WEARING EACH OTHER'S FINGERPRINTS

midnight
tips the candle
slowly slowly

until the pain is bearable
our fingers scream
wax stealing our fingerprints

we laugh in the dark
peel off each other's fingerprints
they lie there

alien animals
cooling on a saucer
sleep finds us

wearing each other's fingerprints
( you me
I you )

years later
not even Death
can steal you from me

**

Me and my big sister Junie entertaining ourselves before the advent of telly back in '63. We made replicas of all ten prints and swapped...she wearing me...I wearing her....become someone else even with this one little gesture. And indeed she would walk into my mind as easy as a lift the latch and walk right in. I too was free to walk into her thoughts and visit how she saw the world. Wrote this for Women's Day because this gentle 18 year old woman meant the world to me. Still does....always will.

YOUR LITTLEST SMILE

Death, rather diffident
(rather shy)

comes to me & says:

'It is time to die.'

'Ok...' I say '...when? '

'...like, this moment? '

'This second...? '

I struggle
with my heart attack

as Death
(feeling bad about it)

reposes my artefacts.

Outside, a van pulls up
with neat Gothic script

DEATH - REMOVALS.
it spells out in big bold letters.

I like it.

Death's got style
(& a nice smile)

& is a kind...
...of groovy guy.

Or is he a lady...
...boy...it's hard to tell

this here heart attack
sure hurts like hell.

'Ok, boys - take it all
away! '

Death's little helpers
all big bruisers all over 7' 2'
(former nightclub bouncers)

set to it with a will.

They take away
the blue sky
under which I had first kissed you.

They take away that night
sky under which I had kissed you more.

They took away
the little day to day
things

I always loved

the shape of your mouth

your continuously falling hair
brushed impatiently away

from your eyes

...your eyes...

the smell of your perfume
in an empty room

the littlest of your smiles
I had saved
for a rainy day

meanwhile
like a living Houdini

I had done it

somehow wrestled out
of the heart attack's strait jacket.

'****! ' Death
spat in a peevish manner.

'How, in God's name
did you do that? '

Death, sighed:
'Ok, kid...ya got me
- this time! '

'Right, boys... put it all back!
Put everything back! '

Les boys, scowl at me
as if to say: ' I'll remember you
...sunny Jim! '

'You...' Death
snarled from the side of his mouth

annoyed now
(no more Mr. Nice Guy)

'You...I'll see you
again! '

A tear...trickled down
my cheek

(unable to speak)
all I could do

was glance down

(your littlest smile)

clasped tightly
in my hand.

LES PAS PERDUS

"What did I do
in the war?"
I kept on trying not to be dead

all my friends were no good
at staying alive
( I keep them alive in my head )

the voices of the dead
shouting why are you
still alive & not I

good ole' Fred
lost his head
easy as a nursery rhyme

Tom holding
his guts in his hands
trying to stuff them back in

all we found of John
were his boots
with his feet still in them

"What did I do
in the war?"
I kept on trying not to be dead

I kept on trying
I kept on trying
to get back to you

*


LES PAS PERDUS (stepping stones or the lost steps )halfway buried stones forming a walkway. The stepping stones between one generation and the next....the war to end all wars merely produced the next war. He and his father were making such a path together as the old man told of his time and the horror that is contained in  a survivor's head. Also the very act of surviving creates an agonising guilt that gnaws at the soul. He would often cry and say better men than he died...why not me...why not me.  

And he would see his dead friends everywhere.

Father in the Ist World War who only related his own tale when his son in WW11 met the same horrible experiences.

“Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I simply should recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.”

― André Breton

CRAZY CANARY YELLOW
(In Memory Of My Mother Ita Dempsey)

Bright skin tight
a crazy canary yellow

jeans
my pride & joy

(my first Versace)  

took a lot
of *****

to wear ‘em
but then

I got
‘em!

My mother hated
(with a vengeance)   them

(hated to pieces)  
them

until one morning early
up with the crow of the ****

I cut them
myself to pieces

“Snick snack! ” sniggered
the scissors

(good for a laugh)  

threw the shreds of the threads
up upon the roof

let an hour or so
pass

and then discovering
my own(the devil’s)   handiwork

accused her
of the dastardly deed.

Who else(I said)  
wanted the jeans dead?

Who hated them
with such a passion

to do such...such
a thing.

Maybe she thought...
“I did it in my(God forgive)   sleep.”

“Although I know
I didn’t do it

it’s what I would have wanted done.”

After hours
struggling like a worm

I let her off the hook
confess it was I

that done them
(the jeans)    in.

She annoyed at the spoof
that took her in

but delighted at the demise
of those **** things.

The hearty laugh of then
the feeble smile of now

as she(here is this hospital)  
tries not to die.

*

It was the last time we laughed through that story. I was on my own with her and was just trying to chat to her like we always did. I also sang her the Nat King Cole version of Autumn Leaves in Japanese that she loved. She told me that I was always " a romantic auld ejeet!" So the poem begins yet again with the telling of this old chestnut and brings it bang up to date and here we find ourselves in her final moments. Usually after the telling and sharing of this tale and a good laugh I would make her a cup of tea and we would be off on some other remembrance....this time it is the last telling of the story.

Although this is ostensibly about shoelaces, times tables and swans in Prague...it is obviously a love poem for me Da....now that I can't bring him anywhere...I bring him everywhere.

7 TIMES 7 IS...?

When I was four
I fretted

over things I couldn't do
like tie my tie...tie my shoe

laces were
beyond me

as were such things as
7 times 7 is.  . ?

My Da  would get it right
Every time...I'd...eh...forget.

Or he would tie my laces
so they couldn't come undone.

Or do me a splendid
Windsor knot.

For the life of me I
simply could - not.

And when I grew up to be
5

would I know by then
maybe...by 10.

Was never sure
about being sure.

Ties...laces...times tables
defeating me.

My father all love
and hugs and smiles.

Now them...them I
could do.

And my father could
pin a river down

a blue line flowing
in an atlas

watching it wriggle
under his thumb.

"Vltava!"
he'd command it

and it would pause
to listen to its name.

He told me the river
lived in Prague

and that was somewhere
I...forget.

And here I am at almost 64
gazing at the Vltava in person.

Know it for what
it is

and all its swans
all its swans.

I even now where
Prague is now.

I stand in its
December.

My father who art in Heaven
I pray to you

as I used to do
when I was 2.

You better
than any God

I could ever
imagine.

So here I be in Praha
watching the waters

of the Vltava
repeating a Czech tongue twister

laughing at its absence
of vowels.

"Prd krt skrz drn, zprv zhlt hrst zrn!""
What a howl!

Still have trouble with
those ****** laces.

My wife laughs as
they come undone and. . .come undone.

**** them!
**** them!

Can only make a bad stab
at a Windsor knot.

Get by by
not wearing a tie.

Hugs and loves
and smiles?

I know them
by heart.

I hug you
in my mind's eye.

Know now
that 7 times 7

is and always will be.

*

Prd krt skrz drn, zprv zhlt hrst zrn!

A mole farted through grass, having swallowed a handful of grain

IT'S TIME

Time pinned down
in a tiny clock
trapped behind its numbers

Time taps out
an S.O.S.
"Tick tock!" it pleads "Tick tock!"

