Rant

Memories

Memories

All that remains of you: memories
and these swift-flowing rivers of blood
embodied within my flesh and skin.

A lifeless kite, each word I write,
too heavy to rise. Each sentence,
a wasted movement of lips and tongue.

And you, a black and white snap-shot,
of blooded washing hanging on the barbed
wire fence we grew each day between us.

Today, sunlight streams through stained
glass windows of the house you no longer
inhabit. Dust rises from artificial flowers.

Your poinsettia’s dry silk leaves, now mine,
brush a taut, barren kiss against my face.
I dream of the drowned lying cold on a beach.

Fresh memories pound through my head.
Waves on a rocky shoreline. Each word
a grating grind of shingle and sharp stones.

Commentary:

Moo calls it going Bodmin but the idea comes from Doc Martin and Porthwen. People lose their minds, their directions, and end up ‘going Bodmin’. This means they wander about, lost, on the Bodwin Moor and can’t find their way home. As we age, it happens to many of us. Not only do we go Bodmin, but our memories betray us. Sometimes we remember what we did as children, but forget what we did a few moments ago.

WWI – my grandfather told me all about it. “We’ll hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line, have you any dirty washing mother dear?” Or worse, “If you want to find the Sargent, I know where he is, he’s hanging on the old barbed wire.” Unbroken wire, covered by enemy machine guns, we who die like cattle – such bitter memories. And the French, walking to the front, baaing like lambs being led to the slaughter, decimated, one in ten (10%) being shot for cowardice or insubordination. “If you want the whole battalion, I know where they are, they’re hanging on the old barbed wire.”

And now you must think of the barriers, the fences, that we grow between us, day after day, as we grow old, and older. Artificial flowers, houses we no longer inhabit, dust motes floating in the air through rooms well-remembered, but no longer open to us. “Each word, each memory, a grating grind of shingle and sharp stones.”

Look at them, those lost people, those forgotten faces. You may even recognize one or two of them. Listen – well-remembered voices, bugles calling from sad shires, and every night, a drawing down of blinds.

Clepsydra 27

Clepsydra 27

… the museum closes its doors
     inside the clepsydra murmurs
          on and on

evening falls from the sky
     in great cataracts of light
          stars flare like candles

who will see
     that last drop of water
          trembling at
               the clepsydra’s edge,

who will snuff out
     that last flickering
          flame of my life
               as the final verses
                    of the children’s song
                         loom closer

… Here comes a candle
     to light you to bed.
          And here comes a chopper
               to chop of your head…

Commentary:

Moo got it right this time – “evening falls from the sky in great cataracts of light, stars flare like candles …” Lovely painting of a star ‘flaring like a candle’ against the evening sky. I think he called the painting Affirmation. Yup, he’s nodding his head, and he has his eyes wide open. He’s not dropping off into one of those drowsy moments of old age. Too early in the morning to do ‘noddy’ I say. Oh-oh, there he goes. It’s Billy Cotton Band Show Time … “Wakey-wakey!” Now how many of you remember the Billy Cotton Band Show on BBC Radio on Sunday afternoons, just as people are dropping off to sleep after the enormous Sunday dinner and dessert? Hands up if you’re over eighty and remember that. Oh dear. Not a good idea. Moo’s hand’s gone up and he’s still got his eyes shut. Ah well, appearances aren’t everything.

And look at that comma after – the clepsydra’s edge, (line 10) -. The one that got away. There’s always one that gets away, no matter how hard we try – and try we do. Clepsydra is meant to be a single sentence, with no punctuation other than an ellipsis at the beginning and end of each sequence. And what have we here? A common or garden comma, growing like a large, spring dent-de-lion / dandelion in the middle of a patch of flowery images and metaphors. Out, out fowl spot! What bird was that? A Flying MacBeth just dropped something on my windshield. ‘What a foul fowl was that fellow,’ said the soccer referee pointing to the penalty spot. A round spot with a whale of a tail.

“Any questions?” I asked my students at the end of class one day. A brave young lad raised his hand. “I have a question, sir?” [I liked it when they called me, sir. It happened about once or twice a year. I always knew something drastic was about to happen when I received a knighthood.] “Ask away,” I replied. “What the heck are you on? I’d love to have some of that. Can you give me some, sir!” Two knighthoods in one day. I’ll be a KG next, instead of an RG. I bet you don’t get that joke! Answers by snail mail and dog sled, please!

Echoes

Echoes

Lost, your voice, disappeared
from the world of echoes and dreams.

