A Little Known Incident from WWII

Only the stretcher bearers had been spared;
the rest were left beheaded: officers
and other ranks, along with all their horses.
The severed heads, with caps and helmets still
in place, were strewn about like poppy seed -
though not one horse's head was ever found.

Full military honours. All the works.
Funerals to die for - for the horses.
The soldiers though, could still be put to use -
Praise be to God for lead and hollow men!
Dad's wax and dead match therapy, would see
them whole again - and back on the front line.

But for the moment: carnage in a box!
I saw the deed in terms of what I knew:
the havoc wreaked by Foxy on our hens:
in my mind's eye I saw the flying limbs,
and massive flows of blood from open necks.
Rommel, I knew, was called The Desert Fox,
but could you have a Rommel under 5?

An uncle came by at the crucial time.
"I see you've resurrected them," he said.
I didn't know what "resurrected" meant.
"I can't bring back the horses," I replied.
"Indeed," he laughed, "not creatures without souls!"
"What's souls?" I asked. "It's heads that they have lost!"
It was my launch pad to theology.

Shaping the Clay

A sculptor toils to shape the stone
or mould the pliant clay.
His work is physical; the forms
have heft, exist in space.

Located in the ideal place,

a word can take
a sculptural form.
It fills the space
and shapes the space around

another secret one : The Lad Who Drew Ellipses.

for this one I am indebted both to Jim at The Truth a bout Lies and to The Writers' Island prompt: Secrets. It was Jim's comment on my original response to the prompt (for which scroll down 2 posts) which led to this poem - and do I feel a series coming on?


Ex-officer, ex-guards -
or so he'd say, although
he seemed too short to me -
but now a clerk-of-works,
his office a small shed
with panoramic view
of all the square bashing
his stalwart heart could wish.

Teased by sub-contractors -
one in particular -
whose knowledge he'd rely
upon to see him through.
The open secrecy
with which he led his life
had never helped his cause.

Each Friday he'd arrive,
small brown attache case
and polka dot bow tie,
the usual bowler hat.
Then enter "Irish Tom",
one trouser leg rolled up.
"Off out this ev'ning George?
Where's it to be tonight?"
And then he'd waddle back
and forth and slap his sides
with dead straight arms and quack.
"Quack, Georgie Boy, Quack! Quack!
And kiss the nice duck's arse!"

And George would look at me:
"Do you know how to draw
ellipses lad?" he'd ask.
"I think so, George," I'd say.
And taking tapes and DIM *
books we would go. Again
he'd look and this time say:
"I'm not allowed to tell
you lad, on pain of death!"
"I know," I'd tell him, "and
I do not need to know.
We all have secrets, George."

In truth, I never had
to draw him an ellipse.
It was a code - one known
to all - that meant: let's go!
Just something that George said.
It got me known though, as
the lad who draws ellipses.

*DIM book: Dimensions Book - a note book ruled rather like a single cash book in which we wrote our measurements and calculations.

Shucks to idols.

They fuck you up, your heroes do.
Those most in need are those who choose
the Rooneys of this world,
and even now at my great age,
mine are a deeper shade of sage -
and some are even midnight blue.
Con artists all, they sell you short.
We're ferries at a channel port,
role models roll both on and off -
no wonder wiser elders scoff!

And if it's true, the world's a stage
and we but act our given parts,
it follows that our heroes too
are stage personae, lacking hearts.
There's nothing there, the soul to please,
but comedies and tragedies.
We choose them when we're least informed,
then wonder how we get deformed.
They're not all bad, but - rule of thumb -
you would not take one home to mum.

Jingle Poetry's prompt for this week was Idols, Role Models, Mentors. It started a train of thought that resulted in the above offering.

Reflections.

Another from the sketchbook. I had driven out to capture a particular group of trees, parked under some nearby trees and became fascinated by the reflections of them on the car.

Christmas Turkey

From this week's Writers' Island prompt: Secret.

