Rage rage

Rage, Rage 41 & 42

Rage, Rage
41

Mortal,
this open wound
clinging, crablike,
to my sleeve.

A sudden surge,
this burgeoning urge
to end it all and sever
life’s thread.

How many times
must I jump,
eyes closed, through
hospital hoops?

Blood thinners,
my veins so
delicately untied,
my life blood
leaking meekly out,
dribbling from
my fingertips,
drip by feeble
drip.

42

Nothing left now
but this pain in my heart.

It makes me think
about growing old,
that unstoppable process
of the body’s slow,
inevitable breakdown
from everything
to nothing.

I should go to the doctor,
but what can she,
will she do?
She can’t stop the hands
on my body-clock
and lop ten, fifteen,
or twenty years
away from my life.

Nor can her pills,
lotions, potions
gift me in the same way
as the long-sought
Fountain of Youth.

Comment:

I should go to the doctor, but what can she, will she do? She can’t stop the hands on my body-clock and lop ten, fifteen, or twenty years away from my life. Nor can her pills, lotions, potions gift me in the same way as the long-sought, never discovered, Fountain of Youth.

Ah yes, my dear old body clock. Clocks went back last Sunday. My body clock still hasn’t quite caught up with the tick-tock clock with its Westminster Chimes and Nursery Rhymes. I have talked to quite a few people recently who have said the same thing. And it isn’t just the ageing and the aged – even young people, just out of their teens, feel the effects of the seasonal time change.

Apparently, the Insurance Companies notice a larger number of fender-benders, and worse, during the first few days after Old Father Time springs forward or leaps back. So why do we change the clocks and why does my body clock not immediately match the tick-tock clock? Good questions.

Maybe Salvador Dalí got it right. Time is Surreal. It is a clock folding itself over a tree branch or sliding over a waterfall, bent in two, with all its numbers abut to fly off. Moo says that his friend, Salvador Dalí, is jealous of Moo’s lovely painting, shown above. Moo says Dalí said he’d wished he’d painted it. I think that Moo, like all painters, has a little je ne sais pas quoi of the word magician about him. His words are as warped as his art. Who could even envy somebody who painted a clock like that.

I suspect Moo would not be able to ace his cognitive test if he actually drew something like that in answer to the prompt – “draw what time it is”. In fact, last time Moo was asked to do just that, this is what he drew – 10:42 AM. I don’t know about you, but I think Moo is a little bit strange. That doesn’t stp me liking him and using his paintings though.

Rage, Rage 39 & 40

Rage, Rage
39

Was I day-dreaming
when knife slipped
and ended up slicing
through my finger?

Blood everywhere
and a deep ugly, red wound
wedged between torn,
fleshy cliffs.

Short, sharp
shocks of shrill pain.

Little finger, left hand.
A glimpse of white bone.
Nobody here to help.
Don’t panic. Think.

40

Sheet from paper towel,
staunch, press down,
more pressure, find gauze,
a bandage, quick.

Take kitchen towel
from rail. Run
down hall, leaving
fresh blood spoor,
the cat following,
sniffing, licking
my blood
from the floor.

Open garage door,
get into car,
use one hand, clumsy,
on steering wheel,
hold other high,
blood seeping
down wrist
to soak sleeve.

Drive to emergency.
Fast.

Comment:

So fast, so quick, so clean. Look away, lose your attention for just a fraction of a moment and … as we grow older, so we must grow more aware of the pitfalls that surround us, especially if we live alone. I don’t live alone, but my beloved was away in Ottawa visiting our daughter and grandchild when that happened. I remember it so well.

Luckily, I had taken the St. John Ambulance First Aid course. The instructor told us – if anything happens you will go into overdrive and know exactly what to do. And I did. Cold running water, ice cube, paper towels, then real ones. Stop the blood flowing from the wound or else staunch it, slow it down.

But the hero of the day was that cat. She followed me down the corridor and my last mage of her, as I closed the door to the garage, was that of her licking the blood, my blood, from the floor. I remember too that one handed drive to the Emergency. Good job we had an automatic, not a gear shift. Don’t know what I sliced to cause so much blood – but it didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, refused to stop.

And more about that next time I write.

If I don’t go AWOL, as well I might!!!

Rage, Rage 38

Rage, Rage
38

Now, my heart is once more
a time-bomb ticking
beneath her fingers.

