The water breaks;
A bird's wing,
Shafts and quills intact
along the shards of ice.
Too heavy to lift, I tip
the basin up
and water drains from underneath
the broken thing.
I want to keep it intact,
Safe from warm,
Hold it in Winter aspic,
One small, fragile memory
of peace.
Hidden,
Eyes protected,
Razor sharp brim
foreclosing our reach.
I
Only an air kiss
for your First Lady.
The wind tries to take it.
Another moment in which
regret might rise up too,
Or maybe bubbles of laughter,
throwing caution to that wind,
That hat, becoming
a frisbee
And you shaking your long hair free.
*
God bless those who've been granted power.
May they use it for the greatest good.
II
Today, a new day,
Sans hat,
but your suit's making a suggestion:
Take Frank's fedora and
Make your own way,
Tip your world
into a caramel confection,
Cock a snook in their direction
and
Take us to the pictures
in Your lexicon of clothes.
Let us live twice,
Do it all again,
But different.
Put on some style
Not your way
My way.
Looking in the mirror,
Your shoes say
Where's that hat ?
*
About Half way up
the mountain they sat down to rest because, as he said, this is far enough and the sun's going down.
She can't remember the ground now, but only the sky as they looked out across the vast landscape, rolling clouds chasing each other alive with colours an ever-changing light show smearing a geranium lake into some fading red ochre then searing chrome yellow following some softening ochre and all the time the depth of blue lakes shining from the wells of a dark blue Prussian horizon.
Here on the magenta hillside she sighs and smiles " I can get to this through painting especially with pastels it's all there, always there, you don't need drugs you just need to keep looking " her heart sang out to him
but even before she looked for his eyes she knew he couldn't hear her and that it wasn't the same for him. Perhaps drawing and painting were superficial in his eyes. Later she would remember these shades of indigo and violet defining his cheek too and think about the dark shadow that defined him; an-ever deepening light which placed him in a separate place from this moment, from her.
Chiaroscuro defining the contrast she felt between all things.
The arrogance of her youthful exuberance and yearning for mutual spiritual understanding, to be connected with another soul formed a barrier between her self and the beloved dream.
And some things you don't discuss, like the fade into the muted dullness of a nineteenth century landscape painting where everything has slowed to the drudgery of the diurnal rhythm of life's inevitable graft and the sunlit uplands of our days lie muted by the deep grey cloud that hangs for months above our heads.
They returned to the area but not the mountain, exploring and discovering a myriad of inspiring things together. A vault of shared experience and enjoyment gradually filled.
She began to realise that it was history that concerned her most. How places and people evolve, that and the nature of time and she could see that these things were intrinsically linked to perception and experience and separateness began to trouble her less and difference and distance to fascinate her more.
*
Beautiful on the lips
The way a shutter might stick
Pause
Take the picture
Long exposures
Can be very interesting
Hidden,
Your eyes protected,
Its razor sharp brim
foreclosing our reach.
Only an air kiss
for your First Lady.
The wind tries to take it.
Another moment in which
regret might rise up too,
Or maybe bubbles of laughter,
Throwing caution to that wind,
That hat, becoming
a frisbee
And you shaking your long hair free.
God bless those who've been granted power.
May they use it for the greatest good.
I hurt a fly today.
Unexpected visitor in the out of season,
About to land upon my chips,
My reason for batting him away.
He might have stopped them ending up on my hips;
They would've gone straight into the bin.
I saw his inert body and contemplated
The sin of gluttony.
There'll always be some more for me.
But what of him ?
Or her, it's not apparent with flies,
Well not to my eyes but
I digress.
I confess I killed a fly today.
Some say that's ok and I would too,
If it was you.
I'd say, I'll sweep it away,
Don't worry,
Eat your dinner,
It's still hot.
Not alot to be done.
It was just the one.
Not as if you've wiped a whole species out
with your careless clout.
