The cloak of nothingness

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” Hemingway.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880–1881). Courtesy of the Phillips Collection, DC.

When I look into the mirror
I do not see my face
I see those ghosts behind me,
Trailing blood and lace.

Please excuse my misapprehension,
I do apologise for my fault,
It is not my intention to diminish comprehension:
Of my actions, my persona, my whole gestalt.

But I am not a good prose writer,
For I sympathise with the autistic blighter
Who can always hear the thunder,
Echo deep within his heart,
It’s louder every day, and it’s tearing me apart.

A terrible beauty

Over four years now since the slaughter
On the 22nd May 2017 at the Ariana concert
22 murdered, 116 with injuries they’ll carry~
all their lives. The target, the young and carefree.

Before, I loved the rainy mornings of my life
And I never thought friendly mountain passes
Would ferry me away
But  now happy times are seldom
And the Manchester rain runs away with me.

From holiday beach to temptestous sea
Thunder clouds gather like swarms of angry bees
I have lost my faith in the indomitable sea.~~~
And I have lost my faith in humanity
Only the city of the bee, is for me.

I sing only one song now
‘Protect the young and defend the free.’
O! the mechanical movement of the sun.
Sunshine blooms and nectar spreads
Covering  all that’s dappled, fair
Like the shadow of a tender tree.

Sunshine blooms and seasons spread
Covering  all that’s dappled, fair
Like a changeling in the ocean
Like the dolphins in the  sea, and unlike me.

After Bukowski

“I wanted the whole world or nothing.” Charles Bukowski. Post Office.

Also I hear the mountains spring on their way back.  They look up and down brown-blue slides and in the weaver of water we have the H2O,  the fish screech to taste cconsumption of water in order of merit and the water is in their tears. Wars over access to fresh water will be profound. Like Israel’s grab for the rivers of Jordan. I listen to the laplap lapping of the weedy Bollin  and am no longer firstly or secondly. At night I speak, weep sadly with song,  whiskey and my sadness gets so overwhelming that my heart slows. Arrhythmia the doctors say. DrinKing Water passes through eleven bodies before mine. That’s fine, by me. Water is peeled of impurity. My glasses are solid water. My feet draw patterns on the dry floor. Water becomes buttons to undress. Slip-shod shoes are polished up by water into patent leather wonders. A ticket for la bus is all you need to escape the smoke from cigarettes. Easily doused with water. Sweet grapes attract the palate. We must wait for significance to grow like a vine. Others sell flowers outside graveyards and can still muster a vote at election time, outside, a chapel of dark jerusalem vines.

The greatest gift

by John E Marks

Sunday 17th March 2019 7:50 pm

Brother Sun and Sister Moon

Shine on the people of this world.

Let them recall the smells of spring

On cold and drear November days.

And let them hear the baby’s cry,

That all the hounds of hell defy,

And give them all the boons of love –

For love is really all we are –

The tiny gestures – the glance, the word –

That will in memory reoccur.

And deep amidst the fears of night

Bring a holy glimmer of delight.

The family face

 

Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

"I am the family face; 
Flesh perishes, I live on"  ‘Heredity’, Thomas Hardy

The extraordinary ordinariness of the everyday
Day-in-day-out: work, eat, sleep then go away.
Like places at the table becoming vacant one-by-one.
This is what happens to families. They wither, die,
Then sprout anew. But not the same family, and not
The same you. No man enters the same river twice.
Houses become homes, children become parents,
Time rolls on. But slivers of the past remain, not
Only in DNA and names but odd congruences:
“She has her mother’s way with her, it’s uncanny.”
“ His grandfather had just that way of leaning back,
Resting on his heels.” In the melee of the constant
Present, sometimes we miss these traces of the past,
Traits we pass on, unknowingly, the only things that last.

AWAY TO THE CRAGS, WHERE EAGLES SOAR

Away with the moon
with her shadows and all
those sturdy penumbras
you saw in the ball.
Forget you, forget you
we fall out of bed
and all we beget
is quite suddenly dead.
 
She’s tousled & sleepy,
this edge of the moon,
where
Angus, dear Angus,
just walked out the room.
His pool-side of shadows
is living alone;
with ginger-nut biscuits
and large gulps of tea,
his shadow is thinking:
is this really me?
 