I dream of walking tall,
with her by my side,
in the youthful paradise
of a distant,
long-promised land.

My tom-tom heart,
softening clay,
putty beneath her fingers,
thumps out a hoodoo
voodoo beat on its drum.

Victor Sylvester,
and his orchestra,
Sundays on BBC radio,
announces his signature rhythm –
slow, slow, quick, quick, slow –
my mind waltzes to the music
plucked from my heart strings.

Wild winds blow in from the shore
buffeting my heart, breaking it apart.
Blown open, in spite of my dreams,
my secret is not a secret anymore.

Comment:

Absent without leave, I have chased the dreams of rugby and cricket and abandoned my poetry until another today. And here I am, a week after St. David’s Day, still dreaming, still raging, still recalling so many things.

Wild winds blow in from the shore buffeting my heart, breaking it apart. You can see, in the photo above, the wind tugging at the waves. A lurid sky fills with heavy clouds and oncoming rain. My heart is out there somewhere, wave-washed, blown open by the simple beauty of wind and sea.

How many now recall Victor Sylvester on BBC Radio on a Sunday afternoon? Or the Billy Cotton Band Show? That was our Sunday afternoon entertainment long before we had TV. You can’t imagine it, can you? A world without TV. So many things fade away from far too many people.

Who now will talk of my Voce and my Larwood, long ago? How many saw Hammond at his best, with his imperial cover drive? Ken Jones? Cliff Jones? JJ and JPR? Lloyd and Bleddyn? Old visions, buffet my heart, breaking it apart. Frank Worrall in Swansea at St. Helen’s. Everton De Courcy Weekes at Bristol, in the County Ground. I have the photos. I have the memories. And I have a broken heart when I remember things, some personal, some not, that so few people do.

Rage, Rage 36 & 37

Rage, Rage
36

How many times
must I open these
Pandora’s Boxes
packed so lovingly
to give me the tests
I loathe?

Yesterday they gave me
a throw-away plastic potty,
and three wooden spatulas.

I also got
an air-dry sample card,
stamped and dated.

37

Today
a teenage apprentice
prompts me to reveal
my birthdate, then binds my arm
with a thick rubber thong.

She tells me to make a fist
and probes with blunt fingers,
searching in vain for a fresh vein
she can open to extract
and bottle a sample
of my precious blood.

I watch my body’s sap
pumping out
in irregular spurts,
driven by my heart,
that worn-out
flesh-and-blood machine.

Drip by febrile drip,
blood accumulates
and the teenager smiles
with youth’s perfections:
slim body, wit, and grace.

Now, my heart is once more
a time-bomb ticking
beneath her fingers.

Comment:

“Youth’s perfections: slim body, wit, and grace.” Those were the days, my friends, I thought would never end. Then I watched my weight rising, my body thickening, my hips and knees sticking. But I am still me – my own hair, my own teeth, my own limbs, creaky as they are.

I remember. back in the days, watching the TV series – $6 million dollar man.” remember him? Artificial everything and he could out run a car, out jump a kangaroo, outswim an otter, out fight the world’s greatest ever boxers, with one hand tied behind his back. Everything artificial. The willing suspension of disbelief.

Well, I called a couple of friends from my rugby playing days, and guess what? They were all in competition with the $6,000,000 man. An artificial hip… an artificial knee … an artificial shoulder. One of my friends, probably the best player of the lot, had a shoulder replacement, two hip replacements, and two knee replacements. Try going through a metal detector with that lot clanking like Don Quixote’s armor on a warm day.

And DQ was lucky. His magic balsam would heal a man, even if he had been chopped in half by a malignant giant with a sharp sword. Instructions to his squire – “if that happens to me, just join the two halves together as closely and as carefully as you can. Then sprinkle a few drops of the balsam on my body and watch how the two halves grow back together, almost instantly.”

Well, it doesn’t always work like that. I spent half an hour soaking my thumbs in hot water when I got them stuck together using some form of Crazy Glue or Gorilla Glue or Rhinoceros Glue or Elephant Glue or the like. Now there’s a magic balsam for you. However, don’t get into any hot water until the halves are well set and the flesh has grown afresh. Otherwise you might come apart in the bath!

PS Moo did not think this was an amusing piece. So he would only give me a very early cartoon of a ticking alarm clock – well, four of them. And each one set to go off at a slightly different time. Way to go Moo.

