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.

THE SHAPE OF HER LONELINESS

she looked at herself
as if she were someone else
looking at herself

"I'm me & not me!"
she thought on her third whiskey
soon she was nobody

she stared intently
into nothing
Nothing stared back

song on the jukebox
colouring in
her sadness

the song her song
poured itself slowly
into the shape of her loneliness

she cried
without crying
great big invisible tears

she was playing at Life
as if it were a game
she didn't know the rules to

"Oh feet..!" she intoned drunkenly
". . .take me home!"
the street seemed to know the way

her female footfalls
echoing into
his male footsteps

she stood still
under a street light
"Beam me up!" she smiled

*

Under the influence of the drink and the song she took stock of her self and found herself incredibly lonely and that she didn't know her self and that somehow she had mislaid her life. Walking home with her husband she suddenly thought she wanted to do something with her life and that she wasn't happy. When they came to a street light she stood under it and with a whimiscal notion shouted out the old Star Trek line...."BEAM ME UP SCOTTY!"

She said this was the moment she made up her mind to leave the marriage and start life again on her own and on her own terms.
The song by the way was Elkie Brooks singing WE DON'T CRY OUT LOUD.

I CHAMENI STIGMI
(THE LOST MOMENT)

the mountain
places a cloud
behind its head

dozes off
into the blue
of an afternoon

the father's shadow
watches his child
pedal a trike

chasing a chicken
in circles
laughing hysterically

this a moment
that will vanish
into a Greek sky

that only
a passing poet
will notice enough

in his head where
words will
re-enact it endlessly

even as time
fades and
years vanish

and the French lady
states that reality is
'les mensonges et les larmes'.

*

Finally got around to these fragments that came together in a moment after 40 years! But as the Greeks would have it. . . "Αγάλι-αγάλι γίνεται η αγουρίδα μέλι."

"Agáli-agáli yínete i agourída méli"

“The unripe grape becomes sweet like honey slowly-slowly.”

ZAK'S PRAYER

little Zak
(just a little scrap of a chap)    
with a deep Barry White voice

enquires(as he enquires
about everything) :
“Why is your hair white? ”

listens patiently to the explanation
how after a head injury
“I went white overnight! ”

being a good Christian child
tells me he will pray for me
for the “black to be back! ”

I’m very tempted
to dye it for the next day
just to prove his prayer right

when his fervent prayer
doesn’t turn the situation around
...he frets:

I tell him
God & me
are both happy

with it
…like this
“Really? ” he asks.

“Really! ”
I affirm.
he grimaces

“Have it your own way then
but man...
it makes you look old & grim!"

I grin
tell him that
I am what I am

but that I can live with it
"Ok..!" he sighs
"...have it your own way!"

*

He was a lovely sincere child who pitied my whiteness of beard and hair. I basked in his pity...it was so loving and tender. And just where did this tiny skinny little child get that Barry White/ Shaft voice! One of my nicest moments in teaching.

AND SO

a latch
shuts the night
out

a turn of key
puts the town
to rest whilst

outside a cat
and a milk bottle
gaze at the moon

yellow and overblown
and now Mr. Cat
with swish of tail

vanishes into the shadows
as the milk bottle
falls and rolls away

its note left
on the pavement.
Inside a clock has run out

of tick-tocks
until it is wound up
by a sleepy eyed man

so that
it speaks of
time again

the house dozes
the lawn yawns
everything is

just so
and so
....goodnight

WRITTEN ON THE PULSE

Time was
when wheat was
a living gold

moving with the wind
moving me
to tears

unable to hold
the ecstasy
of its beauty

or the green of trees
alive with sunlight
made me cry that I

had no words to touch it
and all I could do
was to love it so

with all my soul
before words came
and attached themselves

to these ordinary miracles
the world teaching me
to say itself

to understand
the ravishing
of the senses

the language
of feeling
written on the pulse

THE PROMISE

I feel like the hare
hanging by its heels from a tree
his open guts accusing me

even in death
the hare continues
to stare

"That's one for the ***!"
my kind uncle laughs
my mind screams and screams

"Forgive me..!" I ask of the hare
"I am new to this life
& death thing!"

