One banana, two banana

I hope
when I go
‘banana’ you
know there’s no
fruit there, don’t you,
only a few dots on a page
in black and white. So whose
banana is it then, the one we are
seeing and tasting? And why a banana,
considering all the other fruit we both know
about and all the other words we’re sharing here?
Some even have b’s and a’s and n’s but, despite that,
who decides whether your banana’s voluptuous and perfectly
yellow and curved slightly, zipped up, and/or marginally over-ripe?

Face value

When I look at the face
of a clock, it seems pretty
simple – all about hands
washing a face - time and time again

but I know, behind the numbers,
a faithful engineer has expressed
in manifold tiny detail
torque and cogs, design and energy

(worked loads out) and, even when features
seem fine on the outside, lots
of whirring’s going on behind scenes
- winding up, turning and ticking along -
crafted by skilful hands;
whenever I look into a face.

Listen

I’ve heard all the clichés before
like ‘you’ve one mouth and two ears’
‘children should be seen and not heard’
‘what’s the furthest sound you can hear?’

the loudest, the quietest,
the longest. the shortest,
the highest, the lowest,
the hardest, the soft one

because like rainfall hammering the ground,
a tiny drum-skin sitting by my brain
vibrates (as long as blood can pump around)
suggesting I’ve a fish upon a line.
It never stops - a shell held in my ear
aiming for a simple feeling near.

Trust

I jump on a train
but every seat’s full;
I buzz up and down
like an ant in an anthill

looking for my place;
trying, trusting god,
but every gaze avoids
my eyes, my eager face

and, deep inside, I pray,
pacing like a dad.
that I will find a friend
that, if I trust today,
a gap will open, smile;
my heart is thudding still.

What if God's a gas

Nod a bottle at a brittle glass
and fizzy lemonade arises,
toxicates a nostril,
titillates and fills:

more than ‘satisfactory’,
popping at their birth-point,
bubbles sharp and piquant
instigate a sneeze:

higher than high,
brighter than light,
way beyond planets,
ripple and lap
up to emotion,
quivering lips.

Everest

I
produce
hair on the
front of my eye-
brows I put there
for no reason I see
that it’s utterly futile
but still I sprout a small mane
maybe only because
I can when I choose
grow and inflate
yes create
my wee
star

Glimpse

We had a chat
about a rat;
yours a giant,
mine - a tyrant.

We made a jigsaw
like a sunset;
an orange (I saw)
you saw red

but only when my fruit
and your new fangled colour
merge do we, in truth,
create an apple’s figure

- and the rat, of course,
was a very helpful chap.