 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  Don Cherry 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  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  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  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  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
6 Comments
|