The joy of rhizomes.
Four makes of bamboo
volunteering everywhere,
a kind of supergrass.
‘Hello, it’s me.’
A snitch as tall as a tree.
Whenever I pass that way,
I have at them with the hatchet.
Two minutes of violent exercise.
They are the isolate stiff hairs
on my Eczema Reversion Lawn@

where the weeds have cross-wired
the surface and depth-charged the roots
with their little water-barrel reservoirs.
It’s my baby jungle out there.
Florida, venereal soil, sure,
but my conscript garden doesn’t grow.
Nothing blooms like the unintended
christophine and papayas
the birds left there.
Ghost-green luminous dongs,
sappy salt and sappy sweet.

She’s free to marry her baby grand –
correction, marry her bodyguard – 
she’s free to marry her bodyguard.
‘Is that you, Bodo/Beau/Bö? Come on in.’
The pubble that never bops.
Said of China, or was it Abba. Or Tesla.
The astronauts splash down
in poopy diapers at Pensacola.
Pensacola means the end of thought.
Or is it a refreshing drink.
More Big Orange than Big Pink.

It was FILTH (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong).
Now it’s SHIT (Succeeded in Hong Kong,
Immigrate to Toronto). Oh, far eastern
markets ending mixed, if they end at all.
The three-thirty at Market Rasen.
Better than falling out of bed.
Much less dead cat bouncing.
Spooking and catching cold.
Or catching a falling knife.
(Did those sages never think
they were wasted on numbers?)

They used to make me jump,
but lizards no longer bug me,
I understand them drawn to hot metal
A little one among the CDs,
(‘Greetings, pop pickers,’
said one Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman 50 –
five-oh – years ago,) and indeed
I have a wizened one on the radio now,
that’s mostly pleather. Why move it.
It’s inoffensive. Characterful.

As are the roaches, but them
when I see I snap into action,
clobber them with shoe soles
or spray Friend Samsa on them,
German or Australian,
bigger with each passing year
black or brown, and some now
appear to have gold stitching
in keeping with the times.
Invasive, of course, but aren’t we all,
as the Bish didn’t say.