Granddad would bag the parson's nose,
the wishbone was fair game between
the likes of we two boys. We'd each
take hold, and on mum's say-so, rip
the thing apart, and doing so,
would make a secret wish. The bone
would split unequally. Next, mum,
behind her back,would hide them in
her fist - just two white ends would show.
Then one of us would choose. We each
would hope the other would step up.
Whoever chose - or by default
obtained - the larger part, would wish.
The wish just might be granted - if
you kept it to yourself and breathed
no word to anyone. That was
the challenge. Meet it, and you well
might have your heart's desire. But what
if it came true for you? What then?
Could some malignant spirit steal
the booty from your grasp? I have
to say, I never did find out,
and even now I cannot tell
you, friend, one word of what I wished.

Minutely Worked Out - A Complete Theory of Time

I saw a clock on a mantlepiece
that was telling three different times,
it belonged to Joe , a man of peace,
who played me its three different chimes.

I watch the hands and I meditates,
for I really like to see
how time and the hands have different rates
at different times said he

This one here shows the time to come...
and here is the time to go!
But what is to go and who is to come?
asked I, who wanted to know.

Whatever is up and whoever is down
said the man I knew as Joe.
Life is a matter of ups and downs,
as everyone here must know.

And the third time there? I asked with a smile.
It's the start of an inch and the end of a mile
said Joe with a puzzled frown.
(I thought I was getting him down.)

Inches and miles and ups and downs...
isn't it time to stop?
I asked with a surreptitious look
a Joe's remarkable clock.

Not at all said he, with a look of pain,
I am on the track of time.
It's a slippery worm that farts in your brain
and hides its face in the slime.

It's a bird on the wing or a seagull's screech,
a tangle of wool or a line on a chart,
it's a ripple that runs on a shingle beach
or the sound of a dead man's heart.

Whatever it is and wherever it goes,
you can't define it, it tickles your toes.
It's a day and a half or a couple of ticks,
as light as a feather, as heavy as bricks.

Like the whale as it swims,
it's a back or a tail,
the rest you imagine over your Pimms:
it might be a pig or even a snail.

You can't see it all,
it's a conjuring trick,
you don't know whether to run or crawl -
but whichever you do, do it pretty damned quick!

The Trees

What if these trees have memories?
What would you say to know that sap
is heavy with the fruits of thought
that leaves alone can understand?

A wood is a monastic place,
its trees provide incessant prayer,
and images of states of grace
are mined by roots and raised to God
in litanies the branches trace -
though when a breeze excites a tree
the prayers are more extempore.

I'm safer here beneath their shade
than any arched or stone arcade;
they will not let the world intrude,
but guard this peace and solitude
and all those constant streams that rise
from spirit earth to spirit skies
to make our intervening space
a pristine, breathing, birthing place.

Lake Windermere

Towards the end of January I showed some of my earliest photographs, taken in my late teens or soon after, which I had come across in the process of trying to re-organise my work space. They depressed me slightly, if the truth be known, because I thought them better than I am achieving now, notwithstanding the fact that I now have much superior equipment.

Here I am trying to correct the emphasis. This is one of my earliest watercolours. I don't feel the same way about it, though it is not a finished painting, but a sketch from my sketch book.

A Perfect Bloody Picnic

*
Magpie Tales provided this image for this week's prompt.
*
Out of the sun -
or a hundred watt bulb -
the sabre-toothed hornets,
wave upon wave
had fallen upon
their natural foes,
the five-fanged flies
with their death-ray eyes
laying their eggs
in a sausage meat roll
and feasting upon
the blow-out prepared
for a human tribe
that was looking scared.

The flies fighting back
at the rival gang,
tearing the teeth
from the hornets' jaws,
added more blood
to the sanguine scene,
'till all were dead,
but a favoured few
and the Table Rock
was the deepest hue
as the battered survivors
removed their dead.

It was all arranged -
God, you might have guessed! -
by Damien Hurst
at The Cube's behest.
His installation -
here you see it -
a palpable hit
with the cognoscenti.
The result of it all
you can plainly see:
the process
is what you infer, said he.
This is the end
of a perfect picnic.
Imagine the bodies
preserved in aspic.

