Clive Donovan
Summer Festival
My ripe groin seasoned like a musk ox,
hoping to not get poisoned
on the weekend festival’s third day.
Like tadpole heads, or pebbles, or planets,
flat undersides of raindrops snag like a rash
on the bent single skin of borrowed tent.
Watching the fat wet balls swell, I bet, predicting
the next to sprint its jagged course
– speeding like a steroid-doctored snail.
Peering through my prison mesh,
I mind that only yesterday the sun blazed brief
and royal was that respite from the blank grey up above.
My flimsy heart is battered by the reggae space,
the bass lines rip right through the orange green and blue.
The triangles and rhomboids of the village camp vibrate.
Oh glorious razzamatazz of mud!
We are all survivors now in khaki sludge
– slaves to the barbarous timpani.
Tonight I will drink red wine and eat yellow curry,
then dance again in the snake pit,
wild and contagious – the final stretch
with festival girlies garlanded,
spangled in skirts beautiful
like dirty fallen fairies…