Alpha Status

Alpha Status

With muscles in his spit,
prowling down the stairs in tight fit Calvin Kleins
is my twelve stone hairy baby, and he wants to claim
what's mine!
It isn't always like this and we get along just fine,
but his hormones and his biceps and his whiskers
and his braun,
have jogged to Freudian overdrive like just after
he was born.
Now he's stamping round the bathroom and he's
hosing down the loo, like he's taken alpha male spot
and I'm not sure what to do.

I'm a poet not a fighter and to harm him's not my way,
I'm his silver templed guardian with a slightly dodgy back,
rarely raised my voice in anger, raised an eyebrow once or
twice.
Told him not to swear in library's cause it  wasn't very nice.
Warned him not to flash his eyes at tender hearts with
fickle words.

He's just a Puck like careless Satyr, in his room on his guitar.
Belting out a tune and riffs, throwing back his hair and then
re-waxing up his quiff.

With fake nonchalant indifference, I trot so easy down the stairs,
we keep our distance halfway down, like hungry narkie Grizzly
bears. Flick our eyes and raise our chins in semi mock belligerent
stares.

In my baggy Marks and Spencer skids, I pad up to the fridge,
he's back into Vampire weekend, and he's bellowing the bridge.

As I fumble round the veg tray for my can of Carling slurp,
I hear him flourish his finale with a floorboard rattling burp!

John Watson
Kenilworth Feb 2016

Carved Asunder

Freeborn Johnny's, Wearside Jacks, villains heroes wandered dales
drank my rivers ales and spirits, planed her forests into ships
towered masts avast with sails.

Meandered northern river song,carved asunder over time, cloudbourne sisters, Tees and Tyne.
Durham miners gala days, laughing long dead Geordie colliers toiled down deep in veins of darkest anthracite, squandered youth enslaved their might, ruptured backs and coughed out lungs in scarlet speckled mist.

Dropped like pebbles twelve hour shifts, clattered lifts down wet pit shafts.
Winston's rats back down their holes and under sea, five miles outs no hyperbole.

My bloods flowed all along this stream and in my dreams are Jimmy Crawford 's hopes and schemes.
On Rokers rusted iron rails paint thick layers blistered summers gails, winter storms or twisted pasts, all amongst and within my prescient forms unveiled our presents.