AND THERE WAS ME WITHOUT AN I

Time dawdles
stretches out the crash
to an infinity of now

casually I watch the car
crash into my side
as if it were someone else's story

car runs red light
the crash about to happen
taking...its. . .( time )

I watch my door buckle
as if an invisible monster
wanted to eat its way to me

time...finally(stops):
I fade to black
karate chopped from luggage from the back

I drink up unconsciousness
thirsty for
the oblivion it brings

the world leaves me now
even my thoughts
don't even know me

I am no more
a me
without an I

"You knocked. . ?"
Death asks politely
"No..just...passing through!"

Life swims back to me
from a distant
horizon

"Hey!" shouts Life
"It's me!"
"Do I know you?" I ask  

*

Back in '85 when I was a bookseller and we were returning from a bookfair in Belfast( and where I also saw Nic Roeg introduce his new movie INSIGNIFICANCE ). We stopped at the lights and I glanced casually to my left to see a car jump the lights and head for( in slow slow )motion( me ). I had an eternity to gaze upon my apparent demise. Our folding shelves in the back all shifted forward and my lights went out!

COME VIENE...VIENE!
(WHAT COMES...COMES!)

for Paolo Sandulli

The sun is
preaching her sermon

to the town
of Praiano

that clings to the cliffs
in wonder.

Here in her hand
of light & water

she tells the parables
of pebbles.

One wave waves to another
as she walks upon the water.

Bells undress Time
disrobe her of her hours.

Lemons grow
big-bellied on branches

pregnant
with yellow.

The juice
of the Future

praying in a church
of trees.

Here, a congregation
of butterflies & bees.

Grapes dream of being
turned into wine.

Figs ripen
with pleasure.

The gods of pagan times
survive

disguised as statues.

I only believing
in the religion of

a woman’s
laughter.

And even now
as darkness

grows
upon the rose

it’s as if
the sunlight never leaves

only changes
colour

and the sunlight darkens
only to blossom

into the next morning
in love with Time.

*

This was written for the Italian artist/ceramic sculptor Paolo Sandulli who has a studio in an old Saracen tower overlooking Praiano called Torre a Mare.

His work and his workplace are magical and deliciously fantastic making the mind smile and the soul laugh as he creates a

NUOVE MITOLOGIE MEDITERRANEE

with his love of place and people. Delightful and enthralling.

Check out Paolo's creations at p.sandulli@alice.it

The title in the English version comes from the Italian menu which is the chief's surprise...eh...what comes...comes..ok? The title like Paolo's work amused me so much that it became the poem's name. The dish itself was a pizza with a midrash of everything and anything.

CHE COSA SI FA

Il sole è
la sua predicazione predica

alla città
di Praiano

che si aggrappa alle scogliere
a meraviglia.

Qui in mano
di luce e acqua

racconta le parabole
di ciottoli.

Una ondata onde ad un altro
come lei cammina sulle acque.

Campane spogliarsi Tempo
disrobe della sua ora.

Limoni crescere
grande-addome su filiali

incinta
con il giallo.

Il succo
del Futuro

pregare in una chiesa
di alberi.

Qui, una congregazione
di api e farfalle.

Uvaggio sogno di essere
trasformata in vino.

Fichi maturi
con piacere.

La divinità pagane di volte
sopravvivere

dissimulata come statue.

** solo credere
nella religione di

una donna
risate.

E anche adesso
come il buio

cresce
la rosa

è come se
la luce del sole non lascia

solo le modifiche
colore

e la luce del sole si oscura
solo a fiore

nella mattina successiva
in amore con il tempo.

SLOVO LJUBAVI
(THE WORD OF LOVE)  

Here I am
nailed to this hated bed

with the bright shiny
nails of cancer.

Death smiles
& wants to take me

as his
bride

but I
remain unfaithful
to him

elope with life
(if only for this night)    

spending golden moments
as if there were no

tomorrow.