Rage, Rage 35

Rage, Rage
35

Now,
once a month, they stick
a needle in my arm
and check the levels
of my PSA, cholesterol,
and testosterone.

Is my blood pressure rising?
Is my cholesterol high?
Are my electrolytes
ticking slowly down?

The doctor keeps telling me
it’s a level playing field
but every week
he changes the rules
and twice a year
he moves the goal-posts.

What game is he playing?
A man in a black-and-white
zebra shirt holds a whistle
to his lips while another
throws a penalty flag.

It comes out of the tv set
and falls flapping at my feet.
Now I know for certain that
I’m living in the Red Zone
and I’m running out of time.

Comment:

Now, once a month, they stick a needle in me! Not always in the same place. But, I sometimes feel like a pin cushion. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” have turned into the “probing instruments of innumerable doctors.” Try repeating those lines at speed and you will end up repeating the message, from lips to ear, like the battalions waiting to go over the top, used to do in the trenches of WWI.

Original message – “Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance.” Last message in sequence – “Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance.” Funny how times change. I am re-reading Don Quixote (yet again) and am bowled over by the length and complexity of the sentences. Then I realize how words, culture, times, and attitudes have changed. “Change and decay in all around we see…” – indeed we do.

How many people now know what ‘three and fourpence’ means? And how about LSD – and no, it’s not a psychedelic drug, it’s code for pounds, shillings, and pence. Well, for the original Latin terms for them anyway.

Oh the joys of AI – “The terms libra, sestercia (commonly sestertius), and denarius are the direct Roman ancestors of the British pre-decimal currency system (£sd), which was in use until 1971. The system was adopted from the Roman/Frankish model where a pound (libra) was divided into shillings (solidus) and pence (denarius).”

Oh the wonders of the British pre-decimal currency system (£sd). Four farthings = one penny; 12 pennies / pence = one shilling; 20 shillings = one pound; 21 shillings = one guinea. What fun we had adding and subtracting British coinage in those days, let alone multiplying and dividing for those wonderful state examinations.

Ah well, it’s all forgotten now, as are the jabs, the needles, and the tests. Anyone got a Wills’ Woodbine? Or a Player’s Navy Cut? And how about a Lucifer to light your fag? There weren’t any fags in my boarding school. Fagging was strictly forbidden. As was smoking. And drinking. And loads of other things that we did anyway.

Rage, Rage 34

Rage, Rage
34

A squiggle of spaghetti
or twisted noodles,
that’s what my brain
has become.

My second-hand mind
is a hand-me-down,
an antipersonnel bomb
from another place
and a distant time.

Blind, in so many ways,
with nowhere I want to go,
my soon-to-end days
lie humped on my shoulders,
weighing me down
as I limp along.

Comment:

You can blame my friend Moo for the painting. “That’s my view of your brain,” he told me. “A squiggle of spaghetti or twisted noodles.” I think his painting looks like what my Beloved, courtesy of Corrie Street (as was), calls a Spag Bowl. Funny how easy it is to become muddled and confused as we age. Did I shut the back door? Double-check. Yes, I did. And you can multiply that to the power of N (or DR – for don’t remember!). And what about those windmills that wave their arms in my mind? Will that be cash or “Charge!”

Re-reading the Quixote, side by side with a very good friend, I forget some of the ideas that I once had. I try to read my penciled marginal notes. What fun! First, I can hardly read them. Second, I can hardly understand them. And third, I have to reinvent what they might possibly have told me. All good fun. But sometimes, at the end of a session, my mind feels like the bodies of Don Quixote, Sancho, and Rocinante, after their meeting with the Yanguesans – battered, bruised, and beaten! Why, can someone kindly tell me, did Cervantes treat his two main characters to such frequent and brutal assaults?

Ah well, Friday today, and Friday is fish – not Spag Bowl. Are scallops fish? Not when they are sliced off your body with a razor-sharp sword. But then, I doubt if Quixote’s sword was razor sharp. It was probably vencida de la edad – conquered by age – just like he was. Conquered? No, not yet. Happily, I just limp along, however slowly. Ah yes, I forgot. I need a name for my Nexus. Maybe I’ll call it Rocinante, like DQ’s horse.

Rage, Rage 32 & 33

Rage, Rage
32

I miss
the swish and roar
of my incoming,
outgoing breath.

I miss
those Full Moon fingers
tinkling the tides
of my inner being,
making me strive
to keep myself alive.

