The Dark Oath

Scary,
harrowing, you might say,
seeing all that blood run out of me
thin and watery,
transparent even.
Not blood that I might recognise
as being mine,
yet knowing it
as blood drawn from my very marrow
by those foul grubs,
those slaves of Satan.

I saw all this,
but could not guess
the depths to which my tattered soul
was being dragged,
how spirit can be borrowed
for a wickedness so rare
that one must either
march beneath its flag
or take the oath that leads --
as it has now led me --
to ultimate destruction.

Written for The Sunday Whirl #106

103o

Mum had promised the zoo,
the doctor shook his head
and vanished in a puff of pipe smoke
through the chimney breast.

Next up was mum
holding in her hands a camel's head --
the rest was parked behind,
zebra-striped and in its hump
a tiny first-aid cupboard door
from which mum took
a glass thermometer
for sticking under tongues.

I must have blinked
a quite amazing blink
that swapped the kitchen
and the bathroom round.
I saw mum wave a silver wand
and heard a noise and turned about
to see a great big crocodile
splash water from the bath
and pick the bones of what remained
of Peter's rubber duck.

A train came by
which all got on --
aunts, uncles, distant cousins,
folk I'd never seen.
We sat in open trucks.

They said it was a wonderland.
I swear we never moved,
and all I saw was fog --
until the train pulled in at last
and I lay in my bed.

And mother with the doctor's bottle,
bottle green and fluted glass,
the tallest cork I'd ever seen,
and -- as I now believe --
in big red letters,
LAUDANUM on the side.


Written for the prompt at dVerse Poets by ManicDdaily to Trip the Poem Fantastic -- the emphasis being on TRIP, of course.

Notes for a Retrospective

#1 Leaves falling from the Tree of Life : spring comes to the garden.

#2 The Big Bang : God throws his paintbox at the biggest blank canvas ever.

#3 Therapy : I found these patterns on the edge of nowhere.

Sunburst : a cancer cell emitting electromagnetic signals.

#4 The Tower of Babel : a tumour of a million cancer cells, all emitting their unique electromagnetic signals.

#5 Landscape without figures : we pick out the pieces which best fit the landscape we have within.

#6 This egg yolk is not an egg yolk, but a fungus : nothing came of it.

#7 Speak to the hand, the ears aint listening : Adam and Eve talking to their three children about the consequences of sin.

#8 Pornography : the three children put into practice what their parents told them.

#9 A string bag : the strings vibrate to the distortions of time and space.

Sijo

Round the aspen's trunk, the squirrel's double helix -- one up, one down,
like Aunt May's little house whose garden boasts the magic tree.
In my mind's eye the squirrel weaves the DNA I'm sure they share!


Written for dVerse Poets where Samuel Peralta is introducing us to this form of Korean Poetry.

Woodlands

Somehow
into this small wood
has been compressed
a world too large for it.

Once
the world beyond the trees
was decompression chamber
which now is stressed
beyond the measurable

allowing interested parties
to deny the data --

sense impressions
more compelling
than the dry results
of number crunching.

Scarcity
of old resources
established weather patterns
breathable atmospheres
present a united front
of censure.

What moves between these verticals? Moves
horizontally. Run. Scamper. Scuttle. Flit.
Swoop. Lollop. crawl. Instinctively we plot
trajectories runs paths tapestries
of movement. Catch
the sparrow hawk. His dive-bomb dive.

Gate crash through the canopy. Becomes
one of the verticals.
Does it bring the tapestry alive?
Or is it rent in twain?
The Three-Dimensional
transposed as Two-.

Somewhere
in here it has been said
is where God died
or has been buried
or memorialized.
Something like that.

The Resilience of Plants

The resilience of the plants to survive
against all odds a winter such as we
have just experienced... what doesn't
kill you, hardens I suppose. But some
were killed. Chrysanthemums. (The very
ones which seemed the hardiest of all.)
Shocked. Water-boarded -- plant variety.
A few found shelter. Some under snow.
Bluebells, for example, honoured their
appointments, but with energy full spent.
Yet still you'll need to look with care
to see the gaps the weather makes in land.
Some early plants still struggle - and
this well into spring. Most thrive and
little by little nature keeps its promise.
But even so, they've shipped in extra
daffodils to circumvent the shortfall in
the shops. Some traders even selling silk
or plastic blooms that made a bomb -- or so
I have been told. But then again, some
customers have been appalled and charged
the traders with being eco-infidels -- or
do I mean insurgents (of the green variety?

