Peelin Orange Read online

  there at the fabled edge.

  The brooding pond was dark.

  Sudden, escaping cloud, the sun

  came bright; and, shimmering in guilt,

  he saw his own face peering from the pool.

  A READING

  Faraway eyes

  indifferent as glass

  Come with me come

  inside the park

  there is a fountain

  at the centre

  Eyes

  at last eyes warm

  pathways entice

  Moving together

  eyes holding eyes

  we make a journey

  both devise

  Far

  at the centre

  the fountain

  blooms

  STRIPPER

  At a sleazy club where strippers are on view

  a weary poet stopped for wine

  and song; but had to take the stripper too,

  whose writhing seemed an image of his line.

  She put on clothes to take them off, she wore

  performing pieces, such a fuss she made

  of skimpy little veils before

  her parts (which never were displayed)!

  Riddling hard to music, she performed

  her teasing art, for which the patron paid.

  Nice fleshy legs, gyrating hips that warmed

  the watchers; sensuous, lively, educated tits.

  The poet looked away, to check the eyes

  of grim-faced lechers, soft men going to bits,

  suckers deceived by lighting, sold on lies

  (while there behind the smoke-dimmed crowd

  the cunning pander lurked, a ponce on guard).

  She took the last piece off the law allowed.

  The poet felt his symbol growing hard.

  MUSE

  When you woo her

  she will fade

  This is how

  the game is played

  Smilingly

  she leads him on

  He approaches

  Whereupon

  the figure in the

  evening air

  begins to

  slowly disappear

  Extraordinary

  trade

  When you woo her

  she will fade

  This is how

  the game is played

  TUTORIAL

  ‘I’m strange,’

  you said,

  like an apology

  with just a hint

  of cool defiance.

  But you are not

  alone, remember;

  it is strange inside

  the labyrinthine

  network wiring

  each and every

  head, a mess

  of shimmering

  mirrors,

  a surreal forest

  of reflection.

  You may not

  be as different

  as you think.

  Enjoy, examine

  what you find.

  Welcome

  to the mystery

  of mind.

  OBLATION

  Then shall the poet say:

  Draw near, and touch

  my suppurating wounds.

  This is my psyche

  broken for you. Give thanks.

  You have not cared enough.

  But you may clap.

  GARDENING

  he planted plenty seed

  but where he dropped

  a flower weed

  would sprout

  he pulled the weed out

  sowed again

  but where he urged

  a flower weed came out

  despairing

  of the strangled flower

  he let the dull weed grow

  its awkward power

  STORYPOEM

  well

  one day at a concert

  with the whole hall full

  he entered to vociferous applause

  he settled at the keyboard

  flexed his fingers

  and didn’t play

  just sat there

  listening

  EXAMINATION CENTRE

  Dilapidated room,

  paint peeling.

  Sufferers

  on edge.

  The chief invigilator

  gives the word.

  The fingered papers rustle.

  Outside the centre –

  part of my recall –

  trees bend and stretch

  and breathe.

  Winds, playful, tease.

  We’re struggling here

  with questions

  and time

  and longing

  for a life we glimpse

  through dust

  clouding the panes.

  INTERIOR

  stuck in there

  with the over-stuffed

  imported reading-chair

  the ritual mask

  of native wood

  the stereogram

  the modish canvasses

  a square

  glass-fronted

  shadow box

  revealing

  curiosa

  locked inside

  TUNNEL

  Down

  on his

  belly

  in the

  tunnel

  clawed

  the dust

  bruising

  towards

  light

  Slow

  bellying

  dragged

  his body

  sloughed

  the dark

  TOASTING A MUSE

  One man who came to dinner

  wouldn’t eat,

  just focused on his hostess

  instant eloquent devotion.

  He’d stand and say, as if proposing

  a toast, ‘I speak this in your honour,

  ma’am, you are so beautiful,’

  then chant some passionate verse,

  and sit and drink some more

  until the spirit moved in him

  again, then stand and say

  ‘You are so beautiful’ et cetera

  and do another item.

  Funny fellow. Poet. Mad as hell.

  I been there, sort of.

  For in that ambience I too

  was smitten, by what seemed

  to me unusual radiance,

  beauty of spirit lighting up the place,

  but I kept quiet about it, made small talk,

  stayed sober, and enjoyed the food.

  WRITING

  after Octavio Paz

  When in some solitary hour

  pen writes on paper

  who makes it move?

  Who is he writing to, writing for me

  this littoral of lips, of dream, this

  shoulder to forget the world forever on?

  Someone inside me writes, he moves my hand,

  selects a word, then pauses, wavering

  between green mountains and blue sea.

  Coldly examines what I write,

  dashes it in the fire.

  But this judge is a victim who,

  condemning me, condemns himself.

  He writes nobody, calls nobody,

  he writes himself, gets lost inside himself,

  and finds himself again, once more becoming me.

  WORKING OUT

  a left jab

  at the shadow

  just inside

  his vision

  (nothing

  there)

  a right hook

  at the assailant

  shaping

  (air)

  – he’s getting fit

  and when the real

  night finally arrives

  he’ll come out

  of his corner

  swinging

  SHE

  tangling

  with undergrowth

  he hears

&nbs
p; her questioning

  the twilight

  fears

  summoning softly

  into jungle

  into night

  SHADOWS

  When the man taps out

  a peephole in his crown,

  that hole into the dark

  pit is for peering down:

  but it is hard to tell

  what’s going on down there:

  when shadows thrash

  and slither

  what we glimpse

  are figures either

  wrestling for fun or

  locked in combat

  in a subterranean war.

