Palmyra

Ashes fall on sacrificial altars. Dust rises, shrouding dangling martyrs.

In the name of the Lord,

The Merciful.

You tell me to write

You tell me to write. As if some shit like this could change anything: Crude childish scrawlings on the blackboard of experience Merely smudge with age, and grow no clearer.

 You tell me to write. As if my fingers could translate this inner turmoil. Like cloak-and-dagger comics soaked in whisky and farce we ride the carousel of fucking idiocy.

 You tell me to write. As if any of this matters. As if sitting here at two-thirty-five makes me any kind of Deep. Any kind of Nietzsche, Camus, Poe.

 You tell me to write. As if I could catch this thin-ness that I want to; As if I could produce some kind of Thing worth having; worth reading. No.

 You tell me to write. And so I do, in no hope of placing anything more than crap. Crap but true, but no better off for that. Fit for nothing but the pity-niche of Cyberspace.

Thatchered

“You have been well and truly Thatchered”, My Godmother said one night. A player of the game of grades, Not once getting it right.

 Where’s your academic integrity? She implied, but without saying. It doesn’t matter what you get, The serious bit’s the playing.

Here We Are

Here we are, coming to terms with mediocrity. You with a menthol fag, me a Bloody Mary devoid of lemon, celery, a half-arsed job.

We scribe a word or two on Dickens, then break to wander as two clouds of analytic prowess.

You precipitate, I collect, my laptop full of inane ideology. You put out and I receive:

At your dining table the Pap of Life is served.

Of Hoppes ynd the Goddemuther Ich Singe

[Or: "You absolutely have to take the old hops out of one door, and bring the new hops in at another, and if you do that wrong, you're buggered, probably for a year and a day, if not life or possibly eternity."]

A poem inspired by the yearly 'changing of the hops' in my godmother's kitchen.

   So yet annothere yere hath comme bye, Wyth anne appallyng sight for thyne poure eyes: The hoppes, that wer so greenlie onne the racke, Have now gonne broun, ynd sweetlie visage lacke.

  The time has combe thus fore annothere loade, Rightso owt to the Lavyndere Farme yow rowde. Whanne yow arrived, a iourney yow had gonne, To rivall eny that Aenyas had dunne!

  The farmhause, thro’ the raiyne, had shonne a lyte and gyded yow, a lightehowse yn yowr plight. The farmyre stood him talle amungst hunge hoppes; A giante of a manne bye gyant croppes.

  The flickring fyre wyrmed the shadowes welle, And thysse advice to yow the mann did telle: “Whanne that the yerely hoppinge-feste comth ronde Bye thysse quaynte rulle thou'lt finde thou must be bonde:

  To nevere bring the hoppes thro’ the same dore Thou hast ejeck’d the otheres owt before.” Yow creased (ich ken) yowr brouwe yn wundyrment: Yow wunderd iust whatte thys old crackel ment!

  Thusfar, Pynylopye, yowd past the test: yowd mayde the iournie to the madmanne’s neste, But yette, to listen onne there was stille more, thys halfe-crackt jacknaype wyzard’s wyld fokelore:

  “Fore yffe yow bringe the hoppes by samedorewise thou’lt finde the yere bringes nauchte but miseryes; but yffe yow sepparaite yowr hoppey hawle: thanne happynesse on yow is shure to calle.”

  Yowr eys (ich speckt) did widden inne surpryse, At thysse moste curyiouse turn of frase. Yowr harte it beyten yn yowr chestye-core, Yow wunderd what yowd lette yowrsen inne fore!

  “So listen welle, faire travellyr of hoppes, yffe yow wishe to returnen with mye croppes. Buggerede is he whoe bringes the softyes inne the dore thro’ wich the crinklies owt have bene.”

  Yow mumbelled undyrstonding undyr-brethe, Yow reched owt fore the hoppes, and pickt a sheife. Yn transacktionne yow gayve a shinie coyne, Then wunce more plung’d ynto the drivinge raine.

  Thus, att the ende, remembyr whatte he spayke, And nevere thro’ the saym dore hoppes ye tayke! Be shure that thou hast throun the broun owt backe, Before yow bringst the greenlie for the racke!

Haiku

Only when we dip

to embrace the ocean’s chill:

then ripples are made.

Skimming

We are never too old to skim: The childish rush to find the smoothest stones passes down from father to son to me. Eager eyes polish out the lumps, optimism makes aerodynamic squares fit to challenge those flung from your experienced hand.

  We are never too old to skim. Mine plop once, twice, thrice if I’m lucky. Yours seem to fly into eternity, flashing ten, thirteen times in the sunset over Loe Beach. Rain or shine, we’ll scoop the pebbles and send them corkscrewing 

again

again

until even you can’t make the shapeless cobbles spin.

