Great Aunt Min

In Islington
did Great Aunt Min
keep a pub
she called an inn.
And there, within,
in golden cage
a regal bird
(then all the rage),
a parakeet
elective mute.
Though quite absurd,
no syllable
would pass its beak
until it heard
the magic words:
"Time, if you please!
Time ladies and
good gentlefolk!
Ti..i..ime... if you please!"

At which the bird
would stretch and shake
and lift its beak
as if to say
"Who reckons me
too dumb to speak?"
And loudly then,
with raucous squawk
would demonstrate
his fruity talk:
"Aint you buggers
got no homes?
Aint you buggers
got no homes?
Aint you buggers
got no homes?"
until Aunt Min
turned out the light
and locked them in
to pass the night,
when meek and mild
as any child
he'd settle down
and wait for her
to cover him.

Sunshine and Bombs

"Sunshine and Bombs" we called her.
My dad it was who coined the name.
She kept the corner shop.
Early morning, first part of the war
Dad coming home from fire watch
and she cornered him. About
the weather, of all things. Said
how she'd rather have the bombs
than "all this bloody sunshine".
I spread it round the school.
"Sunshine and bombs," we sang,
"Sunshine and bombs!"
Payback time that was, for her
refusing me my bag of Frog Spawn -
which I had paid for, I might add.
"Too late," she'd hissed. "It's half
day closing - now git out!"
Sunshine and Bombs, that was,
who sadly in her turn was bombed
much later in the war.

I am linking this poem to Open Link Monday at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Watery Dreams

What a good idea!
An underwater Sculpture Park.
But whose idea,
to whom the kudos?
Surface Earthlings like ourselves,
or aliens from Under Earth
who've scaled to these enormous heights
above their Under Earthland
and been inspired by what they've found?


Stone comes to life,
the statues live and breathe
and have their being.
Deep beneath the ocean wave
an ancient dream is lived again...


Or is it simply that sea creatures
have made their homes
have colonised
the works of art,
and now blow bubbles -
in which case, are they
friendly messengers
or do they mean to register
"Up Yours!" - at our approach?


My money's on the Under Earthers,
the chance to swim around inside their thoughts...
How good would that be, eh?
To know how beings unlike us
conceive of what we cannot know;
to know them as we know ourselves!


The sea is apt to worry us sometimes,
what might be there and might come out of it
to threaten us on our dry ground..
But none of these will come,
the sculptures here are well behaved.
This is the worry in reverse:
that one of these might be the one
to tempt me from my dry world up above
to live the dream of water and of love.


You can be jilted by a work of art,
it's true. But not by these.
There's nothing here will leave you high and dry.
.................................................
Posted in response to the Magpie Tales prompt.

pas de deux

It was, the critics said,
the perfect pas de deux.

The leaps, the steps, the moves...
and more importantly:

our perfect empathy;
two bodies known as one.

That lift, so difficult,
I nailed it that one night.

We both left high as kites.
Let's crown the night, you said.

Your place, we thought, the best -
the first for us as one.

Along the motorway
I followed your tail light.

That cutting through the hills...
you'd forged ahead a bit.

I saw you leave the road
shoot up the steep incline...

I thought you'd roll back down.
But no, the perfect arc

as earlier on stage
that brought you back to me.

The two cars fused as one
and shared a sheet of flame.

We watch the dancing now.
I can barely hobble,

you barely understand...
except just now and then

a flicker in those eyes
to greet the pas de deux.

Abughraib

Corpulent figure on all fours,
a volcano has been plugged with straw,
the bonds and blindfolds will not hold for long,
the lava of a human dignity is breaking through.

Blakean figure from a modern myth
(Nebuchadnezzar springs to mind)
one part Urizen penned in rocks
one part a nude by Lucien Freud.