Time the genie
trapped inside
the clock's ticktock

Time torn apart
made available to us humans
in parcels of hrs.,  mins.  & secs

Time held prisoner
in a clock
force fed tick tocks

fob watch
Time tied
to a chain

Death lets Time
out of the clock
the humans stop what they're doing

THURSDAY FOREVER

there was a knock
on the door
it was Thursday

"What are you doing
here?" I demanded
"Today is Monday...all day!"

"I know...I know!" it cried
"I got thrown out
of the week!"

"What are you going
to do?" I asked
"Move in with you!" it sighed

"For how long!"
I now cried
"For as long as it takes...!"

Thursday didn't say
what "it" was
how can this be?

"Oh!" I smiled
weakly and again
"Oh!"

Thursday smiled
weekly "Knew you
would see sense

it's been over
a year now and
Thursday wasn't going anywhere

it never takes out
the trash or does
the dishes or shops

it slops about
the house watching
daytime TV soaps

it does nothing  but
be Thursday
Thursday forever

OH  THE TILLYNESS OF IT ALL

"the sky is an ocean..."
so my child tells me
"...of air!"

and that "birds
are its fishes
swimming in its blue!"

I sit at her feet
as she tells me
how her world is

her mind a great ocean
where thought flies
and words swim like birds

now she sits on my lap
as if I were her
mighty throne

and commands
her words
to speak her mind

then she sings
"Metal guru is it you
(Ah-ah-ah-ah) oh, yeah"

and we both
sing as one
"(Ah-ah-ah-ah) oh, yeah"

*

My 3 year old was obsessed with this T-Rex song and one could see it playing in her head even when she was quiet and she would suddenly burst out with it and laugh. She was my teacher of how a world could be...a guru to her auld Da.

DANNY DEMPSEY'S SON

my name
floated free
from me

like a child's ballon
taken prisoner
by a sky

here at the Old Head
of Kinsale where
my father had been born

I had become
"Ahhh Danny Dempsey's son!"
"Ahhh Danny Dempsey's boy!"

my Donall-self lost
in their delight of my father
"Where's my name gone?"

"He's the spit of ya!"
"The very echo of ya!"
"Hasn't he stole yer face!"

everyone having an opinion
of who it was
I was

and wasn't I only
delighted to be
" Ahhh Danny Dempsey's son!"

*

It was the first and only time I had been taken to my father's birthplace. And despite being long away from here he was instantly  
known by strangers who could tell him by just the look of him. And it turned out everyone was a second or seventh cousin. They delighted in him...sheer happiness to be in his presence as in the wild sky generation after generation linked together in the cry of the gulls.

The lighthouse was too dangerous to go up in so we stood at its base with a storm rearing its head. It was odd that nobody referred to me by my name only as "Danny Dempsey's son!" I wore this naming like a medal...always delighted to be his child.

On my first Holy Communion I was taken to Dublin for the great day. We were walking down Moore Street with the women selling their fruit and vegetables in full voice. A babble of voices....crazy as gulls.
When they saw us the whole street as one stopped and smiled with glee. One after another they declaimed: "Ahhh sure if it isn't Danny with his little fella!"  I was petted and patted and hair ruffled and oooh'd and ahhh'ed over.Money and fruit...fruit and money were ****** into our hands despite our protestations.

I thought it was the Cork effect happening all over again. It was like my Da was The Beatles but they had simply mistaken him for someone else. And the more he tried to tell him who he was...didn't they laugh and say: "Ahh sure isn't it a terrible man y'are altogether...always the joker.!"

We tried to give the money back but they wouldn't be having it. I whispered to my Da: "Who are they...do you know them?" He gulped; "Know them? No!" I gulped: "What do we do?" He told me" "We take the money and run!"

And so we did...dropping oranges and apples as we made our escape. The stall women shouting after us:.."Don't forget to come back!" I still wonder what happened when their Danny turned up!

STRICTLY DANCING


take the skeleton
by the hand and
we dance

it is a gloriously
sunny day
of childhood

the skeleton
just grins..I sing
"I'm all shock up

mm-mmm
yeah yeah
yeah!"

can tell
Mr. Skeleton
is into Elvis

swinging its pelvis
rattles its bones
"Go Skeletony go!"

my Da yells
"Donall son leave
the ****** skeleton alone!"

"Plant ya now
dig ya later!"
I jive talk my dancing partner

the skeleton
comes to a standstill
dangles from a wire

out of his skull
I dash out of
my Da's army stores

I always amazed
that this
skeleton was once

a man as
alive
as me

years later
the army
thinks the same

and plastic
replaces bone
for instruction

he's finally buried
with full military honours
flag draped coffin

3 volleyed salute
scattering the crows
a future he

could never know
become a human
for the last time

then the boy
I was
became the man I am

lights a candle
for my dancing partner
"See ya Mr. Bones

L'IMPORTANT C'EST LA ROSE


runs in from
the garden claiming
"A rose bit me!"

no tears
like the time when
"...a bee bit me!"

this time only an awe
as she witnesses
the mystery of her own

blood
seeping from
a little thumb

amazed to see
"My insides coming out
will I be alright?"

I kiss it better
reassure her
stop the flow

she a little disappointed
that the drama has ended
so un-dramatically

"I think I'll go
and let it
bite me again!"

BAREFOOT

I follow the road
of my father’s voice

journey with him
along white roads...over green fields

barefoot
to school & back

(shoes if at all...worn only to church)    

picking up the cuts & scabs
stubbed toes

his going to school
would entail

in the early years of the 1920’s
only so much history to me

real
to him

his toes
knowing the wind
in the grass

for what it is

his toes
clasping a rock
fording a stream

Irish & poems
bubbling through his head

babbling along
the tongue

words thrown to
those lost summer skies

startling a blackbird
spouting his poetry

with poetry
of his own

(3 miles to school...3 miles back)    

his mind a skimmed stone
dancing along a river

over unforgiven
stones

thorns attacking his feet
with undisguised relish

the vehemence of glass
glinting greedily

for the next footstep

the menace
of the twisted rusty nail

& its treachery
betraying the next footfall

as he walks over
the unremitting years

into my eyes
wide with wonder

listening to him
tell of himself

as a little boy

to his little boy
the me of then

my eyes now

following the road
of my father’s voice

as it wanders
barefoot

through my tears
& memory.

BECOMING THE MAN MY FATHER ALWAYS WAS
(for Brian D)

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.

AS YOU STARE INTO THE VACUUM OF HIS EYES

some stones
having a chat
"Shhhh....here's a human!"

the human stares
the stones remain
sthum

the human reaches for
one of them...then:
skims it across the lake

"Whoa....wheee...hee hee!"
screams the stone
but no one hears

the human has been &
gone
the stones stunned into silence

"I wish he'd chosen me!"
the fat stone says
"I always wanted to travel!"

bottom of the lake
a stone chats to fishes
misses the stones he knew

WRITER'S BLOCK

absorbed in haiku
poet absentmindedly
scratches inside of ear
with eraser-tip pencil
breaks off...oh dear...trapped in ear

all sound erased now
tiny tip of eraser
stuck inside of ear
I can hardly hear the hoots
of laughter in A & E

snapped off rubber tip
finally extracted from ear
treated for acute
embarrassment & red face
"The shame will soon fade!" I'm told

wife beside herself
after initial panic
nothing but giggles
bad jokes about writer's block
like Queen Vic...I'm not...amused!



