1962                                                Havana, Cuba

Jack and Fidel

When they dropped brown acid in the air conditioning
his broadcast went on without a blink: 
he railed against kamikaze molluscs, 
the bacilli dusting his wet suit, 
exploding golf balls and booby-trapped baseball bats: 
said they should settle war on the field of sport,
square up and fight like men. 

Back on the domestic front 
Jack had paid due regard to the potency of cigars 
but Fidel possessed an unimpeachable nose,
could sniff out the fatale in any femme;
handed her the gun from beneath his pillow,
asking whether it was love or war
she was looking for, which side of the bed
she liked her eggs buttered on.

By the time he was done, her legs were trembling. 
You Yankees, once you've had Latin
you never do WASP again, he said, 
handing her a bullet, its copper jacket
etched with the Kennedy name,
stroking the beard only time would grey
and tug from his handsome chin.





1968                                                Paris, France

Groucho & Co.

They are old now
and browning in the sun
on the four-week beach
oystering the Seine,
their walrus moustaches
frothed with the beer
of a Left Bank reunion.

When the Vespers bells
of Notre Dame clang
they lug their bellies
across the Pont des Arts,
cursing the love locks 
bracketing the railings,
the keys tossed away. 

Back in the Latin Quarter
they fill a favourite bistro
that served their stomachs well
in the bloody days of May
even as cobbles were prised
from the Roman streets,
the beach beneath still burning.
Yes, life has been good to them.
You can read in their complexions
the nights of wine and roses,
short days and long vacations.
And if they want anything, it is this –
the right to raise a fist, kiss
the men they've now become.





1972                                                Washington Zoo, USA

Panda Diplomacy

Chairman Mao resembled a panda –
roly-poly from extras at dinner,
eyes ringed from the ministrations
of his ever eager young nurses –
while the cuties chewed on bamboo
he rubbed his teeth with green tea. 

'Do as the Empress Wu did,'
he instructed, 'Send Satan pandas.'

Darling Girl and Shining Star
were greeted like pop stars
when they waddled from their crates,
then they attempted to mate
Tsing-Tsing slipping his penis
into Ling-Ling's purse-like ear.

'What do we give in return?'
Nixon asked Kissinger. 

They settled on Milton the musk ox
as an exemplary American male. 
He worked hard to provide for his wife,
Matilda, to build her a good home,
before dying of hardware disease
having swallowed too many nails. 





1978                                               Fort Roughs, North Sea

The Crown Prince of Sealand

He took on the force
of the oceans, talked
its waves down to size
and when they disobeyed,
violence the only recourse,
of course he used violence –
a slap, the threat of a gun.

If a storm blew in
the royals bunkered down
in an underwater tower –
listened to the whir
of propellers, the call
of a humpback whale –
plotting the next scheme

to fill their coffers:
issue stamps at top dollar,
coins in gold and silver,
flog peerages and follies;
all the burdensome business
of governing a kingdom
at war with wind and tide.


© Damian Furniss 2015