Botero paints the torments of his mind
brush replicates the concrete scrape of chain
in belly folds are labyrinths of creed
sound travels easily through paint -

when eyes are "neutralised" the screams are clearly heard.
We hear the groans from others held like him
from those preserved as beasts and maybe worse.
Each sound and smell is here preserved in paint.
...............................................

The work of Fernando Botero formed the basis of this prompt from dVerse Poets
From the options listed I chose to attempt this ekphrastic poem on Botero's painting "Abughraib", but do go along and read the whole challenge. It really is worth the trip.

the not so magic roundabout

I was a man on a Merry-Go-Round
merrily going round and round
when the man who ran the Merry-Go-Round
sent it out of control.

Then faster went the Merry-Go-Round
and faster it went again,
round and round with a screeching sound
like the death throes of a troll.

The ground around the Merry-Go-Round
became a continuous blur
and the man who'd run the Merry-Go-Round
clung to its central pole

for flames had appeared and horses reared
and the Merry-Go-Round was a casserole
in which spinning shapes had suddenly spun
out of a deep black hole.

From somewhere within the Merry-Go-Round
came sounds like a quake now, splitting the ground
and the swan I was on went down on its knees
before it began to roll.

Bits were thrown from the Merry-Go-Round,
over the fairground, far and wide
and into my lap fell a starry-eyed bride
in the shape of a porcelain doll.

I asked the man, still stuck on his pole,
could he magic the doll alive?
The Merry-Go-Round, said the man to me,
has centrifuged her soul;

it's widely dispersed across the ground
among the swings and the coconut shies.
All that is left is porcelain -
which I find irresistibly droll.

Choice

Job interview.
Going O.K.
So far so good.
Not great. No worse
than I'd expected -
seeing how I lack experience
and could do with more
certificates and paper stuff.
And interview experience -
well, that's why I am here:
another interview next week -
that's for the post I really want.
Fingers crossed,
today might help out there.

The final question -
I feel it coming in my bones. The chair
psyches herself up for it.
"I must ask this: your shirt...
was it your wife who chose it for you?"
"Who bought it for me!" I reply.
"My daughter bought the tie!"
She smiles and offers me the post.
It's not the one I'd hoped for -
but I take it like a shot!
................................

Thursday Think Tank at Poets United suggested the topic "Choice" for this week.

Ode to Basic Instinct

I watched them at their feeders for a while,
saw how the blackbird, magpies, rooks
and pigeons were excluding smaller
and defenseless birds - a wren, some tits,
a chaffinch and a sparrow from the feast.
Pitiless, they were, relentless,
driving them away. But then,
when someone wandered by, quite close to them,
it was the larger birds took fright and left
the field to those they'd dispossessed -
who seemed to have no fear of man,
the one, perhaps, they should have feared the most.

I saw this little drama played
by those unconscious actors on the lawn
as something of a metaphor of us.
What is it that our richest nations fear
and fear to such extent that they must take
whatever of the world's resources they can claim
by fair means or by foul
regardless of the paupers who must starve?

Is there, deep down, a bully in us all?
Would small birds bully smaller if they could?
Would they become remorseless in oppressing
their even weaker brethren with no weight?
What drives we civilised to such extremes?
Not greed, I think - though some will disagree -
not even naked power or lust for power,
to me the answer must be clearly fear.

But fear of what? That our good fortunes may be lost?
The wheat, the iron, the oil? Atomic power?
All that we have branded as our own...
these things are finite in the main. But yet
to me it seems the loss we fear the most
is none of these, but that of self:
the silent threat to that, our ways of life,
the pictures that we paint of who we are.
.........................................
Please go to dVerse Poets for a fascinating exposition of the form and content of an ode - and the prompt for this attempt.

there is a tree beside a river...

The tree is spirit energy
a force of nature channelled to a pinpoint point of view
culvert through a needle's eye
compelling other spirit energies
                                like thought.


River into torrent
                  undermining roots.
The current is a different force.
Water and the strength of water
both are physical
are of the order rock and earth
yet both provide the format
for the wholly other.

