Housman’s Jubilee

A,E Housman

For the opening poem to the series that was to become A Shropshire Lad, AE Housman penned a thirty-two line, eight stanza, poem about the Golden Jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria. His main object for concern was God himself and the role he had ‘actually’ played in ‘saving’ the Queen through duration of her reign up until this date. As the poem rolls, from the extensive setting of an encapsulating illumination of England and into the countless deaths involved in the Empires preservation, this question is emphasized, attacked, and emphasized again until we realise that, not only did God have very little to do with this apparent ‘saving’, he had also quite blatantly disregarded everyone else in the process receiving this unfair praise. He begins by giving God a percentage credit, which, we are to find out, he does not deserve.

Lad’s we’ll remember friends of ours

Who shared the work with God.

          We are reminded that ‘God Save the Queen’ is sang by living people, as obvious as this may seem, which in and of itself reminds us that all who have lost their lives in this constant protection have not been saved and are no longer around to attach themselves to the festival of monarchical survival that they died for.

The saviours come not home tonight

Themselves they could not save.

 The speaker never once suggests that they expected God to save them: just that they could not save themselves whilst aiding God to save another mortal human-being (just the one.)

          ‘The land they perished for’ is now the geographic location of the festivity headquarters. Away from the fatherland (yes, the empirical choice of a Nazi type noun is deliberate here) Asia and its wonderful Nile River are paired with Housman’s semi-fictional Shropshire and England’s beloved Severn for the purposes of nothing more (or less) than death and the markers of tombs and the reading of names to bedfellow the encapsulating beacons of celebration.

          Now some people say that Housman was a cynic, a pejorist who criticised from a distance and participated in nought. I, personally, think it is fine that people believe such because in doing so they kind of prove his point for him. He was, instead, a humanitarian who wrote of the plight of the world and its youth. His close affinity with the struggles of young soldiers was always a metaphor for the struggles of his life, his loneliness and the isolation that never really became Stoppard’s ‘Invention of Love.’ He wanted to identify with the military and the ridiculousness of their situation but never dared get too close, more of a mark of respect for them and against the little notice they brought upon others. He never was a military man. He was a pejorist, sometimes a cynic, yes. Did he believe the world was going mad? I think he probably did and poems such as this are a better thesis than most people have ever produced to the contrary. It seems that what made him sad, not mad, is that God had absolutely nothing to do with saving the Queen. If the song is, instead, a suggestion to God, then he had clearly paid it no heed and simply gotten on with taking all the credit. Housman believed that the salt of the British earth was its youth and it was in fear for them that his cynicism (or realism) grew. He leaves us with praise for his fellow man, thinly veiling a stark warning for the changing of attitudes around him and the social downfall this could possibly create,

Oh, God will save her, fear you not:

Be you the men you’ve been,

Get you the sons your father got,

And God will save the Queen.

          In other words, why don’t we leave God to it, look after ourselves and, more importantly, each other: everyone is, in theory, just as important as the Queen but in Housman’s reality, clearly not. God is very selective and usurping of credit sometimes. I write this on June 2^nd 2012 a few days ahead of our Queen’s 60^th jubilee celebrations and I wonder why people still think that Housman was a cynic and a false pejorist. It seems to me that ‘prophet’ may be a better label to pin on him. His poem is timeless which, in itself, is laughable as he was deemed and doomed as out-dated in his own time. In this glorious day and age men seem to die for governments as opposed to Monarchs, as was actually the case in Victorian times also but the result seems the same. People say we no longer are empire builders, and maybe we are not, but there are men and women dying all over the place for our government and the governments of our friends. Housman was not necessarily political and neither is this. It is about humanity and the worth of human life. In a few days’ time it will be sixty years since God has saved our Queen and I wonder if things are really all that different now than they were then. There is no way that my dreamer’s mind will allow me to believe that Housman would like to say I told you so but ask yourself this: Would you blame him if he did?

BMC2012

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A Shropshire Lad

I

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,

The shires have seen it plain,

From north and south the sign returns

And beacons burn again.

Look left, look right, the hills are bright,

The dales are light between,

Because ’tis fifty years to-night

That God has saved the Queen.

Now, when the flame they watch not towers

About the soil they trod,

Lads, we ’ll remember friends of ours

Who shared the work with God.

To skies that knit their heartstrings right,

To fields that bred them brave,

The saviours come not home to-night

Themselves they could not save.

It dawns in Asia, tombstones show

And Shropshire names are read;

And the Nile spills his overflow

Beside the Severn’s dead.

We pledge in peace by farm and town

The Queen they served in war,

And fire the beacons up and down

The land they perished for.

‘God save the Queen’ we living sing,

From height to height ’tis heard;

And with the rest your voices ring,

Lads of the Fifty-third.

Oh, God will save her, fear you not:

Be you the men you ’ve been,

Get you the sons your fathers got,

And God will save the Queen.

 

AE Housman

Before the Attic: Peetir in New Orleans

“The little house in which I was born and grew until the age of five was situated on Magazine Street in New Orleans. We lived in one of the poorer neighborhoods uptown and according to my father, far too close to the black families. My father, whose name was also Peter, had a tendency to hate everyone and everything. I think it made his life easier and saved him from having to choose too much or look himself in the face. I never indulged in such crazy notions even as a child but sometimes he would catch me playing with the little black kid who lived up the block. His name was Vernon and I liked him a lot. I guess we would have been around the same age, three or so. God I can still remember like it was yesterday. My father would beat me black and blue when he saw us together. Always hit me right in front of the kid too. I guess that showed me. Vernon stopped coming near me in the street after a while. The only other kid I remember was a boy named Troy. I always tried so hard to be friendly towards Troy. I guess he was just one of those kids who liked to bully. He hit me so many times I lost count after a while.

