Having showered after exercise, one feels bright and clean and fully justified in having a celebratory cup of tea - especially tea made to my specific requirements by the well-trained staff in my local swimming pool's cafe.
     This isn't Britain and so, in spite of it being late-ish November, it is perfectly possible to sit outside in shirt sleeves and soak up the sun and scribble a few notes for possible write-up later.
     This idyllic picture is only spoilt by the number of unseasonable flies that seem to relish freshly washed skin in the same way that I enjoy my tea!  Frankly, I feel cheated.  We are brought up to regard flies with a certain loathing as disgusting insects that feed on filth and dissolve that filth with the enzymes in their own vomit which they then suck up.  So why is the squeaky clean me such a target?
     Flies obviously have a certain fascination for me as this is not the first time that they have been the subject of one of my poems.  I suppose I am interested in the way that their lives seem to be linked to ours in many ways and yet at the same time completely separate.  And their speed of life is so far removed from ours - the lazy way in which they seem to be able to avoid a swatting hand; we must be so slow and clumsy to them!
     Anyway, the number of the buzzing pests alighting on my knees (yes, I am still wearing shorts!) prompted me to write.
     The title links to the ending of the poem and perhaps ironically references human vanity.

The Victors

How flies

(those airborne harvesters of death

sucking their way towards the bone)

enjoy

my soaped fresh flesh!

They sense decay

beneath the skin:

memento mori banqueting.

The autumn sunshine crafts a day,

shielding the cold within its warmth

as subtle as a bone-stroked breeze

that cannot move the emptied trees.

A seismic shift of my great limbs

as drink is brought up to my lips

disrupts the feeders’ tiny feasts,

but gravity will drag them back

to what must always be their world.

 

Given the political situation inside Catalonia today, it is hardly surprising that a good god-fearing socialist (you will noice all of those words were with small letters) such as myself should find himself going up to Barcelona to protest about the clear injustices that the right wing minority National Spanish government inflicts on us.

It was one such demonstration called to show support for the Catalan political prisoners and for their release that prompted the following poem.  It is not however political.

As I have now been to a number of political demonstrations I am wise in the ways of them.  I have found that there is a great deal of standing up and waiting, so I now brin with me a collapsable chair so that when I and my friends have found our 'spot' I am able to participate while saving my legs and feet!

Coming back from the demonstration by train I end up in Gràcia metro station to get my train to Castelldefels, where my bike is waiting for me in the bicibox which will get me home.

Grácia is an unpleasant metro stop where the amount of walking between platforms is inordinate.  And when you get to the platform you need you find there are no seats but only a metal pole on which to rest your weary bottom.

When I finally got to the platform I needed it was packed and I was lucky to find a seat - well, a bit of the pole on which to wait.

It was then that I realize that the person next to me was eating crisps.  Metro stations are full of hard surfaces, hard curved surfaces that can amplify certain noises.  Like eating crisps.

I think I share with my father a general dislike of watching poeple eat, and certainly of hearing them.  I am not paranoid about it, but I notice that I am sometimes disturbed.

This poem is a response to the experience.

Misophonia

If she’d been opposite,

two sets of silent metro tracks away

and leaning on the rail that

stands for seats on Gràcia,

I could have looked and liked

what I’d have seen.

Her dinky boots

and sprayed on jeans;

her long dark hair and

elegantly tended nails; her full

red mouth lipsticked to

just this side of slut, and

slim & tall.

I grabbed the first (and only) space

I found to rest my bum.

And she was next to me.

And she was eating crisps.

Each one.

Apart.

And in that sullen silence

crowded strangers keep while

waiting for a train,

each crisp’s demise became

a cut through quiet, like

a blackboard’s finger’s nail’s decent

on my raw soul.

Each solitary crisp -

sought out by fingers’ pince -

observed, a moment;

placed and crunched

excruciatingly.

I thought to move but

reasoned that to stay and suffer

would ennoble more.

And stay I did.

And fought the urge to slap

her bag, and hands, and face.                                 

She made the packet last

until her train drew in.

She left,

and rumbled off.

There was a silence in that sound

that resonated deep within,

and I, if not exactly happy,

was content to wait,

a little longer,

for my train.