Well...that's today's true life drama done for today...I hope. It could only happen to a poet. Talk about work related injuries! Didn't know haiku could be so dangerous to the health...and you think it's easy being a poet!

The incident brought me back to an earlier time when I had to bring my little girl to A&E in the wee wee hours of the morning when she inserted a red Lego block into an orifice she had an insane interest in exploring. We used to tell her "Don't put things in there dear...they will get stuck and you will have to go to hospital to get them out!"
Little did we know it would turn out exactly like that. She would put all manner of things inside her "special place" to our great consternation....little toy soldiers...pieces of jigsaw. She would call it her "lady's pocket."

late night at A & E
my little girl thrilled to bits
at the adventure
Lego block stuck inside what
she calls her "lady's pocket."

And what manner of haiku was I writing when the pencil eraser disaster struck...why these of course. It could be seen as the pencil's revenge!

in its self the pencil
no longer exists
its shavings dance its nothingness

pencil becoming
nothing but its shavings
so many swirling dervishes

so many pencil shavings
the pencil enjoys
its new life

pencil, then:
not a pencil
wind scatters its shavings

pencil shavings
the secret life of a pencil
no words just little dancers

OMBRES
de nous-mêmes
ANCIENS

April in Paris
John Donne has indigestion
pines for words from the Isle of Wight

"...whether I be
increased by a child or
diminished by the loss of a wife..."

his baby is born
dead
his wife lives

words...words
these creatures
made of ink

he begins his Anniversaries
Elizabeth Drury becomes a symbol
for the death of youth and beauty

Ben Johnson scorns
such
extreme lamentation

"If it had been written of
the ****** Mary
...it had been something!"

"...she, she is dead; she's dead:
how wan a ghost
this our world is..."

"the imputation of having said
so much
...to say as well as I could...

an Emperor is
about to be
elected

the busy old sun
rests for a moment in
an empty room

*

Being in Paris and like Mr. Donne suffering from a cold....only hundreds of years apart...so that he( and his life )entered my thoughts as I flâneur'd about the Paris of now and then so that the now and then and the then and now came together in my slightly out-of-kiltered mind

THURSDAY FOREVER

there was a knock
on the door
it was Thursday

"What are you doing
here?" I demanded
"Today is Monday...all day!"

"I know...I know!" it cried
"I got thrown out
of the week!"

"What are you going
to do?" I asked
"Move in with you!" it sighed

"For how long!"
I now cried
"For as long as it takes...!"

Thursday didn't say
what "it" was
how can this be?

"Oh!" I smiled
weakly and again
"Oh!"

Thursday smiled
weekly "Knew you
would see sense

it's been over
a year now and
Thursday wasn't going anywhere

it never takes out
the trash or does
the dishes or shops

it slops about
the house watching
daytime TV soaps

it does nothing  but
be Thursday
Thursday forever

CHOOSING THE RIGHT ADJECTIVE
TO GO WITH THE RIGHT NOUN

She drifted
through
reality

having become
unmoored
from morality

fleeing from time
fleeing from her self
the insistent totality

of being
who she was
not

a stranger looked out
of her
mirror

a faux French
ingénue...
yeah!

she choose
today's mask
like she choose today's dress

something that hung
on a hanger
clothes were roles

she an actress
forever playing
a part

in the movie
of her life
THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE

never knowing the next line
making it up as one
went along. . .


*


She lived her life in a very Françoise Saganish way...curiously detached yet living right in the moment without any scruples  or pretensions...she was very much her own person. A wonder to behold!

Her advice to living was the title of this poem....CHOOSING THE RIGHT ADJECTIVE TO GO WITH THE RIGHT NOUN. And indeed she had un certain sourire.

THE *** IN THE CUPBOARD

I open a cupboard
and there he still is

with my bayonet
stuck in his gut

pleading "kamarád!"
in his terror.

I keep killing him.
I never stop killing him.

The strange thing is
he was the spit of me.

The same blonde hair.
The same short moustache.

It was like looking in a mirror
...like I was killing myself.

I told him "I m not yer
****** kamarád chum!"

Then I stuck it in
harder deeper.

It took him
an age to die.

"Die ya ****** *******
****** well die!"

It was the first Fritz
I'd ever killed.

And it's this killing
and this killing only

that never ends
but goes on and on.

After this one killing
killing became normal.

A direct hit on a churchyard
and even the long dead

had to die again
die another time.

Bodies and corpses
everywhere you see.

Out  of the fog
an angel appears

granting a benediction
in white marble.

I had come to the place
where I was going to die.

But this ****** ******
who could have been me

died instead of me
took my place.

Now I open the door
of a cupboard

or a privy
or a shed

and there he is
pleading: "Kamarád!"

And I still scream:
"Die ya ****** *******...****** well die!"

The terror in
my children's eyes.

HAMLET TRIES TO GET HIS ACT TOGETHER

Hamlet is about to
**** his uncle

when suddenly
a commentator

tells him what he is
doing

only for a critic
to violently disagree

with this theory.

"...eh...excuse me....'scuse me..!"
Hamlet tries to interject

politely
but

the debate
over what's what

is becoming heated
overheated.

"EXCUSE ME, BUT..."
Hamlet almost close to tears

"...I'M TRYING TO **** MY UNCLE HERE!"

But they pay no heed to him
in the least.

Hamlet and Claudius
pause and noisily

share a bag of popcorn
watch with avid glee

as commentator kills
critic just as

critic kills
commentator.

The rest, is...
. . .silence.

AN UNFAIRY STORY

whilst fretfully she sleeps
Frog Prince kisses the Princess
turning her into a beautiful frog

yes, and well...they lived
happy ever after as water
in the bottom of a deep deep well

what kind of fairy story
were you after....ahhhh
the grim human kind

frog prince & frog princess
hop happily about a bit
eating delicious(ribbitribbit)flies

oh how our love has
spawned
tadpoles will be tadpoles I suppose

now it's time
for us to croak it
remembering our happy once upon a times

VIZHDAM VI. . .
( I SEE YOU. . . )

( Poem for Onelia )

"Did you know. . ?"
says ALICE

". . .that Lacie is a
an anagram of me!"

She follows me
through Sofia's streets

as my camera clicks
"curiouser and curiouser"

taking pictures
of reflections

the passing world
stopped and stilled

in windows
mirroring reality

back to itself

marrying one
to the other.

"Krasiv!"
whispers the street
to its other image.

"Yes. . .yes!"
I hear myself

answer her
as she falls

out of my pocket
( the wind reading her )

its unseen hands
riffling through her pages.


ALICE as real
to me as I am myself

. . . friend of my childhood.


"And in predictive text. . ."
I offer my fictional friend

"I change ***
becoming. . ."

"Enid or Ethel or
one or the other."

Like a door mouse
in a teapot

my mobile goes to sleep.


Like a grin
without a cat

her laughter
lingers.