Self-Immolation

Strange gesture from the young man. Out of context.
Like tugging on a ripcord. Then the pause
before the fireball swallows him.

Self-immolation, it is called - to make
it sound a tad respectable, no doubt.
We hear him through the flames.

Screams of pain? No, none of that, but calling
in his high tone voice: "Take me, take me now!"
It's The Buddha that he's calling.

He's never been a Buddhist - until now.
Looking for a shortcut, I suppose?
None of us can get in close.

The flames are threatening to last for ever.
People, trees and buildings: all are seared
and blackened by the fire.

Then they subside to night-lights. Flickering.
A charred corpse sits there with pale orbs for eyes,
his body glowing red,

but soon he stands and towers above us as
a man full-grown, of adult stature,
his beard luxurious.

And we all falling to our knees, beseeching
Allah, Buddha, Jesus, any deity
who might be listening.

*
Jingle Poetry suggested Cartoons, SciFi and Super Powers for this week's prompt. This is one of those last two, but I'm not sure which.

We stood for ages at the waterside.
Gazing. Mesmerised
by having seen.
What had we seen?
And had we seen?
The water heaving
that now is calm.
The present ripples
straight and orderly
swamped by a craze,
alarming patterning
never seen before.
We could not leave.
We stood for ages at the waterside.


Just one of the visual prompts offered by Totalfeckineejit on behalf of this week's Poetry Bus.

Improvise

Improvise being Writers' Island's one word prompt for this week.
*
What if the word that I want,
the word so precise in its meaning,
the one that I need
for the thought I am wanting to think,
does not exist?
What then?
Can I still think it?
Or will I be able
to improvise?

And what if words that I want do exist,
but harbour insurgents,
harsh malcontents and saboteurs
who use innuendo
subverting the meanings,
gathering round them
the most undesirable words,
can it be there's a way
to improvise truth from their lies,

creating my meanings
from new combinations,
making it up
whilst I'm making my way?
And what if the thought
has the shape of a word
but is empty of meaning,
cuts a space for new thinking,
can I satisfy it with my makeshift devices?

Everyone is Someone Else : #2

concluding

Logic is like a boulder dropped into a torrent: it interrupts the flow of possibilities. The thought strikes him as he is shaving, and the thought changes the whole landscape of his thinking. He begins to talk to his mirror image and is encouraged by the nods he receives in return, despite the fact that he is sure that he is keeping his head still for the cut-throat razor that he's using! "I have been concentrating all this time," he explains, "on the seemingly unlikely possibility that either I am each of the two readers of the book or I am not. That would be the logical situation, but that is wrong. I see it now, it is more unlikely even than that. The dilemma is a false one. The truth of the matter is that I am both of the book's readers AND I am not. And more than that: I am but one person AND I am two people. AND I am three. And that prepares the way for yet another possibility: it occurred to me when thinking of these things in the half-conscious state between sleep and waking, that it would help enormously if the author of the book turned out to be the natural father that I have never known. Do not ask me to explain exactly how this would help, but I have become excited beyond measure by the thought that if he proved to be my father, I would at least be looking at a coherent landscape, one that held together in ways it otherwise does not. The difficulty for me has been a complete lack of any sort of evidence that my father did indeed write the book. Now, though I can say that my father both was AND was not the author."

At this point he resolves to track down the blonde to see what she can tell him. He talks to all those who were at the party, all his friends, all the relatives who were there and his colleagues from work. None of them engaged or invited her. Leastways, none of them will admit to having done so. He is eft with but one alternative: he must track down his other self. The idea worries him, but there is no way to avoid it. The worry stems from his not knowing what might happen in the event of two manifestations of a bi- (or even tri-) located entity meeting.Fancifully, he can't shake off the fear that they might mutually (or -self, whichever is the correct phrase) destruct. More optimistically, he turns his mind to the thought of his father, or his not-father, writing of his wn death. He still cannot comprehend this possibility, and so reminds himself that the death section at least must have been written by an authorial self who survived the other self. On that reckoning at least, it is possible for one to survive the other!

