Joy of Words

Monkey Turns Down Promotion

Monkey Turns Down Promotion

“I hereby appoint you head of the asylum.”

The young office monkey with the plastic stethoscope
was dressed neatly in a white sheet.

“Dr. Freud, I presume?”
Monkey held out his hand
but his witticism was lost in a flood of water
flowing from the flush and over the floor.

Monkey stood there, paddling in piddle.
Inmates with crowded heads and vacant faces,
fools grinning at a universe of folly,
paddled beside him. He wiped
a sick one’s drool from his sleeve.

The office boy spat on his hands,
slicked down his hair, and placed
his stethoscope on monkey’s heaving chest.

“You have no pulse.”
“How do you know I have no pulse?
Surely, you cannot hear my heart
for you have a banana stuck in your ear.”

“Speak up!” said the doctor,
“I cannot hear you:
I have a banana stuck in my ear.”

Then monkey felt fear.

Daylight diminished
and waters closed over his head.
He spurned the proffered paw,
the life belt thrown
by the offer of a new position.

Exit monkey left,
pursued by a chorus:
“Run, monkey, run!”

Commentary:

A Golden Oldie from Monkey Temple (2010). I came across it by accident as I thumbed through some older books – wow, fifteen years ago that came out. A Golden Oldie indeed. I had forgotten all about Monkey Temple. However, the last couple of days I have watched New Zealand vs Canada and England vs France (Women’s Rugby World Cup). Both semi-finals took place at Ashton gate, Bristol. That’s when I started thinking about Bristol and Bristol Zoo.

We had family in Bristol (Westbury-on-Trym) and from an early age we visited Bristol Zoo. One of my favorite places was the old ruined Monkey Temple, full of monkeys that impressed me with their antics. A small, walled zoo, it was full of innovations and I remember well Alfred the Gorilla and Rosie the Elephant. I loved the rides on Rosie’s back. The camels too offered lifts to young children and the elephants took apples from my hand with their long trunks. I also remember the bear pit, and loved watching the brown bear climb to the top of his pole and catch food thrown to him by the visitors.

I think everybody’s greatest thrill came with feeding time for the seals. What a racket when the attendant appeared with his / her pail of fish and he/she threw them to the waiting seals. Almost as thrilling was the penguin house with its aquarium and glass windows. Animals that seemed so clumsy, waddling on land, turn into sea-angels when they dived and we could meet them, face to face, so to speak, almost in their own environment.

My love of zoos reached out and I recall the zoo in Madrid, established when Columbus returned from his voyages with species of animals hitherto unknown. And who could forget Copo de Nieve, the albino gorilla in Barcelona zoo.

Alas, my zoo day’s are over. But the world is wonderful. Today, two deer entered our front yard, lunched on the fallen crab apples, and went to sleep underneath the trees outside our window. Joy to the world and the world brings me joy -sunrise and sunset, colored clouds, the deer in my yard, a fox passing through. However, I must admit I am not impressed by the little red squirrel that nests under the hood of my car and gnaws my cables. Nor by the porcupine who loves the salt in my garage doors and nibbles at the door frame every chance it gets. The love of nature – red in tooth and claw – I guess we have to enjoy the good and put up with the bad. Life’s like that. “Ask the animals, they will teach you.” Bristol Zoo motto.

Dog Days

Dog Daze

1

A dry storm lays waste the days that dog my mind.
Carnivorous canicular, hydropic, it drinks me dry,
desiccates my dreams, gnaws me into nothingness.

At night a black dog hounds me, sends my head spinning,
makes me chase my own tail, round and round. It snaps at
dreams, shadows, memories that ghost through my mind.

Tarot Cards and Tea Leaves are lost in a Mad Hatter’s
dream of a dormouse in a teapot on an unkempt table.
Hunter home from the hill, I awake to find my house
empty, my body devastated, my future a foretold mess.

Desperate I lap at salt-licks of false hope but
they only increase my thirst and drive me deeper
into thick, black, tumultuous clouds. Dry lightning.
The drought continues and no raindrops fall.

Dog Daze
2

The drought continues and no raindrops fall.
Desperate I lap at salt-licks of false hope but
they only increase my thirst and drive me deeper
into thick, black, tumultuous clouds. Dry lightning.

