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I am a persona, I would say; a caricature by Cruikshank

Of myself. Like a comedian, I’ve contrived my role.

So I am not aiming for authenticity, more, exaggeration.

Braggadocio. Something out of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Made partly from my own clay, but shaped by imagination;

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Blessed as well with the gift of multitasking, from the mouse

And the keyboard to the kitchen and the cutting-board,

I am a Jack-of-all-Trades – and there’s a good and a bad side

To that, as with many things in life. It’s good to have

An array of skills, a habit of rotation:

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It gives you the advantage of replenishment.

Rotation, from an artist’s point-of-view, allows one

Aspect of the work to lie fallow for a spell.

So my persona manifests a medley of accomplishments

Proving multi-sided, like some cubist picture may.

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I am a persona drained of energy however, withering, I feel,

Like the sad sunflower whose roots can find no wet.

Age is not to blame, though it may be a contributing factor.

I am a persona, but the drought, the drought is

Having an effect now that the hosepipe ban has come in.

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Cracks in hardened fields threaten the wheat.

Anything left out goes off. I find it hard to keep awake

In the day, but have to endure a wakeful night.

Skinny and stand-offish clouds dawdle across the sky.

It’s baking hot between the shadows of walls or trees.

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The parks have gone yellow. It is even worse in Africa

Or anywhere further South. This drought has gone on for so long

That the situation is somehow drained of suspense.

One might expect an absence of rain maybe every third year,

But now it’s so dry it has to be the Rothschilds messing us up

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So as to take advantage of the desiccated result.

Don’t they cause an eruption here, engineer a tsunami somewhere else,

Because all they think of is the profit to be had from a catastrophe?

Capital encourages expertise in this one-track pony vein.

Still, a more mixed portfolio like mine

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Has both its advantages and its drawbacks, I maintain,

Not so much in the master-of-none variety.

That juggling can all be going smoothly. It is just that

There are too many aspects to me, too many

Nooks and arbours, all of them equally thirsty.

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Out of our clay the drought is making stone.

What leaves there are prove small and hard.

I am becoming gnarled, even my stomach which

Is overlarge will end up shrunk eventually:

A bright side to the business as without a stitch

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I’m ashamed to look in the glass. Caricature by Cruikshank,

I now appear more Jewish than my grandpa.

Portly, to put it mildly. Bald, but with a weathered look

Hopefully, from soaking up the D blazing down on me,

As I ration out one or two cans to a thirsty plot

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While cruising away at the housework as well

And keeping abreast of the hoovering and all. However,

Frittered-away resolve disintegrates into there being

Too many tasks to give any one of them its due attention.

Being a dilettante should sanction that variety

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Which one may need to experience deeply within

In order to renew oneself, but now it feels as if

Too little time’s left to keep up this hopping about,

While the springs of my inspiration seem to have dried up.

So that I am reduced to searching among old scraps

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Being as long in the tooth as I am, while data banks go on

Eating up trillions of acres and billions in cash

And water in gallons and gallons, weakening our taps,

Just so as we can all stash away our overstated opinions

On Facebook or X. But at what cost, we now begin to ask.

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Summer should be our reward, not a visitation

By the Lord of His wrath, ironically applied –

Or is this just the Almighty’s idea of a joke?

Three drops and after that, nothing. The rain withheld

As events turn into myth, but weren’t they myth from the start?

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I am a montage masquerading as a harlequin,

A patchwork quilt my everyday attire

Which tells you nowt about the state of my underwear.

I seek out statues isolated on their plinths

In drought-hardened parks, presiding over our despair.

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All they are good for now is their shadows

These may well offer respite at least from the sun

Which grudges us the few drops morning tried to squeeze

From a view of tantalizing cloud.

What can you do or say to an obstinate shroud?

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But the worst of it is, the drought gets all the way

Into you, and ideation dries up too.

Thoughts evaporate. Who would have thought

That you needed to refrigerate thought?

Each glazed eye stares at the screened panorama

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Of palace intrigues, predictable drama

Of politics, catastrophes happening elsewhere,

While less and less is left in the reservoir.

Migrants flooding in, just about the wettest thing

Suggested underneath remorseless blue.

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Because of the ban I must water one can at a time,

Birds croak as if they were thirsty. The plants are parched,

And the soul, the soul is parched as well.

But mention the soul and you enter some balderdash

And twaddle territory. Let’s get back to the pragmatic sphere.

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I am a persona, if you chance upon me lounging here,

Louche as they come, witnessing the enfeeblement of an empire

While trying to inject a little humour into the situation,

I will tell you that I got here on my own dime.

I want to teeter between nonsense and presence.

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Balancing these on my scales. That place in between

Abstraction and figuration, chance and deliberation,

Where you are not quite sure just why you got here.

That place is for me. I’ll wobble on one leg.

A harlequin who’s balanced on a powder-keg:

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Restless even while I dream, never quite settling down

To a single way of going about things; colourful, to be fair,

Amid the crass conformity stereotypical of our time,

Caps or hoodies, sneakers and a drab but casual look

As commonplace today as top hats and umbrellas were

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To yesterday’s impressionists. Meanwhile our world

Gets more and more like a real life gangster movie

Watched in a curtained room in the afternoon

Because it’s just too hot to set off down the street:

A pavement baking white stretching ahead like a threat.

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