                Baptismally
water (physical)
and  thought of water             
                     (halfway house)  
deepen what is spiritual
carry to oblivion
                 tissue sap and bone.


                         The tree decays
and by its own imperative
decay is spiritual
It's there in nature's blueprint for a life
as workaday as source code or a score
that calls the cellos to a poetry of sound.

All journeys are internal.
In the ending of a life
                       begins the spirit's odyssey.
The life is.
And the spirit is.
Nothing that is
is not.


In winter
the tree has bared its soul
to us and to the world
is stripped of earthly life form
skeletal.


There is a fire
a purge
in which the tree is singed
is charcoal -
           little more
than symbol for a tree.


Form is emphasised
is stark
patterns colours textures
no longer vie with contours for the eye

anticlimax

It had looked so inviting from below,
a low domed hill, and on its crown
a circle of young trees. The climb
was undertaken willingly. We found
the circle ringed a hollow in the ground -
the sort that's not uncommon on these downs.
Best bet: a German bomber, homeward bound
had dumped the remnants of its load. If so,
one bomb had carved a saucer from the chalk.
We weren't the first to see it in those terms:
for someone at a later date, came, stood
an iron mug, a huge and rusting thing,
of purpose indeterminate, smack in
its shallow centre where a cup should go.

Its toppled since that day, stands now aslant,
bumped out of its complacency, no doubt
by the red pedal car, for ever wedged
between a whitebeam and a beech. There was
no road to that high place, which through the years
had sprouted rosebud toilets (broken: two),
a bedstead, fridge and T.V. set, a bike,
a motorcycle (minus wheels) and a
large body-building gizmo with a range
of hooks and chains more like a torturing
machine. A red stain as of blood did not
put any minds to rest. But worst of all -
it was a bigger mess, by God
than that the Heinkel left.

Perspectives

The streets seem in indecent haste
cannot wait to rush together
somewhere just above our thoughts
where all lines of perspective meet.
There buildings will collide as one.
A single point.        A sonic boom.

Illustrious men will turn to stone
who never left a stone unturned
and strong men will still stand alone.
Yule Brynner gazing from his throne
finds enchantment in a bird.
The King and I now seems absurd.
Commands his subjects. Make him fly.
Fly bird and he to some high nest
lay the musical to rest
above the clash of steel and glass
above the clash of skin and class
above the narrowing of space
space to breathe and space for grace
where concrete bleeds and flesh is stone
and every babe is fully grown
all men are born of every race
and nature is man's interface.

...........................

Written for The Magpie Tales picture prompt.

They're demanding answers to their questions.

Philistines must quantify:
how many Euros,
pounds or dollars
is an opera worth?

What makes it worth
a dip into the public purse?

How will it make life better?
(It could hardly make it worse.)
What do the voting masses think?
(What shade are they of blue or pink?)
What shade of which will it empower?
Which shades might it not disempower,
which bring back from the brink?

Did music lose its value to the nation
on some street corner
where the nation lost its way?

What's that you say;
you've got a new libretto?
What special benefits do you forsee -
if none, we'll have to let it go,
so say if there's a pay-off, kid.
In terms of tourist trade perhaps,
or racial harmony?
Come on now, laddie, lift the lid!

Don't tell us that it entertains -
and don't provoke us either, they're both passé;
we've stopped the funding on those gravy trains!

We're all in this together, man.
All worms are equal in our can!

Cohesion in the city, now...
we might splash out on that...
could your concerto pull that off?
It's one of our objectives, see,
something we must fix...
so, who would watch this play of yours,
the avant garde, the poor, the rich ?
Or could you promise us an ethnic mix?

Art for art's sake cuts no ice...
"Creative Industries"? Yeah, that sounds nice...
I like the sound of that last word.
Industries... We might buy that - not too absurd.