This road's yellow
bricks escort me to

an OZ
of words

where an alphabet
dances in Cyrillic

its strange shapes
delighting my eyes

teasing me
with its sense

of real
Unreality.

I catch
a ray of sunshine

stealing into church

saying the little prayer
of itself.


Icons emerge
from the dark

as I walk
through the passing

. . .of ages.

One icon looks
like Berbatov

on his transfer
to Manchester United.

"Krasiv!"
whispers a leaf

. . .in its falling.

"Krasiv!"
whistles the little bird

enjoying a steam bath
in the hot springs

. . .behind the Mosque.

Saint Sofia
guides us

through her streets
we look to her

for our
bearings


knowing where we are
when we find her

standing in the sky

stopping to let a cloud
pass by.

"Krasiv!"
Sveta Sofia blesses us


"Krasiv!"

In the park
a man in a hat & a Mac

chases people
for chess

offering his pieces
as if they were a gift

inviting Time to stop
& play.

And when passers by
pass by

he invites himself
to play an invisible "him."

His unseen self seen
pondering its next move.


The timer releasing
the world

back to itself
where naked

statues shiver
in the park

throw snowballs
at each other

when a human
isn't looking.

A toddler
( as yet unsure )

of all this
"walking business"

tastes
each cautious step

as if
sipping soup

too hot

sip ( sip )
step ( step ).

The park is
melting

revealing itself
as it thaws...thaws

ice & snow
releasing its stranglehold

slinking slyly
away.

Outside the theater
snow has been swept up

into neat
pyramids

as if they were an Art
installation.

I listen entranced
to my friend's voice

a woman made only
of words & thoughts

( paper & E-mails )

now made real
by the beauty of her self.

"Krasiv!"
whispers her smile

to the secret
that she is.


"DA! DA! DA!"
chortles a yellow & black

tram as it "Yes! Yes! Yes's!"
around the bend.

Back at the hotel
my ALICE sleeps

dreaming of when
I will read her.

A book on a bed
in an empty room

chatting to a shaft
of Bulgarian sunshine.


And always
ALICE is

. . .asking:

"Do you know
what tomorrow is. . ?"

And I say "Yes. . .yes. . .yes!
to everything!"

"Tomorrow is all
I can imagine it

to be
&
more!"

Sofia sheds now
her clothes of snow

strips down
to her sunlight

& dances. . .dances.

"Krasiv!"
"Krasiv!"

her dancing translates
finally the word

"Krasiv
is. . .
beautiful!"

And it is
. . .it is!.



*

Reading and re-reading ALICE IN WONDERLAND  as I threaded through Sofia's streets drawing its sights through the eye of my mind and stitching it together as the words took pictures and like a patchwork quilt sewed it into the heart's lining. Knowing now( as if I hadn't already known before )that friendship is a KRASIV thing.

SPEECH LESS
(for B. B.)

The page looked at me
blankly.

The words gathered
inside my head

but refused to
come out.

'Sorry mate...
we're on strike! '

'But why...? '
I cried.

'Do I have to spell it out
for you? '

'Write...write...write! '
'That's all you do! '

'You 'ave us up
all ****** night
it just ain't right! '

'No...I...don't! '
I lied...blantly.

'Oh...who was that scentence
I saw you with last night? '

'That was no sentence...that was
my haiku! '

'And those poor vowels
...the howls! '

'Look, mate...we're consonants
so we can take it but

...a vowel's a vowel! '

'Now, it's just
our luck
that we're gone & got
ourselves an Irish poet

who is prone
to a little

internal vowel
rhyme! '

'Assonance! '
I said.

'Bless you Guv but
I don't cares wot you'se call it! '

'All we hear all night long is
O...E...I...U! '

And with that
they left

the whole ******
alphabet

abseiling out of my head
marching down
my forearm

the whole ****** platoon
now on my patella

now turning at the door
saying: 'See ya fella! '

'Call yourself...call yourself
a ****** poet! '
they jeered

'We're off to Bryan Baker's
head! '

'Now...there's a poet! '

Slam!

The door was silent.

They were gone.

I was... ...I was

...speech-less!

A DOOR AJAR ON REALITY

The blackbird led
his wife

up the garden path

as if the crazy paving
had been laid especially

for them &
their kind.

I thought it odd
that

they walked instead
of flew

as if they were acting
the human.

They both
deep in conversation

about bird
current affairs

or gossip
about those noisy robins.

When they hit the deck
they both stood

in a deck chair
each

continuing what
they had been

conversing
about.

Maybe blackbirds
had taken over

the world
& I

the last human
to know.

Or, all humans
had been changed

into blackbirds.

They suddenly
made loud caw.

I took to the air
& flew.

DEATH AIN'T GOT NO
SENSE OF HUMOUR

Stopped at
a red light

when who should pull up
beside us but Death

driving a fancy
invisible car.

He is dressed in
the usual trope

cowl and scythe
how cliched can one get.

He just sits there in mid air
tapping a bony finger

on  a wheel I
can't see.

His scythe sits
in the passenger seat

looking like a tame
pterodactyl

smiling with neon
and moonlight.

He nods to me.
I nod to him.

"Hope you haven't
come for me!" I grin.

He shakes his skull
back and forth.

"Just practising...what's de matter
you ain't got no sense of humour?"

He points a long bony finger
at the green car jumping the lights.

"Holey Moley!" I holey moley to myself.
"If that car don't stop it's gonna crash into us!"

And into us
it does.

But before it does
time goes AWOL.

The moment stretches into infinity and
the next second lasts for ever.

I nonchalantly watch the green car
hurtling towards us for an eternity

and just wish it would
get on with it and be done.

Even the rain falling
stops in mid-air.

A bird's flight freeze frames
above the stilled trees

despite the bluster
of the wind.

Then as if someone had
pressed a button

infinity snaps back
into the moment's reality.

The green car bites with a roar
into my side door.

I watch it buckle and
stop a centimetre from my thigh.

I go out like a light and
the world does a runner.

The darkness is so
thick solidifying around me.

And then the world shamefacedly
comes back to me.

"Wot's yer name..." a voice keeps
asking "do you know your name?"

Over and annoyingly
over again.

"*******!" Death
curses.

"How in Heaven's name
did you get out of that!"

My voice forms a cloud
in the cold night air

like a cartoon
speech bubble.

This breath is the sweetest
I ever have breathed.

The joke's on Death.
Death ain't happy.

"What's the matter Mr. Death..."
I quip all cocky like.

"You ain't got no
sense of humour?"


*

We were on our way back from a bookfair in Belfast and nearing home when this happened. The shelfing units slid forward from the back and karate chopped me on the neck. I went out like a light...darkness invading my sight. When I came to a man was asking me if I knew( over and over again)if I knew who I was and what was my name. I recovered quickly but forever after suffered from headaches and breathing problems but ****** I was amazingly untouched and unscratched.

IT WAS A SATURDAY

it was the first house
I had lived in
on my own

I was just
settling in
pleased with myself

the doorbell
rang and rang again
there stood Saturn

I hate it when
the Cosmos
decides to drop in

"Thought I'd delivered
your depression..solitude
and low self esteem!"