   In our small garden we had a large Oak tree. A tree far too big for the size of our yard but cutting it down or even trimming it sounded  too much like work for my father . He would tell us that the tree had been there so long and that it would be a sin in the eyes of god if we were to harm it. One day Troy split my head against that tree, I don’t know how many times. My mother came rushing out of the house like the kitchen was on fire and tried to drag me away but he just kept slamming me. Eventually she freed me, or so I am told. I did not remember anything of it, then or now. Apparently I never woke up for three days afterwards. My mother held me on her knee when I came home from hospital and told me that I would never be the same again. She had to nurse me for quite a while I think. My father had very little to say on the subject. As I recall he and Troy had a very similar outlook on life, even though Troy was only ages with me. It was easier just to tell me that it must have been my fault. It’s funny really. If people keep telling you that you’re to blame, eventually you believe them without even being told. Much later in life I was reading a book about Lee Harvey Oswald and discovered that as a child he had lived on Magazine Street also. I found that somewhat ironic and wondered if it had something to do with the location. I mean, they tried to blame him for everything too, didn’t them?

   For years I often wondered what had ever become of Troy. What he would be doing , where he was . He haunted me right into my adult life and I can remember having nightmares featuring his presence as a grown man. My ghosts have never gotten to grasp the concept of aging along with me and because of this I have had to lie awake in bed, terrified of a five year old boy. He has been everywhere I have been. I cannot remember a moment without his face from that day to this. His jet black hair and that screwed up little expression, cconstantly lookin ill done to. One of my first ever tastes of victimization have never ended. A bit like yours, I imagine. .

     My father would come into my room constantly at night. Lesson time he called it. Is it not just amazing the things you remember?  He would ask me about different colors and see if I could name the players on his baseball cards. He would also punch and scratch me for his own amusement. Put my hand in his pants. Once he put it in my mouth and laughed until he cried as he watched me choke. I don’t remember my mother ever once coming to see why I was crying. I guess sewing in the den can be real noisy at times. My father would molest and abuse me by night and Troy would constantly beat the shit out of me by day. After a while the bruises seemed to run into each other and no-one ever said a word. I had this theory as a kid. I was convinced that when I would go inside at night for bed, Troy would secretly turn into my father so that his fun did not have to end on account of something as silly as a child’s bed time. I constantly went back to that kid. He was my friend. My opinion on the minds of children has been somewhat cynical for most of my life because of that.

 And then one day in the summer of 1954   it all ended.

I was playing in the front yard when I heard a bang. More of a thud really. I ran into the house immediately and was confronted with the sight of my mother lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. There was blood everywhere. The wooden staircase was sodden and the walls leading up to the second floor landing looked like they had been repainted. I screamed and called my mother’s name and wept and collapsed all at once. There was no reply. I shook her as hard as I could and was covered, within seconds, in blood and matter. I would imagine that for anyone over the age of four it was more than obvious that she was dead but I had no knowledge of such a concept at the time and opted for the innocent presumption that she had fallen asleep while coming down the stairs. I just remember feeling that it was so strange that I could not wake her. Our neighbor Mary spinet must have heard me scream and duly descended on the scene to find me knee deep in a thick puddle of human interior, my mother motionless beneath me. I have never again heard anyone obtain the volume and frequency which emanated from that little Italian woman’s lungs that day. Nothing even remotely similar. She bellowed three thousand questions all at once whilst still maintaining a personal conversation with every saint imaginable, achieving nothing other than to terrify me slightly more than I already was. Then suddenly there was silence. A deadly silence that made the air around me speaks. Mrs. Spinetti was frozen. I could see her blink occasionally and her mouth appeared to me moving ever so slightly, but there was no sound. My mother’s eyes were open and I looked straight in but the warmth had gone. Nothing was left but the torment and frustration that had surrounded her all of her life. Suddenly I was aware of a tiny dripping sound, slow and kind of muffled. I turned my head and watched in disbelief as my mother’s blood drippad from the banister on the second floor, fallying within inches of my head to rest on the wooden boards by my feet.”

   Peter’s head was bowed and something seemed to have left him, oor maybe it had just returned. Jessica sat silently, somewhat dumbfounded and unsure what to say as the light from the far window was began to fade, shading the room in a familiar, comfortable ambience that reminded her of happier childhood summers. She turned slightly and looked toward her father who was still deep in sleep, his head buried in his pajamas sleeve. Peter slowly began to speak again before she had turned back.

 ”It didn’t take the Police long to find him. He never even left the house. As it turned out we had a small attic inspection that no-one but him had known about. He was curled up in a ball in the corner, a bottle of bourbon in his grip, covered in blood.  I was long gone by this time. Whisked away in a patrol car to begin, what I came to refer to as my new life. My father was a drunk. My mother was a manic depressive. I was a little abused boy with no real understanding and an insane four year old friend. I guess it was only a matter of time before someone killed someone.