It is at this point that the phrase "mirror-like reflection" comes into his mind. He prefers this to the more awkward "manifestation". It seems to carry more of the characterizations of the concept with which his mind is struggling. He feels now as though he is planning to meet a long-lost brother. No, correction: a clone. He decides not to announce his coming, but to simply appear on the doorstep at the address his "refection" gave in his advertisement in the personal column. He makes several unsuccessful sorties, finding no one in. Then he is luckier. The door is opened to him by a woman claiming to be his reflection's wife. This is a blow. Is his theory beginning to un ravel? According to it, his reflection should be in the same state as himself: living alone. He introduces himself, hesitantly, as best he can, not being sure how informed the woman might be. He need not have worried.

"I know you!" the woman flares angrily. "You are the one who is harassing my husband! You wrote that damned book!"

"I'm not, and I didn't!" he retorts, equally angrily. "I am the one trying to discover who did write 'the damned book'! Where is he, then?"

"Where he's been for the last few nights: trying to find you, but you're always out!" she snapped.

Well, that at least, is how it should be, his reflection doing in reverse what he's been doing.

"And don't try to bedazzle me with more lies," she goes on. "You're the dead split of him. You well could be him!"

"Indeed, I well could be!" he agrees. Then in a moment of inspiration: "how did he come to lose his copy of the book?"

"Lose it? Lose it? What you mean, lose it? He aint lost it, I only wish he had!"

"And you don't know who wrote it, then?"

"If it weren't you, I don't!"

After more angry exchanges they part on the worst terms. He sits in the car for a while, turning things over in his head. If she was telling the truth and he did not lose his copy of the book, then that is the biggest blow yet to his theory, and things were indeed beginning o unravel. But why would he have lied? Perhaps because he had been engineering the whole thing from the beginning, had arranged the gift of the book by the woman on the white horse, and then arranged its loss, though how he might have accomplished that is none to easy to imagine. On the other hand, why would she have lied? Still thinking on these things he starts to drive away, but then meets himself coming from the opposite direction. On impulse he turns right at the next junction instead of going straight on. He drives for twenty miles or so at the legal speed limit when a motorcycle comes from the proverbial nowhere and collides with his near-side front wheel.

Arriving home around Dawn in a taxi, his car being undriveable,a voice on his radio-alarm clock is recounting the details of a road traffic accident that sound remarkably familiar. But why should they be featuring his misfortune on local radio? In the great scheme of road traffic accidents in general his was a most minor mishap. At first the details tally: the descriptions of the car and motor-cycle; his name is given - slightly inaccurately, but not enough to cause comment - and the time of the accident. But then the location is way out. Forty miles out, to be precise. Then comes the information that the motorcyclist was a courier delivering a donor heart to a local hospital. Our hero is pretty sure that he was not. But finally, the clincher: our hero died later from freak injuries sustained at the scene. No prizes for guessing what has happened, though. When one part of the bi-locating pair decided on impulse to drive due north, the other drove due south. Interesting, though, that his name was almost the same as his own.

The next few days and weeks were difficult. Things got worse rather than better. Almost it was like mourning, but the worst part was that he still was paralyzed, could not cope with not knowing what came next in the book. Eventually he could stand it no longer. Anticipating that he would not be well received he drove out to see the widow. But was she his widow also, he wondered. He hoped the thought had not occurred to her. He was fortunate this time. He found her in. He commiserated with her, and then, seeing that she was becoming very irritated, came straight to the point: he offered her £1000 for the book, if she still had it. She suggested that, it being the only copy, she thought it might be more valuable than that. Eventually she agreed to sell for £5000. He left with the book under his arm - and a feeling of great elation. At home he opened the book and turned to the last page he had read. Then turned another page and found it blank. Every page from there to the book's end was blank.

