Category: taster

Wishing a Merry Midwinter to all my readers!

Santa on the cross*

An image to horrify, amaze –
such a mixing up of concepts
we’ve grown up with for so long
but, after all, not necessarily so wrong.

Old stories, myths and fairy tales,
have been distorted every way,
taken from the memories
of former tribes and families.

For a century and more
they’ve served to sell another line,
to hang our dreams out on display
and, to satisfy our hunger, make us pay.

In the North in winter we need light
to get us through the darkness of that night
and so we celebrate, as best we may
with fire and food and drink, the shortest day.

But the pushers who control the world
use every kind of trick they know
to ensure that we consume their junk
and spend all of our dough.

So it is not that strange at all
that in one shopping mall
the management mistakenly
hung Santa on an Easter tree.

rs 19.12.17

[* It was outside a store in Japan and told by an Icelandic story-teller on BBC Radio 4]

(à Camus – Exile and the Kingdom)

We set off on our various roads,
some together, some apart.
We’ve little choice in where we start
our own long journey to the heart.

We never know before the time
whether decisions that we make,
or separate turnings that we take,
will lead us to a final break.

The separation hits you then –
you’re studying the ticket in your hand
and thinking how it wasn’t what you planned,
to be an exile in a foreign land.

You realise the truth in this:
you never see the same place twice.
You wish you’d listened to that advice
before you had to reckon up the price.

But now the barrier has come down,
now they’ve dug a trench across that road,
you remember what is owed
when all that you can do is write in code.

“They’ll miss me. More toothache than heartache!”
is how you joke it off at first
before you get that terrible thirst.
Each time you think that it’s the worst.

The news you do get only tells
what you are missing in the life
of lover, children, parents, wife
you left in friendship or in strife.

In case your paths should meet again,
you go through agony like this,
dreaming of a welcome kiss
you hope to get from ones you miss.

She has the kind of accent the English love to mock,
one of the generation whose words’d been forgot
but who remembered still where the strap had hung
that taught the children to renounce their mother tongue.
She grew up to be the blacksheep of the flock,
worried almost to distraction by her lot,
this proverbial innocent who wanted to be good
but defended her one lamb as fiercely as she could.
If there really was green land beyond the hill
where mild and humble souls could always eat their fill
and play harps to hearts’ content and harmoniums too
she’d get a first-class ticket there and never queue.
I love that singing voice with its Morriston lilt,
it quavers but with the rocksteady trust on which
churches are built.

I step out and am arrested by the sight –
like a china tea-set shattered on green baize,
like soft late snow, scattered on the grass,
the day’s eyes blaze at me with light.

By squinting I regain my vision and my poise,
the flowers recede, the city comes once more in view –
a warm spring day, the air feels fresh and new
despite its load of dirt and noise.

I turned to you the other night and lost my fear
in that smile, in the bright blue trumpets of your eyes
like Morning Glory taken by surprise;
I only wish that I could see you here.

Climbing alone now –
your partner’s out of sight –
slip!
Heartstop.
Slide, sweat, sick,
halt nearby,
trickledown fear.

You hang there falling
in
slow
motion,
like a kitten on a tilting
glass-topped table.

` On a rock face
on a roof pitch
you lie
spreadeagle,
trying to stretch your arms
around the whole earth,
nearly weeping,
squeezing down the shudder
which would shake you off.

Now
to try to get back up,
unstick a hand, a foot,
slither, scrabble,
unclamp a jaw,
tear loose a tongue,
drag your face out of the dust
on an aching neck.

Now come the harpies.

Fear, rage and despair
pluck your eyes,
stab your belly,
gnaw your liver
and shrink your sex.

Like a little boy
afraid in school,
your death seems as close as air,
clinging like wet trousers,
strangling like an overtightened tie –
birth-cord round your throat.

Now, to get out of this.

III. left-side

Self-portrait is a social game,
like trying to tell a joke;
the object is to trick the crowd
to see what you invoke.

With dabs and hints and other strokes
you build up the illusion,
while relying on the others’ egos
to join you in collusion.

However, to convince the marks
of your veracity,
you need more than just a mirror
or a lucid memory.

