John Whitworth

The Examiners

Where the house is cold and empty and the garden’s overgrown,
They are there.
Where the letters lie unopened by a disconnected phone,
They are there.
Where your footsteps echo strangely on each moonlit cobblestone,
Where a shadow streams behind you but the shadow’s not your own,
You may think the world’s your oyster but it’s bone, bone, bone:
They are there, they are there, they are there.
 
They can parse a Latin sentence; they’re as learned as Plotinus,
They are there.
They’re as sharp as Ockham’s razor, they’re as subtle as Aquinas,
They are there.
They define us and refine us with their beta-query-minus,
They’re the wall-constructing Emperors of undiscovered Chinas,
They confine us, then malign us, in the end they undermine us,
They are there, they are there, they are there.
 
They assume it as an impost or they take it as a toll,
They are there.
The contractors grant them all that they incontinently stole
They are there.
They will shrivel your ambition with their quality control,
They will desiccate your passion, then eviscerate your soul,
Wring your life out like a sponge and stuff your body down a hole,
They are there, they are there, they are there.
 
In the desert of your dreaming they are humped behind the dunes,
They are there.
On the undiscovered planet with its seven circling moons,
They are there.
They are ticking all the boxes, making sure you eat your prunes,
They are sending secret messages by helium balloons,
They are humming Bach cantatas, they are playing looney tunes,
They are there, they are there, they are there
 
They are there, they are there like a whisper on the air,
They are there.
They are slippery and soapy with our hope and our despair,
They are there.
So it’s idle if we bridle or pretend we never care,
If the questions are superfluous and the marking isn’t fair,
For we know they’re going to get us, we just don’t know when or where,
They are there, they are there, they are there.

[ Published in The Times Literary Supplement ]

Them There Out There In Here Right Now

There’s a tickle in your nostrils like the turning of the milk,
There’s a swish across your fingers like the whimpering of silk,
Like the flutters of a death’s head, like the squitters of a mouse;
You can feel them in the lobby, you can feel them in the house,
There’s a flickering of faces, there’s a bristling of hair,
At the elbow of a passage, at the winding of a stair,
       Till you feel them everywhere
              In the air.
                     Yes, you feel them everywhere.
 
Pitter-patter like the creeping of the waves across the stones,
You can trace the gothic filigree of tiny little bones,
Trace their frettings with your fingers on the velvet of the dark;
Trace their restless to-and-froing like the swimming of a shark,
To-and-froing in their going like a prowling picaroon
In a wilderness of starlight on the deserts of the moon,
       And they’ll be here very soon
              How they croon 
                     They’ll be here so very soon.
 
They are swarming in the dawning, there’s no turning of the tide.
They are homing through the gloaming and you’ve nowhere left to hide.
They are swinging from the cornice, they are sliding down the sill.
Have they come to do you good or have they come to do you ill?
As they whisper at the window, as they mutter at the door,
With a scrabbling down the chimney and a squeezing through the floor,
       Till you’re theirs for evermore;
              It’s for sure
                     That you’re theirs for evermore.

[ Published in Being the Bad Guy: Peterloo Poets ]

Humdinger

(Getting louder)

     See I saw the feller humming,
he was coming, he was coming, through the wood,
      like a bandit in a hood
and it wasn’t looking good, no way,
     so I started in to pray
but my wits had gone astray (wouldn’t yours?),
     big paws full of claws
and enormous jaws, full of teeth,
     white teeth, sharp teeth,
he was furry underneath, and his breath,
     hot breath, foul breath,
made you think of sudden death, with the smell
     of a shuttered room in hell;
so I knew full well I was done
     and it isn’t any fun
when you’re out without a gun, if things
      with teeth and wings
(did I say about the wings?) like these,
    come thrumming through the trees
till you’re weak about the knees, with their hum,
     with their drum, drum, drum,
and their fi--fo–fum,  in the wood,
     where it isn’t looking good,
 no way …
                  no way…
                                  no way…
                                                  no way…

[ Published in Anon 5 ]

Not You

If you were not the one who brought the milk,
And you were not the one who ruled the land,
And you were not the one who wove the silk,
And you were not the one who held my hand,
And you were not the one who touched my face,
And you were not the one who kissed my hair,
And you were not the one who’s off my case,
And you were not the one who wasn’t there,
And you were not the one who lost my life,
And you were not the one who fell apart,
And you were not the one who chose the knife,
And you were not the one who broke my heart,
Then you were not the one who’s in my head,
And you were not the one who’s dead, who’s dead.