Everyone is Someone Else : #1

A man is celebrating his twenty fifth birthday. Half expecting a kiss-o-gram, he is surprised when instead of the usual package, there comes a blonde astride a huge white horse. She smiles, hands him a gift-wrapped package, and then rides around the hall a couple of times, before turning the horse towards the door and disappearing through it, back into the night from whence she came. Excitedly, he rips the paper from the package. Inside the copious wrappings is a book called "Everyone is Someone Else". That night he starts to read the book. It is an autobiography. The writer, though, declares that his identity is not to be revealed. He does not even use a pseudonym, just refers to himself as "me". And then, still on the first page, our hero learns that the final pages of the book will tell the story of the author's death. How can that be? Our reader's mind is in a turmoil. First of all, he cannot get the blonde equestrienne expunged from it, and now he is wrestling with the concept of a man who can write not just the story of his life, but of his death as well. How can that be? Unable to resist, he turns to the back pages and learns that the mystery writer met his end in an industrial micro-wave oven. He then turns back to page one and reads on. Increasingly though, he feels that the writer's identity is identical to his own. Events are replicating those of his own life. How can that be? He has no recollection of ever having written any book, least of all this one. Yet details keep appearing. Personal and intimate details, that only he could know, details that surely could not be true of any other person - like the way the finger nails on his right hand grow twice as fast as those on his left! He must seek out the blonde and hope that she will have some light to throw...

But first he has a most important business trip that will not wait. He packs the book to read it on the plane. Once in the air, he settles down and gets as far as a familiar birthday party and a blonde on a white horse, when a strong call of nature causes him put it down. When he returns to take it up again, the book has gone. He asks passengers in the adjoining seats. No one has seen the going of it. With their permission,s the stewards search for it, examining the travel bags of those sitting nearby. It can't be found. He spends the next week or so in a forlorn attempt to track down another copy. He visits shops and libraries, but no one has heard of the book, so he decides to place an advert in a local paper.

At first he thinks they've printed his text twice over. But not so, he soon comes to realise that a man from a near-by town has placed an advert much the same as his. This other man also was visited by a blonde equestrienne at his twenty-fifth birthday party, was given a book - the same book - and he too, was tempted into reading the final pages early on; he also read to the same point of the book, only to discover that the book had gone missing; he too, came to the same views and found himself asking the same questions as our hero. It follows, thinks the first reader, that until now our lives have run on identical lines, not just mine and the author, but, it seems, mine and his and this other reader also. Probably our two deaths will be as his - in an industrial micro-wave oven. But what I - we, probably - need to know more than anything, is how our lives will run from now until then. Oh, to find another copy of that book!

He feels himself paralyzed, unable to make life decisions until he knows what comes next in the book. Just one idea he has: he'll ring the man who placed the other advert... he'll say he's found the man's book, and would he like to come to lunch to pick it up? This other man, he thinks, might be the key that will unlock the mystery. The conversation does not go as he had planned and he does not use his I've-got-your-book ruse, but never-the-less they chat for ages on the 'phone, exchanging confidences such as ordinarily he would never have exchanged with anyone, never mind a stranger. But then the thought occurs: are they, in fact strangers? It would seem that not only is he, our hero, one and the same person as the book's author, but that so is this second reader of the book. Furthermore, the author having written of his own death, must be someone other than the author. Logically, he cannot be himself. Can one person in some way be two people? Three? Four?

Our hero begins to reason with himself: this is a situation which is clearly impossible - and yet it just as clearly is so. How should the intelligent human being - which I am - deal with such a logical absurdity? Let us call it a singularity, like one of those that exist in black holes in which the normal laws are in abeyance. How does a man's intelligence deal with that? Obviously, he cannot invoke the supernatural... but even as he says that to himself, he finds himself asking: why not? However, before he can begin to answer that last question, he is struck by an even more beautiful idea: the world is a fabulous place in which everything imaginable - and much that is not - is potentially possible. Correction: anything is possible, but not everything. Not all at once. The world is limited only by what the size of the human intellect can allow. So, there was a time when magic and when miracles were possible. Were part of the fabric of the place, in fact. They could strut their stuff with no one saying no. But then it would have been impossible to think the world had four - or more - dimensions. But we can say that now. The brain says yes to all that it can process and says no to all the rest.

