Poetry P – The Recusant

Poetry P

Matt Panesh

St George (Dedicated with love to the BNP)

“For God, and Harry and St George!”
wrote Shakespeare the Bard,
and made him ours,
the ever ready reliable St George
who stuck with us through two world wars
St George,
Patron Saint of…
Syphillis.

And so we spread
like a disease
and conquered all of the seven seas
bringing Civilisation with cutting steel,
a hearty Huzzah!
and a damn good eye for other people’s Real Estate.

“For God and Harry and St George!”
Patron Saint of…
Beirut.
And there the Dragon he did slay
in a place that’s aptly called
St George’s Bay.

“For God and Harry and St George!”
Patron Saint of…
Leprosy.
And like a leper’s skin the Empire cracked,
bits fell off, the system nearly collapsed,
the puss inside began to weep,
and by the way,
St George is also the Patron Saint of Sheep.

“For God and Harry and St George!”
Patron Saint of…
The Teutonic Knights!
The f***ing Germans!
Well, I must admit, I was a bit surprised,
but we won’t dwell on the War, or
economic zeal,
instead we’ll move along to a different field,
cutting through the mystery,
let’s have a look at this man’s history.

St George was a Roman soldier, from Anatolia,
born in the late third century, all sources are, however,
hagiography (Which means NOT the verifiable truth).

In 303 he was ordered to take part in a persecution,
but confessed himself to be a Christian and criticised the Royal Decision.
An enraged Diocletion
ordered torture followed by execution,
so he was lacerated
on a wheel of swords,
then decapitated
outside Nicomedia’s Walls.

“For God and Harry and St George!”
The shout still outs
in the world of Sports
where every shaven head is clad
in the white and red-striped flag
and we still cheer at the sight of the crest,
and despite all evidence (just look at Wimbledon!)
hold that England is the Best!

“For God and Harry and St George!”
Patron Saint of…
Agricultural Workers, Archers, Armourers, Butchers,
Crusaders, Sheep, Shepherds, Field Workers & Farmers,
Ptuj, Lepers, the Order of the Garter,
Riders, Saddlemakers and of course the Soldiers,
Canada, Cappodocia, Catalonia, Ethiopia
Ferrara in Italy,
Genoa, Georgia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Malta,
Modica in Sicily,
Slovenia, Amersfoot in the Netherlands,
Corinthians, the Brazillian football team, and naturally England!
Equestrians, Palestinian Christians and the dreadful Syph
Palestine, Aragon, Beirut in the Lebanon and Venice,
Gozo, Moscow and Constantinople,
Skin Diseases, Lod, the plague and Portugal,
Cavalry, Chivalry and Haldern in Germany,
Horses, Horsemen, Husbandmen and Leprosy,
The Scouts, Greece, Herpes, Heide & the Teutonic Knights
“Ladies and Gentleman, I give you George –
He’s the Patron Saint
of everything in sight!”

Ihor Pavluk

Trns. Steve Komarnyckyj

The Old Water Flows

The old water flows, the ancient water,
A pagan wolf howls at the half moon
By some hermit with a beard of cloud,
The yellow maple woods parade,

The old waters flow, flow, flow,
Tiny deities hide in the skies,
Stars, the children of the frozen Dnipro,
Collide and kiss
In the constellations’ vagaries,

The old water flows…
A dog, grey
And awaiting
The miracle of death.

Is history an angel
With a sword, old water
Bereft of wave or whirlpool
Always moving, but completely still?

Стара Вода

Стара вода тече, стара вода…
І виє вовк-язичник на півмісяць.
Пустельника хмаринна борода.
Полки стоять кленовим жовтим лісом.

Стара вода тече, стара, стара…
Малі божки ховаються за небо.
А зорі – діти змерзлого Дніпра –
В сузір’я б’ються і летять до себе.

Стара вода тече, тече, тече…
Собака сивий.
Див чекає смерті.

Історія – мов ангел із мечем,
Стара вода…
Без хвиль
І круговерті?

Вовчі Ягоди
малинове село.
Ріка.
Старенька церква.
Букетики свічок.
І тьма.
І забуття.
Тут джинсове дівча
В бабусинім люстерку
Із ніжністю в очах.

Сова мовчить в млині,
А млин в мені кигиче.
Епоха у зубах, як м’ясо, застряє.
Кругом села ліси.
Кругом лісів обличчя.
Одне із них моє.

Втомлюсь любити світ.
Всім все одно ж не вгодиш…
Прикрив асфальтом вірш,
Бо він, як вовченя.
А я ще повернусь до себе, до природи,
Себе поранивши, розхриставши коня,

Мов скрипка, що до спазм знов хоче мати корінь
І деревом рости, і знати цвіт, і плід…
А так — лише пісні…
І осінь, осінь скоро…
Усе, як у людей, усе – як на Землі.

І треба мати честь.
І добре мати гроші.
І справжнім мужиком…
І вміти пити ріг.
Ці зорі, ці віки, метелики хороші…

Комусь я допоміг.
Когось я не зберіг.

Ці люди й голуби…
Вже вовчих ягід – море…
Вже села не такі.
Вовків чортма в лісах.

А джинсове дівча
Прозоріє, прозоріє…
Тече його коса.

Я ще косар, коса…

Wolf Berries

Village splashed with raspberry light,
Of sunset, the river too, a mottled strap,
The church with bouquets of candles
Brews its deep intrinsic dark,
All we forget…
The girl in jeans applies her make up
In her grandmother’s compact,
Giving her reflection a tender look.

In the mill the owls are silent,
Its workings squeal inside me,
The meat of the epoch stuck in my teeth.
Forests surround the village
And faces, one of them mine,
Surround the forest.

I am tired of loving the world,
You cannot please everyone…
All that you asphalt over your verse,
For it is like a wolf cub, glides
Into nothingness and I turn
To nature, a wound in my own skin…
Saddling my horse.

A violin spasms, yearning for its roots
To be a tree, to know blossom and fruit
Rather than only song.
The autumn comes quickly, through the soil,
Its human soul.

You need to have your honour,
You need to have your money,
You should be a real man,
Quaffing horns of drink,
What of these stars, these ages,
The beauty of butterflies?
I helped someone,
I failed to protect someone,

These people, these doves,
These wolf berries and,
Respiring over them,
A green ocean
Fathoms deep, the villages change,
There are so many wolves ranging the forest.

The girl in jeans becomes transparent,

Her hair,

The river,

I’m still the farmer, gathering wheat by the water.

