Lucky Dip
Lost
and all at sea,
I reach for a life raft
and
find only an apple
bobbing in the waves.
Now
I must grasp it firmly,
like a stinging nettle,
not with my hands,
but blindfold,
and
with my teeth.
Lucky Dip
Grief
What foods would you like to make?
What foods would you like to make?
Walking round the supermarket the other day, I was astonished by the high prices now written on labels. Meat is virtually unaffordable, especially the good cuts. Butter at $9.00 a lb is a shock to the system. Eggs are up to $6.00 or more for a dozen. Wow! So much of what I used to cook I can now no longer afford. So What foods would I like to make?
Good, wholesome, cheap, nourishing foods. Foods that could be distributed to the city’s poorest people, at very little cost. Foods that would support those who are struggling with high rentals or rapidly climbing mortgages. Foods that would give a genuine opportunity to do both, to those who are wondering whether they should heat or eat . Foods that would allow people to stay on their medication and not be forced to choose between eating, heating, or skipping their pills.
Now, with these enormous heatwaves, house-cooling is also a priority, as is clean air, and clean water. Our food preparation, sooner or later, will have to take so many different factors into account. ‘Brother, there’s a reckoning comin’ in the morning’ – the spiritual says it well and speaks true – ‘better get ready ‘cos I’m giving you the warning’.
And remember, the percentages of people who can no longer afford to live a decent, respectable life is rising, not falling. Food Banks are on the rise and more people are using them. Soup kitchens too. In the United Kingdom, now known as the Untied Kingdom, it is rumored that government is cutting sponsorship to food banks so that more people will return to their daily gigs and fulfill their duties of supporting themselves financially by seeking multiple employments at minimum wage or less. Alas, even then, with multiple jobs and moonlighting, they cannot necessarily sustain a decent life-style.
So, what foods would I like to make? Good, cheap wholesome foods that would support a maximum number of people for a maximum span of time. Pax amorque.
What Bothers You and Why?
What bothers you and why?
I went to the pharmacy today for my regular shots, booster and upgrade. The pharmacist asked me if I was allergic to anything. “Yes,” I replied. “I am allergic to stupidity.”
Stupidity is a singular thing, but it comes in many forms. The car driver who weaves his car through thick traffic, breaking the speed limit, threading a narrow pathway, overtaking on the inside, the outside, turning a two way street into a three way street by adding a third lane, even though there is oncoming traffic in the new lane he has built for himself. Such people rely on the charity of others to give way and make space.
Then there are incompetent teachers. Not all teachers are incompetent. Some are wonderful, kind, friendly, and comforting. Others are martinets, escaped from the army cage, and strutting the classroom, using the ruler to beat the students into submission. ‘My way or the highway,’ they claim, and what they say goes, even if it climbs to the height of stupidity or falls to the bottom of the well of incompetence.
Goya illustrated the nature of various kinds of stupidity in his wonderful etchings. Witches flying, donkeys braying, simple people worshipping the expensive clothing but never seeing the corruption it covers. So, turn to the Caprichos and the Proverbios, or, if you want to receive a real lesson in man’s inhumanity to man, look at the Desastres de la Guerra, the disasters of war.
Stupidity – a simple word – but with multiple meanings. What bothers me, and why? Stupidity, plain and simple, in its multitudinous forms.
Window Pain
Window Pain
I live in a world beyond the material world.
At night, I swim, a silver fish, among the stars.
Constellations net me in their glistening hair.
By day I wander along a piano’s keys.
I replay life’s golden dreams again and again,
its quartets, concertos, and its symphonies.
A harmonious blacksmith, I no longer know
who, or what, I am. I only know I exist right here,
at my desk, looking out through my window,
a window in my mind, that serves as a mirror,
reflecting all I was, and am, and ever will be.
Sometimes, the sun shines. Often the rain
falls cold against that window pane, and I press
my nose against cold glass, and feel again the pain.
Lac Megantic – 10 years on
Lac Megantic
ten years on
Fire on the water, the waves ablaze,
and the sound, a monster, indestructible,
a dragon descending, breathing fire,
so swift, so powerful, come sudden
from nowhere, yet another disaster,
one of the many that torment us
now and then with its ravage and roar.
It refused to move on until sated – but
who could satisfy the monster’s hunger,
destroy its will, defeat its power?
