AHHHH BACH... FOR CHRISTMAS! (for my pal Al)

the church orchestra
search around for an
E sharp

the conductor blows his nose.
but as an oboe player points out:
'That's in F sharp! '

they laugh
the singer
starts singing

words like
stepping across ice
as it cracks:

'In the beginning
was the Word
and the Word was

...lilac! '
yet more
laughter

the stained glass
listens  to this
musical tomfoolery

as they practice
their perfection
& the rehearsals drag on

tonight it will be
nothing but
Holy

a pagan tree
cowers in a corner
all Christmassy

a church hanging
proclaiming: 'Praise him
hail and lightning! '

as we two
lost souls
delight

in the music
of being
...human!

*

Up to York on an old fashioned cho choo and not being able to make the concert but they invited us into rehearsal as they worked their way through all the ins and outs of it all...they were just so relaxed and having fun...playing off each other with great good humour. This was so playful and I bet by the time the real performance came around they were nothing but HOLY in big bold capital letters. But here now they were just a bunch of humans having fun and their own talent with a great big bunch of laughter thrown in for good measure. It was wonderful to experience them....an unforgettable joy!

CRIES

I write
these words
to exist you

trap you in this mesh
of consonants &
vowels

flesh you
out
into sounds

here you are again
dressed i
n your yellow dress

a marigold
held between
finger and thumb

offered to me
your young son
the old man who now

writes
to keep you
alive

until the pen
falls from his hand
and
he cries
he cries
he cries

**

Watching my mother dying as outside a badger trundles across a path( the badger is a psychopomp bringing souls across to the other side)and watching my self reflected in the dark window. Remember this simple little moment of her in a yellow dress and being impossibly young and offering me a marigold. Just that. Why that? Clear as day. A beautiful day and this one act etched into my mind with a clarity beyond belief. I thought if I kept writing the words that make up this poem I could keep her alive if only in words. But time must have a stop. Also words.

ONE IMPOSSIBLE THING BEFORE BREAKFAST

Alice in Wonderland
rests upon a table
in a ray of sunlight

"When is a book
not a book?"
the sunlight asks itself

I answer it
by opening
the book

it is empty
of words
only an empty space

to place
a bottle of whiskey
in

yet its emptiness
is packed
full of time

the memory
of hands
reaching into it

some of the time
spills out and becomes
now

*

An old guy I used to look after and wasn't supposed to drink. He always had the book at hand whenever I visited him. This time it lay upon the table and I picked it up saying I didn't know this edition....loved that book all my life and...a small bottle of whiskey fell out. After he died the 'book' was still there on the table empty of any words and empty of drink.

TWAK!

Twak!
  
A knife embeds itself
  
in the space just
by her left ear
  
as if the wood
gulped it...******
  
in
its glint
  
vibrating still.
  
In her head
she plans
  
dinner.
  
She stares
at her husband
  
remembers how
he had come
  
to court her
...twak!
  
Another knife
flashes spitefully
  
narrowly missing
her other ear
  
a little
bubble of blood
  
like a stud
earring blossoming

on a wobbly
earlobe.
  
'Ouch! '
she whispers
  
to herself
guilty
  
at such an over
reaction.
  
Oh how he had
excited her
  
her head
in a spin
  
saying he
was in
  
show business.

Her world
revolves
  
about him
the next knife
  
impregnates itself
in the space
  
between her
legs
  
like a tuning fork  
it hums

her excitement
builds
  
a tiny splinter of
wood
  
nestles in her
left inner thigh.

'Wow...nice! '
she becomes moist.
  
The shimmy of her
spangles
  
as the lights catch
her
  
a little
gasp as
  
she faces him
boldly
  
afraid &
un-afraid
  
upside down now
her world all topsy-turvy
  
she still so
proud of her

husband's skill
to tantalise her
  
his unerring
accuracy
  
the pride of being
(she the knife thrower's assistant)

as well
as wife.

A loud sea
of applause.

Twak!  


*

She had run away to show business. He was exotic...the blindfolded knife thrower who swept her off her feet. Oh the roar of the grease paint the smell of the crowd. Now the circus was just the humdrum ordinary world and she was finding it hard...to get...into...her costume. She still found the act itself exciting especially those near misses. It was the only thing they ever had a row about. The whistle through the air and then the shocking suddenness of the arrival of the knife with its capitalised sharp exclamation point. . .TWAK!
And when she was up she was up and when she was down she was...TWAK! It was always the knife between the legs that drew the biggest baited breath from both the audience and her self. She had to admit it still turned her on but there was dinner to think about and other mundane things like the baby's whooping cough. Oh the exotic...the ****** and the ordinariness as hubby went about his work.

INTO THE INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE INELUCTABLE VISUALITY

Leopold Bloom
tousles my hair.

Tells me I'm a
"...grand little fella altogether!"

His large black eyebrows
look as if they will leap

off his face and land on mine
chew my mind.

Of course he is
only Milo O'Shea.

Actor extraordinaire
from Strick's ULYSSES.

Some concert in the girl's gym
has made him appear here

before me
quaking in fear.

He is the first man I see
in a tux.

Our class is to recite
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

Was I not nervous?
Jaysus I was so I was!

The spotlight a Medusa
turning us to stone.

An audience a many
headed monster.

I...I...I
petrified.

I throw my voice
out into the dark

like throwing a mad dog
a bone.

"As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky."

Guy beside me starts to cry
wee running down his left knee.

Now it's over and I
am returned to myself again.

Meeting Mr. Milo
is just a happenstance.

Later he will become
Durand Durand

trying to **** Barbarella
with sheer pleasure.

Now, Zeffirelli's kind friar
in ROMEO AND JULIET.

But for me
he always blossoms

into Bloom
tousling my many many curls.

"A wink of his eye and
a toss his head.

soon gave me to know
I had nothing to dread."

"...MORE FULL OF WEEPING..."

in the bedroom
from which he first
saw snow falling...


...snow
now
falls

he watches the ghost
of his young self
press his face

against the glass
snow sticking
to his reflection

amazed
that a world
can fall

into such a silence
hide itself
in a white quiet

snow falls
in the old bedroom
where his sister recited

his first Yeats....
kissed him
goodnight

snow clings
to peeling wall
blown against

the remembrance
of things long ago
forgotten

snow covering
his lost sister's voice
"...for the world's

more full of weeping
than you
can understand..."

*


I was about 6 at the time and a great big storm was building up outside and Junie was just saying this off the top of her head as the storm broke and her words were broken into by the thunder and lightening. It was like an incantation and I thought that the poem had conjured up the breaking heavens and that it would always happen when the words had their say. Oh the power of poetry on the very young!

THE STONE WARM IN THE PALM

the stone skips
across an ocean
shatters an horizon

the wounded sun's disc
day bleeds
into night

now the skinny dipping
now the excited shouts
we dive into the moon

the moon'******br>broken with our quick nakedness
the sharp knife of youth