Tarot Cards and Tea Leaves are lost in a Mad Hatter’s
dream of a dormouse in a teapot on an unkempt table.
Hunter home from the hill, I awake to find my house
empty, my body devastated, my future a foretold mess.

At night a black dog hounds me, sends my head spinning,
makes me chase my own tail, round and round. It snaps at
dreams, shadows, memories that ghost through my mind.

A heat wave lays waste the hopes that dog my days.
Carnivorous canicular, hydropic, it drinks me dry,
desiccates my dreams, gnaws me into nothingness.

Dog Daze
3

The drought continues. No raindrops fall.
No fresh water. None at all.

Dark clouds gather in the sky.
No rain falls. The ground is dry.

Grass all burned. No more hay.
How much livestock will they slay?

No rain comes, but a flash of light
sets the woods and fields alight.

Home from the fields, some farmers confess
their future is an unpredictable mess.

Desperate farmers are losing hope.
Out in the barns, they keep some rope.

The roof beams are sturdy and built high.
One little jump and problems good-bye.

Commentary:

Dog Daze 1 is a reverse sonnet. Instead of being structured 4-4-3-3 it moves in reverse 3-3-4-4. What fun to pretend to be Milton Acorn, and to turn my sonnet upside down. It should rhyme, but I abandoned rhyme in favor of metaphor a long time ago. Was I right to do so? What, if anything, catches you unawares in Dog Daze 1? Does it work for you? What would happen if we turned it upside down? You be the judge.

Dog Daze 2 is more or less the same sonnet returned to its normal stanzaic shape 4-4-3-3. In what ways has the poem now changed? Clearly there is a structural difference. Obviously some of the lines and images have changed. Is the poem stronger? Weaker? Does each one affect you in a different fashion? Do you prefer one version to the other?

Mission Impossible – How many more adaptations can we make to this poem and how would each one affect the poem and the reader’s reception of it? For example – Dog Daze 3 sees our sonnet turned into a poem composed of seven rhyming couplets. Couplets are easy to rhyme. But do they simplify the thoughts too much? Is the poem now too dark? Can you lighten the mood? How? Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to rewrite the poem in seven non-rhyming couplets. That will make a change from the Daily Sudoku and the Cross-word puzzle. If you do take up the challenge, let me see what you do! And remember, you can make it personal to you, your life, and your garden.

Hair Cut

Hair Cut 

Curly locks, wisps of grey and silver,
curve around my ears, cuddle my collar.
I stand in the bathroom, look at my scissors,
glance in the mirror, and start to hack.

I turn my head swiftly from side to side,
watching white hair falling, like snow.

“All done!” I look at myself in the mirror:
hair shorter, still sticking out in clumps,
but some curls still tickle and cling.

Not bad for front and sides. I still
can’t see the back, but if feels fine.
“Right” I say. “I’m ready for the show.”

What show? The one where I sit before
the computer screen and admire myself
before I click in the code, type the password,
and join the virtual meeting that today,
in the pandemic, passes for face to face.

Commentary:

Face to Face – Moo helped me with this one by allowing me to have one of his ‘face to face’ paintings. Thank you, Moo. Sorry I said you weren’t too bright yesterday. And we both got the singer of All Shook Up wrong – it was Tommy Steele of course. Also, as you explained to me, you may not be great at adding two and two and making four, and you may be unenlightened with words, but wow, when you add a colour or two to the palette you are enlightened and enlightening and dazzle people with the lightness of your enlightenment. There – hope we can be friends again now. I would miss your paintings if you withdrew your services.

And this is a Golden Oldie. In 2020, when Covid walked with us, I started cutting my own hair – hacking might be a better word – and I have continued to do so ever since. In fact, I have only been to the barber’s three times since 2020. Each time, the hair lay so thickly upon the floor behind the barber’s chair that we walked knee deep in the white stuff. Great fun. How the young lady made fun of me. Right down the middle of the back of my head she found a large mullet that I couldn’t reach with either hand. She found that so funny. Asked me if I wanted to keep it. Of course, I said no!

I remember those face to face on the computer days. At least we couldn’t catch Covid from an image talking back to us on a screen. I always find those online meetings so difficult and awkward. I love the awkwardness of that word – awkward. The facilitator always began with – ‘Now, let’s all introduce ourselves.’ What on earth do you say on such occasions. ‘Easy,’ Moo told me. ‘I always say “Hi. I’m Moo. I’m a painter.” Nobody bothers me after that. Once somebody asked me what I painted and when I replied ‘houses’, everyone lost interest and the facilitator moved on.’