Written in response to The Sunday Wordle Post #105

Too hot for daffodils

How all the others
lean on her
or lay themselves across her back.
Untidy bales of hay.

She stoops
CRUSHED
beneath the withered corpses.

Either side
REVIVAL.
RESURRECTION Day.
trumpets sound their yellow notes
bright as that first day

when they were wings...
were they wings...?  are they wings?
The yellow sound surges
wavers...

Image of wings         whose wings?
Hers? Maybe she is/was
an angel   what sort of?   of death?

Too hot
that's what
did for her --
and all the others.

Never so tightly packed in life
never so close.
Death huddles them together.

Language, Ethics and Curiosity

Listen. Let me tell you.
Eden was a trick, a sham
like a show trial put on by an autocratic state.
Could not have ended any other way!
Not one of us,only a simpleton
would not have behaved
the only way the human mind
is programmed to behave.

How do I know? Well, let me tell you,
I have played at being God,
have seen it all pan out,
almost before my eyes. The dice,
I say, were loaded. Overloaded.
Could not have fallen any other way!

When I say I played at God,
I mean I set up my own Eden.
Part of it. The tree. Forbidden fruit.
And tempted those who were so innocent
they simply had to fall.

I chose my Edens with great care --
location being so important
in these modern times. Let me tell you
of the time I chose the rose wood table
and spread it with a range of goodies
tempting to a child: two paper-weights
complete with snow, some costume dolls,
a crystal ball, a box of soldiers,
a castle and a tower. And centre stage,
my tree of Good and evil:
a bright red Chinese lacquer box
that rose above them all.

Teachers brought in eight top infants,
sat them at my Eden and then left.
It was not long before the angel came
(School secretary with a pre-arranged, fictitious
phone call in the office.
Could I take it now?)

I tell them they may talk among themselves,
may pick up the objects and play with them --
but on no account may the box be touched!

Exeunt yours truly and the secretary.

Has he gone?
Dunno. Can't see...
Open the door a bit, then.
You be me!
We've not got long!
Not got long for what?
To see what's in the red box.
He said not to.
He won't know.
He might!
How?
Dunno. My gran, she was a teacher. My mum say she's got a nose for things like that. All teachers have!

That's nonsense. He'll never know!
Something might fly out if we lift the lid!
Like what?
When you look in this crystal ball you sees the classroom upside down!
It's humming!
What is?
The box, of course!
The windows go all out of shape in the corners.
Could be a bird in it then!
Birds don't hum, silly!
Some do!
Like what?
Humming birds!
That's their wings does that when they flying. There's not room to fly in the box, so it's not a bird.

I wonder why we can't open the box...
He thinks it's special, I s'pose.
It is special. It's got all these lovely lions all over it.
Don't be daft! Don't you know anything? They dragons, not lions. It's a Welsh box!
If you look right through it everything looks out of shape... only it's all behind you!
Welsh is dangerous. There's witches and things in Welsh!
That's why we mustn't touch it then! We might get spelled on!
I says we open it!
Who else says we open it?
That's all of us then, but not Peter.
No, he's too busy magicking with that there crystal ball! So Peter look away. Don't see us do it.

{LONG PAUSE}

Christmas!
It's a tape recorder!
AND it's running!
AND it's on record!
That's how he'll know!

The reference in the poem is to an investigation I made in an infant school into the development of language and an ethical "compass" in young children. It was in fact one of two such investigations. The other I have already posted in a more straight forward report form. You can read it here http://picsandpoems.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/chalk-and-cheese.html

sPrInG

For long -- too long --
they've hesitated:
trembled in the wings,
stars of this year's pageantry,
their costumes under
winter's heavy wraps,
asking if it's time.
Was that our cue?

Then suddenly,
not as we'd thought
or where we'd thought,
not from the earth
(or so it seemed)
but conjured out of air:

just overnight,
the bright magnolia
is spangling the sky.
Stella, she's called --
so aptly named. Near-by
Forsythia
vies with the sun
for colour and for light.

