society – Seven Hundred Jisei

Guadeloupe

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 NickLeave a comment

Our little band, our merry troupe
Had just arrived in Guadeloupe
Filled with mirth and junipers.

Island clouds, mangrove lush,
A chartered man from the Hindu Kush
Landed us where a giant dune occurs

As high as three knees of the God
Of Iguanas, verdant mountains at odds
In their majesty with smaller dwellings

Of colibri, territorial, proudly emblematic
Of a land where a slightly rheumatic
Castilian caraveller (and with swellings)

Imported moose to banish snakes
Like San Patricio of the Lakes,
Only those Eurasian deer grazing would devour

With gazes obtuse as atheists as they chewed
All native flora and fauna viewed
A few hundred years ago, an hour

Of ingestion at a time, and no longer.
At the harbour I found a fishmonger,
Lobsters as bright as the famed red paint

In the sacristy and the credo
Of Santa María de Toledo,
He boiled the claws and prayed to his saint.

In a fever my genuflecting libido
Summoned dreams in a white tuxedo
Worn in that club at Les Abymes –

(The club they told me not to frequent,
Entrance shaped like a one-eyed serpent),
Where a barman garnished a large Ti’Punch for me,

Where a Caribbean singer
Whose hips within my view would linger
Gave birth to the shape of Guadeloupe.

I woke in a deep and heated sweat
And for a moment I would forget
That I had not flown before, nor my troupe,

Nor travelled to her sheltering lore
Where I lost my mind before
On the blue shores of Marie Galante,

And in that hazy nightclub smoke
Holding someone’s panetelas, I woke
In the concave dreams of an Ashanti

Slave-trader, only I was the slave
And he softly spoke and gave
Advice which has ruined me to this day,

For I was to be imprisoned in his seam,
Neither stirred nor sleeping with a beam,
But somewhere in between the fray.

Still, somewhere out beyond my prison cell
My people there have smiles to quell
Storms which filled a holy stoup

Of less green seas, their hills of gold,
Where rains remain our friends of old,
We steered our flight, to Guadeloupe.

Majorca

June 17, 2021June 17, 2021 Nick2 Comments

This government of mine
Has mastered a post-modern
Political and Sophic arts
Of fuckwittery,
Omnishambles,
Clusterfucking, and
Chicanery, as though
Ambling ineptitude
Was newly in fashion,
As if it was a finest
Prensal Blanc from
That sun-blessed island.
Swearing during the pandemic
Like so much hot air
And so much in the ashes of
Public money and taxes
Is uprising.

Why did we lose our hard earned money
As though we were those robbed blind
Homeless wayside token folk
Within a certain scripture,
To those mountain-dwelling raiders
Who did nothing for us,
Who we never befriended or even met
And yet they depreciated
And were depraved;
From our place and our markers
We watched as they built
Majorcan mansions and plazas
Using the future depths of our
Self-dug graves.

I don’t usually provide a narrative to my poems. I prefer the words to speak alone, and I like to think the reader will also find their own meanings and interpretations, if I am using metaphors or allegories. This poem is a little more direct, perhaps, and yet ironically justifies an explanation. I also do not tend to swear, not illiberally, yet the italicised words I use at the top of the poem are some of my current favourites – so descriptive and with currency. I like lists. I have a list ongoing of my favourite words – there are currently 1654 words on the list. I also started keeping a list this year of issues concerning probity and conduct in government. I don’t know why particularly, I suppose it was a constant cause of frustration; the lack of accountability and transparency. It is only from one news source, the UK Guardian online; so many news sources I find difficult to read due to ownership and bias and political leanings. Here is my list so far, though I know that I will have missed a lot. It is just for my own record. Also, a recent study in the UK has shown that swearing during the pandemic has, apparently, increased. Is it little wonder?

(Oh, and as an aside, I travelled to Majorca many times on holiday in the 2000s and it is the most beautiful island, with wonderful people and places. My reference to it in this poem is I suppose the juxtaposition of an ideal, which can become changed by something, but it is not a comment of any sort on Majorca itself – or if it is, it is only positive about that European neighbour – and it was only my poetic licence. Plus, I like the island’s name for the title).

List:

Haiku #746 – #747

June 16, 2021 NickLeave a comment

746.

Domesticated
Nature, we imagined farmers
Using a manual

747.

Two thousand years old,
Surgeons too, even lawyers.
The sky remains blue.