"Don't forget me..." says the hare
"Just keep me forever
in your mind!"

*

It was like a theatrical scene that the moment had set up..there was Uncle Mikey and me lying in the field that falls down to the river and this hare comes and sits beside us...another living being just soaking up the world through the process of mental osmosis. We all just sat together....no distinction being made between animal or human. I could see every hair on its coat as if it had been drawn by Durer.

Then suddenly my uncle my lovely kind uncle gave the hare a karate chop in one quick flash. And that was it. I was totally shocked at how fast my uncle moved and the result. I couldn't imagine it being done just as I couldn't imagine the hare coming to sit with us. It totally traumatised me.I promised the hare I would never forget her and she could lived in my mind forever. That night we had hare but I wasn't even there...I was out in the barn crying. This poem became that promise.

It was silence deepening into an even greater silence and I thought the miracle was that the hare dared to trust us. It was a privilege to sit with such a wild creature...all of us gazing into a sunset. Nobody was breathing except for the hare. I was afraid to breathe in case it scared him away. And the unbelievable act that my uncle had been contemplating all that time. I also thought that surely it wouldn't... couldn't be possible. Surely. But my uncle surprised both the hare and myself with an agility he had never shown a sign of...he was an easy going laid back type of guy. He sure had me and the hare fooled.

A KISS OF RAIN

written inside him
with wild calligraphy
the littlest of her smiles

it was raining hard
the kiss hardly a kiss
unmaking making the world

the kiss
making him all at once
aware of his existence

the kiss now
making them oblivious
of a world turned to rain

rain & laughter rain&laughter
he kisses her like a happy
ever after

FASHION STATEMENT

the tree
gathered its leaves
around her

stuck a passing cloud in her hair
wore a little  sunlight & a slight rain
changed clothes

every now & then
as the fancy
took her

now a brilliantly blue
sky made of summer
now a warm evening

with just the slightest breeze
then a striking sunset
before falling asleep

wearing only
a night sky
with scattered diamante stars

AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF WW2

the doodlebug cuts
its silence deadlier than its whine
a baby crying

where there was a house
there was a house no more
a rocking horse survives the blast

the neighbours
across the road
move to a place called Death

"The road had a ruddy big hole
with a bus sticking out of it!"
Death always only a heartbeat away

"1939 & I
were such good friends
only time Love walked in my door!"

"Such a card he was
but he turned out
to be a cad!"

"Oh he was cad but
he was my cad
but I loved the bounder!"

"Yes, dear...the War
the War got him...
...he never came back!"

on the middle of mantlepiece
a black & white slice
of 1939

Spring is late...again
"Where have you been!"
shyly it smiles at me in flowers

OH BROTHER MINE

my brother
has lost his voice
I will speak for him

my brother
has lost the world
I will share my world

my brother
has lost his body
he lived in

I let him live
in mine
keep him alive

my brother has lost
all his thoughts
I let him think with mine

come brother
live in me
let Death die

BROTHER BLUEBOTTLE

a bluebottle
emerges
from a hedge

like an expensive
and repulsive
flying jewel

It settles upon
my ring finger
I wear it

with fear and delight
Its iridescence
bewitches

this the first
bluebottle
I'd ever seen.

I thought
they grew
in hedges

I had a lot to learn
It buzzes about
in my brain

as if
60 years
had not passed

welcome
welcome back
brother bluebottle

it's good
to see you
still alive

SCHRODINGER'S DOG

Unlike
Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's dog

was always
there

under his feet

hungry for
...his Master's voice...a pat...the sound of his step...

The cat
(like anybody's cat)

couldn't give
a toss

(but that was neither
here nor there) .

