Tony Martin-Woods

 
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm.
Show us what you are made of,
thrive to compete,
reach for the stars
in England’s global dream.
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm.
Don’t worry if it’s just white tissue
where you have to navigate:
The world’s changing fast,
don’t refrain to adapt
to exciting new terrains.
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm.
We don’t want any
foreign,
faster,
bastard
sperm
to get there,
to get anywhere,
in fact,
before you.
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm,
if you’re idle, you’ll be dead.
I know there is no egg,
but who needs more of them
if technology will soon
allow to replicate,
even in their solitude,
individuals like you
who can’t find a mate?
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm,
it’ll do you good.
You don’t want to be fat,
like me,
or have cholesterol.
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm,
it’s in your DNA
(and in my IDS),
like our sporting traditions,
discipline, skill,
our culture of duty,
glorious league tables,
sacrifice, routine.
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm,
but do not demonstrate!
Do not complain!
Do not affiliate!
Put a brave face
and get on with it!
Don’t believe what anyone says,
just believe in you.
 
Keep moving your tale,
sweet little sperm.
Your welfare depends
on the vibrancy of your motion,
your speed up the stream,
and so does my wage,
and my job,
and the profits of thousands
of savvy businessmen
who trade
with the energy
of the movement
of your tail,
sweet little sperm.
 
 

 

Tony Martin-Woods started to write poetry in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada (Transforming with Poetry), an online publication of political poetry that he edits. Tony is a political and artistic activist who explores the digital component of our lives as a means to support critical human empowerment. He is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his non-literary name. He writes in English and Spanish and is due to publish his first book of poems in 2016.
 
 
www.poesiaindignada.com
www.tonymartinwoods.com
 
 
editor@artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com

 
 
 
Once upon a time
I was a fig.
 
(Yes, a fig)
 
Full of little flowers inside,
Plenty of endless dreams
 
I was born
In a casual tree
of those that nobody grooms,
of those that never gets rain,
of those that drain you to death.
 
Shrivelled,
punished by birds
who picked on my white sweaty sweetness
and left me scarred,
but made me stronger.
 
One day,
an arrogant orange,
of a garden nearby,
called for a meeting of peers
and suggested the idea
of forming a fruital system.
 
(Yes, a fruital system)
 
The rest of fruits agreed.
 
So, the orange stood in the centre,
cause she was too tangy to spin.
 
Everyone else
came forward
in a perfect queue
that started to curl
coiling outwards
around the self-proclaimed star.
 
The apple, the peach, the pear,
the lemon and even the grape
found quickly a place
in a galaxy they called
“The Juicy Way”.
 
They all looked so lush,
immaculate,
divine,
waitrosy,
as they floated
in their glorious ether
of mechanically smooth subjects.
 
I want a place in this system,
I said,
I want to be an aster too,
I deserve to be there,
rotating
in harmony
with you.
 
The apple and some others
started to giggle
with patronising
swivel-eye disdain.
 
I am sorry my love,
said the eloquent
smily
sunny leader,
but this is a fruital system
where everything works
out of our own
 
combined
 
accord.
 
Everyone wins,
 
everyone contributes.
 
The magnetic fields
of our respective masses
are already balanced.
 
that is why we levitate up here,
so graciously.
 
If we take you on,
we will have to open the floodgates
of the universe.
 
How many more fruits
could we feasibly accommodate?
 
So, after this rational rejection,
I had no choice,
but to become
a zero-hours planet,
also known as a comet.
 
(Yes, a comet)
 
So now,
I am a wrinkly wild comet
full of odd rugged cracks.
I am not round,
not even pear shaped,
I have no clouds,
no satellites,
no green bits,
no rings of dust,
no frozen lakes of gas…
 
but I don’t give a shit..
 
I am the cock of the universe,
planets fear my freedom,
no one knows my trajectory,
it is hard to land on my surface,
I come and go as I please.
 
If the calculating master of creation
messes about with my equations
I may just crash on him,
or in one of his gardenly planets.
 
Who knows?
 
If some shepherds see my tale,
flying in the night
in the skies in winter,
they may grant me godly status
an invent a religion
at my place of collision.
 
Who knows?
 
I have nothing to lose.
 
I am a wrinkly wild comet,
I am a pirate in an orderly show of stars
who learnt their moves
in the youtube version
of the Book of Genesis.
 
Unlike them,
I am my own choreographer.
 
Only infinite heavens will tell you
what I am made of!
 
Simple!
 
Watch me!
 
As I fly!
 
Bye!
 
 

 

Tony Martin-Woods started to write poetry in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada (Transforming with Poetry), an online publication of political poetry that he edits. Tony is a political and artistic activist who explores the digital component of our lives as a means to support critical human empowerment. He is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his non-literary name. He writes in English and Spanish and is due to publish his first book of poems in 2016.
 
 
www.poesiaindignada.com
www.tonymartinwoods.com
 
 
editor@artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com