Explorations in narrative/'Bureacracy'

The waiting room is long, low, and grey. The scuffed carpet is grey, chequered in different shades as if in a desperate attempt to cheer up formal guidelines on décor. It spreads to the walls like a greasy sea against forbidding cliffs, serving only to enhance the lowness of the ceiling. Even the people are greyish, as if the waiting fades their colours, leaving only the faintest signs of vibrancy behind. They are sitting, lumped like sacks, on metallic benches riveted to the floor. These are also grey; not the desperate grey of the carpet, but rather a harshly efficient gunmetal. Pausing at the door, the man sighs. Not outwardly – that would be dangerous – but deep within his carefully neutral expression. The waiting room. Or, more correctly: The Waiting Room. Never had capital letters seemed so ominous as on that sign. It is a small, rather unobtrusive rectangle of chromed grey that imperiously guides the eye toward it, imprinting its message on the viewer. It seems to say: ‘This is The Waiting Room, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

He passes into the room and is instantly hit by the oppressive stuffiness pervading it. Sweat prickles his armpits, the nape of his neck itches. He becomes horribly aware of himself as he shuffles to a seat, horribly aware of the eyes staring at him with deadened curiosity. How long have they been waiting? The door shuts softly, cutting off any hope of escape. He sighs again, and spies the nearest chair, walking as calmly as possible across a floor suddenly a mile long. Sweat seems to pour out of him and he dives for the chair, half covered by the next victim, a flabby man apparently made of water, and avoids any eye-contact with those around him. He needn’t bother, for as soon as he sits he becomes one with the sacks, and is no longer of interest. Their flat stare, almost a presence in itself, is transferred to the next luckless victim in the unending queue.

Perching on the edge of his steel stool, he clutches his scrap of flimsy paper, already moist, to his chest, as if it can protect him from the encroaching neighbour. Carefully, he memorises the number printed on it, for the paper is close to disintegrating in his clammy grasp – as if he doesn’t know his own number, imprinted on him at birth, his governmental birthmark. A mechanical voice crackles in hidden speakers, startles him. It is broken, a hybrid rattle of toneless human voice and electrical energy.

“Number. Thr-bbzzz-ndred four. Kerchunk to desk. Number twenty. Three.”

The last word, no matter the number, is always upwardly inflected, too sharp, piercing the waiting with an un-nerving insistence that pervades until the next announcement, when the cycle repeats. At one end of the room, a bland woman calls numbers four hundred and one through to four hundred and five over and over, as if a broken record. Nobody comes forward, and she is left to parrot the numbers again, and again, and again. Those who are called by the mechanical voice jump guiltily, and plod with drooping heads towards the next section in the governmental chain. None ever seem to come out. People are trickling out, but the man is unable to match those coming out with those who went in earlier. There is just a flow, a Brownian motion of greyish, plodding lost souls filtering in and out of the bureaucratic mincer.

The Pub

We old pair choose the pub for the calm contemplation not meant for clubs and bars. In the waitress we both see fantasies, conjured By adolescent urge, lonely nights.

  We joke we are old men, but in the humour there’s a grain of truth – we’re wasted husks fit for nothing but trying the next ale on the pump. We are disappointed that they’ve stopped serving porter.

One Girl

One girl, blond, riveted into her fleshtube is not what she thinks she is.

  She gyrates, wanting needing craving to be sexy. She makes us laugh.

  Laugh at this girl who needs attention. Laugh at the manic confidence of the crushed.

  The bar is stuffy, cloying with fleshly desperation. Laughter turns inward, hollow.

Prince Albert

I am, and drink, alone in the Prince’s garden. The fading sunlight ushers springtime chill sinking with the level of my pint to gloomy emptiness.

View Across the Water

Across the water squats red-brick Argus with a thousand eyes. A finger raised heavenwards an industrial Atlas supporting the sky.

Haiku II

A cormorant flaps,

Dries its wings in the sunlight.

Black solar-panels.

Haiku

A single magpie;

Black and white it flutters by.

One is for sorrow.

Skeppsholmen

Geese line the waterside at attention like sentries.

A lone gull dive-bombs a swan its mournful cry the siren of a Stuka.

Two rocks bob up from the waves gasping for air; while the city rumbles in the distance.

Placid Waters

Placid waters. Three gulls dive and dip over the ripples of surfacing fish.

  We sway in a rough plastic hammock between two trees on the shale bank, the far side lit by day-embers.

  Placid waters. Lazy ripples spread across the mirror-sheen, waving the trees with gentle fingers upside-down.

Birches

Birch forests stretch endlessly in the ever-light, bright bone-fingers gleaming in the foliage. No wonder there are folk tales with woods like these.

Even in the warmer light of day a grim firmness clings; ramrod-straight remembrancers of forgotten past.

What heroes, villains, and monsters they have seen! These silent sentinels at the death of man, fish scales fluttering in the breeze.