Poetry

Annunciata

2011-08-29T09:12:00.000+02:00

There is a story from Rome

in the sixteen hundreds

about the church of our lady

of fertility;

a small parish church, where

desperate women

who were advanced in age

and still without children

went to pray,

to the priest,

Father Giacomo.

They’d come furtively

to the confessional box

just before the closing

for Sext

at lunchtime.

Father Giacomo

heard their confessions

and when they told him

they were still

childless.

He asked them to wait

in the sacristy.

“My daughter

if you really want

a bambino, you will accept

the intercession

of the Holy Mother Church.”

The cowed, veiled women

shuffled in awe

into the priest’s

backroom.

He showed them

a chair by the table,

and poured them

a goblet of altar wine.

They refused, but Father Giacomo

insisted.

“Drink, my child.

I will be gone for a moment.

Please pray so that your family

will blessed

with a son

or a daughter.

Do not be afraid. Remember

Saint Elizabeth. Pray to her.

And please drink.

We needn’t tell anyone.”

Father Giacomo

kissed their heads,

as they clumsily sipped

the wine:

with tears in their eyes.

And he left.

After a few fearful minutes the Lord

must have sent an angel

to comfort them

because they all soon fell asleep.

And dreamt a dream

that made them sing:

a beautiful cherub, with chocolate ringlets

and sad, sad eyes

flew into their arms

from out of the flowers

sown in the carpet.

A feeling

like heaven.

And when they finally awoke,

Father Giacomo would cup

their reddened cheeks

with his soft,

warm hands.

“My daughter, you have slept.

I told you to pray.

But never mind. May the Lord

grant your wish

to become a whole woman.

To be a mother”.

And he would lead them out

into the afternoon sun, always

crying and grateful that someone

had touched them.

Now, this had gone on

for over ten years.

Every so often, the priest

was seen

guiding a woman,

blinded by the light

out into the piazza dell’annunciata.

Week after week,

Year after year.

And though you wouldn’t call it

(as all births are miracles)

the women (but not everyone) soon

fell pregnant.

And the happy families

would take their carts

full of meat, fish and vegetables

as an offering

to the church

on the day of the birth.

They would sing, with their friends,

and dance in the piazza

around their little carts.

The new fathers drunk,

and the midwives

bloody-aproned and sweating

with a good job

well accomplished.

And Father Giacomo

embarrassed but happy

would insist that it had been the work

of divine intercession.

Of Saint Elizabeth. The Virgin Mary.

And that next week

he would say a mass

for thanksgiving.

That night there would be joy

and music in the households.

Men would admire

the shy husband.

Women would gather

at the bed

of the mother

and child: a boy or a girl

with sad, sad eyes

feasting at the breast:

a feeling like heaven.

The young girls

nodding off

at the edge of the bed.

Even the priest

would partake of some wine

with the blessed

and happy families

before heading back

to the presbytery.

to lock the church,

extinguish the candles,

and chase out the dogs.

Before going to bed,

He would take a few morsels

of pork

to the cellar,

for his little friend,

with the chocolate ringlets,

and too-big tongue,

and oriental eyes,

“Grazie, padre.

ho molto fame.”

“I know, Ugolino.

And perhaps tomorrow

we will feast again.”

Father Giacomo finally died

and the church

burned down

one Saint John’s eve,

when some boys had been trying

to steal the wine.

A scuffle was heard;

the cellar caught fire.

But the little parish

blossomed,

the guilds were booming

and the children

survived

more than the average.

They re-built the church

and it was consecrated

to Saint Elizabeth.

The old , pregnant woman

who bore John the Baptist.

Whose head was cut-off

and given to Salome.

“These dark, chocolate ringlets.

These sad, sad eyes.”

Afghanistan

2011-08-24T13:29:00.002+02:00

Our two countries are sleeping.

They are connected by a stone stairway

leading to the dawn

perched on your shoulder.

The night is a guest

in this forest.

The mouth having drunk

relives your name.

The mirror and the river are

calling each other

through the room. Two lights

caught in dark shelves.

Our two centuries are sleeping.

The sound of birds in the fountain

is borne by the afternoon light.

The night’s lamp discovers

a body

that sometimes moves

in its dream.

Love Song of an Afghan Prince c. 1530

2011-07-16T10:54:00.001+02:00

Our two countries are sleeping.

They are connected by a stone stairway

leading to the dawn perched on your shoulder.

The night is a guest in this forest.

The mouth having drunk

relives your name.

The mirror and the flooding river are

calling each other through the room.

Two lights caught in dark shelves.

Our two centuries are sleeping.

The sound of the birds in the fountain

are borne by the afternoon light.

The night’s lamp discovers

a body that sometimes

moves in its dream.

2011-06-30T08:59:00.002+02:00

Summer Evening Storm

Rain becomes sight

and returns to sound,

like your mother

in the bathroom

crying.

2011-05-26T16:32:00.002+02:00

The Lark

The sky’s last spark . The day’s first heat.

Crimped in the dawn, it sings a disturbed earth.

Bells in its breath and free on its way.

Fascinating.

Awestruck, we kill it.

René Char

2011-05-26T14:29:00.002+02:00

swifts

at the stormy time of day

the ragged time of life

there are these scythes

swiping close to the hay

suddenly everything cries no higher

than hearing can climb

Philippe Jaccottet

2011-05-12T13:32:00.000+02:00

In the Beginning

From the KLM plane,

I watch the wind turbines in the polders

and come up with a simile:

‘kids waving to intercept an about-to-be-thrown-ball’,

but who’s throwing the ball?

I imagine the real (‘simile’) thing:

a bunch of kids doing jumping jacks,

trying to block the blockers.

That’s like a nuclear stand-off.

But I’m not sure about the mutually

assured destruction bit.

Perhaps the turbine farms

are like religions:

everyone flaying about to catch a ball

that’s never thrown.

God as pitcher.

Up here in the window seat

I feel like God.

Maybe God is like a passenger

flying above his creatures

on his way to Amsterdam.

Maybe God is the simile

for the world.

In this new Bible, we would read:

‘The wind turbines are like God

sitting in a KLM City Hopper

comparing them to ….’

2011-05-10T12:39:00.000+02:00

By the Rivers of Babylon

The history of flight is
the history of crashes.
When the cleaning staff found
Bobby Farrell’s dead body,
in Saint Petersburg, in a hotel room,

they whispered
Rasputin.

Boney M:
the first Western pop-group
to perform in the Soviet Union.

The stain on his pillow
was the hair dye
he never finished putting on…

His flight for Rome
left without him.
It slowly banked
over the Neva
on New Year’s Eve, minus
a backing vocal
that never was his.

2011-05-03T09:14:00.001+02:00

Air Duct Day

Today’s not a bad day
for cleaning the air ducts.
We’ll wait for Jeanine
who’s been off her crutches
for a week and ready to help.
Sanjay will be late
but the rest of the team
is here, in the kitchen.
Last year we found a bird
in the filter. It’s leg hung down
between the metal grate.
Ken thought it was a twig
and pulled it, feeling resistance.
It didn’t stink. The wind
had dried it out. Ten months
since we last cleaned it. I hope
Nate didn’t forget the solvent.
Dirt’s not the main problem.
It’s the grease. The air’s lanolin.
The vent’s heat. The engine’s perspiration.
The fan slows for the first time this year
and stops. Jeanine’s arrived and opens
the windows, putting the flat
on bypass. She smiles and limps.
We climb into the ceiling
and start to clean,
padding on buckling metal sheets
in pitch black. Sanjay passes me
two mechanic’s lamps.
I hook them to the wall
and feel for the switch.

2011-04-22T10:46:00.000+02:00

Hangover 3

I saw you in the hallway mirror, the way
the sheets broke on your legs
as you swam across the bed.
Submerged in the airless bubble
of intoxication, you breathed noise
like a tern
searching for its mate on the beach.

2011-04-19T16:46:00.004+02:00

The Bull

You never die at night.
Here, the river has the sky’s ear.
The snake beneath the rocks
is the hyphen
between your fear and the light.

