Numerals On A Spree

NUMERALS ON A SPREE

8, 10 and 6 got drunk again last night
And you know how it is after a few

8 stumbled, fell over and lay there prostrate
As if paying overawed homage to Infinity

10, as usual, got rather too full of herself
And declared loudly, “I am the Digital Goddess”

6 stayed silent and simply sat there, crestfallen
Embarrassed to have turned into a limp flaccid 9

Shush!

SHUSH!

These emotional symphonies of yours
With their hypnotic little melodies
Encore after encore
The last thing they need is your applause

Travelling

TRAVELLING

Here a trunk
…full of souvenirs

There a wardrobe
…full of costumes

A comfortable chair
…to enjoy the present

A mirror
…… for reflection

And an open door
…with a WELCOME mat

…for the future

“In the night the walls disappeared
In the day they returned”

This is room enough

…for a journey

Holiday In Berlin

HOLIDAY IN BERLIN

The slow times between afternoon traffic
Cold coffee on bungalow verandahs
May sometimes serve to remind
Silk rustle of passing clouds
How once in laughter jetting
Above frail flutes of the ocean’s smile
Wan Europe and far away

To gray freeway boulevards of Berlin
For afternoon walks ginger-soft as cats
With smiles ever less frequent
And for some reason more and more drinking
Dwarf fools in a sad circus
Creating the right spectacle for them
Lay readers of the lesson

Stumbling the important words
Unsure repeating such words each morning
Parodies spraycan the scent of daisies
Chinese whispers total loss of meaning
Carrying it between two
Nervous to the breaking point
Too fragile a vase to save

From arrows of sleet or rain
Through dagger edge adventures
Between avenues of trees whose tired leaves
Only appeared distantly
For to disappear again
Though a tree is dead fungus will survive
Sitting through the dusk of putrefaction

Mildewed walls of cafés and hotel rooms
Daily decomposing and composing
Faded brown and smudged copy
Needed for long past deadlines
Like reporters of the nineteen thirties
Recording one another
In desperate impatience

Dumbly fumbling a bedroom door handle
Until sad days of doom now really dawned
Forced empty slipstream Atlantic returns
Where vapor trails reel two times
Across tangled cotton clouds
Three days apart and strangers
And the wet runways of final descent

Do glisten whose tyremarks are like tears
Descending the handshake passengerway
In the drizzle scarcely shaken from sleep
Opening eyes to look up at the sky
Just as now from bungalows
The sky will never seem the same again
(And of course it never did)
——————————————————————

This poem has a soundtrack! It was composed while listening to the track sequence ‘Holiday In Berlin, Full-Blown > Aybe Sea’ (from Frank Zappa’s “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” album) set on ‘Repeat’. If you don’t own the album you can find the tracks on YouTube.

While listening, it’s not too hard to work out how the stanzas relate to each section of the music and vice versa.

Really it’s just your typical boy meets girl, boy loses girl scenario. Same old same old. (Or boy meets and loses boy, as there’s a nod or two to Christopher Isherwood.)

A verbal/musical movie for the mind (and heart). Enjoy.

Clarity

CLARITY

She strode purposelessly into the room
Her features were drawn
But the rest of her was real
Suddenly she became transparent
“I hope I make myself clear”
Were her only words

Witchcraft: A Cautionary Tale

WITCHCRAFT: A CAUTIONARY TALE

Young John was relaxing in Blackpool
From making his daily pile
He lay and dozed down there on the sands
Not far from the Golden Mile

His health and his strength and his beauty
He believed were beyond normal reach
And so he smiled quietly to himself
The hero of the beach

Suddenly some sand hit him in the face
A curse burst from his lips
He opened his eyes – a haggard old crone
Stood before him, hands on hips

He jumped to his feet with fire in his eyes
Lest his manhood come to harm
But the old woman reached out and restrained him
With a hand upon his arm

“This is your lucky day, young man
For I’m a witch, you see
And if you’ll fulfil one condition
Then I will grant you wishes three”

At once John regained his composure
Greed told him what to do
“I want a beautiful mistress,” he said
“And a fortune, and a sports car too”

“Abracadabra! Balaam! Shazam!
There now – it’s done,” she said
“When you get back to your hotel room
You’ll find a young girl in your bed

“She’ll be the loveliest you’ve ever seen
Gentle and kind as well
And the car that you’ve always coveted
Will be parked before your hotel

“And thirdly the sum of a million pounds
Will be deposited at your bank”
The young man gazed at her starry-eyed
Quite overcome with thanks

She reminded him there was a condition
“Oh … what do I have to do?”
“Simply come up to my room right now
And stay the whole night through”

John felt rather less happy at this
But he’d promised and so he went
Where the woman proved quite insatiable
Until John and the night were both spent

The things that she made poor John go through
Seemed a frightful price to pay
But the thought of the money and car and girl
Kept him going till the dawn of the day

But as soon as the first streak of light appeared
He began making for the door
“By the way, how old are you then?” she called out
And he answered “Twenty-four”

“Hmm, twenty-four years old, you say?”
She asked as he jumped into his breeches
“Don’t you think that’s a little bit old
To be still believing in witches?”

