Listing to Port

Dear relative, whose angry screeds
I get to read on social media;
I know the ways we disagree
Could fill a full encyclopaedia,
But now we meet on Christmas Day
It’s time to put aside critiques
And share this time with love and joy.
I got your dog this toy. It squeaks.

I choose my gifts with thought and care.
I know how much you love that pup -
I’m sure that her infectious joy
As merrily she chews it up
Will fill you full of Christmas pep.
What’s more, I’m sure the coming weeks,
The dawning of our brand new year
Will also fill with joy and squeaks.

Now, dog toys often break, it’s true.
I choose my gifts with thought and care.
So something I considered well
Is making sure this toy will wear
As little as a toy can do.
I used a shop I truly trust
To tooth-proof up the rubber, and
Make sure the squeaker is robust.

Another thing that makes dogs sad
Is when their toys get stuck up high.
I choose my gifts with thought and care.
I do not want your dog to cry.
I asked the shop I got it from
To make some very minor tweaks.
When activated by a bark,
It bounces down to make more squeaks.

A marvel of technology!
But what if it were shut somewhere  
Inside a cupboard, or a bin?
I choose my gifts with thought and care.
This toy is proofed against that fate:
It has a smell that dogs adore
To help your dog to dig it out
And squeak and squeak and squeak it more.

So pass the sprouts, dear relative.
It’s time to raise our glasses high.
And then some pudding, don’t you think?
What’s that, you say? A gift? Oh my.
You choose your gifts with thought and care.
I’m pleased to hear you have on order
A loving present for my daughter:
The Child’s First Extra-Loud Recorder.

The itch of the if
At the back of your brain,
Returning and turning,
Again and again.

If only I hadn’t,
If only I had -
If only I wasn’t
So mad or so sad,

If I could have faked it
Until it was true;
If I wanted the things
Others wanted me to;

What if I was wrong?
Am I wrong even now?
Have my distant mistakes
Caused disaster somehow?

Or - what if those days
Had been just a bit colder,
Or I had been wiser,
Or stronger, or bolder?

You can’t slake it by scratching.
That spreads out the spot -
Draws your memory threads
Through its thick sticky knot.

Oh there’s words and there’s music,
The bottle, the spliff,
Things that drown out the sound
And the itch of the if.

But the sole cure is time,
Time and time ‘til it clears -
A medicine measured
In years upon years.

So seal it in stone
With a terrible glyph,
Drop it five fathoms deep -
But the itch of that if!

The Internet is wise and wide;
The Internet’s a sage
Distilling and distributing
The knowledge of this age.
But when I asked the Internet,
Its words meant naught to me:
You won’t believe this one weird trick
A mom once taught to me!

What trick? I asked the Internet.
The Internet replied:
What happened next will warm your heart,
Just come and step inside.
What mom? I asked the Internet;
It answered, Did you know?
How she looks now will haunt you!
Come on, let me list why so.

And I must have quailed or something,
For it said, with unctuous care,
Well, number six is shocking,
Why not try some gentler fare?
Like this dog whose soldier master
Has returned from years apart,
Or these fifteen gorgeous kittens
Who will truly melt your heart?

But still I went on searching
For the meaning of that phrase.
I’d done this wrong my whole life through,
I thought. I searched for days.
And at last, a revelation
Slowly rolled into my brain,
As I read a list of mysteries
That science can’t explain.

What if my search for wisdom
From our planet’s fount of learning
Had been Byzantinated
By a lack of proper kerning?
There was no mom, no crafty mom
Putting the world to rights:
Instead, the demon Amom
Had me squarely in her sights.

Amom, that great spider;
She who haunts each hologram;
The hacker of dropped packets
And the fountainhead of spam;
Who deep within the darkest web
Encrypts your zombie dreams;
And whose trick is slurping people
Through a portal in their screens.

Amom has my soul now;
In a field of burning bytes
She warmed my heart, then melted it
To feed her kitten-wights.
Ignore that patch upon your screen
That’s sort of like a door
This one weird trick will shock you -
Just lean inwards to hear more…

Behold this drooling, snoring cat!
All snuggly sat upon my lap.
This purring, petted bag of fur,
This connoisseur of hug and nap.
Her hoary form is far from svelte,
Her scruffy pelt is wearing thin.
Behold, such domesticity,
Her days of roaming free all done!

And would you call her, on first glance,
A veteran of chance and scrape
As, heedless of my epithets,
She slyly lets a fart escape?
Yet in her time she ruled the sea,
A prodigy of salt and storm!
Who knows how many men she drowned,
This fury bound in feline form?

They say she studied piracy
As by the sea, in kittenhood,
She saw a score of feline foes
Assuage their woes as pirates could;
Her mind was keen, her claws were good;
She thought she could defeat them all;
She sought the pirates in their dens
And fiercely then she yowled this call:

“Join me or die, ye flea-flecked cads!”
And soon she had (from those not dead)
A cat-boat with a cutthroat crew,
As through the realm the rumour spread:
“Beware the queen who rules the waves,
Enslaves the humans whom she meets
And paws them up at 5 a.m.
To summon them to bring her treats!”

And oh, what terrors she dispersed
To all who cursed her years afloat!
The scourge of scurvy sea-swept dogs
Whose epilogues in blood she wrote;
The scourge of sleepy piratekind
Who’d wake to find their treasure gone;
The scourge of undiscovered lands
Whose unspoilt sands she shat upon.

They say she once, when feeling bored,
Made war toward the Mouse-King’s halls,
And all victorious, she stole                      
His underlings for cannonballs -
And how the mouse-king loudly wailed
And quailed before her unsheathed claws
As from the cannon’s mouth his hordes
Were launched towards the tropopause!

And on an archipelago
Where South winds blow all summer-sweet,
She kept a troupe of eager Toms
Who with aplomb her joyous heat
Attended to; and as she lay
All sunlight-splayed and satisfied,
They rolled in catnip on the shore
And swore they’d serve her ‘til they died.

The end? The ship by Blackbeard sunk
As she lay drunk; the boat’s capsize;  
Her fearsome crew all forced to scatter,
Pitter-patter counterwise.
Until, rainswept and woebegone,
She caused some consternation when,
Escaped from Blackbeard’s Oubliette,
She asked to get back in again.

So though for seas to soothe her soul
Her water-bowl must now suffice,
Who knows what recollections strut
Behind her shut and sleeping eyes?
Where seated on a silver throne
On pirate-flesh alone she dines
With blood-red wines, and in her dreams
Are quinqueremes and barquentines.