       It was a long time before I was to fully understand what had happened. I was sent from one foster family to the next until, at the age of seven, I found the family that I was to remain with until I left home at eighteen. They were a nice ordinary southern family with a stereotypical drawl and an obsession with quality Sunday lunch after church playing way too high on their list of priorities but they sure looked after me. My abuse had become appearenot to them and I was sent to numerous councilors and doctors until they were confident that I felt secure in their house and could bring myself to be close to them.  This had been, initially, very difficult when it came to light that I had been molested to an even greater extent by everyone in Louisiana who had the intelligence to fill out a foster form. In the end we all seemed to opt for a situation arising from compromise more than anything else. I accepted the fact that my new father , whose name was  Thomas by the way , could read me stories at bed time without tearing my soul to shreds and they accepted that I would never be a completely normal child no matter how many scriptures , verses and parables they forced me to read . The strangest thing that I remember of that time was that I still missed Troy. He had participated enormously to my mental downfall but had probably been one of the only people to have ever noticed me for anything more. I can remember him teaching me how to pitch and on occasion he would let me wear his mitt. After a while , and of course it had not taken very long , he too discovered that life was always more fun with someone else on the receiving end and that was the end of that but I often would remember his few moments of kindness and held them close for fear of having nothing . Anyway I digress.

    Apparently my father had returned home from a grueling day at whatever manual waste of space and end of line job he was enrolled in that particular week in time to find my mother sewing back together an old shirt which had been ripped from her back the previous night, coincidentally around the same time as the local bar had been closin. There had been no attempt made to complete the preparation of his evening meal and, even though he was home a little early for dinner, decided to teach her a lesson in priorities. In an attempt to defend herself she had shoved hard against him at the top of the stairs, almost causing him to fall which he had found to be a slur on his very manhood. He quietly and calmly proceeded to pull his fishing knife from his belt and carve her from top to bottom before shoving her almost lifeless and shredded body over the second floor landing and onto the wooden floor below. She wwould have been dead before she hit the ground. As is the case with most offenders of this nature, guilt and remorse, coupled with self-pity set in quickly and can only be neutralized with copious amounts of anything alcoholic, available to the perpetrator at the time. Within a half hour of the consumption ritual beginning the fore mentioned perpetrating offender can be found, in this case in an attic, actually crying and requesting sympathy for the terrible state of affairs which has just befallen his loving young family. He was arrested, evaluated, found to be sane and stood trial for the murder of my mother. As I am told, during the course of his short trial, opinions on the subject of his sanity began to waver. I am not really sure of all of the details but in the end he was sent to the State Penitentiary and apparently moved to some mental ward or such place after a few years. I have no idea where he is now or if he is free for that matter. Perhaps he is dead or dying. Both of my foster parents died while I was in my early twenties. I often think of New Orleans now but have never really returned as an adult. Too many ghosts I guess.

BM2001

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Katie Is Never Mentioned?

My wife told me recently that she never seems to be mentioned in my blog posts and that I no longer write about her. Such self indulgence is not allowed in our house so I got this out for proofing today. This was the first time in my life that I allowed an iambic pentameter quatrain to sit with an imperfect rhythm in  one line and no ending rhyme in either the first and third, first and fourth, or the second and third lines. I have neverdone this before or since, and people claim that love is dead. It also turns out that my photographic skills bear a fruit similar to that of the dung beetle egg. My apologies. Justin Sullivan said, ‘The mirror never lies/ its just these foolish eyes.’ I do not personally believe Justin Sullivan but I ask myself, ‘Would a dung beetle care?’ ‘No,’ I answer myself for there are none that are listening. Justin Sullivan could not care less either.

This poem also clearly runs sixteen lines, composed of four quatrains, and summarizes without a ending rhyming couplet, making it quite unique to almost everything I write. I also would not usually allow myself to be laid out so nakedly which I have boldly, and again, clearly, done and in every single line have created a false protagonist (nestled subtly in the first person tense) that both distracts from and pedestals the true subject of the poem. Am I blowing my own trumpet? No: I am blowing hers.

Katie my dear, you have been mentioned. I have also scanned all my previous blogs and wont embarrass you with the amount of times you have been previously mentioned.

All my love Always

BMC 2012 X

 

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I have no wish to taste her as the drug

That empathized my embalmed qualms of worth.

Yet her existence, homed, disproves the rule

My soul has craved and all I shan’t deny.

Such sylphlike substance spawns a vivid fear

In those who witness. Feigned? Perhaps, but styled.

And I must now attest to this in terror:

Her paths of eyes have stunned; she has beguiled.

I do not care to breathe her as a past,

Without her wants permission, claiming naught

Of consequence to reference who she is:

But view such days as simply things we’ve fought.

Though each trained lantern’s flame combines in flight,

My altitude near dropped a trifle low.

Now this cracked self strives, vies, to see her light.

In turquoise eyes I wrote so long ago.

BM2011

 

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Milo & the Maternal Arachnida

I do not believe that I have ever met anyone who loves superheroes as much as Milo. If he were 12 years older he would be seen as a geek (I insert no opinion on the concept/ observation only). Anyway, at the age of 4 this is already ‘not’ a new thing. We have read watched and invented superheroes in the short time we have known each other, Maverick Milo Man being the premium product so far but no doubt one of many that are to come. One of the mainstays of our invented superhero capers at bedtime was Spiderman’s mum, (hence Maternal Arachnida). She was very friendly with Batman’s aunty Betty and they go to Bingo together on a Tuesday night, always having to race home in time for the assorted superheroes (DC and Marvel combined) to get home from an adventure and be looking for a hot marzipan pie and a shower. Aunty Betty is a dab hand with the laundry and towels, Spiderman’s mum takes care of the food. Sometimes Green Lantern would drop by if it was his day off from college and Robin always said hello after his shift as a lollipop man in Partick. Milo always believes that Robin is very brave but I am not convinced. Spiderman’s dad works on the oil rigs off of the coast of Aberdeen and is rarely involved, although he sub contracts some of his lawn cutting business to Batman and Wolverine when he is too busy. The Hulk rides 7 horses that are sellotaped together. Enough said. Anyway I wanted, for some time, to document a slice of our newfound friendship before it became too ‘family’ orientated (not that there is anything wrong with that) and came up with this sonnet. It was completed about 9 months ago I think and was just pulled out of a file that I am proofing this very day.