**** planets
coming 'round here
slammed the door

in Saturn's face
"Beat it...!" I yelled
"...or I'll call the cops!"

Saturn slipped
the depression...etc., etc., etc.
under the door

I've got to stop
believing in astrology
be my own man

snap open the paper
check out Cancer
only to be told

"You'll feel
tempted to
hide from the world!"

Shakespeare tries
to give me courage
"The fault...is not

in our stars but
in ourselves that
we are underlings!"

JUMPING INTO THE PAST
( SPRINGEN IN DIE VERGANGENHEIT )

rainy rainy day
a hopscotch  
almost washed away  

pounced upon  
by some off duty nuns
becoming girls again  

hike up  
their habits  
and hop  

their laughter  
bringing out  
the sun

I think
that's the best  
kind of prayer  

and God  
in his Heaven is
alright with the world

*

They were German nuns and they were playing HIMMEL UND HÖLLE( Heaven and Hell)which is what hopscotch is called in Germany.

A DOOR AJAR ON REALITY

The blackbird led
his wife

up the garden path

as if the crazy paving
had been laid especially

for them &
their kind.

I thought it odd
that

they walked instead
of flew

as if they were acting
the human.

They both
deep in conversation

about bird
current affairs

or gossip
about those noisy robins.

When they hit the deck
they both stood

in a deck chair
each

continuing what
they had been

conversing
about.

Maybe blackbirds
had taken over

the world
& I

the last human
to know.

Or, all humans
had been changed

into blackbirds.

They suddenly
made loud caw.

I took to the air
& flew.

AS MONDAYS GO IT WAS THE BEST OF MONDAYS

it was
a state of the art
day

perfect
in every
way

as if God
had created it
then thought about it

and made it
even better
this time round

the light
pristine
immaculate

like God
sent a postcard
saying wish you were here

and I
delighted
to be

AND SO SAYS ALL OF US

my little girl
pregnant
with a cushion

cushion
up her frock
mimics Mummy

cushion up my shirt
a very pregnant
family

the whole family
pregnant
together

Mummy mummy
Daddy mummy
daughter mummy

later on
we give birth to cushions
Mummy still with child

*

Started with the first one and then it just grew...pregnant with haiku..oh my gawd...sextuplets! My little girl was very serious about copying everything her Mum done and this was her attempt to keep up with what was happening mannnn! She told me I had to be pregnant too so I too had to resort to a cushion. When Mum came up she fell about laughing at having two more "Mummies" in the house. We then wrapped her in bandages so that she was truly a Mummy's mummy. So then we all had to become a Mummy's mummy...it helps when an entire family has the same sense of humour. Bit hard to explain later to Mummy's Mummy when she is looking through the family album. Mummy's mummy didn't have the same sense of humour...but I say...the family that plays together...stays together.

PARALLEL LINES DO NOT MEET

Happiness...is not...a mathematical formula
that one can apply to supply an answer.

Rather...it is the sum of who you are
multiplied by who you are willing to be.

Happiness...like Mathematics
is something I was never ever any good at

& always made me weep

with equal parts

Desperation
Exasperation

&
Frustration.

Or DEF for short.

For example:

If it took a man a lifetime
to dig himself into a hole

how long would it take
for half the man he used to be
to dig himself out again?

Questions – such as this
only caused me grief..

In Mathematics(like Latin)
which I could also never know

I would cheat & repeat
words full of sound & no sense.

E.g.

The cares of the hippopotamus
are equal to some of the cares
that the other two hippopotami confide.

Happiness...like Mathematics
was all Greek to me.

I don’t know...that’s all I know.

But I do know that...
Happiness happens

every now...& then...

the only trick
is to be aware that it’s there & that...

Parallel Lines do meet...

...at Infinity

Q.E.D.

*

About twenty years ago working with challenging kids I got my arm broken and had only recovered from that when I received a head injury which took out the other arm and paralysed the left hand side of my face. The next five years were a long day's journey into night and sheer agony and I became a ghost haunting my own life. I had to learn how to speak properly again(still with an Irish accent) and it took a year for me to be able to close my eye again and another 6 months before I could blink and wink at you.

This is my whistling past the graveyard poem with me hoping that the light at the end of the tunnel was the the light at the end of the tunnel and not another oncoming train.
I had forgotten what happy was.

Before the pain and paralysis rushed me I took a step back and like an American football player I threw my happiness up up into the air and ran forward into my future to try and meet it. The ball seem like it would never come down but...my happiness finally came to ground in the form of this lovely lady. It was touchdown and my ecstatic heart went wild.

I know now what happy is.

A woman called...Janice.

POOR POOR JESUS

"Jesus!" she shouts
"Jesus Christ!"

She runs over to the crucifix
gives it a huge hug

cries with all of her
three years of self.

"Poor Jesus!" she sobs
"Poor poor Jesus!"

Christ cries
a single painted tear

unable
to comfort her.

*

This poem is simply about my little daughter's innocence and compassion.

All crucifixes made her cry for she could only see the physicality of his suffering and not the symbol. And as always, if it was a bird with a broken wing, a cat with a limping front paw, or a baby crying she would always want to comfort it. All she had was her hugs and tears and her own little scrap of humanity and she would use these gifts fiercely to fight what she saw as an injustice that anything should have to suffer.

She befriended sticks and stones as if they too were living beings. All she knew was that these things were in the world at the same time as she and so must be allowed their moment. And the only way to combat the brokenness of this world was to love it all the more.

I had shaped her a little saddle which clipped onto the crossbar of my bike( just like my Dad had done for me)and we would cycle out into the country to find trees to adore and cows to amaze at and birds to marvel to! My body would form a protective cage around her and she would scream to me "Be the wind!" and we would flash by the scenery like a streak of green and gold praising the very leaves on the trees and the sunlight that ran through them.

We had stopped at a wayside shrine that some man who was good with wood had fashioned from his own hands. She ran forward to it with outstretched arms and it looked too as if this painted Christ carved with all his suffering was also running towards her. "The sad man on the tree" as she called him. He suffered her to come to him and she embraced him with all of her self. He shed a single painted tear that hung upon his check as if at any moment it would splash and fall in yellow.

She gave him all of herself to help heal his sadness, imbuing him with her tiny belief.

AND IF YOU HEAR ME SPEAK
( for Granny Dempsey )

and if you hear me speak
of the greenest goosegogs
then it is obviously the summer of '63

with the sunlight of that year
trapped tightly
within them

and if you hear me speak
of goosegogs and a certain year
then I most

certainly will be
talking of
my blind granny

who used her crooked hands
to sculpt my face into being
and I am here

because her blind hands
saw me so
completely

and I was made
anew each year
as if I had never been

before
but
am now

and if you hear me speak
of goosegogs, the year of '63
and my blind Cork granny

then you will know
that I speak of
the gentlest love

I have ever known
and now I will speak no more
for I have said everything

that can be said
and that
goes beyond all saying

LOST BALLOON

crawling from the crash
I couldn't have died
if I tried

I had a son to save
laughed
spat in death's face

pulled him from the flames
I forbade him to die
he disobeyed

the car exploded
burning the edges
of the night

I survive
without him
a death in itself

my reflection
does all the talking
I just stare in the mirror

Christmas now
I feel like a lost balloon
sticking to the ceiling

*

This was a lady I used to look after and I know this story inside out as she told it and retold it to her self in the hopes that in one of the hopeless retellings she could break through the words and save her son again only for him to die over and over again. Not even in words could she save him but she wouldn't ever give in and so was doomed to relive that horrific moment for ever.

