Peelin Orange Page 4
empty of feeling, a colossal cruel,
soon victim of the tale’s conclusion, dead
at last. You hate him, you imagine
chopping clean the tree he’s scrambling down
or plotting deeper pits to trap him in.
You cannot understand, not yet,
the hurt your easy tears can scald him with,
nor guess the wavering hidden behind that mask.
This fierce man longs to lift you, curb your sadness
with piggy-back or bull-fight, anything,
but dare not ruin the lessons you should learn.
You must not make a plaything of the rain.
PALIMPSEST
Grandma, much younger
than her age-paper,
is giggling on the floor
with baby Jon
as with his daddy
forty years ago. ‘Age
is just a number,’
as the slogan says.
Grandpa, seeming
buried in a book,
gives thanks for her
endearing gift
and mumbles Larkin,
‘What will survive of us
is love.’
AT HOME
I
No strangers here
tonight: alone at last
with music
we reclaim our home
we rediscover space
we do not need to speak
II
This evening no one raps.
Our music underscores
the vacancy, the walls
demand possession. O
such gaps! This quiet
evening palls.
GAMES
Sometimes
when he teetered
on the brink
the woman
saddled with
his mind
would wish him dead
then pray
he’d come again
to safety
and her bed
Time after time
he sidled back
into her care
contending
there was nothing
in the world
to fear
INTERLUDE
Life of the party, he’s
a clown on springs
until the keeper
puts him down.
Jack in the box
again, recoiling.
Quick, now!
Click.
EPIPHANY
your eyes
bright headlights
dip
& we flash by –
SEEN
beyond the longing
& the lies
half-hidden in
equivocating eyes
(be careful
if you can’t be good)
a lurking dread
of being
understood
SISTER
beneath the undulating
calm
dark currents move
recalling
hurt & rage
& fracture
o my romantic soul
sister longing
for a whole
new world of love
i hear your soft song
breaking on the page
ACROBAT
brave woman
trusting
he has gauged
her arc
exactly
she’s letting go
she’s flying
in the dark
GIVE T’ANKS
Anodda year of love.
Give t’anks. An’ pray
dat God-Above
will seh to time, No way,
No way:
de word is love.
THE PLEDGE
I
She’s black
and beautiful
you lucky nigger
poet sing
II
I love her
black I love
her sensual
grace
I love her
black I love
her bright
enquiring face
digging truth
beyond my eyes
weeding dark lies
I love her black
III
but she says No
Stay with with me nigger
lover keep it true
Say with me nigger
I love her
(love her)
Also we are black
(are black)
(are black)
SHE TELLS HERSELF
Something like love
is hiding deep inside
the silences.
He doesn’t often talk
to me. I trawl
his eyes.
SHE TELLS HER ANALYST
There is a place inside me
not even you will ever see
I locked my wound away
the day I saw the roses wither
I will not call the name
of the deceitful brother
I locked my wound away
the day I saw the roses wither
INTERFACE
Discombobulated
by his riddling eyes,
the foxy lady tries
to seem untouched, but may
have seriously miscalculated.
The predator can sense
her willingness to end her
laughable pretence.
She wants to play
surrender.
AUTOGRAPH ALBUM
That boy who loved you
(and you loved him but never told him so)
has scrawled his epitaph on your pink vellum.
The girl whom you detested (and who knew)
has paid you back – with troubling ambiguity,
neatly on the back side of your best friend’s
witty retching.
The lad you asked just to be kind
has pulled a big surprise, has written
something shrewd yet generous to a fault.
This album
is a mine field floating,
waiting to sink your craft.
MOTH
A somewhat intellectual moth,
she could dilate for hours on flame
and how to fight desire.
She’d read an awful lot on fire,
but it consumed her just the same.
INTERVIEW
he sits there
looking thoughtful
slyly taking me in
from top to bottom
eyes / bust / legs
meandering
through the detail
of my life & times
simpatico
but i can feel
the charge
that he does not
acknowledge
i know he knows i see
the amber light
& will not cross
the bridge
PROPOSITION ONE
A routine love that hangs its hat
on coming home and wipes its feet
precisely every afternoon, and greets
its wife with proper peck and asks
how went the day, is not for me.
Love will not set the clock
by my affections
and wind its own springs up
in time.
To keep the thing alive
let’s loosen up,
let’s improvise, my love,
relax, be casual, enjoy the lime,
relinquish the habitual,
reshape the paradigm.
THE LOVERS
after René Magritte
The lovers kissing
do not see
each other, do not feel
unmediated hair and skin.
Each hooded
in an opaque swirl,
neither seems aware
of something strange.
Do not disturb.
They are in love.
Each feels a kinship
with the other’s mask.
OPERATION
after a thorough
physical
he dug a hole
into her skull
he cut
a great big window
in her gut
then mumbling how
he was so sorry but
he couldn’t stay
the fucker
walked away
HOME
Father, given a chance to be
away a while, be free
a month or two,
was quick to grab it!
