Giving Light

LAST OF THE SPRAY CARNATIONS

That day, stamped through a haze,

a nervy bleach, blurred photograph

exposed before developing

like a crippled Spartan baby;

a saffron-starched, sun-blanched album

family image, except it wasn't

my family I mingled with, but a stunned

white drift of sun-paled faces probing

lychee-eyes into market bargains.

 

As if I looked at this bustling rock-pool

speculum of life through frosted glass

or a thick honey-coloured vase.

I tripped on, lost to the fogged outside

of myself, part-deaf to the touting shouts

of the cod-eyed fishmonger, the sun-flushed

apple-shaped pink lady, lamb-shouldered

butcher with a scrag-end face, his

white coat reeking of bloody meat.

Everything, poetic and pathetic

at once, in a burst of cheap-side sunlight

scooping a pool on the scene.

Even the vivid spoils of the Florists

appeared pitiful: a cluster of pink

and white spray carnations,

green on the edges of thirsty petals

poking from a bucket; a bunch

of scrunched-up tissues saturated

with tears of mustard sun.

BEATITUDES

Today, everything's resolved: the man

with a rainy Sunday face has found

a smile's an inspiring beam of light

in his outlook; the senile lager-breathing

dragon of withered scales, forced to forgo

his habit for the day, is better for it:

sober, brave; the two middle-aged

friends have let bygones be for a change;

the doubting housewife's found her faith,

vacuuming behind the chairs.

THE BLACKBOARD

My first glimpse of oblivion:

the school blackboard, to me then

my life seemed like one scrape of chalk

smudging into the dark.

GULES SALTIRE, AZURE RAMPANT

One dark afternoon after school

you came in odorous of classrooms,

uniformed in the gold and black

of the Comprehensive, put me down

for my callow daddy-fied infatuation

with chivalry as Imperialist.

I capitulated, naive

to phases, present in absenteeism.

You, dissecting the chop on your plate

as if a frog's lung in Biology,

your cutlery, pilfered scalpels,

muttered you were a Socialist.

I read red into that heralding,

no inkling I'd soon share your diction:

junk cultures spawning like lab samples –

I can't understand, on your soap-

pouf fee scratching berry-juice eczema

on nettle-rash skin, how anyone says

'I am a passionate Capitalist.'

Back then

I just drooled for the crackling.

THE WATER SHALLOWS

While I was paddling in the water shallows

the ripples turned to waves,

the paddling to a wade.

While I tried to shallow my tumbling mind

the thoughts that swam in the water shallows

were chased as fish by the shadows of sparrows.

INFATUATION: THE FIRST

Infatuation? It didn't last

Beyond rosy, rough-and-tumble days,

Gooseberry sweet, no sour aftertaste.

Time didn't intimidate the infant; time was sky.

The love, the bond that tore our hearts

Strained too far, sighed out to die.

Time's the face you love

but are tired of looking at.

Bitterness of callow apples, raw,

Windfall-bitten, sour out the tongue

With immature spices to subtle in

Its un-acquired taste – sap squandered on

Those who sample before ripe; spat out;

Wiped clean by sleeves it bruises on.

Time's a face you love

but tire of looking at.

Time takes long to trickle on; to traipse.

Rich spit of first kisses infiltrates the rest.

He: life's not long enough for love.

She: love purses lips for death;

Familiarity and death: the same.

We tied knots in our stubborn bond; our breath.

Time's a face you love

but are tired of looking at.

Feelings home in unhealed sores;

In lichen ruins bonds re-build

On slippery foundations – love clings on;

No shutting off till we're told – mistakes,

Only palpable once trampled past,

Form the pattern of the human face.

Time's the face you love

but tire of looking at.

THE LINGER OF YEARNING

I'm left the shadow of your memory,

a linger of yearning to know

if there was no other what light you'd throw

on that room in your cramped heart for me?

FORGIVE-ME-NOT

Let go. Forgive. Forget the bitterness

That buttresses when love is dead:

Most of what's said isn't meant

And most of what's meant isn't said.

ADAM'S NIB

It wasn't a woman tempted me

into my fall, into my fall,

just some paper and a pen –

the imperfection of it all.

OBVERBS

Motto for the Mountaineer

If you try to reach the summit

You're likely to become it.

~

Age's Hill

Young Puritans of austere will

Grow cavalier past age's hill.

~

-isms

Capitalism spouts from city walls;

Socialism mutters in draughty halls.

~

Damp-Stain Angel

The vicar couldn't make it out at all:

a damp-stain angel on his chapel wall.

~

Fear of Blindness

Believing in God for a dread of death

is living in darkness for fear of blindness.

