What of the end, Pandora?

 

What of the end, Pandora?

 

Pandora returns to the kitchen late one night

unsure of what has brought her there

perhaps some troubled dream

that still haunts the 40-watt gloom

the lazy shadows that line the walls like maps

she leans on the back of a high wooden chair

and surveys the room the unwashed dishes

littering the table piled in the sink

the toys strewn across the floor

a naked doll in a shoe box

the fruit bowl a study in decay

but beyond the surfaces

and on a high shelf at the back

behind a bottle of Tesco’s whisky

is the jar the lid still screwed in tight.

 

The next day, sometime after two

in the garden on the rickety table

she sets down an apple the jar the bottle

and sits down throwing off her shoes

she lies back closes her eyes

can hear her daughter singing the blues

as she climbs the steps to the slide

she stretches out her hand to catch at the …

and as her sleeve rises up her arm

she sees the tattoo just below her wrist

“Gods’ Gift” her fingers pause …

 

Halfway through the whiskey the apple gone to core

she picks up the jar and puts it to her ear

wonders if it will purr like Schrödinger’s cat

she hears the beat of wings things borne

all that is left when all else escapes

takes flight flees a prisoner all but released

the dregs the lees there’s so little air to breathe …

 

What of the end?

She wipes the earth from her hands

but the dirt has been ingrained

she rubs at a spot but it won’t come out

the stain the prophecy the reading of the banns

the spreading of the pall

will these hands never be clean?

She empties the last of the whisky

over the grave

and as the rain begins to fall

she calls her daughter from a game

all too human

 

considers the torment of hope

Check out the following links

http://mural.uv.es/spricas/pandora.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/human-all-too-human/aphorism-71-quote_d3cd42c76.html

https://www.yorknotes.com/alevel/english-literature/macbeth-alevel/study/plot-action/01210100_act-v-scene-1

Learning to write

 

Learning to write

 

The house is fully furnished:

A mother, three kids and the TV;

The father is upstairs, attached to a guitar:

An intricate arrangement of strings and chords;

An intimate arrangement of bodies and words.

 

My hobby, he once declaimed,

Is not playing the guitar,

It’s learning to play the guitar.

Then he took himself off for a session.

A terse man, pithy under the skin.

Once, maybe twice,

He’d handed me the guitar

Like a baton, like a lesson.

I never learned. He never listened.

 

And so, only when the music stopped,

Was the poem written.

 

Now, sometimes, if I listen very hard

I can still hear the fingers at work:

The tiny metallic flowers blooming,

Filling the air; dandelion heads

Going to seed, wind-blown.

 

The time is always the same: too late.

This poem was initially inspired by Carolyn Kizer's Thrall. See the link below.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thrall-2/

The original of the picture above is by Regina Cassolo Bracchi.

For information about her see the link below.

https://www.gamec.it/en/regina-della-scultura/

Family Therapy

 

Family Therapy

 

Tell me,

 

Were you ready for this?

Being asked to undress,

 

The tone polite but stern.

The folding of your clothes …

 

Was it tea or coffee

That you dunked the biscuit in?

 

I could, I suppose, agree

That when they asked who did it -

 

Who started the fight,

Who committed the theft -

 

That you looked up right,

Or that you looked up left.

 

Are you looking up now,

As if you’d know somehow?

Still

It’s in a shoebox under the bed - still

 

She’s young here

a stranger to me

the photo

its moment of happiness

excludes me

 

Young and happy

the picture captures this

imprisons and endlessly repeats it

still as Zeno’s Arrow

 

Yet no one remembers it

this deictic moment this little death

 

It lives only in the image

and what I now bring to it

yet still the wound

the piercing of the heart

 

It’s all there is and then it’s gone.

Solus

 

Solus

On the edge of everything there is something:

The mind, cradled by bone and skin,

Is the shore for an ocean’s wave -

With the kiss of kith and kin -

Rolling shadows into this island cave.

 

On the edge of everything there is nothing;

It hovers on the periphery of being,

But sometimes it slides into view

Like a fin slicing through water,

Cutting a hole in the whole … thing.

 

A whole is a whole by virtue of its parts;

A hole is hole by virtue of what surrounds it.

 

Everything but Nothing can be shared.

https://www.damienhirst.com/the-physical-impossibility-of

Offstage

 

Offstage

She’s backstage in wardrobe,

Being measured up:

The final touches to costume,

Hair and make-up.

She can hear muffled voices,

Layered on the silence:

The ruffled noises of actors and audience,

The occasional scratching of applause,

The sharpening of the critics’ claws.

 

She shuffles around the stage -

Her slippers scuffing the polished floor -

Rearranging the props,

Shifting the scenery,

Changing the backdrops.

 

She’s working on trying

To remember her lines,

And how to figure in her cues.

But she keeps forgetting,

Drifting off … is carried away …

 

Then, prompted,

She exits stage left,

Wanders down the abandoned corridor,

Past the glitzy Stations of the Cross

That line the walls,

Climbs the narrow, crepuscular

Staircase, gripping the twisting,

Muscular bannister,

Calmed and worn smooth

By familiar hands.

 

At the top, a door ajar;

She finds herself in the gods,

Looks around, takes a seat,

Takes a breath,

And stares down

Into the teeming, atomised dark,

Sits waiting for the next show to start.

The Slanting of the light

 

The Slanting of the Light

 

You left them sitting in a room,

Backstage, behind a closed door,

For years,

Waiting for it to open

And for you to come back in

Larger than life - spotlight, drum roll – ta-dah!

With an invitation to the reunion;

Or perhaps they were hoping

For something small:

For a supplicant’s tentative knock,

For something to rouse them

From the stupor of sour memory,

For some good reason to cross the floor,

To ask who’s there, to open the door,

To set the dust motes aflight,

To change the slanting of the light.

 

But no one ever knocked

And the light remained unbent,

Unbending.

And now the door is locked,

And the room is empty and unaired,

Filled with music - no one has ever heard -

To announce the happy ending.