WORDS! WORDS! WORDS!

I hide in a book
( in a nook )
as adults look for me

I hide in my book
( in the big bay window )
invisible to all adults

or a brush
makes my bed a tent
the torch reads the book

the book
my magic carpet
the smile of Scheherazade

I dive into the words
come up again at the last page
gasping for breath

asleep on the book
my head
amongst words

talking now
only in fragments
the burnt book

HOW MANY MILES. .?

I try to
get back
to

the you
before you
died

you flicker
in the candlelight
I am trying to

not let the forgetting
happen
to you

but you begin to
fade and
falter

you tell me
to let you
...go

that it will be
easier
for me

but I would rather
own
the pain of this love

hold you all the tighter
smuggle you in a dream
across death's border

you are beyond Babylon
...the many miles to...
the childhood rhyme

I told you
"Can I get there by candle light..?"
I ask the dark

"...there and
back again..."
the emptiness echoes.

each night I fetch
your ghost
feeding it my pain

to keep you here again
only to have to
return you

when morning
brings a new day
you can never know

*

Brian was about ten or eleven when Jennifer Johnson's beautifully elegant and achingly sad novella HOW MANY MILES TO BABYLON  came out...I used to tell him the story and read bits to him. He had asked me why the book was called that so I would recite the little rhyme for him and then he would often repeat it to himself.

How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candle-light.

THE MELAMINE TABLE TOP WITH
THE PINK GINGHAM TABLE CLOTH

You're kidding?

The goat is on
the table.

The goat comes in
( doesn't even bother to knock )&

stands on the table
for a good half hour

as if it were  an art installation
or some obscure goat ritual

that humans are
unaware of

as if it were a phrase
in a foreign dictionary

the equivalent of
the cat sat on the mat.

And when the goat
is done

it just jumps down
and leaves

just as it came

as if it were
the most ordinary

of ordinary things
to do.

Even now, I still see
the ghost of that goat

even though it was long ago
made into stew

as if the goat realised
that a time

would come
& come it would

when it would end up
on the table

but not of its own
volition.

But right now
it is standing its ground

on the Melamine table top
with the pink gingham table cloth

and becoming that something that
just can not be

forgot.

THE LOST MOMENTS OF CHILDHOOD RETURN

the trees stop running
the hills slow down
the station arrives at the train

he felt if he were to
let go of the tightly held red balloon
he would float away into the forever

the silence settles
upon him like invisible snow
even the noise is quiet

the teacher speaks to him
in visible italics
sarcasm staining the space between them

the teacher shouts in CAPITALS
he cringes in lower case
rubbing himself out

a snowfall of dust
upon the snail's back
sunlight shifts from foot to foot

a sunbeam slices through
the attic's ages
motes pretend they're atoms

the night like
black blotting paper
absorbs him bit by. . .

a yellow brick on a red brick on a
the ** ** ** of Christmas
my tonsils no longer mine

fields dozing
under an unrelenting sun
trees walking in shimmer

the world too big
to pack into the little words
he knew

in the space between
second and second
he sees the world as it is

*

These are the 'non-times" or times of no apparent consequences...remembered bits of nothing where the sense of a sense of things and how the world comes to invade my little head...where the thought can think itself but can't express itself in those building blocks of uselessness we call words.

They are of importance only in the fleeting sketch of my me-ness as it encountered a world that grew organically out of the time I was planted in. This is the place between second and second where the world comes into being.

AHHHH PEACE AT LAST!

goat is in the kitchen
chicken is in the living room
dog is in the bedroom

the cat is on the mat
the cow is mooing
in the window

the humans are out
visiting other humans
in the next village

if one could call it that
landscape is asleep
in the sun

animals
have the house
to themselves

*

When we returned all the farmyard animals had taken up squatter's rights in the house. We felt like intruders! When we tried to talk the animals into leaving they were like" "Wot? Wot!"

AND THE WAY UP IS THE WAY DOWN

"Footfalls echo in the memory..."

I still see you
in the rose garden

reciting Elliot in
those magnificent tones

although death
gently erases you

so that the roses
can be seen

through you
though your voice remains

true and strong
a swallow flies

through your eyes
you nothing now

but a ghostly aid
to my faltering memory.

I still miss your body
the shape of you

sleeping beside me
curled like a question mark

into my dreaming
back.

Never got used to
an empty bed.

Find I have to imagine you
conjure you up.

A sleight of mind
the smoke and mirrors

of desire
and wanting.

I prune my roses
"the poet's wife."

How we always laughed
at such a name

when you could never
write a word

only quote
your adored Mr. Elliot.

I prune
a rose that rambles

and oh dear
I appear

to have snipped off
your head

fading as it was
I will imagine another.

Your voice impervious
to the  secateurs.

"...for the leaves were full
of children..."

the children we
never had.

We lived our life
as if we had a wisdom

of our own
knowing

"If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."

MEMORY MOTEL

he burnt his draft card
she burnt her bra
they burnt their bridges

she was always Stones mannnnn
he a big Beatles fan
the only thing they argued over

took off for all that glittered
against their families' wishes
they rolled their own

the War happened
on the telly
kicks in her belly

saw the 60's through
saw through each other
divorced in '72

divorce was now
the war
the long battle

he took the boy
she took the girl
hostages to love

the kids hated
him...her
it

he runs through women
she runs through men
like its some competition

the needle gathers fluff
riding the black shellac
her life badly scratched

the needle falls
upon the floor she
don't know nothing no more

cleans her self up
kicks the habit
a health fanatic

becomes Mrs jones
....un-becomes
Mrs. Jones

now somehow here
in 2000 & 2 they
do the wife&husband thing again

they're happier this time 'round
he still a big Beatles fan
she still Stones...mannnnn!  

*

An almost iconic old couple so deeply in love they give off a tangible glow. I meet them on an old fashioned choo-choo puffing its way north to York. The train was a large catterpillar throwing a boa of smoke over its shoulder. I fell into talk with them and admired that their love must have been deep and profound to have lasted to this stage of their life...they laughed at this impression they gave and told me all about how they came about and how they came to be together so that their souls almost glowed with happiness and delight. The story they told me in deliciously thick Brooklyn accents was not the story I had expected to hear but an even better story than I could have ever possibly imagined.