It's hard to tell

if it's alive or if
it ain't.

It's one
lazzzzzzy cat.

He's never there
(when you want him to be)

and always there
(when you don't want him to be.)

Quark the cat
was just one big paradox.

The dog
was old and faithful

always
in the box

asleep or gnawing
a bone in thought.

The cat couldn't care
less

a source
of constant

anxiety

about its
whereabouts

and the state
of its health.

Being
neither

here nor
there

or somewhere
else entirely

as if it lived
in a parallel universe.

Lived in a world
of its own.

Thus the theory of
Schrödinger's Cat

proved
(beyond doubt)

that although
cats are nice an' all dat

dogs
are a scientist's

best friend.

*

In 1935, Schrödinger published an essay describing the conceptual problems in quantum mechanics. A brief paragraph in this essay described the cat paradox:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat) : in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.[

*

There was a leak in my cistern in the brain stem. I didn't like to play dice with my universe so I called a quantum mechanic in. I asked him if it was bad. He said: Well, it is or it isn't...depending on how you look at it.. It's good for me...bad for you! '

'Now, about that cat? '

'Not that old chestnut....the cat is over 70 now...just fix the cistern will ya! I had the cat poisoned...so that's that! '

'Ohhhhh! '

'Anyway...it was a hypothetical cat! '

'Ya mean it wasn't real? '

'Oh...what is real?

He seemed considerably saddened by this and left without charging for the cistern.
I hate when after all this time Animal Rights activists disguise themselves plumbers in order to rescue the ****** cat that is neither alive or dead.

Next time it leaks...I'll call a vet

". . .TO KISS THE SLUMBERING OWEN NA BUIDHE. . ."

the river wandered along
as if it was
in no particular hurry

it had forgotten time
and Time
took no mind

now it flows
through my memory
lazy in a heat haze

the sun thrown high
in a summer kissed sky
the day lasting longer than forever

"Howya!" I called
and the river answering
in its own language

now here
we are
I no longer a boy

both of us
both of us wearing
the same sunshine

we wore
some 60 years
or so ago

"Ya wouldn't have
an auld song in ya
would ya!" asks the river

"Indeed I have!"
I told the river and
it sparkled to be told so

I sang Carrigdhoun
catching the river
in the nets of the tune

"Ahhh sure that's
a grand song so it is!"
pleased to hear itself sung

and now dusk
was gathering
the countryside to itself

"Will ya come back
tomorrow and sing!"
I promised it I would

and every 60 years or so
I sing to the river
flowing through my mind

"and Dónall swore aye o'er &  o'er,
we'd part no more
a stór mo chroidhe"

YESTERDAY'S MAP

yes Sir
can I be
of some assistance

this map
I
bought yesterday

it keeps changing
all the **** time
never the same

from one
moment
to the next

of course Sir
that is a map
of the future

well I want
one that stays
the same

oh you should have
said so Sir
you want a map of the past

you should have
specified
the type of map

most people
want a map
to tell them

where they are
going rather than
where they were

paid my money
and left in a huff
now where was I

IN FOG EVERYTHING IS THE GHOST OF ITSELF...SO IT IS.

alas poor Scrooge
I knew him
a fellow of infinite jest

a lover
of all things
Christmas

why he wouldn't say
boo
to a ghost

the kindest
caringest
loving
loan shark
in all of this here
dreary town

kept me going
through hard times
even though my life

was only
rust & dus
rust & dust

"People
mutht be
amuthed!"

he'd always say
in that Sleary way

wot happened
to the old
geezer

why there is not
a body
doesn't know dat

ended up Marshallsea
Debtor's prison along
with old John Dickens.

ya know
Charlie's
father

for want of
an unpaid baker's bill
a good man was lost

to his self
drove him mad
it did so it did

now that Marley
on the other hand
'ard as nails....

