The Deaf-Mute Basket Weaver of St Pierre des Ifs

At a modest 1,500 feet
out of his RAF Hawker Typhoon,
Warrant Officer George Martin
chews all the fat he might chew

then spits out the bone
before coming to grief,
considering how he
might bang out of his

cabbage suit and bale
from beneath the Nazi-
occupied sky, praying,
atleast, below the German

beehive for a baleful biscuit*
or bale of straw on which
this erk might crash land,
instead of how he would end

up breaking his leg against a pear
tree’s stolid peg
for a branch–where by break
of dawn he would be espied,

if not revealed, by the village priest
of St Pierre des Ifs, a man of facts,
who, knowing a thing or two
about screensavers, would pin

the british clot within a cell dank
if not dark enough for such a peeping
tortoise** to salt if not plug away and lick
his wounds by dint of a farmer’s barn.

By dint of a farmer’s barn in which Martin
might have, at any moment, to make
like Aladdin and cut a hole in the rug
and make a wish or just pray to God

that the S.S. would–for fact–buy his cover.
Such a load of crap, repurposing himself
like a fresh cow heap of dung into the fairy-
tale soil of a flaming onion story wherein

he played the deaf-mute basket weaver.
Yeah. The deaf-mute basket weaver
who slept next to a Mr Lepetoukhathe’s
extra hen, providing, from time to time,

on the farm an extra hand. On the farm
that happened, after losing some wool
and two wind chimes, to have confined
itself within the reigns of some Nazi-held

turf. The SS using the bulk of Lepe-
toukhathe’s farmhouse for a greenhouse
in which the Jeroboams or chamber pots
would draw up blueprints and flr_plns

in their pabulum and platitudinous
designs of drafts for how they might fly-
swat the Allied invasion […] That the basket
weaver could neither hear or talk of the Teutonic

plans to clout and cuff, to biff and belt
the Ranger’s Rolling Goat of Spacey
Shuftie Kites, Ramrods and the smoke
trails of umbrellas, some tumbling

a football field of somersaults
before giving their Slop Jockey
a two thumbs up to join the D-day
siege for which more than one plaque

bears name of the serial number
matching Martin’s shedded plane.

                              *Biscuit - The original palliasse or straw 
                              mattress. Each was a 3 ft x 3 ft canvas quilted, straw 
                              filled, grey coloured object of which three were issued 
                              to each junior rank in order to soften a wooden slatted 
                              bed frame when laid end-to-end.

                              **Peeping Tortoise - Desperate for a poo. 
                              The nose of the turd is making a break for freedom, so 
                              the airman/woman needs a toilet soon.