Wondermentalist

This poem,  like the Hanging by a Narrow Thread sonnet that precedes it, is somehow connected to the Client of the Year post - in my mind, anyway. It’s from a little red book called Here We Are Then. 

Phobias

All right, Okay I own up, I am frightened

Of spiders, ear wigs, moths, crane flies and bees.

My bowels loosen up, my sphincter’s tightened,

There’s always a slight tremor about my knees

When these creatures encroach on my environs.

And when they run or brush against my skin

I make a sound like old-style air-raid sirens.

I’m not proud of the state I can get in.

But I don’t choose to flinch, it’s a compulsion

Which I am dealing with as best I can.

And overcoming such a strong revulsion

Is practically a life’s work for a man.

But when I feel more comfortable with insects

I’ll see if I can’t start to relax a bit more around people.

I know it’s not directly related to Wondermentalist - although it will be if I choose to read my shed poem tomorrow night at Ways With Words, which I might - but I was so chuffed that my Guardian Work Section Desktop Poetry offering on the subject of sheds, Where Earwigs Dare,  was picked up on by the wonderful blog Shedworking, produced by Alex Johnson, that I wanted to link to it from here and post a copy of the poem. In fact it’s very wondermentally related, as I was told of the shedworking blog and given a link to it by a thgouhtful woman called Annie who I’m sure has been to Wondermentalist as she also sent links to youtube performances that might inspire wondermental happenings…Anyway, here’s the poem:

Where Earwigs Dare

A silver trail across the monitor;

Fresh mouse-droppings beneath the swivel-chair;

The view obscured by rogue japonica.

Released into the wild, where earwigs dare -

You first went freelance - and then gently feral.

You worked from home - then wandered out again,

Roughed it with spider, ant, shrew, blackbird, squirrel

In your own realm, your micro-vatican.

No name conveys exactly what it is -

Chalet?  Gazebo? You were not misled

By studios, snugs, garden offices,

Workshops or outhouses. A shed’s a shed -

And proud of it. You wouldn’t want to hide it -

Wifi-enabled rain-proof wooden box.

A box to sit in while you think outside it -

Self-rattling cage, den, poop-deck, paradox,

Hutch with home-rule, cramped cubicle of freedom,

Laboratory, thought-palace, bodger’s bower,

Plot both to sow seeds and to go to seed in,

Cobwebbed, Cuprinol-scented, Seat of Power.