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.

MAYBE MINUS AN ANT OR TWO

after the picnic
they rolled up the sky
folded up

that particular patch of grass
plucked a few trees
put the sun back in its box

the kisses they hid
deep within themselves
so that

many years later
they could
unroll the whole shebang

savour the same scenario

down to the last dotted "i"
down to the last crossed "t"
maybe minus an ant or two

dressed as it is
in memory
but keeping the essential

ingredients...
the you...the I
until once again

it is
just as
it was

*


It's about a perfect day and with one last glance one tries to remember everything...burn it into the mind...each perfect detail. But Memory that imperfect creature will choose what to put in?leave out and so the stinging ants...out they go!

MY GHOST CHATTING TO MYSELF

knife flashes through flesh
the stunned silence
the wild scream of red

the pastpresentfuture
flows from the wound
time is thicker than blood

the assassination of Time
the body dying
to its sense of self

the world
leaking into
nothingness

my ghost
chatting to my self
in an amiable manner

the dead enemy
staring at
my dying

my friend whispers
"I'm not going to let you
die in this jungle!"

never thought I'd live to be
the old man
I am now

the friend who saved me
dead
only a week later

still remember the stare
of the Japanese soldier
looking bewildered he was dead.

*

What it takes to be a soldier...**** or be killed...he told me that he still sees that man every day of his life...the sweat on his skin...the sweet smell of his breath...the shadow of his eyelashes..

It was like watching a human being being turned inside out....the act of killing somehow dehumanises you...it doesn't matter that in this hand-to-hand fighting you literally come face to face with the person who is basically just another you and you...**** him by making this him ...an IT...**** or be killed but you also **** a part of your self to do it...the fall out is like an emotional atomic bomb that blights the rest of your life and poisons your future...it stops you being a normal human being...you know both what death is and what it is like to be death.

DU TEMPS PERDU

weather vane
rusted into a NNW
still facing into the long ago

paying little heed
to time or what
way the wind blows

the peal of a bell
nails our shadows
to the hard ground

the sharpness of sunshine
outlining everything
it touches

the smack of bat on ball
****** of tea things
broken china cup "...howzat!"

our shadows get up
walk silently away
they have business elsewhere

so here we are
trapped in this
one moment

staring blindly
into a future
we can not know

the white border
of the photograph
contains us

it is no longer
the 1930's
storm clouds gather

another generation holds us
between forefinger and thumb
war has come and gone

they must wonder what
we were
thinking when it was taken

we stare out at them
staring in at us
each unable to imagine the other

they remark that we
have their eyes...their faces
the resemblance there for all to see

they could just as easily
be us
"Ha ha...that's us...in fancy dress."

time doesn't seem
to have a moved
the weathervane still

doesn't know
which way
to turn

TO NOT TO BE OR TO BE

I travel into my death
forgetting this world of now
that has all but forgotten me

this world looks so
insignificant
like a planet reduced to a full stop

being dead
felt so alive
I didn't give the world a second thought

"...to infinity &. . .beyond!"
I grin to my self
seems a sense of humour survives

glad to lose the body
never did get on with it
think I'm going to enjoy just being thought

that's it
just thought
I think myself into being

I'm still me
only
minus my body

I think
then I am
my own creation

I've been to
nowhere & back
now I am an everywhere

here I am
& here I am not
the mesh of existence

I try to explain
my self to
my not-self

so now I
understand it all
it's. . .

*

A friend of mine telling me what it was like to die and then...not to die.