*

HARD TIMES was at one stage possibly going to be RUST AND DUST. And of course it is Mr. Sleary in HARD TIMES who professes: "People mutht be amuthed!"
Dickens' dad John was the one who was sent to Marshallsea for not paying his baker's bill.
Scrooge going to the light side of course will be the ruin of him as a money lender 'cos he has become just too too nice and let's everyone off! Marley instead of being dead...'dead as a doornail" is very much alive and horrible to boot.

As well as being as "myriadminded' as Coleridge proposes to be and as humorous as could possibly be...old Charlie just wrote beautiful English! I always remember the section with great affection of how the house came to find itself in the street it was in in A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

As I do of the beautiful section in OUR MUTUAL FRIEND when in talking a bit about...mist Chapter 57 if ya wanna look it up.

"The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water."

That sticks in my head as pure poetry and whatever the story is what I really really remember!

You can now see how and why my title is concocted as I wanted to pay homage to those words and to get a chance to knock around with Charlie and his cast of characters.



"They were gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide and seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again."

THE ME I AM

I laugh
with a dead man’s laugh
(a man I never knew)  

my grandfather’s laughter
flowering like Springtime
blossoming in my mouth

not listening to the years
Time joins the dots
Painting by Numbers

I see
with my mother’s eyes
the world

stealing into my mind
become music
anything it chooses

Time
joins the dots
Painting by numbers

this gesture
is my big sisters
gathering me

up into her
nearness
tenderness

Time
joins the dots
Painting by Numbers

my father’s love
beats in my heart
sings in everything

it touches
amuses me to see
how I am

all those
others
as well as me

Time joins
the dots
Painting by Numbers

STAIRWAY

sound
staining the air with
music

the air
turned to music
staining the soul

armies of music
invading
the land of the ear

my ears
stealing from the air
diaphanous music

the record
writng music
on the air

the music
lost
in itself

sound sculpts
music
out of the air

music
the invisible shape
of sound

"I like the way
the music swims towards me
through the air!"

my little one
afraid of records
"...'cos of the ghosts of the voices..."

the ghosts of voices
trapped
forever in shellac

*

My little girl used to like STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN and she used to plead with me again and again to "play lady...play lady!" and that's where this bunch of haiku on the subject of music started their journey into being.

LOSING ONE'S SELF

she's only
being 3
for the last three days

she wakes
in the pitch
black of night

cries out because
she can not see
herself

"I've lost me...
. . .I've
lost me!"

the candle comforts her
gives her her self
back again

I stroke her hair.
"Shhhh...shhhh...
I'm here!"

sleep
takes her
away from me

In the morning
she laughs
to see Daddy

asleep beside her
she strokes my hair.
"Shhhh....shhhh...I'm here!"

!WAKEY WAKEY!
( for Maureen )

Every morning I
delighted in her

jumping into her skin
eager to begin

being her
all over again.

New to her self
as if she had only been

minted that very minute
her own self invented.

Touching the world
with her sense of self

chasing after dust motes
trying to clutch sunlight

creeping up on a honeysuckle's
scent

snatching at music
in the air

begging the world
to come out to play.

*

"!Wakey...wakey!" is what Tilly would greet me with rather than I her...she was always wakey wakey...I...a poor tired Dad...attempting and usually failing to keep up with her perpetual ball of energy and non-stop soaking up of the world through the emotional osmosis of being a 3 year old girl.

WE ARE EACH OTHER

I slip into
your gestures
as if

they were my own
the ones
I loved

adopt that
certain tone
that could only mean

Brian and
that
"Alright...Bud!"

your voice
walks
inside my head

I listen to
the footsteps
of everything you say

here I adopt your smile
use it as
you would do

the kindness
in your eyes
reflected now in mine

see sometimes
even I
forget your death

by becoming
you
bit by bit

you live inside me now
and we still exist
as brother to brother

the one
grown into
the other

outside a new day
blossoms
into being

walk with me as one
my eyes will see
for you

a time that can be
never known
by you

I tell the dawn your name
this is
my brother

GETTING 22

A  glance
told me all

I needed to
know.