Ah therapy? You're talking now!
That's for the common good, we'd all agree
it's worth a bob or two somehow...
except... you'll understand, it's got to be
the focus of the work. That is a must.
A spin-of's just not good enough.
We're talking here of the main thrust!

Why should we fund the guy who looks
to stick his nose in obscure books?
And if not him, some Glyndebourne guy?
Where should we draw the spending line -
along the ground, or in the sky?
Your poems on earth meditation
must justify themselves like health,
police and education!

This poem was suggested to me by an article in the Saturday Guardian(Value Added, by David Edgar) pointing out that although the minister has described the present cut-back in funding to the arts as temporary, a majority in the government would like to scrap it altogether. In the mean time "they" are devising ways to asssess the value of each art in their own (strictly practical) terms.

Rhythms of the Night

I know the sound - or part of it - of old:
whisssstle-thwoom-pa (pause) whisssstle-thwoom-pa (pause)...
But this is more disturbing than I've known.

My father's practice swings beside the tee,
his driver sending shock waves through the air.
whissstle-thwummmm then silence from the follow-through.

But this is more persistent, rhythmic, more
the sound a scythe might make. A cutting down.
Grim Reapers spring to mind from story books.

If this was South America, you'd think
of gauchos whirling bolas round their heads
and listen for the crash the balls would cause.

But three nights on the trot with little sleep,
a reaper in the skies above our house -
though grim or not, depending on your view.

Even in the silences the ears strain
for the barely audible first sound,
the distant whistle of its slow return.

Spot on as Haley's Comet it returns
It is the major rhythm now, has drowned
out all those minor ones, like heart and sleep.

And so you notice as it fades again
a change to deeper tones of thwoooom-pa (pause).
It's cops in choppers reaping close to us.

This poem was written in response to dVerse Poet's Pub prompt to write a piece of onomatopoeic poetry, something of which, unwisely perhaps, I have always fought shy in the past. I know some of the greats have used it with outstanding success, but then the greats can do anything. What about us more humble mortals, though? I'd really love to hear what you guys think.

My First Exhibition

I had an exhibition once,
a hundred years ago
before the advent of the coffee bar
in a palace of a place
art deco on four floors,
a Lyons Corner House.

In perfect truth,
I shared the exhibition:
saw my babies
hung between the tables
("among some porcelain",
as Eliot might have said)
close by the chandeliers
between the longer term incumbents:
lithographs and reproductions -
names I loved and feared.

Amongst the Sutherlands, Man Rays
and Mintons - giants of the day?
My little ragamuffins in amongst those
grand celebrities? How could they make their way?
How did I get that stupid?
Words like "hiding" and "to nothing" came to mind.

I don't know how much tea I drank
in vain attempts to eavesdrop
what chat there was about my work.
Not a lot was being said.
Nothing for a gallon and a half.
Then "Orange Nude" caught someone's eye
who thought it was "The brightest, not the best!"
"Sandy Beach" fared rather better: "I can feel,"
a lady said through apple pie,
"what it was like to be there on that beach -
the colours tell me all I need to know.
Not so "Grey Man in Moonlight": "Cannot stand
Americans - especially Picasso!"

Chasing Abraham

Desperately needing Abraham,
looking everywhere
to no avail.
The man next door was clearly not.
I asked at the model agency:
are Abrahams in short supply?
Two they'd had the month before.
Nothing since, but a rather fine Ezekiel
and a Moses to be proud of.

Then walking home from Mitcham Junction
late one foggy night
crossing Mitcham Common
there he was in flesh and blood,
Abraham as ever was, asking me the time.
Flowing beard as white as snow,
desert robes that also flowed,
leathern sandals, necklaces of beads -
and what for weeks I'd overlooked -
YHWH* tattooed on his arm.

Two days from then
I had the painting done and framed.

.......................................

*Tetragrammaton, the proper name for God in Hebrew, from which Yahweh,Yahveh and Jahweh are all expansions.