Слово — Не Яблуко…

Слово — останній листок.
Мовою жестів спілкуюся з лісом осіннім.
Димом вітчизни я пройнятий весь — до кісток.
Кров’ю ліричною досі я голонасінний.

Як і розп’ять, не люблю я нутро торгашів
І релігійних фанатів зневажливі очі,
Чорних політиків на моїх вухах «лапші»…
Але люблю я дощ серед ночі.

Ще мені милі скуйовджені запахи хвиль,
Ангельська скрипка, що плаче невидимим сміхом,
Світлий і добрий зап’янений дядько Василь,
Що на Поліссі збирає горіхи.

Хочеться пісню таку написати — як світ —
Той, що до мене, і той, що уже після мене.
Потім — заснути: як в шкурах вовків, — у траві,
До воскресіння щоб танцювали гени..

The Word Is Not An Apple

But the last leaf of the fall.
I converse with the autumnal forest using the language of gestures,
The smoke of my fatherland seeps down to my bones…
I sow my lyrical blood as seed,
A naked voice…

Like the crucified I do not love the mesh
Of trade, religious fanatics with their blank eyes,
The inane hiss of politics…
I yearn for the nocturnal rain

And yet linger, tangled in waves of fragrance,
From an angelic violin that cries with an imperceptible smile,
Remembering bright, kind, and somewhat inebriated, Uncle Vasyl
Gathering nuts in Polissya.

I want to write a song that is like the world
Of all who came or who will come.
Then sleep in grass, as in a wolf skin,
While my genes dance, awaiting resurrection.

From Polissya

На сосну навіяв смуток вітровій.
Я тебе покинув, край поліський мій:
В солов’їнім гаї — росяні сліди,
Ту, що у розмаї за село водив.

Білий цвіт черешень і волошок синь…
Голубі озера, я ваш менший син.

Тут збирав ожини, рвав рожевий мак,
Щастя з неба зичив Зодіака знак.

А бабуся в казці так розповіла:
«Щастя — хоч від Бога, але — за діла,
Роки, як гусята, не вернеш назад…»
Кучерявим вербам я русявий брат.

Повернутись хочу з осінню в наш сад,
Як веде журавка в небо журавлят.

Осипати смуток в тінь її крила,
Від зірок зайнятись — і згоріть дотла.

* * *

The morose wind respires through the pine,
I have abandoned you, my Polissyan country,
Dewy footsteps in the nightingale grove
Left by her, whom I drove from the village to this greenery,

White cherry blossom and blue of cornflowers…
Dove soft lakes, I am your younger son,

Here I gathered berries, tore the poppies’ pink blooms,
Wished my fortune from heaven, a zodiac sign.

As grandma told me once in a story:
“Fortune, though it comes from God, is earned by work,
The years, like geese, never turn back…”
I am the auburn brother of willow coils,

Longing to return with autumn to our orchard,
As the crane leads her young heavenward.

Scattering sorrow in the shadow of her wing,
Catching fire from the stars utterly burn.

Літописець

Ріка — як час: не видно, що тече…
Шумлять ліси, продовжуючи пісню.
Ревнива доле, хочу ще і ще
Надіятись приснитися Поліссю.

Тут білий сад мене благословив.
То гриб, то синь…
Та що там говорити!..
Осінній клен моєї голови

Шумить над вбитим за дбайливість дідом.

Зашепчуть мавки чорта у мені,
Зашепчуть страх за право бути битим.
Живуть же зорі на морському дні…
Не все одно — згоріти чи втопитись?

Ріка — як час: не видно, що тече…
Куди — не знаю, але знаю звідки:
Із краю, де порубуна мечем,
Сміється вічність —
Наче Божа кістка.

* * *

Chronicler

The river, like time, flows imperceptibly…
Forests murmur, continuing the song.
Jealous of fate, I yearn endlessly,
Striving to appear to Polissya in dreams

Where the white orchard blessed me.
Among mushrooms’ blue light…
What is there to say?
The autumnal maple of my head murmurs
Above Grandfather slain for his carefulness.

Dryads whisper to the devil in me,
Whisper to fear for the right to be beaten.
Stars live in the depths of the sea…
Is it not all the same to burn or drown?

The river, like time, flows imperceptibly…
I do not know where to, but I know where from,
From the country felled with a sword,
Eternity laughing —
Like God’s bone.

Знову Вдома

Я знов там був душею і думками…
Свята бабуся молиться Землі.
Як очі — небо.
І сміється камінь.
І дід лежить під берегом, як хліб.

Вогонь помер.
В очах відбитий Місяць…
Наш Бог живе у церкві, як в тюрмі.
Мисливським рогом згадує Полісся
Усе, що у галактик на умі.

Дорога-промінь в соснах поламалась.
Русява шишка впала в тінь свою.
Мов тиша, бродить привид князя Мала.

Я бачу, а сміятися боюсь.

Сліпа хатина.
Скошений чорнобиль.
Тоненький вітер — сни очеретів.
А час іде.
Нічого час не робить.
Але ж, погляньте, — ліс осиротів.

Але ж почуйте: мохом, як морозом,
Заріс Перун.
І коні не іржуть.
А час пішов…
Жовтіють верболози.
Все людство спотикнулось об межу.

Вагітних мало.
Весни не солодкі.
Ніхто себе не вміє обмануть.
Діди весняно ходять на колодки
Мовчати в душу яко в таїну.
Через вогонь зростається залізо.
Через сльозу…
Ох, що через сльозу!..
Тут рейки вже.

А я все древнім лісом
Русалку залоскочену несу.

Дрімучий світ —
І раптом: добре й легко.

* * *

At Home Again

Again I was there with my spirits and thoughts…
Sacred grandmother praying to the earth.
Eyes blue as heaven
And the stone laughing.
Grandfather laid beneath the riverbank like bread.

The fire has died,
The moon is reflected in my eyes…
Our God lives in church as in a jail,
Polissya recollected in the hunting horn’s call
Everything in the galaxies’ minds.

The roads of sun rays splinter among pines.
The auburn pinecone falls into its shadow.~
The apparition of Prince Mal roams like quietness.
I see him but am afraid to laugh.

The blind windows of a house.
Sheaves of wormwood.
The slender wind, the dream of reeds.
Time passes,
Time itself does nothing
But look on the forest now orphaned.

But hear how moss encrusts Perun
Like frost.
Silent are the horses.
And time passes…
The osiers turn yellow,
All of humanity strikes against the boundary.