And now the flame bush,
seeming nearer earth,
dispels that myth
as all its flames
spontaneously ignite.

Even the earth-bound hellebores
have raised themselves
to face the sun,
so lightening their load.

Diaphanous, the willow's gown,
bought yesterday on-line.
She shakes her skirts
with patent glee
and pride in how she looks.

Written for Claudia's Poetics ~ Spring at dVerse Poets

Art and Theories of Art

While we argued
The Truth of the painting,
its meaning -- and could
such a thing as meaning exist?

while we debated
how much he'd been swayed
by the skies of Bellini
or the mysticisms of Blake,

while we wrangled about
the folds in the clothes
(was it the Romanesque
line that we saw?)

or the slight elongations --
did he intend
the subtle rotations
that made form seem bizarre?

Even then, as we bickered,
the wind was rising,
the sun slowly falling,
the birds fallen quiet, and

the sky (though not a Bellini),
had gone suddenly dark --
and all the while
as we argued

these ponderous thoughts,
the sole custodian
of the answers we sought,
was dying alone in his bed.

The Coming of Godot

Peggy at Poetry Jam invites us this week to present a fictional character from a Point of View. I have chosen Godot from Samuel Becket's "Waiting for Godot". In the play Godot never appears. Waiting, interminably, for him to do so are two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon. In the spirit of the prompt (I hope!) I have given Godot sole occupancy of the stage.

Vladimir! Estragon! Where are
you -- Surely you have not left? Gone?
Can it be so? Are you not here?
Of course not. I see you are not.
Could ye not watch for me, one brief
hour more? Of course not? Why should you?
You waited well beyond what might
have been expected. I delayed
my coming -- God-like, but not God.
My non-appearance then became
far more than you or audience
could bear. Soon it became the main
point of the play. Academics
argued it was all. (What thoughts did
you, my friendly tramps, have then? Did
you think it all? Or did you think
I might not come at all? Perhaps
you were among those few who thought
me God: all wise, invisible,
and at the end, unknowable?
There were such and still are -- so I
was bound to come. A pity then
you are not here. What would you make
of me -- or did you long suspect
I am a woman? I guess you did.
And so you danced attendance on
me for so long -- not long enough
though, as it came to pass. But had
you known for certain sure I was
a man you would not have stayed long --
or would have stayed for ever. But
for a woman you would do what
you in fact did do -- wait long, though
not quite long enough. So am I?
Am I God? And does the play ask
that -- or answer it? No, never.
Is that the point of it? My non-
appearance, is that the crux we
need to understand? Or me, here,
now, and you departed God knows
where -- the final revelation
as I speak it now to no one.
That is an abiding truth; that
the final revelation goes
unheard. The trees may hear my words,
the birds may glean some molecule
of what I say, a fox may steal
my words, and so the day may come
when someone finds them, finds a use
for them. Our two good friends, perhaps:
friends Vladimir and Estragon.
One way or another, the words
that we speak will come back to us.

The Cross

I am the way, I said.
How could they understand?
All faith is path, the path
the ultimate expression
of all the footfalls down the years
that have compressed the earth
and left a deep impression --
yet one so mystical
that only I could clearly see
the way the feet had worshipped it
and where they'd let it peter out
and lose itself in sand.

But only from the cross I saw
the state of man and things:
his soul and mine
so inextricably entwined.
It took the cross for that.

I saw the path laid out afresh,
the path he'd walked,
the path I'd walked,
the path that lay ahead.
It passed through flood
and tempest too,
in mountains disappeared,
was trapped by snow and ice.
Enormous rock falls buried it.

This was the path,
a rough and ready way
on which no tarmac lay.
It was reward --
the only one --
to man and I
for a rough cross
across the years
and Resurrection Day.

The Night Security Patrol

The night security patrol -
that's Grant and Mischief II.
A university. Extensive grounds,
a six mile beat to be completed
twice or thrice a night.

The half-way point: a statue
of the venerable founder. Ghost-
like and silvery in pools of light
that move with clouds and trail
deep shadows in their wake.

Grant becomes aware
that Mischief's nose or ears
are on to something he has missed.
Grant lets him run on the long lead.
Mischief growls. Attacks the noble

founder. Will not let go his legs.