But freedom’s
neither here nor there:
home is the habit
he will always wear.
ANOTHER WEDDING
The ritual is well-known:
the bridegroom says his total vows,
the bride says hers,
the clergyman declares how strong love is.
Yet, each time, something stirs:
they resurrect our own
promises
promises
DEPARTURE LOUNGE
The young man,
when the flight is called,
is blowing his nose to clear
the sadness of departure.
The girl who’s leaving looks
composed. They’re travelling
on different planes
to different destinations.
Partir,
c’est mourir un peu.
Time after time
these moments
devastate.
But partings down the years
have helped to make me
ready to say goodbye.
BREAKING UP
Stay away she told me
Don’t come back
It’s time
to turn the page
Refocused now she
doesn’t take my calls
she blocks
heartbroken messages
but can’t delete
our history
her eyes a secret garden
her touch a sacrament
PUSSYCAT
His conversation flattered; she said yes
and went the way his thoughts inclined;
but not content with rooting in the flesh
he stuck an amorous finger in her mind;
and now her mind lies naked to his pleasure
and hungry for possession, she’s afraid.
She would have barred him from her treasure
if she had known her mind was getting laid.
GUINEA PIG
susceptible
to viruses
that bother
human beings
& therefore
used
as a laboratory
animal
he seldom
bites
he’s almost
human:
gentle
stupid
animal
caged
WHY, THIS IS HULL
on a grey day
(spring) when
on my balcony
beyond plate glass
pigeons
flutter & strut
i wing
a little something
to my sun
PRESENCES
You’re here.
I conjure you
house-coated, half-asleep
in the armchair by the window.
Awake in bed
I hug you, memory.
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
ANNIVERSARY PROCEEDINGS
Clinton and Barbara,
you stand accused
of Christian practices,
of faith in God and helpfulness
to people. You habitually buoy
us up with cheerfulness, which is
the very heart of your offence:
your challenge to a world of friction,
the marvel of your unaffected joy.
In view of all the evidence,
we vote for your conviction.
Clinton and Barbara,
you shall serve hereafter
another forty years
of love and laughter.
III ON HOLY WEEK
a sequence for radio
PROLOGUE BY THE MAKER
Beware: the following secular depiction
of people living through the Crucifixion
revises Holy Writ. The gospel story triggers
the maker’s thinking about various figures:
he offers moments, voices, attitudes;
and if, occasionally, faith intrudes
don’t blame the maker, blame the borrowed bible
(for humanist agnostics, unreliable).
The maker who presents these versions
is grateful, in advance, to all those persons
(including The Almighty) who’ll forgive him
his ordinary rhyme and rhythm,
allow each portrait arguably true,
and kindly authorize invention too.
Now hear these people. Some are good.
Some fail to do the things they should;
but hear them all. Let each one speak
a little of Unholy Week.
JESUS IN GETHSEMANE
I
O Father – if it be thy will –
let this cup pass from me.
But o my Father, I submit to thee:
use me, thy servant, still.
II
Father, I cannot drink this cup!
Release me (if it be thy will).
Unwilling, Father, I am still
thy servant. Bear me up.
A PRIEST
The chap’s a madman rather than a liar:
I think he’s quite convinced he’s The Messiah!
That God might be a carpenter! Absurd!
It’s quite the silliest nonsense I have heard!
(You know my bias; but) a priest –
perhaps an elder, at the very least –
would seem to be more likely for the job
than some untutored Galilean yob!
JUDAS
That evening, not so long ago,
the Master, fingers in the dish,
said gently: ‘Did I not choose
you twelve, yet one of you’s
a devil?’ Mocking, he glanced
at me; and others, quick
on cue, looked my way too.
The odd man out is always
Judas. ‘We’re from Galilee.’
(Nasty little province,
smells of fish!)
The point is,
Jesus never trusted me.
John, who’s favourite, he’s
from Galilee. Like Peter,
Andrew, all the cosy band.
Which Galilean, Lord,
will sit at your right hand?
Tonight I kissed him
and I saw
that mocking glance again.
‘Betrayest thou the Master
with a kiss?’ he said, ironic; then
seemed pleased or something
like relieved he’d got me
right. That knowing judge of men,
he surely ought to realize
that truths are often complicated:
what he spotted he created,
distrusting with those distant
foreign eyes.
The point is not the money, I’ll
go give it back. For, hell,
what’s thirty bits of silver?
I would not sell
the Master, he’s for free. Just
preserve my purity of hate
for him I served and loved so well.
My Lord, the Master of my fate,
always withheld his trust.
PILATE’S WIFE
I dreamt us strolling, arm in loving arm,
along the avenue that skirts the border;
our tender courting days wheeled back.
Just then we heard a yapping,
loud, a pack in full pursuit!
Into our lives he crashed,
a lamb, bleeding and bruised,