Pregnancies decrease,
Spring is denuded of its sweetness.
Nobody can deceive themselves.
Grandfathers become as the young,
Silence secreted in their spirits.
Iron grows, fuses with fire,
Because of a tear…
A tear.
The railway now runs here
And I am the ancient forest,
Bearing the tickled Rusalka from the water.

A dreaming world —
Suddenly things are good and easy
It is simpler thus…

* * *

І просто так…
Колиска і крило.

Ми всі ще — час.
Ми близько і далеко.

Ми любим біль.
Нас довго не було.

* * *

A cradle and a wing

We ourselves are time.
We are both near and far,

We love pain.
We have not long been here.

All excerpted from A Flight Over the Black Sea –Selected Poems of Ihor Pavlyuk (trans. S. Komarnyckji, Waterloo Press, 2014)
bar ‘Old Water’ which is exclusively published in translation here for the first time.

Neal Pearce

Bridget

When I was at college, a girl called Bridget
told me I was going to kill myself one day,
which was kind of her.

Down the years her words have haunted me
through many depressions; but I’m still here.

I’m sure she intended no malice.
It was just the way she came out with it;
I don’t think it was anything about her:

not even her red hair,

like rusty cemetery gates.

Circle

Me as a wedding suited harbinger,
squinting at the moon;

you as a toothless skull,
wishing back the flesh of your squandered being.

My children as candles burning down in another room.

Time as the impassive witness.

Our clock as an hourglass,
filled with the sand of pulverised rocks from eternal beaches.

The old man in the jaws of death,
as a shrivelled apple looking back on his treetop youth.

The world as a mollusc at the bottom of the sea.

The end as the beginning.
Last Thursday it was,
as two men who never wore hats we met;
sat filling our bellies with
the flesh of dead fowl and hogs;
pushing logic where
it oughtn’t to go:

“Have you noticed
there are no flies in my flat?”
enquired Brian.

“The reason there are no flies is
that you’re not dead,” I declared
with a dark smile that he returned.

Then I finished my coffee,
and turning left, I left
down the unlit stairs
into the night of rotting oranges.

J.R. Pearson

Drop

a song forged from the bare
rhythm of the night

& you’ll hear petals fall from her voice.
Follow the sound of sweat

to the roar of her breath

in your mouth. She hums
your name with her pulse lost in the dark

& a magma bleed from a Milkyway
of holes in your chest.

Hours after Geronimo walks the skyline,
silent tongue-tips feather stones

in a held breath before an Apache tracker’s sunrise.

Eight legs of daybreak climb forearms
& drink a bead of sweat from wet hair

horned by your bad collar.
Cygnus opens its last luminous wing

across the sky’s black mouth

& she winks at the dead air
in an eavesdropper’s lust for padded vice grips.

You recite the underground alphabet
tattooed on the back of your eyelids

& think of the last honeydew
that sings in the summer sun.

Douglas Penick

Blanqui Unknowing Loss

Violence exhausted,
All action past;
Imprisoned deep below the granite dome
Whose high summit is ever unfathomable
In shadow:

A monster to established ways,
Judged, convicted, imprisoned
A Minotaur, he muses:

perhaps
there may be a way to contact, you,
the other prisoners.
While no physical medium allows.

Perhaps
there are parallels and passages
deep
within the mind where thought flows
to merge boundariless.

shhhhhhhhhhh

Reflecting:

Log ago, long after expulsion from the Deiity’s garden, His Eden,

Humanity, ever on the move,
Now amid sparkling waves
Finally discovered a New World!

Europeans, we discovered unexpected living
Lands and shimmering seas of an alien star

And it did not occur to us, didn’t

That we had found Yahweh’s Eden once gain
Our place of origin,
Our point of departure
From which so long ago, we were expelled

Reflecting:

We Europeans, ever on the hunt,
Were not inclined to think that we,
Were not extending
The limits of our fallen world,
But
Might have found
A space undivided,
The innocence of all beginnings

Shhhhhhhhh!

So, amid the silent walls, do I begin to wonder if there is a way to find in our imagining a garden or a palace or a book or music or device in which we, imprisoned everywhere, can meet and share the fact, the mere fact of our task, our awareness.

I begin to find that certain movements of the body cause specific images to arise in mind. If I lie on my back and slow my breathing by consciously relaxing my diaphragm, I am still in Paris. I am crossing a street near a news-stand at the Boulevard St, Michel. It is eleven in the morning, bright, warm. Lying on the floor, as I relax my neck, I see a restaurant near Montmartre. It is a famous place, I think, a place where artists once gathered. Now only tourists go there. Nothing quite comes together.

Shhhhhhhhh!

It did not once occur to us,
Then or now, that
These white beaches, these deep and humid jungles,
These macaws shrieking,
This deep river opening on the shore,
That this, your great discovery.
Is both New and Ancient World.

Reflecting:

It is our Eden where
Now
A gracious and merciful God may offer us redemption
From our history of sin, violence, corruption.

The prisoner gives a bitter smile.

Yes, indeed, Columbus, on his 2nd voyage, considered that, yes, when his ship touched the shores of what was later named Venezuela, he might have rediscovered Eden. But that time he had other missions. But he could not put it out of his mind. He returned on a 3^rd voyage to explore this possibility even though it stretched the lines of history.

Ssssssssssh

What is awake and what is asleep come to have a very different significance for me now than once they did.

I feel sometimes as if I am perched on the summit of a mountain at the summit of the night and my thoughts and all the images and sensations that pour through my frame radiates through all the universes taking shapes and finishing out as lives of moments I will never see and which I will no longer have to maintain. A kaleidoscope of edges, borders, boundaries, junctures, breakages.

Ssssssssssh.!

Columbus did not stay.
The exigencies of establishing a slave state in Hispaniola,
The need to temper his brothers’ ill-considered brutality,
Shifted the course of his energies into dark and familiar channels.

New white Americans would follow him.

Thus again we lost a verdant and ample Paradise;

Colonization by genocide and slavery
Became your outer our inner engagement
with the unknown.

Reflecting:
Loss, destruction and unknowing now conjoined.

Ssssssssh!

A beam of light of slower frequency than the blue violet range passes through space. Though it cannot be seen by the naked eye and no one has bothered to create an instrument to observe it, it leaves certain traces. Like the faintest of breezes rustling in the high branches of the palms, it strokes the webs and networks that bind matter as visible or auditory or perceptible or graspable or knowable or just beyond knowable. It causes webs of awareness to vibrate subtly. It creates an inaudible music that can sometimes, but not always, move denser and weightier forms. A hissing, a faint laugh, rippling from afar, sometimes causes the rulers of the world to look down in unaccountable shame.