Rene Char

2011-04-19T10:19:00.000+02:00

TANKA

Plastic casings:
laptop and lunch box;
(clip-ons , cooling fan…)
stretch the carry bag GoreTex,
to a white dimpled ridge.

2011-04-18T12:46:00.002+02:00

Jewels

The lounge room,
an apple
a pot of chamomile.
Fingers,
tearing at
staples
on the cardboard
box, puncture
and bead.

2011-04-18T12:38:00.000+02:00

The Higher Tea

The gymnast twists
her ergonomic pen.
The redwood
cupboard sends
a message: recycled
rail sleepers. Paper knots
a dry image
in the pillows’
undergrowth. Picture books
stacked in a Ducati
slide, caterwaul
their Sunday habits: a heavy
thermos of white hot choc-
olate, raisin
toast and marshmallow
flints. A credo like substance
abuse, innate
as fingernails.

2011-04-12T00:34:00.002+02:00

Conquered

Two pickle
toothpick flags:
one Dutch; one American, planted
in a dog’s turd
on the Prinsengracht, claiming
territory
like the moon or a slice
of the Arctic seabed.
Split empire
of shit. Dividing up
a new world.
Micro-frontier.
Soft and scented
positions
hardening in the sun.

2011-04-08T15:26:00.000+02:00

The Lark

The sky’s final ember and the day’s first heat,
It remains crimped in the dawn and sings about the agitated earth,
Carillion-master of its breath and free on its way.

Fascinating, we kill it filled with wonder.

René Char

2011-03-27T19:34:00.002+02:00

Green

That wine was once a solid
reminds us the world is melting.
The CO2 gas puffing out of our blood
makes a smoke stack of the merest human.
This isn’t entropy, it is a journey
flapping its air quotes against a closed window.
The mushrooms at the tree-line are edible
evidence of a morning shadow, as we walk
into the field this afternoon. Grass everywhere
in beef and milk, staining your dress
when we kissed, leaving you with a white moustache.

2011-03-24T14:55:00.000+01:00

Carbon Dating

I put a wood cinder in my mouth
and it tasted like shoe-polish meringue.
I tried to chew it and it felt
like my teeth had gone off-road
into a ditch of powdered glass.
The aroma of a gutted bedroom;
of paint chemical recycled
into the dangerously edible,
gave way to the thick air of the valley
from where the wood was harvested.
Fire had deforested the room
and loosened its black topsoil
revealing nails and copper wires.
What was in my mouth had become
some new type of mortar,
and when I spat it on the ground,
it bubbled and furred in the charred
floorboards, and crawled away
like a snail.

2011-03-20T15:02:00.002+01:00

My Previous Dogs

Higher-up at the vertical limit of sight;
caught on a flake of rusty guttering;
hidden in the leaves of a Californian walnut;
pressed in the middle of a waffling summer;
diphthonged at a flange in the upper-register;
flayed at a paint-crackled curl in the canvas;
alone in an attic like a cork in a gene pool,
who can see further than their next vacation,
past the landfall of mornings when you’ve awaken
out of the Valium of three am?
Derek and Brendan are laying the sprinklers
piling up the lawn down the side passage.
Professional gardeners
standing in the graves of my previous dogs.
Without my network of skills and debts
and capacious fridges that zip-lock air,
the afternoons would drag their marine-life
up an octave into slack-key,
pitched too high for humans.

2011-03-16T12:23:00.002+01:00

Plums in Honey

What has become of the dating game? We’ll see.

Ernesto revels in his love-beads as Angela bakes her much treasured lemon-cake.

The entire den is subdued. Leo warns of his rising ire, but we’re not discussing Pompeii.

The Plimptons have consumed their third packet of Student Feed in this epoch of wasabi-coated peas.

Bernard slips out with Pat for a joint. Pat comes back showered in a Roman triumph of soap-stone cones.

Poetry is the object here, but are we really motivated?

Bernard lounges on the porch dreaming of a steak and beer night in the Ardennes, the two children asleep.

Leo names them in a cheap move to bring down the house.

This morning Eve saw a small group, cupping their hands at the edge of the pool. A fourth stood off playing a button accordion. He sang of perspiring empires and nights beneath the Mario Plaza.

We got jealous.

When you’ve nothing to say sing it, when you’ve nothing to think … … and so on. Plums in honey.

Otherwise, there’s shopping with the Bin Ladens in the Via Barbuino. At least we can tag along, unlike the no-show Pope.

I promised mum, with her crook knee and mean tortellini. Here she is.

The years only leave us with speculation. They are our touch judges. Our concreters. Filling the gaps where our bodies had been.

The olive oil skin, the acacias, the footprints on the beach like a Bolivian heiress.

Echocardiogram

2011-01-29T09:51:00.000+01:00

Kidneys, lungs and teeth. A straw
standing in frozen cola. Corneas
ducts and valves. Headaches.
Tubes, split veins and butterflies.
Toenails caught in worn coverings.
Nail tracks on velvet cushions. Veal
furred with fat and jelly. Zip locked
sandwiches crushed in backpacks.
Bicycle locks and fruit bowls.

Lying on my side, I watched the monitor,
as Annalies showed me the wobbling ventricles;
and valves flaying like barnacles. She plotted
lines measuring the thickness of the walls
and added color to the sonar to detect
calcium plaque. She echoed my neck
to sound out my carotid for sclerosis.
Then she ripped the pads from my chest
leaving two bald spots above each nipple.

Nirvana

2011-01-28T16:06:00.001+01:00

When I attained Nirvana
last Saturday,
it couldn’t have come
at a worst time.
It was about 7 am. I was slowly
waking up
in my transformed state,
when Debbie
flew into the bedroom
to ask if I could
take her to the airport.
Her Subaru wouldn’t start
and the flight
was scheduled within the hour.

Toodle-Oo

2011-01-27T17:57:00.001+01:00

Meeting John Forrester in the stairwell
takes me back to the weeks
we camped out
along the shoreline
of the Beresford Park Lake.
That’s when Stacey
met her match as an addict
of cream buns; the ones
with the stripe of strawberry jam
in the fold. (What was her name?
Jan? Jennifer?) What I remember
about her
is her shock
of sun bleached hair,
her multicoloured toenails, and the small
Pleiades of glitter
painted below her left eye. She drove up
each morning
fresh from town with the groceries,
and an empty box
of cream buns. ‘Toodle-Oo’,
she sang
taking the brown paper bags
out of the boot. I think
I was falling in love. I hadn’t the heart
to tell her
that ‘Toodle-Oo’
meant goodbye. So when
I met John Forrester in the stairwell
I told him ‘Toodle-Oo’.

‘Yes,
‘Toodle-Oo. What was her name?
Jan? Jennifer?’

‘Something like that’

Poem sent to Bernard in Coogee

2011-01-27T17:37:00.001+01:00

Bernard, you’re probably sitting at home in Coogee,
but you aren’t.
Not really. This isn’t Coogee. This is a poem
in Coogee.

A poem which you have been visiting
for years, when it was sunny, when it was raining,
when it was stormy. And here you are now:
standing (or sitting), reading this.

Yes, there you are … and you’ll go away again, shortly.
This is how it’s going to be between us. In fact,
I’m no longer here either.

after Rutger Kopland

Pranayama

2011-01-24T18:42:00.002+01:00

I went on this yoga thing recently.
The instructor talked about
the difference
between being a healthy person on paper
and being a healthy person.
The other extreme was
legal as opposed to actual
death.
You can’t explain it just by language.
Try sticking out your tongue
when you’re on the road
to hypothermia.
The instructor was at a loss
for case studies
so she white labeled her life.
Her brother was a financial director
who last March was hired
by a chemical & plastics company.
At the executive retreat
they fed him until
he sank beneath the ice.
To us it seems so obvious
we overlook the one thing
that distracts us
most.

2011-01-22T11:39:00.000+01:00

Half Marathon

Like a worn gravel; a white
gravely dust, stretching
to where the grass begins
at the foot of the hill. The bank sweeps
down to a scribble of plants,
and it smells. That’s
what’s left of where
I need to run. I’m focussing
on my breath, and the pain
trail branching into my lungs;
a sharp strap edging along the hip.
I stop here and look back, and see
figures bobbing out of the mirage.
Sweat stings my eyes. There’s a promise
here somewhere, it’s waiting
in the distance. It’s shaped
like an oil stain and hides
beneath the dried clay.
I’m off again; I see people
appear, screaming left
and right, with banners
and cars out over
the incline. I know
it will soon quieten
down and there won’t
be much more to it: this
vague track that tastes
like cement. I feel it through
the hairs on my arms.

