Doctor Nikola, by Simon Williams

Illustration from Doctor Nikola (Guy Newell Boothby), by Stanley Llewellyn Wood (Britain) 1896

Doctor Nikola

Never trust a man whose tie is the colour of his shirt;
half-priest, half-beau with monstrous lapels.
That should show you to his first deception,
but then, the olive eyes straight back at you
duplicate my feline own and are as passionless.
What do you think the red river is behind;
no art nouveaux wallpaper, no reflection.

What should tell you ‘Never bank with this man’
is the fur coat, a dozen foxes shot to make it
and tailored rough as a trapper’s on his thin frame.
He’s not what he appears, this one, no turn
to his mouth, no attention to his hair and who has
his portrait drawn with a black cat pressing down
his shoulder, paws together, like a trained hound?

Simon Williams

Simon Williams (www.simonwilliams.info) has been writing since his teens, when he was mentored at university by Roger McGough and Pete Morgan. His first collection was published in 1981. Since then, he has had eight further collections, his latest being The Magpie Almanack (www.simonwilliams.info) from Vole, published December 2020. Simon was elected The Bard of Exeter in 2013, founded the large-format magazine, The Broadsheet and co-published the PLAY anthology, in memory of his young grandson, in 2018. About a year ago he developed a one-man poetry show, Cosmic Latte, centred on astronomy, animals and sub-atomic particles. One day, he hopes to be able to perform it.