BMC2012

For Milo RIC

Maternal arachnida hear me call!

Although my might appears condensed, I stand

Before your highness, golden locked and tall;

Beyond my wearied vision, taller still.

As matriarchic caped web trees furcate

Through Bat and Crawler, Wolf and mauler’s teeth;

Down valleys, vast, within my stainless slate

And steel combed mind, I crave the victor’s tear.

My dream world? Sinless antics out of mind:

Of war bent Velcro sinewed from my back;

Of justice bound crusade trails, books and binds;

And crime bent villains blue-tacked to the wrack.

My wanderings? Your aspiration chimes:

Hypothesized by me in stargazed times.

The Orange Tree

As I would love to believe some of you know, I have been compiling a series of sonnets, named The Orange seed, for my unborn son (who should not be remaining unborn for very much longer). This series was supposed to end at 14 pieces, as my signature series does, but journeyed to 15 and then an apology for a 16th before I finally drew a line beneath. As I started to post these sonnets on my blog with a few notes, and eventually caught up with myself at the point of composition (somewhere around the 10th), I began to realise that, unlike similar sonnet series that I have created, the linkage between some poems was haphazard and, therefore, more coincidental (or so I thought) than structured. I initially had the intention of composing during times of thought or experimental parental contemplation and allow only the numbers to dictate relationship within but, as I have suggested in some of my blogged notes, this did not always occur and thought trains, as well as grievances, emerged from some and into the next. The most obvious examples to me are between 11 and 14. I would be both delighted and honoured if anyone would like to take the time as I have just done to read it as a series of 16 sonnets as opposed to 16 individual pieces that I somehow provoked into uniformity. It shouldn’t take too long, I promise.

As always, I would like to thank Milo Cole for his eternal ability to crush my somewhat theoretical thought processes toward parenting and for the inspiration that he simply brings to my life.

BMC2012

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THE ORANGE SEED

(for Wilfred Donald Miller-Cole, as yet unborn)

I

To rhyme-death, full skewered, refuge and refuse:

Two words, when voiced, so ilk-alike I find

Too solemn. Seldom, words have left behind

My shadow lifeline’s carnage. Wracked abuse

Has dew-drop felled my bricks of brain-dead rind.

Through cobble dipped emotion, our road curled

Between the darkest housings of my crime.

Their welcome mats were camouflaged by time

And your dissension. Heartfelt war unfurled

Against a flag of reckoning and grime.

Still, I have fed to you, through shrapnel straws

Of horror show, the all assuming film

Of delegated degradation’s flaws;

Of custom carnage, circumstance, and cause.

II.

Hyperbole is tantamount to theft

Of factual fiction, patricide, and loss

Of inclined self. Inclined by what? By cross

And nails, or tiresome tales and all that’s left;

Or merely from exhaustion drowned in dross.

This racquet ball of conflict, and the way

It ne’er can bounce, is fierce. It slices trees

Of thought from branches of regret; it pleads

With rallied force for all enticed to stray

Away from common sense, and weep: and need.

Our highs are tallest low down sinking blows.

We greet the worst taste lingering our mouths;

We rant and scream, or so it seems, we throw

The jotted notebook, so as not to grow.

But he shall grow for me, this Orange seed.

Porter Square III.

Protruding from the Hell at Heaven’s gate,

I spewed an exhaled terror at my sun

Of spite, my bungee labelled life: The plate

My service, self-inflicted through a spate

Of operatic lather, served upon.

Dear Lord, your pinnacle, your porch, disgusts

The very balance in my feet to heart-

Attacked dissymmetry. My knuckles thrust

Their blood to white, to digit clamps, calloused

Beyond redemption’s dross. All trains depart.

I know now that I saw you bearing down

On me, the only eyes above the clouds

Of Eden. Steering me, as not to drown,

And nudging me toward life on the ground.

IV

Abrupt: you dawned on me, where did I go?

Mine eyes had stung the glory, sponged the brine

Of years; constructed era selves of time

Lined shorelines, spun the match and spent the coin.

Why was my ocean void of suffixed rhyme?

Taut turmoil, fraught, surrounds my you for now,

And weighs dead weight on programmed parallels

Not always sacrosanct. Time roars domed bells

For what you will become. Time brace my brow

For weary eyes and paddle footed cells.

Your entrance will illuminate such trails

Of epic journey duly recognized.

For if my notions slay the wave torn sail,

I’ll hit my head but miss the waiting nail.

V.

Bolster me for God’s sake, I am weak

And weakened by incessant sense

And program life redemption’s ring road fenced

Approach. I long to yearn to hear you speak:

Come bolster me and be my present tense.

Come prop me up my cushion blow, come sing

In verse my want, my all. Come stand me tall

That I shall breathe, take heed, and call. Please loll

Me to my rest with calm and you. My wings,

Please steer me, bolster my soul’s overhaul.

For when my ear shall hear you call my name

I know I’ll weep; I sense I’ll never scorn

My very being in this place again.

I’ll never underestimate the rain.

(From the Depths) VI.

Conditions pre-exist most rabid spheres.

That is, to say, my child, that pasts can be,

And will be, breathing elements of fear

To be restrained. Yet all compliant tears

Will nourish, wild, the eyes from which they flee.

And that, itself, will be and always be.

Perfect a planar home to hide if musts

Necessitate such tenting. My supply

In stock of shelter will not end. I trust

The rains are blessed upon all valleys, just

And crimed alike; the wind and watered eye

That peers upon you can but will not die.