Not us with our pitiful sacrifices,
homes, friends, family, devoured.
In spite of our efforts to rebuild,
nothing can ever be the same.
Ten years later, memories, grief,
and our tears are all that remain.
Yes, it has left, but what can we do
to stop it, if, and when, it comes again?
Comment: I wrote this poem on July 6, 2023, while listening to the CBC radio commentary on the tenth anniversary of the Lac Megantic disaster. A terrible event, it still haunts so many people, and yes, the fears, tears, grief, and memories linger on. How could they not?
Painting – Poppies – by Clare Moore.
A World of Silence
A World of Silence
My dreams are black-and-white movies,
no voices, with the cinema pianist tapping
silent notes on the hammer dulcimer.
Shadowy images, cast by a candle, flicker
along the walls, and I am back in school,
walking, half-asleep to midnight mass.
I stumble forward, from that distant past
towards a series of unknown futures
none of which may ever come to pass.
In the Big Top of my head, the gymnasts
hold hands and in silence float their clouds
above the heads of the wondering crowds.
To fall or not to fall, to fall to rise no more.
Soundless sighs erupt from silent, open
mouths as the tight-rope walker sets out.
The umbrella in his hand is a Roman candle
that throws shadows on the circus sand
as clowns with bulbous noses cavort below.
The ring-master flexes an inaudible whip.
The carnival ponies trot up and down.
The motor-bike rider accelerates. In the hush
the bike ascends the Wall of Death and falls,
diving down, down, down, into silence.
“All words come out of silence. The language of poetry rises from, and returns to, silence.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 110.
Old Man Sin Drome
Old Man Sin Drome
Damn! He’s done it again.
He must pretend it hasn’t happened.
He struggles out of his jeans,
runs the hot tap in the powder room,
removes his underoos,
and places them in the basin.
He adds soap and watches the water
bubble and change color.
He rolls up his sleeves,
places his hands in the hot suds,
grabs the nail brush,
and starts to scrub.
Cancer. He is washing it away,
removing its stain, the smell,
the pain of its presence.
He drains the water and wrings
his underoos, twisting them this way
and that in an effort to purge.
More water now, no soap.
He waits for the water to discolor.
When it doesn’t, he knows that all
is well and the evidence destroyed.
He wrings out his underoos again,
then hangs them over the air vent to dry.
He keeps a spare pair in the cabinet drawer.
He puts them on, struggles back into his jeans,
and hopes that nobody will ever find out.
Wash Day Blues
Wash-Day Blues
“Out, out, foul spot.” Yet,
however much I scrub them,
those blood spots on my clothes
will not disappear. No seas
incarnadine for me. Picking
at scabs, my fingernails draw blood.
with so many ragged edges.
The old, stale liquid flows
fresh again from once-healed wounds.
Why made me open them up?
Was it just boredom? Or that itch
ever nibbling at the mind’s edge?
Tell me, how do we walk away?
How do we heal ourselves?
How do we forgive and forget?
Does the fresh blood wash away
the dirt I feel crusted round me?
Will I ever be clean again?
Wednesday is wash-day.
I scrub again and again
at all my dirty linen. Then I watch
as my wrinkled skin grows damp, scabs
soften, and I open them once more.
Lost
Lost
Where can it be? I put it
somewhere safe, but I
can’t remember where.
So many things grow legs,
go absent without leave,
walk out of my world.
I am slowly losing control.
My life will soon be left
in somebody else’s hands.
They will control my wants
needs, and necessities.
Then I too will be lost.
Placed somewhere safe,
perhaps, there to lie forgotten,
abandoned, secure, perhaps,
but who knows at what cost.
A Darker Mist
A Darker Mist
Sometimes a dark mist marches over
the sea-salt marsh flats and, a sea-bird
come to land, nests in my heart. This lone
bird brings others and soon a colony sings
its chorus in time with the incoming tide
that threatens to overwhelm me.
My body’s weak clay responds to this
darkness and slips into the chaotic
cacophony of multiple voices
raised to shut me off from the light.
My soul, a seagull seeking the sun,
rises upwards, ever upwards,
in search of the sunshine, that silver
lining that redeems every cloud, belying
the darkness of this gathering gloom.
“You will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over landscape.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 94.
rogermoorepoet 