That being so, there must come times when we are living on the cusp, when other things are breaking through, but are not quite in place. If not, from where does poetry and music come? All learning, for that matter? And on the cusp are possibilities of slips, of outlaws getting through the brains defenses. There must come times when an event, though banned, gets through and happens out of time. The brain, once having given permission for a photon or an electron to exist in two places at the same time, fails to stop the likes of me from doing the same thing. So let's suppose that I have bi-located. I can exist in one place as this Reader 1 and somewhere else as Reader 2. The problem now is that I am not aware of my other self. Why not? That surely could only happen if we lived identical existences.

to be continued

The Hanging Man

Fresh from her triumph at The Biennale,
she's dreaming of ascendency and power.

It's Thursday, and it's Thursdays that she keeps
for him. "This Thursday, you'll know Paradise,"

she'd said - so why should he be late? She counts
the seconds, entertains herself with thoughts

of punishment: slight over-tightenings
of ropes, a twist too far... she knows it works:

it's worked before: a customer too smug
for his own good. She'd known such flames within.

They'd felt like a perversion; smelt like love.
He knocks at last: his double rat-a-tat -

and she had clearly said he was to ring.
Her long lips tighten as the plan takes shape.

Her "Rope World" at Tate Modern changed his life.
Its "Desert After Rain with Stunted Trees" -

and tiny, flowering knots - had brought him face-
to-face with his too long neglected soul.

He'd watched her bind an ox skull there, until
the rope was all there ever seemed of it.

And now he is to be her "Hanging Man".
(He's sold his Jaguar to pay for it.)

Longer than usual, the binding takes:
pride in her craft is tightening each knot.

At last he's ready and she hangs her man -
then is solicitous in checking him.

Visits and absences of equal length,
while he, suspended horizontally,

cocooned in golden thread, breathes ultra-short,
unearthly gasps - the sort that make her pant

for air with him. Her final visit - and
she finds him dead. The paramedics slice

the cords, confirm the fact. Police arrive,
they smirk a bit, then switch. Disinterested

mode takes over, and is then replaced
by earnestness. She's never known them

quite like this before: imploring her to share
with them her loving arts, show them her skills

with ropes to lift the soul to higher planes...
She tells how bonds can slow the blood, close down

the conscious mind, bring visions into play
and deepen prayers. "He was a Holy man,"

she says, a sponge for spite - which she, his friend,
supplied. He'd wanted to evangelize.

She speaks less like a suspect than a girl
possessed of a great passion for her faith -

but quips to interviewing officers:
"A shame for all of us: you can't hang me!"

The train not standing...

The train you travel in arrives -
or it does not arrive - at a small wayside station,
and comes to a stop - or, not having arrived,
it does not stop. If it stops,
there will be people boarding it
and there will be others alighting - or
maybe there will be no-one getting on
and no-one getting off the train.
And it is possible that the train will not go on,
having for the moment nowhere to go, nowhere to get to.
If it does not stop and does not go on, it will not exist.
That seems self-evident. And that being so,
what then will become of you and all the other passengers?
How will you justify your existence?
Or will you, too, have ceased to exist?
Can you exist in a train that does not exist?
Can a train that does not exist hold you? Is it
germane to ask whether the non-existent train
in which you are or you are not travelling
is stationary or is moving as a train should? If, indeed,
you have ceased to exist, then how is the train to reappear?
And where? And under what circumstances?
And yourself: under what circumstances
might you reappear, with or without the train?
Why have you never thought about these things before?

Memory

Our memory films our passing.
And more, it edits it,
selects the pleasant facts.
Thrown back upon that inner screen,
away from all that fashioned it,
it loses sense
significance.
It flickers intermittently.
Deep shades of thought and meaning pass before our eyes
but somehow in the video
the deeper feeling dies.
We still, as in a dream, receive
the vicious blow again
and dream-like still
the blow we feel,
but do not sense the pain.