My body’s house,
devoid of gnomes,
wolves, and pipes,
lies vacant and silent.

The full moon’s
rampant skull
empties the sky of stars
and fills my mind
with cratered shadows.

33

Strange creatures hide in the mist
that overcomes my brain.
I see the sudden flash
of sharp, lusting midnight teeth,

My heart turns into
a time bomb ticking
its irregular beat
in the cavity of my chest.

Am I a victim, then,
as Camus suggests,
or just another assassin?

A suicide bomber, perhaps,
with explosives strapped
inside my rib-cage
rather than round my chest
in a hidden vest?

Tick-a-tock
and tickety-tick-tock,
I can hear and feel
the arrhythmic clock
alarming me
as it arms itself in my chest.”Tick-a-tock
and tickety-tick-tock,
I can hear and feel
the arrhythmic clock
alarming me
as it arms itself in my chest.”

Comment:

So, Moo has just come back from wherever he’s been and wherever it was, he’s not telling me. However, he does say that I look All Shook Up. And he’s humming Elvis Presley songs at me. And the above painting is his suggestion for me for today. “Thank you, Moo. And welcome back.” He nods at me. “Good to see you two,” he says. “You spelt that wrong,” I tell him. “I didn’t,” he says. “We all know you’re a split personality and I am saying that I am pleased to see both halves of you again.” Oh, dear, you can never win with Moo. He always paints a different angle or comes round in a wiggling circle. “Ha!” he says. “At least I don’t paint myself into corners.”

Am I a victim, then, as Camus suggests, or just another assassin? Interesting suggestion. We are either murderers or victims. But I haven’t murdered anyone, that I am aware of. And I don’t feel myself to be a victim. So what is my dear friend Albert on about? Alas, he isn’t around to ask. I just have to read his books and see myself left wondering.

I guess it was all different in Paris, in the 1940, during the Nazi occupation. Anyone can talk a good game, but what do you do when the Gestapo knock on your door at 2:00 am? Good question. Existence precedes essence. We live. We survive. That’s Jean-Paul Sartre. And so is this – “L’homme n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il fait.” Man is no more than what he does. So there you have it. It’s never what you say you might do, or how you relate things in respect – it’s all about what you are doing right now. So – ask yourself that vital question – “What am I actually doing?” The answer you give will tell you a lot of things about yourself – if you are honest in what you say.

Rage, Rage 30 & 31

Rage, Rage
30

A pack of miniature wolves
infiltrated the midnight forest
flourishing in my other lung.

When the pibroch played,
they pointed their noses
at the spot where the full moon
would have been, if
I had invited her in.

They mingled their howls
with the bagpipes’ caterwaul
and I lay awake all night
with my heart beating
arrhythmic suspicions
on its blood red drum.

The drum played,
the pibroch wailed,
the wolves howled,
my body lay scarred by
an absence of sleep
and the presence of moonlight
that drove stars from the sky
and filled the room with shadows
and shifting shapes.

31

The full moon drew up water,
imposed high tides,
drew the wolves
by their drawstrings
out of my chest.

The piper paid his rent,
packed up his pipes,
took a sip of his whisky,
Bell’s – ‘a drop before ye go,’
and marched away,
leaving me alone.

Now silence rules my lungs.
Five deer stand silent
in the woods beneath my window.
I watch them watch the piper
pipe himself away.

It’s all over now,
the cough, the splutter,
the aches and pains
that told me I was alive.

I miss
the swish and roar
of my incoming,
outgoing breath.

Comment:

The piper marched away, leaving me alone. That’s the funny thing about pain, especially in our old age. It lets us know that yes, we are still alive. I know we are better off without it, but when it is there, it is better than the emptiness that will follow when we slip into the dark night that awaits us. Or perhaps it will be the golden dawn of another age. Many people tell us many things, but I don’t know how many people really and truly know. As I get older, I speculate more and more.

I once asked my grandfather if he was worried about dying. He looked at me for a long time. Then he said, “Well, one thing’s for certain. I know I am going to die. I’ll die if I worry about it and I’ll die if I don’t worry about it. So why worry about it?” He was a wonderful man with a wonderful attitude about so many things. But then he had survived the trenches in WWI and there weren’t many things he hadn’t seen. He rarely talked about it, but when he did, he told the most wonderful stories. And he sang all the old WWI songs too. A one man entertainment act for the small boy that would climb up onto his lap and say “Grandpa, tell me a story….” and he would begin “Once upon a time…” and that was the start of the magic.