Through Eden’s Hell and felled Angels I’ll crawl,

Beneath the shrouds of Kings, toward the wall.

VII.

Back-tracking three-six-five I bled to birth

And justified the nothingness of trite

And trusting brotherhood: I sponsored slight

And sloping stance, yet felled myself. My worth

Was all but mouthless, market priced in plight.

Was death surrender? Was this even real?

In now time, as of now, death seems a farce

For life is in my way. There’s you and sparse

But mite built smiles, snuffed out upon the wheel

Of piled up breath and breathing. Stop, please stop.

There is no worth in servile dredging forth

Of stark regurgitation’s frothing clause.

There is no point in heralding some truth:

In hanging from the lamps my blood stained gauze.

VIII.

Unlike a vaccination chaplaincy,

This orb shan’t always cusp a braided net:

Shan’t look upon you first, my foremost prize.

Mined lamps that guide the doomed canary’s way

Shan’t glisten such as ours, though they beset

Themselves to do so: willed themselves to try.

Unlike the heat of home heart hearth, shall dust,

At times, shotgun your eyes toward the cold.

At points such as, for wish regained, we’ll kneel.

And craning candles, small and dim, shall burst

All cornered blackness from its stifling fold:

And choking smoke will splutter how it feels.

And cornerstones will edge toward our glow,

And build the frame that binds us evermore.

Crieff: IX.

Sparse swooning creeks of neck and valley brave

The ice to product stamp this saltire land.

Staunch pride at work in branding hues of grey

Throughout homed heart-food fars the city’s lamps.

And yet I rest upon this thought: I rest

When I am resting not; my strings sleep bowed

In weight, on distant pastoral gates, at best.

For Glasgow, base bricked, rough-cast bound and proud,

Entails my soul and your conception shroud.

And furthermore, Crieff’s bark brown door exists

To halt intruders such as I, my views,

My hankerings, and my sky. My city cists

Weed-kill angelic elegies of muse,

And finger-prod Clare’s green and pleasant bruise.

X.

Were those the days of roses that I sowed,

Meandering my gauntlet’s drowning dreams?

I tasted with the wealthy all my life,

As disenchantment gnawed me at the seams.

And now, perched here, I know not how I know.

Had knowledge introduced itself? Had trust

Shoved forth its claim? I tried to sanctify

The blindside prank, afoot behind life’s drape.

Then nightshade, cunning, lured the very eyes

That sacrificed to circumvent life’s thrust.

My all, the moon is yours to etch upon:

To scratch the very pane of sky, to fly

Atop these dreams of ours. Discard the burn

Of my misunderstandings past, my son.

XI.

Age motion lulled corkscrews release the scorn

That once I held so tight. Senses, beguiled,

Are gently nudged awake in me by mild

And manic you. I feel not tired, but worn.

My lifeline rhythms sync with yours my child.

You ask of me if I can frame the wind

With gin bruised eyes, still healing in the jar

I call my head but sadly, to the far

Off faith and wonder, I must now rescind.

Existent knowledge surveys o’er my scars.

I cannot box my breath my boy but yet

I brave the cold. ‘Twas faith that led me here

To you, this here and now, this fold. I met

Myself beneath the crossroads of regret.

And climbed.

Symmetry XII.

The symmetry is suspect, yet the soured

Membrane, the inward eye, reveals a rant

Of woe beneath two souls entwined. Hearts pant

Through insignificance of mouths that howl

On laddered octaves of regret: they fail.

The symmetry is fleeting and the cist-

Led ticks of age reveal the red beneath

The armoured surface penned in paint. The teeth

That gnashed each outline threaten to desist;

Meek two-way traffic steps implore the pale.

The eye’s red circles never take a side

Nor wish to break the glass they rest upon.

Outside symmetric bricks may yet divide:

Inside, two hearts, two welted wounds, hang on.

XIII

My chequered skeleton of yesteryear

Can slander peace of mind and torrid times

Until cows relocate. These clichéd crime-

Waved savage eyes adjust; they seem sincere

While sloth-diving accumulated grime.

Their sandwich life-sliced-motherfucking-tongue,

With ham acting asides served, never spin

The pickles, jarred, I drowned myself within.

Hence, appetizing scavengers amongst

Our sect still smile-cud-chew away their sin

If that, their want, shall be. The hanging noose

Is never tied, doth never hang obtuse

Above our door: our two-way door; our life.

They scoff at us? They scoff upon refuse.

XIV

Perpetual dissatisfaction shook

The jailflat’s cornice and the hanging lamp

That never could withstand your weight but looked

The part when crack dishevelled. If Imust

Perpetuate these doings and their hooked

Film strip of comics, I shall fear the worst.

Are we submerged within the worst through you?

I think-thought not, yet death accumulates

The herd, still penned; still gnawing at my shoes.

Reminding me that hell swims just beneath

The pale soles of my family’s feet: death brews

The cud that drowns: that compost heaps and wreaths.

Ambivalent Benevolence is key,

To framework brick my sons, my world, and me.

Namesake: TOS XV.

My past can cast a long dark shadowed moon

To pierce the prospect of my coming kin.

Unless I breach this darkness from within,

I’ll never river-dam bygone fortunes;

Or reunite the Dogfish with its fin.

For such a notion, such as such, depends

On much of such being luck and tandem two.

We’ll choose our wars together, me and you;

We’ll circumvent our foes and make them friends,

And live, and feed the Dogfish balm fuelled glue.

For destiny’s forked snowdrift did abscond

With Frost-fuelled prickly heat and instinct’s gut.

Through wisdom’s mute experience we bond:

In tongues, your namesake mutters from beyond.