2011-01-22T11:26:00.000+01:00

Second Life

Amanda is turning ghostly as a line
inscribed in that wordy book.

Wretched tracks. She offers a thinly veiled
sympathy.

And serenely trims the message.
Lowing on those downloaded hills.

Bent to parks. Standing before turtles, where the conical
washes blank. Outworn

Amanda. She peddles and spins.
Selecting the plump boils

on the song’s enterprise. Amanda
doesn’t hope to tack

from dim until dark. A rout
shows her home.

She seethes in browns. She has shone
to a dilating shore.

But Amanda stays. Given, dull memories
fester enjoyably, but

she balks. Who is Amanda
playing with and leading

up to bedtime? Amanda
declines while vanishing.

Dowdy as always.
Amanda. Merely formed.

Comes up to the knee. Changed
outward and sees. Building

Amanda. One to play.
One to buy. A penny’s worth,

A piping wreck. She’s
brushed, and pinned to Amanda.

2011-01-22T11:03:00.000+01:00

Well

The stolen vote sinks into footnotes.
How many canisters?
How many inky fingers?
When will Bluetooth courtships become a threat?
The lesson expels
an age’s worth
like a wadi song
whistled at the weekend.
Weren’t you asking
about Eveline? And that short
scarab bracelet,
she wore at Philae? The tension
builds to dehydration. Deftly, Eveline
rummages for a moist pad
to dab away
the surface veneer. A damask
curtain emerges, a hotel room at Aswan.
I wanted to ask Omar when the souk
was open. He had just landed
a bundled
month of magazines
in the stairwell.
The sketch artist whipped
the Kolinsky round
through dry ink. Is that it?
“Wait, effendi. Look.
It floats to the surface. Medium.
Light. Sweet.”

Riddle

2011-01-22T10:38:00.003+01:00

He committed suicide in seventy-two.
He left a note saying he was bored; wished us luck.
He'd been living in Spain for many years.
He was Lord Henry Wotton in Dorian Gray.
He was Mr. Freeze in Batman on TV too.
He married two sisters (Magda and Zsa Zsa).
He overdosed on barbiturates in a hotel room.
He left a note saying he’d lived long enough.
He left Majorca just days before.
He was the voice of Shere Khan in the Jungle Book
He checked into a hotel at Castelldefels.
He married Benita. She was looking for fun.
She died of bone cancer in sixty-seven.
He would kill himself one day, he told David Niven.
He called Catalonia “this sweet cesspool”.
He was born in Saint Petersburg. But he was British.
He was the Saint before Roger Moore.

2011-01-22T10:05:00.000+01:00

10 Years in Amsterdam

Three thousand mornings. Three thousand revolutions.
The faster you spin, the stiller the light.
After the storm, breakfast.
“Drink up. You need the vitamins”

This love is deep

shit.
Just give her what she wants
and no-one gets hurt.

2011-01-22T09:51:00.000+01:00

Stuff

I was hired last week to write terminal illness
declarations at St Vincent’s.

Last Saturday Barbara walked into the bathroom.

I was having a shower.

She showed me the ad through the Perspex.

“They’re looking for writers at the hospital”

I thought there had been a bombing.

“Who was there?”, I asked.

“Huh? No. Writers.

For cancer patients, and stuff”.

2011-01-22T08:53:00.001+01:00

3 Koans

Tim was just finishing the ironing that he had put off for 3 weeks. When he got to his last handkerchief, he heard an SMS arrive on his mobile.

“Did I forget the Calgon?”
________________________________________

Sue asked Tim how he would know when she had attained the state of Bodhichitta?

“And?” replied Tim.

Sue was enlightened within the week.
________________________________________

Two retreat participants were watching the tumble dryer in the laundry shed.

One said to the other, “Is that my knitted wool jumper?”

The other replied, “Has your girlfriend left you?”

Tim overheard this. He said, “Not the jumper, not the girlfriend, but send me your CV.”

Commentary: The first participant has become addicted to a pain-body, as if trying to put on a shrunken woollen jumper. The second participant has stopped being and returned to the back-story. Tim sees this as a consignment to the flatlands. This koan demonstrates the realization that in deleting an object one may foreshorten one's understanding of the true nature of nature’s fabric by falling into externalization and believing that the true nature of the tumble dryer, the girlfirend, and the CV are different. Tim always taught the One Vehicle Buddhism of One Package which teaches that wisdom (sanskrit: prajna) comes from the Essence of Love-Organs and not from an exterior source.
________________________________________

Once Sue asked “Why have the peas been boiled?”

Tim answered, “Was that your question about the water?”

“Yes”, said Sue.

At another time, Sue asked, “Why have the peas been boiled?”

Master Tim answered “Was there water?”

“No”, said Sue.
________________________________________

2011-01-19T15:50:00.000+01:00

The Man who Woke-up Married

So, what you are saying is that I can have sex with you anytime …whenever I want. Right? I know I’d have to clear it with you first, but … other than scheduling concerns, can I start the ball rolling when and as I wish? Yes, of course, I will always ask you beforehand. You know, verbalize it. That’s just plain courtesy. But tell me, are there any specific times when I can just spring it on you – when there are no other timetable clashes? Just get down to it on short notice? That’s fine. I can be flexible too.

2011-01-18T16:09:00.000+01:00

Déjeuner sur l’herbe

Between me and God lies a well-loaded picnic blanket.

Between now and my death lies an Olympic pool of drinking water.

Take these two premises
with their “gated community” mind-set

and the road to Damascus
becomes mined
with water-melon stalls.

Like this morning,

I’m boiling
in my flak-jacket, sitting
in John’s Range Rover.

Up ahead
the Syrian guard
will surely

bum me
for a frozen Snickers
(plural noun, single candy)

from the cooler
I put
on the back seat.

2011-01-18T10:33:00.001+01:00

Song for the End of Lisbon

The warm days run from west to east
in the new machine,
and time soaks up the first hard drink
we’ve had on Prata street.

The old machine may still complain
but we’ll keep it on the fridge,
when closing times and herbal teas
are options in this heat.

The final name we give ourselves
is playing near the swings.
A pen becomes a space-time ship
in its final weeks.

We woke at five on the beach today.
The kids had buried our feet.
At the night the waves still tickle our toes.
And laughter fills the deep.

2011-01-14T13:30:00.004+01:00

The Ballad of Jennifer Rollins

This one’s old. It dribbles its Cornflakes.
It mixes up slippers and buys lottery tickets.
But the story’s new. And it starts at the gate
in front of the house of Jennifer Rollins.

Where is my Jenny, boys? Where is my Jenny?
Come pickles and ice-cream! Come ads on the telly!

Saturday morning, and the breakfast plates
on the table lie wabi sabi .
A cell phone plays “My Favorite Things”
in the pocket of the jacket of Jennifer Rollins.

Where is that Rollins, boys? Where is that Rollins?
Come toilets and paper! Come blue orange bobbins!

The cell phone sings, and buzzes and jumps.
It flashes and winks in Jennifer’s pocket.
The cell phone hides, and peeks, and rings.
Calling “Come on, Jen!” out of the denim jacket.

Where is my Jenny, boys? Where is my Jenny?
Come pickles and ice-cream! Come ads on the telly!

The cell phone pauses, then starts again.
But Jennifer’s not wearing her denim jacket.
It’s Spring again. It’s the first warm day.
The jacket is hanging in Jennifer’s closet.

Where is that Rollins, boys? Where is that Rollins?
Come toilets and paper! Come blue orange bobbins!

The day’s got dogs, a sun and cars.
It’s dried out the lawns by eight o’clock.
It’s emptied the bars down by the docks.
Jennifer won’t need any denim jacket.

Where is my Jenny, boys? Where is my Jenny?
Come pickles and ice-cream! Come ads on the telly!

