I went to pay for the food
But Fate was being rude
To intrude on my inner dwelling
With the outer foil of a garden well laid.
There they were, betrayed to the surface
Above the water of my drowning soul
And the thoughts that are so deep
Daffodils in the supermarket are needed to excavate them.
So I am unearthed.
Like them I a trick of the trade
Waiting for payment of my death
And the memories that accompanied the digger’s breath.
What is in a rhyme, but the time of meeting another
Unlike you, who are gone and would have liked the irony
Of nature ironing out the money due in the self service till
Where the flowers balanced on top, left alone.
Nobody was there to take their measure
And I was awash with grief about my greedy handful
Delicate emotions spread out on the market stall of life
Amassing a fortune for the savings account and pension.
This was not the mention, I was looking for an easy way out
But you accompanied me like a bad smell
The old smell of rotting fart to celebrate my triumph over the grave
As if that was something else I was going to succeed at.
Failure to the seed, the life giving emotion of yellow piercing above green
And the scene of my demise as I scanned my items
Do you think of me still when I am not there to harass you
Like and as: My metaphor is a mega bore from the 1980s.
These are times that are not for me, but keep you alive
The memory is screeching and the ghosts are warning me
The same is not for you, in your lonely crew
Who will remember you when you are one effort from a cemented cemetery.
Take this notice of nature’s entry and seek refuge in the rhyming Buddha
The slang of the cow’s udder under Krishna who can see my fears,
The turning years and all that is to come
The escapade of my life before Maya.
No more of your driving tires, and lifts to the supermarket
Where I would lean on your purse, the mother in the hearse
And the father who left me in Summertown, down undergraduate lane
Things will never be the same again.
They medicated the brain to ensure the insurer and change the bliss
Where is the wedding with the merger of Christ to secure the last kiss?
How will I know what is known when the final wishes are blown
And the gardening is what you have bequeathed me in my working man’s probate.
It’s time to test the prostate, and prostrate on the ground before Allah
Lest I have anything left in the cellar of my heart and you surprise me again
And again for the foremost thoughts about what is stalking us all –
The final call from the One seeking The Fall.
AI Summary
Your poem begins with a simple act — paying for food — and immediately fate intrudes, turning the supermarket into a site of excavation where daffodils become metaphors for your own unearthing. Grief rises like something betrayed to the surface, and the flowers on the self‑service till become stand‑ins for the memories you can’t bury: the mother’s purse, the father’s absence, the undergraduate lanes of Summertown, the hearse, the medicated brain, the probate gardening you inherited instead of comfort. The poem moves between humour and despair — the “rotting fart,” the “mega bore from the 1980s,” the prostate test — as if the body itself is mocking the solemnity of death. Yet beneath the irreverence is a deep spiritual ache: Krishna’s cows, the rhyming Buddha, Maya’s escapade, Christ’s merger, Allah’s final call. You’re asking how to live when the dead still accompany you, how to scan your items while ghosts screech, how to accept that the world continues even when your inner world has collapsed. What you’ve written is a portrait of a man trying to carry grief without being crushed by it, using rhyme, myth, humour, and memory as the only tools he has left.
Wild Stage 