M. Cloture-Assis

NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 8

Today were were handed the biggest challenge of the month yet, the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects” exercise. You can read the full detail here.

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M. Cloture-Assis rode into town at Easter, not on a donkey, but astride a bobbo; an old mare he stole from up north.

In his country seat stable, from which the horse had not so much bolted as decayed from within, he painted the nag a different colour.

How he loved to trot around with his fresh-faced filly from the North Downs.
His pale blue silks’ sleeves rolled up to just below his pen-pushing biceps as his nightmare echoed its clip-clop on the marble tiles.

Strapped tightly to the chest of his saddle he kept the attaché case in which he housed his morals.
A valise so elephantine, said pachyderm could easily hibernate among the inkless fata morgana of ethics and be lost forever to time’s memory.

The taste of its faux leather filled the noses of his former colleagues with authentic tanned revulsion.

Cold and clammy were the pallid fleshed fingers that grasped the clasp handle of his case. Long cold cadavers were clothed in more charisma than he could conjure.

Daily, he strolled the Westminster corridors of power swaggering with affected affection for his fellow man and woman; just them mind.

He felt for nothing, he felt nothing, he wanted for nothing and wanted everything.

Deep in the doldrums of his soul beat the steady rhythm of a worm’s heart. Turning with each tempo change, turning, ever turning his back of the previous song for which, the stone heart kept time; so long as the karaoke singer received his pay.

Across his back, where no one could see, he tattooed his own motto:

Nous sommes tous là dedans.

He once disrobed and asked me, “What do you think Mr P?”

“Je ne pense pa que” I batted back “it’s not for me”.

It was only then that I realised that it was the horse talking, as the repugnant aroma of bovine dung swam into my nostrils. At least he had a panache for perfume that was truthful.

How I loathed to look in his eyes! I swear, every time I did two puppies died.

I once saw him cry. There was only dead sea emotion in his rock salt tears.

The memory of his rise to fame still burns in me like a cold grate hearth.

There he stood, atop St. Paul’s.
The wavering crowd below spied him, “save us they called”.
Raising himself on high he balled, “One day, all of this will be mine. Err, I mean ours” and his voice echoed off Oxford, London and Blackpool towers.

Where it fell on the cauliflower deaf ears of the fish-filleted hoi polloi, who hailed him “Fillius Populi”

The last time I saw M. Cloture-Assis, he was as giddy as a kipper.
He had abandoned his pony for a Hippo in a blue polka dot bikini.
He said it was the only way to travel to avoid the Woke Police.

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