But we stare at the space,
Our glum faces
thinking about the life of flies,
Unwanted, ugly in our eyes.
What are they for ? We surmise
They must play some part in this world
we share.
Can't be all bad surely.
It's just nature. Unknown unless you study
All of its parts including the weird ones,
Even they have hearts.
💗
Lately, I've been thinking about gates, but off and on, a bit like a light operated by a switch.
First, the municipal green gate with its strong spring that made it snap shut on the leg of the Belgian hare my aunty had brought home in a shopping bag. My first rabbit. I'm not sure if we ate it or whether it was actually the one hopping around its pen in our back garden.
Life is brutal at its core.
This farmer's gate keeps nothing out. It's just a warning and a designation of ownership. Sometimes the horses will bolt. When love of freedom overcomes their fear of fences. That sense of flight at the apex of the curve. A memory of tripping, over the chain linked fence, skin ripping on the spikes, a halting kind of pain prevents us trying again until, like giving birth, we forget, only thinking of the utter inexorable joy of the leap, faith in it all.
We're watching the horses roll. First one, then the other. They're so funny with their legs in the air, hooves look silly waving around like that. What a character he is, teaching his friend to play. We see it later in the gallery, Elizabeth Frink's exquisite renditions joining us in the joyful moment of it all.
Overcome it. Let it all come over you and feel the exhilarating rush of something akin to a notion of happiness.
Then life can be wild. Whichever side you're on.
⻚
It must be Summer 1982, my memory's not great for dates, but I can place it by looking up the facts on Wiki, plus she's wearing summer clothes. It must have been a hot day and unusually sunny in the rainy city.
She's walzing along what might have been Medlock Street. It's certainly coming from the right direction. Anyway, there she is, walzing, as her mother would have described it. Full of the joys of summer in her red gypsy skirt with it's flounces and garish yellow and black flowers. She broke her bank a couple of years ago buying it at a Laura Ashley sale and she's worn it nearly to its death, she loves it so. Recently, she shortened the hem up to the middle of her knees so it looks a bit less old fashioned.
Her top's a white broderie anglaise short cap sleeved acquisition from her favourite second hand shop on Oxford Road. Her hair's growing out from a recent crop and she's swinging her arms and swishing her skirt feeling groovy as she makes her way down to the Hacienda where a friend has got her a job recently.
She's totally and utterly unqualified for this job in every way imaginable. She's not informed or in any way interested in contemporary music or any of the hip things going on in this very hip city she's landed in. Although a poor art student, she's not desperate for work because she's found part-time work easy to come by in this thriving metropolis and has worked in several interesting places, but her friend seems to want her to work at this new venue she's got involved with and so far it's been a bizarre and alienating experience, but then, this city has afforded her many of those, and so, until this day, she's not really phased by that.
So looking on from the outside, she's a happy-go-lucky young woman, enjoying the walk in the sunshine down a busy street in Manchester.
She's taken to going bra-less recently. Hardly aware of it, she's slim and small breasted, so it doesn't seem to matter. Nature girl her mother used to call her. Poppy, the nature girl, her nickname. Not really as affectionate as it may sound since her daughter's refusal to ' make the most of herself ' has driven her mother mad over the years. Seeing her shorn head last year was the final straw and brought her to actual tears. But anyway, here she is, Poppy, the nature girl, who's been allocated her own personal life drawing model in her final year of a fine art degree at the Poly is feeling absolutely fine and free about not wearing a bra. Until;
" SLUT !!!! "
She doesn't stop, and if she slows at all, it's imperceptible, but her gait does change. From walz to march. She marches quickly towards the Hacienda, doesn't look back to see where the voice came from or if the insult was intended for her, just thinks back to where she's come from, a some kind of home, making herself smile with the memory of how once again that morning her boyfriend had cried out with pain as he went through his daily ritual of going for a pee and getting an electric shock from the toilet's handle as he flushes it. They've only just that day worked out why this has been happening to him and not her and only in the morning and it's a funny scary reason that'll make them wear wellies round the flat until the council fix the faulty electric cable that's been pierced by a huge nail holding one of the floorboards in place in the bathroom. They have only a scattering of rugs in the upstairs of their generously sized flat that she'll get a taxi back to later and beg the driver to drop her as close to the entry as possible so she only has to run as fast as she can up three flights of stairs past the bin chutes that very successful breeding ground of huge cockroaches everyone shares these flats with and lifts which never work and which you wouldn't use anyway incase they broke because no-one would ever rescue you these are the halcyon days before mobile phones might bail you out if anyone could be arsed to care.