The room had been
Chandlerised.

A bishop was kicking a hole
in a stained glass window

whilst eating a pearl onion
on a banana split

but not the angel cake 'cos
it had a tarantula on it.

Everywhere there were
kangaroos in dinner jackets.

Somehow Raymond's words
had escaped the constructs

of the language
&

similes and metaphors
had become real

realer than real.

I kept walking
in ordinary prose

each footstep
a boring report.

trying not to break
into a metaphor

or smile in simile
or anything similar.

I made it to
the last page

and dived into the dark hole
that opened at my feet

into
THE END.

I had managed to make it
through these mean pages

( it's hard being a linguistic
private **** in one's mind )

when one is falling
asleep and

the Chandler
( the studied text )

falls out of
the too tired hand

but oh no
I had somehow entered

the realms of one
Dashiell Hammett.

Me...I  
felt like somebody

"...had taken the lid off life

let me see
the works."

"The problem with putting..."
( I thought to myself )
"...two and two together..."

"...is that sometimes you
get four

& sometimes you get
twenty two."

*

Sometimes study and sleep don't mix and I tell myself: "If you don't leave, I'll get somebody who will." These were just some of the quotes from Mr. C and Mr. H that were floating about in the old noggin as sleep and study fought to a stalemate for the mind of this poor student.

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

“He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him see the works.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."--Farewell, My Lovely (Chapter 13)

“He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.”
--Farewell, My Lovely (Chapter 1)

“There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback

“I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

NOBODY HOME. . .

I'm afraid I
am not
myself today

I'm
someone else
entirely

a stranger
unknown
to me

My reflection
steps out of
the mirror

"Well, there you are..."
it grins
"...in you go!"

The mirror
closes
behind me

a world
of glass
freckled with time

my shadow
abandons
me

now that it has become
a person
in its own right

struts about
on the sunny side of the street
pretends not to know me when we meet

even my imaginary friend
refuses to talk me
acts as if I don't exist

*

My father and my brother both died recently and for two years I wandered in a limbo of grief...trying to keep going and pretend I was still me...this is what that feeling felt like.

AS ONE
( for Miss Tilly & Miss Tiddles )

the kitten has no need
of time
it lives in the meow of now

the toddler too
of time cares nothing
cries only for the now

both watch
as the world assembles
itself around them

they gaze
into each other's eyes
smile with recognition

they treat each other
as equal
beings

they play with the moment
rolling it around
as if it were a bell in a ball

they are both startled
by the shadow that
grows out of them

neither kitten or girl
can understand the stranger who
mimics and mocks them in the mirror

now their shadows hide and
there is no body
behind the mirror

grandfather clock
spits out time
in sharp short ticks

both girl & kitten
laughing at it
wondering why it cries

they live in the endless
time of
no time

a moment is
a forever
a play thing

girl & kitten now
asleep in each other's arms
Time has been turned off

the world sneaks away
here a blob of green
there a shred of red

inside their heads
kitten...girl
share the same dream

"...IN THE DEPTHS OF ETERNITY..."
(for Jeremy Loynes)

the sea was trees
as if trees had awoken
from a dream that they were sea

great waves of trees
rose up...rose up
like forests walking

they the sea trees
"thousands deep on every hand"
the poet holding them in his mind

the clouds too
were a sea in storm
the moon drowned

Edward Thomas
H.D. and me
trying to contain the sea

in words
ha ha
mere words

*

Hilda Doolittle's fabulous OREAD much much loved by me from childhood...I have often quoted it to the sea itself in Malta or Ireland in an attempt the calm the frightened sea...it usually succeeded and just as usually did not! Some seas were pleased to hear the poem...others wanted to maintain their mystery.

The title  and quote comes from letters by Edward Thomas in THE ANNOTATED COLLECTED POEMS.

