Peelin Orange Read online

  i live in a castle

  with very thick walls

  and the drawbridge drawn

  up tight

  THE REASSURANCE

  When, my sweet,

  the man taps out

  a peephole in his crown,

  that hole into the pit’s

  for peering down.

  But watch! – the dark forms

  floundering, flapping,

  slithering,

  have not dethroned

  the previous person

  you have owned;

  the person still

  is what the person seems;

  no pressing need to shrink

  from fictive monsters

  flailing at your dreams.

  Bask in the present minutes:

  he

  uncorked by patient love

  pours tonic constancy

  (though pits brood fearful

  since that foetid day

  another man, your father,

  slipped away).

  Drink: and accept

  the offered peephole in the mind.

  You must not shrink,

  no matter how the shadows thrash

  or crawl.

  Pull away, or blink,

  and you will never

  own him

  all.

  TOGETHERNESS

  I

  Lying in the dark together

  we

  in wordless dialogue

  defined community.

  II

  You switch the light on to inspect

  an alien remark.

  And now your body stutters.

  No more lying in the dark.

  A VOYAGE

  ‘Beware, beware their evil song:

  they eat your flesh,

  they bleach your bones,

  you won’t last long.’

  His vessel neared an island.

  Shimmering calm. Air still.

  Enthralling song

  across the green sea floating

  paralysed his will.

  O heaven within his reach,

  he felt. And swam for shore.

  His fortune waited, lolling on the beach.

  WOMANSONG

  i am sinking

  do you care

  i am drowning

  over here

  throw a lifeline

  out for me

  drag my body

  from the sea

  i am dying

  can’t you see

  that girl lying

  there is me

  lying dying

  here on shore

  i don’t know you

  anymore

  CRITIC

  Questions about meaning

  really concern you now

  whose deconstruction, exquisite

  unravelling, terrorised.

  You were in control.

  Did you misread her eyes

  when, leafing through a magazine

  in bed, she glanced your way?

  Unstable text, your wife

  has broken up the game.

  Now she has left you, academic

  reading doesn’t seem the same.

  VERSION

  ‘A marvellous otaheite

  dark and sweet,’

  the Lord said. ‘Eat;

  and every time you go to it

  the apple will be whole.’

  Adam loved the apple

  heart and soul

  until he fancied

  on another tree

  another apple, dark

  (and sweet, presumably).

  He checked it.

  he enjoyed the change,

  the pleasure of the new fruit

  succulent and strange.

  Eventually remembering

  his sweet original,

  he turned again and found

  a change more radical:

  he bit it, and a huge hole gaped:

  the thing had lost its power:

  his luscious apple now

  was withering and sour.

  WORKSHOP

  he casually decodes

  her scrambled mews

  the cat is reading

  heat

  miaow implodes

  a molotov

  well mixed

  o she will have him

  she will have him

  fixed

  SHORT STORY

  I

  How carefully they walk

  together, hardly ever touching.

  Neither he nor she is rushing

  into anything.

  But something’s going on

  beneath the easy talk

  of books & family & friends.

  Read on.

  II

  They’re in a private place

  together, searching

  through the story, getting to know

  the characters, intertwining

  themes, discretion & desire,

  exploring conflict, complication,

  restructuring lives

  in the imagination.

  III

  Goodbye. ‘Let’s keep in touch,’

  they say, without conviction.

  They hug each other warmly, and depart.

  But each has nestled in the other’s art,

  so it’s another story in the fiction.

  MEMENTO

  a wrinkled head

  carved sideways

  on a hump

  a wooden figure

  old as sin

  it fell from me

  & the old man

  broke his neck

  i left the pieces

  in the garbage

  at the railway station

  RIDING HOOD: VERSION

  he seemed a proper granny

  till she grasped the truth –

  beneath the pretty bonnet

  lay a well-hung youth

  working up a story

  that he wanted read

  with the happy ending

  of her maidenhead

  ENDGAME

  She knew

  the risk

  but played

  the fool

  just entering

  his eyes

  then trying

  to run away.

  Too late.

  Checkmate.

  CASANOVA

  Flaunting his gym-toned pectorals,

  washboard stomach, fashion-

  conscious locks, he worked the image

  of philanderer, every woman’s

  fantasy or threat.

  But something tremulous inside

  his gravelly baritone exposed

  a small boy quivering in the dark,

  his mother dead, his father gone away,

  groping for explanations.

  HAPPY HOUR

  her laughter quivers

  like a flimsy bridge

  before it breaks

  her laughter covers up

  a hole

  and sharpened stakes

  but the detested animal

  is potent still it seems

  the prepossessing monster

  dominates her dreams

  MOMENT OF TRUTH

  as both were

  always listening

  for what was being said

  inside civilities

  the genial courtesies

  did not drown out

  their body language

  whispering exchange

  and they maintained the dialogue

  sotto voce many months

  until the clash of glances

  the electrifying flash

  PEACETIME

  bomb-disposal

  combed the area

  & declared it clean

  but love i cannot

  guarantee

  safe conduct

  through the rubble

  of my dreams –

  i’ve read

  too many
people

  blown to bits

  by land mines

  lying silent

  in the dust

  long after

  all those bells

  & all that joy

  long after solemn treaties

  had been signed & sealed

  SNAPSHOT

  i press your eyes

  and study the exposure

  in my head

  i have you

  sagging in a rumpled bed

  (don’t go don’t go)

  one snapshot

  in the miles & miles

  of undeveloped

  yesterdays

  (shutter your gaze)

  A MEMORY

  Not a cloud in sight:

  day calm and bright:

  cliché tranquillity.

