cold war

 

cold war (Berlin)  

 

he has told the story often enough

around the age of five   Christmas time

he was losing faith in Father Christmas

snow fell that Christmas Eve on RAF Gatow    

his dad was elsewhere eavesdropping on Soviet plans

for troop movements over the Yuletide celebrations

and his mum took him out onto the balcony to see Santa in his sleigh

being slowly driven around the streets of the camp

leading to the urgent declaration

“I do believe   I do”

his mum told him this story   her truth of it

made it a memory   over time

music was added   carols   the sleigh stopping

just yards from their flat and Santa waving   waving

to him    and the flakes of snow

grow fatter and thicker falling and settling

and covering his tracks   and he did believe  

 

later   years slow then the rachets slipping   days to decades

when they talked his sister and he and he said Dad …

his sister stunned at the idea that his mum their mum his dad their dad

and it was her mum and her dad and the remembering and experiencing

and remembering the experiences and experiencing the remembering

were all topsy-turvy    a turvy-topsy truth of who was good and who was bad

a mummery of the time and place   the shaken and the stirred   the decayed

 

and the Russians moved their soldiers here and they moved them there

(but mum’s the word)  

carry on

carry on teaching (excerpt)

 

(1^st and 2^nd years not beyond   and not

an age preference   just defence

by thirteen you’re a different animal

another self kicks in   kicks against)

 

he knew who he could touch

experience   a skill   a radar of recognition

the blips on his screen   one of which was you

he would have picked you out

called you out to the front to his desk

to question your sums   your figures

whilst the others were to carry on

 

there’s no trauma   forgotten by playtime

just the memory to parse   a boy’s grammar

not a moment   nothing written on the skin of time

his hand resting lightly unmoving on your arse

your own tense muscular reflexes feeding

the electric current of his impulse   pulsing  

 

and at home alone in his study marking

his wife upstairs in bed alone in front of the TV

the children doing their homework in their rooms

the Polaroids in his diary   the days blank with wanting

in one there’s Tommy Atkins across his knees

smiling into the camera   you’re all smiling   posed

the teacher beaming his hand poised for the slap

you press the button   snap   and you’re all caught 

in a bit of fun for his uncle/brother/friend in Australia

the picture in your hand develops slowly    remains

unresolved   your story   what this says about you

then and now

 

in the bathroom he washes his hands   washes his hands

before going into his kids   the kiss goodnight

tucking them in safe and tight   don’t let the bedbugs bite

his hand resting lightly on the softness of a cheek

the warmth of the breath on his fingers

undeliverance

undeliverance  

 

the cart stumbling over the rutted track

losing a wheel   the world keeps on turning

the letter not arriving   distant gunshots 

 

and no difference

 

except maybe the tiniest of tears

in the fabric of time and space

the inaudible hiss of air escaping

the world unmeasurably smaller

 

an eternal unnoticed silence

pushed to the side of the plate 

on the near death of Dostoevsky

Polaroid

 

Polaroid  

 

it’s underexposed   dark

taken on the run

but while I’m alone

you’re still there   a snatch of starlight

the flash in the window behind me

and somewhere in the space-time continuum

    the curve   the move

a planet that devolves itself to a moon

bedsit 2 continued

 

it starts again with the search for adjectives

for example seedy sordid squalid shitty

which collocate with a number of nouns

for example the room with its subterranean

daylight gloom   even the cold felt filthy

the mattress with its atlas of stains

of borders crossed into another body

the shared toilet on the half landing

the discomfiting comfort of the warm cracked seat

an intimacy lost regained pinching the skin

the familiar stink in your nostrils

the one shared working shower 3 floors down

down the queasy creaking stairs past the greasy

flaking walls an uneasy cakewalk in a haunting

house to the spider of matted pubic hair in the plughole

the shared DNA    the shared host   the guests

the landlord and the other mostly unseen unseen to

bickering and barking ghosts   lost souls

and the meanings touch and diverge

dirty unpleasant lacking moral hygenie

and in the in-between where the assonance appeals

the surge of synonyms soiled spoiled  spilled

and shabby   the sibilance of sleepless nights

the hissing vicissitudes of verbs   the ups and down

in the active and the passive   appals

then the drunken indifference of the weekend

pissed down the sink

the bravado the dissemblance the doublethink

the essence    of a room a home a life   grows dark

 

Imago feeds another 10p in the meter   the light flicks on

sharp as a knife   the room reflected becomes a theatre

and in some stark present-future   the forms unchanged

there’s another lonely actor alone upon the stage

 

so far from Helsingør in 13 Denmark Terrace  

“Berwick Court” etched on the fanlight above the door

 

in a name a remembrance and a performance

     

and the rest … “the rest is silence”

bedsit 2

 

bedsit 2  (extract)

 

memories first

before the search for adjectives

to nail to the concrete nouns

vague pictures feelings a young Imago

the callow and shallow verb to be

the past is a grammar the present corrects

and memory is fickle and feckless

the taste of the air in the room forgotten

the windows smeared with light   there is

the room being a room not the room not his room

and moment to moment Imago being in the room

the furniture furnishing the room   just the forms

and the details almost gone   the betrayal

of experience to language by time …

persona

 

persona  

 

Imago has found himself of late uncertain

believes his person has reverted to a persona

appropriated   it has become a front

a certain Imago having appeared

a cameo role   in certain dubious poems …

 

Imago remembers his self

its location somewhere in his chest

the solar plexus or thereabouts and how it moved

but did not seem to change   to a position

somewhere just behind his eyes   staring out of himself

 

through the mask of his skull

from the monkey in the mirror

his homunculus   somewhat smaller

somewhat younger   somehow truer to itself

somehow more loyal to itself    

 

and the betrayal      

canvas

 

canvas  

 

I do not have the words for this

this … this …

a scream would give the sound

I’m aiming for   a real scream

I can imagine it    this scream

only as a more violent form

of the silence I am trying to break

 

I can feel the glass behind which

I am locked resonating bending

with the pressure        shattering

I can sense the shards and splinters

so sharp I can picture the scratches and cuts

the spatter pattern on the tympanic membrane  

only to become a sky scarred with cloud

a blood-red sunset in bright acrylics

drying slowly