I always get tongue-tied and can never manage to be coherent. In fact, I am neither coherent nor cohesive and I often fall apart. “Hi! I’m Roger. I’m a writer.” This always opens the doors and the windows to all sorts of questions. ‘What do you write?’ ‘Have you published anything?’ ‘What’s your latest work?’ Of course, if I had any sense – and often I have less sense than Moo – when someone asks me ‘What do you write?’ I should reply. ‘English.’ Or ‘Italics.’ Or ‘Greeting cards.’ That last would be as much of a show stopper as Moo’s response – ‘houses’! Of course, I could get really inventive and say ‘Bilingual jokes for Christmas Crackers.’ Another pet peeve – have you noticed how the French and the English don’t match up? I could have a great old rant about that one. But don’t let’s talk about Fortune Cookies!

And suddenly, we have strayed a log way from the act of getting our hair cut during Covid. But, like many diversions, the journey is often more important than the destination, especially if we are amusing ourselves! And I hope you had some fun and took some joy from my words.

Time Flies

Time Flies

… bends like a boomerang,
flies too rapidly away,
limps back to the hand.

Endless this shuffle of unmarked
days dropping off the calendar.

Hands stop on the clock.
The pendulum swings:
time and tide stand still,
do not move.

The print in my grandma’s house:
seemingly moving seas,
sails swelled out,
the ship stays firm in its frame.

‘As idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean.’

Our garden fills
with brightly colored birds
and red and grey squirrels.

Light and dark
switch back and forth
each day
a twin of the day before.

The TV screen hangs out
the daily washing.
Tired, worn out shadow,
their faces boring us
with shallow wit
and hand-me-down wisdom.

Time:
an albatross around the neck,
an emu, an ostrich, a dodo,
an overweight bumble bee,
too clumsy, too heavy to fly.

“Time flies?”
“You can’t.
They fly too fast.”

Commentary:

My friend Moo told me he was ‘all shook up’ when I read him this poem. I don’t think Moo’s too smart. He thought All Shook Up was written by the Rolling Stones when they went out moss gathering during the Fredericton Harvest Festival, but I said no, it was definitely written by Buddy Holly on an off-day when he was playing cricket. It wasn’t okay in those days to play croquet.

The last three lines come from an examination question in the General Paper, “S” Level, as it used to be. “Punctuate this sentence – time flies you can’t they fly too fast” – of course, they should have said, “in exactly the same way we want you to. Corrections and alternative versions will not be accepted.” What did they think I was? A mind-reader? I wasn’t. I was a teenager having a field day in the national examinations. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when they marked my paper.

In the biology exam, they gave each one of us a Brussel Sprout and asked us to draw it and tell us as much as we could about it. Of course, I ate mine, and I said it tasted a little bit dry and needed some salt. Then I drew a mess of potage, all yellow and green with chewed up squiggles, and added “That’s what the sprout probably looks like right now.” I failed that exam too. Didn’t even get a part mark for ingenuity, though the science teacher said I could have a glow of satisfaction. Very useful after lights out in a boarding school, I can tell you.

I can’t remember if Moo went to that school with me or not. I don’t think he did. I think he drifted into my life a little bit later. He wasn’t a painter at that stage, just a half-starved philosopher doomed to live in a garret. Of course, once he started painting houses, he made money. It’s amazing how many people will pay you for painting their houses. Of course, that was before they invented plastic siding.

About now you realize that I live in a strange world all of my own and a lot of people live in it with me. You, too, if you enjoyed reading this. Long may the ‘strange world of me, you, and Moo’ continue. I’d send you a penny for your thoughts, but they have gone out of circulation. I can’t even sing you a song of sixpence these days either. Silver sixpences have walked the dodo path too.

Fear

Fear

Now is the time of fear:
ice on the morning step,
a child’s slide on the sidewalk,
a parking space too narrow
for me to get out of the car.

Sometimes the shopping cart
lurches beneath my weight
and I clutch at thin air:
each fall a precipice.

An emptiness in the gut,
a tightening of the elastic band
clamped around chest and heart,
a chill through the bowels
in the washroom’s dark:

 a long night that threatens.