TOS XVI

By twelve the fading light of wonder slid

From Spring dawn’s grasp today, and warned me thus:

That money would not buy the breath that hid

Within my sordid throat; that bold as brass,

As crass as class, would boil in oil my bid

To guide and proof the comfort I’ve amassed.

I was the man who could not break the cloud

That led beyond the cold, to save himself

From drowning in a dry sky’s knowledge; proud

Of disobedience and his death knoll’s strain.

He fell in silent scream; his eyes, aloud,

Pled upward of a thousand times, ‘insane!.’

I hope I have the strength to break your fall,

For I can’t tell you anything at all.

BMC2012

A Walking Contradiction Such As I

Contradiction

If I have to go through you with a gun; a sword,

A knife and fork, and a pair of fucking scissors

I will:

In order to find peace.                                                             (2008) – Boston, Mass.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

I found these lines in an old word file disc, dating back about four years: they have intrigued me for approximately four days now. The fact that I do not remember writing the above is not newsworthy and the sentiment within was something that I felt more often than not so there is no real surprise in their existence, on the surface at least. I have been doing a little study in my head all day today, just trying to figure out how that lunatic went about his days then. It would have been 2008: that’s all I got from the disc.

By 2008 I had moved to Massachusetts and was in the throes of everything negative. I was a year and a bit away from my first serious hospitalisation but was pretty well on track with the invisible schedule that was leading there. I had invented two men named Charlie and Frank that took me under their wing at AA meetings I never attended and was becoming confused as to what they were up to. Charlie identified with me because, although much older, her had left Ireland and had never really settled away from home. The disease of his alcoholism had accompanied him to Boston and I now see it as a shame that I had no knowledge of the alcoholic’s inability to leave his illness behind when constantly running because it would have been a fairly identifiable trait if I had been able to write it into his story. Of Frank, now remember very little. He did not like his wife and was angry at the necessity of the meetings: a real cliché really. That’s hat Frank was. By the time I had moved to Somerville I had the weight of monetary excess on my shoulders and the first realisation that it may, in fact, be possible to drink ALL of it. I knew I was coming closer and it is at this time, I think, that I started believing that I would be dead before that ever really became my problem. This eased the burden pressed against an impossible character such as I and allowed me to feel sorry for myself, even if no one else would. In truth it was very difficult for anyone else to because I invited no one into my life. I remember Emily considering positively, the idea that I may make friends at Harvard hat could actually become friends outside of campus and I can now understand why she saw that as a good thing for her as well as me. That, however, was never going to happen. In truth I had made many friends in the bars that surrounded Harvard University (and I suppose a few within the confines of the lecture halls and the Widener) but they were mine. The bar resident friends (some employees) were what I considered my parallel world. No one knew that I knew them and they never knew that they were a secret from everyone else. I had a bar tender friend in the famous ‘Dedalus’ Bar who went as far as lending me books and inviting me to Red Sox games. He was into that whole ‘Scottish’ thing and was determined that we were going out drinking someday. I was once smashed within him after a shift, in his own bar, but that was as far as it went. I cannot for the life of me remember his name right now but I am sure it will come back to me. I also had a bunch of Irish friends in another bar named ‘Tommy Doyle’s.’ They were fascinated with the whole Old Firm thing and we watched football together. I remember that around this time Rangers had drawn Manchester United in the Champions League and, as they were all Manchester fans, we watched together underneath a sea of free drinks. Of all of the people in my parallel world I liked Megan best. She was a bartender at John Harvard’s Brew House and a fellow student at the University. Her boyfriend was from London, which I remember thinking was one of her only flaws, and she was seriously interested in the essays of Wilde: a subject almost unheard of these days, even in Massachusetts with it Irish connections – I always feel that Wilde was really an English writer who happened to be Irish because no Irish man ever wrote like that – and therefore something that I jumped at. I also liked the Bars of Downtown Boston as they allowed me the insight into the Boston people and the almost dream like ideal of having lived there in a happier, more accessible, time. I adored the place d the people to the point that it saddened me to leave it, even for no more than a weekend to NYC or nearer. It was my inability to be in it the way I wanted to be. Secrecy was everything to me. The life that rolled on in my head, as childlike as ever, still boasted true love and the muse like creatures that were no more than invention. The success I never attempted to grasp, the locations of security and a comfortable skin wardrobe that I enjoyed being in. This was a third existence which only really came to fruition when I was in bed, thinking in the dark (when my cats no longer cry) or in the middle of the night at a small computer desk, virtually blind with vodka and tiredness; being soundtracked by Cosby show reruns and oblivious to the person downstairs, asleep and (apparently) oblivious to the life I was leading. I would never blame her if she knew and did not care, really I wouldn’t. On review I do not blame her for doing exactly what she did because it allowed me to continue to drink and NOTHING ( and I mean nothing) was more important to me, Boston itself included. In the winter time I could smoke out of the window of her office because it was cold outside and she was still allowed to smoke. I cannot remember why but I was not. I was probably trying to stay healthy, the Boston marathon was always around the corner.

And this was pretty much my life. In the morning I would go to class and library – I miss that library: it was one of my favourites although I write, right now, this piece in my favourite library in the whole world- and then start to stroll round the bars; maybe take the T train to Allston and crawl back through the hundreds of Student, sport, and dive bars that crossed the river on both sides. For the first few bars I would look over poetry that I was studying and some of my own verse. By the fourth or fifth I had begun to write myself. My series, To Wash My Wish Away, had actually commenced in Los Angeles about two years before but it was here that it sprouted from the original intention of 14 sonnets (one representing each line of an English sonnet in both rhyme and reason) to an autobiography that could maybe explain a few things. Little did I know then that I would become sober and actually learn so much. These days the series is not about explanation. It is just about me and my life. Like my friend Janet says, ‘Now I’m Janet, just Janet, and that’s enough for me.’ It is a shame my name is not Janet. If it were I would thieve that line.

