The Caudal Appendage and Haemorrhoids
(tried a hot bath, more fibre, taking my overdue books back to the library. Nothing has worked, and it's been two days now … )

Oh, “where the sun don't shine” -
Overdue, and a terrible fine!
Avoid all haemorrhoidal bleeding –
Take your books back after reading;
Take them back, renew your loan!

A lump emerged, as big as the bone
That protrudes at the base of my spine,
Rendering me supine,
With knees aloft, wide apart,
And now it hurts to fart -
More than hitherto known;
A lump as big as my tailbone -
With blood, so bright, almost pink;
A lump the size of the missing link -
The size of the bone where a primate’s tail
Had tethered itself to a hay bale,
Rather than climb
Beyond the time
When we evolved and borrowed books.
The monkey’s hay bale looks
So comfortable in my mind
(My books were late and I was fined),
Extinction’s healing void
Would surely soothe my haemorrhoid
(Dodos flying, never landing,
Library fines are still outstanding) …

If I sat on extinction’s bale,
I know that, soon, like the tail
That evolution docked,
My coccyx - usually easily knocked,
Usually sour and petrified,
And routinely made to hide
Beneath my pants, under a label -
Would loosen and be able
To swish and ripple gracefully ...
Let something else evolve, not me:
A bookish, thrombotic droid,
Emerging in time, like a haemorrhoid -
Straddling the dolphin's fin.
Insert a finger, pop me back in:
Let me sit on this bale -
My brain like the bone where a primate’s tail
Once wagged,
As its hands dragged
On the floor;
Leave me behind, my bottom is sore.

With a stern “shush!” in the Reading Room,
I see another haemorrhoid loom,
Like a comet, with a tail of sparks,
And the mildew of studious bite marks
On the plastic arms of my glasses,
Glistens beneath my hair, as it passes:
I study for what - a Distinction?
And all I crave is extinction ...

Make me endangered, then make me gone;
The tail I had, like the neck of a swan,
Fell on its wings, grew shorter,
Then dived for something under the water –
Extended deep, then dissolved;
And so my body evolved
Without a tail – without grace –
And now I feel compelled to chase
Another morsel of sinking bread:
Let me dissolve in the river bed;
No more a biped, nor erect,
No longer sore, no longer pecked
By my coccyx, madly,
Under a label, cut out badly,
So the jagged washing instructions remain
To prickle and scratch … oh, let me crane
My neck to chase the sinking bread:
Let me dissolve in the river bed.

The bale looks soft, but might its hay
Scratch me in a similar way
To how the label does now?
I crave extinction, but exactly how,
Where I sit – and what on –
Will make the difference when I am gone:
Luxuriously extinct –
When my tender coccyx has slinked
Away from the base of my spine,
I will find a comfortable place to recline …

Endangered, in limbo, extinct, limber!
Felling the fins of sharks – timber!
I kneel in the path of the toppling fin,
Hoping the impact will pop me back in –
As the fin spanks my rear end;
Where the fin had stood, light will descend
And seedling fish will thrive.

Oh, why did my tail not survive?
Ka Cox, the girlfriend of Rupert Brooke,
Had a coccyx that people mistook
For a tail – it hung so loosely;
And while she secretly prayed profusely
That her tail would someday shrivel, the poet
Secretly wished his muse could grow it,
For he knew its power;
And he climbed to the top of the library tower
In Cambridge, by the River Cam,
And shouted to Ka: “From where I am,
I can see the tails in the city of Ely,
But none are as loose, none swish freely –
They climb the cathedral like vines!”
He returned his books and paid his fines …
Gotta go kak, got gut rot!
The vicarious kicks,
That he got
From Ka Cox’s coccyx,
Are in taste quite poor –
Leave me behind, my bottom is sore.

A shower curtain of sharks,
A tea cosy T-Rex;
The mildew of studious bite marks
On the plastic arms of my specs,
Glistens beneath my hair - shines through;
And the ice axe, placed adjacent to
The Yeti's footprint, for scale,
Was once a twirling, limber tail ...
But no more.
Leave me behind, my bottom is sore.

So flimsy now, without their fins,
A shower curtain of sharks begins
To hug my back, as I stay kneeling –
Its clinging transparency revealing
The gargoyle of my coccyx, behind.
Naked and shampoo-blind,
I long to hear the clatter of rings
Sliding along, as extinction slings
The shower curtain aside;
And the ligature applied
To my haemorrhoid - tied tightly -
Would also be used to strangle me,
And when we drop off, the world will be raw …
Leave me behind, my bottom is sore.

Where the sun don’t shine, it will set,
And black salubrious sweat
Will flow again, beneath the pleats
In my anus; and Keats
Should have made the distinction:
“Fully in love with easeful extinction
Is greater than half, with death, it seems … ”
Tell me the meanings of my dreams,
And why Darwin and Freud –
So anally retentive –
Never pondered the haemorrhoid:
How it provides an incentive
To be extinct;
For these two factors are linked,
Like the coccyx and the tail …
An ode to Florence Nightingale -
The wounded in war;
Leave me behind, my bottom is sore.