Commentary:

Things happen, from time to time, and seem inevitable. With the coming of fall and the threat of frost comes the fear of ice. All year round, the fear of wet and slippery floors walks beside me. I am very careful about how and where I place my canes.

Shopping brings the fear that someone will park so close to me that I cannot get back into the car. Shopping carts can be treacherous. In one shop, their light-weight carts always seem ready to tip up or lurch over. The tell-tale leap in my chest reminds me that yes, this can and does happen. I am ultra careful in that particular shop.

Oh yes, and don’t forget the diuretics that upset the tummy and leave one struggling for time, and space, and the right place. Such things arrive so suddenly. They make the night seem dark and long.

Funny how the same thoughts change shape when published in prose, rather than poetry. The narrative is the same, but the emotional impact can be so different. Góngora wrote about such moments, a long time ago, in the early seventeenth century. “Cada pie mal puesto es una caída, cada caída es un precipicio. / Each false step means a fall, every fall is down a precipice.” The fear of falling is inherent to those of us who age. It is interesting that precipicio (Spanish) ends in -ice, precip-ice (English). How many readers note such seemingly minor coincidences?

Accident or deliberate? Who knows when the shopping cart or the cane slips out beneath us and we stumble as the ground comes suddenly rushing up, with us on the way down.

Clepsydra 14-15 – Clowns clowning around

Clepsydra 14-15
Clowns clowning around

14

… walking life’s walk
     grey jays in the ash tree
          fresh snow on the ground

at night
     deer track out of the woods
          moon’s dead skull
               chalking its slow path
                    westwards

snow falls
     white upon white
          whirling our world
               back to its cratered life

nothing needed
     other than moonlight on snow
          to ignite us

a white wall of water cascades
     earthwards from the moon
          waters of renewal
               waters of life
                    waters that restore us
and save us
     from the moonbeam’s slicing knife
          that amputates all life …


15

… it is scary tonight
     inside the topsy-turvy
          big-top of my circus world

carnival time
     clowns clowning around
          turning my life
               upside down

is my mind
     a spider-web
          spun by worry and doubt

I remember how
     they pushed me around
          kicked me out
               always the anonymous they

they abandoned me
     told me I was unwanted
          surplus to purpose
               forced me to exit

they told me to forget
     those amniotic waters
          that water world of comfort
               that illusion of reality
                     they had created
                          then threw me onto the street

    I left behind
          their stultified personalities
               with all their stupid rules
                    and blinkered minds
                         that stopped them
                              from seeing straight …

Clepsydra 12 & 13 – Pilgrim in this barren land …

Clepsydra 12 & 13 –
Pilgrim in this barren land …

12

… pilgrim in this barren land
     lost in my wanderings
          the wander-lust still tugging at me

in my back-pack
               dusty with memories
                    photos that only I have seen
                         sepia
                              spotted in places

only I know names and faces
     recall relationships
          a mystery to me, an outsider,
               such images haunt me
                    move me in ways
                         I do not understand

the irregular heart-beat
     of my life walks inside me
          down new corridors of time
               fresh music
                    strums my heart-strings

a heart
     a bridge a time too far
          lost I wander the woods
               searching for things
                    I know I must find
                         my lost self among them …


13

… but to find myself
     I must first lose myself,
          not in a barren land
               nor in the inner depths
                    of my suffering mind
                         nor the deeper depths
                              of another’s body

am I nothing more
     than an offering on the altar
          where nothing alters more
               than this interchange
                    eye to eye
                         mind to mind
                              body to body

will the I ever transform
     into the power of us
          together
               both of us

and are we much more
     than one plus one
          with three or four or more
               conjured from the word
                    that was from the beginning

or is all of this
     nothing more than
          the woven magic of pillow-talk …

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

1. If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

That is a very hard question to answer. I think of all the material things that everyone else can think of, but I do not want to sell commonplace things – antique furniture, paintings, books, stamps, groceries – I could go on and on, but I will resist the temptation to do so.

When I lived in Santander, Spain, the local wines were sometimes called ‘sol embotellado’ / bottled sunshine. I wouldn’t want to open a wine shop, but I would love to bottle the essence of a warm sunny summer day and – why should I sell it? I wouldn’t. I would give it away, free of charge, to all the needy people, inner city boys and girls, the impoverished, those who live in the streets and sleep in doorways or under bridges at night. Oh, the joy and happiness that would come when they opened their bottle of summer sunshine and felt the warm fresh air gather around them so they could breathe it in.

