OPEN SECRET

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Robert Frost

Post-lockdown in Guernsey, Open Mic poetry sessions have recommenced. 
Each month those who choose to participate have the option to read poems on an agreed theme. 

This month’s theme is ‘Secrets’ and promises to reveal more than a few.
I decided to indulge my inner surrealist with the poem below.

The event takes place at The Fermain Tavern on the outskirts of St Peter Port on Thursday 20th August at 8pm. 

SECRET BUS-STOP

There is a secret bus-stop where secret buses stop.

The buses carry secrets and on and off they hop.

While skeletons, escaped from cupboards, rattle-shake their bones,

question marks, round-shouldered, whisper low on mobile phones.

Wild theories of conspiracy just sit there getting bigger,

we’re told the name of who’s been shot but not who pulled the trigger.

At secret bus-stops, under wraps, the secrecy’s maintained:

all on the QT, undisclosed, no mystery explained.

There’s no divulgence, all’s hush-hush, mysteriously hid:

whatever happened, didn’t happen, happened off the grid.

It’s confidential, under wraps, redacted, sealed away.

The less one knows, the less one crows, the less one has to pay.

At secret bus-stops, secretly, the secret buses stop.

The buses carry secrets and on and off they hop.

Encripted, esoteric, Kabbalistic and arcane,

the darkest secrets can withstand a whispering campaign.

The buses come, the buses go, all surreptitiously, 

the drivers smile complacently, the truth won’t set them free:

Omerta baby, zip the lip, for pity’s sake keep shtum,

just look away, say nothing, if someone asks, play dumb.

No one took part, no one’s to blame and, even if they were,

bland looks look like the blanks in an abandoned questionnaire.

The buses leave, buses arrive, disgorge and then reload.

Somewhere is stashed a time-table that’s written down in code. 

The routes the secret buses take are always ill-defined:

there is no way to check on them and not one cheque is signed.

At secret bus-stops secrets hide, like creatures of the deep,

appearing, momentarily, out at the edge of sleep.

We call them nightmares, thresh around, in panic scream and wake

convinced their coils encircle us but everything is fake.

Each secret is an octopus, evasive and covert.

Best turn a blind eye, step away, avoid potential hurt.

With suffocating tentacles that crush the living breath,

it is a tale, unreadable, whose letters may spell death.

The plot is labyrinthine, far, far darker than you think.
Both octopus and writer conceal themselves with ink.