PER-VERSE SEQUENCE
A) Bad Tempered
1. Wreckognition
If the charmless young spot me
they look away. I’m no more
than a shadow at death’s door.
They wouldn’t want to be me.
So, I don’t exist. But I do,
and making my presence felt
with a walking stick, in lieu
of a wave, I give them a belt
2. A.1
like sportsmen into tyrants’ washing machines.
It’s worse than doing drugs or becoming hobos.
Automats have no release from themselves. We.
must ask what’s happening to human beings.
We’re becoming the last subjective species,
as the virtual takes over the life-force?
Not being able to think for ourselves, on course
to follow mindless each automatic click
set by a mean average scale. We must be quick.
If time runs out, it’s a refusal. Once done it is
below reason. And if switched on at the mains,
we’re at one with the world of matter over brains.
3. Half-hearted Hate
I suppose I should hate the young bucks
with their podgy swaggering, hairdos
piled up in straggles of chicken plucks,
arms sporting seven-devil tattoos,
and decked out in the grungy low fashion.
I pity the girls that have to choose
from these louts their object of passion.
Yet when I see the young things attached
to smart phones sharing sly giggles, I’m
inclined to think they are well matched.
4. Half-hearted Vice
Alas, fait divers and me-too# risks
recalls what I didn’t do with my hands.
I hanker back to the dingle-skirt,
and the elastic twangs of the show band’s
jumping Jacks. A shame. I shied off trysts
with the Sunbeam girls whose carefree-lives
were a joy to behold, twirling jives
with wide boys or my bolder friend.
‘The frizzy one’, he said, ‘gave you the eye’.
But I turned a blind one. I don’t know why
and sat out the dance. Virtue wasn’t my end.
B) Life’s Fragrance
The world is more perverse than I used to think.
Its perfume corrupted till it makes a stink
can, in degradation, create medicine
to prolong life, which is not always a good thing.
Also, the truth of beauty is it blooms and dies.
Still the whiff of fragrance lingers in the air
long enough for a swansong. So, it’s demise
echoes down the ages. Dead poets’ fare.
C) Old Poet on Safari
I met Rimbaud on an African route one day
And asked for directions. He sent me the wrong way
D) Sainte Barbe
Barbara’s father was struck by lightning
after burning her at the stake. Anon
firemen made Sainte Barbe their patron.
When the alarm sounds and the fire-fighting
braves, sparks flying, take off at a lick
you can hear the ‘quelle barbe’* of their shout.
Barbed-wire won’t stop them putting it out.
And they’ll glean her ashes as a relic.
(Did you know that the pompiers eschew
all partying with a barbecue?)
*What the blazes, now!
E) Casper David Friedrich’s Wife’s Plaint
You couldn’t talk to him when painting clouds.
Head bowed the downcast heavens he shrouds
to check reflections on the frozen lake.
All one can do is knit or, better, take
a walk if the murky weather allows.
On my return, around him there are cows
for all the world like mourners at a wake.
‘I give up’, he sighs. ‘For my brother’s sake
next time I must have the patience to wait
for raindrops, which after all are clouds fate,
and so, like him, I’ll be a happy fellow.
Unless you have run off with my umbrella’.
He’s thinking of Johann on thin ice
A skater who vanished before his eyes.
As second-thoughts would end in tears, I laughed
it off, and changed the subject to his craft.
‘If you listened to me, not the discord
of chatter in your head, you could accord
cries for help with deafening foggy skies,
and there wouldn’t be another canvass to forsake’.
‘I’ll spray it’, he blurts. ‘Now let’s bake a cake’.
F) Existential Hymn
If you know where you stand,
the floorboards take care of themselves.
If you know where you sit,
you are able to face the south.
If you know where to look,
you don’t have to tidy the shelves.
If you know where you walk,
you can always find a way out.
If you’re going too far,
further will complete the circle.
If you know that you sleep,
you can be sure nightmares won’t come true.
If you aren’t able to keep
an eye on yourself no one else will.
If you know where you are
and who, well, then what’s the problem.
G) A Counterblast to Winnicott
‘It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found
Donald Winnicott
1.The body can hide
but you can't hide the body.
Murderers know this. I’d
call it a game of hide and seek.
So, at the crime’s scene,
the suspect remains to be seen
at the plot, prodding deep
with a divining rod
to unearth in clay
the victim’s DNA.
He doesn’t need to be God.
2. The joy may be hidden
some say because
it cannot be bidden,
except in a dream.
But joy has no laws
of sight/ unseen,
other than its spin
which, on the point of a pin,
makes it invisible. Still,
you can’t hide its whistle.