Temples
of Sand
Slipping through
fingers, shells in miniscule, ground to dust.
Someone tests the
mike and I am hurtled, sky-rocketed, into an abandoned fervour, the
dream.
Hasta luego,
buene suerte!
Puppies lapping at
fountains, full belly, twittering birds.
One trick sets off
another. One horn, one trumpet.
What we need is
water and strong legs and a cheerful disposition.
The places we visit
– will they crumble too? In terms of – in terms of this –
flying the flag high – above the castle, the fortress – the wind,
sound of sails.
My temple of sand
is built compact with rapid slaps of the palms
Maybe I should find a lover for my
wife, then kill her and spend three years in prison
and nearby, waves
crash, the sand is dark and wet and grainy to the touch, and I am
able to carve paths and curves and contortions to fashion this
structure, this whim.
*
We landed as bugs,
causing pinprick footprints, delicate and spongey, our antennae and
spindly legs leaving ethereal traces, ghostly marks. Nearby, a hermit
crab, a jealous lobster clawing at a rock pool. A reef, resplendent
with its variety of inhabitants, decadent with wildlife, with the
many-textured, patchwork-odoured, overflowing mottled scene, like a
seabed nativity, yearning to be picked apart by a loving toddler who
is innocent of all concepts such as war and destruction, gaining by
the minute, gaining in leaps and bounds and racing through fields and
cornfields and mountain paths and groves and wild chestnut trees and
canopies and fortified milk farms and cattle courtyards where they
are left to bleed and die and ringworm factories and places to stick
in your teeth and watersheds and farmyard animals and loose tongues
and crackling pig skin and witches howling into the night and
force-fed donkeys and chickens in their silent coops and the
co-operative of birdsong and the flight paths of doves and the
rustling nests and rustling leaves and the crack and pop of each new
idea, each hope-filled love affair – and their deaths, beautiful
and soaked with sorrow and smoke, laughing at some joke told long
before when the world was funny, not grey, not dead, but uproarious
and newborn and twinkling like the skin of a fresh baby, left alone
and condemned to believe in miracles when there are none, trapped in
a Soviet daydream where puddles and rubble and grey drizzle reign as
the symbols of frugality and conformity, and it all rots, like fruit,
and all its counterparts, faces melt into the background and we are
left staring at the image of our true makers – placid, empty faces,
dumb, dumb, shocked and numb and receding – and we are nothing, how
many times do we have to be told, yet always without fail we wait on
the sidelines, cheering on everlasting life, like lowly rats, rodents
caught in the net, summertime transience beating down upon us,
radiating our sweet faces with sickly light, promising palms full of
oil and treasure, and what could be better, be so utterly poetic and
just, as an empty promise, a story never come true, a truth on the
verge of fruition, but condemned to the very same fate – that of
withering into the grate, the jar, the crematorium.
'I
know where I am, but I have no idea how I got here'
I couldn't tell you
for the life of me
the nature of these
streets.
Winding with
serpentine logic
and all the booming
acoustics
of a deep well,
a cauldron.
Afternoon light
filtered out behind
shadows -
slatted windows,
buried tracks.
I choose to listen
to passing voices
rising up the
balcony,
a ghostly mix
of spirit and song.
The orchard, the
peach-brown slate.
The heightened
perception of a clear mind.
The utter,
restless, fervent, squinting, tail-dragging, manipulating,
teeth-baring, chin-wagging, finger-snapping, world-crumbling
hereditary indifference.
No more dead
statues. No more images that threaten disownment.
Prompt me, try me,
but do not stick.
Freeze it off like
chewing gum or warts.
Oh – go out!
To the world, to
the rain.
Oh – pay for your
coffee and leave!
Swaying, from this
world, to where -
all paths lead
here.
I love surprises, I
said, as I looked over my shoulder,
keeping one hand
clasped on my knee.
Look out look out!
You could say
each moment
prepares you for failure
as it lifts you up
like a small
bundle,
a baby mouse,
a turtledove.
Words passed like
grapes
from one mouth to
the next.
Frames
The hissing woman
follows me. She wears two different shoes.
I pass her in the
tea shop, fondling dried fruit like a manic child – a demon in a
forest, stumbling across acorns or a patch of red spotted mushrooms.
Warm spits of
rain, heavy summer droplets on my bare shoulders. I take shelter in a
cafe, under the awning, next to a guy dressed in black with a
rats-tail running down his neck. We frame the entrance like stone
lions.
The hissing woman
skulks in a doorway, mutters something and bares her teeth. The
waitress asks her to leave - she raises a fist and cackles.
Such wildness
exists – and how does it survive?
Such wildness
exists still, in the streets.
Jewels spread out
in rice under the glass table top.
Open door –
fresh, wet – loud French voices – Ah huh dee huh huh huh – a
Down's syndrome face with a beard and trilby – a city of umbrellas
held triumphantly – bills flapping in the wind – the warm glow of
a bamboo lampshade.
The ever-creeping,
ever-creeping frame, that self-conscious frame.
How does one end
up like the hissing woman? What steps to take? A to B to - ?
The very mention
of the word 'science' and I would be willing to argue with all my
idiotic fervour that, that, that, we are made of stories!
The dull grey
sweater. The faint smell of sweat after a clammy night of dreams. The
shutters tight, the space still settling, easing around you like a
blanket of smoke – and what more?
Like a blanket of
smoke, and what more.
Jewels laid out
for me like fruit in a bowl.
(Won't you make it
OK, I ask you with a wide-open puppy mouth – lacking, lapping, spit
dropping like the sweet jewels of a waterfall – stick it in there,
and I mean that in the cleanest way possible).
Oh sweet, sweet
segments!
I analyse like an
obsessive professor, trapped in a cascade of outdated theories and
stuffy furniture, rotting books. Ouch, I say, as they hit my head,
ouch, I say, as they come tumbling down – the mistakes, my
creations, the hard-won battles swept to the side.
Native American
faces – a friendly bird hopping on pebbles.
You could call me
a warrior, a queen, a lighthouse.
Everything is so
clear after it rains.
The heaving chest
subsides, and lets the rest take control.
Sueno del nina,
mhmm, aha!
Bored of flower
arrangements, bored stiff and petrified, like a dog, a daisy.
Childhood frames
seen once again, through the eye of a needle.
Monkey
Mind
I heard a wild call
to chaos and I am still in those woods with that monkey mind,
leaping between trees and hollering, and I look down sometimes at
those quieter, slower creatures such as the ant-eater or the warthog,
those slower, humbler parts of myself, just to check in, just to
check that it's all on track, and yes they may cast a disapproving
eye upwards, but they send love all the same, up towards my creaking
bendy branch. Glittering dust and bark shavings crumble down and I
yelp and I hoot and scream with frustration and joy in equal measures
– to be alive! To be alive! The jubilant struggle! The exaltation!
The sticky wonderment and clawing rapture! The animal pain and
suffering! The shock! The banality! The blood, the pain, the disease!
Oh yes, I am
forever that monkey on the branch. Always swinging atop cracking
boughs, staring up through the lattice of jungle leaves at the wide
open world, the searing bright sky, and wonder, and crawl back,
content for now with just a glimpse, surer than sure that one day
I'll fly.
