Poetry and Photography by Rhys Hughes
The fudge boat
stays afloat
thanks
to the towering
willpower
of sailors
who love fudge.
The anchor is weighed
every day
and brings up sludge
on its flukes
that looks disgusting
but tastes
robustly nourishing.
This is the fudge
in question.
And the fudge in answer?
Well, that’s as
smooth as an exotic dancer
who undulates
her degenerate limbs
for the benefit
of the salty whims
of the shore leave crew,
captain, navigator and mate,
all of whom
love to chew
the hardest fudge that you
might ever imagine:
it sticks their
jaws together
as if their gums are tethered
to each other
by mooring ropes.
But the fudge boat remains.
Once I took a trip
as a passenger on that vessel.
I nestled in the hold
among the tubs of fudge
and I refused to budge
when we finally
reached our destination.
I loved that fudge too much!
The captain kicked me off
his ship
and I was reduced
to begging in the port city
for cheap toffee
because of fudge withdrawal.
It’s a terrible curse
to love fudge that much
and even worse
to be forced to give it up
but I was a poor man,
not a toff,
and couldn’t afford
to overindulge until I bulged.
Woe is me!
But I am resourceful
and never abandon hope
and now
I'm designing
my own strange boat:
a tiramisu submarine.
If it works, it’ll be a dream,
and if it doesn’t
I will drift with the currents
under the waves
towards those flooded caves
where mermaids
act as envoys for
the rulers of fudge enclaves.
I’ll be brave
and attempt to claim asylum
by denying my
species, class and phylum
and fudging
the figures to the best of my
affable ability.
Fudge paradise, here I come!
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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