World View

There was darkness
and the darkness that there was
was on the face of everything.
And there was fire.
Cold fire, blue steel fire, semblance of fire,
semblance of light, fire without promise or threat.
And figures, shadows of figures,
semblance of figures figuring
hardly at all in a huddle, huddled
round flames lacking light.

And there was God. Tongue-tied and silent,
a murmurless mummer of a God, miming creation,
re-making in mime the old misbegotten conception
of his long ago. Invisible god - except for the hands,
the hands of a weaver. Intricate movements,
balletic with grace. Weavers of space
and spinners of time on the go.
And the eyes with the hands,
two halves of a coin spun as one.

Then visible darkness. Thin darkness hung
between me and impassable darkness
passing before me like whisps in the wind.
God-produced darkness, that darkness like sin,
that lure of the eyes that sought a way in.
Between the two darknesses, dark ghosts of me
stared back, each in turn, each eyeball
to eyeball. I watched as more ghosts
behind and beside me, appeared as from nowhere,
caught between darknesses, trapped as was I.

But still those hands did mesmerise!
A chink of light when curtains just behind the vision
parted and two dolls swam into view.
Not dolls, but mummies rather, human forms
devoid of detail. As featureless as was
the landscape from the start. The hands -
and now a shadow form behind the hands -
manoeuvred them in space, arranged their limbs,
caused one to sit upon a tree stump, one to stand.
But still the scene and they were bland.
More then slid between the curtains into view,
the hands deploying them around the fire.
Some wore grass skirts, but all were onion-like
in texture and in ornament, in markings on the skin.

Yet now was light enough - though gloomy still - to see
some palm trees ranged along a sandy shore,
and out beyond an atoll there, a liner rocked at ease.
The window-dresser slid away to hide himself
against a jet black frame. (He, too was dressed in black.)
God-figure that figured to change or replace the old world
with a form reduced in aspects, focal points and facets,
having fewer of those things that man fixates upon.
The onion-form would reign supreme
in a world devoid of promise and of threat!
A caption in the ocean read : WORLD CRUISE.

But still in the window, the faces of tomorrow
and today stared back towards the sadness that was me
as I looked in... and the god-figure stayed as he was hid.

Blood and Glory

Scientists,
brain-scanning
meditating monks, ran
radiation tracers
through their parietal lobes.

The resulting images
of falling blood flows
reinforced our sense
that sense of time and place
is centred there.

What better place
for God-experience
than where He'd set
the focus for our sense
of time and place?

For, just suppose
the God-experience
is more than blood flows
or their lack... is how we interact
with the Divine...

how might the radio-
activity affect
that dialogue? We need to know:-
what is it in this life
that should be glorified?

learning languages

Children play -
conduct their adult business -
on a quiet pedestrian square
leaving records of their exploits there
for us, the world, posterity,
in scripts concocted out
of artifacts and chalk
(posterity in chalk...
now there's a thought), echoes
of rune and hieroglyph and gypsy sign
(and other, stranger, signs, the signs,
maybe, of races not yet born),
together with some bits of Arabic
and Japanese and bird signs - would you know?
I didn't know - until I overheard
them talking on the square -
that birds have written languages, use ciphers
left for one another in the snow:
footprints, for one;
or sticks they lay the way they build their nests
and leave for others of their kind
who understand the meanings of the codes.
To all those in the know
<^^/\O<> in arcanic ancient lingo means:-
The lady here leaves fruits and nuts for early birds.

A child is not a purist. Understand,
that being so,
they put to use a host of artifacts
and natural bits that come their way
to push back boundaries and help the sense along.
Dolls are frequent characters in these
mixed sentences. But what to make
of interwoven sticks (a part-
made nest) and next to it (inverted)
one torn half of a straw hat, the fruit of which,
once on the outside, now repose within -
signifying eggs perhaps? And what to make
of three men circled, holding hands? Stand back,
a wider view reveals the circle is a woman's
abdomen. The men are smokers and the woman
holds a fist up to her mouth.