Si Philbrook

In Memory of Me

Light the ovens,
Burn to ash
The race that would deny me,
Do this in memory of me
Defend the oil,
Boil alive the pagans
On the road from Al Jahra,
Do this in memory of me
Reign Supreme,
Prepare the beams from which to hang
Your strange fruit,
Do this in memory of me
Suffer the children,
Teach the beatings into them
Our little secret,
Do this in memory of me
Worship me
I don’t care how you live
Or what you give, just make it dollars,
Do this in memory of me.

a different beauty

i’ve seen naked
cynthia
fifty-two with a catheta fitted,
three years of alzheimers
stole the sparkle
that comes with “downs”,

cynthia –
i changed her pad
wiped away the shit
others chose not to smell
near the end of their shift,

cynthia
bed baths and hoists,
dignity
isn’t measured on a tick list of pad changes,
but in the eyes
and in the days
when
naked moments
passed between us –

giving her a drink
in a sippy cup,
her lips, old and cracked,

life is brittle
and hurts,

she just left me
no words
no fuss,

she wasn’t family
but important;
fragile.

cynthia

Mair De-Gare Pitt

Crimson Lady

She is adorned with a necklace of tears
a smoky blouse of sighs,
with little tappy shoes that shine red
in the shadows.

Dainty blood-beads bracelet-dot her wrist
and hide in her scarlet skirt.

Sometimes she talks youth-speak
and paints its password on her mouth.
Tipsy lip-stick.

His key grinds
then wrenching, turns.
Her stomach churns.

The door swings;
china quivers.
She shivers.

Blodeuwedd

She watches the squirrel, sharp-clawing bark,
the lizard lounging, lazy on stones,
the minnow wearing the water like silk.

Fritillaries bob in the turquoise
haze; the broom
is patched with purple.

In the sweet meadow, petals quiver,
shimmer in the warm breeze breath
and the mirage-making heat.

Dusk fills the field with shade.
Sky-lit hills scoop up the black.
All is becoming in the changing light.

Cool in its own shade
the oak beckons with long shadows.
Blodeuwedd dreams of day and wakes to dark.

A tussock couches, rabbit-like; rabbits crouch, still as tussocks
then sprint as air made animate
as living ghosts.

She conspires with the Moon
in silver fear.
Small creatures tremble and freeze.

Over sleeping flowers she glides
listening for rustling grasses,
scenting heartbeats in the darkness.

In the tarnished night she kills.
She swoops, wing-breath whispering
cold on the meadow-sweet.

She visits like a veil flitting through fingers.
She visits like a stream in flood.
She visits like a half-wish, like a scattered rose.

She is terrible in the darkness.
She is Kali, red tongue lolling.
She is Fury, twitching to snip.

As the long day rises
she is Eve, consuming night-knowledge.
At last, birth-star Mary, Mother of us.

Now she is Wendy.
She is fragrant Florence.
Beneath the cool starch, is she razors?

Dark falls again and she burns.
Now she is Wendigo, owl-beaked.
Why is she starving? Has she been fasting?

Dawn breaks on the hillside,
showers gleam like shot silk.
She raises her hand to her heavy hair.

Italian Retrospective

Like an old man, sky-full of memories,
Palazzo Blu invites us in
to wander through its layers of time.
TVs play flashes of mistakes on loops:
leather boots in flickering black and white,
the screen grainy with history like rheumy eyes.
Inlaid cabinets with secret drawers
hide whispers in dove-tailed spaces.

Regrets bow their heads in corners.
Galleries ring with grace-notes,
their triptychs in scarlet and gold-leaf
remembering love and loss and resurrection.

Like an old man, grateful for our time,
Palazzo Blu, head nodding, lets us go.

Kenneth Pobo

Myself Starring in Bergman’s Cries and Whispers

He didn’t cast me but I appeared
anyway. I play a secret sister
named Agnetha. Barely photographed,
I get none of Nykvist’s loving closeups.
I slide in the background, polish silverware,

dust clocks, hum. Ingmar can’t
understand why I keep interfering
with his shots. Get him out of here,
he says, but no one sees me—bulbous
Swedish dresses disguise me and

my beard looks like a veil. Credits
don’t list me, but the Academy notes
my performance. I’m nominated
in Best Invisible Actor Or Actress
in a Foreign Film. Ingmar returns to Faro,

Liv returns to America to choose
her next project, and I return
to the Acme, drop six grapefruits
in my basket, then speed home
to read fan mail that never comes.

Doug Polk

The Game

far away the wizards watch,
hoping to cast their spells,
people living the day to day,
pawns on a chessboard,
moved from square to square,
waiting patiently for the next move.

Devotions

awake in darkness,
breakfast can wait,
til devotions paid,
to the church,
cassock and surplice of white,
candles lit,
the altar made ready,
prayers said,
and heard,
the Mass,
performed,
home for breakfast,
and off to school,
full of faith,
and glazed donuts,
from the bakery downtown.

Frederick Pollack

Billionaire

The sun is a great neurotic.
It regrets that, when its time comes,
it will be unable to go nova
and rise for months in someone else’s day.
It could not, however, abide
a white dwarf
companion sucking its substance, which novas require;
and is reconciled, barely, to becoming
a red giant, absorbing
at least some inner planets. Then what?
The option of being a black hole –
that spectacular collapse;
outliving everyone, though negatively –
attracts, yet is barred to it. So, a white dwarf
itself; in the fullness of time,
perhaps, a black one –
still envious (of neutron stars, etc.),
until the final chill.

The spots, the flares, the magnetic storms are signs
of the sun’s petulance,
like the amber borders of the leaves,
the khaki grass this summer, the sense
of a wordless demand for love, evaded, mocked.

The Liberal

They settle in. Testosterone
and an obvious need for decision
as to who gets top bunk, top spot
in rapes, main share of the food, etc.,
reciprocally cause each other. Plus
ideology: Aryan Christian types,
more common-or-garden
bigots, and other believers contend
for corporate spokesmanship. The few
real corporate figures who weren’t
sufficiently faceless to escape
my dragnet try to act
like regular, prayerful, duckhunting guys,
but learn that distance is the price of love.
(In another block, the women
find their own ways to hierarchalize.)
The room, initially clean enough,
soon smells the way these places do.

