THE BECOMING OF ME

I'd be the first to admit
I was present at

my own
birth.

As was everyone
at theirs.

But I attended mine
with full consciousness

even if it was
my mother's

who in the telling
and re-telling of the tale

making me experience it
as it happened

down to the tiniest details
and so it was I was

born again and again
in her voice

in the tale of me until
her memory become my own.

So there I am
watching myself being born.

The labour ward radio
singing Ce Sera, Sera

either to sooth or
to drown out the screams.

My mother pleading with Doc. Cahill
"Oh will it be a boy...please make it a boy!"

And the Doc. answering in the demotic:
"I don't *know Ita...whatever will *be...will be!"

Then I put out a toe
to test the world and

Doc. Cahill is able to tell her
it's a boy at least!

And here I come
all 2 lbs of me!

All energy.
Speedy.

Popping out fast
heading for the end of the table

only to be caught by
an even speedier nurse who. . .

"Got ya....ya
little divil ya!"

It was '56 and I had come
prepared to rock 'n' roll man

sideburns better than
the King himself.

Only to be sung into being
by Doris that day.

"Oh he's got such a little *** ***!"
my mother moans.

"Don't worry..!" smirks the nurse
with the big big hands.

"It will grow!"
As indeeds it does.

And so they myth of me
begins.

I a tiny pebble in the stream
of my mother's voice

giving me her memory
for me to see

the me
of me.

"What are ya gonna call
this little fella?"

I get the kiss
and the caress of the Irish

"He will be
a Dónall."

A big name
for the little fella.

And see how the Irish
elevates me.

I, now no longer
a nameless entity but

"World Mighty
Spear Power!



It was almost like being there for me even thought I of course can't remember it for myself but I became my mother's memory and lived it vividly. Every birthday I would call her up and thank her for having me. When push came to shove...all I did was arrive...and she did all the work. I was tiny and she lost so much blood and nearly died and I spent my first six months in hospital with her.

". . .THE WONDROUS ARCHITECTURE OF THE WORLDE. . . ."

I laugh
the road over the Hog's Back
closed because....it melted

was the sun ever so
back in your day
eh Kit?

and what do I read
Mr. Marlowe?
why words, Kit, words

that word magician
Dr. Burgess he presumes
to bring you back

to life again
and so it seems
I see your blood Kit

streaming in the firmament
nay only a Deptford sunset
dragged screaming from memory

your blood upon the page Kit...
mere cherry juice it
stains the words

and so to Deptford I
do go
thanks to Madame Remembrance

I a poor
purveyor of poetry
clutching at words

and here
a great reckoning
not  in a little room

but on a lost street
staining the scene
a sickly yellow

and so enough
of Prologue...
Act 1 begins

a smiling ruffian
see his knife smiles too
the blade eager for blood

alas I
in so much pain I
have no fear of death

indeed would welcome
the flicked knife
if it would release me

from my life
a man prepared
to die if it be so

"Come live with me and be
my love..." I doth quote
in my best Passionate Shepard

"Wot?" he wots
scared of my insouciance
the ghost of Marlowe by my side

ahhh he the very villain
a scar from eye to smile
he aims to do the same to me

"Where rogue did
they get thee?" I mock
"VILLAINS 'R' US?"

Marlowe's ghost laughs
"Aye lad...ay lad
to him!"

"Only one of us..."
I warn my hellhound
"....will come out of this alive!"

I pause for effect
"And I'm afraid
it won't be( hee hee ) thee!"

I take a determined step
towards my would-be
now trembling killer

who all this wordage
being too much for him
he flees

ahhh the glint of words
defeats the glint of steel
he my Ortygius

"What sort of Feend,, or spirit of the earth,
Or Monster turned to manly shape
Or of what world or melted he be made...?"

I declaim to an audience
of cats and cans and
other streetly filth

I...I. . .unable to
find the next line
and so I etc., etc., etc.

and once more
I am of Guildford yet again
30 years or more away

and there melts a road
upon the Hog's Back
and I laugh to be alive

"Doth teach vs all to have aspiring mindes:
Our soules, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the worlde.."

**

Ha ha spent all this morning writing this after Jan came in and told me about the melting road! On the hottest longest day of the year for 40 years I was reading Anthony Burgess A Dead Man in Deptford and remember one of only my two visits there. Of course this is where Marlowe was killed/assassinated.

For seven years after a head injury I was in immense pain and would have been grateful to be taken out of it...so my poor villain had met a man who didn't mind dying....hence all the verbiage and wordage.

BECOMING THE MAN MY FATHER ALWAYS WAS
(for Brian )

Each night
I would follow you

through the rituals
of what you had to do

being Daddy.