~

Death's Dress Rehearsal

Romans called asthma rehearsal for death;

life, summed up as a shortness of breath.

~

Faith & Death

Who fears death needs the crutch of faith;

who fears pain needs the crutch of death.

~

Sleepy Head

The man who looks like he hasn't slept well

has a face like a bed that's been slept in.

CHASING SHADOWS

Tipsy with nostalgia we

Miss those times of time's slower pass

When we were children trying to chase

Our shadows on the grass.

NOSTALGIA

Even in those golden days

Life always left us wanting more;

Why we loathe ourselves today

Is why we loved ourselves before.

OLD-FASHIONED SUN

Eleven years old, I tried to reclaim

the past, inspired by a cottage's gloom –

the countryside's always the same

no matter what year: I furnished my room

with my dad's dog-eared books caked in dampstain

from The Black Arrow to Allan Quatermain.

On brumal mornings as a pale sun

lit thin curtains that filtered its rays,

I'd stick Holst's scratchy Jupiter on

summoning my father's schoolboy days –

Somerset, Nineteen Fifty-One,

in the ghostly warmth of an old-fashioned sun.

But there's a book-end to the shelf of time:

one can't stay absent from their age

in the fusty clutter of an historic shrine –

so I parted the curtains, tripped the page

to the post-impatient future time

where lyrics strip the Kipling rhyme.

THE COTTAGE

For all the breath-smoked nights

we shared some misty summers

drifting off to light tunes' fall

like balsam on the garden

from my brother's bedroom window

jarred with grandma's Iliad;

sunbathed with mongrels at our feet;

plucked blushed apples from the tree beside

the cement-filled well, where we planted

hope for rescue from this rustic lull

false as our restless wishes were,

still yet to be weeded.

Father's face hair-line cracked

as the crumbly stone of the cottage walls;

mother's nerves fragile as

the shaky glass of the greenhouse grave –

I'm sure she's shrunken in this shade

all these faded years;

given the chance she wouldn't leave

this place for ties still tested like

the trembling washing-line.

This is where we dug-up doubt

fossilized in the outhouse stone

like stories of our mythical home;

where we first came to believe

in not believing, with the countryside,

that simply is. How could we leave.

THE HOUSE OF SADNESS PAST

After this fruitless time, strife

of fifteen garbled cottage winters,

didn't bid goodbye to the shrunken shack

bribed us to sojourn for time

unmarked by ageless slate West sky.

Chance missed to lay a lifetime

ghost to rest; leave behind

a difficult friend I fell out with

but stayed close to the bitter end;

to purge goodbyes in haunted stares,

self-pity in rooms un-exorcised;

plaster-pink walls, unpainted;

a damp-aired landing half-suggested...

I reassemble that tomb of stone

in its clump of weeds; hinge-creaked gate;

blue gloss door with Piskey latch;

derelict sunlight splintering where

twisted limbs of an apple tree

choked rotten spoils – soft crinkled skins

bruising to the touch: moth-thoughts,

hovering, tumbling numberless

as pebbled beds of crouching flowers

in those imprisoning mornings.

A cow-bell clopped to the overflow;

a carcass of glass spilt stinging nettles;

a cement-filled pebbledash well

pushed up shrubs of wishing petals.

Darkest nights I'd known;

moths, grotesquely outgrown,

hand-size spiders tapping on

peeling posters, clicking time

to the clock's taciturn ticks.

Bowed by the bent beam gazing

warped books on the blistered sill

over the garden, a tumble of troubles

pouring from the mouth of the house

in tangled nettles, stinging words

sculpting sorrows from sad panes.

Sold us as idyllic, white-washed,

it was a starker face: our own

little crumbled House of Usher

obscured by prouder abodes,

confiscated from the hamlet's view –

a disgraced sight set back from the road.

Cuckoo-broken silence versed

with upstairs' floor-boards creaking

in an empty bedroom – a reassuring

ghost too shy to haunt us or

the panting scrape of earthly mother's

cobwebbed broom brushing the floor.

Some houses have souls, memories,

haunting them – this one had:

a sadness past remained, served

to feed ours with historic force.

I'll go back, through the ghostly photo

grope up the slanting path

into its blossom-grey, cabbage-white

wintry circumstance, now time's

passed trace of us there...

THE MANSION GARDENS

Shall we stroll those mansion gardens,

baize on baize of velvet grass

so well-kept and un-walked-upon?

Come on, love, we've cut the coupons,

let's see those shouting flowers

round grounds of ivy towers.

Shall we walk those mansion cloisters

verged with portraits? There's the Lords

and Ladies, and their ancestors

hanging, framed and ashen-faced.