  Out of the blue she floated in,

  a memory,

  playing her enigmatic grin

  (whose legend reads ‘At last, at last’

  but is re-written fast

  as you move in):

  nostalgic, but embarrassing.

  I mumbled ‘Hi’ and moved away.

  A ghost I’ll never lay.

  PANTOMIME

  She smiled and smiled and seemed to be

  the genial friend, the keen collaborator

  until the transformation scene; then she

  became a block of stone, a champion hater.

  PERSEPHONE

  i sleep & wake

  & see the dream again –

  the spectre

  of my youthful paramour

  my profiling adonis

  begging to be gored

  my faithless lover cruising

  at the cemetery gate

  NIGHT FLIGHT

  He’s off into the night

  alone, the lucky devil –

  no one hanging on his tail

  to keep him out of trouble.

  He flaps his wings

  in the uncaged air

  and, floating on the night,

  is gliding everywhere,

  is revelling in flight –

  until he feels

  the fish-hook in the flesh,

  the line tugged tight.

  DIALOGUE FOR DANCERS

  for the NDTC

  I

  at home on stage

  his wife the martyr

  bleeds

  II

  the other woman

  wraps a sensuous leg

  III

  torn

  between

  his clinging wife’s

  domestic harmonies

  the open breakfast face

  and that sleek wanton queen

  the red rose in her hair

  his wanting body

  writhes

  PARLOUR GAME

  Antennae register

  enticement, picking up

  glances and the enigmatic

  smile.

  Superfly is tripping

  into trouble, visioning

  himself entangled

  in her script.

  STORYBOARD

  Love gave her eyes:

  the tough man snatched,

  locked them up tight.

  Love gave her hand:

  the tough man tickled it

  early one night.

  Love gave her tongue:

  the tough man found

  it tasted right.

  Love gave her body:

  the tough man smiled,

  switched off the light.

  Love gave her heart:

  the tough man tensed,

  ready for flight.

  REUNION

  long long ago

  we heard the eyes

  vote no

  not here

  not yet

  not ever

  but the whirligig

  of time

  has brought us round

  years after

  that brief pantomime

  and we are playing

  new games now

  acknowledging the strain

  of lust inside our laughter

  AN OFFERING

  In love, and reverently inclined,

  I bear the lesions of my mind.

  But from your eyes the message is

  that I must do the bandages

  again, swaddle my wounds.

  Such prophylactic fear impugns

  my gift. Unwrap my injuries.

  FAMILY PICTURES

  In spite of love

  desire to be alone

  haunts him like prophecy.

  Observe: the baby chuckles,

  gurgles his delight

  that daddy-man is handy,

  to be stared at, clawed at,

  spitted-up upon;

  the baby’s elder brother

  laughs, or hugs, and nags

  for popcorn or a pencil

  or a trip.

  And see: the frazzled wife

  who jealously

  protects the idol infant

  from the smallest chance

  of harm, and anxious

  in the middle of the night

  wakes up to coughs; and checks,

  and loves, and screams

  her nerves; but loves him

  patient still: the wife

  who sweets the bigger boy

  and teases him through homework,

  bright as play.

  But you may not observe

  (it is a private sanctuary)

  the steady glowing power

  that makes a man feel loved,

  feel needed, all of time;

  yet frees him, king of her

  emotions, jockey of her

  flesh, to cherish

  his own corner

  of the cage.

  In spite of love

  this dream:

  to go alone

  to where

  the fishing boats are empty

  on the beach

  and no one knows

  which man is

  father, husband, victim,

  king, the master of one cage.

  LOVE IS

  a giving

  & a measured taking

  amputation

  re-creating

  everlasting

  interface

  a prison

  & an open space

  a teasing glimpse

  of holy grail

  a generator

  that can fail

  the naked jugular

  the knife

  the torsion

  balance in my life

  NORTH COAST HOTEL

  the lovely pregnant lady

  leaning on the disco bar

  lets dancehall flow

  through her

  an elegant

  black patrician

  breaking out

  before her man

  a chunky brother

  decorously sipping wine

  while she is moving

  like a native to the bass

  teaching the child

  dancehall

  FOR A SON

  Watching you swell

  your mother’s womb, only a crude

  connection seemed to make itself.

  Watching your mother swell, with having you,

  taught tenderness, for she

  while growing you was all my care,

  happy as she rounded.

  Even alive and howling clear

  you seemed a thing your mother had.

  But you yourself I learnt

  could make me feel – maybe your laugh,

  that warm primordial gurgle, did it:

  your personal self enjoined my love,

  tying our lives as with the living cord.

  Be strong my bond and my release

  from time. Be tall, stretch separate; and know

  the love you’ve nourished though you may not care.

  LITTLE BOY CRYING

 
; Your mouth contorting in brief spite and hurt,

  your laughter metamorphosed into howls,

  your frame so recently relaxed now tight

  with three-year-old frustration, your bright eyes

  swimming tears, splashing your bare feet,

  you stand there angling for a moment’s hint

  of guilt or sorrow for the quick slap struck.

  The ogre towers above you, that grim giant,