A Year of Unmagical Thinking, Drinking, Marvelling & Scribbling

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​Knowing nothing is a wonderful thing. In this age of supersized certainty there is a chiming delight when you hear yourself saying I don't know, I'm not sure. Discovery? Exploration? Curiosity? Aren't these the roads to passing pleasure? Rigid opinion the road to isolation?

The momentary & fragmentary is all I have, all I have ever had; substance has always escaped me. This time last year I was struggling to write anything of any length, and convinced, that in a world of bellowing & belligerent opinion, I had nothing to add to the melée. The wind, a righteous tempest, was blowing in the sturdy sails of what you were saying, not billowing the fragile & flimsy silk of how it was said, sung, painted. It was enough to drive me to drink but I was already drinking so I would have to find some other destination.

What I turned to was the art of others & the daily meanderings of a small world & experimenting with red wines in the fridge. Along with the chilled Rioja, I was going to write a poem a day for a year reflecting upon what I had seen, watched, listened to, dreamt, read, cooked, thought, felt or wildly imagined the previous day. 

​This is a celebration of that year. I made it. Three hundred and sixty five poems later I still know nothing but I have put words together, played in the prism of perception & danced on yesterday's embers. And, as T.S. Eliot would never had said, November is the coolest month. Here are twelve  of my fragments, the butt-ends of my days and ways….

​

 Abakan Orange  (1968) Magdalena Abakanowicz

​Abakany

The forest is taken to the seaside 
our noses are roped to wonder

fraying, tears, threads tumble
& turn from fabrics heft, clothes

of ancient giants wardrobed in grey 
walls, wet woodland perfuming

weave & weft, this is monstrous
enchanting refuge we cannot touch

hands impulse restrained, we sidle 
up to these wonderful creatures

chasing twined snaking beyond
knowing into dark delight

25th  November 2022

​Shelter from the Circle Line's storm

​
Kindness has been bled dry from these bodies
falling heads are bent away, shadowed from distraction
mind-vised to machines, fortune’s wheel theirs, they do not see
ragged exposure weeping before them, two young men

the first, wiry & demanding attention, thrusting goatee
electric limbed, fluent in anger & need, brown hungering
eyes yearn for a seeing, money to shelter him in a hostel
he holds desperate half-defiant pose in their bouldered silence

I lift my eyes to his & offer sympathetic smile, an apology
for having no coins, a wish for good luck, Sweet bruv, he says
taking his fortified body, another layer of angry skin added
to the next chorus of the deaf, heedless travellers who will no witnessing

the second is like a ghost, a soft voice struggling through embarrassment
& distress, a child, his pale skin, long body barely covered in the thin black
jacket & beige trousers pocket patched but empty, he vanishes as quietly
as he came, defeated, treading gently towards death or madness

space emptied, these blunted hearts have no blood to lift eyes to raw
hurt & all of their journeys trundle on, railed habit keeping them safe
unseeing of the stage on which other lives are played out, another swipe
of the screen, a little closer to home, a solid door shielding them from the world

29th  March 2023

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                                               Don Cherry

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​A Don resurrected at the Barbican

​
Don Cherry’s little brassy trumpet is lifted
gleamy witness to night’s spirit celebration

rasps, cries & laughter do their calling
a rhythmic thrum propelling them heavenward

his son’s hands press the keys then hang
suspended in space, phantom’s delicate hold

if Don is listening, his distant feet will be dancing
 on the loamy joy filling our vacant hearts

21st November 2022

​Idiocy

​Idiocy's my speciality
​I cook it up everyday
thankfully it doesn’t take
much effort, the ingredients
stored & shaped lie waiting
within the little cupboard
I polish in my brain
last week with little effort
& no forethought
I embraced seven
years of bad luck, a sweet
splintering of newly bought
mirror poorly stored & hastily driven
to a home it would fragment
mirror mirror on the wall      
in pieces, cracking up
who’s the stupidest of them all
 silence is the coolest of answers
& only yesterday I spiked my heart
fearful palpitations pushing gripped
hands into steering
wheel’s faux leather
as I stared at the warning
signal, dreadful illumination
that my dull finger had lit
if you want a lift to idiocy
mine’s the fastest ride going

​7th April 2023

​The Sauce

​The soft skin of the mascarpone gives
                               as my craving index finger presses
for something, oblique & out of reach
                                         to rescue the heat exploded tomatoes
flesh torn, seeded innards splattering
       the red roasted onions
            my mouth closes on cream crowned finger
                               a gentle swell holds tongue’s sway
                      the Italian saviour is tossed into vegetable heat
                         martyred to improvised making
      watery red is churned to deeper realms
                                       lightening, clotting, exalting  the sauce

7th February 2023
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Shining the buttons​
​
​The Brothers of Italy step from the shadows
blonde wigs cling to sharpened skulls
the silken flow pours from hot throat
to tickle tongue into twisted shape
forming the finery of smooth words
camouflaged sentences trickling into lost ears
looking for hope, welcoming a brute dream
dressed up in a cream jacket with gilded buttons
a white collarless blouse hides her black heart
hands clenched in victory muffle the cries
of those she will crush, flanked by the state
marching her through mosque, synagogue
over the fallen bodies of those that have fled
to the heart of Europe, civilisation’s protection

handmaidens will follow with soap and stiff brushes
plunging her cream coat into barrels' suds
when the blood, dirt, shit cannot be rinsed
they will hand her another jacket, cleansed
the gold buttons gleaming, pure, blinding

