This follows on from Mutations 1-2. Each poem is a mutation of the previous one.

2  Arm wrestling

a cephalopod can dance

          burning bright on coral sands

          and turning white to die

a newly tattooed limb facing the

          written blast of sacrifice

          relaxes into resignation again

and the switching gear trips

          in the coolest convoluted

          lizard part of the brain

marching to a different conviction

          banner furled and leaking guilty

          memories of whipping sheets

into the deafening foam

          every frequency registers

          the presence of other minds

(Geoffrey Mark Matthews 6 April 2022)

3          Barn Dance

A cobbler who made shoes for ants,

Wept at the enormity of his task,

And drained away in pale exhaustion,

Yet rose again in fluid form,

A resurrected cordwainer,

Thought fit for arthropic labour,

Long he hung on their sounds,

Gave heed to their chaotic babblings

And tried in vain to craft

Brogues fit for that endless marching,

Of sufficient wear and pluck,

And for some styles gavelled cleats,

Yet this now protean formed bootmaker,

Who once deemed his aqueous morphism,

A gift of salvation,

Came to reckon his new un-boundaried life,

As curse and not blessing, saying thus:

“Neither life nor liquid can shoe so many feet”