Rex
purveyor of tall tales &
veteran of Gallipoli, the
Western Front. carpenter
& model maker, smoker
of ‘roll-yr-owns’, thin
as a rake, he grew
only asparagus for an anaemic
looking wife who loved the races
& left him & his wheezing
in the sun room complaining
bitterly in the middle of a
well worn yarn about a
corporal who’d ‘blew his guts
out’ on a grenade rather
than let it kill the recruits
he was instructing, when it fell.
above him a stuffed canary
Tommie, who ‘used to peck
yr fingers – sing all day.’
John O’Connor