TALKING TO THE DARK

her reflection
refuses to speak to her
she sits in the wardrobe talking to the dark

inside her head
is a B&W film
of when she used to be her self

inside the wardrobe
she talks & talks
to her dead mother's clothes

despite the mothballs
the moths hungrily
eat the Past

outside the rain
asks for answers
that there are no questions to

she clutches
her mother's dress
the dark talks back to her

THE SEA TO SEE

the sea saw her first
"Oh!" said the sea
"Oh! said she

she chased after a wavelette
the wavelette
chased after her

"Look...me in sea..me in sea!"
sea puts an arm 'round her shoulder
smiles as the camera goes click

sick mummy
she brings her the sea to see
cupped in her tiny hands

the blue house
with the yellow door
patchwork quilt dancing on the line

waves shyly lick
between her toes
as if she's tamed an ocean

an ocean
like a genie let out of a bottle
walking beside my daughter

an ocean
smiling with all
its horizon

some scattered birds
like thoughts
the ocean has thought up

not willing to leave it
she cries to the sea
"Shhhhhhh....!" shushes the sea ". . .shhhhhhh!"

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

We declare
- this our bedroom -

an independent
dominion

secede from
the United Kingdom

& the Commonwealth
of Nations

(although still enjoying
our European unions) .

Us a Republic
of Love

out on our own

our New Found Land
as Donne had done

a currency
of caresses

our national tongue
...kisses

needing nothing
but the other

to complete
our independence

flying the flag
of happiness

in this our brave
new world

of
Love.

CLOCKLESS

the car's wipers
slosh the world back & forth
back'n'forth

how stupid of me
left my heart out in the pain
my thoughts gone rusty

white noise
on the telly
my fingertips touch the static

"Suicide is painless..." I hum
I tell the waiting room
"I...hope...it is!"

the objects in the room
looks terrified
look on in silence

locked inside
the whisper
( the shout )

this room is clockless
time locked outside
howling to get in

I ...sit...and
crochet on the couch
time looks sheepish

clicking needles
I knit
one moment to the next

there is only this
little moment
left to live in

"Too much time..."I tell myself
"That's the trouble. . ." I tell the room
"Think I'll cut it down to size!" I say to nobody

"Time to be gone..."
I say
in a melodramatic way

I laugh at myself
weep in my private
theatre of heartbreak

my reflection & I
both reaching for
the razor blade

the room
holds its breath
I close my eyes &. . .

this one perfect moment
time rearing up like a wave
that never ever breaks

"HI! IT'S ME!"



no religious fervour
no down on knees
no hands joined together



just talking to Him
as he He were
really there



marching around
her bedroom
as if



He were Her
new best
imaginary friend



"Now...I'm tired
and I know You
must be tired too



I'm sure
You must have a trillion
prayers to get through



so I'n going
to live in my dreams
come visit me there


oh by the way
I am the Tilly
with the blonde hair.


not the Tilly
down the road at No. 2
she's got black hair


oh & I'm 3
and she's nearly 7
so don't get us mixed up


well...that's all
from me God
see ya soon


and look
after Yourself
will ya?"

THE WIND WALKS AMONGST THE CHANDELIER

a chandelier
hung from a tree
the sunlight in love with it

"No room for it
in my little house
I thought I'd give it to the tree!"

"Well, have you ever
seen a chandelier hung from a tree?
No, well...there ya go!"

the tree looked happy
wearing its chandelier
as if it had grown it itself

a bird alights
on the tree's chandelier
a sunset caught up in it

*

It was strictly for the birds and the bees( and the tree)who seemed to love it...it was only a broken plastic thingy but the idea of hanging it on the tree was what made it work...it was very surreal like coming across a Dali painting but after a while you just accepted that...well...there it was...the wind liked playing with it too. All it takes is one man with one novel idea and there...ya go!

A friend has sent me a picture of a chandelier in a tree! Ha ha I thought this only existed in my memory of Ted in Cornwall! I hadn't a camera then and didn't write poetry so it just sort of languished there in my mind until it got jogged into recollection! We used to drink Mint Juleps under it and talk into the sunset. He used to have bottle trees as well so I thought the chandelier tree was just an extension of this. At night he would run an extension to it and it would just exist in the sky like a rather large firefly. I liked its daylight incarnation best as then it was strictly the tree's. Once electricity was added it became more ours...albeit a rather strange "ours' but still ours to drink mint juleps under until dawn lit a fire under it and it was time to go to bed.

AS SURE AS SHOES IS SHOES

out of the interlocking needles
a sock
grows

hanging from its needles
the sock
a chrysalis

Auntie Marge's socks
as if a rainbow
had grown two feet

Auntie Marge's
infamous rainbow socks
flying off for Christmas

Paris..New York...Termonfeckin
nieces nephews children grandchildren
all wearing rainbow socks

the half grown sock
tick of a grandfather clock
wait for the mourners to return

her needles in a cigar tin
standing to
attention

sticking their heads
out of the bin
some large crochet needles

"As sure as shoes is shoes
I kept warm the feet
of this here family!"

clock cuts up Time
into little bits
so that the humans can understand


Her grandfather was a cobbler and would always say this whatever the situation. People would always need shoes...although the family of the cobbler often did without as shoes is what put food on the table.

But who is wurs shod, than the shoemakers wyfe, With shops full of newe shapen shoes all hir lyfe?

[1546 J. Heywood Dialogue of Proverbs i. xi. E1V]

All languages have same sounding adages...whatever the profession.

Les cordonniers sont les plus mal chaussés.

with a first quote by Montaigne : Quand nous veoyons un homme mal chaussé, nous disons que ce n'est pas merveille s'il est chaussetier in

In German:

Die Kinder des Schusters haben die schlechtesten Schuhe.

In Spanish (En casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo "In a blacksmith's home, knives are wooden").

In Chinese "the lady who sells fans fans herself with her hands",

In Arabic, "at the potter's house water is served in a broken jug".



Her grandfather was a cobbler and would always say this whatever the situation. People would always need shoes...although the family of the cobbler often did without as shoes is what put food on the table.

"Chomh cinnte is bróga atá bróga!" as she would say in her Irish.

Her grandfather would shorten it to" is bróga atá bróga!" or" shoes is shoes."

IM NEBEL VERSCHWINDEN

My ghost sat
comfortably ensconced

in an armchair
opposite me.

A fire roared
between us.

The whiskey glinted
in the glass

like a thought
held in amber.

Outside a fog had
wrapped the world

in cotton wool
like a memento

in a badly scuffed
lacquer box.

As  host I
offered my ghost

a little something
"...a G&T perhaps?"

My ghost slyly smiled:
"I, never....touch spirits!"

"Ok...!" snapped my ghost
looking very pale

"...let's leave reality
out of this!"

"No tree knows
its neighbour

. . .each alone. . .
. . .each alone. . ."

I muttered
in my mind.

