After Two, a Couple of Pastiches of British Poets

a collaboration between myself and Strangeways_Rob: https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poets/Strangeways_Rob/
 
Spitting Mountain Mist into Seasons  
 
after Owen Sheers  
 
It may have been the summer before the winter  
Strong men pickaxed through ice to bury Old Man Jones.  
   
It may have not.  
   
We found a baby seagull on the beach  
death nested inside a sand castle moat,  
fingertip deep and eyes flagged closed.  
   
She had seen a BBC documentary  
rows of dead things in jars.  
‘Myself is mutilation and separation’  
as if recounting an exotic times-table.  
   
Under a Godless roof shed  
she placed the cadaver in a  
methylated spirit splashed jar,  
liquid gnawed at raw skin and  
released flotilla of pink shavings.  
Fizzed to the surface like drunk  
divers sprung from sea bed.  
   
She shook the jar and pressed her  
giant’s face against the glass,  
swayed violently on verge of taking flight  
or opening its minute beak.  
   
She mocked irony and named it envy  
   
The whirlpool faded and death became  
a sunbather to arithmetic of the heat  
 
Maggot  
 
after Stevie Smith  
 
My soul is like a creature, see,  
a little thing that crawls across  
the bladed edge  
of God’s Swiss army knife, a toss  
between the lad and shy  
at some old carnival.  
 
(The lord back then was just a boy.)  
The name’s Maggot, it says, my soul,  
wish I could say that I’m not understood.  
But insect minds are simple, see,  
and when I’m called I’ll say to He  
that Maggot’s happy to be free.