When I allow a meeting,
manifesting myself
on an indestructible screen high in the wall
as a rigid golden figure like an Oscar,
they get it together, proving
the ultimate necessity of reason.
They elect a charismatic or Opus Dei
Father to follow my directions through
the wall, to my universe. When his
anathemas, prayers, impotent
violence are exhausted he remarks
that I’m as much a prisoner as they;
that unless perfect love casts out fear
there is no end short of eternity.
I tell him to preach this to his flock.
Predictably he won’t accept the point;
sees only power and a loathsome pity
sculpted into a stylized golden man.

So through that monitor the inside
of the mind like a warden watches
the outside pace and hate;
and cannot look away, and broadcasts
Tolerance and Rights and Science,
the whole dispirited reflex rosary,
to no avail. I think my charges, clients,
(masters perhaps?) are worthless
because they doubt these things;
they know I think this of them
and therefore despise me and will never
listen to anything I say, and are therefore
worthless. The mind holds them
the way a captive is held
one doesn’t know what to do with
but can’t allow to roam unsupervised
(which is why anyone is kept in hell
or, really, any of the nearer places).

The Forest

It often happens that the parents
of schizophrenics, when they have been robbed
too often, or (as it happens) terrorized
in their own house for hours, beaten
(or at least weakly, almost absently
punched), and the words
the schizophrenic says about them, desperate, heated,
yet banal and capricious, have drawn tears
too often, change. Change locks, obtain
a restraining order, tell the schizophrenic
they cannot help him any more,
not to come by, they love him; then change
their phone number. And the schizophrenic
comes by, pounds on the door, is arrested
and spends perhaps three nights, before
he’s released, in a verminous
uncrowded place where many schizophrenics
once lived, then were released
to beautiful clean halfway houses
that were never built but existed
integrally in dreams. And the parents,
as previously noted, change:
their faces become still, their affect flat,
empirical when they describe
the treatment they received and the schizophrenic
received, or didn’t. The death of a child
often separates parents, but this
overarching, effectively nameless
stratum of things, which aspires
to the ubiquity and necessity
of death, creates a defensive bond. And one
or both of them will think
(as if to stay in touch) of the schizophrenic
out there somewhere, lousy, hurt
or dead (which is a way of being
hurt), and may still wonder what
he perceives. In Sarban’s novel,
at the trees’ edge a Chief Forester smiles
terribly as his guards attach
fur to the bound limbs, horns
to the head of a prisoner. Hunters
watch, but tonight will only carouse. And the Chief Forester
strikes off the bonds and cries,
“Thy lust is to be free? So shalt thou be!
Free of the Forest!”

Thesis

Hegel says that Diogenes,

vainly seeking an honest man,

is unknowingly seeking a man

of an earlier type, bypassed by History.

Diogenes, however, has

just found his honest man.

Clings to his shoulder, laughingly tells him

what Hegel said. “Who says I’m dishonest?”

the guy yells. Casts off

and punches out Diogenes, calls him

a perv who never held

a job or a sword, Hegel a typical egghead,

and dies in a shootout, a hero of the Right.

Results May Vary

I was privileged to live

in immense luxury (it never seemed

that great to me) on the eve

of the Sixth Extinction-Level Event.

The Arctic ice-free in summer, Antarctica

thawing, most of the coral

and 60% of vertebrates

dead since 1970 – but such phrases

sound like scolding,

and no one wants to be scolded. Yet

through subtle conduits, the anguish of frogs

and bears, the background noise

of energy in the atmosphere

seep into culture, and even I,

soigné as I am, have grown rude.

Observing my precipitous decay

with a risus sardonicus that is neither classical

nor Decadent nor brave nor

in any way generous, only

glad that I’ll die before you, and in

some comfort. Like drowned bayous,

uncontainable

deserts and wildfires, methane belching from tundra,

my hate overflows its banks;

my “narcissism of small differences”

(countless as the signs

at neofascist rallies

I watch on TV

with rage greater than theirs because informed)

flaps in the wind. And leaving places

I’ll never visit

and/or won’t be invited to

again, I do once-unimaginably

vile things … “Made you look!”

Orange lilies, pink alstroemeria,

one white rose and a ring

should do. Walking, I nervously

rearrange with my free hand

my straw hat, which alternates

with an upscale kerry and a bowler

Then, ducking into door- and alleyways,

I change my look: thin eyebrows, small straight nose –

or the originals? Compress (there’s a valve) gut and butt.

Lengthen legs and stride, then think

better of it. (Springs and struts.)

I wish there were a module for morale –

some slow-released hormone – and for the day:

Monet clouds, a brass band in the park, a park,

and a few last horse-drawn carts amidst

the Fords would be preferable

to this grey.

Will you say yes? Oh, do – before

I sense I’ve drifted back

into some Futurist future or Constructivist fancy,

and flights of biplanes mutate into drones,

and some medley of electronics,

first centralized and broadcast, then autonomous,

takes over regulating me.

Oh the Wellsian crowd is a Deco mirror

I wish we were gazing into

side by side, nude and organic;

but the gloom of the day and the world’s prospects

have furnished only these flowers, as real as you.

The operative word is “I” or “buy”;

they amount to the same thing.

With the decline of malls, malls are occupied

by artists, the lowest kind of squatter;

and these are the lowest kind of artist,

the audience – pretentious dreamers.

They drift through garbage, Everything Must Go

signs, needles, greasy wrappers.

They nap on the torn couches,

dream of Fifth Avenue, the secondhand smoke,

the contact high of money,

and gaze into the few working displays.

Dignity, a glazed bowl.

The give and take of discourse, a top.

The unarticulable early hope,

luggage(?). One place offers

(strange firms creep into dying malls)

a “Love Machine.” The living dead,

readers, viewers, cognoscenti flock

to that window. They expect something

like an ancient fax or 3D printer,

concave, convex, and soulful; but what’s there

is a man. He stares vulnerably out,

spreads his arms as if to embrace

the abandoned throng and the sullen vista

behind them. What the world

needs now, what the world

by definition needs is prosperity,

the carnal index of transcendent love;

moved by that vision, he begins to sing.

In her own much-loved work, the editor

moves from emotion A to emotion B.

It’s apparently heroic for her to have

the first emotion, and the second,

and to move. I can’t grasp those emotions.

Not much happens, but there’s a lot of nature.

Someone or perhaps no one is there,

a betraying, reassuring presence.

For years before I learned the word “reflux,”

I was troubled by heartburn.