The sea’s gone hazy. The garbage stinks.
The ice-cream vendor’s made love to his wife.
The body of evidence is overwhelming:
Jennifer won’t need any jacket today.

Where is that Rollins, boys? Where is that Rollins?
Come toilets and paper! Come blue orange bobbins!

In front of the house, down by the gate,
under the trees, next to her bike,
Jenny is quiet, and cool in the shade.
She cannot hear her cell phone playing.

Where is my Jenny, boys? Where is my Jenny?
Come pickles and ice-cream! Come ads on the telly!

Jennifer’s smiling, she’s looking up,
She really can’t smell the rotting garbage.
A breeze whistles through her small pink ears.
The grass stains her shirt, and she’s blocking the passage.

Where is my Jenny, boys? Where is that Rollins?
Come pickles and ice-cream! Come blue orange bobbins!

2011-01-13T11:56:00.002+01:00

Remembering Ruby's

The short walk from the port

soaked Stilton to Suzette's on Sundays is just

platitude city.

2011-01-10T17:55:00.000+01:00

By the Rivers of Babylon

The history of flight
is the history of crashes.
When the cleaning staff found
Bobby Farrell’s dead body,
in a hotel room in Saint Petersburg,
they whispered
Rasputin. Boney M
was the first Western group
to perform in the Soviet Union.
His flight for Rome
left without him
banking over the Neva
on New Year’s Eve.

2011-01-08T12:19:00.002+01:00

The Rome Poems

Rome 1a

2008. Evening. Piazza Navona.
An Irish student asks the street musician
if he could play along with him.
He brings out an old school desk
sits in it
and thumps along.

Rome 1b

2008. Afternoon.
Walked into the Hotel d'Inghilterra to have a look.
Went into the Japanese Bar and saw an old Brit in the library.
He was dressed to the nines and drinking scotch.
He smiled at me and said’ “It’s Tarzan.”
Johnny Weissmuller was on the flat screen.

Rome 2a

2009. Dream.
Space, 7010.
We found an abandoned Space Station. It was frozen.
We found a drop of solid sperm floating in the toilet facility.
The space station was from 2010.
I thought about Jurassic Park.

Rome 2b

2008. Dream.
The Charles River, 2007.
I was at the business school, or at the old family home.
I’ve never had an old family home.
A case study was in progress.
It was called The Life Machine.
You fed in various inputs like Cornetto wrappers or some spare change,
and whatever comes out
will be due on 08 July.
I caught the frizzbie to the library with two other passengers.
We were followed by tracer frizzbies.
I felt bad that I was late in starting the case study.

Rome 2c

2010. Afternoon.
I asked Nathalie what makes a Roman happy.
“AD or BC?”

2011-01-08T12:03:00.003+01:00

Time Out

I looked out the window
and saw a city in my mouth:
London.
“Fucked-up, guv!”, said the cabbie.
Your Hot ‘n Sour Soup. Your queuing.
Your weather like breathing a slice of salt beef.

2011-01-04T11:17:00.003+01:00

Summer

The mother did not so much walk
slowly, but
made each step
an event. Visits had become
this simple. Enjoying the sun.
Drinking tea. The daughter. The children. Together
quietly. Words returned to their objects.
The breeze in the leaves.
The afternoons getting longer. The lawn.

2011-01-01T14:00:00.002+01:00

At Lella’s Farm

In the pen
the young colt
pranced to a hand at the rail. He sniffed its palm
where the sugar cubes had been. They stood there,
not waiting. The damaged
wind drew back to its drip feed in the hills. One of them whistled
for the hand’s
owner to come back to the pickup. The colt snorted
and arched into a coiled
spring. The pickup’s engine
shivered.
Further up, a white cloth
clacked like a freight train.
They were off, all of them. A point at the source of the dust column.
We heard the colt
alone in its skin, a wet
envelope, a wall.

2011-01-01T13:40:00.000+01:00

The Insult

I laid an egg once and China hatched from it.
(Tibet too, but that was later).
I lay “BIG”.

But now, when an ant finds one of my eggs,
she hordes it with her own.
She can’t tell the difference…

I witness this
with a thinly disguised rage. How can I try
to explain
without exposing my shame?

“Haven’t you got anything better to do than quibble with a poor ant..?”

“Yes, sorry … “ and I bare the insult
in silence.

after Henri Michaux

2011-01-01T13:25:00.000+01:00

Untold Story

The men and boys entered the van
like molecules
in a nostril becoming a scent.
Something there, thoughts
surge like gypsies,
crouching at the edge
of the pit. Matted
hair, teeth, bone, and sweat.
A crushed feather marks
the page. Charactery of flight:
chiseled dollops
of whipped-cream spread
across the glacier of light
with a three-volume wind; the paper
struts solidly
ambivalent as scripture. Stories shout
like cones of smoke blowing from the men; while the boys breathe
like bats curled to sleep
in the pavilion of your ear.

2011-01-01T13:12:00.000+01:00

Oscar Bolts (Part 1) - 20 June 1971

The last time I took the cart to Castaseedie,
my old Clydesdale, Oscar, bolted
on seeing two water voles
log-running a plastic bottle in the Emmens Creek.
He was a tsunami of horse meat
dragging the cart like a comet. The broomsticks
rattled loose from their binding, and fanned-out
to disasters along the mossy granite.
Tilda’s antique brass pans and commode
thundered
in a botched cacophony as it blazed in the slipstream. In that instant I could see her face
puckering into disappointment.
I had lost over half my load.
Desperately, I leapt onto Oscar, but my take off was a fizzer,
and I fell between the horse
and the cart, only saving myself
from being ploughed under by grabbing
Oscar’s crupper.
I hung on with the strength of a mother, staring
into the horse’s palpitating arse muscle. I thought
any second now
I would be caught in the wheel’s metal rim
and dragged beneath the cart
But Oscar
stopped suddenly, ramming my nose up his ring.
A cathedral of silence heaved over the hillside. I was standing in the danger zone
with a foundation
of horse puck on my face. Up ahead, I saw why Oscar had come to a halt.
A mammoth Lawrentian pink foot
was standing in the middle of the track. It gaped wide at Oscar,
clattering its beak on the gravel
in a gesture of defence. But after a couple of minutes
I realized
it was in pain and going mad.
I saw something wedged in the side of its face.
The object was pink with black furuncles; small
and bizarrely angular. I couldn’t make out
what it was. When I approached
the bird,
it trilled like a socialist-built motorcycle
and drew a few donuts with its beak. I was worried
this would scare Oscar again, so I settled back . . .

2010-12-31T12:13:00.000+01:00

Moving

Grey spills traced back and pinned
high on a bark collage. Janet gave me that,
and a lettuce of mulberry nudes from an evening class. Paperclip
bellies for the kids who have gone. Pumpkin seed
roads winding into a grove of feathers. A Bicentenary
transfer scraped from a windscreen, faded
to gossamer. I hardly see
Captain Cook commanding the sailor to stop
firing on the natives. Drawn back from an instinct
to chuck out the lot,
Janet piled-up the cardboard boxes
in the carport and let us rummage through.
A card missing a deck winked up and down: a time killer
for a Sunday drive up north.
The blankets that smelt like milk
and the exercise book with one letter in it.
I took some of it home and ordered it
across the rug. And if you looked
long enough… Tomorrow, I’ll chuck it out.

2010-12-31T11:59:00.002+01:00

Shining Throne Sutra

I’m playing games with the humidity
guessing the size of the kitchen cabinets
drowsing by a kite on the football field
pasting diets on my backyard fence

shining thrones for the mystery play
working-off a hangover by classifying socks
disorienting bats by clapping my hands
increasing my output for diminishing returns

flouting the rules for long-period events
feeling nauseous on a beach in Cancun
lambasting clowns at my niece’s day-care
earthing the static in your new corduroys

celebrating crosshairs over laser-lock sights
making a dog’s breakfast of my first drama class
writing 'buff' when I mean 'suspension'
responding to condolences with your marriage-list stationery

eating plum dates and regretting the cheese
crying at jazz tunes in peak hour traffic
re-evaluating the effects of a long awaited launch
tying up prospects with my probing questions

2010-12-28T15:59:00.003+01:00

The Collector

Once
you claimed you would soon become
my household god. But you refused to talk. I took your arm
and handcuffed you to the bed.