Best Love is Never Seasonal

Best love is never seasonal.
It may begin on some high plane,
a bare plateau where nothing grows --
or has not until now. It's looking down
(or back)the lovers see their futures.

The world removed from love (and them)
looks small, not worth a French kiss
with an empty mussel shell. They shall
much rather forge their worldly way.
With nothing set in stone, all things

are possible. The frisson is between them, not
between them and our world. They look around
like frightened rabbits with no bolt hole.
They should be focussed on each other. Spring
holds the key, but love is never seasonal.


Written for Willow's prompt at Mag 164, with much thanks for the image.

A Very Private Monster

Outside my childhood bedroom window,
a tree of unknown species --
the family at variance.
I don't recall I ever saw it in full leaf,
though leaf buds came and went,
but never blossom and no fruit.
It had a scar down one side from a lightning strike.

On windy nights my phantasoid*
might take possession of the tree,
the tree become a miscreation in disguise.
The creature's bony fingers scratched
across my window pane in search of -- always searching --
for that one elusive crack, a weakness, a way in.
Sometimes it found it, and its digits or its arms
would wind their way across my ceiling,
down the walls, and even scrawl
their patterns on the pages of the book
that I'd be reading with my torch.

It had, I came to realise, as many arms
and fingers as its work required.
No point in counting them. Their numbers changed
from one look to the next. In constant flux,
I would have needed to know calculus
to calculate the sum. Two heads it had --
that much seemed constant -- black and grey.
The grey one scowled or roared, the black
just smiled, as if to say Good day!

On stormy nights when all the elements
turned really wild it aged enormously.
I called it then my phantaswick* -- because
it had a beard (on its grey face)
that stood up to attention like a wick.

A monster of a mystery, it never frightened me,
but next day if the storm had passed, I'd go and look:
the tree was quite unchanged, the miscreation
quite restored and unpossessed -- and far too far
away to ever scratch my window pane. Nothing
of note to catch a small boy's interest, except
two birds' nests side by side -- one black, one grey --
and maybe something weeping from the scar.


Written for Brian Miller's prompt at dVerse Poets Poetics ~ Monsters
* My names for

A day with the brush.

Me__ Any thoughts about today?
Toby Yes, actually. Thought I might sit up near the conveyor belt and look down into the abyss... And you?
Me__ The opposite. Up on the high bank, looking straight across to where you'll be.
Toby Sounds good to me!
Me__ Anywhere should be OK today. Conditions are ideal. No matter where we park our easels, should be fun.
Toby Have we ever had a day like this before, with both wind and sun? Take your pick.


Silence and shiver.
No sound but traffic
hum from below.
Sun's dazzle a quake
gently shakes what I see.


Everything white
other than sky,
nothing visibly not white
except for its blue --
and the sun's yellow pencil
outlining a shape
and a texture or two.


My easel's black shadow,
a cataract, falls
down the bank's sharp incline,
the sun's latest cut-out --
or black-out, say you?


Think of a coal mine
its coal brilliant white
dust crusts the landscape --
grass, shrubs and trees
a building or two...
the conveyor belt wheel
is the mine's winding gear.
The men all below.
Birds never come here.


Riddlesdown. Quite unique in my view.
Cement works and chalk quarry.
What little remains
of the downs that were here
is covered with dust sheets.
Spectral, the scene.


The conveyor belt rattles
and bangs into life,
buckets clatter and sway.
Deep in the quarry
jive their shadows all day...


Toby Would you believe it! Some guy comes up to me while I'm painting. Says "Why you bothering with paints? There's plenty chalk down there you could use.
Me__ And you said?
Toby Nothing! I thought: Prick! But then, afterwards, began to think it not such a bad idea. I might work over it with pastels.
Me__ Yeah, I can see that working!
Toby You know if heaven and hell ever got together and reached some sort of compromise, it would probably look a bit like that place.
Me__ Maybe, but I think I prefer my good and evil a bit more black and white.


Written for Herotomost's Destinations and Dialogues prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads where we were asked to sandwich the poem between two pieces of dialogue.

