Random Bursts

 

Eyeball assaulting yellow, lurid miles

Of neon oilseed rape, its nostril rich,

Thick layered, honey mead smell cloys my throat,

Overwhelms the bird filled hedgerows dozing

And bee-rich beneath this scented blanket.

Summer trees, plump with leafy lusciousness

Offer up their random bursts of blossom;

Tooth-brush flicked white paint dots,

Daintily spattering the flanks of green.

Unfettered assortment of ivy and

Loose, slutty dangling growth spills joyously

Over disintegrating dry stone walls,

Intimidating the geometric

Viciousness of manicured lawns.

Secateur defended personal plots

Display a fastidious placing of

One plant here; twelve inches away, plant there.

A creeper, its malachite messages

Carried inside wafting, semaphore leaves

Bravely ascends thrusting telegraph pole.

Clinging vines strain upward to smother the

Jabbering, techno-buzz lines slicing thin

And mean across the blue wash of the sky-

Strict, rulered pencil marks ever seeking

Their elusively vanishing point.

Duo of crows, haloes of light sheening on

Blackened, hematite wings pick and scratch where,

On the roadside, some dick-head has fly tipped

Scrunched, greasy cast offs from a fast food feast.

I turn and head to work, exchanging these

Bright scenes for filthy clumps of brick and steel.

Fuming car queue spewing plumes of smoke over

Pavement shuffling, hunched up human remnants.

We workers bow, prepare to slice away

More pieces of our souls, like mean slithers

Of underestimated cake eked out

At an overpopulated party.