The only time, by this point, that I would actually leave the Cambridge area was when my in-laws came to town. It is pointless going into that scenario but needless to say I would usually venture into Boston, switch location from the Widener to the Boston Public Library (which I suggest you Google image right now if you have never seen it) and drink around the city, killing time until they got tired. Once I even travelled to Glasgow, only to discover that they had extended their stay by the time I returned. I refer to that situation in my life as ‘Fumar (n) Pains Sense’ and that is enough of that.

So,

In order to try and make some sense of this reminiscing babble I will have to return to the discovered lines that prompted it:

I can think of three people that were possibly on my mind when I wrote this vile diatribe, and could (in all honesty) quite easily axe one of them (from the list, not literally – I am a sober reformed character these days) although what strikes me as the only relevance now (today) is that it doesn’t matter who I wanted to kill. What matters to me now is the blatant contradiction of the lines that so easily reflect the hypocrisy and contradiction that was my life then. The idea of butchering a human in a quest for peace (especially with no mention of any necessity, hunger for example) must be the ultimate contradiction. It makes no sense at all and that is why it does not matter who the mind-set recipient of this dream like gore fest was: the recipient was always me. I read these badly written lines today and, as a sober man, see that the only person who can stand in the way of my peace…….

Is me.

I added the title, ‘Contradiction’ to make the lines look like a poem (distorted ego to the bitter end) and hopefully lend a sense of form to an otherwise crudely written Diary extract. This is not poetry.

All that can be garnered, by me at least, is that today I do not feel this way.

BMC2012

Do Alcoholics Slip?

Do alcoholics slip?

I slipped once. I was walking down the narrow wooden staircase in my house. An old ‘Somerville’ style home in, well, in Somerville actually. My old cat, now sadly deceased, had left his tickling stick on the stair, four from the bottom. Having long since lost its suction grip due to the size, weight, and strength of the cat, and the Dollar store quality of the product, Brick the cat had taken to dragging it around like a tree trunk for the domesticated, chewing at it and waiting for me to become the function of the toy; holding it out for him to bat the furry ball or generally attack with a glint in his eye.

Having nonchalantly made it to the step five from the bottom, my right leg naturally stepped toward the fourth. I believe my heel caught the pole of the tickling stick, which then rolled under the pressure and took me out completely. My feet were higher than my head when the middle of my back hit the edge of the step. I slid, suffocating within myself, to the bottom and hit the facing wall. I cracked three ribs in my back that day and could hardly walk or bend for the pain for months. I attended a lecture at Suffolk University a few days later and remember the teaching assistant being more than a little concerned about my complexion and over all, ill, demeanour. This was not an unusual reaction to my visage as I was a chronic 24 hour alcoholic by this point and usually looked like shit anyway. I was sent to a university doctor and then to another before being sent packing with hot and cold remedies, numbing agents, and pain killers. Nothing worked but Smirnoff Limon and by both luck and chance I had a massive supply of that particular anaesthetic. I also, at this point, had a big stash of cash and was in no fear of running low. I nursed myself back up to the gutter but it took some time.

Did I slip down the stairs?

Yes.

Was I wrecked out my head at the time? I was always wrecked out of my head by that particular time of day, evening, or night. I do not actually remember what time the incident took place but Emily was at Art School so it must have been during the day time. I know that my mid-morning had started in the White Horse in Allston and moved on swiftly from there. The sun was shining when out and I remember the whir of the air conditioner while lying on the floor, wondering. It must have been spring or summer, maybe not: maybe early fall. God knows. This is enough.

So,

Do alcoholics slip? This one did, but I believe that what they mean is relapse, not slip. As stated above, I slipped once. I relapsed hundreds of times: every day as I awoke from a stupor, to be accurate, because I knew nothing then of what I know now. Every single day was my chance to change and yet I did not. My life was to get a hell of a lot worse than it was on that day and those that followed.

Was relapse part of the remainder of the story?

Every day.

When it looks like it, tastes like it and acts like it, we call it what it is: Relapse. When one falls, one breaks their ribs, at least that is my experience. When one relapses, one crawls one day closer to death.

I hope you like my poem,

BMC2012

 

Relapse

 Dulled planks resembling stress beheaded wise

Yet weakened flooring fashioned my tomb cage.

Of blinding slats, of splintered pine, the flies,

The memory of wine had hope. The rage

That raged was gone; the eyes of heaven cried.

Across the Prairie and the Plane, the wood

Of rotting rings beneath roared, force-pulled by

Four addled mares of worthless aptitude.

As desperation wept I clung to life.

Adversities like passing, tolling, bells

Rang vivid deep through memory and strife.

From God and Grace, reluctantly I fell.

The grass-dew drained my sweating brow of light.

The wagon fled, in terror, out of sight.

BM2011/ BMC2012

 

 

 

 

 

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The Orange Seed XVI (An Apology)

I do not necessarily feel foolish (it is nice to know I have a conscience and a desire of some sort) but I realised today, for many different reasons, that my plan to guide my unborn son from the paths that I have taken and the choices that I have made is probably more audacious, more arrogant, than any feat I ever attempted in the twenty-five years that I intoxicated my surroundings and my(self). If nothing else then my own experience qualifies me as an idiot as opposed to an advisor of anyone on anything. I feel tonight that I have squandered a great deal of the humility that I attempted to embrace in my recovery and even now my ego is trying to work out why no one pointed this out to me.