Are all of the currents
just drifting away,
or finally forging
a minor delay?
To foster a loyalty
to heart, clan or cloud
to cover our heads
as we bury her shroud?
 
Infinity saves,
where the icicles cling,
on the edge of a wave
where the albatross sings.
Now, the soft roar of silence
is all around me,
it stings me awake,
but it wont set me free.

Heart murmur

Photo by Luke Ellis-Craven on Unsplash

Man and mist and fog and dog;
my winter-of-the-heart hideaway,
I stop, wake and sleep again.
Clouds disguise this fall
into the past,
as surely as the grave obeys
the rule of days. 

Everyday, this sheer cliff path
crumbles, just a little more.
Listen! as these screeched warnings of the gulls,
echo through this thin air.
Seeing you there shimmering,
glistening, as all light fades.

Troubadour

https://pinkushion.com/2016/09/06/concerts-hommage-a-nick-drake/

I walk beside you: tall, stooped,
a quintessentially English presence. 
Listen to those flat Fenland vowels
swirl into melodies,
meld with the staccato RP of Cambridge.

So many minor key explorations of sadness;
pull at the scabs of loneliness and regret.
Your songs made plangent
by the melancholic timbre of your voice.

Your abiding mood was irresolution,
the secret cross you bore, regret.
You never lost your fragility of heart.
My emptiness of soul filled,
at least passingly, by gentle,
observational lyrics that
lift your songs into poems.
Poems that continue to break my heart.
And that’s my mea cula.

Body on a beach

There’s a body on a mid-winter beach
Bloated by sea water, battered by waves,
The skin an indeterminate grey but the DNA
Gives it away: stomach distended, flesh declined,
Soul departed, a package of flesh left behind,
With seaweed dancing from her open mouth
That once kissed another, a mother, a lover.
Spoke words of comfort to the dying, bereaved:
Religion indeterminate, nationality left behind.
Look at the legs that carried the body
Over rugged mountains, across freezing tundra,
Over deserts thirsty, prickly with heat, across borders.
Look at the eyes which read the newspapers, scanned the phones. 
Read holy books, consumed erotic poetry and letters from home.
While a heart that was broken by war, death and disease
gathered the strength to begin life all over again.
That grey mush was a brain that loved to tussle,
Think and debate. Those bloated fingers wrote elegies
That were gateways to all the planets and stars.
In classical Arabic she argued it was never too late
To begin life again, soon, in beautiful Aleppo.

Body on a beach There’s a body on a mid-winter beach Bloated by sea water, battered by waves, The skin an indeterminate grey but the DNA Gives it away: stomach distended, flesh declined, Soul departed, a package of flesh left behind, With seaweed dancing from her open mouth That once kissed another, a mother, a lover. Spoke words of comfort to the dying, bereaved: Religion indeterminate, nationality left behind. Look at the legs that carried the body Over rugged mountains, across freezing tundra, Over deserts thirsty, prickly with heat, across borders. Look at the eyes which read the newspapers, scanned the phones. Read holy books, consumed erotic poetry and letters from home. While a heart that was broken by war, death and disease gathered the strength to begin life all over again. That grey mush was a brain that loved to tussle, Think and debate. Those bloated fingers wrote elegies That were gateways to all the planets and stars. In classical Arabic she argued it was never too late To begin life again, soon, in beautiful Aleppo.

Body on a beach There’s a body on a mid-winter beach Bloated by sea water, battered by waves, The skin an indeterminate grey but the DNA Gives it away: stomach distended, flesh declined, Soul departed, a package of flesh left behind, With seaweed dancing from her open mouth That once kissed another, a mother, a lover. Spoke words of comfort to the dying, bereaved: Religion indeterminate, nationality left behind. Look at the legs that carried the body Over rugged mountains, across freezing tundra, Over deserts thirsty, prickly with heat, across borders. Look at the eyes which read the newspapers, scanned the phones.  Read holy books, consumed erotic poetry and letters from home. While a heart that was broken by war, death and disease gathered the strength to begin life all over again. That grey mush was a brain that loved to tussle, Think and debate. Those bloated fingers wrote elegies That were gateways to all the planets and stars. In classical Arabic she argued it was never too late To begin life again, soon, in beautiful Aleppo.