Semiotics
Mum talking
with her hands
driving fast
Instructions for Goal Celebrations, or If You Should Score
1: Scorer gives a fist-pump, points or fires invisible arrow.
2: Scorer rips off shirt or dons shirt of the nearest available team mate.
3: Scorer imitates an oxygen-starved fish.
4: All field players on scoring team do likewise. Goalkeeper weaves between players in the manner of a squid.
5: Table and chair to be brought on by agent. Scorer signs more lucrative contract.
6: Substitutes to bring on carpet. Team to roll up scorer. Roll and unroll five times.
7: As above, followed by the auction of the carpet.
8: Scorer retains carpet for a gold coin donation if no bids are registered. All proceeds go to charity.
9: Teammates attach ribbons to head of scorer, before dancing round them in concentric circles. If the goal is decisive, attach ribbons to referee.
10: Scoring team to depict the mind-body problem, as either a musical or interpretative dance.
11: Scoring team to construct a tableaux of Oedipus Rex. Scorer to play Oedipus; conceding keeper, Laius; conceding team’s manager, Jocasta.
12: If a consolation goal, any play by Samuel Beckett may apply.
13: Scoring team to construct two wooden forts to re-enact the siege of Vicksburg. Conceding team to represent the Confederates. Scorer exits stadium via catapult.
Prodigal
“How like a younger or a prodigal”
The Merchant of Venice
Hazarding everything
he owned, I won.
Our girls proved lucky.
Our ships popped up.
I pawned the jewels
and sold off
the portraits, melted
the gold and silver caskets.
Antonio grew old
with his books
never left us quite alone –
didn’t leave us quite enough.
The Pale King
– On Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World
This moon-pale Christ,
whose knock is
too gentle to wake
the sleeping
century,
let alone the dead.
His lantern
too honey-mild.
His tap-tap-tapping,
only
the wind.
Three Poems
Cans lighten
at the speed of mist.
Muzak for dying insects.
*
De-cluttering
at the church working bee,
one too many pitchforks.
*
Fabulous
trophies of ice