In Los Angeles, California, there is a place called the Skirball Jewish center and I attended many AA meetings there. One evening I remember listening to a learned gentleman pointing out that in sharing we get to talk on our favourite subject: us. As someone who desperately wants to one day be a poet of worth, this is a very identifiable trait to me and I now believe that it is in relation to this and the sobriety that I have blessed the world with (you were all only waiting for me to turn up, right?) that my impending fatherhood fitted the bill for the next chapter of the sermon on the Partick Mount. A moment of clarity has kicked me today and I must admit that I hate it when that happens. Mostly because it reminds me, not only that I am an idiot, but that this God (of my own understanding) damned program does not allow me to give myself a break, even for a mere second, from myself. Confused? It’s a good news and a bad news thing, depends on the context really.

I stated, after the 15^th, that I was ending my wee series of poems for Wilfred. I renege and now add this as an explanation and an apology for being so presumptuous. Wisdom is a humble thing that I have yet to learn. I came home from a gathering tonight with all of the above as a thought and quickly wrote what is below (and obviously what is above). Sorry wee man,

BMC2012 – May 7^th 2012

TOS XVI

By twelve the fading light of wonder slid

From Spring dawn’s grasp today, and warned me thus:

That money would not buy the breath that hid

Within my sordid throat; that bold as brass,

As crass as class, would boil in oil my bid

To guide and proof the comfort I’ve amassed.

I was the man who could not break the cloud

That led beyond the cold, to save himself

From drowning in a dry sky’s knowledge; proud

Of disobedience and his death knoll’s strain.

 He fell in silent scream; his eyes, aloud,

Pled upward of a thousand times, ‘INSANE.’

I hope I have the strength to break your fall,

For I can’t tell you anything at all.

 BMC2012

jESSICA fARMER lIVES AND dATES IN tAMPA

The date came and went as most civilized dates go. There was much small talk and very little reference to reality and the burdens of life. A small sense of familiarity became apparent within an hour and certainly played a large part in calming Jessica’s nerves. She had banished Jimmy and his memory from her mind and had managed to avoid the incident in conversation. As always, her sub conscious was searching frantically for sense on the subject and eventually emerged triumphant when she suddenly realized that her legs looked pretty good without stockings and this particular skirt. Something she would never have known as the notion to dress for a night out with her legs uncovered had never crossed her mind. She felt more than a little attracted to Garrison as the night rolled on but was sure that she would allow no physical contact at this time which silently enraged her as thoughts of Jimmy the junkie came back to the surface and left her asking the question of herself if she had been prepared to explore the body of Garrison Lane before such an encounter rocked her world yet again. It would have been nice to, at least, invited him back for a little while. He could be trusted , of that she was convinced , but was unsure if she could and had no intention of starting something that she could probably never finish .

As she dropped Garrison off at his door, she found herself reaching out and kissing him long and hard. The warmth of his lips and his taste had her longing for the eternal loneliness of solitude to end and wondering if it ever would. The drive home was quick and her bath water was running in less than fifteen minutes. She had crossed the intersection of Kennedy, as she had done the previous evening, and was immensely relieved to see no car crash and no man hunched beneath a street light. The constant nagging of coincidence was as strange as ever and held with it a sense of the unreal. One meets a man for the first time and only several hours later see his double on the side of the road. The truth is stranger than fiction or so they say but in life, or Jessica Farmer’s life at least, when the truth turned out to be stranger than fiction, it usually indicated that the truth was not all that true at all. Her bath water was soothing and the wine tasted good although she was conscious of the fact that she had probably consumed too much earlier in the evening and that her driving had been somewhat impaired as a result. Tiredness had swept over her very being all of a sudden. It had been the strangest of days. Yesterday had not been all that normal either. Whatever had happened to normality? Where had it gone and was it ever intending on coming back?

A mural with colours brighter than reality, splashed against canvas in the walls of her imagination. In the background a young Peter was playing in the small backyard of his childhood home. There were no bruises on his face. His smile had been over exaggerated by the artist in an attempt to convey a happiness that could not be mistaken for abuse. To his left, leaning against a dumpster, Jimmy sat motionless but there were no tracks on his arms. His clothes were clean and had been selected from choice and not necessity. His portrait had been painted in a friendly yet serious manner, emanating intellect and care. In the centre foreground lay Peter’s mother, hacked and dead. There was no way to alter such a state. The horror on her silent and still face could only ever have been depicted one way. The question mark on her forehead, painted crudely in black, had been a nice touch of emphasis on the artist’s part but the joke was not funny, the point had been made. There was no need for any emphasis at all. Throughout the beautifully crafted skyline, complete with colours of depth and design, the children of Oklahoma fell from grace and life. Again there was no need for artistic emphasis. Only the expression of horror, embedded on the face of the hunched man by the streetlight that looked upon them in disbelief. The essence of the painting stood testament to the recurring feature of the evening’s retrospective as it unravelled itself from the bath tub. As it turned out, the truth can in fact be far stranger than fiction whenever it feels the need.

Barry Miller/Sector7g – 2001

Boston Streets II

This is actually a real Sheppard Ferry, pre printed on rolled paper and pasted to the wall of the food court that faces Harvard Yard and the famous News Stand. The pub that no one knew I knew was situated in the basement of the building. I took this picture after noticing that the graffiti piece attracted a lot of interest from the tourists. I then learned a lot more about Ferry by watching the film ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop.’ I have no real interest in the subject of the piece as a topic of discussion but I do remember it being a controversial gambit at the time.

The brick that can be seen around it is original Harvard brick, making it, to me, kind of sad that this has been splattered on top of it.

Cambridge, MA, Summer 2010