But why are they ashen-faced?

They were never ground down or disgraced.

Shall we stroll those dust-still rooms?

Well, just alongside, take a little

look at them, just peep inside?

They're cordoned-off with red rope...

just like our lives...

oh, we'll cope.

Shall we pace those mansion chambers

ringed by pasty-plaited rope...

easily unhooked and disobeyed...

No – that would be to abandon

our law-abiding principles...

what's wrong is always irresistible...

Shall we recall those mansion gardens,

baize on baize of velvet grass

so well-kept and un-walked-upon?

I'm not envious: simply a dreamer:

those lawns were so much greener...

FEW NEVER ENVY

All I have: this shabby room

furnished grandma-style:

carpet muddy umber,

thin beige curtains pile

like luminous mosquito nets

over the draughty window-pane.

A lacquered table's centre-piece

where I eat cold meals, scrimp an aim

inkling in a typewriter.

Plastic clatter of tone-deaf keys

scores each curtained, fiction-night:

a blind mind tinkling ivories.

Breaks spent on a spineless bed;

fingers brush the woodchip Braille,

step across the blue-tack path,

trip to the creak of banister-rail.

I stare up at a blanched Van Gogh

by the toothpaste-spattered sink;

the ticking of the crippled clock

decides it isn't time to think;

I rise to wash: chalky water

chokes out to the rusty squeak

of the stiffer tap; over my shoulder

a back-to-front Thirty Bob A Week

reflects in the mirror that traps me.

Smoking soothes as doubts unroll.

My only other luxuries: tea

and sleeping pills when I get my dole

of hardship maintenance that feeds

my lapsed Protestant shame

(though I was born a Catholic

I'm English all the same).

Few never envy others' lives

with their ambitions in arrears;

only thoughts that telescope

help one cope – focused years

blur the edges of fogged progress.

Lungs fangled for spearmint fags

purse their pockets. Abstracts heap

like half-p's in the money bags.

MIGHT

Why did some of us come to believe

The Left is in the right

When it has a massive clumsy body

And wings too small for flight.

THE SOUND OF EATING

My great grandfather, a Fabian,

never missed a single meeting

to discuss best ways of feeding

empty bellies of the down-at-heel.

(Privately he ate his meals

in his study, apart from his kin:

he couldn't stand the sound

of other people eating.)

TALES FROM THE EMPTY LARDER

I can't stand scant catechisms

of tremors in an empty stomach;

the stench of hunger-scented breath

where a full belly's the only tonic;

the famished itch in-between the teeth

where only food can feed relief.

The stain won't shift: mean-spirited strife

spoilt my appetite for living well;

splintered my spittle with bitterness;

chipped my shoulder with its scrimping chisel –

I taste it still in weak stewed blends;

in sickly stings of singed dog-ends.

I suppose the harsh lessons I scribed

inspired in me a need to dream,

to believe in insubstantial truths,

for you need a God when you can't keep clean

and hope, when your faith overspills,

Socialism will cure most ills.

I've said to my brother, it's strange to think

amidst the dirt we found ideals,

a sense of justice in second-hand clothes

and transubstantiated packet meals –

that the glooms of a larder's empty shelves

were where we first found ourselves.

A HAMPER FROM LANDRAKE

In the creel of a slate-skied Cornish winter

we caught a scraping sound outside;

a huge mass landing, heavy as the weight

my father prayed would be lifted from

his jobless shoulders scraped and bowed –

cold wind shot through the hallway, lo!

we beheld a hamper packed with tins

and vegetables – no Christians,

just a scribbled note blown on the lino

saying from the Parish -my father scowled,

now he was obliged to let them Save him.

THE COIN FORAGERS

During days of testing means

we'd find distraction in playing games;

one comprised four players,

rules always the same:

each foraged for mouldy copper tokens

hidden about the scrimping room,

collecting as many as they could find.

Some stuffed in the crumbs

under the settee's cushions; some

stashed in the clutter of the kitchen dresser.

The winner: first to disinfect their treasure.

THE RING

No wizard there as our guide –

Poverty's spell casts all else to one side.

Father's face grey as Gandalf's gown.

He always told himself he'd let us down.

Love is its own darkness, slowly binding.

One day my mother had to pawn her ring,

But kept it secret till we'd finished eating;

Her finger as it was before their wedding.

GIVING LIGHT

When women give birth the Spanish say

They're giving light – and it's said

The newborn child comes into the day

Armed with a loaf of bread.

Waterloo Press, 2003

ISBN 1-902-731-14-X

32pp chapbook

www.waterloopresshove.co.uk

Alan Morrison © 2003