Once walked at 3 AM to a 7/11

for Rolaids and the sort of high-carb crap

responsible for the condition. Once saw a diagram

of acid-producing cells in the stomach;

they looked like alien weapons or flowers.

When I chewed Tums or Rolaids or, in a pinch,

chugged milk, I visualized

the meeting between acid and chalky alkaline;

the brief cooling or neutrality

was blessed, though knowing that

the result is technically a “soap”

caused qualms. This internal oil-war

changed some of my esophageal cells

to stomach cells. That’s bad, said the doc

who stuck a tube down my throat,

then told me to take Prilosec daily.

Which stopped the problem for decades,

though recently I’ve heard it causes Alzheimer’s.

When she encounters my work, the beloved editor

reacts first with a smile,

like any intellectual confronting terror.

John Porter

My eyes

Happy
to still be here,
on waking I am greeted by
the silver logo of the company
as my eyes boot up.

I have, I admit, papered over the
branding on the cereals,
kerbing the invites
to merge my journey
with that of a dry toasted
toe nail of corn.

There is a click lid resistance
and any blinking trickled into
an image feed, with a following
of ten million masturbaters,
but that is ok they paid for my eyes
free at point of use
pointing to choices
glance right to order, left to
gift wrap.

The thoughtverts did start to
grate so, just for a while
I wanted to unplug, and tensed the link
between chip and vein.
A stern message flashed up,
and doors locked,
no sirens allowed for the self fired pain,
if you tamper with stock
kindly supplied by the company.

Sleepers

The tent flaps clatter in the warm wind
coming in from the red horizon and inside
I tend to the sleeping. Not many of us are still awake in the
rolling cites moving on as the waters come. The sleepers are laid
out in rows, numbered, labelled, I change the drips
twice a day, let the nappies go until the stench gets me.
I have not yet yawned, but do not resent the
sleepers, let them drift on till the day their snores
turn to gasps, the young ones can repay me in the pot,
the old I’ll cast off into the waves
to move, tumble and dance down, and away.

Dissolving

Even as the ice melted
and waves crashed in taking cites with them,
as the land was bitten away like secret
nibbles on a biscuit until there’s just a rugged middle
and an archipelago of outlying crumbs,
even then, when spires poked out like splinters
in the flood and roads led down from crowded hilltops
to nowhere but deep fish playgrounds
and every minute another server slipped under
the web fizzing away to steam,
they still sat around rescued mahogany,
wincing at the wet leather of the chairs,
banging the table, even as useless banknotes splattered
the rocks, with spit flying as strongly as the currents
they sang out their faith that this would all be solved
by the market.

Dry heat

At the start of the week there is already reverence
as those disposed to fawn at its constant warmth
regard the Aga. The luck that the house is equipped
with such a metallic alter is pored over, dry heat
discussed and temperature gradations
of the particular ovens charted, as if they were marble pillared chambers
of the world’s greatest bathhouse.
Later should members of the group doubt
the heavy hob lid hallelujah, opting instead for fan assisted exacting ease
it is sacrilege, a blasphemy against
the order of stone floored kitchens, withering looks pity aspirations that
do not see the good news in thick wire coiled handles.
Even when the bacon deposited behind the shining metal door
is returned charred to dust, the conductor blames herself
for not being in synch with the mighty instrument.
By the final day the most devout stand hand on the Aga
risking burns, unable to part, so consumed with love
and gratitude, merging with the metal, sliding
into dry heat.

Baby walking

So I just stood up, pressed off, put the stained mug
in my bag and left. I think is was 9.15am and since then
I’ve been baby walking.
At first it was wriggly screamers, I’d pace round
the streets for hours tiny head bawling
rocking against me until rhythms
forced nuzzles and snores. It started with one but
soon there were some on each shoulder and a few on the arms.
Like limpets on a rock striding further up hills by the moon
through rainy city neon they calmly look out,
fireflies on a ship through the gloom.
The parents were pleased to rest, a welcome slip into stupor
whilst I strode on just my eyes looking out
from a blanket of babies purring as they slept,
safe as I carried them home.

Steve Pottinger

Enough

And so, it comes.
That winter morning when you wake
and find that you have had
enough.

You will give it up, you tell yourself,
retreat to the hills, the coast,
a cottage, a boat, a hut
some place out on the edge of it all.
Anywhere but here.
Anything but this.
You make plans to see out your days
walking beaches
scattering resting gulls
climbing mountains
to stare at far horizons.
You tell yourself
you will tend vegetables
grow old by the heat of a fire
lose yourself in books
and the view from a window.

Let the rich and the furious
have the world for themselves.
Much good may it do them.

There’s no shame, you tell yourself,
in howling your grief
into the roaring wind
at the stars, the moon,
anything that listens,
in finding solace in the bottle
or the bottom of a pint.
There’s no shame in walking
away from the fight,
throwing the towel in.

Let the rich and the furious
have the world for themselves.
Much good may it do them.

You tell yourself all of this and more.
You even believe it.

And then, one day, it comes.
That morning which has always
been written into your bones
woven into your future
that morning when you wake
and find that you have had

Basta!
Enough!

and you roll up your sleeves
and set to once more.

Frank Praeger

Indolent Interlude

The piling up, the flood of sound, and a fixed star,
indolent interlude in the presence of a Siberian tiger.
I have not lathered my face
for this stilly no nonsense hypothetical;
I refuse to acknowledge threat, dream,
knive plagued playground,
cracked cement,
unthreaded needles,
bent nails,
copper tubing,
explorations of an unremaindered past,
or dark wherein crocuses close.
Ah, pearl gray encroachment on a lavender siding.
Ah, that dark wherein I, too, have rested.
A crow and a greater dark,
a bracelet charm in a rain spout,
voices and moving figures,
finger pointing and clarification.
Escape in a subway entrance, emerging to a new life,
another reprieve.
Horseless and no oasis,
A coconut mango mix and cherry blossoms off to the side.
An only answer, patience,
without awareness of the calamitous events,
the bizarre nights,
the waste-weary, vapid intrusion of day,
the uncooked meals,
excuses for two.
I am closing down,
a little dry rot,
a less than sibilant whisper taken for mind,
a perplexing darkness for sleep.

Rhetoric for the Ordinary

An invariant handful of dirt
and pleasure almost beyond bearing.
Smiles that do not distinguish,
a daily bowl of spinach positing a dreamful venture,
a painful posture,
the visible neither adding nor subtracting.
The view of the distant bluish Huron Mountains
that has always consoled. 
Days vacuous as the water's edge.
A stillness from a stranger's mouth.
Was someone laughing or was someone crying?
Seventy and forever old.
No way to reconcile a churning in the gut
with a putative inner calmness.

