Alecto

Alecto in the revolving door (an extract)

 

1

How many years down the drain?

She’s on a roll now, a roller coaster

All her past clawing its way up the slope

Ratchet by fucking ratchet

The disappointment the bitterness the loss of hope   to

Launch itself into the present

She’s giddy with it nauseous

The push the rush the gush

Does it work like that?

To “do the right thing”

But to do it so badly

Held to account for unhappiness

Yours and mine 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alecto

Dark Matter

 

Dark Matter

 

I have tried to separate your pieces

and to fix them into a puzzle

that is the puzzle of you

as if you are a puzzle to be fixed

by finding discrete pieces

discreetly

that form a whole   only to find

there are holes where pieces do not

fit

or do so inexactly   more parts than sum

you or someone dropped the mirror

and when you peer in

it’s pure Picasso   the pain

 

There are spaces not bridged gaps fissures

there are cracks plates shifting

lack of seismic control tectonic

irregularity tremors and yet

you are immovable and unstoppable

 

All this is invisible

my antimatter

my Sagittarius A*

sucking in all the light

 

But this is just science

and since it does not cannot explain

nor can it paint a picture of a weeping woman

 

I hold a shard up against the light

to see its shape wonder if this might be

a piece of myself   sharp enough to make you bleed

warped by the force of your gravity

Prognosis

 

Prognosis

 

The doctor shook his head,

The horizon’s coming after her,

He said.  He said,

It’s going to tip her off this world -

Which, after all, is flat, linear

When unfurled -

And take a part of your world too.

Did you imagine that the Coriolis

Effect was a fictitious force?

Or that Achilles would never catch up

With the tortoise?

That life was travelled along a Möbius strip?

 

The TV’s on all day, playing repeats,

A mockery of time passing.

She sits,

A bundle of sticks thrown at her feet,

Too many to count, too few not to number.

 

How much courage do you have to muster,

Waiting, knowing, looking over your shoulder?

A four-letter word

Home

When they go out and slam the door,

The house remains faithful

To their absence.

Surfaces insidiously gather dust,

A secret accretion blocking pores,

A skin hardening to indifference.

The curtains, impartial, as usual,

Will not be drawn, so the windows

Are left to frown upon light and shadow.

A tap, its mouth loose, drips, spittle

Calcifying and spreading the tittle-tattle of rust.

The clock unwinds, ticks, tocks

A touch more slowly or quickly,

Adjusts as its mood thins or thickens.

The fridge hums and then forgets

The tune, falling into a frigid sulk

With a juddering shudder.

The milk feels left out and sour,

Its jagged lips pouting.

Toast crumbs, ignored, foretell

Fortunes that still no one is reading.

The iron flirts with the idea of being left on,

Of wrinkles smoothed, of creases gone.

The TV, blind-eyed, remains on standby,

Soap operas stored, ready for replay.

The mirrors doze in unlidded sleep,

Dreaming the empty rooms,

With unbelieving eyes.

The alarm clock, awakened from a snooze,

Petulant and querulous, repeatedly peeps.

The photographs, held on pause,

And having cause to believe in their own story,

Stare, without memory, into the cold light of day.

The washing machine, on a dark wash program,

Matinees intimacy - Boxer’s Tangle with Tights!

Lights! Camera! Action!

Pyjamas, discarded and spastic,

Savour the heat and aroma

Of armpit and crotch.

Fragrances linger, a snatch of voices,

Scenting the foul air, where smells and noises

Commingle – a his and hers, a redolence

Of the bitter perfume of spilt coffee

And shattered crockery.

And where the echo of sharp words

Clashed like cutlery in a kitchen drawer,

Slashed at history like swords drawn,

The walls ache with silence.

Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment.

A poem about family life; something dropped

Splinters

To begin with, you are perfect, unsullied,

A pristine exhibit, kept behind doors,

Held under glass in the museum of us;

Kept at arm's length there are no visible flaws.

Yet soon, there are scratches on the surface,

Scores in the glaze that has become your skin,

As you are slowly cooked in the family kiln;

And you’re no longer saved for Sundays’ service.

Later, you are a chipped part of the set,

Casually treated, knocked about a bit,

Used inappropriately, as an ashtray,

Or a receptacle for items gone astray

(Unidentified keys that fit no locks,

Buttons that will never be sewn back on,

Foreign coins from holidays never taken);

Or simply slipped, unregarded, under a plant pot.

Finally, you’re dropped by careless fingers,

A cause of curses and invective, an upset,

The pieces pushed aside, swept under the carpet;

Yet there will be blood, pain, insidious splinters.



This poem comes from the offcuts of the previous one, "Plasticine". Some lines didn't fit and later developed a life of their own.  If "Plasticine" deals with parents who are controlling, overbearing, seeking to shape the child into their own image, eventually to reject it, "Splinters" shows the turning away to indifference, neglect and another violent rejection.

Click here to watch the film on youtube A note on style

If the earlier poem, "The Beauty of it", was freer in style, looser in arrangement, it was because of its narrative elements.  "Plasticine" and "Splinters" were an attempt to create a more 'formal', precise yet general, image of parenthood, employing a  slightly variable rhyme scheme within four line stanzas.  I believe that rhyme in poems is sometimes important.  I certainly enjoy the discipline and challenge it brings to the act of writing. 

