JIKANWA TOMARU( TIME IS STOPPED)


The dead were talking to me
in black and white.

Complained all the colour
had gone out of their voice.

Complained they lived their lives
like they were a movie.

The illusion of living
rather than the thing itself.

You know...that thing
"cinema is truth

24 frames
per second."

We call it
"Waiting for Godard" syndrome.

"Oh our "story has a beginning
middle and an end but. . .

. . .not necessarily
in that order."

Sometimes it slows to
just a still or

Godard help us
only a publicity photograph.

We look at your living
envious of your movement.

Your ability to
change and be

something then
something new again.

We can remember
doing that without thinking.

God it's hard.
So hard to see you

take it all
for granted.

What we would give
just to be aware

of a leaf
trembling on a tree.

Or a bird taking flight
into a summer.

Or see a stone
skim across water.

World has become
tiny as a tittle

on an i or
a j

or how was it the Bible put it
". . .till heaven and earth pass. . ."

Earth time is so
brief.

Blink and you
will miss it.

We thirst for even one
of your seconds

Hunger for the time
you so nonchalantly throw away.

Here....there
is...no time.

"JIKANWA TOMARU!"
"JIKANWA TOMARU!"
"JIKANWA TOMARU!"

"Time is stopped!
Time is stopped!
Time is stopped!"

They kept repeating
...in Japanese."". . .

TWO ETERNITIES AND AN INFINITY

The doc gave me
the once over.

"Well...what is it
doc...tell me!"

"Now...don't quote me but
to quote Mr. Eliot

you got
"Some minor problems of the soul."

"What'ya mean minor
for crying out loud.!"

I know this is
a personal question but

how long exactly have you been
eh...dead?"

"They tell me only an hour or so
...no more I...still not use to it!"

"Well you see as far as I can see
you are leaking time

and only your will to live is
keeping you...keeping on."

I was thinking of asking
for a second opinion.

"You are finding it hard to believe
...you are dead

despite all the obvious signs
and the facts."

He paused
scribbled indecipherably on a pad.

"But it's not the physical
aspect I am worried about."

He paused again.
I drank in the silence.

"It's the state of your soul
good God man

you can't go to your maker
in such a state."

I opened my mouth
but the doc told me to close it.

"No...you can't
ask not to be born!"

He placed his fingertips
together in a typical doctor gesture.

"But we can now give you
a replacement soul

that once belonged
to a second to none nun.

Life's cheap I thought but
a soul ain't.

"What in Heaven's name
will it cost!"

"The usual..." he chuckled gleefully
"Two eternities and an infinity."

Reviewing: THE SITUATION

somehow
summer
was losing it

forgetting her lines
missing
her cues

putting on a well
below par performance
having to be prompted

becoming
a bit of
an embarrassment

then: one day summer
just didn't show
the day panicked

Autumn, who had been
understudying summer
declared to God

she could play her
she knew
the part by heart

word perfect
could play her
in her sleep

so Autumn
far too early
in the run

put in a performance
that was - well. . .
just  not summer

stars began to look
more brittle...colder
leaves bled red

couples cuddled closer
more for warmth
than...the other thing

me who
had a front row seat
up at the old lake

put in a tired review
"They just don't
make a summer

like they
****** well
used to!"

LOOKING FOR A GOD
( for Shyam )

I pray only
to the God
of this poem

for free passage
from word
to word

as I journey
through the vast space
between thought

& thought
speak to the sound
trying to translate

syllable by syllable
what the moment
is saying

what the moment
wants to say
and see that

it says it
in its own voice
or as near as

I can
get it
...******!

WORLDS AT ONCE

I watch you
sleeping
in the mirror

& touch
your image
& you echo it

only your laughter
inhabiting both
worlds at once

on the other side
of nowhere
a dream away

the mirror
laughs
in its sleep

"IS MISE DÓMHNALL SALACH!"
("I am ***** Dónall")

"Dómhnall Óg!"
he always call me
by my name in Irish

and indeed
young Dónall
I always was

until chased
by a giant
dragonfly

into a pool
where cows
moo and drink

a cow lifts
a tail and
does what it does

on my astonished
head as it too
laughs at us humans

Uncle laughs so
hard he falls in
himself

"Dómhnall Salach!"
he now names me
"***** Dónall!"

a dragonfly sneers
"Do you feel lucky
well, punk do ya?"

"MARBLES...PYJAMAS AND JAM!"

wake up at 3 of the clock
eat jam in my pyjamas from the jar
play marbles with an imaginary friend

he wins...again
this the grown up world
of a four year old

acting like a grown up
time mine
to play with

*

"Marbles...pyjamas and jam!" I chanted to myself to announce the new me I had become.

I remember getting out of bed in my striped pyjamas and  going downstairs and eating the jam out with a spoon( forget the bread) and then having a game of marbles by myself...first taking one shot and then moving over and becoming my invisible opponent and taking his shot. My imaginary friend winning all the time.

This was at 3 in the morning and felt very scary and daring and so grown up because I was deciding what time and what to do for myself even if it was 3 O' ****** clock in the morning.

I had envied grown ups and their not having to go to bed by nine and be able to stay up and be themselves. I could hear them laughing downstairs...having I supposed....the time of their lives.

So now I sang myself into my four year old adulthood with "Marbles...pyjamas...and jam!"

Because that's the kind of kid I am.

Now the wind wails through the ruins of the house howling that "Home is...an absence." My new mantra.  And outside the house (that isn't there no more)( invisible to everyone but me) I would have ghost girls jump to a skipping rope chanting my "Marbles...pyjamas and jam!" as a rhyme. Skipping in time.

"And this one's OUT!" they all shout and scatter away like little marbles being hit by a sacred scared twa.