For All Those Whom Gustav Klimt Painted: Adele Bloch-Bauer I,
Emilie Floge, Mada Primavesi, Fritza Riedler, Unnamed Models, Et Al. 

Too much - 
too much gold, luster, 
too much design, ornateness, 
too much myself, 
extended, touched, 
inundated by each cluster 
of gold, of purple, 
of heightened color. 
Crumpled vermillion lovelier..., 

nor pair of scuttling claws, nor razor. 
Nowhere 
ground cover, 
dull, dying vegetation, 
amorphous 
ground color, 
plaintive - glossed over. 

Each of you
has been held, 
each 
pictured 
at least once, 
each 
held dearer - dresses 
dyed heightened color, 
dyed purple, 
dyed gold, 
dyed vermillion, 
dyed lovelier... - 
held 
at least once, 
each 
caught, 
fixed, 
a calculated figuration - 
neither significant nor trivial. 

Each face, 
if complacent... 
if willful... 
displayed, 
seen - 
a flowery pistil arrangement - 
whether ductile... 
whether brittle... 
final - 
as any fortuitous, 
winding sheet scene.

However Desperate No Longer Quiet

Allegiances he’d lost others had lost before –
Idyllic squanderings of excess, troubadours of more.
So here he was last and lost,
compa¤ero to spite, yeas ricocheting,
dream dust irritating his eyes.
Last and lost he repeated, grittily.
Although even sandpiper cries could dishearten him
he set about counting ways he could be.
Lover of big cigars, admiring the declarative,
could he not prophecy the end,
but of two minds on pigtails,
inclement weather, little red riding hood,
wouldn’t he end up
press agent of paradox?
Unable to confirm his own words
he aped the mirror’s consternation –
so why the hellabaloo.
Exhibitionist to his own discretion
he mobilized.

Today would do.

No more cuttings on the floor,
a clean foray to wherever,
a quiet sorting of loose ends,
neat coils receding, hallways
filling. He backed into a crumbly wall,
shook himself off, backed again.
A slight fog came settling on the window sill.
Tired of high fives, staged impromptus,
he stabbed at power buttons, pushed contraptions,
belabored missing parts, burned-out motors,
separated more and more like from dislike.

He varied the day’s agenda, fascinated by each menu,
to change the odds. Recipient of entry forms
to numerous contests,
he took to calculating distances,

to swatting flies.

He vowed nothing furtive would do.
Destined, he thought.
Unsure as to exactly what
he said it to himself again, destined.
He liked that sound, how it rang true.

Crickets, Robins and Flies

Crickets to follow
after frogs,
already a robin’s call.
A fly on the inside of my bedroom window
was busily cleaning itself
enveloped by the warmth of sunlight when….
Oh, crescent streaks, pitiable washes of gray.
Tousled, interminably doctored,
truculent when not cheeky,
an indolent, speculated had,
dashed
turgidly
through homeless paths
to be left with an out-of-tune piano,
with a deft touch for the inacessible.

And a Fitful Wind

Matter?
Beached whales, dithyrambic bits,
discarded biopsies?
Who could have thought it?
Yet, days are still the same.
And nights?
Lengthened, shortened?
In memoriam quickened?
Questions, questions.
A pointless shrug
answers.
Matter?
does it
that sparks of fire and daylight haunt me
with their spectre of crimson-green
and how bullrushes shake
before a fitful wind.

Slight Inclines

Segregated – no! sequestered.
Grapevine not budding yet,
otherwise, fine.
Breathing hard on slight inclines,
despondent climbing stairs,
swollen feet and ankles,
as I’ve said, otherwise, fine.
Happiest sitting down.
This path, these bushes, thorn entangled, deep in dusk
with nowhere to get to.
A transient pain measures wakefulness.
Is it that trees do not sleep?
And why should that follow?
Who will call busy but careful?

But true, I have not heard a nightingale
nor played with wolf pups,
or been a comfort for the aged,
too mournful of yesteryears distancing
and all the in betweens.
Troubled, humbled
by the confetti of the last parade.
Shouldering arms and an uncertain fate
conspire toward screw-ups
as miscue follows miscue,
even
as all the rehabs are bungled
all the seats taken.

Never So Incisive

Crepe laden monuments,
misleading signs,
a debacle in bundled fibres,
fractured shorelines,
measures out of whack.
I am no more thankful than before;
darts, dartboards tender climatic moments;
binges, excesses, hopes precede
a modicum achieved.
Humidifiers off,
fire out,
I plummet.
and where I had once been
a man falls.
And what to make of having gone on,
having had someone else pronounced dead?
These fragments may well tell whatever I may wish.
My father dead, too,
left no footprints.

Getting It Right

Motorized vehicles,
spaces between intervals,
firing blanks celebrating
ascendency of jolt –
where has the color gone?
More motors, abandoned mine shafts,
a grainy, faded iridescence,
a not so obvious opal,
not even neglected tears or yesterday’s joys.

Swings still. A see-saw rests. Shadows form
as children scatter.
Sleeves catch on blackberry thorns.

Start over.

Shoulders back, swagger
tossing bread crumbs into storm sewers.
Let the early arriving birds
make patterns overhead,
chatter, in part, their disapproval.
No further question where the color has gone.

Say it is now that dawn comes over.
Shades partially drawn,
an old dog shifts
into a more comfortable position.

A lattice takes on color.

An outdoor faucet drips.
Here and there, standing pools of water.

Slackening But Not Impatient

That which was once with me,
whose pace was mine, that fevered senses, now, when failing,
am I not the one
to be diminished,
shaken,
made numb.
Masquerader at a loss,
totaled, mascara botched, ill-disposed
towards any final hurrah, tried
for an unruly, unstoried watch –
wait!

Who lingers longer touched.

Who cared
who could have worn taffeta, sequins,

whose severance was a further slanted light,

talked about, then, dispensed with over lunch.

Acceptance

“I am not here to write, but to be mad.”
Attributed to Robert Walser when while in an insane asylum he was asked about his writing.

Acceptance is all.
The dried leaves shake,
no sense to it even if they quiver
nor fruit or shade.
Dried up plants, drooping leaves.
Ask if you wish where the insects have gone.
Walking up even slight inclines my ankles ache,
my breathing hurried.
Yes, also, to the dried-up marshes,
but the wind is still constant –
I can not offer enough thanks.