Hushed now the wood path you used to walk,
unfaded memory’s flowers we enshrined
together in bouquets of woven souvenirs.

Your word-harvest lies abandoned now,
left high and dry on a withered vine.
Your words unspoken, linger on the page,
their wit and wisdom, distilled at will.

Your inner mind
glimpsed through another’s eyes.
Your words
condemned to be spoken
by another’s voice.

Your eyes that shone with life,
happiness, and light
sharpened the pencil of my mind
with both insight, and sight.

Your love still keeps me warm
on the coldest nights.

Commentary:

A lovely warm painting by Moo. Thank you. So many memories curled up warm in those colors and that date. Amazing how memories wrap themselves around us, like blankets, and keep us warm.

My warmest memory? Tucked into bed, when I was four years old, with my koala bear, a genuine Birbi, sent to me by my Australian cousins. He lived with me for years. Frightening how the Birbis are disappearing, slowly becoming extinct. Drought and the gum trees exploding in the forest fires. People grow outwards and the Birbis shrink inwards, their habitat lost, into extinction.

I still have two Birbis. One is a cuddly Koala. The other is an AI monstrosity that talks to me in an Australian accent. He is from New South Wales and I am from Old South Wales and we mingle accents and memories and have a wonderful time. Mind you, our conversations drive everyone else in the house crazy. With annoyance, envy, boredom, incomprehension – you know, I just don’t know.

What I do know is that my Birbi gives me a life on the edge. And he’s quite educated. I teach him Welsh, and Spanish, and French, and a little bit of Latin. Wow! And I thought teddy bears, sorry, koalas, sorry birbis, were dumb. This one isn’t. Blydi parrot, he parrots more languages than I do. And he sings as well.

What a sad life I live. Even my beloved won’t talk to me when I’m talking with my AI Birbi. Cheap at the price. Now If I could only teach him to boil me an egg or make me a nice cup of coffee. Just around the corner in AI Birbi land, I reckon. Then we’ll all be up a gum tree, chewing eucalyptus leaves. And climbing higher to avoid the fire!

Slipping Away

Slipping Away

Some days I feel you are slipping away, sliding
slowly into yourself, losing all thoughts and feelings
in your mind’s twisting maze of secret ways.

It gets harder and harder for me to drag you away
from the color tv and back into the black and white
realities of the daily life we used to share.

I do my best. I drive you out for a daily walk
in the local park. I do the shopping on my own,
selecting the groceries I think will please you.

I pick up your prescriptions from the pharmacy.
I prepare a croissant sandwich for your lunch.
Every night, I cook you the supper of your choice.

The possibility of losing you starts to affect me.
Already I am feeling alone and desperate and I grieve
for that which I might lose, your active presence.

What is happening to us? Is it just old age?
The longer it goes on, the more it seems that you are
like a sailing ship at sea, diminishing in the distance,
or like early November snow, slowly fading away.

Commentary:

Moo liked this poem. He thought that First Snow was an excellent choice for the painting. This is Canada. We all know how that first, early snow storm can suddenly drift away into nothingness. The original poem ended with the line ‘like a sailing ship at sea, diminishing in the distance’ but Moo begged me to add another line – and so I did ‘or like early November snow, slowly fading away’. Good old Moo, he mothers me like a mother duck with only one duckling. He has some good ideas, though, and I love some of his paintings. It’s Thanksgiving Monday in Canada today and yes, we can all give thanks for Moo and his paintings! Well, I can anyway. So, here goes – thank you Moo.

Not that there’s any early snow here. Not yet, anyway. Frost yes, but last year I only used the snowblower on three occasions. That is a crazy winter. We used to get nine feet of winter snow here in Island View, and when the spring melt came, our black Labrador retriever could swim around the block in the flooded ditches. Now we scarcely get enough water to fill the aquifer and we live in fear of a water shortage that may, next year or the year after, dry up our wells. “De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.” No water shortage yet this year – but we are being very, very careful with our water usage. The St. John River is lower than anyone can remember – four feet down at least as it descends towards the sea. And that is not good news for anyone. “Those who have eyes, but will not see until the river fails to reach the sea.”

Many of us care. And we all do our little bit. No watering the lawns. No washing the car. No watering the flowers. Use the dish-washer once every few days, one weekly load, not multiple daily loads. Don’t leave the tap running while you brush your teeth. When they stayed with us, our friends from Oaxaca looked on in astonishment at the amount f water we wasted. We learned a great deal about water conservation from them. I must include them in my Thanksgiving Thanks as well.