Water Slide

June 12, 2021June 12, 2021 NickLeave a comment

We enter by a dark
And elevated chamber;
People do this, apparently,
For their own entertainment.
Yet atop those chlorinated
Steps where re-used water
Pours back down rusting
Spiral stairs beyond where
Semi-naked people stare
Up towards me
Or at least the
Approximation
Or vicinity of me
Expectantly and patient,
I have nothing to give.
Instead, I observed
On this heady pilgrimage
A phlegmy edge of
Chewing gum,
Masticated and
Impressed behind this
Aluminium balustrade
I cannot touch.
An English teacher
Some thirty years ago
(Although I recall
This moment as if
Furloughed by Time and
Just further below
A moment ago), expounded
On how gum survives
Within large intestinal
Tracts for three years
Or more, which he imparted
As a matter of fact,
And though that Mr E.
Is now deceased and outlived
By you and I and all
Those innocent eyes
On those rows below me,
All I know is how
He used to pull me by
My ear until my ear
Then reddened, and there
And then, my soul was
Deadened. He also said
Or instead proclaimed
That should you drink
From water fountains
Within the central city,
That very same fluid had
Reduced and sluiced through
Eight other bodies already.
From where I am standing,
Inner tremblings
Vertiginously,
There is little difference.
So in this hellish place
I find amalgamations
Of my two severest fears:
Water, and the populous
Within this easy confluence.

For a vast majority
Upon this downward
Uncontrolled trajectory
Where I am shouting
With all my internalised
High cacophonies
They are having fun
And bless them yes
They are laughing.
Buffeted from side to side,
Elbows bruised,
Points confused,
My soul paramedics
On standby, they know well
I create and decorate
My private forms of
Self-inflicted torture.

Far north from here,
The heavy skies of Scotland
Brew a murder or two,
Or at sixes and sevens,
Whilst I am thrust from
The open mouth
Of a rusty and very
Asthmatic serpent
Into this new heaven.

Tombolos

June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 Nick2 Comments

Sometimes I could not feel
My feet or my hands,
These extremities
Of my experiences,
Socially tied
Like isthmuses
Providing havens
For radicals and
Eminent pariahs
From the edges of
The Hesperides,
Unable to return
To our homelands
For fear of persecution
Or reprisals
(Or if not the Hesperides
Then the Cyclades
Or Sporades, or if
Not the Sporades
Then the Great Orme
Or the Rhins of Galway
And also Blakeney Point
Where my tame grey seals
Sunbathe on sandbanks
And I know each one
By name for we are
One and the same),
I grew up believing
Radiators were designed
To handcuff hostages
By the mist of international
Politics – in lands
Without plumbers or
Thermostats, but wild
Celebrations which also once
Blinded a man as shotgun fire
Fell back down to earth –
Before returning by
Diving back in to
My childhood, one day
I remember vividly,
Colluding in my empty room
With an atlas,
A tiny life ahead
In parentheses,
Until I observed,
Dropping that great book,
My feet and my hands
Turn in to translucencies
Of lapis lazulis and shiny jade
And my wonder reverted
Into horror then
As I climbed up inside
The used husks of my future,
Where my whole long
And arduous life filled
With silent furores
Became a faded photograph,
In a family album
No one opened ever again,
Nor blew dust off
In that boarded-up house
From its light blue cover,
And what was once,
A long time ago,
A gold leaf letterhead.

Tuesday Mornings

June 8, 2021June 8, 2021 NickLeave a comment

Tuesday mornings, bright
Sunshine, as white as
Appallingly lupine teeth
On the necklace of Life,
And so I close my blind;
Outside, a recycling lorry
Cruises through this
Bluesy estate
Like a finless basking shark,
Filled with impending menace
But with no fish in its reach,
Turning in circles
Of bottles of bleach;
Oblivion surfaces, and
I recalled how most of our
Recycled plastics are shipped
To Malaysia, or Indonesia,
(Such is the warp in our media
That one death on our doorstep
Creates an outrage equivalent
To twelve thousand Uyghurs
Slaughtered, fathers, sons,
Mothers and daughters,
And so we are not at all
Infuriated by profits
To be made from a safely
Consumerist sham),
This in their saguine halls
They call the Local Angle,
I call it a derelection of
Empathetic humanity;
We are always shifting our problems
Around as though brushing
The ice of our collective
Societal conscience
Will push these Ailsa stones
Of our hope just beyond the bar;
The green bins are rumbling
With caterpillar emitics
As their stomachs are emptied;
The trouble with recycling
Lies in it’s false economics,
Some plastics are usable
Just twice and many are burned
Or buried – people most in denial
Are those who sing their party notes
The highest, and they are marching
With placards to back their
Kleptocracy and their
Oppresors who wear
Their wigs with pride,
And clip-on earrings with
Mother of pearl and gems
Translated as woebetide.
I am surrounded by ghosts;
I surrendered my soul so long ago
I forget what she should feel like.
She too was salvaged and reprocessed,
Yet I do not recall acceding to this,
Thrown into a blight where
In the night we are comandeered
And the worst-off disappeared,
Blessed are those left only
Disappointed.