But I must have spoke
my mind out loud.

"What's that?"
hissed my ghost

"That's Hesse...I believe."
I addressed my ghostly alter ego.

"...all about being alone in a mist..."
I mused as if it hadn't been there.

Just an idle
thought like

a dandelion seed
getting  caught in a sleeve.

"And what has that...got to do with this?"
my ghost looked miffed

"Oh, nothing..." I smiled
"...just a feeling."

"Can we skip
the literary stuff!"
my ghost acidly suggested.

"Of course...of course!"
I assured it.

"Im Nebel verschwinden..."
I thought aloud for the last time.

"And do you mind if we use
...English."

"Yes, yes...!" I said
"What ever you say..."

"I'm here because from where I am
I'm not pleased with how you're leading

. . .my life!"

"Hold on a sec!" I said.
"I'm not dead yet!"

"Are you allowed to haunt
your own self?"

"Do you have to get a haunting permit?
Is it the haunting season...am I game"

And so the conversation
dragged on until

yawwwwnnnnnn...dawn

when my ghostly self
felt it had to depart.

Reality had snuk
back in the back door.

I sat in the chair
dead to the world

become my ghostly self
as it happened

and strolled serenely into
the next world.

The fog had lifted.

*

I lose a lot of poems as they pile up in my initial scribbles and I can no longer read my own writing. I have to decipher them after that. This was written before my brother's death and a little while after climbing to take down a book I reach for the next step and it wasn't there and I just entered a fog of nothingness. Came through like a puppet with cut strings and then alright again. My brother was asking me how I write poems and I was telling him the gist of this and other poems that resulted from "this incident'...I little thought that he would slip away from the world and I would lose him forever.

Hermann Hesse's beautiful poem IM NEBEL( IN THE FOG )...is what is running through my mind.

IM NEBEL VERSCHWINDEN means to vanish into the fog. I thought if I am about to vanish then I might as well go out dressed in Hesse's words.

IM NEBEL

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Einsam ist jeder Busch und Stein,
Kein Baum sieht den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.

Voll von Freunden war mir die Welt,
Als noch mein Leben Licht war,
Nun, da der Nebel fällt,
Ist keiner mehr sichtbar.

Wahrlich, keiner ist weise,
Der nicht das Dunkle kennt,
Das unentrinnbar und leise
Von allen ihn trennt.

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Leben ist einsam sein.
Kein Mensch kennt den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.

IN THE FOG

Strange, to wander in the fog.
Each bush and stone stands alone,
No tree sees the next one,
Each is alone.

My world was full of friends
When my life was filled with light,
Now as the fog descends
None is still to be seen.

Truly there is no wise man
Who does not know the dark
Which quietly and inescapably
Separates him from everything else.

Strange, to wander in the fog,
To live is to be alone.
No man knows the next man,
Each is alone.

–Hermann Hesse, Im Nebel from Unterwegs (1911) in: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, p.

WATCHING THE WINDOW

She smiles at one and all.
But mostly to herself

"I love to watch the large TV set!"
she announces to no one.

She points to the window.
"It only shows bird programmes!"

Outside the birds flock
around the feeder.

The new nurse smiles
has to stifle her laughter.

"But sometimes strange humans
come and knock and scare my birds away!"

New nurse turns
the sheets down.

"Oh I complain but
it doesn't do no good!"

"Oh dear..." Miss New Nurse
explains yet again.

"That's your family...see?
Waving at you and holding up signs!"

The clock ticks
a very audible tock.

"Look see....'I love you Gran!'
Oh and isn't that nice from the little one!"

She lets her tea go cold.
Takes her glasses off.

"I've never seen them before"
And why the masks?"

"Now Nathalie I
have told you about Covid before!"

She whimpers "Oh Nurse...
make them go away...please!"

It brings on
her asthma.

"And put back on
the bird channel!"

IT WAS A NIGHT WHEN FLIGHT HADN'T YET BEEN INVENTED

He had a face
like a FOR SALE

sign that
had been there for ever

with the kind of moustache
that smart-aleck kids

would draw upon
a poster of the Mona Lisa.

His eyes were kind - Dalí-ish
as when the great painter

announced his
own greatness.

Behind him
a yellow half-moon

posed
perched upon his head

as if it was his
own peculiar particular pet

otherwise he was
nondescript

a no-one
that no one would notice.

An announcement announced
that the flight to Dublin

would be delayed
indefinitely.

Outside the snow was
impossible.

It was a night
when flight

hadn't yet been
invented

and only snow
took to the air.

I only noticed him
because a tear

silently and slowly
trickled down

his left cheek
and hung suspended there

for a century it seemed
before falling on the book

before him
that he wasn't reading

only holding as if
in defence against the world

and I wondered what
his grief was.


*

It was our first Christmas  without our mother and I wanted to be there for my father. But the snow was fearsome and no flights were to be had...you had to go to the airport and stand in line outside the closed terminal to have even a chance to maybe be lucky. After three hours I got lucky and made it home. An old man was sitting on his suitcase and holding a book upside down. pretending to read and crying silently to himself.I was in the same state myself and his grief was the embodiment of mine. Looking up at the darkness as giant flakes of snow fell upon us it was as if we had been transported back to a time when flight hadn't yet been invented and the heavens were inviolate and could not be touched.

ICH RUF ZU DIR. . .
( for Mimi Khalvati )

1.

brushes her hair in the mirror
she stares Death full in the face
the heart attack catching her off guard

11.

Dusk walks off
into the distance
Night speaks slowly….quietly

111.

Green shadows
lilac shadows
never just
black

1V.

gooseberries…geraniums…sherbet
those things of childhood
she both liked & didn’t

V.

I only half listen to them, smug in their snug, poets scoring points off each other over the odd pint or two or more. . .

“Ahhh now Jaysus...your oyster always gives me the collywobbles. Every time I encounter an oyster I think of Chekov’s corpse and sure the appetite goes off of me!”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right so it is!”

“Sure when poor Chekov became a corpse...he was kept on ice with the oysters and shipped to Moscow. So it’s always Chekov’s auld face I see( ya see )when I come face to face with an oyster. I think of him being extracted from his shell and slipping slowly down Death’s throat.

“Ahhh Jaysus...Jaysus sure isn’t Death a terrible man altogether for the poets and such like. But come here to me when I’m talking to ya...have ya ever heard tell of a fella called.. if memory serves me well. . .Qui ****-Haung-ti?”

“Qui ****-Haung-ti? Eh, let’s see now...ahh...no...now…I don’t believe I have had that pleasure? Who he? For God’s sake!

“ Sure wasn’t yer man only the first supreme ruler of China!”

“He wasn’t..!”

“He was...I declare to God!”

“And sure for 9 months, 9 months now I tell ya, after his death he continued to reign seated upon his throne...surrounded by fish!”

“Well, that’s as posthumous as ya can get! But, why...the fish?”

“To disguise the smell...ya ejit!”

“And that’s why I can’t stand either sight or sound of our scaly friends.  It gives me the creep I tell ya!”

“Fair enough!”

“Will ya have another?”

“Ahhh sure, I will so!”

V1.

bitter gooseberries

V11.