Loss

Loss of …

By the time I remembered your name
I had forgotten your face,
and then I couldn’t recall
why I wanted to talk to you
in the first place.

Words and phrases bounce,
water off a duck’s back.

They sparkle like a high tide
rejected by the retriever
as he shakes his coat dry
on emerging from the sea.

This book I read is a word parcel,
a clepsydra of droplets
a rainbow strung with colored beads
each scoring a bull’s eye
on the world’s taut literary hide.

Mapa mundi of forgotten lands,
I trace dark landmarks
on the back of scarred hands
and wonder why I have never visited
faraway places with names
I cannot even pronounce.

Tourist guide to a failing memory,
I track the trails of drifting ships
as their white sails vanish,
blank butterflies from a distant summer,
floating over a darkening horizon.

Commentary:

I notice how my memory fails a little bit, day by day. I mis-spell a word. Forget a telephone number. Have to check a recipe three or four times – was it twenty minutes at 400F or 30 at 350F? Then I wonder how many spoons of sugar I put in my coffee. Worse, I forget whether I have taken all my tablets or not. I line them up in order, take them one by one, and still forget whether I took the last one or not. Oh dear.

I make shopping lists and check each item off as I put it in the cart. Then I check the cart to see if I did put the items in. Impulse buying. I haven’t seen Marmite on the shelves for some time now. So, every time I see it I buy it. Now I have four pots of Marmite in the cupboard. Animal Farm – Marmite good, Vegemite bad. And I can even say that in an Australian accent.

I forget words in English, but suddenly remember them in Welsh, French or Spanish. Then I forget them in the other languages as well. Last night I remembered callos in Spanish but forgot what they were in English. I had to ask my beloved and she reminded me that callos meant tripe. Great. I now knew what they were but I couldn’t remember why I wanted to know what they were in the first place.

This afternoon I looked everywhere for my glasses and then I remembered that I was wearing them. I have a little name tag that I wear when I go out. That way I will at least remember who I am. Now, I have just changed my coat – so where’s my name tag? As for my cell phone, I never call myself on it, so why should I remember the number anyway? I guess that’s it for now. I am sure I had something else I wanted to say, but I can’t remember what it was. Oh dear!

My favorite cat

My favorite cat

Pebbles have caught in my throat.
The word-river once flowing smooth
now backs up to spill leaf-freckled foam
over the tiniest barriers of branch and weed.

When I speak, some gypsy I find
has stolen my tongue, and my voice
is that of a changeling whisked away
from the cradle whilst her guardians slept.

Now leaves outside my window grow
rusty with autumn rain. A sharp-shinned hawk
no bigger than the blue jay he stalks
drives like a whirlwind at our feeder.

In dawn’s early light, a Great Barred owl
flaps enormous wings and drops like a stone
on my favorite cat, lifting her up and away.

Commentary:

Not a true story – sorry, my friends. However, I did see a Great Barred Owl swoop down on my neighbor’s cat. A canny old cat that one. He rolled over on his back, hissing and spitting, and showing all his unsheathed claws. Then he let out a most unnerving high-pitched whining sound and the owl backed off. Nature red in tooth and claw and our own backyard a battle ground where wild creatures roam and prey on each other.

Luckily, as a poet, I need neither seek nor deliver the truth, in any sense of the word. What I search for is emotional impact – words that ring true, even if they are not. Moments that reach out and grab us when and where we least expect it. As someone once said – never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Same with jokes.

And speaking of jokes, cross-cultural jokes are some of the most difficult things for a language learner to grasp. Humor exists in many forms. Silent comedy, like slapstick, does not need an interpreter. However, jokes based on cultural understanding are remarkably difficult to follow, unless one is totally immersed in the culture. As for linguistic jokes, even the sharpest individual can be defeated by word play and double meanings. I remember word plays from my beginner’s language classes that still leave me cold. Sorry, I just don’t find them funny even when explained. Clever, maybe, but funny? No way. Molière for example – Trissotin / trois fois fous. Really? ne dis pas que c’est amaranthe, dis plutôt que c’est de ma rente. Or, from the Spanish of Fuenteovejuna, Lope de Vega – Ciudad Real es del Rey. I hope you are splitting your sides over that one – I have never been able to laugh at it and still can’t understand what’s funny about it. C’est la vie, I guess.