I wanted to be Daddy too.

Mimicking your gait
becoming an exact

copy
of you

trailing along
in your footsteps

like a lone seagull
following in the wake

of some great ship
of state

watching the water
burn

'til it was all bubbles

then letting it
calm down

before filling my mother's
hot water bottle

carrying it to her side
like a lover's gift.

I was
your little shadow.

She'd always smile:
'Thank you Danny! '

'That's alright love."
was always the answer.

These the ritualistic words
in the hot water bottle ceremony.

Then he'd teach the clock
to ****

adjusting it with his hands
and wind up Time

so that it spit tick & tocks
all through the night

then go lock doors
turn keys
draw bolts.

'That's it, son! '

I used to imagine
being you

and now I am
my own man

winding up Time

bringing my missus
the gift of a hot water bottle

(the gift of me)

both equally
heart warming.

'Thank you Donall! '
she always smiles.

'That's all right love! '
I always answer.

Me the man
I am

because of you.

OH PHOTOGRAPHIC YOU!

you...yes...you
wearing the latest
cloud upon your head

living your life
in Kodachrome
leaving your B&W world

and see here
a tree in full bloom
growing out of your head

and see there you
with only half a head
in Polaroid Land

now you no longer
here or there
I love the photographic you

even all these
badly taken snaps
a treasure trove of you

all these awkward moments
tears that bring
laughter

now you gone for ever
but these holy relics
possess your smile

I shove them to
the back of a drawer
unable to look at them

but knowing I will
again and again when
pain bites through the soul

...AND I WAVE BACK

Outside the hatch
he turns slowly

and talks
but I can't make out
the words he says

they fall from his lips
dangle and float in space

outside the backyard fence
a hill grabs the moon

and then slowly
lets it go again

the moon floating just
out of reach

laughs; 'Go on...do that again! '

the hill smiles: 'Just you wait... just you wait! '
the moon beams
as a little bird

gingerly(as if at first unsure)
steps out into space

and then finds flight
take hold of it as if

it had only discovered it that minute
and absconds with it

the darkness
barks

and falls
into silence

and then another part
of the darkness

barks back

held in a gentleness
a leaf tiptoes down the breeze

as if descending
a spiral staircase.

Time holds its breath

outside the hatch
flat on his back

the earth a little blue ball he has let go of

the astronaut
slowly turns and waves

& I
wave back.

"MINÄ RAKASTAN
SINUA PALJON PALJON!"
( "I love you very much!" )

the sky
full of stars
as if suddenly

as if billions of stars
had been ordered
and crammed into place

he realised he
had become lost
in the silence

these were Finnish stars
and the silence too
was very very Finnish

he turned on his heel
and then turned
again and again

"Hello!" said the snow
only in Finnish
of course

"Hei itse!"
I answered it
as if we were friends

after an hour
the way home
finally found me

that night
curled up
in his life

he watched with his wife
Hiroshima Mon Amour
with Finnish subtitles

she translating
it into English
for his benefit

"...and then one day
my love you came
out of eternity..."

both of them
not realising they
had become pregnant

SCHRöDINGER'S SOCKS & THE REVENGE OF THE CAT

Schrödinger's cat
failed to see just what

all the fuss was
about?

It was all such
a reductive absurdum.

The cat couldn't understand
collapsing wave functions

decoherence
entanglement or whether

reality was really
quantum

to save its life.

It was aware of
one thing & one thing

only
. . .the diabolic device. . .

Cat in a metal box
with a Geiger counter

with a radioactive substance
blah blah de ****** blah

an atom decaying or something or
other &

releasing a hammer to smash
a phial of hydrocyanic acid.

Wot!

"I do not like thee Dr. Fell!"
thought the cat.

It was a very literary cat.

So all this palaver
about a cat( me? how! )

being both dead or alive or
neither dead or alive or

. . .wot!

So this is to be my great
to-be-or-not-to-be!

Welllll excuse me!
Say...doesn't the cat have his say?

So, I( clever cat that I am)
merely claw my way to the top &

disengage the device
by taking out the hammer.

So no cat was harmed
in the making of this

thought experiment.

It almost drove Schrödinger
out of his tiny little mind!

And he( hee hee )
never did discover

what ever
happened to his socks.

I forever stealing
one sock from a pair

from the open
washing machine.

Leaving him to ponder
just where socks go?

The other side of the Universe?
Oh come on Erwin...it's not

rocket science!

Now, to get back to
describing the behaviour of

a quantum entity.

"Mmmmm......mmmmmm?"

"Naw....I still don't get it!"

"Say ya couldn't see yer way
to giving me a scratch...could ya?"

"Up a bit....upabit....yeah...yeah
. . .there...just...there!"