Naomi Larh Millinery

SURREAL TAILS

January-June 2020

Automatic writing as I drift almost asleep

Ploughs and Cows

The plough’s in town, the plough’s in town, everyone gather,

Gather gather all around,

Get your fields out, dump them on the ground,

The plough will make all the rounds,

The plough is coming for you, coming to help you dig and destroy.

‘Dig and destroy to grow!’ growls the plough.

‘Dig and destroy to groow!!’ roar the crowd of ploughs

Who accompanied plough,

Plough into town,

The plough is here so get on the ground

The plough spares the cow, ploughs favour cows,

They live on the farm and do a similar thing in the field.

Gently spacing out, cows and ploughs, turning the flat stuff that sits all around.

The ploughs won’t stop for you little ones,

You’ll soon be turned into fresh vegetation,

Veggies, veggie people,

Aubergine boy, coconut gal, celery fluidity, skip all around,

The plough’s in town and so many cows to hug and brand

Sticky nozzles, flies and poop

Dung, manure, fill up the tupperwares,

Save them for a rainy day, save them for a morning chew,

Save the seedlings for my sweetlings,

I simply have to suckle them supper since their dear mother

So resembles a sloth,

Hairy and slow with such a sympathetic glow,

She takes so long to get them dressed for school

That it’s already the next day and sweetness’s are soundly sleeping

Waking only to still be either dressing or undressing,

When can school ever start for these tragically dear darlings?

Well, it doesn’t matter now

Coz the plough’s in town,

Everyone gather, get down on the ground

Except for the cows,

Maybe the lions can stay

But everything’s gotta get grown now

that the plough plough plough plough plough …

But the tune dies down,

It still rings on the wisp,

There’s not much left now

But the ones we know who rhyme all the time,

Except for them

And a few scattered lions,

The new ground doesn’t grow like it used to, they moan,

In a season when the bees run dry and the leaves run crisp,

Flaking off in the mist and settling at your quiet cloven feet.

You look back at your herd, ploughs and cows,

‘This isn’t the end’ you moo.

Gills

Science is a silent salami said the sandwich to the peshwari naan.

I’ve only ever dreamt of a time I could empty my paradigm purse

in the arms of a sweet, sweet someone.

That bear is someone, hold me in your arms,

look into your dazzling wells of eyes,

I’ll help you catch salmon,

I’ll whittle you a toothpick and sweeper the crispy leaves from your meagre den. The river trickles and bears gather to paw at the leaping fish,

I squint up the mountain and see another fluff, a new one,

So I scramble up, up, up.

But the fluff is in the haze of a passing cloud, too close for comfort.

Yes the clouds look comfy, but also thorny with lemon lightning,

pulsating purple and ultramarine.

The air once warm is now chilling,

windless one moment, then ferociously gusty the next.

I call out to the fluff, ‘hold me in your arms fluff,

I want to look into the dazzling wells of your eyes!’

But as it turns, my stomach plummets, the rain pours, lightning strikes within and I have to stand there, still, stiff and silent

The fluff smugly nods and rolls away,

I slither back down to the bears,

I eat so much salmon that I turn pink and grow tremendous gills.

Figero

Figero liked boats, he liked to row,

He liked to row so he could be a true figure.

The figure that rowed, Figero, here he comes, a fine pedestrian,

Slipping through the river streets like an eel,

His long, protruding moustache

Allowed him to sense width with extreme accuracy, like cats’ whiskers,

His lip hairs leaked around him, checking for any mysterious surprises

Picking out the occasional shrimp snack.

Life is but a dream for Figero when he really is a figure row,

But when his sweaty cramping calves hit the bank, he becomes but a figure,

And the mysterious O keeps circling round on itself gaining momentum

Rising with heat and friction, frothing up the air underneath,

Is O a thing or a hole, does it enclose or is it missing?

Is it completely nothing or looping nothingness for ever and never?

Figero where are you? What are you missing in your O,

Are you missing the end or the always?

I can see him slouched on that dirty bench wishing it was a boat,

he can’t rock the bench though, it’s screwed into the tarmac.

So Figero purchases a melter, a very hot one, as hot as satan’s lava spa.

He melted the old bench to goo, and though it did float for a minute or two,

It soon hardened up to its stubborn old ways.

So Figero melted other things, he started enjoying these small moments,

A life cycle of hard, soft, hard.

After the bench, he took off a shoe from a passing clerk and tried that,

A quick melt.

Then he pranced over to a nearby bramble, melty melt,

Berries fizz and blob to the singed grass,

He melted post boxes and ice cream van tyres,

Took his melter to the helter-skelter

And swam down the molten slide with fiery felicity.

Figero to this very day,

For all that’s past and all that probably might definitely be,

Is a figure that will never not row through his neither state of fluid frenzy.

Wolf & Bean

If you’ve leaned in close,

I can tell you the story of one humble bean and a dream-riddled wolf.

The wolf’s head emerged from a hole,

Still attached obviously (to the rest of her body)

She smells a spicy bean somewhere.

Bean bounces over, lands on her shoulder,

It snuggles into her ear and whispers: ‘eat me’.

Wolf wasn’t even listening,

She was already vigorously swinging her head to the side,

Trying to munch that pesky bean.

But as hard as she tried, Wolf just couldn’t get her mouth to where her ear felt, They were so close, but not close enough.

So she stopped, sighed, then visualised with all her might

to manifest her mouth to reach her ear.

Manifest. manifest. suddenly yes!

She can taste her ear and hear her taste,

Her head is complete, a complete hairy donut.

But no bean.

‘Beany, that’s me!’ Wolf’s other ear pricks up,

She can hear the squeaky tauntings of crafty beanbean

but all she can see is the top of her head

which has become a never ending furry path, hairs waving in the breeze.

Bean’s voice begins to traverse and transform in the background,

It sounded close to her tail, then distant through a dripping tunnel,

Then gliding above with tousling blossom,

The voice was swirling in from all angles, becoming louder, moving inwards, Bean was booming and Wolf clenched her eyelids and felt the rushing, Pumping, swishing, croaking, sonorous sound come crashing and releasing, Like a wave falling from her chest.

She is aware of her mouth moving and in that instant awoke to her own voice: ‘The beans are Sylvia’s!’

Who’s Sylvia? Wait.. I was just with her she thinks,

I thought I knew her, we had a life, she’s in the tip of my tongue,

She’s slipping away like seaweed through stunned fingers.