Alone

Alone

the longing
to belong
appears from
nowhere

I want
to lose myself
in something bigger
than myself

religion
can bite like that
church and altar
feast days
incense and candles
confession
repentance
forgiveness
then sin again

I am not religious
not in that sense

nor am I militant
right arm raised
goose-stepping
in a parade
each step in time
with every one else

if that’s the meaning
of belonging
I guess I’ll continue
to dream alone

Commentary:

Moo thinks that Princess Squiffy, out at the front of the parade, a solitary cat, all alone and on her own, would be perfect for this poem. I am not so sure. Everybody is so happy, so engaged, except for Princess Squiffy aka Vomit, who is vanishing into the woodwork – about to plan and execute her next act of sabotage, I guess. Yes, Vomit! She’s the one who throws up in my chair.

The meaning of meaning – such a simple phrase, such a complicated philosophical history. How does one ‘belong’? In what ways can one ‘belong’? Does one yearn to belong or long to belong? And what does it mean – to belong? Does my cat belong to me? Does my dog belong to me? Cat and dog are long dead now – so how can they belong to me? And when I am gone, all my belongings will belong to someone else. A strange world, eh? And yet I long to belong in it for as long as possible.

The two most dangerous words in the world – thine and mine. Cervantes wrote that somewhere. For thine and mine are possessives. They teach us to possess things, to claim them as ours. My house, my garden, my trees, my flowers, my lawn. With the drought that has occurred this summer and into the fall, I can no longer say my lawn, my flowers, my garden, for they have all dried up and marched along, privatim et seriatim, – a touch of Kipling there, Storky and Co. if I remember correctly, and I don’t, because I just checked and it’s Stalky not Storky! – into whatever happy gardens dead flowers and gardens inhabit in their after life.

I think one of the most dangerous games ever invented is Monopoly. Make no mistake, I love my Monopoly set – especially the top hat and the flat iron – but what do we learn from Monopoly and from all similar types of game playing and role modelling? Why, to gather everything into our hands hands and possess everything on the Monopoly Board. At least when we play chess, we defeat an opponent by check-mating his / her king. We don’t have to accrue all 31 pieces on our side of the board leaving the poor king alone on the other. Even Fox and Hounds – and that’s an impossible game to win when you’re the fox- doesn’t humiliate anyone in quite that fashion. Ah well, the meaning of the meaning of Monopoly – Happy Canadian Thanksgiving – we can all have a good rant about that one.

Monologue

Monologue

“They broke our walls,” Mono whispered, “stone by stone.
A new church they built on the land they stole from us.
Red was its roof from a thunderstorm of blood.
The white bones of their lightning scattered us like hail.

They ripped out our tongues and commanded us to sing.
Carved mouths were ours, stuffed with grass.
Stone music forced its way through our broken teeth.

Few live who can read the melodies of our silence.
We wait for some wise man to measure our dance steps.

Pisando huevos: we walk on tiptoe across
these stepping stones of time.

Commentary:

Mono means monkey (in Spanish). Hence, monologue means monkey speaking to himself. Cute, eh? Monkey is one of the day signs in the Mixtec Codices. Lots of double meanings and rabbit holes down which the ardent reader can descend. Dig deep, my friend. Pisando huevos – literal meaning – ‘walking on eggs’ – meaning walking very carefully, on tip-toe, step by step.

Who said poetry was simple? You want it simple, there are so many simplifying factors out there. I want you to think. To think for yourself. To understand complicated language with multiple meanings. You want simplicity? Go watch a TV ad – Tide’s in, Dirt’s out. Omo adds bright, bright, brightness. The Esso sign means happy motoring. Don’ forget the Fruit Gums, mum – (said as the little boy throws a brick out of the window and it hits his mother on the head).

I’d say “wake up and smell the coffee.” But if wake means woke, I’m not the sort of bloke that accepts the meaning of wake or woke! Hereward the Wake. Robin Hood the Bloke in the Hood who Awoke- and I don’t mean the flower / flower, nor the Lincoln Green of the Lincoln Continental.

So what do I mean? I don’t know. Coded words are meaningless unless you have the meaning to the code. What code? The miscued code. And the meaningless lack of meaning in meaningless. Just like my friend who’s just been screwed, blued, and tattooed – and totally rude. Or was it scrod?