You said you’d wear it forever.

2010-12-28T14:35:00.002+01:00

The Van Line Convention

let’s face it the mouth is the apricots of Marbella and the sky well the sky shrinks to an edible ball on this point being perhaps the Guatemalan in the next booth señor pack-mule gargles oil in prison these are the rubs Professoressa Testarossa the Yorktown Porker we would not want to at this time so kindly Brian told him a prissy story one of his best at the ninth we were just not swinging like the ladies in the French garden a shrubbery fleur de lys Bernard says romantic poetry is just the adjectives black for compensation or misty for the ceiling fan looking down oh please c’mon he’s just brown-nosing it with god it was a mistake we were invited to something must have gone wrong you mean the president’s club? pissed I mean it makes me cry every time I see my children on the big island with the little one on the dolphin’s tail we invited Sophia to unveil it in the driveway when the pool wasn’t finished but invented the colour schemes for electronics a doughnut hole bigger than a doughnut endeared to underwriters kissing on the rooftop scampi beneath a layer of rucola glazed strip steaks coruscated with a pod of fingerlings and for real we’re only human let’s not confuse love with today and all afternoon at the beach we grew closer I know our small talk now as evening spreads it cannot be no never again

2010-12-20T13:36:00.001+01:00

DM 1958-2010

Debra is dead,
again.

She was already dead
last night.

And last Friday?
Dead.

If anything,
she is persistent.

And dead.
What is this

obsession,
monkey-on-her-back?

Back to rehab!
When tomorrow,

we wake up,
and Debra

is something else.

2010-12-04T12:35:00.001+01:00

Alley Oop

Yesterday, I wrestled with my soul:
it was a slap-down with the Junkyard Dog.
A Samoan drop for Gorgeous George.
A Fireman’s Carry Slam on Doubt.
A Category Error Clothes-Line Leg-Sweep.
A Fallacy Accident Spine-Buster.
A Tag Team of Straw Men.
A Caged Murder of False Dilemmas.
A Pump-handle Drop Argument from
Silence.

2010-12-04T11:31:00.000+01:00

The Rome Poems

Rome 1a

Middle of the evening, 2008. Piazza Navone. An Irish student asks the street musician if he could play along with his desk. He brings out an old primary school desk and bashes along.

Rome 1b

Middle of the day, 2008. Walked into the Hotel d'Inghilterra to have a look. Went into the Japanese Bar and saw an old English man in the library. He was all dressed up and drinking scotch. He smiled at me and said’ “It’s Tarzan.”

Johnny Weissmuller was on the flat screen.

Rome 2a

Dream, 2009. Space, 7010. We found an abandoned Space Station. It was frozen. We found a drop of frozen sperm in the glacial toilet facility. The space station was from 2010. I thought about Jurassic Park.

Rome 2b

Dream, 2008. The Charles River, 2007. I was at the business school, or at the old family home. I’ve never had an old family home. A case study was in progress. It was called The Life Machine. You fed in various inputs like Cornetto wrappers or some spare change, and whatever comes out will be due on 08 July. I caught the frizzbie to the library with two other passengers. We were followed by tracer frizzbies. I felt bad that I was late in starting the case study.

Rome 2c

Afternoon, 2010. I asked my wife what makes a woman happy…

2010-12-04T11:29:00.004+01:00

Dinner at Buci's

Tree-frog soup with lentils
Followed by an alping of Haagen Dazs.

At first sight, you never
Like the place you eventually
Come to love.

Quintuple A chitterling
Pan fried with Dijon mustard
And fries. Guts
And chips.

She had big hair
As opposed to
Long hair.

2010-10-24T12:48:00.003+02:00

Lungs

Lungs are the forests of the body, pegged
at the bleeding edge of a sponge: lungs are an image
sandwiched between broccolis of meat.

Lungs are lawns pocked with bunkers
Radiating out from the heart of the club.
Lungs are El Niño, Singapore Sling, Beelzebub.

Lungs are a chameleon. Then they’re not.
Lungs are a decision tree. Lungs are a drop
of dye dripped

in a glass of water. Lungs are the tip
of an iceberg ... not. Lungs are your internal air bag,
useless in a crash. Lungs make you

a wine flask. A blushful Hippocrene.
Caverns measureless to man.

2010-10-24T12:40:00.000+02:00

Song for a Neglected God

When God left the

church at five

he took his golden revolver and

headed for the meadows

for target practice.

At about

ten, he headed

home

to his wife

and children

passing

in his car

a row of willows.

2010-10-22T09:47:00.000+02:00

Lungs

Lungs are the forests of the body, pegged

At the bleeding edge of a sponge: an image

Sandwiched between broccolis of meat.

Lungs are lawns pocked with bunkers

Radiating out from the heart of the club house.

Lungs are El Niño, Beelzebub, Singapore Sling.

Lungs are a chameleon. Then they’re not.

Lungs are a decision tree.

Lungs are a drop of dye dropped

in a glass of water. Lungs are the tip

of an iceberg. Not. Lungs are your internal air bag,

useless in a crash. Lungs make you

a wine flask. A blushful Hippocrene.

Caverns measureless to man.

2010-10-05T09:28:00.000+02:00

Eyes

If the eye were a person, would it see?
Or would it remain blind to avoid redundancy?
But evolution’s not like that. An extra organ comes in handy.
When threading a needle, for instance.
Or when you are lost in a hurricane.
The day has millions in summer, as many as the flies
mobbing your mouth as you hike across the meadows.
Whatever it is, the eyes have it.

2010-01-07T13:55:00.002+01:00

The Witch of Brabizante

My reflection in her pink skin made my eyes water. The large head
rolled around its neck
like a satellite dish
at SETI. Her legs
plunged into the wallflower skirt
like an underwater ledge. The acres of hair
suggested
an arable brain.
Her lips were a puncture hole
in a rubber mattress; the air
rushing out was more toxic
than Tutankhamen,
richer
than a fly strip
at a piggery. A rubber pompom of subjects
dotted her “I” and pitted
glib pronouncements
with evacuated fricatives. The baste
ladled tongue
lapped at shores
where language competed
with sea wrack. A gothic
carbonara
scraped from a skillet
in Arcimboldo’s kitchen.
Teeth crowded forward
like the charioteers
of the Elgin Marbles. Her smile
was a skyline from Jerome Bosch.

2009-12-30T13:08:00.000+01:00

Alley Oop

Yesterday, I wrestled with my soul: it was a
slap-down with the Junkyard Dog. A Samoan drop for Gorgeous George. A Fireman’s Carry
Slam on Doubt. A Category Error
Clothes-Line Leg Sweep, a Fallacy Accident Spine Buster, Tag
Team of Straw Men: Caged Murder of False Dilemmas, a Pumphandle Drop Argument
From Silence.

2009-12-29T10:18:00.000+01:00

Time Out

I looked out the window
and saw a city in my teeth: London,
city of foodies and cookies, spy-wear suits,
and paper mâché cucumbers.
“Fucked-up, guv!”, said the cabbie.
(Referring to the Right Lane or something).
And your Hot ‘n Sour Soup queuing?
Weather like breathing a slice of salt beef?

2009-12-28T14:38:00.001+01:00

Two Short Poems for December 28th

1. The Expert

He was the master of the proverbial bleeding.
Like an elephant without a trunk, or a lone molar grinding a walnut.

2. Louisiana Song

And then the muddy ripples across his swamp-skis, heading towards the bridge:
“Low down and dirty chariot; flanked by silos of cotton-weather”.

2009-12-22T09:39:00.001+01:00

Johnny Halliday

My last beer with Elmar
Was toasted in poetry, and drunk in prose.
Warsteiner, in fact.
His head was haloed
by a cream-colored poster
of Johnny Halliday.
“My life, George, is about to begin.”
He stood up,
zipped up his jacket,
and walked out.
His beer – next to his wallet -
left half drunk.