I pray to my granny’s apron full of stars and flowers…only a rag now for shining shoes; to my uncle’s auld hat that that sat for years and years on the brown dresser like a dried up soul.
To my other uncle’s battered boots still caked with mud from summer’s long long ago which now houses a kitten that can’t get out mewing pitifully its plight:

V111.

the gooseberry’s bitterness

Solaris...was it
floating in space
back to Bach...ich ruf zu dir...

1X.

she holds the gooseberry
between finger and thumb
her eyes devouring it

X.

the sun shone through it
a prism of living light

snow is falling
in the room

from which she first
saw snow
falling

she stands outside
falling through time

X1.

she listens to the wheat
the wheat listens to her listening
the wind moves them both

X11.

in the story of her
childhood there are
always gooseberries

X111.

the words dress themselves up
walk around in stories
showing off

X1V.

she prays to the green light
of the gooseberry that is
the God of living things

XV.
the mirror holds her reflection
even when she’s gone
Death hums its little tune

XV1.

“They’re better fed than read...”
as my grandmother said
about anyone other than our selves

XV11.

he thought the good idea...was his
she thought the good idea...was hers

XV111.

he said he will( but he won’t )
she said she won’t( but she will )

X1X.

the mirror can’t find her
anywhere
she’s fallen off the edge of a flat world

*

The title emerges from Bach's BWV 177 - "Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ"

Cantata for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity

Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ,
Ich bitt, erhör mein Klagen,
Verleih mir Gnad zu dieser Frist,
Laß mich doch nicht verzagen;

I call to You, Lord Jesus Christ,
I beg You, hear my cries,
grant me mercy at this time,
do not let me despair;

The soundtrack of SOLARIS features Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale prelude for *****, Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639, played by Leonid Roizman, and an electronic score by Eduard Artemyev. The prelude is the film's central musical theme.

Tarkovsky initially wanted the film to be devoid of music and asked composer Artemyev to orchestrate ambient sounds as a musical score. The latter proposed subtly introducing orchestral music. In counterpoint to classical music as Earth's theme is fluid electronic music as the theme for the planet Solaris.

The character of Hari has her own subtheme, a cantus firmus based upon J. S. Bach's music featuring Artemyev's composition atop it; it is heard at Hari's death and at story's end.

The memory of the movie...of the two drunks in the pub....of the music...her childhood memories of gooseberries all hail the prelude to her...death.... memories lie shattered and scattered like the hand mirror fallen from her hand...reflecting all and nothing.

A sequence poem that attempts to mimic the strands of the choral movements sustained by a single voice a la Mr. Bach.

Whatever is in the head when Mr. Death comes calling.

BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE

"Are there
really
monsters under the bed?"

"No, no.!" .I
attempt to
comfort her

"Good!" she sighs
" 'cos if they were
they'd get cold!"  

"Right!" I say
seeing her coming at it
from a different way

later I find her
cuddleed up beside
a scary plastic T-Rex

"See..?" she scolds me
"I told you he'd be cold
but he's alright now!"  

the T-Rex looking sheepish
its neck sticking out of
the top of a pink pyjamas

so every night I leave
her with another monster
under her bed she always checks

even a green Frankenstein
gets the cuddle treatment
almost crying to be loved

by the end of the week
she has seven monsters fast
asleep beside her
all feeling ridiculous
in different coloured pyjamas

but loving it

next week she had fallen
in love with a stick...a leaf...a twig
as they become

the new beloveds
to be brought to bed
to be loved as only she can

JOURNEY

wearing a thick fog
the mountain ventured
into a nearby valley

as suddenly and silently
as a mountain could
if it so choose

the night also
aided and abetted
its efforts

it splashed through
a wide river and over
a geographical border

to the next country
without anyone
being anything the wiser

it saw towns
and more humans than
it had ever seen in its life

the noise and activity
troubled its thoughts
and it turned and returned

before the new day dawned
it decided to stay
in the place where it was

born
clutching a morning to itself
winking at me

telling me to tell
nobody
of what I had seen

of its wandering
or the thoughts
that lay

sleeping
in its great
granite mind.

*

From the Bible. It is recorded in the 1582 Rheims Bible, in Matthew XXI 21, as: "If you shal haue faith, and stagger not, ... and if you shal say to this mountaine, Take vp and throw thy self into the sea, it shal be done."

THE MAKER OF WORLDS

"Who made the world?"
and the cane and the chanting

did their work
"God made the world."

the church's Catechism
teaching him by force...by rote.

He smiles now at this
the only scrap he can remember.

"Good God...it was I
who made my world.!"

Here at the center of
my tiny universe

my thoughts made the world
out of nothing.

That tree was my tree
that nobody else could see

the same as I saw it.
I a creator of my self.

Now that Death
comes to visit him

he talks to himself
Death sitting silently.

The pain eats him up
from the inside.

Gnaws at him
as if he were a bone.

***** the marrow
out of him.

The world fading to a bicycle bell
and children's skip rope laughter.

He hears his voice questioning
"Who made ***** tonk angels?"

The sacred and the profane
a mash up in his brain.

Kitty Wells voice swims back to him
cutting through the seas of time.

"It wasn't God who made ***** tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
And that's caused many a good girl to go wrong!"

But now the time has come
that is no time.

He has abandoned God.
He sees the world falling out of his hand.

He walks towards the light.

*

A friend of mine who suffered a heart attack but survived to tell the tale...saved just in time by his friend the milkman who always came in for a cuppa. He found him fallen underneath a dark glass table and did the necessary to keep him with us and called an ambulance. He told me that as the heart attack had laid him low he was gazing through this table like a glass darkly! He asked me if I knew any of the Cathy( what we kids called the church's question and answer indoctrination)and I said only that first question. He said me too and that then dovetailed into one of his favourite Kitty Wells song! It made a good funny story he said but by God it hurt like hell.

My poor mother would sometimes burst into this song( no ***** tonk angel she)when she was doing the mountain of ironing that having 10 kids had brought into being. So to me too it had a loving memory and would invade my mind anytime I did my ironing. We drank a drink to not being dead and sang IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE ***** TONK ANGELS loudly and with great gusto. It is always good to cheat Mr. Death even if we knew he would come back knocking one fine day.

IN THE HERON'S EYE

you swim
into yourself
the lake doubles you

your swimming reflection
trying to claw its way
into you

from the lake emerges
a head like a bust then a bust then
the whole delicious nakedness of you

your reflection
hides inside you
when you leave the lake

naked
being chased
by your shadow

the heron's shadow
stares through the water's skin
at the fish within

in the heron's eye
the fish already
- caught

a leaf
floats on the tree's reflection
fish swims amongst its branches

we swim amongst clouds & trees
rain taps on the top of the lake
we laugh underwater

piercing the water's skin
thin blades of sunlight
we swim we swim

AMATEUR DRAMATICS

between the acts
the real life
drama occurs

Claudius and Laertes
are as( rumour has it )
"...having it off..."

Hamlet is indeed in love with
his mummy but his mummy
doesn't want to know

Polonius has the hots
for the ghost but
he hasn't a ghost of a chance

Ophelia and Gertrude
have just broken up
Ophelia almost mad with grief

the play's the thing wherein
we catch the private lives of
these living human beings