"I fell into a deep sleep; and in my sleep I had a dream...a great forest hung round about. The might of its infinite silence and repose, indeed, never ceased to weigh upon me in my dream. I could hear sounds: they were leagues away. The trees...must be thousands deep on every hand."

Edward Thomas

OREAD

by  H. D.

Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.

SLOWLY, SILENTLY NOW THE MOON

I treasure this little scrap
of moonlight you left behind
as you stepped into memory

you recede from me
like a sea
running to meet its horizon

you imprisoned
in (your own) parenthesis
the words continue without you

Death unclasps
the Present from the Future
now all things are Past

*

Written somewhere over the Hindu Kush

What happens at death....time instead of being joined up writing or linked to each other are unclasped from each other and the link is broken...everything is now made of past as there is no more future.

Written for my sister Junie...a little scrap of a memory...just the back of a bare heel leaving a room and stepping from a moonbeam...impressed itself on me though I was only 7 and there it stands...lonely and insignificant until flying to India I look out the window and underneath the Hindu Kush crawls by like a petrified sea and this tiny moment comes to visit me.

I can still hear her reciting SILVER by Walter de la Mare to a me that was only three.

OUR AVATAR

our Avatar
who art
in Cyberspace

hollowed
be
thy name

thy w.w.w. com
thy "#1"
be done

on earth
as it is
in the ether

give us
this day
our daily tweets

and forgive us
those we delete
who have unfriended us

and lead us
into temptation
( lol )

but deliver us
from evil
( ...not really )

for thine is
the Twitterdom...the facebook
& the google

for ever
& ever
ahhhhhh....men!

"...TO MAKE MUSIC THAT WILL MELT THE STARS..."
( For Ray of the Pools )

So, here we are
in Flaubert's garden

as if he has just
gone in and

will be back
in a moment.

We wait for him
to return

chat amongst
ourselves

intimate
with his very thought

having travelled
through his mind

and not mere
summer tourists.

We feeling we have
just stepped out from

a time machine and
a servant informs us

we have just missed the master
who had been called away.

We pass his photograph
with his melancholy gaze

"...it seems to me,,,"
it whispers as we past

"...that the rain is falling
through my heart...

,,,causing it to crumble into ruins.”

We return to his rooms
the mummified heads

stare back at us
through glass

screaming silently
"We were once like you!"

A fly argues
with a window pane

much as it did
a hundred years ago

time lost
between the tick and the tock

but now the sunlight
grows old

and outside the 21st century
awaits

angry at our escape
into another time.

I shush it
with a wave of my hand

“There is not a particle of life..."
I tell it

"...which does not bear poetry within it”



Musee Flaubert et d'Histoire de la Medecine
51 rue de Lecat, 76000, Rouen,

Flaubert's house but also on show...two mummified heads in a glass case, a full mummified body in a casket in a glass case, the skull of the Marquis de Sade and some plaster death masks of criminals that were guillotined!

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.”

― Gustave Flaubert, November



I wrote this after Ray Pool gave me a copy of Madame Bovary which I had last read when I was 12 so I needed to read it this time around as an adult. It was the writing on both occasions that got me!

CHEVAL Á BASCULE EN FEU

she keeps
the room
just as it was

as if
Death
had never entered it

still
turns
teiderdown down

still
straightens
sheets

still
plumbs
pillows

brings breakfast
every morning
just like before

but
there is no before
anymore

even
the future
has vanished

one day
it hurts her
this haunting

the room has become
a shrine
and she its priestess

so she decides
to burn the past
escape this trap

the wind
turns the pages
as the books flame

dolls
melt
in the witch hunt

a rocking horse
is on fire
its mane a flame

"Go now!"
she commands
"These are only things!"

she hides
her daughter
in her heart

where nothing
can touch her.
fire reflected in her tears

*

She hunted down all the dolls and they were all burnt at the stake so to speak. Two reactions to grief in the one person...preserve everything...destroy everything.