SHADOW PLAY

the shadow
(it seems)      
creates this stone

that I
(motionless
& still)      

sit upon
as if it were the centre
of this world

it is the summer
of my childhood
& the world

is making itself
known
to me

my mind
hungry
to learn

my own shadow
chained to me
like a soul to a body

longing
to escape
my mortality

it lies
like a fallen angel
thirsting for a Heaven

crestfallen at my feet
shadow plays
hide & seek

amongst the leaves
sunlight laughingly
chasing it

birds write
the notation of themselves
upon the telegraph lines

sounds morph
into each other
the moo of a cow

becoming the murmur
of a bee I try to understand
the existence of a me

the five-bar gate
prints its shadow
on the lane

smiling
at its own
distortion

wild roses
ramble from
hedge to hedge

honeysuckle
climbs
upon its own scent

I sit amongst
the milk churns
gleaming with the silver

of their laughter
as if I were one
of their number

waiting for a tractor
to escort us to
a faraway dairy

we three wise monkeys
(seeing)(hearing)(speaking)      
no evil

in this the innocence
of my new & only
world

*

"Often, when I was alone, I sat down on this stone, and then began an imaginary game that went something like this: “I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath. ' But the stone also could say “I” and think: 1 am lying here on this ***** and he is sitting on top of me.”

Carl Jung

STOLEN SUNLIGHT

that summer
the heat felt now
even from this photo

you looking in a window
I now looking in the window
of this faded photograph

I look at this photo
even in the dark
the Braille of your laugh

invisible
to Time
the me taking the photo

that 1950's summer
the sunlight stolen
trapped on paper

trapped on paper
your laughter
and its reason

the invisible me
making the visible you
smile for the camera

faded photo
the sunlight stealing back
its light

TÁ AN GHEALACH AG BRIONGLÓIDÍ
( The Moon is Dreaming )

I smiled
at the daytime
moon

all my life I had
been a lover
of daytime moons

a little piece of magic
hung up
in a sky

as if the moon had
shaken off its nighttime
moorings...sailed into our day

"Hey mister...mister!
a kid's voice breaking
into my moon reverie

"You've lost
yer moon!"
"?"  I puzzled

but sure enough
there was my moon
rolling down the hill

before happily plopping
itself into a nice
generous puddle.


I had rescued it it
from a charity shop
and knew it

would glow
in the dark
for my daughter

although
its Day-glo surprise
couldn't be guessed at now

it seemed happy enough
to be mud splattered
and acting |
as if
it were king
of its puddle

the kid pulled it
from its happiness
and punted it with

a fine Garry Owen
that I just about
managed to hold on to

it's dark side was
a bit
cracked

I rolled a pound
back down the hill
which was 50p

more that I paid for it
the kid just beamed
"Gee thanks mister!"

later that night
the moon hung
and twirled

on its string
above my daughter's
dreaming head

dreaming of its
own adventures
gazing at

the full moon
in the sky
daughter falling into dreams

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

carrying carefully
in my belly
your future smile

*

How my mother described the pre-Me before I actually came into existence as the me-Me that I now am...she said she had longings...to see my smile.  Then we sang GETTING TO KNOW YOU to each other from ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM.

I trawl backwards and forwards in time...anyway the poet's mind is never chronological....this is the long long ago told in the forever present...I am a young boy getting to know...be aware of...my mother as she was before talking on the life task of being my mother...I am aware of her as the person she was...all the different selves....I could talk freely to her about everything and anything...I was always interested in the who she was and the why she was....I saw her as person in her own right...she was telling me what it was like being pregnant with me and how she longed for me....this was her lovely description of carrying me....and it lives forever in my mind in the present tense wishing for the future to happen. She was a lady in waiting and here via words I get to wait along with her...for me! So this memory hangs timeless in my mind...devoid of time....having no need of time and its tenses....not obeying any law but the law of love that does not abide by time's rules.

SHE SAYS SHE SAYS

she presses her *******
cold against the mirror
tries to enter her own reflection

she says she wishes she was
someone else
so that she could make love to herself

after her shower
her hair cups her *******
like two alien hands

she says she
breaks into my (absence)
to steal my (presence)

she says she loves
the way I adverb her
the gentle "ly" in my voice

somewhere she
feels she's made out of a silence
where no sound has every fallen

she accuses me of
stealing her dreams
whilst she'd dreaming

she says she
adores being
on the tip of my tongue

she says my voice
is like the vowel O
in the word love

*


I wanted to get a montage effect of voices and conversations that just come unbidden back...like Godard's UNE FEMME MARIEE montage of images only mine would be of thoughts...feelings...emotions... traces of the love that would by now have floated away into the ether but slip back into the unconscious.