Mappa Mundi

Jingle Poetry's prompt for this week included a video and a poem - both of which I recommend to you, both of which led to the idea for this poem.
*
The map is of this world, a rock
once natural, which man has cut
and still is cutting like a precious stone,
sometimes with skill so that an aspect
sparkles in the sun, sometimes
in ignorance so that the facet darkens.
Nothing now - not even God -
seems part of what was here
from the beginning; all appears
to have been worked by man.
The scale of this late Mappa Mundi, like the old,
relates to concepts of perceived importance.
Thus, Africa, Afghanistan, The Amazon
and others you could name are smaller than

The Citadel - a fortress built of plexiglass
and filled at all times with a man-made mist.
It occupies the very centre of the world.
Here was Jerusalem portrayed of old.
Ineluctably, the mist leaks out,
conceals the citadel from all who have not
eyes to see. Inside,
made alien by warp and buckle from the mist,
projections of the outside world
are shown in unreal terms.
Here new realities are born, cloned,
mass-produced, destroyed. Men speak
in tongues and understand all languages,
for every form of virtual life is here.
The girl who propositioned you, the one
who showed you to your table... both
were holograms. The rest is video,
TV and games machinery.
Computer-generated smoke -
DO NOT INHALE. Communication,
world wide and beyond, is instantaneous,
but for the colleague standing by your side,
the split screen will translate.

Above the Citadel (cruciform please note), the roll
of honour. And across the intersection of the beams,
the golden names: Walt Disney, Einstein, Eisenstein
and others, all but vanish in the mist.
More visible: enormous tentacles of plexiglass
reach out beyond the Citadel, enclose the world.
Between the largest two and closest to it, sits
Elysium - in fact a nursery
among whose cabbages and radishes,
disturbing their neat rows,
experimental gardeners are trying to grow God -
or aspects of Him
that the world has overlooked -
and claim they are succeeding.
Others are concerned
that rows have been disturbed.
One gardener
is posting on the web
an algebraic proof that God could not
reveal Himself
in vegetable form.
Even for Him
that would be far too lowly.
In the rose bed, a large tea
hides in its perfect shape and symmetry
a growing brain
where pollen sacs should be.
(The bees seem closest to the deity -
explaining their decline, perhaps?)
And on the stalk,
and on the stalks of several more,
where thorns once were, are breasts.
They suckle spiders in the night.
Around the nursery a ring of fire,
keeps predators at bay. (The old
technologies are being resurrected
day by day, one at a time.)

The seas account for nine-tenths of the globe.
(This is true in Mappa Mundi terms
as well as in reality.) Now move across
the North Sea in to what is now New Africa,
and just before you make landfall,
you'll come to London, now below the waves -
though not by much, no more than a few feet
in places, Nelson for example. This is the
last throw of the tourist dice - so some would say.
The unknown hand who drew the map has clearly shown
the glass hulled boats that ply their trade,
allow the pleasure seekers to look down
on all the ancient sights: St Paul's great dome;
the twenty-five fifteen Olympic Games, its athletes
poised to throw, run, hit a ball or mount a horse -
each in the frozen pose in which the waters found them;
and then The London Eye - the story goes that windswept
nights still find it turning in the waves!
What ghosts are there we can but dream...

Arriving at New Africa, you'll see the pen has drawn
the last remaining forests. Depicted as enormous,
continental-sized, because of their imporatnce.
Here scientists are working, redesigning trees
to make them more adaptable. (The same tree needs
to thrive in drought and flood, in ice storms and
in searing temperatures - as well as grow
at many times its natural speed.)

Look closely at the cities, friends. They seem
identical: a seething mish-mash; jumbled lines,
deliberately smudged and blurred, from which emerge,
by means too difficult to analyze, strange terraces
of tenements and palaces, of hovels, shops and factories,
a church or two, a hospital, and all with tidied lawns
How can this be? The artist gives no clue. We must assume
the cities are both beautiful, yet harbour at their cores
some form of chaos. A fractal quality, maybe, one
that a pen could never grasp. Some poke their faces from
the scrum, smile for a moment, then are gone.
The very opposite of any that we've known.

Preserved in Amber

From the prompt by 120 socks


preserved in amber

thing of beauty
object of study
curio
adornment

preserved in amber

not by any hand of man
for science
on some aesthetic whim
or vanity

a work of nature
at the time
a tragedy