I WEAR LONG SLEEVES EVEN IN SUMMER

(blue bruises
bloom
on my skin)

I wear
long sleeves
even in summer

the memory of
his flashing fists
even the memory hurts

first I lost
my smile
it somehow floated away

(blue bruises
bloom
on my skin)

next I lost
my flesh
until I was nothing

but skin and bone
my curves...my *******
vanished into themselves

"All...something...
is...grass!"
I quoted to myself

I wear
long sleeves
even in summer

the woman
in the mirror
who claims she's me

isn't...isn't!
a stranger holds
my eye

I...
...I
look away

(blue bruises
bloom
on my skin)

I wear
long sleeves
even in summer

A BLACKBIRD CHIPS AWAY AT IT

here on the shore
of your death
only time between us

remember walking with you
in the last century
this century I walk alone

Time lends me sleep...dreams
I conspire to meet you there
together we outwit death

I assault the world
with my grief
embarrassed it turns away

the world
not big enough
to contain your death

I am bound
in a nutshell
even grief tires of me

happiness hurts
even for daring
just to be there

I don't forget you
I just can't
remember you as you are

happiness shushes me
"Hush...hush!" it soothes
my guilty tears

an invincible sky
frozen silence
a blackbird chips away at it

ITS OWN GOOD SELF

no God just
the sweet rain blesses me
with its own good self

a robin
unaware
that he's my prayer

the miracle of sunlight
playing
with a kitten

wind sings
in a choir
of trees

THE MUSEUM OF MISTAKES

here in the Museum
of Mistakes
I wander among

the many exhibits
amazed
gasp at how stupid

people can be
look through
protective glass

at the ghost
of a love
my own face

reflected back at me
such finely crafted
heartbreak.

perfect little memories
glint cruelly
against the lights

displayed against
the stark contrast of
black velvet

I remember these
didn’t realise
how valuable

they were then
priceless
now.

I turn away
& cry
having seen too much

here
in my Museum
of Mistakes

the Past
comes back
to haunt me

THE BACKWARD LOOK
( for D.B. )

The blackbird
leaves me a note

pinned
to the sky

that blue
beyond blue

the tide
of the moment

turning turning.

Time like apple blossom
falling through my mind

the little boy
unable to believe

that this day
is not

made of forever
but only this " now."

I walk back
through my self

to unpin the note
the blackbird wrote

with his voice
still pinned

to that
self same sky.

The blue so still
beyond even its self.

I, at last, able
to read the bird's words

its language a secret
no longer to me

"I sing..." it says "...I sing!"

"Because all this
must die!"

"I sing the moment's tide
its turning always turning!"

It's throat
full of song

glorying in being

alive
for this

one eternal
moment.

*

I was reading Frank O'Connor's series of lectures on early Irish poetry
( THE BACKWARD LOOK )and listening to both Bowie's newest and an old favourite of mine LODGER. I was at the start of FANTASTIC VOYAGE when the seemingly impossible news of his death trickled through and I went to BBC to confirm that...it was not so. It was so.

A moment ago he had been singing( as he had been singing for me all these years ):

"In the event
that this fantastic voyage
Should turn to erosion
and we never get old
Remember it's true, dignity is valuable
But our lives are valuable too"

I was also reading this 4 line fragment from the 9th century :

"There is one
   I would wish to see again,
And give the golden world to win -
    All, all, though all were vain."

"Fil duine
     Frismbad buide lemm díuterc
Ara tabrainn in mbith mbuide
     Uile, uile, cid díupert."

And  so I wrote him this little poem....THE BACKWARD LOOK.

For me she always
stepped out of the screen

and into this
my unreal real world.

Celluloid tears
still glistening in her eyes.

I hold her.
Tell her...

in my bad Bogeyish way:

"Listen sweetheart...you are
gonnna get...back into that movie.!"

And somehow she'd see it
as it was.

