HER FIRST AUTUMN

I watch her
try to capture
things in words

her first Autumn
her eyes try to accommodate
what her mind sees

"The Autumn
is rusting
the trees!"

PASSING STRANGE

Rose, arose & having risen:
...was angry.

'You never call me
by my name

only love & darling.'

'A rose by any other name
would smell as sweet! '
I quoted.

'That's neat! '
she sweetly smiled.

'That's Shakespeare! '
I whispered in her ear

and kissed her
sweet sweet smile.

(Each reflected in the other's eye) .

'Oh, quote me that kiss again! '
she sighed.

'How I do love thee...! '
I cried.

'...let me count the kisses! '
she replied.

My lovely darling

Rose.

*

PASSING STRANGE is from Shakespeare's Othello...when the big guy tells his tales to Dessie and she finds them not only strange but...passing strange. I always thought of a series of inns along a journey...the first was the Ye Olde Strange Inn...then the next one was Ye Really Weirdy Strange Inn...and then surpassing all that... Ye Olde Passing Strange Inn. The Passing Strange of the title refers to the fact that the poem begins with the most strange off the wall wonderful brawl of a row and ends in the most sublime *******!
I had merely asked her(as many times before) 'Do you want a cup of tea, love? ' And all hell exploded until I could understand where she was coming from and kiss it better. Using 'love' in almost every address to a person is an Irishism that is visible to others but invisible to me as...I'm Irish. I don't hear my Irish accent until someone comments on it and its little pecularities. So, my mother would say:
' Make us a cup of tea, love? ' And I say: 'Yeah, love! ' Or a shopkeeper would tell you that that was: '...only a shilling love for all them nice juicy tomatoes love! ' And if you hurt someone, you'd say:
' Sorry, love! ' Or: 'I love you...love! ' It's like spice or flavouring... invisible until it's not there! '
Even if you are unhappy with what a person is doing and tell them in no uncertain terms...so...then the sentence construction is likely to be: 'Ahhhh for fu's sake... love! ' You still put the 'love' on the end of the sentence to show that it is their present actions that you are displeased with and that despite all this they still are your 'love! '
Frieda used to tell me that she loved being my 'love! ' And indeed if I didn't say it she would pick me up on it or ask if I didn't love her anymore! Her full name was Frieda Rose so I would call her so or just Frieda or just Rose or 'Frieda Rose love! ' Try it yourself...it's very hard to be annoyed with someone when you are calling them 'love.' In my part of the country even men would call each other love(in Yorkshire in England they still do as well) and all the normal courtsey and manners are extended to a gentleman as well as to a lady. That's why it's called common courtsey! This can be seen at the end of the Beatles YELLOW SUBMARINE where the guys make an appearance as themselves and not just their cartoons! John is looking worred and Paul asks him: 'What's the matter John, love? '
This time however Frieda went berserk and said 'Don't call me love...I'm not your love! ' It turned out that I had begun to dropp her name more and more and now she was permantently called just 'Love! ' to show how dear she was to me. There was not other word for her except 'love.' She was love itself to me...the very embodiment of the word. Turns out a guy who treated her real bad and cheated on her a lot would always call her love to make it easier for him to cover up his cheating. If everyone was love then he couldn't make a mistake. One day he broke his own rule and called Frieda Rose...Dolly!
Big mistake...they broke up and as he left he told her of his foolproof system of using 'love' for whatever woman he was with. She always hated it after that and until I came along she wouldn't let anyone call her that. She said I said it so differently and it sounded lovely in an Irish accent and I said it like I meant it! That day she had been thinking of him for some reason and all the hurt came back and I just happen to say: 'Do you want a cup of tea, love! '
My stepping into Shakespeare diffused the situation and we started playing around with the launguage and delighting in the words.
Frieda Rose didn't know much Shakespeare until she met me and then it was impossible...not to. just by the process of osmosis you would soak up my passion for the bard. She was just bored and didn't like him anyway but gradually she came to see what I saw in the guy...like.. wow! She gradually soaked up lots of poems and poets and became quite an expert in whom she liked. She had just gotten into the Brownings and this also makes an appearance at the end of the poem.
I brushed back her hair and kissed her on her neck just under her ear and she swooned and sighed 'Oh, quote me that kiss again! ' She was now fully in Shakespearean mode and her feeling and the language got married at the point and out came this lovely natural line. I wish I had wrote it(I only report it!) and I bet Shakey wouldn't have minded coming up with it himself. Today it is still one of my favourite lines of poetry and I still wish I had wrote it. ******* it...she had
out-Shakespeare'd me!
And so I had to write a poem to get my favourite line into it and so PASSING STRANGE came to be. I love reading it even if an audience don't get it or like it that particular night.
It makes me go 'Mmmmmmmmmmm! ' and I get a chance to say:
'Oh, quote me that kiss again! '
Everytime I speak that line...I enter forever the timeless time of that kiss and that's the only moment that exists!