NO. 31 O'HIGGINS ROAD, CURRAGH CAMP, CO. KILDARE.

I climb a stair
that isn't there
stand on a landing

in mid-air
each step I take
creates the next part

of the vanished
house
lost to time

as see through
as a cartoon
ghost

this was
(still is) for me
No. 31

O'Higgins Road
my world
the universe of me

what was once
my bedroom...is now a cloud
a window become a moon

night
and its storm
sit in our living room

a bird tiptoes
down the stair
flying through

nine year old me
reaching for
the light switch

to turn on
what isn't
there

YES WE NEVER FOUND JESUS

I was there
the night
Jesus fell to earth

a great storm
announced
itself

and a glow-in-the-dark
plastic Christ on a cross
wrenched itself free from

its nails
leaving its hands
and feet behind

before it could be saved
our Golden Retriever
snapped it up

and escaped
the house
with Christ in its mouth

when at midnight
it had returned
from the wood

it was without Jesus
having  either lost
or buried Him

we questioned the dog
but it
wasn't saying anything

Jesus
was never found
even after all this time

all four of us
made up stories
of how now

He lived his life
and whether He
enjoyed His freedom

perhaps as a woodsman
saving Little Red Riding
from the wolf

or as a hermit
charming
the birds

or telling parables
to a troop of toadstools that
had grown up around Him

or
preaching to
a curious fox

guess he was happier
now at one with nature
and all his creation

ALL TAFFETA & TULLE

(For Angie Baby)

Frightened by the storm
he crawls under

his mother’s skirts
all taffeta & tulle

clinging to her
ankles

before falling
asleep

upon her feet.

She continues playing
her cards right

winning all before her

as the candles
gutter

and almost
go out.

She remembers her body
wrapped about him

her flesh
protecting his innocence

as now her dress
encloses his sleeping

unconsciously stroking
his hair

with her
left foot

his dreams now
pooled at her feet.

*

She was a remarkable woman with only a stump for a right arm but could play piano beautifully with her left alone. She also had a talent for  being able to do things with her feet just like you and I would use the hand. I remember her little boy being born and watching him crawl into being a fully fledged tottering walker. There was a great big storm and we were reduced to candlelight and kept on playing cards. Her little boy, for little boy he then was, crawled under the table and fell asleep for comfort at her feet. She continued the card game but stroked his hair with her foot as she played and went on a winning streak A woman doing the fabled multi-tasking but with a unique
difference.

Someone once said why didn't i write that detail about the arm into the poem but this poem wasn't about that and anyway it didn't define her or her life. What was remarkable was the terrible tender gesture of her hushing him to sleep with her foot whilst stroking his hair and...winning hands down. It was the beautiful gesture in the fantastic situation that eclipsed anything else.

INVOCATION
( for Mary Forde )

See the dead
bring in the hay.

Hear them call
all the cows by name

as the evening
ambles in.

Take the horse
out of her harness

whisper their thanks
to her.

Hands...rough hands
that mend a fence

fix a hedge
collect eggs...feed pigs.

The thousand tasks
of a farm dressed

in the glorious summer
of long lost ago.

Call them by their names
as you call them then

the child you were
reeling them in.

See them come
eagerly alive again.

Loving that you
have not forgotten them.

"Mikey...Seanie...Sonny...Granny...Nellie!"

Ghost voices
on the wind.

Fields fallow.
Home a ruin.

How time
crumbles away.

I gather you in.
Name you one by one.

Do not allow
time or death

to touch you.

HAPPY NEW...WHAT?

the day
was standing
in the world

not knowing
just what
to do with itself

I was standing
outside
the world

not exactly eager
to be part of
the New Year

somehow I
had escaped
both time and space

but knew there was
no way out of it and
would have to return

a bird
sang
creation into being

and I had to step back
into the ways of the world
hoping against hope

that things would be
could be
better

but of course it was
more of
the same old same old


*


And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.

Rainer Maria Rilke