  COUNSELLOR

  Reaching out

  with irony

  she greets

  our tensions

  registers the timbre

  of our screams

  MUSEUM PIECE

  The thing had wings

  that flapped

  flapped in the dark of the skull

  You let it be they said

  we don’t care

  to know about it

  you keep it it is yours

  But the thing kept going

  flap

  flap

  So he got himself a lance

  and he practiced tilting

  tilting

  till one day when the thing went flap

  he climbed on his practised horse

  and galloped into the dark

  He rammed the lance in its gullet

  and dragged it into the light

  then he wiped off the dust and the blood

  and he put it on display

  (making sure to pin the wings)

  DADD, POOR DADD

  They said, concerning Richard Dadd,

  a delicate talent was all he had;

  until, emphatically mad,

  he stuck a knife into his dad,

  unlocking vision. Sad.

  VALLEY PRINCE

  for Don Drummond

  Me one, way out in the crowd,

  I blow the sounds, the pain,

  but not a soul

  would come inside my world

  or tell mi how it true.

  I love a melancholy baby,

  sweet, with fire in her belly;

  and like a spite

  the woman turn a whore.

  Cool and smooth around the beat

  she wake the note inside mi

  and I blow mi mind.

  Inside here, me one

  in the crowd again,

  and plenty people

  want mi blow it straight.

  But straight is not the way; my world

  don’ go so; that is lie.

  Oonoo gi mi back mi trombone, man:

  is time to blow mi mind.

  ASYLUM

  I

  a fellow in the madhouse cries

  the world is wallowing in lies

  innocence is nevermore

  the fat worm nestles at the core

  II

  Fix what you can. Forget the rest.

  A little learnt indifference is best.

  ZOO STORY

  they’re grappling for you

  the fatuous bourgeois with a book

  and the lean wild man

  the animal

  prowling your territory

  the lonely transient

  longing

  and you

  will hold the knife

  ENCOUNTER

  When I was stumbling

  in the dark, confused

  and crying out for help,

  this friendly fellow seemed amused;

  and while I fought like anything

  to keep the candle lit

  he cheerfully reviewed

  the guttering of my wit.

  Astonished that the brother found

  my struggle such a treat

  I turned the flickering light on him

  and glimpsed his cloven feet.

  CRITIQUE

  Yuh a grow, yuh wi come si

  Authenticity for you

  is blazing revelation,

  the suicidal nerve

  exposed, the madman

  naked in the street.

  One day, one day,

  if you live long enough,

  you’ll feel the fire in sobriety,

  and come to value

  smouldering.

  AFTER THE MOVIE

  So they all had tea on the ceiling,

  floating,

  high on laughs!

  But Mary Poppins flew away,

  and the little boy wept in the dark.

  Dragged into daylight he is weeping still.

  DATA

  facts lie

  behind the poems

  which are true

  fictions

  THE FOREST

  That world I knew was all too plain:

  a dry world, crisp and certain

  in the sun, where practically anyone

  could laugh and prattle all day long,

  seeing clear for seeing nothing. But

  horrid those grim creatures which, obscure,

  lurk in the forest where the leaves

  are damp, where sun is filtered

  to a nightlight feeble against fears!

  Around dark tree-trunks red eyes leer:

  Come; into the forest

  where the leaves are damp,

  where no bird sings. Come,

  flee the sunlit safety of the shore.

  Deep in the forest where the air is dank

  embrace the gracious maggot in the mind.

  The bright boat burns on the beach.

  POETRY WORKSHOP

  november sunlight

  climbing up the shoulders of

  the simmering poets

  TO TELL THE TRUTH

  i used to burn my poems

  he said

  was troubled

  murmuring inside

  till puking demons

  brought relief

  but no one

  ever analysed

  or even

  saw

  the stuff

  i vomited

  i used to burn my poems

  GOING THROUGH THE PARK

  Out of the shadow an awkward figure

  loomed, commanding, with a gun.

  The finger tightened on the trigger.

  The finger tightened on the trigger.

  She couldn’t fight, she couldn’t run;

  she learned in that peculiar park

  how much she feared the gun.

  The finger tightened on the trigger.

  Then suddenly along the dark

  gun-muzzle whoosh! a full balloon

  came rushing, rainbow-bright!

  The awkward figure laughed. And soon

  that weird encounter faded into night.

  II LOVE IS

  WEST INDIAN LOVE SONG

  from England

  The moon begat our love

  the moon on the sea

  You said the moon would prove

  what love should be

  The sea frustrates our love

  dissolves my life

  The moon that spun our love

  sharpens the knife

  And to regain my love

  I’ll ride the sea

  I’ll put my arms about the moon

  and we’ll be free

  A TEMPERATE LOVE POEM

  Hoarfrost glimmering beyond

  latched windows. Icicles

  adorning iron bars. Inside

  we are cold, or colder than

  we like it, snuggling

  each other, hopefully.

  Some fine day, spring

  (as in a poem) will burst

  again, real sun

  shine for true, and we

  won’t need each other so;

  then may we choose to share

  the summer warmth and live

  together, happily apart.
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  DREAMTIME

  the lady dreams

  herself shut out

  her lord in the castle

  his lady without

  he waves from a window

  a long way away

  she doesn’t know what

  he intends to convey

  one evening in dreamtime

  the wind blew right

  and a voice floated down

  from that worrying height