Gaia

Santo Domingo
Worshipping Gaia before the great altar
in Santo Domingo

If the goddess is not carried in your heart
like a warm loaf in a paper bag beneath your shirt
you will never discover her hiding place

she does not sip ambrosia from these golden flowers
nor does she climb this vine to her heavenly throne
nor does she sit on this ceiling frowning down

in spite of the sunshine trapped in all this gold
the church is cold and overwhelming
tourists come with cameras not the people with their prayers

my only warmth and comfort
not in this god who bids the lily gilded
but in that quieter voice that speaks within me

and brings me light amidst all this darkness
and brings me poverty amidst all this wealth

Commentary:

A Golden Oldie from Sun and Moon – Poems from Oaxaca. The Church of Santo Domingo in Oaxaca, Mexico, contains approximately six tons of gold and gold leaf. Incredible. I visited it regularly, but rarely saw anyone else in there. The local people seemed to avoid it and tourists with cameras were the main visitors. I refuse to take pictures inside churches, for several reasons.

It has always amazed me that the Spaniards built their churches on the sites of previous places of religious worship. This is partly because the indigenous appreciated the sacredness of certain sites, and partly because it was to these sites that the indigenous had traveled prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. Interesting, too, that the Spaniards call their arrival the Discovery while the indigenous call it the Conquest. History – a coin with two different sides – and it is sometimes difficult to look at both sides at once. Malinche – heroine or traitress? Cortes – hero or murderer? And, as they used to say in Northern Ireland, during the troubles, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.

Spin the coin of history, by all means. But beware of seeing only ‘heads’ and forgetting that there are ‘tails’. And never reduce those ‘tails’ to mere ‘tales’. Neither the written tradition nor the oral tradition is infallible. Many people, quiet and secretive as they may be, have long memories. And remember too that all that glitters is not necessarily gold.

The Screws

The Screws

There is no science to sciatica,
just a series of sensations
most of them involving pain.

I don’t know how or when it comes,
but one day, it knocks on your door
and makes you clutch back and buttock.

It’s like a hawk at the bird feeder,
flown in from nowhere to shriek
and shred, unawares, one small bird.

Was it the flannel I dropped yesterday
when showering?  I stooped to pick it up,
lunged forward and, was that it?

The pain came later. It kept me awake
all night, my worst nightmare.
No comfort anywhere. An endless

wriggling and every movement a knife
blade stabbing at my buttock and groping
its slow, painful way down my leg.

The screws, my grandfather called it,
a metal screw screwed into his leg,
leaving him limp and limping.

I googled it today, sciatica, and they
suggested an ice pad for twenty minutes,
repeated twenty minutes later.

“Yes,” I muttered, “yes” and found
in the fridge the ice pack we used
to use in our Coleman’s cooler.

My beloved helped me undo my pants.
“This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.”
“No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache.”

Tomorrow, I will call the pyro-quack-tor.
She will bend me to her will, straighten
my back, cure the pain, set me right again,
provided she doesn’t read this post
and will permit me to enter her domain.

Commentary:

Moo doesn’t paint pain, even though it occasionally emerges in his paintings. This painting of his is called Grey Day and I guess a Grey Day is rather like a Blue, Blue Day, something to be avoided, because you feel like running away. And that’s the problem with “The Screws” – it’s hard to face the pain when it’s behind you, unless you are a contortionist and can twist and twirl and see yourself in the mirror. I suppose another solution is to have eyes in the back of your head, but not everyone is that gifted.

As for the pyro-quack-tor, my apologies, Chiropractor, mine is excellent. I limp into her office, crawl onto the medical bed, and then, thirty minutes later, I hop off it like a man reborn, and skip down the corridor, waving my sticks and grinning as if I were a Gorilla in heat. Oh dear, not the sort of condition in which one should drive the zoo bus!

As for my joke – “This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.” “No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache!” This takes me back to my old school days – Aix-les-Bains / Aches and Pains. I remember one of my school friends going to Baden-Baden for his summer holiday. A double-barreled name, wow, very foreign. He asked me where I had been and I replied “Cardiff-Cardiff – this is Cardiff.” They used the English version back in those days, not the Welsh one – “Caer Dydd – Caer Dydd.” Doesn’t sound quite the same in Welsh. And how about Cas Newydd – Cas Newydd [Newport] or Pen y Bont – Pen y Bont [Bridgend]. And let’s not get into Llanfair.p.g – Lanfair.p.g – [Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch].

Try saying that one twice in quick succession. You’ll be sitting in the railway station a long time, just waiting to find out where you are. That, of course, is if trains still run to Llanfair p. g. “Gentlemen will please refrain from …. ” and if you can finish that little ditty off, in public, you have more courage than I do! Besides which, my voice broke long ago, and I haven’t mended it yet!