But why stop there? I would also give away ‘essence of butterflies’, that special feeling that comes on the colored wings of a butterfly and combines with the joy of flowers and the gift of taking flight. How special that would be. But sell it? It is much too valuable to sell. Put a dollar, Euro, yen, rupee, or sterling price upon it, and all its powers would vanish, like fairy dreams fading away.

Among other things, I would also like to offer the gift of the joy of words. Colors, in the imagination of Blake, were ‘sky wounds’. What joy to take a normal word, add a second word to it and create a new verbal image – ‘sky wounds’. And what happens when the sky is wounded, you ask. Well, the wound opens, the blood pours out and ‘le soleil se couche dans son sang qui se fige’ – ‘the sun sets in its own congealing blood’. Baudelaire, if I remember correctly, from Les Fleurs du Mal. What beauty in those new images. What joy in remembering and recreating them. I would bottle such gifts and give them away in my shop.

Fairy dreams – yes, I would offer them as well to those who needed them. And not the sort that fade away, but those fairy dreams that suspend us in the wondrous beauty of their ethereal light. And I would bottle hope, and self-belief, and the power to change oneself from what one is to what one is destined to be. And I would add essence of self-knowledge and powder of Davey Lamp light that would enable the seekers to seek in the darkest corners of their souls and find that elusive inner self, and bring it out from the darkness. And I would stock fragrant filaments of firefly that would also allow my customers to enlighten that darkest of nights, the dark night of the soul. And a map of hidden foot paths that would allow the wanderer to wander and never get lost.

How about an elixir of happiness and joy? A quintessence of rainbows, perhaps? Or a magic lantern that would shine out from heart and eyes and enlighten the soul friends of those lucky souls who were able to locate and enter my shop of conditioners, vital vitamins, and soul magic for all those lost and lonely people. And there, that mirror on the wall – look in it, gaze deep into your own eyes, and maybe, just maybe, you will find my shop.

And “What will your shop be called?”, you ask. Look into your heart and you may find the answer engraved therein. It will be called The Gift Shop of Hope Restored. I look forward to welcoming you when you open the door and step in.

Comment
1. The number at the beginning of this post, refers to its position in The Book of Everything. In that book, I have included 100 blog prompts (The Book of Everything) and 11 more (and a little bit extra) to give a total of 111 responses to prompts. Each one is a little bit crazy, just as this one is. But what fun to read, and write, and think slightly differently.

Clepsydra 9 & 10

9

… what lies behind this attic door
     ready to spring out
           at the slow push of my hands

cobwebbed
     this world revealed
          a universe of memories
               waiting to be called
                    back into life

what life
     the flickering half-life
          of shadows on a wall     

or the alternate reality
     of planets that lost their way
          and forgot how to dance
               around their sun

do they still move
     in rhythm to an unsung song
          an unstrung guitar
               music no one else can hear
                    played by a wandering star

lost the glimmer
     of life’s candle
          adrift on distant waters,
               but never forgotten …

10

… nor seen
     nor heard
          I am amazed by the maze
               wandering
                    among cluttered objects,

my world takes shape
     in a mad hatter’s workshop
          where things grow legs
               walk this way that way
                    constantly getting lost

I can hear them
     chittering chattering
          but I can neither
               see nor hold them

like so many bats
     they roost upside-down
          little children lost
               in memory’s attic
                    where everything ages
                         slowly gathering dust …

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait

I smell. I whiff. I gloriously stink.
My arms, my feet, my crotch, reek with beauty.
This is me. I am still alive. I’m rank.
The time has come, the Walrus said, to take
a shower. I strip. I weigh. I obey.

Hot water streams. Bathroom steams up. I draw
faces on grey glass, smiling, glum. Soft soap
works its miracle turning Japanese
nylon into a rough body cloth that
rubs and cajoles all putrid dirt away.

Butterfly from its chrysalis, I step
from the shower, sniff with caution, and stench
no more. I am clean. I no longer pong. 
My body has been taken over by
perfumes no longer mine. Who am I now?

I am no more myself. I am no more
my own gorgeous underarm muscular
ripeness. I have left my odor circling
in the soap suds and drifting down the drain. 
What a pain. It will take me a week or 
more to start smelling like myself again.