Something from inside must show
to prove your good intentions
and put the stamp of truth
upon your sneakiest inventions.

Which is where we hit the paradoxes
of honesty in artifice
and, if we’re souled in separate boxes,
who may say what does take place?

Enough! I’m sure you must object
to all this going round the houses.
Why hop about the subject
in Heisenberger’s cast-off trousers?

There’s not much time and space left over
to pin down the uncertainty
and arrange collisions, if I can,
between words and my reality.

vlad_the_impatient
An entrance

My difficulties began when Cousin Enver came back.

One night a year ago I was sitting at my desk in the small hours, idly trawling the Net, when there was a sudden hammering at the door. I sat up with a start. Cops?! Then relaxed. Two inches of good English oak with steel fittings – they weren’t going to get through that in a hurry without explosives. I left my pipe where it was and went to the intercom.

“What’s wrong with using the doorbell?”

“I don’t see no bells.” The accent was horribly familiar.

“Who is it?”

“Family.”

Oh shit, that’s all I needed.

“Stop banging before you wake the whole street. I’ll let you in.”

“Cousin Enver, how good to see you.” I lied as I swung open the door.

“Don’t use that name,” he brushed past me, “call me John.”

“Come in why don’t you.” I said breezily and to myself, ‘and why not Jonah?’, closing and rebolting the door before following him into my living room.

A few decades earlier Uncle Joe had arranged for his termination and incarceration in Siberia, figuring the permafrost would keep the old bastard out of circulation for a very long time. Unfortunately the Great Planner hadn’t reckoned on global warming. As Enver’s icy bed softened and he felt the vibrations of the fracking drills, he started to wake up …

Or so I learned later. For now Cousin Enver parked himself at my dining table and looked around.

“Where is everyone? Out hunting?”

“No, they’re all downstairs.” I had no idea what to say next. I hadn’t planned for this eventuality. Hadn’t been expecting any callers at all.

“Well, I’m here. Let’s go wake them up and have a party.”

With a sinking heart I took down the key and led the way to the cellar.

There they stood, the four sarcophagi holding my family: father, mother, brother and sister and the fifth, my own, lidless and empty. The other brother had fallen foul of the Roumanian Iron Guard and been handed over to the Germans, who burned him in Majdanek.

“Open them up then!” demanded Enver and I reluctantly went to slide over the stone covers and open the coffins inside. As I raised each coffin lid, Enver’s eyes widened as his gaze travelled from one to the other. I felt tense.

“Where are their heads?”

“I was hungry.” I replied irritably.

“You were hungry, so you ate your family’s heads?”

“No, I sold them to vampire museums.”

When their routines were finished for the night, a few of the lads headed for the pub across the road from the theatre. It looked a fairly ordinary place and, out of their costumes, they didn’t think they stood out much. Once served, they grabbed a table near the door and settled down to drink and chat. Being together probably made them drop their guard and voices grew louder. Lou was in the middle of a story about one of the women dancers and was saying “.. she was so pissed off with her bra that she ..” when another voice cut in.

“She was so pissed off!”

A guy at the table across the room was flapping his hand in a camp way while his companions laughed. He saw them looking and continued.

“Who let these fairies in here? This used to be a real pub!”

Bernie glanced round the room – several faces were turned their way now. He calculated the odds and gave Guiseppe a questioning look.

“Sure” replied his friend.

Bernie turned to their tormentor.

“If you think we’re so limp-wristed, how about a spot of arm wrestling?”

“I don’t do your kind of pervert games.”

“No, I mean, proper arm wrestling.” Bernie insisted and demonstrated what he meant, “Or don’t you think you could beat one of us?”

“I’m not holding hands with a queer.”

“We could put a napkin between your hands so you don’t have to touch. What would make it worth your while?”

“That you piss off and don’t come back.”

Guiseppe stood up.

“And if I won?”

The blokes at the other table laughed coarsely.

“In your dreams!” announced their leader.

“Possibly,” replied Guiseppe, “but if I did … how about you suck-a my dick?” He always exaggerated the Italian accent when he was fired up.