​26th September 2022

A son darkens

​
​The phone call
when it comes
doesn’t reach me
I have cut
the lines
stopped
the clot
of filial loss

the swelling body
of my mother’s
dispirited dog
doesn’t try
to rouse her
black blood
trickling
from unwashed hair

it carries on
released 
from leash
padding
to the bar
where lives
are retired
to liquid work
detonating
blue eyes
lifted to
where she
would sit
in eroding
silence
retreating
searching
for something
disappeared
within herself

my mother
lies untended
her shapeless
lily patterned
dress dampening
darkening petals
a body beyond
control & care
seized by a surge
within her
shrinking head
motion shrunk
prone
she shivers

someone
not too gone
in the caressing
of their glass
sees this
companionless dog
stands, stirred
to action
in actionless
seaside town
is lead
to her laying
calls her name
flattened
by tonic clonic
years of drinking
& no love of life
she stays
unresponsive
no scrabbling
for sense


the ambulance
carries her
to unfamiliar
attention, gentle
hoping hands
to clean her
tend her
& scan her
hurting brain
the loveless ache
I hold
imagines
the barren
landscape
beamed back
from beneath her
skull


                       later
unable to sleep
I conjure
the scene
see her
lying alone
frightened
the girl inside
who was lost
without the love
of her parents
shakes to a
final falling

31st  May 2023

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​In search of eggs


Breakfast is being made to revive us
from last night’s gulped celebration

to escape the restless itch hatching
inside of me, I go searching for eggs

a man smiling with a ravaged face, purpling
& pocked sore, follows me in to unloved Spa

& greets the woman in the red smock
plump, shielded by grubby plastic, she

welcomes him to his morning ritual
of ruin, frail hands hungry for the drinks aisle

I scan the depleted space for a dozen eggs
grey metal shelves offer nothing but

themselves, Friday’s meagre delivery, bird-flu
shrunk, has been swooped away, disappointment

unravels into hope, a damp journey to the town’s
two other shops whose lights are dimmed

till mouths are open & doors held shut, the sweet fatty smell
of the grill meets my return but bacon & sausages

will have no yellowing accompaniment, an unfinished
symphony that calls the itch to crescendo

2nd January 2023

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King Street, Hammersmith​

​He spits from inside his grey stubble towards a woman
at the bus stop, the white stippled fleck doesn’t travel
far, just missing the coarse bristle thrusting from grimy chin
his cursing travels further, she’s a cunt, her mother’s a cunt
& she should go suck her mother’s cunt, jerking spasms hustle
his skeletal frame around the pavement as Christmas shoppers
tighten their hands, swerve & head for home
when it looks like his rash wrath is pulling itself back
him turning along the high street, back into his pain
some raw hurt returns & he is railing again, animating
his crimson jumper which could be for Christmas were it not
for the dirt, the holes, the despair, which any festive spirit would fall through
the fraying & the sore fire of his speech, I think about stepping
in with restraining voice, trying to silence scattering violence
but this whirlwind of stoked hatred feeds on impediments
when he does take up his journeying, his new voice, desperate
wheedling curdles the heart’s of those that have caught his rage

15th  December ​2022

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At your door (Rachel Clare)

Endless Flight

In what swampy depths of the heart did your jealousies grow?
Fed and deformed in whisky’s deluge they writhe

in your strict, bulging, bloodshot eyes & move to make
your hands monsters, those same hands that turn suffering

to lyric line, unbearable sights pressed into a language
stroking reader’s soul into a magnificent pity, monstrous

your fist closes on a clump of her hair, you will not let go
whilst the moon runs vainly through radiant darkness

& she must lie unmoving, her curling love-locked
in the clasp of your palm, a token taken & held prisoner

belligerent and fearful you sleep through her distress
biled spite drags you deep into your own nightmares

as she cuts through auburn strands to free herself from
your grip & flees to a madness stoked by your rough hold

​Whilst reading Endless Flights: A life of Joseph Roth 

5th October 2022

                                                              Who you looking at?  (John Joseph Sheehy)

  For John Sheehy

​Unshaven & unhappy
carving into cardboard
to make a relief


he tells me, he thought
he’d be long gone
never reaching this pain


the body’s refusal to bend
snatching towards a sock
from agony’s realm


he wishes he could be
condemned like his boiler
DO NOT USE adhered


to his empty chest
no heart for it
this lugging of hurt


there is some lessening
in the cutting, a new face
promising into the pasteboard


shaped from aching limbs
this portrait will not breathe
nor cry out in aged pain
​
May 2nd

                                                                   
​ 

 
another birthday

The red-haired woman haunts me through the day
her face riven by angst & alcohol, her lips struggling
to make lines of sense, curling & pursing, pinching
& parting, she is lost amidst high empty tables, glasses traced
with froth, a mumbling man with  three cans of Stella
stretched out at oblivion’s shore, & me, a solitary soul
with a book of poetry and a pen scratching marks into
emptiness on the day of his birth. Her clothes are snagged
& dragged down by bags heft hanging from her body
black rucksack's untempered outpourings. Before
her battling down of cold demons, loneliness’s untethered
thrust in maffled speech I struggle to catch, her fierce scent
has landed, bladder’s abandon staining her olive trousers
the darkness, neatly formed like jodhpur’s reinforcements
& the smell hints at former breaches. In some form
of telling, she reports the collapse of the toilet door
the transformation of exposure & asks if I am a poet.
I take her & the mumbling man sucking on his can in
& know this is the stuff my poetry might be made off

Oct 3rd 2022





​© Simon Parker