Filed under: eating, health, pain, regression | Tags: breathing, dark, deep, feelings, fish, sea
Beneath the solar plexus
Is where it starts
That is where all the year’s
Undone things crowd for
Warmth, shivering like tramps
Round a spitting petrol drum.
Undone, why? Because I
Filled my cup and bowl too full
Scared that if
Too light
I might float up to the
Surface and, breathing,
See the whole universe.
Things left undone, good things,
Real things,
Like collecting leaves for
Compost or supporting a
Shoulder stand.
Things that require presence in a world
With me at the centre,
Such things are left undone.
Instead, come feelings,
Doubts, thoughts about the size
And shape of things unseen-
THE thing, the tumour- shhhh-
Not that, don’t think it,
What if thoughts be things!
Better to sink back into
The dark Deep for a while,
Where life is lightless and
The bloated stomach cannot
Taste or choose,
Programmed like an angler fish
To digest all passers by
No time to wait for hunger:
A leisure for the light.
Filed under: Uncategorized
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Filed under: childhood, eating, memories, nature | Tags: ball, childhood, daisies, games, lawn, repunzel, sherbert, young
Twister twister
Lucky dip
Sherbert dust
And Tizer pop
Daisies strewn
Across the lawn
Chains made from
Lime-bright stems
Held in grubby
Young hands
Laid around the
Circle band
Before the lawn
Mower man comes
And hoovers up
The carpet, how
Absurd,
A barricade is
Made. In outrage at
Adult atrocity
It guards the
Survivors chanting
‘Save the daisies’,
Still alive, yellow faces pleading.
Another day and
Daisies gone, balls
Fligh high through
Leaves to greet
Plastic bags stranded
like Repunzel with
Short hair bleached
White in the sun.
Games come like old
Yarns, never learnt
Never forgot, Hop Scotch
Starboard, What time is it
Misterrr..
Too lat to be up
Remembering this-
Ball games like cricket
But not, rounders with
Socks for bases,
Blankets fo birthdays
‘Givim the Bumps’
Smash goes the racket,
Crack goes a window
Clean through the net,
Old enough to read
‘NO BALL GAMES’
Young enough to know better.
Filed under: destiny, growth, happiness, religion | Tags: couple, English, Ganesh, Indian, love, magenta, peridot, wedding
English at an Indian
Wedding, sitting in
The crowd among
The drums and
Auspices like weeds
Among the cultivated
Saries with their
Yellow and magenta
Blue topaz and
Peridot sheen.
Looking on Indians,
At home in their religion.
At One with
Whatever it is that
Made them.
The English hope It made them too,
When they come to looking
In the dusty files labelled
Wedding, funeral, birth.
God and gods and people and family weave
Together and in this
Web, the couple
Catch the tricks
They need,
Sharing the cords,
Keeping them taught
With Love,
The remover of all obtacles,
Ganesh.
Filed under: childhood, happiness, home, love, memories, nature, strength | Tags: blossom, bread, gran, ironing, mary, mash, pie, pudding, sea, winter
Mary moo Mary
You were there
When the blossom
Came, Mary you
Were there when
The winter
Went, Mary you
Are here just like
A Gran.
Standing ironing
Sitting moaning,
Laughing, crying,
Listening to ‘Lipstick
On your collar,’
Telling tales from
The betting shop or
You and Marge’s
Latest trip to Wimpy,
Brian, Moreen
Leighton,
Patrick the Irish
Queer next door.
Have some more
Cream slice,
Bread pudding,
You’ll buy four for
For me, ‘Only a paahnd
Fifty’, to take home.
Or pie and mash for sister.
YOu? No, no you
Don’t eat like
You used to,
In the caravan,
Round, happy,
Just the sun and
Slot machines and
Walks along
The sea, girls
On leads, so’s
We dont ‘draaan’.
Please remember,
We thank you
And love you like a
Gran.
Grand old Mare
Filed under: death, fishing, hope, nature, regression, willpower | Tags: deep, jonah, prisoner, sea, trapped, whale
Inside a whale sits
Jonah, pondering
How many more rotting
Tuna he’ll
Stack up in the corner
Before he dies of
Stench and despair.
Not a scale can he see
Only slime to the touch
As the creature heaves
Through the Deep,
Filtering fish through its
Radiator teeth.
Jonah dreams out
And up, into the light
And over this rut.
cards fall on the table,
Dry, clean in the sun,
Behind the horizon,
Life’s line, noone
Can question
The silence beyond.