Not that she'd ever say arsed or swear at all. Those kinds of words had never nor ever will be in her lexicon. She doesn't know why exactly because she doesn't really disapprove and usually laughs when her lover says Jesus or fuck but only starts to use the word bollocks many years after when she's tired, so tired of it all.
For now, on this day, this fine sunny day in Manchester not yet Madchester, she's not tired, she's scared again, in the way she's been scared for most of the twenty one years of her life. she comes to wonder later on if it is the way she looks or walks or smiles or something and not the fault of those who seethe so visibly, speak so peevishly, kick and slap so vehemently they make themselves seem like the normal ones.
So she marches with a gait she's perfected over the years; assertive, purposeful, I know where I'm going, I'm going to get there and nothing and no-one's gonna stop me kind of gait, towards the Hacienda and in through the front door because they know her, right into the office, ignoring the rolling eyes and impatient sighs of the smart, sassy, fashionable young women who can't understand what she's supposed to be doing there she's just so incompetent and badly dressed, one of whom will try her best to get her sacked when she overhears her talking to Ian McCulloch on the phone about him getting free tickets for a gig and then asking the supervisor if that's ok because you know, duh, just say yes you stupid pillock. But Ian was absolutely fine, laughed a bit, but then, he's a scouser, probably got off the phone and joked a bit about some posh bitch saying she'd just have to check if he could, maybe even mimicked her charming, polite telephone manner to his mates who may well then, Poppy imagined, have ribbed him about acting the entitled genius musician and he would probably have laughed and said he'd get his secretary to ring next time. And his girlfriend might even have taken a playful swipe at him. Who knows.
For now, she's marching towards this place where she does not feel at home, though she'll take out and read some of the sweet and sometimes moving letters from people all over the world who say they're coming to Manchester especially to visit the Hacienda, sometimes describing what the name and concept means to them personally until she feels she's working somewhere that will become a place of pilgrimage for all the lost young people seeking to dwell alongside like minded souls, if only for a few nights and she'll feel slightly safer, slightly more at home.
She does not look back to where she's come from, the cockroach infested flat with its damp penetrating the wooden panels beneath the windows, once the altruistic vision of a modernist architect, part of a socialist council plan to provide decent homes and spaces for communities to grow just on the edge of the inner city, ring side seat for the riots the previous summer. She does not look back, even when she hears the second call;
" HEY SLAPPER ! "
She does not know why they were rioting, or rather, she does not question it because, well, everything's shit isn't it. It's been shit since she was born and from what her family told her, even worse before. She does not question why she was born, why she was wanted, Poppy just walks, eyes forward, towards her shift at the Hacienda, girl in a bubble, not understanding anyone or anything, not really wanting to, especially who it is that may or not be slagging her off in a busy street in Manchester soon to be Madchester.
And maybe she reached her destination before that person thought of another rude word for a woman, she certainly can't remember any more being hurled at her out loud that day, though some of her work mates might have uttered some different ones under their breath or to each other during her shift later and even more during the few ensuing months she worked there until she and her boyfriend upped sticks to Heald Green to escape the inner city violence that called once too often at their door.
Some time later sees them on a train out through the most surprisingly beautiful hills and valleys towards a place where they saw a sign on a door saying 'welcome to paradise' which made them smile and nod to each other without any trace of irony and where they would eventually build a nest on the side of a valley they would want to call home.