I watch her walking
back to her flickering world

as the music swells and
there ain't a dry eye

in my head.

"At least..."
I tell her

( mist shrouding her figure )

"...we'll always have
GUILDFORD!"

REMEMBERING COLERIDGE

"Ok! Can we have..."
my mind shouts

from its directorial chair
megaphone in hand.

"A MIRACLE OF RARE DEVICE
over here!"

BUT OH! THAT DEEP ROMANTIC CHASM
is still in her caravan.

"Ok...cue camera No. 2 &
where...

where are the SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
can someone please. . .

. . .get the ****** SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
please!

"We've got a Coleridge
moment

coming up on his next
footstep!"

"Are all you brain cells
following me!"

Memory goes through wardrobe
dressing each thought

in perfect Kubla Khan
costumes.

"Ok...cue footstep 2000 &
waitforitwaitforit....2!"

"Ok people..!" shouts my mind
"...he's going to remember the

Coleridge any second
. .    .nOW!"

"Cut to...OH STILL UNRAVISHED BRIDE OF QUIETNESS!
wot...wot....cut CUT!"

"Ok...who pressed the Keats button!"

And so it is that a Keatsian personified urn
of Greek extraction

finds itself in Xanadu

as I cross the road
and almost get knocked down

by a ****** big No. 69

and a cursing cyclist
in spangled blue latex.

*

What it is like inside my brain as I try to remember the bits and bobs of Coleridge that bob up and down in the stream of my thought as I try to cross a busy road. The mind is more interested in salvaging the lines of the poem rather than coordinating the feet in order to cross the road still in possession of my life. I survived to tell the tale but...only just.

I guess I was remembering the old comic strip THE NUMBSKULLS that tinkled my pink when I was a young fella me lad and both comics and poems jumbled around in that little mind like so much bric-a-brac or emotional flotsam and jetsam. And so the lines like shipwreck sailors get washed up on the shores of my consciousness.

Our "myriad-minded Shakespeare" as Sammy said of Will and could have been said of me in this poem but not as successfully as either Shakespeare or Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Numskulls is a comic strip in The Beano, and previously in The Beezer and The Dandy – UK comics owned by D.C Thomson. The strip is about a team of tiny human-like technicians who live inside the heads of various people, running and maintaining their bodies and minds.

The comic strip first appeared in The Beezer in 1962 and was drawn by Malcolm Judge. In this version they lived inside a man's head rather than a boy's head. The man was never named, but the Numskulls referred to him as "our Man". There were six Numskulls during this time. The 'Mouth Department' was home to two Numskulls, named Alf and Fred. Luggy (Radar) looked a lot like Cruncher, Snitch looked like Cruncher as well except Snitch wore orange, Brainy had no glasses and had no hair apart from around his ears and wore black, Blinky looked the same except he was bald and Alf and Fred had two hairs on their head and wore black and yellow.

VISITATION

Brian walked
through the wall.

Paused, smiled:
halfways in - halfways out.

"Jaysus..!" he said.
"That always feckin' happens!"

He pulled the rest of him
through to this room

leaving a glowing
trail of ectoplasm.

"It makes me feel
like a ****** snail!"

"Sorry about the ghostly slime
it's hard to get used to

being dead
if ya see what I mean!"

I couldn't have of course
so  I just nodded.

"And this ghost stuff
is really the pits.

Here I am and yet
here I am not."

He gave me a playful
punch on the shoulder

and went right through me
misjudging his new existence.

"Now, listen bud...all this crying
is getting on me nerves.

It's gotta stop.

You've got a life
to live...now...live it!"

And then like e clichéd
cockerel crowing at the dawn

he faded into the curtains.
"Jaysus...these curtains

are truly terrible
they'll have to go!"

"Well. . ?"
said the sunlight

"...will we get on
with it?"

The day waited impatiently
hopping from one minute to the next.

"Yes. . ." I said
"Yes."

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.