2009-12-17T02:03:00.001+01:00

Caribbean Honeymoon

We are sailing into the Bermuda Triangle of love.
My ripped T-shirt billowing over our raft.
The days are piling up like cups on the bench.
At night the moon radiates its Turin Shroud on the dark.
We negotiate our daily Cuban Missile Crisis.
We are two fish caught in the net of sheets.

2009-11-12T15:28:00.000+01:00

Song for a Neglected God

When God left the
church at five
he took his golden revolver and
headed for the meadows
for target practice.
At about
ten, he headed
home
to his wife
and children
passing
in his car
a row of willows.

2009-10-07T21:18:00.003+02:00

2009-10-02T10:30:00.001+02:00

Song for a Neglected God

When God left the church
at five
He took his golden revolver
And headed
For the meadows
For target practice.
At about
ten, He headed home
to his wife
and children
passing
a row of willows
in his car.

2009-10-01T08:47:00.000+02:00

Preset Wash

Sharon, let go of the child. It’s finished. It’s really finished.
The mornings in the laundry, gone,
Piled-up and discarded, a thin film of softener
Inside the dispenser. Leave it! Let your heart stop. Let the pegs
snap and fly off the line when you pull at the clothes.
A funny, funny story but how does it end? It doesn’t, does it.
Behind the air a coolness that wasn’t there before. Just wasn’t.
Christ, not now. I haven’t had a good one. A thumping
good one, and then.
And then? OK.

2009-09-07T12:21:00.001+02:00

Let it live!

In my country, we prefer the tender hardships of spring and its barely-feathered birds to lofty goals.

Truth is waiting for dawn beside a candle. The window is filthy and neglected. But this doesn’t matter to the one keeping vigil.

In my country, we don’t question an emotional man.

There isn’t a dark shadow on the capsized boat.

Practically not saying hello is unknown in my country.

We only borrow that which can be given back many times over.

There are leaves, - yes, many leaves - on the trees in my country. The branches are free not to choose to bear fruit.

We don’t believe in the goodwill of the conqueror.

In my country, we give thanks.

René Char

2009-09-04T16:30:00.003+02:00

Six Boxes

The boxes have arrived and I have put them on the kitchen floor.

I open the first and before I pull back the last flap, I imagine how soon I will be already slightly familiar with the contents that I have never seen. I pause and let that future recede a few seconds. And then I lift out the small bolts of silk. Their circus-like sheen and rattan smell turn the kitchen into a souk. The evening draws back to an afternoon I spent years ago wandering around a warehouse on vacation. Already then, I noticed how outmoded anything exotic really is. I saw Nathalie walk towards me, having finally found me among the packed acreage of rice bags, dried fish and cartons of plastic utensils. She told me that she was looking forward to dinner. I try to remember where we ate. Is this something we can keep? But there is nothing there now. Thinking back is like being alone in a cinema with a too many embellishments: velvet curtains, chandeliers, volute carvings in the armrests.

The second box is on the tip of my tongue. Of course, an illusion, a trick. Prestidigitation. Let me draw it for you. The line is not solid, but marbled like from a piece of charcoal. This makes it gritty. Here we go. It looks like a face: dirty, hot and wet. This must have been when we played soccer in the yard with a tennis ball. My teeth tingled with the taste of chewed sand. I spat and coughed as it snaked down my throat. We were three-nil ahead. I think at that time we said “our favor” . This is the driftwood theory. Not embellishments but sediments: dirt collecting in the lines around your eyes. Pools of mud running from your sideburns.

Box number three. It’s such a distinctive box: no longer an ordinal but a cardinal number. I could have started here, or at anytime. It doesn’t matter. It is an epic box: in medias res. Like something from the Greeks or Romans. Let’s get to the point: Dido was never going to get Aeneas, so why bother. When you climbed the steps of the amphitheatre, the sound came from all around us. But then, this is just an exception to the relentless logic, the irresistible sequence of things. The starting point is now, and the universe expands equally outwards from wherever you are.

I have put the fourth box on the table, and scratched the veneer. Christ! And when I lifted it up, the staple has caught the needlepoint place mat and picked a hole in it. Naturally, I turned the box over to inspect the damage and its breakable contents broke in an avalanche onto the floor. A heap of porcelain figurines gesticulating their maimed stumps. The jagged noise scared the cat who sought solace among the knick-knacks on the bookshelves. Why not, the attachable schnook pencil eraser has spun into the washing-up, sending a greasy wave across the bench onto my shirt. Where else?

The fifth box is the oldest. It’s not creepy. It contains just one object: the sixth box. So why the fifth box? If you look at the sixth box you will notice that it was one of six boxes: not these six boxes, but another six boxes. And where are the five other boxes? Well, they were supposed to have been in the fifth box with the sixth box. Their sixth box, which is now ours.

2009-09-02T13:44:00.002+02:00

2009-09-02T09:22:00.001+02:00

On the tympanum of a Romanesque church

This is the house for the abandoned of God.
Bent backed and blue-stoned.

The hopeless greed of the dark,
Endlessly pursued
In its love, in its skeleton.

The truth of secret tears,
The greatest offering of winter sleep.

René Char

2009-06-18T08:37:00.000+02:00

Personal

It was a two-dimensional bubblegum bubble shivering outwards
in a viscosity of glass, backlit by a sun so huge
everything was in X-ray. The infinitely larger world
of my nails and skin could never be fathomed by these beings.
This is what a global pandemic looks like at close range:
Atomized feeling of fever and pain: an inward distance
beyond ourselves: the quiet colony of refugees in a corner of our anatomy.
The great internal cavity: unknown, no longer inhabitable.

2009-06-17T12:19:00.000+02:00

Plums in Honey

What has become of the dating game? Let’s see:
Ernesto revels in his love-beads as Angela bakes her treasured lemon-cake.
The entire den is subdued. Leo warns of his rising ire
but we’re not talking about Pompeii.
The Pimpernels have consumed their third packet of Student Feed
in this era of wasabi-coated peas.
Bernard slips out with Pat for a joint. Pat comes back
showered in a Roman triumph of soap-stone cones.
Poetry is the object here, but are we really motivated?
Bernard lounges on the porch dreaming of a steak and beer night
alone in the Ardennes, the two children asleep.
Leo names them in a cheap move to bring down the house.
This morning Eve saw a small group,
cupping their hands at the edge of the pool.
A fourth stood back playing a button accordion.
He sang of perspiring empires and nights
beneath the Mario Plaza. We got jealous.
So jealous, in fact, that text messages flew around the room
with no lines of sight. When you’ve nothing to say
sing it, when you’ve nothing to think …
… and so on. Plums in honey. That sort of thing.
Otherwise, there’s shopping with the Bin Ladens in the Via Barbuino.
At least we can tag along, unlike the no-show Pope.
I promised mum, yes Joan, mum, with her crook knee and mean tortellini.
Here she is. We had a date at the fiftieth.
The years only leave us with speculation.
They are our touch judges. Our concreters.
Filling the gaps where our bodies had been. The olive oil skin, the acacias,
the footprints on the beach like a Bolivian heiress.

2009-05-13T08:47:00.001+02:00

If

We will never return home. We will no longer strive: we will no longer die in some far-off paradise. The sky has rotted right through to its furthest strut. Not one glance can penetrate it. The earth has become a bone yard without devotion.

René Char

2009-05-10T10:49:00.001+02:00

May, Amstel

When the wind shows up
the trees applaud
but the river gets pricklier.

2009-05-03T20:17:00.001+02:00

Elms

There’s a blizzard of elm seed along the canals,
piling up in shop fronts and tourist photos; cottoning into recesses, eddying
into a Brownian motion over an Amsterdam
trapped in its own snow dome.

2009-05-01T17:21:00.001+02:00

Personal

It was a two-dimensional gum bubble shivering outwards
in a viscosity of glass backlit by a sun so huge
everything was in X-ray. The infinitely larger world
of my nails and skin could never be fathomed by these beings.
This is what a global pandemic looks like at close range:
atomized feelings of fever and pain: an inward distance
beyond ourselves: the quiet colony of refugees in a corner of our anatomy.
The great internal cavity, our very own unknown territory.

2009-04-24T06:34:00.002+02:00

World

The weight of thoughts, of rocks.

Dreams and mountains
don’t even balance out.