To see my and other poets' work click here

A childhood poem, The Beauty of it

             

             

What we learn of life as children is absorbed one way or another, and then it seeps into our being,both consciously and unconsciously as we get older.  Sometimes we are aware when young of what we perceive to be wrong, not just childishly unfair but actually wrong; a small outrage to a morality we cannot define. This may, perhaps, enable us in later life to prevent its reoccurence in our own behaviour.  Not pass the baton on, for if we do, what we have and what we give is a life less lived.

The Beauty of it (continued)

A six-year-old walks a line

That may or may not exist,

Always teetering on the edge

Of ordinary temptation, nothing original,

Over a safety net sensed by instinct.

The fall brings knowledge,

Something not seen from above –

Not a test you were born to fail,

Nor an impulse you could never resist –

That being caught is a kind of love.

Not being caught is not knowing.

You can spend your life falling.

It’s not much of a life –

A life less lived.

Made to stand in the hall,

And told to strip,

His fingers fumble at button and zip –

Undoing himself – his body rocks;

His mind’s seismograph has stalled,

Cannot measure, has no scale -

The piss leaking from his toy cock

Puddles shame and fear on the floor.

He bends for the strap;

Then the shock tautens his frame,

And something gives, rips, snaps …

(“Catch me!”  She closes her eyes, drops…)

Flaps raggedly in the wind,

A twist of cloth caught on a fence crossed:

Something snagged, lost, left behind -

A hole around which his life is stitched.

His daughter picks at the threads;

Sews kisses, offers insteads.

Arms and legs wrapped around tight,

She whispers in his ear, “I knew you would.”

Still he wonders if he could,

And for how long he’ll bear the weight.

But the blue blue sky is a blanket.

Isn’t that the beauty of it?

Childhood poem, The beauty of it

And somewhere in the dark atlas of the mind Is the conceit in the relief of a journey that is signed.

Neither poetry nor memory is about the truth.

Welcome to this blog.  Within it, over the following weeks, I want to present a collection of poetry: Dark Atlas. The title comes from a poem within the collection. But I want  to start by looking at childhood and two earlier poems I wrote.

"Pieces", a prologue. Memory is a haphazard and sometimes unreliable 'search engine', unable, mostly, to retrieve fully formed narratives or pictures.

"The Beauty of It". Writing, I've found, has it's own agenda and if a piece is prompted by a memory, a feeling, something autobiographical, this is soon taken over by the 'life' of the writing, forming itself out of itself.

So a childood is good place to begin, part-remembered, part apocryphal, perhaps mine, probably somebody's.

Pieces

Life is made up of

Pieces of life:

It’s something dropped,

The whole finally

Irretrievable.

The beauty of it. (A Piece)

He crossed the road on his bike.

Was the car too close,

Did the horn blare,

The car skid and brake?

He doesn’t remember.

He doesn’t think so.

A family outing:

Mother, Father, son.

Where had they been?

What road were they on?

What rule was he flouting?

He doesn’t have a context.

The piece is small, a fragment.

How many beans …?

A cause and effect,

And the memory is stagnant.

He doesn’t remember the pain,

Just that there was pain.

It’s a kite tied to his wrist

And bullied by the air;

He struggles to let it soar –

It tugs and it twists.

Was it the stick, or the belt?

The arse or the legs?

(Where are the scars, the welts?

Have they healed or been sealed

In the skin, unforgiven?)

Did he squirm and beg?

Did he know it was coming?

The rest of the way home

His brain foaming,

His mind scrambling up a wall

It could never climb,

Unwilling to put into words,

Or pictures the punishment to come.

Or was it the first time?

Tempers overheated,

The lash of harsh word

And wagging-finger threat

Seeming chastisement enough,

Leaving him in a sulky slough,

As he pushed the bicycle homeward,

A pedal catching his calf,

Catching his calf.

But then

At home

The world - his world,

Such a small world – cracked;

The plates pushed askew,

Fault lines visible,

Continents torn;

And theirs, perhaps, too.

(Though wasn’t theirs just pasted over,

Plugged with duty, self-belief,

And love just not glue enough

To hold it all together?

And the stick becomes a baton

You have to run with, pass on,

The race never over, no line to cross,

And no one wins; the field is endless.)

And it’s always there, the flaw;

Hidden mostly, barely discernable,

But in a certain light …

In the garden, the sunshine slices

Through the tree, the fruit unripe,

Green and bitter,

Too early to be picked.

He looks at his daughter,

Tells her once more to climb down,

And this is the last time, or …

She swings on a branch, leaves flutter,

Light and shade jostle and mix.

She hangs, defiant, staring at the ground,

Releases a soft hiccup of laughter.

(At her age he had known,

Had had to bite down,

Had known himself naked,

Shedding one skin for another: flaked.)

She looks up, back at him;

No shadows skim her eyes,

No hint of withdrawal, or flinch,

She’s not yet his sintered mirror,

Her head tilted this way or that

Gives their unwarped images back.

He could teach her,

Flesh of his flesh, as yet unblooded;

Arraign her in the kangaroo court –

Held in camera –

Hopping from one foot

To another.

He’s felt the impulse,

Been baptised in the righteous,

Blinding fury – too strong a word,

Perhaps, but it’s beyond anger’s grip,

Something slipping loose,

Something reined in tight.

And she’d tidy her room,

And be quiet when told to.

And she’d still love him.

Isn’t that the beauty of it?
...


(An extract)