🏡
Fragrant remnants
Echoing voices
Aeolian mail
Featherlight mantle
Sweet smelling totem
Mandelbrot root
Chafe velvet
Offer cheek
Lip song
Sun streamed
Soul warmed
Sweet dreamed
Day dried
Down laid
Felted shelving
Cool wave
Groovy feet
Lemon
Drops
Drop
Wind winnowed
Bonsaied
Perfect
Wave crushed
Wagging tails
Winter wails
Pat the boughs
Moon bright
Jupiter close
Illusory space
Pallor
Subtle dreams
Shifting thoughts
Now of clouds
Each drop
Worlds of thinking
Duluges of time
Weight of water
Flood plain
Towards the middle of the poet, essayist and teacher, Anne Boyer's meditation on her experience of going through treatment for breast cancer; " The Undying ", she gives us two quotes on the difficulty of writing;
" A writer must, wrote Brecht, be courageous enough to know the truth, keen enough to recognise it, skilful enough to weaponize it, judicious enough to know who might be able to use it, and cunning enough to help it find its way. And the truth must be written for someone, a someone who is all of us, all who exist in that push and pull of what bonds of love tie us to the earth and what suffering drives us from it. "
Then, after this gem, she goes on;
" Back in the Roman Empire, Aelius Aristides had a problem. He wanted to write a book, but he didn't know how to organize the information of his experience:
Since I have mentioned the river and the terrible winter and the bath, am I next to speak of other things of the same category and am I to compile, as it were, a catalogue of wintry, divine, and very strange baths ? Or dividing up my tale, shall I narrate some intermediate events? Or is it best to pass over all the intermediate things and give an end to my first tale, how the oracle about the years held and how everything turned out? "
*
The writer doesn't have to write, but often feels compelled to. Amongst the most momentous and life changing experiences is serious illness and for so many reasons, a good writer, a serious poet, will surely find it both necessary and difficult to find a way that feels appropriate to process and communicate what happened and how it felt.
It has taken to this point for Anne to be able to relate briefly a salient moment she shares with her teenage daughter when they have witnessed a deer being hit by a car. Watching the deer struggle and finally get up, an opportunity is afforded for her daughter to be able to voice her fears about Anne's illness and for Anne to make a firm, well-researched attempt to allay them. Anne is the epitome of strength and defiance in the face of this shared terror, but nevertheless, ends this short, poignant description with the words;
" Every person with a body should be given a guide to dying as soon as they are born. "
*
Anne also talks about her devastating loss of sense of self, of feeling like a ghost and links it to her awful loss of memory, poignantly making a small joke about how her autobiography should be called " The Medically Induced Failure of the Remembrance of Things Past. "
Having not been through aggressive chemotherapy and surgery for cancer, I can only try to imagine the kinds of pain Anne writes about in her book, but I can relate to and understand the struggle with writing about certain kinds of pain, and also the loss of sense of self and memory.
Sometimes I write to try to remember properly and this involves facing truths that have lain buried deep within for a long time and the act of delving, remembering and writing can feel like being one's own pathologist with the scalpel-pen making a deep, deliberate wound as it is employed.
+
Sometimes I try to imagine
My mother, walking in the gloaming,
Clutching her too small coat across
the shame that wasn't me,
but poverty.
Anne Boyer speaks of beds
And I think of Nurse Moon, her head
bent as she works her skill with
scissors, setting me free,
To enter silently.
Story tells how the house holds its breath,
Listeners awaiting a joyful cry,
But I am quiet, my breath is small,
Sipping air involuntarily,
Life entering so slowly
*
Other times I try to remember,
My Mother in her final bed,
Her head so cool as I kissed it
Gasping for air again,
Now silent, once more in pain.
**
The water breaks; A bird's wing, Shafts and quills intact along the shards of ice. Too heavy to lift, I tip the basin up and water drain...
