Free Refuge by Michael Tolkien Page A

pace.
    Queen Pin scintillates through blue-tinted specs,
    emits chill fire at what she wants to see or hear.
    Dressed down tight as disapproving lips
    she wields a burnished hairdo set against dissent,
    while flabby Number Three rumbles in agreement.
    One tale ends with masticating nods, and
    You’d think her parents would have had more sense
,
    then with melodious
quite right, quite right!
    perspiring Drop-Jaw fuels the next assault
    with another round of Côte du Rhone.
    Can the main course douse incessant talk
    of who’s who and others’ mess and muddle?
    Chewing adds relish to the moral. Every forkful
    perfects the verbal stab and makes conviction
    piquant till it hardens like the arteries.
    Copper beeches blacken, mist creeps up,
    haloes distant processions of lights,
    while an agitating choice of suites is followed
    by Remy-Martin, Grand Marnier, and Crème de Menthe.
    Chatter shuffles to the hall, solid slams resound,
    and gravel crunches under heavy wheels.

SPENT
    White, uniforms converge bright-eyed
    to coax, change and adjust him.
    Young, eager to show no holds are barred,
    they manipulate his bulk like navvies,
    find purpose in sores, faeces, tubes,
    maintain this flaccid mechanism,
    once cock of the walk who reckoned to tread
    every hen that fluttered across his path.
    Now he sucks on each rationed cigarette
    like a salving last request, wastes
    his stock of words on what’s served up
    as food and who can’t be
arsed
to visit,
    swivels pale eyes up and down
    these ayahs who rearrange his fragments.

EGO
    You’re
Alright Jack
passing moochers
    who surely put on age like protective gear.
    Wait till all those aches and niggles
    entertained as passing blips, take root
    and shoot
    with mechanical precision.
    Then try to get smartarse Jack
    off your back.
    Feel him tug when you hobble to
    the coach after yet another toilet stop,
    trying to spot your partner’s hairdo.
    If you’re lucky and she’s still there,
    helping you trudge unlikely extra miles
    on brittle bones and muscles drained of blood.

TOGETHER
    Couples should fill us with hope,
    walking with that assured clasp,
    children again, wandering anywhere,
    whimsical in their surprising leisure.
    Such meanders, such pleasure in each other,
    such florid dreams that cannot wilt or wither.
    Forget those routine stairs their feet
    will tread, rooms that seem replete
    with cluttered memories and trinkets,
    assumed like the bond of debt and habits.

IN THE CAFÉ OF YOUR CHOICE
    She’s half listening but I broach my fear
    that options keep displacing one another.
    “I’m doing X, and beyond return, knowing it
    could have been Y, had I considered
    as I now need to, α and β . Or even Z,
    given the advantages I begin to suspect
    of accounting for X,Y,
α
and β , not to
    mention θ which has just occurred to me.”
    (Wait, though. The ageing gent over there
    stares painfully at a cocksure trendy.
    Why do I think he might object to fairisle
    tanktops, slicked-down hair or a partner
    having to listen to one or two notions
    repeated in a hundred and one guises
    over several capuccinos ?) “Perhaps,” I resume,
    “this shows my days are numbered and I’ll lose
    my appetite for taking algebraic stock.”
    “You’ll get over it. It’s tension,”
    she says. “And too much isolation.”
    Now let me consider this very carefully
,
    I think I say, or am I mumbling ? “Next time,
    and not just at one of these plastic tables,
    I’ll begin as I mean to go on:
    setting out to find a solution.”
    Clearly though she’s not impressed.

GOLD & SILVER
    I.

    She censures our unruly world
    with every step, and bourgeois gold
    kindles her hair tossed here and there
    to say
Try me! As if you’d dare!
     
    II.

    Marigold open to noon-day sun,
    this is your now. You need not
    be seed, shoot, bud or rot.
    Unlike ours your cycle’s just begun.
     
    III.

    When her hair’s thinned and silver
    she’ll look back and think proudly:
    I found my own man and lover
    and not a