Meeting the Dreamer

They call me the dreamer, he said,
I having asked him who he was
who'd burst upon my idle time above the tide line,
lost among the marram grass and sand dunes,
watching the sea-whipped waves play in the bay.
Strange boy: man's body, girlish face that now
and then would greatly age and then be young again;
and covered head to toe in moths and dragon flies
that when the face changed would fly off
to form a cloud that followed him -- or was it her?
No answer ever came in all the years we met.

Why do they call you that? I asked.
That's not high science, sir, he said.
Because I dream! I am the one
that has dreamed you and put you in
this dream time and dream place. I gave you
what you're pleased to call your life.
I thought about this deeply for a moment as I watched
the moths and dragonflies dance lightly on the waves.
Then: I'm just a figment in your dream?
I asked. He nodded his assent. And yet, he said,
We were great friends before I dreamed you here.

Pockets --Wot they 4?

Once in my early teens --
Oh, memorable evening under stars,
trees bidding us keep schtum --
wearing a great coat not my own,
and in a pocket of the same,
a rabbit -- not a beast to conjure with,
not one to pull out of an ear or hat,
Oh no, a rabbit, though unbloodied
and still warm, quite dead.

My coat, a poacher's coat
(each pocket big enough, I thought, to hold a horse),
belonged to Jake who lived with others
(the others who were with us now)
in coaches on a railway line.
They'd put me up when I'd been in distress.
And Jake had put his coat around me
when I'd shivered -- from excitement, not from cold.
Inordinately long on him,
it reached the ground on me.
Railway men they were.
Plate-layers they were called.
They introduced me to their sport --
of poaching down the line.

Alas, the phase of pockets filled with fluff,
dead mice and chewing gum - part chewed -
passed me completely by; so this, my solitary
bragging right, is what I offer now.

These days the contents of my pockets seem
much friendlier, if more mundane:
coins of the realm and keys, a mobile phone,
a lucky stone, a note-book, pen
and camera, some paper tissues, like as not,
my wallet and a tube of peppermints...
These simple things
are more fulfilling now
than that poor rabbit was back then.

But not completely so! I yearn
for something tactile and exotic
to play with as I walk or wait
in some quite cheerless waiting room.
I'd love a netsuke,* for example,*
to roam my fingers round and secretly
enjoy the sculptor's special skills.
That or a small stone God or godess,
a replica perhaps of the oldest one of all
the WILLENDORF,* that neolithic Dame...*
Oh, how I'd like my fingers roaming her!


The prompt brilliantly suggested by Poetry Jam

To the Sound of Breaking Glass...

This is the moment
that comes occasionally
or not at all:
the dream
fading into reality,
lost in the borderland
between full sleep and wakefulness.
With eyes still sleeping soundly
the ears are wide awake.

One foot in nightmare, still I stand
and listen to my other land.

The mind is stretched between the two.
The dream runs on,
a silent film,
no longer silently.
The soundtrack comes from somewhere else:
the street outside
where two men argue about... about...
but now drowned out
by children playing,
the bin men on their rounds,
the clatter of the bins,
the sound of breaking glass...

all this laid over... what?
A London bus,
the upper deck,
A Buddhist monk
immolates himself in front of me.
His sacrifice.
Protest for freedom.
Immersed in flames
he disappears from view.
A horse jumps through the flames.

Silly man, silly man, out you go!
sing the children in the street below
to further sounds of breaking glass.
Surreal. How could they know?
The Buddhist figures in my world, not theirs.
Innocence and artfulness walk hand-in-hand.

The couplet (lines 10 and 11) though in italics is not a quote, but an allusion to a Poem of similar title by Edwin Muir. You can read it here

Trust him, he's an artist!

If an artist tells you
that he wants you for your body,
it's best that you believe him Ducky.
Let him have his wicked ways with you,
distort your body's finest features,
include more loving detail in the towel
than in your sexy shoulder blades,
and smudge or blur your face or breasts.
Humour him his pastels or his paints,
for if you scorn what he has made of you,
you may have scorned your immortality.

If a sculptor tells you
that he wants you for your body,
try to believe him Dearie,
though you know it isn't true.
It's his stone interpretations that he wants:
the shapes he's found in rocky outcrops
that hold memories of you.
Humour him his syntheses
of chiselled flesh and marble stroked,
for if you scorn the visions that he's seen
you may have scorned your own memorial stone.


My thanks to The Mag for the image as prompt.