the emptying air.

Scheherazade

Dumb was as good as dead;

better to utter.

Inside a bottle, a genie.

Abracadabra.

Words were a silver thread

stitching the night.

The first story I said

led to the light.

Fact was in black and white;

fiction was colour.

Inside a dragon, a jewel.

Abracadabra.

A magic carpet took flight,

bearing a girl.

The hand of a Queen shut tight

over a pearl.

Imagination was world;

clever to chatter.

Inside a she-mule, a princess.

Abracadabra.

A golden sword was hurled

into a cloud.

A dead woman unfurled

out of a shroud.

A fable spoken aloud

kindled another.

Inside a virgin, a lover.

Abracadabra.

Forty thieves in a crowd,

bearded and bold.

A lamp rubbed by a lad

turning to gold.

Talking lips don’t grow cold;

babble and jabber.

Inside a beehive, a fortune.

Abracadabra.

What was lost was held

inside a tale.

The tall stories I told

utterly real.

Inside a marriage, a gaol;

better to vanish.

Inside a mirror, an ogre;

better to banish.

A thousand and one tales;

weeping and laughter.

Only the silent fail.

Abracadabra.

Big Ask

What was it Sisyphus pushed up the hill?

I wouldn’t call it a rock.

Will you solemnly swear on the Bible?

I couldn’t swear on a book.

With which piece did you capture the castle?

I shouldn’t hazard a rook.

When did the President give you the date?

Nothing to do with Barack!

Were 1200 targets marked on a chart?

Nothing was circled in black.

On what was the prisoner stripped and stretched?

Nothing resembling a rack.

Guantánamo Bay – how many detained?

How many grains in a sack?

Extraordinary Rendition – give me some names.

How many cards in a pack?

Sexing the Dossier – name of the game?

Poker. Gin Rummy. Blackjack.

Who planned the deployment of shock and awe?

I didn’t back the attack.

Inside the Mosque, please describe what you saw.

I couldn’t see through the smoke.

Your estimate of the cost of the War?

I had no brief to keep track.

Where was Saddam when they found him at last?

Maybe holed under a shack.

What happened to him once they’d kicked his ass?

Maybe he swung from the neck.

The WMD … you found the stash?

Well, maybe not in Iraq.

Ariel

Where the bee sucks,

neonicotinoid insecticides

in a cowslip’s bell lie,

in fields purple with lavender,

yellow with rape,

and on the sunflower’s upturned face;

on land monotonous with cereals and grain,

merrily,

merrily;

sour in the soil,

sheathing the seed, systemic

in the plants and crops,

the million acres to be ploughed,

seething in the orchards now,

under the blossom

that hangs

on the bough.

Politics

How it makes your face a stone

that aches to weep, your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, your tongue

an iron latch with no door; your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet the left, your laugh

a dry leaf twitching in the wind, your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, the words on your lips dice