I live in a world of the
Politically-appropriated woke
And their tokenistic gestures;
This last week a sportsman
With whites and willows was suspended
For racist language beffiting
Our idiocracy, only to be replaced
At the very next wicket
By an interchangeable
Transposed
Xenophobe;
Social media is an oxymoron.
We have international footballers
Being asked to consider
Not taking to the knee
In solidarity for our worldwide
Sisters and brothers
Because although they have been
Subjected to abuse for
This symbolism, this feeling,
So as not to offend those
Of this idiocracy no less,
Who took offence and in
The ample caverns of their minds
Transcended their affront into
The boos of the unevolved
Who thought their bleak
Cause more potent, more worthy,
Those from the grossly inflated
Self-imposed judiciary
Of moral impotence and rectitude,
While our Government of Pelicans
Introduced a Bill wherein they are
Proposing to traduce the aid we give
To reduce the hurt and pain we made
From Sana’a, and Aden, to Gaza
And on to Tripoli and Khartoum,
Not to mention Hong Kong,
Chittagong and everywhere else
Our forefathers with their
Bigotry and intolerance
And slavery and injudisciousness
Would tread on the neck
Of sovereignty, well, these people
Are still bleeding and our
Blessed parliamentarians
Are cutting the cord and
Cloth of humanity they said they spun,
A dress on the men disguising such brutality
There’s four billion sterling less
Dispersed to those we made worse off,
While the liver-gazers protest
At consecrations, statuesque,
Of those now deposed in rivers
Where on that barren plinth
The future racists and despots
Are already being sculpted.

The day we ask the careful
And the kind, the thoughtful
And considered, to moderate
Their conscience and their
Language and their actions
So as not to offend
The racists and the zealots
We may as well burn our books
And drown out all law-abiding people
We once demeaned and diminished.

I pulled up my blind using a Roman string.
The laughing, noisy workers had gone.
The sunshine still blinded,
So I pulled the blind back down,
Made a coffee, thought of times
I knew of human tears,
Went upstairs, undressed,
And fell asleep exhuasted
On my single bed
For a hundred thousand years.

Cloud Topiarist

May 24, 2021 NickLeave a comment

Clouds shaped like lovers,
A giraffe without a neck,
And skeletons in cupboards.

Cloud topiarist,
We seek perfection and yet
The nearest shears are in heaven.

Metallic balls on a yttrium string
Swing rhythms on a table;
Dead offices; disconsolation.

Was there ever a collective
Endeavour roaming
Worth our reminiscence?

It remains an open secret,
There are many dead men walking
And living people buried;

This is what occurs
When graves within my sleep interred
Are kept broken, undelivered.

I hear recurring prophecies –
Spiral vortex dreams –
A financial offshore tremor,

A van concealing hostages
In flags of white and blue,
Loaded guns, rooms in rubble.

If over nations clouds remained
They often gave that day a name,
Apartment diaries, online news,

Then happy in this skylight citadel
Are those murdered few,
For at their graves

Where clouds give shape
They’re brought to life
By a drama or two.

Haiku #736

May 19, 2021 NickLeave a comment

736.

Everybody sees
Somehow slightly different
Versions of this me.

On Homelessness

May 18, 2021May 18, 2021 NickLeave a comment

There is much to be said
For a warm, downy bed,
And a roof for my head.

In truth, those cold stars
Kill men with their draught;
Stratospheric, crystal glass.

I knew a man who died that way,
On a bench rain-soaked
In a well-loved park;

Several cars had slowly passed,
Narrow tailgate margins;
I didn’t have the heart.

He started somewhere far apart;
So much at sea drifts
Listlessly from where our hands

With a planetary love did chart,
Yet Truth has no use for straw
Or for bars, nor Justice, too,

Constantly miscarrying,
She chews on rue like
An ancient Appalachian goat

And her rivers are in my bones
And bath. In the long grass
I lay there waiting, in hiding,

Until the shadow of my self
My life, flew slowly,
Silently above those hills,

A giant airborne stingray,
Inexplicable, mythical,
I cried at the sight of my

Childhood loss. Returning
To my humble shed from roaming
Through my gloaming spirit-loft,

There is much to be said
For a warm, downy bed,
And a pillow for the lonely.

Haiku #702

February 22, 2021 NickLeave a comment

702.

Art all abounding;
Unviewable, resounding,
When our eyes are glued.