We live in another world.
Maybe the one in-between.

Philippe Jacottet

2008-10-10T08:34:00.003+02:00

Contracted Thus

Today is
curtains. Drapes,
valances, cornice boxes. Mafias
wrap bodies in them. Fresh
kills. Shower
curtains are better for
arterial work. Eyelets
peaking through
swags and tails. A theatre
called the world.
Curtains.

2008-09-24T13:39:00.000+02:00

‘contracted thus’

Today is curtains. Drapes, valances, cornice boxes. Mafias wrap bodies in them. Fresh kills. Arterial work’s better with shower curtains. Eyelets peaking through swags and tails. A theatre called the world. Curtains.

2008-09-23T15:01:00.001+02:00

Now, Voyager

The brown weather crouches on the business park as Tom
boards the Toyota for the flight home.
His plane leaps at six, and the microwave background
rustles the water contents in his salmon salad,
his peas and his tossed spears of asparagus.
It’s a highway dry time until the bourgeoning futures
slap him awake at terminal 2, and the luggage berth.

2008-09-16T17:18:00.000+02:00

Now, Voyager

The brown weather crouches on the business park
as Tom boards the Toyota for the flight home.
His plane leaps at six and the microwave background
rustles the water contents in his salmon salad,
peas and tossed spears of asparagus.
It’s a highway dry time until the bourgeoning futures
slap him awake at terminal 2 and the luggage berth.

2008-09-11T14:41:00.004+02:00

Kincaid

That was the one with Kincaid.
Bent over her milkshake at the Albuquerque.
A knitted white top with pink buttons
up to a pleat in her neck. Her name was Jenny.
Her small beagle never strayed
far from her chipped blue toenails. Kincaid
observed her from the cashier’s desk
and wondered if this was luck.
The little nose packed tight around the nostrils
and cheeks with no time for abuse.
They grappled with the idea of a couple
through Hell’s Kitchen. A Dixieland
Promenade like the Sweetheart’s Wrap
towards the street stalls on Broadway.
This was Kincaid’s last Summer Sunday
in Manhattan. He knew Jenny
wouldn’t come with him to London.
They took turns at leading, down to Bryant Park
and spent an hour reading. They walked back
to Kincaid’s and gave the dog
some water. Jenny put on her favorite CD,
and screamed the lyrics to Kincaid.
Her asked her once more. (What did he say?)
Once more. She stopped and tip-toed to Kincaid
and held him so tight he could smell her
in Piccadilly Circus.

2008-09-10T16:14:00.000+02:00

Moving

Grey spills traced back and pinned
high on a bark collage. Janet gave me that
and a lettuce of mulberry nudes
from an evening class. Paperclip
bellies for the kids who have gone. Pumpkin seed
roads winding into a grove of feathers.
A Bicentenary transfer scraped from a windscreen.
Bled to a gossamer. I hardly see
Captain Cook commanding the sailor
to stop firing on the natives. Drawn back
from an instinct to chuck out the lot,
Janet piled-up the cardboard boxes
in the carport and let us rummage through.
A card missing a deck winked at me
up and down: a time killer
for a Sunday up north I suppose.
The blankets that smelt like milk
and the exercise book with one letter
in it. I took some of it home and ordered it
across the rug. It told a story with meaning if you looked
long enough. Tomorrow, I’ll chuck it out.

2008-09-09T15:00:00.002+02:00

Alone

I dropped off the car at the garage
for a check-up before our trip
to Belgium. I waited in the forecourt
for ten minutes when a mechanic
showed up at the garage door.
He had a single glove
in the back pocket of his overalls.
His hands were knobbed
and folded in a chamois. I saw
two gold rings on his left hand.
He pointed at the empty space
for my car. The flaps of his front pockets
were stained with ink.
I gave him the keys along with the papers,
and my mobile number, just in case.

2008-09-09T13:12:00.001+02:00

The Witch of Brabizante

The reflection in her pink skin made my eyes water. The large head
rolled around its neck
like a satellite dish
at SETI.
Her legs plunged into the wallflower skirt
like an underwater ledge. The acres of hair
suggested
an arable brain.
Her lips were a puncture hole
in a rubber mattress; the air
rushing out was more toxic
than Tutankhamen,
richer
than a fly strip
at a piggery. A rubber pompom of subjects
dotted her I and pitted
glib pronouncements
with evacuated fricatives. The baste
ladled tongue
lapped at shores
where language competed
with sea wrack. A gothic
carbonara
scraped from a skillet
in Arcimboldo’s kitchen.
Teeth crowded forward
like the charioteers
of the Elgin Marbles. A skyline
from Jerome Bosch
was her smile.

2008-09-09T12:58:00.000+02:00

Lasagna

The pressed and hung pasta strips
clicked on the sill
in front of Mum’s herb patch.
The date palm housed a parliament
of poultry for the one cat poised
at the edge of the corrugated guttering.
Mum was turning the Wintergreen couch
she planted to lay a mosaic of porcelain shards:
a pink and gold-leafed rim jostled
against a half-moon of Liz’s pottery assignment.
The shattered floor was slippery
when Mum hosed it down. She stacked
a row of pots there and put a fan in one.
When the lasagna was cooking, Mum
turned towards the window
to listen to the fan’s unstoppable buzz
as the evening came on.

2008-09-08T11:13:00.000+02:00

Silvio

All hail the senior statesman
lounging at the Bar Rouge!
Hail his calamari suit,
his Brahms ringtone, his fried onion shoes!
Beneath the porticos of his steely eyes,
within the heart of his pearly whites,
the words form music, a Grosse Fugue,
a Motown hit with leather roots.
His touch is chocolate,
his nails are finely ground.
The sun and moon glow
in his Gulfstream hair.
He whispers like a breeze
in an orange grove;
he lathers his image:
a sculptor of steam.
This gypsy archangel who dreams at the mike;
he bolts and creaks like the Palatine.
He kisses a sorbet of mothers and wives;
a marmoreal scene of back story pals,
of mullet-cut thoughts and dredged intentions.
All hail the knight with the crew-cut smile!

2008-09-06T11:25:00.001+02:00

Silvio

All hail the senior statesman lounging at the Bar Rouge!
Hail hail his calamari suit, his Brahms ringtone, his fried onion shoes!

Beneath the porticos of his steely eyes, within the heart of his pearly whites,
the words form music, a Grosse Fugue, a Motown hit with leather roots.

His touch is chocolate, his nails are finely ground.
The sun and moon glow in his Gulfstream hair.

He whispers like a breeze in an orange grove; he lathers his image as he builds up steam.
This gypsy archangel who dreams at the mike; he bolts and creaks like the Palatine.

He kisses a sorbet of mothers and wives; the marmoreal scenes of back story pals,
of mullet-cut thoughts and dredged intentions. All hail the knight with the crew-cut smile!

2008-09-03T13:27:00.001+02:00

Achieving Enlightenment

Just around the corner, a calamity. You cannot see it yet. But just wait.
Have a stiff drink, I would. Quick.
It’s coming soon. Bigger than a repossession.
Faster than old age.
Just a bit further. Then a rebuttal. Still a little while, then it’s all a joke.
We’ll all be laughing.
We’ll all be thankful that it wasn’t us (even though it will be).
Yes, you’ve built your house on sand after all, and the bricks were secondhand.
And you think it isn’t fair? But that’s the point:
it isn’t. You won’t squirm your way out of this. No more waffling.
Take it on the chin. In the neck. Up the tail pipe.
There it is. Goodbye now. Just one question though.
What’s it like? After all the promises? All the hopes? To come to this?
What no insurance covers.
Where angels fear to tread. Where the waters part; the tsunami rushes in;
the earth opens up;
the buck stops. Where it all totals up. Rounded to the tenth.
Adapted for the small screen.
We need to tell the tale. To warn others. To come clean. To paint it black.
To conform to legislation.
To lay down a few rules. For the unlucky few. Those toiling day and night.
Writhing in their hammocks.
Counting all the stars. Slapping off the bugs. Eating curds and whey.
You are not the first.
You are not the last. You are not the piggy in the middle.
It’s not that cut and dried. It’s not that simple. It’s not a bit part.
Although you’re not the star.
Someone’s got to do it. Every job’s important. Every day its due.
When you wake up tomorrow morning, the sun will still be there.
Your head may ache a little.
But the coffee will be stale. You’ll be left behind alone with just one thought.
An applet in your brain;
a unique and sole obsession; a stubborn little itch.
It will take you by the hand and lead you out the door.
It will do your shopping for you. And tune your TV too. You will see it everywhere.
But it really lives in you.
So quickly have that drink. A don’t forget to stretch. Here it finally comes.
(But is it all that bad?)