Always there.
Forever, back
Down fathoms and more
To our whale and
Trapped Jonah.
Never to see the sky
Split from the Land
And the sea
By the line.
There in the gut’s leviathon walls his
Murmurs sift the
Gloom for gold
But none drops.
Patience and hope
And his jaws will part
And out he’ll fight
Then float like a
Ripe apple, spongy after
The long winter store.
Filed under: bereavement, death, memories, pain | Tags: Changi, death, family, POW, prosoner, skull, veteran, war
That skull there on
The pillow,
One two three we
Heave him up,
Belch,
One two three we
Let him down, down,
Death bubbles in his
Guts,
Fiddles the clockwork
In his heart.
A nappy smothers
Paper skin and knees hover, angling,
Buzzards above the
Wan skeleton, barely
Worth the fuss.
His eyes are lidded
And the curtain’s shut
But for the odd crack
Of Pain and Cricket,
Outside.
In they come, ‘The family’,
He mouths and seems to say,
As he lifts bone to
Palm, before the bridge
Breaks and his life flows
Off, prisoner no more,
Away.
Filed under: acromegaly, control, pain, regression, shame | Tags: centrifucal, conspiracies, cycle, doom, frustration, Narcissus, pain, procrastination, spy, torment, yellow
Round and round it swings
With centrifucal force,
The cycle of pain and self torment, the
Frustration of procrastination
Why not do it today?
Cant! Wont?
Loud the pound, Narcissus
Streaming round the brain,
Pumping full the eardrums
With the sound of sheer
Doom
Boom, it goes, again.
Forget the sun, what
You had won through
Ernest Toil.
The boil on your leg is the
Clumsy spy, whose
Yellow fuss gives away
Conspiracies beneath;
Self sabotage.
Filed under: childhood, haunting, home, memories | Tags: cat, ghost, haunt, house, kitchen, london, ma, neighbour, poetry, terrace, time, victorian
The house was built in 1864 or thereabouts
With bricks and mortar
In the usual way,
Set down on the street
‘Tween two just the
Same.
No, I lie. Next
Door was a shop,
Greyed out now, modern
Style, frosted windows, the works.
Behind doors to the house of
A family, bent by
Chance into odd-
Shaped rooms, tombs
For the spirits of eras
Passed, mingling now and
Then with the plates on
The rack or a glass in the
Cupboard, no harm meant.
After twenty five years
No surprise at a flying saucepan.
The family lived in the house,
Part of it, kin to it,
Whatever its freight.
Besides, after twenty five years, they
Had their own ghosts as guests,
Those former selves in former
Times living on,
Resonating in overlapping lines.
The cello practice, the barking
Dog, the sleeping dog,
The trampoline, the one that
Broke, the roller blades,
The skipping rope.
The time when budgies tweeted
In the kitchen
And Ma cooked at 6 for me
And 8 for him, again.
The time when garden’s shade
Was less and next door neighbour
Had a cat called…called….
Times gone but still present
In the ether, round the stairs, up the blocked chimney,
Or the skylight, then,
Down, over mossy steps
And at the back door, again,
With a ratataptap, like a
Ghost..
No, it must be Jack
The new next door neighbour’s
Cat.
Filed under: growth, healing, love, nature, pain, regression, shame, strength | Tags: ache, apple, autumn, bell, doubt, girl, loss, love, muisty, poetry, romance, worm
1.
My name is girl
My age is when
I feel the day
My height is fringed
With misty things, the haze
That surrounds all,
Air , or something like it,
Electrical.
Part 2.
My fate is but a worm
Squirming in the sand
Beneath an apple on the
Beach.
My rubbery coil senses Autumn’s
Mellow fruit but feels
Only grit and cigarette ends,
Yellowed with spit
And the odd spat of sea.
Part 3.
My Date is a round
Can of something fizzy,
A man, who’ll pop
And bubble over
With sense and tunes
Told well, with confidence
Like some voluntary tramp.
Part 4.
My ache is a bell
Bent out of shape
Chord twanged by the wrong
Hand. Who’’s hand?
Who cares? Lets fix it,
If it’s copper it’ll meld well.
Part 5.
My tune is a song
Soldered on to the side
of my liver, an odd
Audience, granted,
But keen, it knows exactly
Where I’ve been and what
Deals Life’s dealt.
No, livers make grand audiences,
They’ll tell you whether or not
You were truly magnificent,
With their view from the stalls.