Thought I Found Someone

THOUGHT I FOUND SOMEONE

Robin and Peter went walking
Fearlessly through the woods
Clutching their scripts like addicts
Seeking one who’d deliver the goods

At home among the forest trees
Creatures of the heath
He was looking to beat the Sheriff
She was looking to beat the teeth

They met one day in an autumn glade
Dead leaves were all around
They looked at each other warily
But neither made a sound

She came armed with caution
He came armed with hope
He had a quiver of arrows and bow
She had a length of rope

And as Peter became more cautious
So Robin’s hope increased
He was looking to court a lady
She was looking to capture a beast

Did he see the one he’d been seeking
As she lured him toward the tree?
I suppose, as has often been noted before
You see what you want to see

As he thought he had her by the heart
She caught him by the tail
And so the tale was ended
And all to no avail

He was looking to meet Maid Marion
She was looking to meet a wolf
——————————————————————

References are acknowledged to the popular folk figure Robin Hood, Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” and the Transactional Analysis concept “Life script”.

Chicken Noise In A Pig Neighbourhood

CHICKEN NOISE IN A PIG NEIGHBOURHOOD*

They tried to close off that shaft
With signs that said “Danger”
But the sign over the entrance read “Mine”
So I went in anyway

You thought those ways I took
Were simply for pleasure or escape
You’d been left knowing no better
I suppose

Lift your eyebrows
And mutter together in corners all you like
The street light is a comfort
But not where you dropped your keys†

——————————————————————

* Refers to a children’s party game. On a slip of paper, write the name of an animal that makes an obvious noise. Create five to ten slips for each animal. Give each participant a slip of paper, but tell them to keep their animal a secret. The participants are to find the rest of their kind, but there is no talking. So how do they find the others? They have to make the noise of the animal. Once two of the same kind have found each other, they stay together to find more. Continue until all of the like animals have created one big group. Fun as a child; as an adult you learn the dangers of making a chicken noise in a pig neighbourhood. Try supporting your team from the wrong end of the stadium …

† Most of us have heard the old story of the drunk who looks under the street light for his lost keys, even though he lost them elsewhere, because the light is better there.

The Legend Of The Moon’s Reflection

THE LEGEND OF THE MOON’S REFLECTION

Deep in the Northern mountains’ silence
Once long ago
Far from the lands of men there lived a Prince
Cold as snow
All day long he would wander
Like a man possessed
As he went he would ponder
His life’s helplessness

Why it was that what he loved the most grew old and died
Why he found no place of rest however hard he tried
And he threw himself upon the mountainside
And knew himself to be alone and bitterly began to cry

And in his misery he saw
As if in a dream
That where his tears fell to the ground
There sprang forth a stream
And the stream fed a river
That flowed glad and free
From the hills to the lowlands
And so reached the sea

River and seawater
Flowing down together
Though the river ends
The sea lives on forever

And by means of this vision
The Prince was set free
And in his dying moments
At last he could see

Why it is that what we love the most must disappear
Where that place of rest is that is always free from fear
And he flowed into the river with his tears
And knew himself to be the sea without a knower or a seer

And if you gaze far out to sea at night
So they say
Sometimes you’ ll see his face shine in the moon
Far away
And the river still flows
From the hills to the plain
And the sea feeds the river
With drops from the rain

River and seawater
Flowing down together
Though the river ends
The sea lives on forever …

Flies

…..
…..
…..
FLIES

One fly
On either side of a pane of glass
Each one crawling
Concentratedly searching
For a way through this invisible
But so tangible barrier
To its freedom

Neither
Seems to notice the other
And so is not disheartened
Or amused
To see the vanity of it all
Still less consider what then
If the glass is but a mirror

So people too
At liberty within the boundaries of their minds
Yet feel themselves imprisoned
And long to escape
Into the freedom they have made
Of another’s prison
And this they call love