2008-08-25T14:02:00.001+02:00

Untold Story

The men and boys entered
the van like molecules in
a nostril
becoming a scent.
Something there, thoughts
heaving like gypsies,
crouching at the edge of
the pit. Matted
hair, teeth, bone, and sweat.
A crushed feather marks
the page. Charactery of flight:
chiseled dollops
of whipped-cream over
an illuminated glacier of light
with three-volume wind. Paper
struts being solidly
ambivalent as scripture. Stories shout
like cones of smoke blowing
from the men; while the boys breathe
like bats curled to sleep in the pavilion
of your ear.

2008-08-22T16:41:00.001+02:00

At Lella’s Farm

In the pen
the young colt
pranced to a hand
at the rail. He snuffed its palm
where the sugar cubes
had been. They stood
there, not waiting. The damaged
wind drew back to its drip
feed in the hills. One of them whistled
for the hand’s
owner to come back
to the pickup. The colt snorted
and arched into a coiled
spring. The pickup’s engine
shivered a reflective calamity.
Further up, a white cloth
was clacking like a freight train.
They were off, all of them. A point
at the source of the dust column.
We heard the colt
alone in its skin, a wet
envelope, a waving sheer wall.

2008-08-22T13:19:00.002+02:00

An Attempt at Meaning

Bernard, have you read
that line of Eliot’s:
- and I quote –
Men can do nothing
without the make-believe
of a beginning? Was Deronda’s
imminent voyage to Palestine
make-believe? Beginnings
(and ends, too) conjure
a geometric world
we refuse to inhabit.
And spatial is not geometric:
that depth on which we tread water
is more like a mirror. A vision-field
sprinkled with scabs
and caesuras where time
stares into that tragedy called life.
Too deep? How about a little
less strings and more
tympanum? There you go,
marching off with that little
back pack whose contents
I once contributed to.
So, I admit (albeit vicariously)
that there is a before
and - therefore - an after.
Bloody geometry!
Shame on us, Bernard!
We are not that special,
are we? Now, in this scheme,
is a central point. Someone else
will take its place one day.
But not now.

2008-08-21T13:55:00.000+02:00

Lilies of the Field

He passed me the plates and they dripped
all over the wooden floor. The story
he was telling me was about some delivery
that had gone wrong. Like a pie bird or a torn
piece of Kleenex. The lorry
backed up about ten feet. It had a strange
ring to it, like a quacking mouse in the children’s
tale. We saw a parade of nuns along the road
when Sidney Poitier popped-up in his pink
Yank tank. That’s who he called his friend
from Ghana, except his friend had dreadlocks
and drove an off-white Twingo.

2008-08-15T12:44:00.000+02:00

Surfing Home

The time left to us varies in value like a Bermuda call option.
Early exercise is precisely what is meant
and not a long evening at the bar de la plage.
There’s no getting out of it.
Overeating implies a tab on the room,
a provisioning for the end,
like a an Egyptian prince
stocking up for the Underworld
at 2 a.m., the minibar
cleaned-out. He flies home and gets his
jellaba from the cleaners and considers how
utterly surfless the Mediterranean is.
Somewhere between America and Europe
an accountancy principle whips-up a wave in his
Zinfandel. Here is the divide
between what my life is worth now
and what it may be worth tomorrow.
A peak and a trough. The crowd
spills onto the luggage belt.
It splashes over clothes and books,
and recedes, carrying all along with it…

2008-08-15T10:41:00.003+02:00

Surfing Home

The time left to us varies in value like a Bermuda call option.
Early exercise is precisely what is meant
and not a long evening at the bar de la plage.
There’s no getting out of it.
Overeating implies a tab on the room,
a provisioning for the end,
like an Egyptian prince
stocking up for the Underworld
at 2 a.m., the minibar
cleaned-out. He flies home and gets his
jellaba from the cleaners and considers how
utterly surfless the Mediterranean is.
Somewhere between America and Europe
an accountancy principle whips-up a wave
in his Zinfandel. Here is the divide
between what my life is worth now
and what it may be worth tomorrow.
A peak and a trough. The crowd
spills onto the luggage belt.
It splashes over clothes and books,
and recedes, carrying all along with it…

2008-08-14T14:26:00.001+02:00

Surfing Home

The time left to us varies in value
like a Bermuda call option.
Early exercise is precisely what is meant
and not a long evening at the bar de la plage.
There’s no getting out of it.
Over eating implies a tab on the room,
a provisioning for the end,
like a an Egyptian prince stocking up
for the Underworld
at 2 a.m., having cleaned-out
the minibar. When he flies home
to Alexandria, he recovers his jellaba
from the cleaners and considers
how utterly surfless the Mediterranean is.
Somewhere between America and Europe
an accountancy principle whips-up
a wave in his Zinfandel. Here is the divide
between what my life is worth now
and what it may be worth tomorrow.
A peak and a trough. The crowd
spills onto the luggage belt.
It splashes over clothes and books,
and recedes, carrying all along with it…

2008-08-13T14:34:00.001+02:00

My Previous Dogs

High-up at the vertical limit of sight, caught on a flake of rusty guttering
hidden in the leaves of a Californian walnut,
pressed in the middle of a waffling summer (despite this weather), diphthonged
at a flange in the upper-register,
flayed at a paint-crackled curl in the canvas
alone in an attic like a cork on a gene pool. But who now has attics?
Who can see further than the term of their years,
past the landfall of mornings when you’ve just woken up
from the Valium of three am? Derek and Brendan
are laying the sprinklers, piling up the lawn down the side passage.
Who can afford professional gardeners, standing here
in the graves of my previous dogs? Without a network
of skills and friends and capacious fridges that pack
air into zip-locks, the afternoons
would drag their ballast of marine-life an entire octave along the guitar,
into slack-key, hitting a pitch too high for humans.

2008-08-12T12:08:00.003+02:00

Plums in Honey

What has become of the dating game? Let’s see:
Ernesto revels in his love-beads as Angela bakes her treasured lemon-cake.
The entire den is subdued. Leo warns of his rising ire
but we’re not talking about Pompeii.
The Pimpernels have consumed their third packet of Student Feed
in this era of wasabi-coated peas.
Bernard slips out with Pat for a joint. Pat comes back
showered in a Roman triumph of soap-stone cones.
Poetry is the object here, but are we really motivated?
Bernard lounges on the porch dreaming of a steak and beer night
alone in the Ardennes, the two children asleep.
Leo names them in cheap move to bring down the house.
This morning Eve saw a small group,
cupping their hands at the edge of the pool.
A fourth stood away off playing a button accordion.
He sang of perspiring empires and nights
beneath the Mario Plaza. We got jealous.
So jealous, in fact, that text messages flew around the room
with no subject lines. When you’ve nothing to say
sing it, when you’ve nothing to think …
… and so on. Plums in honey. That sort of thing.
Otherwise, there’s shopping with the Bin Ladens in the Via Barbuino.
At least we can tag along, unlike the no-show Pope.
I promised mum, yes Joan, mum, with her crook knee and mean tortellini.
Here she is. We had a date at the fiftieth.
The years only leave us with speculation.
They are our touch judges. Our concreters.
Filling the gaps where our bodies had been. The olive oil skin, the acacias,
the footprints on the beach like a Bolivian heiress.

2008-07-28T10:43:00.000+02:00

Termini

The surface of the loading dock had been milled
by a century
of pallet-laden forks.
The ballast
emerged in a loose,
slippery flour. I could feel its
granular drift beneath my shoes.

Nails and washers were compacted in
the sediment. An iron
cross-beam poised its hesitant
threat, rushing us

molecule by molecule.