I fling my laughter
in his big stupid grinning face

as if he thinks
this is all a human is

a something to be
taken.

I hope to sneak out
when he is not looking

or looking the other way

before he discovers me
alive in your heart

(untouchable)    

my memory
safe in your memory

so that to **** me
he will have to **** you too.

So beware my friend
you will become

a marked man

& Death
cheated of my soul

will hunt you
down

and rip me from
your heart

to finish the job.

But I know
you will
hide me

hide me
among your words

little seeds
of me

that will propagate

so that Death
would have to **** the whole world.

I laugh to see
the little seedlings

of me
sprout in other

minds
other voices

see my laughter
blossom

on  a strange
tongue

unknown to me
but known

Death furiously
glaring.

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
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.

THE MAKER OF MAPS

throw the sheet over her
start tracing her contours
"I'm making a life size map of you!"

it has to be a scale of 1:1
the map
creases with laughter

after:  we hang this
map of you upon the wall
"Mapmaking tickles!" she tells me

"Well...time for the real thing!"
I consult the map
set out to explore you

my fingers
those brave mountaineers
scale your left breast

ahhh this view of you
worth the climb
my fingers rest

and so I begin the descent
the map telling me
where to go

AS ONE CENTURY BECOMES ANOTHER

I take the spiral staircase
one steep step at a time
from the 20th to the 21st

century at the top
as the clock chimes
and a star falls

all over town
puddles hold stars prisoners
wear them as jewellery

unable to escape
the ice that holds
them earthbound

the Milky Way
frozen
in a tree

and so time moves on
the music fading away
moment by moment

rowdy revellers
reel in this
the newest of years

like a fish gasping
on a river bank wondering
just what they have caught

"HELLO MR. DEATH AND HOW ARE YOU?"

I felt like a fog
in the shape of a man
a dream walking

a shadow
come alive
never more

alive now
I was
dying

this moment
the most precious thing
I had ever owned

unable
to believe
I was leaving

the sunlight of this
morning behind
me forever

time lay scattered
on the ground
my reflection trapped

in broken bits of mirror
strange that I
would never be

me
ever
again

a cuckoo
( the clock )
not( the bird )

had the last word
I had to
smile...

*

Felt good to cheat my own heart attack..you kinda attack it back with nothing but words and the need to capture it and make it talk.But it's impossible to grasp and poem after poem tries to hold it only for to flow like water between your fingers....like trying to grab hold of a piece of sky and wrestle it to the ground.

Alas my little brother didn't manage to cheat his and the words keep trying to explain this unexplainable fact to my self. I look at the typewriter and it looks back at me...both of us at a loss for words.

"Бог правду видит, да не скоро скажет", as they say in Russian.

Spring had arrived in that Dublin morning...just snuk in when we weren't looking. We were having breakfast and after we would cycle to Eccles Street to see a real house that was lived in by a fictional character. The house was a mere ruin and would soon be knocked down to make way for a new hospital wing.
Time, as it happens, stops when one is dying or rather that particular moment lengthens forever and a second is a century. Mr. L. Bloom's house was in my mind and my hat would later blow off into its basement and I would be as one with the man himself as I lowered myself down to retrieve it...thus entering a chapter in Ulysses. And the fiction was made real.

I had just read Huxley's TIME MUST HAVE A STOP and afterwards thought how ha ha...apt!

I had also come across a 1664 phrase about buds that "explain into leaves" which I thought delightful.

I had also came upon a battered copy of Bacon's SYLVA SYLVARUM ( A natural history, in ten centuries. Whereunto is newly added the History natural and experimental of life and death, or of the prolongation of life) which alas would go inexplicably missing and which I would never read to this day.

These are the things that were running through my head when I was going to be dead but...just as suddenly wasn't.

Oh and Tolstoy's GOD SEES THE TRUTH BUT WAITS was ratting about in my mind somewhere so it was going to be a very literary( literally )death!

Each Spring I go back and revisit my death( that wasn't )feeling glad to be just....alive and...in the moment