MEANAGERIE A TOI

Ring! Ring!
“Hello...who?”
“F* you!”

“What the . . ?”
“Sorry...that’s Secherazade!”
“Who. . .?”

“My cockatoo!”
“Oh!”
“Fyou!Fyou!F*you!”

“Slurp! Slurp!”
and an even bigger: “. . .slurp!”
“What the. . .?”

“Sorry...that’s Harry!”
“Harry?”
“My Labrador!”

“Down boy...down I say!”
“Purrr...purrr!”
“Are you purring?”

“No...that’s Brat!”
“Brat?”
“My cat!”

“Brat!”
“Your cat!”
“Anyway...how are you?”

!!!!!!!HOPPY BIRD DAY!!!!!!!

just shy of
almost 21 inches high
she perches on my arm

sobs into my shirt cuff
her 4th birthday looms large

for her
& us
...the big 04!

she cries she doesn't
want to grow old
& die!

fears her birthday as
the Grim Reaper himself
calling in person

"Birthdays..." I console her
are just like breathing
in&out

stop 'em & - you're gone!
you don't have birthdays then
no more you!

birthdays are how you
keep making you
happen!

my little eyassvall tears & snot
brightens up at this
sniffs & sniffles

I tell her
you are the sky
all endless & blue

time the wings
that lets you
fly

Death, snickers
standing by my shoulder
"Ahhh...ya old haggard ya

that's a nice pretty lie
to dry
a nestling's tears."

I watch her fly
into the endless blue
of her self

smile as she
embraces
her now

I hop on one
leg
hoppty hop

"HOPPY BIRD DAY!"
I shout against the glare
of time and sun

she squeals
excited now
as to the who

she is
going to
be

both of us
hopping down
the path together

WELL, KISS MY POPLITEAL FOSSA!

I remember the golden
tassels of my dress
touching the back

of my knees
as I was kissed
for the very first

time bent over
in a clinch as if
we were statuary

the tassels' touch
exquisite in itself
much more sensual

than the actual kiss was
I wondered( his tongue
dancing with my tonsils)if:

there was a name for that
sort of thing
(the back of the knees I mean)

"Ok Freddie!" I commanded
seeing as I seemed
to be in command here

"...that's quite enough of that!"
shattered he reluctantly
took his tongue out of my cheek

"Cheeky ******!" I thought
"should never have let him go
...that far!"

crestfallen he
stammered
a sorry

"You won't tell my mother
...will you?"
hid his ******* with his topper

I went in at once
and asked of father
"Is there a name

for the back of the knees?"
"Of course there is my love!
It's your popliteal fossa!"

I tingled to my toes
having discovered my first
erogenous zone

and knowing
that one day
I would become a doctor

*

Just as the inside of your elbow...the crook of your elbow ...the elbow pit is..is called the "antecubital fossa".
And that cute little bit just under your nose and above your lip is called...the philtrum.
The suprasternal notch (fossa jugularis sternalis), also known as the jugular notch, is another part of human anatomy that is known as an erogenous zone but remains nameless. It is that large, visible dip at the base of the throat.
And that bony part of your elbow is an olecranon which I should know as I broke mine very badly. I was known as "the elbow" and doctors would almost drool over how bad it was and forget their professionalism and go "Shitttttttttt!"