Sunlight shines off the surface of Pilgrim river;
my wife and I, two small and quiet persons stare.
Some sighing and, later, with a bucket full of blackberries
more sunlight, more reflecting, more running water.

Would I could vanish there
as much
as on top of Lookout Mt.
Would I?
Here, there is no stone tower,
no water-fall or wooden bridge
from here to there.
A facetious gloss to the everday.
A laugh mistaken as lament –
maybe.
Yes, it is so, I am not Chinese.
My roots are countless,
indistinguishable
from anyone else’s.
Further now means less.
More has long since been past.
How to rank successes, failures?
If I were a painter,
would I be painting black on black?

Instead of listening to mice
rummaging in the interstices of my house.

Time Slots

Intractable,
scheduling,
parsing existence,
parsimonious doling out of time slots.
A loquacious maintenance of distance –
closer I can not get.
Sandy feet,
cutoff levis,
dirt,
dust,
and spider webs
as inconsequential
as a broken yardstick
could be –
inconstant measures of remorse.
Observations faithfully done,
why not file an interim report?
A childless background, an empty swing,
as much dream as not,
no more foretold than forgot,
and, as before, a scribbling in scrapbooks
replete with place-names.

Not to be ignored, fingers cut,
stained with blood –
that same parsimony again doled out as time slots.

Gillian Prew

mobile canto

the first colour was meanderings in black & white
liftings from sorry blinks & scratches in the sand
it wore itself close folding the sky earthward
plucking the wind from the centre of rhyme
we were free then the blood unstuck
the air in our lungs just long enough
for a breath

remember red

Walk a deeper drift than confetti (love). Make
a pilgrimage (a path sore
and sailing) scooping
the soft spillage of forgotten blue. (Remember
red?) It was born with us before they wiped our
bodies clean. Learn it
again. Recover
our discovery with tongues (wrapping). Words
and spit (sweet) show
the horizontal hallucination
of the dream, the vertical
illusion of the view (yes? no?). There are answers. Pluck them. See
if they resemble truth. Rock them
into red.

(remember)

momentum

the frozen miscellaneous of January is
building a gun to the moon.

(meanwhile) in
another part of town (there is warmth on
the edge of a barroom stool). the air is
fresh with forgetting. thoughts
circle careless spillage
waiting
for history. the future is an idea
in the corner of a smile.

it might snow once in a while in
a place like this. the streets measure
life in worn tar, pacing it
with traffic lights, but nothing.

ever.

stops.

Alan Price

Enid

This sole image in my hands.
Octagonal glass frame
with a clipped down photograph.
Subdued sepia except for the felicity
of a yellow button or broach,
hand-painted on the collar
of her studio dress.

Grandmother’s well enough.
Diseases unborn, yet waiting.
Pensive for evidence
of hope and humour.
Her eyes, nose and ears,
first premonitions of myself.

Occupation mother and wife:
the code of the century.
Died of TB.
Her boilermaker husband left
for another port.
Three infant daughters and son
fast donated to an orphanage.

No film or recording.
How did she kiss, laugh or sing?
Scottish. Reticent. Stoic.
Loved choirs and musical hall jokes.
My mother unable to unknot
the mystery of who she was.

Jessie

My aunt giggled on seeing a buzzing fly,
a kettle boil or a plate fall off a table.
Anything could pull the trigger
for Jessie to be sent into nervous laughter.

She only slowed down on listening
to my mother tell her fortune.
Her eyes would stop darting wild,
blur down on tea leaves in a china cup.

I imagined she was fidgety at night,
laughed when her husband undressed
and told her to shut up.
Pressing his beer lips against hers
in semi-darkness
she must have pushed him away,
wiped her mouth,
with the back of her hand,
wanting the performance to end.

I once saw Father
make a pass at my aunt.
A proposal followed by groping.
Her weighing up and refusing.
What Jessie desired was acceptance,
a condition she never laughed at.

Dorothy

A beret suited Dorothy.
It made her head look brightly lit
and stacked full of big mischief
to dignify a small, frail woman,
tender and trusting, who shivered,
late spring, from abandonment.
Her man, for twenty two years,
buggered off down south
with a factory girl.
And a son was conscripted
by the army to Suez.
The only canal she knew
was the one from Liverpool to Leeds.

Mother and Dorothy were pally
at the pictures, doing the shops,
swearing about a late bus,
laughing at the rain, having tea
and forgetting, inside the house,
to remove headscarf and beret.

In hospital she was dear Dot,
a whispering skeleton,
overlaid by skin,
shaking visitors’ hands.
No more shared lipsticks and secrets.
No being flighty together in the street.
Good companions unable
to understand the end.

Mother tried lighting a fire with a newspaper.
A headline, about the government’s betrayal,
turned brown. Mother let it burn as she grieved.

Edith

The dog waddled in,
after its waddling owner,
sniffing chocolate buttons on a cushion.
She kept the dog bloated for complicity
and comfort: an ally to resist
a skinny husband who beat her
with a brush.

She and her dog competed in smelling
so I couldn’t tell them both apart.
My nose was constantly bewildered.
Auntie smiled and touched my cheek:
her face and her smell becoming as one.

She fed us potted crab-paste bread rolls,
salad, cake and black and white TV.
Even though the bread was stale
and the tea too strong we came together
on summer nights only marred
by a coal fire blazing.

Edith would mail us bulky letters.
Mother and I struggled to decipher
words that looped and rode the rapids
of an inky page and, when rescued,
be mistranslated by our laughter.
Only when she bussed it down to our place
did we dare to question what she meant.
Auntie never blushed or brought the dog

Miss X

On Sundays visitors would come
but this was a shocking first timer.
“Remember me.” she said to Mother,
“I’m Angela’s friend. We met and chatted
at the hairdresser’s. You said pop round.
So here I am.”

Mother poured tea, buttered bread and thought,
“Who is this slut? Wearing heavy makeup;
crossing her legs like that;
shuffling her bottom on the sofa
and smiling at everything.”

“Spinster.”muttered father
behind his News of the World.
He asked me to leave the room.
“Let the boy stay. He’s no trouble.”
protested the strange woman.
Her dress a floral exposure
‘indecent’ for that summer day.
All coiffure hair and showy necklace.
Earrings that glinted astray.

She spoke nonsense, sighed and left.
My beautiful disrupter.
My lonely intruder.
Whose house did she visit next?

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