Toy Improv Play | Gerry Shepherd

Ah Ha, I Found Pete in a Toy Box

I had porridge for breakfast. I wore a bow tie with a map of the Martian canals.
There are no Martian canals; my bow tie was a frog and it hopped away.
While I was eating, two giraffes entered the floating room (I have the lily pad blues!).
One of the giraffes was carrying a smoking hat, the other a giant apricot.
The stone of the apricot had been removed and replaced by an embryonic neutron star.
The neutron star was orbiting a black hole – they are like brother and sister.
At the end of the world time reverses and we all have a chance to go sdrawkcab.
I am wearing a red dress with pink rose petals glued to it.

I am thinking of the future like a miner thinks of a coal dust covered cheese sandwich.
An Egyptian mummy dressed as a ballerina pulls the chain and then dances out of the toilet.
Three old ladies hadn’t reached the finish line so they couldn’t start the race.
An old man stumbles towards the start pulling a kite – the kite had grown hands.
One hand was holding the skeleton of a saintly typewriter from which issued spirit words.
These would be read by a dog headed judge singing to himself on a playground swing.
 The playground was otherwise empty as all the children had either grown up or grown down.
Venus kicks Mars and Mars kicks me; I haven’t got anyone to kick.

I photograph myself photographing myself; several pencils were sticking out of a Plasticine ox.
A veteran of the war at Woodstock doesn’t care if he paranoid as the world is a confectionery.
A senior citizen refuses the sweet offered by a young girl standing on a bass drum.
Meanwhile six hooded figures walk by, each holding a candle, only one of which was lit.
The room looked like a mangrove swamp with neon signs for trees and fish in Wellingtons.
A portrait painting on a sniggering wall hiccups; the man with hair on his hat turns round.
Behind him the secret cupboard smells of fish; who cares if the ocean is a foreign language.
I say goodbye to the manatee king using seaweed words – I forget the full stop, ha ha.

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Improvisation A1

Stanza One

I thought I had baked a dream in a cake
It had risen like a frog’s head
Blowing a trumpet in an incandescent light bulb
The bulb cracked like winter water
I saw the reflection of the back of my head
I had a Pompeii hat and Herculaneum earrings
Vesuvius jumped upon a kangaroo paw
A cathedral bell winked at a weathered gargoyle
The rain was knitting a jumper I would never wear
As the sun comes out like a bicycle in a muddy field
I dip my pen in the Somme trenches
And draw with hate on a tranquil sky
A bird the size of a coal fired power station perched on a paper clip
Will read the paper like a razor blade
A werewolf barber and a vampire tailor
Sitting in a hospital for lost socks
The lost boys were hidden in rubber gloves
Hanging from the comb of a bald man
I held my head as if it was a seashell
I heard the sound of a dried up sea.

Stanza Two

I thought I had said a prayer in a toffee wrapper
The priestess dressed in the dead leaves of Spring
With a fire in a water bottle and a puddle in a grate
I feel the warmth of space rocket footprints
As I follow a water rat executioner along a poor man’s artery
A picture of beggar veins huddled in a wren’s nest
My a hair a woodland screaming like a torn cloth
A blind painter hiding from the sound of his own name
His reflection says his name backwards
Smoke issues from a disappearing statue
A house on caterpillar tracks in a railway tunnel
Where the sun emerges from a fishnet stocking
To meet a moon goddess made from mouse cheese
A trap that catches thoughts with dreams
A nightmare in a free flowering rain
Water in the shape of a sailing boat
The horizon a rock vein in a gold wall
Hope like a smoking top hat
Bends in a wind tunnel of war
Like features that fight across an ageing face

Stanza Three

I thought I had found a bat in a ball cave

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Micro-Play 1

A sparsely furnished room, the heavily curtained window faces east. A worn faux leather sofa in a subdued orange, resplendent in the stains of a personal history; a chair in a similar material and in a similar condition; a fold up table, pushed into the corner and a coffee table pulled into the centre. Although close to midday there is not enough light to see clearly, with more light coming through the partially opened door than issuing through the floral patterned window.

A large man with bushy beard and bushy eyebrows coughs as he enters the room, looks round as if he is not sure if this is the right room and promptly leaves again.

Another man, just as tall but much thinner comes in quickly, drops a newspaper several days old on the coffee table and goes out with equal haste.

A little plump lady languidly enters, sits on the slightly less worn side of the sofa, takes out a comb from her handbag and combs her hair. After replacing the comb she gets up and walks out, saying something to herself that no one hears.

Immediately afterwards a small boy runs in, circles the sofa one way and circles the chair the other. He then runs out, getting his foot caught in a raised piece of carpet and almost tripping up as he does so.

An attractive girl enters, glances at her reflection in an ornate mirror over the Victorian fireplace and then sits in the chair with a cultivated elegance. She crosses and uncrosses her legs before standing up abruptly and after hesitantly picking up an object from the table and placing it in her pocket she leaves.

Rain can be heard falling outside and a clock chimes twelve times in another room.

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The Wait

The Wait (Man House Variant)

The wall has a large mouth
And is chewing gum
The eye in the roof looks up
The rain comes down

A giraffe climbs a step ladder and
An elephant climbs inside a cushion

The thatch is wearing a wig
Small people climb down the creepered wall
Like tears
Hahaha, large hands grasp sky like trees
As all shapes are coloured blue or green

A snake hides in a hose pipe
A kite pulls on a piece of string
The listener turns the page

While a poet holds a hod of bricks
And the bricklayer writes verse

The Wait (House Man Variant)

Specks on a bare wall
I make a crane with my Meccano hands
The chimney (bent like a broken promise) coughs

I imagine a desert in a soup bowl
The clock has four hands

Flashes of light in a bare sky
I write with lengths of licorice
A dead musician turns the music up

The chimney (straight like a laying down lie) sighs

The Wait (In A Doctor’s Surgery)

Speech like sludge
I poke mud out of my third eye
The carpet coughs
The mumbles continue from an ancestral mouth

Music like a spider's web
The chair taps it's foot
To the heartbeat of a million men

A hand emerges from the wall
And I shake it

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©2023 Gerry Shepherd
All rights reserved

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Gerry Shepherd…

…frequently contributes art to The BeZine.

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The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins

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