ANAM CARA
( Soul Friend )

the sun bursts
into the tiny room
seating itself on the sofa

the water boils
whistles impatiently
waiting for the human to make tea

she feels like an object
in a room full of objects
an object cursed with consciousness

milk gone sour
out of cigarettes
impossible to live without cigarettes

dashes barefoot
to the opening shops
out of her favourite brand

an impossibly old man
almost a living cartoon
turns the handle of a barrel *****

as if they had
being beamed down
from another century

the young Irishman
(she had heard him talking to)
the monkey in the red fez

when he was not
reading Hamsun's
The Hunger

the monkey yanking at
his manacled left foot
when he wasn't dancing

"Ahhh Anam Cara!"
he comforts the monkey
"Me monkey too in Chinese Zodiac!"

The Merry Widow Waltz
wafting above a tree
its music entangled in its branches

the barrel *****
erupts incongruously into
Abba of all things

she watches the Irishman
now from her bedroom window
a figure trapped in a painting

he reads all day
until the light declines
to help him

she wonders at what thoughts
roam inside his head
what images grow there

dusk comes quickly
as if it's in a hurry
to get day done

tiny stars nail the night
to the frozen sky
before morning tears it down

the Irishman
observes the lights go on
in all the windows  

he appears to be
outside of time
she wishes she had spoken to him

"Ahhh Anam Cara!"
she mimics his voice
comforting herself

not knowing what
the words mean
her voice touching their tenderness

he leaves
his Hunger behind him
on the bench

she pockets it
falls asleep reading it
dreaming of him

*

This was a park in Rotterdam as the evening declined and night came on...I was a very lonely young man. I was reading Knut Hamsun's THE HUNGER and just letting life stream past me as if I were a rock in a river. Then a barrel ***** with a monkey hove into sight and sound. I had never thought to have encountered such a thing as I had only seen them in films and it was as if it had squeezed through some wormhole and escaped into this future. It played all operetta interspersed with the hits of the day so surprising to have the Merry Widow one moment and then Dancing Queen the next. The old man looked as if he had been sculpted from pure sadness as did his monkey who wore a red fez and a dashing scarlet waistcoat. The incongruity of meeting a dancing manacled monkey dressed in human attire was not lost on me. It was like being in a scene from The Third Man and I expected to glimpse Mr. Lime at any moment as the night came on.

In the morning a barefooted woman from one of the flats across the road came and got some cigs and milk and stopped to look at me as I talked to the sad monkey in Irish. She smiled fleetingly and dashed back to her home. I had a sudden flash that maybe she was my soul mate and we were doomed to miss each other in that one mad moment. So I imagined her loneliness in her room and my loneliness in this park and how we we would never encounter each other ever again. And so my soul mate was to be this poor monkey as if we both recognised that we were both tied to this mysterious moment by a fake gold chain that let us dance but never escape the ***** grinder. I forgot the book when I was told the park was closing and the man and his monkey had long gone. I still had not finished it and it was only years later that I finally got around to its final pages.

AND ALL FOR NOTHING

the house waited for him
like the faithful dog
he had not got

"Hello...hello!" said the house
smiling
with all of itself

"Welcome!" said the mat
his own home at last
the silence filled up with his footsteps

"Read me...no read me!"
the books on his shelves
argued amongst themselves

made himself a G&T
watched the sunset
like it was TV

slowly the night
crept through the house
found him asleep in the chair

he startled awake
saw her smiling at him
from an old photo

he turned the photo
face down. . .a tear ran
into the edge of his moustache

"And all for nothing..."
he told himself
"...all for nothing!"


*

I never got to see this fabulous house. I met him in a pub and we just fell into talking...then he'd have to get a train back to Manchester to "my house!" But somehow the house in words was greater than any house he could show me. He was Greek and would always tell me that his wife was "the King of my house!" Because his English was not good( learnt from movies )he had picked up the King of Siam's "etc., etc., etc." phrase in order to fill in the thoughts suggested but unavailable to him in words. Every time I see this fabulous film I remember him and how his wife was "the King of my house and my heart!"
The big dream was to own his own home. Then he got married and his wife died in childbirth so now the big dream( ever since he was a little kid )was here but....empty.

I prefer the "not knowing" in the poem. The elements in the poem are the delight in having the dream house and then for the sorrow and the emptiness you have to imagine the rest...asking the reader to complete the poem with their imagination. An air of mystery...suffice it to say...something soul destroying has happened but the wondering what it is...is...another poem.