GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

Not stated
( though it’s understood )

she will not say a word

like dust
swept under a rug.

Good
Housekeeping.

His anger
ripens

into the bruise
she wears upon her skin

a jewellery
of fear

written upon pale flesh
his hieroglyph of hatred.

Love’s lustre
tarnished from the first

the tattoo
of boot and fist.

Holds her hand
under the grill

until her eyes bulge
gulls screaming overhead.

The bilge
of his vile

vomiting insults
upon her scared face.

“****...****...****”
his screams in a rut

matching each word
to each rising fist

a blow by blow
account.

He the liturgist
in the nightly rites

of violence
uglier than can be imagined.

Lilies cower
in a vase.

He the high priest
of her despair.

An ugly bruise
upon her soul.

Her eyes now
null and void

slit wrists
upon polished table tops

in a room
now sunlit...now unlit.

TURN OF THE CENTURY
(for Debbie unable to sleep)

Bright yellow flower
dazed...standing in a vase

tries to remember

a blueness of sky...lost now
beyond the great window pane.

Tries to remember
a joy of sweet falling rain

lost now on the glass

& yet...the memory of it
persists...pursues it...& yet

tries to remember
the pleasure in being a seed

roots reaching into
a sheer richness of darkness

& its opening into sun

tries...remembers the
playfulness of butterflies

clouds chasing a cloud
winds scattering tiny stars

across the beauty of a night

tries &...remembers
the wonder of a bird’s song

the sun forever
almost just...just...out of reach

the sudden silence
after the storm is gone and...and

flower bows its head.

The new young maid is scolded
for not changing the vase.


*

I woke up in the middle of the night and unable to sleep again saw that my friend Debbie had said she was unable to sleep and would someone write her a poem. So I wrote this for her and then...went back to sleep.
Years ago in the long long ago my little girl said she would adore to know how a flower felt( "adore was her new word )so 30 years later late into the night the phrase "how a flower felt" hijacked my mind and this poem was my answer.

NOWHERE TO RUN TO....

I'm 9
going on
all of ten, when:

reading
TO ****
A MOCKING BIRD.

I wanted to be Scout
when I grew up
didn't matter I was a boy

just wanted to be
her
that great explorer

of how to be in the world
that great frontier of
becoming

then, in '67
the bus crash
happened

& there was always
that empty chair
a nowhere of me

always calling
my sister's name
I became Boo Radley

living inside my head
like it was a haunted house
with a me who wasn't

me no more
looking out of eyes
that belonged

to someone
else
like Boo...

I didn't
".. have anywhere
to run off to..."

"ELECTED SILENCE,  SING TO ME..."

"Skin"
as they used to call him
is( like me )

up a tree
the very topmost
tip of it

wondering at this
great height
"What must it be

to be
someone
else?"

I too a boy
at one with the sky
sharing

a branch with a bird
who accepts me
as just

another( if odd )
bird
of a different feather

I wonder if
the bird wonders what
it must me to be - me

esse quam videri
( to be rather than
to seem to be)

words carved into the living
tree
the wounded bark

clouds too
are my friends
feel as if I could

step on one
have the wind
roll me about

fields...
a green
patchwork quilt

river...
a silver thread
house --a mere toy

Time
spreads out
endlessly

it is always
and only
forever

the created
and uncreated
map of Now

"Skin" or
Gerard Manley Hopkins
as I will get to know him

both up
our respective
trees

he in 1853
me in 1963

drinking in
the world
with our eyes

and one big
gulp
of the mind

*

REALITY'S UNRAVELLER

Charles Luxmoore on Gerard Manley Hopkins...

"...a fearless climber of trees, and would go up very high in the lofty elm tree, standing in our garden...to the the alarm of un-lookers like myself."


I on the other hand climbed trees to escape the world of my young sister's death...here at this great height I could be both in and out of the world...longing to be someone else...somewhere else....anywhere else...anyone else...even a bird if that could be...the map of the world spread below me...high above this bitter grief. I would "vanish" into bay windows and sit for hours whilst aunts and uncle stood a few feet from me and wondered where "the boy has gone" and call my name that didn't seem to be me anymore.

I remember sitting between two silver milk churns down in Cork and everyone unseeing of me as if my grief had made me invisible. I was "Of reality the rarest-veined unraveller..."

THE ARRIVAL OF ENIGMA

The square dressed itself
in moonlight

as if it were on its way
to a fancy dress ball

as one of de Chirico's
masterpieces.

The puppets
after an inspired performance

lay tangled together
in a box on the bridge.

They waited as their world
was dismantled and

their stage sets stacked
neatly against a wall.

A glass eye winked but
didn't think the human saw.

But the human saw.
Or was it just the moon?

The moon played hide
and seek behind a cloud.

The puppets chattered
amongst themselves

untangling each other
as they planned their escape.

But before anything could
come of this

they were tossed carelessly into a case
that snapped shut with sudden finality.

They were carried away
into the early hours of the morning.

The rebellion of wood
had been scotched.

We used the left over de Chirico
as a scene to stage a kiss

as if we had been painted
into place ourselves.

"The Arrival of Enigma"
or some such title

scrawled in litter
below our feet.

MUSEUM OF MISTAKES

here
in the Museum
of Mistakes

I wander among
the many exhibits
amazed

gasp
at how stupid
people can be

look through
protective glass
at the ghost of a love

my own face
reflected
back at me

such finely crafted
heartbreak
perfect little memories

glint cruelly against the lights
displayed against
the stark contrast of black velvet

I remember these
didn’t realise
how valuable

they were
then
priceless now

I turn away
& cry
having seen too much

here
in my Museum
of Mistakes

the Past
comes back
to haunt me

"SOLO TE...SOLO ME...SOLO  NOI"


"Ahhhh what happened to the world we knew..."

All the songs I sing
are celebrating

their 50th
Anniversary.

Man that can't be so
seems like only a moment

ago
a lifetime now away.

And that would make me
older than them.

And ******* I
guess I am.

And here's Stevie singing
just a month or more

after the moon landings
and hey

that's 50 years
one giant leap for...

And yeah I look like
the old man I am.

Don't know where
the boy I was went.

Time has gone
AWOL.

Left me here between
nowhere and some where

"...we could feel the wheel
of life turn our way

yester-me yester-you yesterday
yester-me yester-you yesterday

Sing with me

solo te...solo me..solo noi

One more time, yeah

solo te...solo me..solo noi"

**

50th Anniversary of the moon landing and when in Naples heard Stevie singing it in Italian on a passing car radio. Loved the song from the moment it came out(about 2 months after the historic one giant leap)and hearing it now again stuck in the middle of a Naples torrential downpour.
Then in Leicester Square on a surprisingly sunny day( the next day it would pour with rain)we encountered a little busking band in German get-up and a Sousaphone player delighting us with Stevie's Sir Duke and yes Yester-Me, Yester-You,
Yesterday.

Sometimes the past wraps you up in its warmth and puts an imaginary arm around your shoulder.

All the way from the boy Wonder himself from his MY CHERIE AMOUR album. "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday" was written by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells. At that time, it was Stevie's biggest UK hit.
Stevie was going through some vocal problems and was required to wait before recording a song. Due to this, instead of making new ones, they decided to release songs that he had recorded years earlier, and this song was one of them (it was recorded two years earlier).