Armchair and I trimmed a swell topgallant,

I sent aloft the numbskull boys and those with rising talent.

My seaboots kicked around your world, I cosied to my binnacle

and close-hauled past Cape Fantasy, gave sea-room to Cape Cynical.

 

The estuaries I called at were alive with virtual ships,

and the lighters came in-tow across the moonlight’s water-lips,

to bring us cargoes with their smells of coal or coriander,

and seasoned crews undone by shore, still snoozing from some blinder.

 

So what’s a cringle, what’s a splice, and what’s the view from high

at orange dawn when loosing sail, departing from Shanghai?

My name is Captain Armchair and I’m strangely twice alive,

for all life grows uneasy when two livings must connive.

 

Now buntlines are all unbelayed and gimbals bang my brain,

and futtock shrouds go fraying on The Esoteric Main.

Now rocker gear clanks cable over greasy windlass pawl,

and I have heard the shanty-stuff converted to pop drawl.

 

When I was Skipper Armchair and my limits were the planet

I’d take a ship wherever there were nouns and verbs to man it.

When lexicons unloosed their sails and sheave-pins squeaked with strain

to work to windward of the real was compass for my brain.

 

 

Stanzas for Nearby Insects

 

Our dapper moths in capes of velveteen

dig nervy profits from our almond meal,

and for their gross the daddy longlegs trawl.

Long patience is a daddy longlegs’ scene.

*

 

What do the ants consume,

fervent along their cables?

And if ants sleep, then do they sleep a-swarm,

like text in bibles?

 

*

Black admiral spread your spinnaker

and broad-reach through my quarter acre.

Windward whisky, leeward rum,

Regattas of black admirals come

To set their gorgeous sails a-quiver

Whenever citrus seeps them something clever.

 

*

 

Sleek silverfish you’ve found my Freud,

unconscious mind is now all void,

Will tiny grinders nibble Joyce …

Will stream-of-consciousness lose voice?

 

Sleek silverfish, you tat such lace

locks Conan Doyle in his worst case.

White islands grow where Conrad sailed;

White starfish feed where story failed.

 

*

 

No dirt is dug, no hint of sleaze

can taint the single-minded bees.

 

They go like pollsters, door to door,

to try their angles, give some jaw.

 

What is the buzz in all their murmur?

Might Nature have a sense of humour,

 

the DIY of making honey?

innately funny?

 

*

 

My darling showers at 3 a.m.

when peckish daddy longlegs eat their kind.

And in warm rain my darling watches them,

for she is of enquiring mind.

 

Our bathroom spiders rarely suffer loss.

Should one go down the plug,

my love contrives, with dentifloss

a lifeline for that bug.

 

*

 

Why is my home so insect and imperial

with settlers subterranean and aerial,

like here, this mantis on my window glass,

outlandish twig of prayer? Such gravitas?

 

Alan Gould