The King of Bling

A central atrium
from which five wings
like five points of a star.
And so the name was born:
Star Mall. The oldest wing,
The Christmas Gallery
(it having been completed
late December in the snow)
the builders called Phase 1,
lies empty and deserted.
The leases on its shops
expired six months ago -
leases which the landlord
for reasons of his own
(financial, certainly)
will not renew.
Looking at it now,
pad-locked and barred
with metal grills,
you'd think a prison gallery.

Josef and Marianne.
Homeless. Sole visitors,
their whole world packed
into a baby's buggy
pushed by Josef,
have wandered in
and paused a moment at
The House of Bling,
not so completely cleared
as was the rest. Their eyes -
their ears, perhaps - are caught
by remnants of past bling
reflecting light.
(Security, like clearing
and the cleaning,
has been less thorough here.)
As they lean in
to get a clearer view,
a man-sized door
set in the steel grid
covering the entrance,
gives slightly to their weight .

Josef now works briefly - but
intently -on the lock,
until the small door swings.
Then he unloads the buggy,
carries it across the door's
high threshold,
and after it their two worlds,
bag by plastic bag.
Five minutes maximum
and they are in.

A day or two
and word has spread:
they're joined by others
from the world beyond.
First in: two practised
squatters, man and wife
who get things organised:
some heat, some light,
a change of locks,
the duty rota, and so on.
Then come The Seers,
a boy band yet to make
their way. Two one-time
workers from a sheep farm -
now "a farm experience"
for schools and families -
and a former chief executive,
quite used to bling, she says.

Almost from the first
small crowds are gathering,
and growing by the day,
soon to include the local press
and then the nationals.
When Marianne gives birth,
Josef takes a packing case
and makes of it a cot,
half filling it
with (artificial) straw.
Bling Bling
writ large upon its side
is symbolising something,
you might think - a name
to call a glitzy child, perhaps?

The happiness occurred
on New Year's Night -
also symbolising something, you might think.
By morning light - about
the time the media begin
to make their presence felt -
someone notices graffiti
on the entrance tiles outside.
It reads: "All Hail, the King of Bling!"
And from the first floor gallery
above Bling House,
a star is hanging by its flex
and flashing merrily.

But then,
before the day is fully lit,
come Social Services
to take the boy child
into care, removing him
to Herriod Road
Young People's Home.

Now Josef blames himself
who'd had a dream
in which the whole of this had been
played out before his eyes
without from him the merest
twitch of recognition.

And so it is a tale
like any other.
Merely that.... except,
we're hearing -
reading on our social networks -
that the home,
in turmoil when Bling Bling arrived
(two youngsters having
recently absconded,
the milk consumption
having doubled - as it is apt
to do at times of stress),
was suddenly becalmed; a place
of peace and light.
Tranquility, no less!
Then when they walked
him round the grounds,
the birds flew down
and sang to him.

Therefore, we wondered...
might there be more
to come of this... of him?

The Turning

Stepping from the old year to the new
I carry with me seeds to green the view.
They're in the wool of jumper, mud of shoe.

Past and present
root and stem
fruit and leaf -
cogs in time's machinery.

The turning is a season
as eloquent as spring,
the smallest seedling from the past,
an oak in influence.

We may forget
write-off
ignore the year just gone.
It will not do the same for us.
Our footprints mark it:
its mark us.
The new start's never new,
the start's a part-continuum.

And yet the land is virginal.
Behind us:
leaves have withered;
fruit has rotted into this new seed;
there have been deaths;
and illnesses, like fungi,
have invaded healthy stock.

Big moments, these:
like redwoods in a kitchen garden.
Bark and sapwood cling to us:
new perfumes and old smells.

The pods of memory pop
and green shoots beckon
that were not there before.

Be careful with the fruit, my friend -
it bruises easily.

dVerse Poets Poetic Endings and Beginnings inspired this verse.

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!