And it’s the magic that we need. The magic that is so often missing in this age of information overload. “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.” Nor do we have any time to crawl into grandpa’s lap and seek those magic words – the words that start the willing suspension of disbelief – “once upon a time, a long time ago …” And, with a wave of the magic wand we are transported into a wonderland of dream and magic.

Rage, Rage 28 & 29

Rage, Rage
28

Two small gnomes
camped, one in each
of my lungs.

All night long
they played
their squeeze-box,
wheeze-box concertinas,
never quite in unison.

Sometimes they stamped
their feet and my body
rattled in time
with their dance steps.

Their wild night music
caught in my throat
and I coughed
unmusical songs
that spluttered
and choked me.

29

This morning, the bailiff,
Mr. Koffdrop, evicted
the two gnomes from my lungs.

Landlord Bodie
placed an ad on Kiji.

He rented the free space
in the left lung
to a tiny bag-piper
who took up residence
by my heart.

All night this piper piped me
a highland pibroch
on his whisky-worn pipes.

Comment:

All night this piper piped – and there is nothing stranger than having a clogged up, congested chest and hearing your own breath whistling in and out of your lungs. It certainly kept me awake. And I lay there remembering all the pipers I have ever heard piping. One very special one, from the Canadian Black Watch, gifted me the last image “a highland pibroch on his whisky-worn pipes”. A flask in his jacket and a nip every now and then to keep the music and the energy flowing. Scotch of course. None of the Japanese or Irish whisky varieties for that kilt-clad friend of mine. I can hear him now, as I type these lines – “A drop before ye go?”

As for the accordion, well, I have always liked the small, hand-held ones – squeeze boxes – wheeze boxes – and did those lungs of mine ever squeeze and wheeze. I called them Mr. Teasy-wheezy and Mr. Teasy-squeezy. And all night long they serenaded me. And I lay there, wide awake, not even drowsing, watching  Orion gradually striding his lonely way towards the western horizon. No rest for those afflicted with the squeezy-wheezy lung syndrome. And long may it stay away.

Rage, Rage 27

Rage, Rage
27

Last night
an east wind blew
outside my window.
It whistled and groaned
as it herded the stars
from left to right.

The stars pursued
the westering moon
and planets danced
to the rhythms
of the accordion playing
music in my chest.

The sky’s planetarium
folded and unfolded
its poker hands
of silent cards
marked with my fate.

Comment:

The photo is of the Hunter moon, as seen from Island View. It is quiet out here, very quiet, with very little light pollution. At night the stars shine bright and the constellations to North and South are clearly visible. Not so much so to East and West where the older trees tower. Occasionally, we get to see the Northern Lights. They can be incredible – great curtains of light hanging from the Northern Horizon. So bright, so clear, you can almost hear them crackle.

I have always loved the image of the planets dancing. If you have followed my poetry you will know that the idea of the Master of the Terracentric Universe, in Platonic and Neo-Platonic Theory, plays a large harp. The planets dance, forwards and backwards, to the sound of that harp. Of course, all that poetic beauty disappeared with the work of Galileo, Kepler, and all the students of the helio-centric universe. It is good to remember it though.

My beloved, born a Leo, loves to follow the progress of the sun. Each day she times its first appearance as it peeps above the ridge. Then she watches for it to arrive on the kitchen walls, and times that too. It is as if we lived as they lived thousands of years ago, in touch with nature, communicating with nature. And yet we are but a ten minute drive from the city centre.

The accordion playing music in my chest – you will have to wait until stanzas 28 & 29 for me to clarify that sound for you. I have been remiss in my postings. Very irregular, like my recently diagnosed A-Fib heart beat. Perhaps, after all, everything is linked, right down to the tiniest details, like posting blog notes and remembering all my e-friends out there. The known and the unknown.

Speaking of the known – Orion is gradually striding his way to the west. He dominates the southern sky at this time of year. He reminds me a lot of the Naked Man of Cerne Abbas. Except the Cerne Abbas man doesn’t move, while Orion definitely does. Or is it us who move around him. Your answer to that question will make you heliocentric – an observer, a measurer, like my beloved. Or it will make you Terracentric – a poet like me, well, an aspiring poet, who prefers the beauty of myth to the cold realities of science. Well, sometimes. Not always. But certainly in terms of my affinities to Plato and his celestial followers.