THE ME I AM

I laugh
with a dead man’s laugh
(a man I never knew)  

my grandfather’s laughter
flowering like Springtime
blossoming in my mouth

not listening to the years
Time joins the dots
Painting by Numbers

I see
with my mother’s eyes
the world

stealing into my mind
become music
anything it chooses

Time
joins the dots
Painting by numbers

this gesture
is my big sisters
gathering me

up into her
nearness
tenderness

Time
joins the dots
Painting by Numbers

my father’s love
beats in my heart
sings in everything

it touches
amuses me to see
how I am

all those
others
as well as me

Time joins
the dots
Painting by Numbers

STAIRWAY

sound
staining the air with
music

the air
turned to music
staining the soul

armies of music
invading
the land of the ear

my ears
stealing from the air
diaphanous music

the record
writng music
on the air

the music
lost
in itself

sound sculpts
music
out of the air

music
the invisible shape
of sound

"I like the way
the music swims towards me
through the air!"

my little one
afraid of records
"...'cos of the ghosts of the voices..."

the ghosts of voices
trapped
forever in shellac

*

My little girl used to like STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN and she used to plead with me again and again to "play lady...play lady!" and that's where this bunch of haiku on the subject of music started their journey into being.

LOSING ONE'S SELF

she's only
being 3
for the last three days

she wakes
in the pitch
black of night

cries out because
she can not see
herself

"I've lost me...
. . .I've
lost me!"

the candle comforts her
gives her her self
back again

I stroke her hair.
"Shhhh...shhhh...
I'm here!"

sleep
takes her
away from me

In the morning
she laughs
to see Daddy

asleep beside her
she strokes my hair.
"Shhhh....shhhh...I'm here!"

!WAKEY WAKEY!
( for Maureen )

Every morning I
delighted in her

jumping into her skin
eager to begin

being her
all over again.

New to her self
as if she had only been

minted that very minute
her own self invented.

Touching the world
with her sense of self

chasing after dust motes
trying to clutch sunlight

creeping up on a honeysuckle's
scent

snatching at music
in the air

begging the world
to come out to play.

*

"!Wakey...wakey!" is what Tilly would greet me with rather than I her...she was always wakey wakey...I...a poor tired Dad...attempting and usually failing to keep up with her perpetual ball of energy and non-stop soaking up of the world through the emotional osmosis of being a 3 year old girl.

WE ARE EACH OTHER

I slip into
your gestures
as if

they were my own
the ones
I loved

adopt that
certain tone
that could only mean

Brian and
that
"Alright...Bud!"

your voice
walks
inside my head

I listen to
the footsteps
of everything you say

here I adopt your smile
use it as
you would do

the kindness
in your eyes
reflected now in mine

see sometimes
even I
forget your death

by becoming
you
bit by bit

you live inside me now
and we still exist
as brother to brother

the one
grown into
the other

outside a new day
blossoms
into being

walk with me as one
my eyes will see
for you

a time that can be
never known
by you

I tell the dawn your name
this is
my brother

GETTING 22

A  glance
told me all

I needed to
know.

The room had been
Chandlerised.

A bishop was kicking a hole
in a stained glass window

whilst eating a pearl onion
on a banana split

but not the angel cake 'cos
it had a tarantula on it.

Everywhere there were
kangaroos in dinner jackets.

Somehow Raymond's words
had escaped the constructs

of the language
&

similes and metaphors
had become real

realer than real.

I kept walking
in ordinary prose

each footstep
a boring report.

trying not to break
into a metaphor

or smile in simile
or anything similar.

I made it to
the last page

and dived into the dark hole
that opened at my feet

into
THE END.

I had managed to make it
through these mean pages

( it's hard being a linguistic
private **** in one's mind )

when one is falling
asleep and

the Chandler
( the studied text )

falls out of
the too tired hand

but oh no
I had somehow entered

the realms of one
Dashiell Hammett.

Me...I  
felt like somebody

"...had taken the lid off life

let me see
the works."

"The problem with putting..."
( I thought to myself )
"...two and two together..."

"...is that sometimes you
get four

& sometimes you get
twenty two."

*

Sometimes study and sleep don't mix and I tell myself: "If you don't leave, I'll get somebody who will." These were just some of the quotes from Mr. C and Mr. H that were floating about in the old noggin as sleep and study fought to a stalemate for the mind of this poor student.

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

“He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him see the works.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."--Farewell, My Lovely (Chapter 13)

“He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.”
--Farewell, My Lovely (Chapter 1)

“There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

NOBODY HOME. . .

I'm afraid I
am not
myself today

I'm
someone else
entirely

a stranger
unknown
to me

My reflection
steps out of
the mirror

"Well, there you are..."
it grins
"...in you go!"

The mirror
closes
behind me

a world
of glass
freckled with time

my shadow
abandons
me

now that it has become
a person
in its own right

struts about
on the sunny side of the street
pretends not to know me when we meet

even my imaginary friend
refuses to talk me
acts as if I don't exist

*

My father and my brother both died recently and for two years I wandered in a limbo of grief...trying to keep going and pretend I was still me...this is what that feeling felt like.