Mortifying

‘Bout halfway down some poem’s vent

I missed a writing implement

And so went I to Aime’s sphere

A pen or pencil to adhere:

Retrieved a biro, scarcely chewed,

Hacked out verisimilitude.


We had a working partnership,

You and I, biro, quip and whip,

Yes we got on completely braw,

Me and you, sired out of law,

I kept you folded at my breast

With pads and keys at my thought’s nest


In the grey overcoat I slept

Within extra-collegiate space;

Through the grey overcoat you crept

Into the lining’s carapace.


Do you know those whinnying moments?

- no, biro, I address my friends –

Do you know those whinnying times

With wind in hair and a clear way ahead,

When you speed up and revel in your walk,

And think, damned good am I. Then struck the hawk.


Its bead now drawn upon my (comely) thigh,

The dolorous biro always carves on time,

When I am not, for punctuality

My biro bears in mind. Better, pride’s purge.


A certain Millie, willow celebrant,

I fiercely regarded by Hussein’s.

“You really love me,” remarked erring she –

The traitor stabs. Squeak. She: “Fond as I am…”


Fair’s fair, and scissors could it liberate;

But at my greatcoat’s cost would I baulk fate;

So Aime’s biro, and my wounds, will stay.

The moral compass needle has its say.


Accordingly, I’ve relapsed to typed verse.

2008

How about this for a situation.

I hear insane insane noises in

The basement, put on some clothes, stagger

down to exercise discipline.


I am roundly mocked. I retreat.

As I hurry offstage a hulking figure

Quoth "You're breaking the rules! You can't go there,

You're breaking the Upstairs Rule!"


while this was amusing

and I did like the chance to snap back

I own this place and that kind of thing,

it did make me stop to think. Because


on a deeper level, the most profound level

of life, I am no doubt indeed breaking

the rules. Are we not all breaking the rules,

the rules set up to protect ourselves?


Could not that drunkard's lurching voice

have resonated as the eternal

challenge of the shadow self –

"You are breaking the rules!"?


Then I got tea from this v domesticated

girl with the most absurd hairstyle I ever saw,

like a sort of blue arctic roll superim

posed on a background of porridgey whey.

The Church

Just before Communion was dispensed

My mother pointed out the woman

Dressed in grey plumes and quills and sheen

Of looks, as Tara Palmer-Tomkinson.


So. You may need reminding.

(No, you won’t, the kind who don’t

Say they know who she is, they

Know her well enough to disapprove).


A line of royalty and others too,

A career and some adverts and a face

That is attractive, very, save its cause.

But Tara, of the Irish hill, at Hampshire makes her home.


“No reason to get excited” – eyes mock-averted,

We bowed, as at prayer or twinging from the Host,

A good-attendance-ful of Lancelots shunned the Grail,

To let the city clothes and home girl sit at ease.


Beside me and behind me sisters knelt

Who dressed to match her and had conserved strength,

Who laughed with me at wombs and veiled flesh,

And at the vicar’s aphrodisiac.


I didn’t laugh with them about the blow

Caught in her drooping feathers. For she

Sang lowly, she looked down and did not take

A blessing from Rev. Parnell-Hopkinson.

My Place

Why scorn my city?

Well then, whip me, but stop that deigning;

Your speech was framed for fitter errantry

Your heart to sooner break such tenantry

To tropes and troubles and to angled squares.


Don’t blame my birthplace if you shift like that;

I shouldn’t blame at all. Raise up that brow

Now – if you choose, know that that edge

That tires on plate will best dissever silk

And bear in mind your best rational ilk

Your kind that rallies in each jibe I’ve eyed.


Enough, to me be silent,

And yet my city, ground, is duller than

A grind, but when enjoyed, don’t you

Remember how you shine or shone in it?

Brightly but not the first, nor most deserving.

The mind and hand here bowed itself unswerving.


Here scholars dropped their tracts for many a cause

Ill-fortuned and unfunded and believed.

Can’t you see Empress Matilda, arm in arm

With shortie Charles? It doesn’t snow too often

Because this city’s memory’s in slush,

Shall we then hear one sleetflake’s anecdote?


Sixty odd years back a boy was due

To pick up one of Jowett’s awards. In Poland

Look at that palamino’s unmetalproof flank.

So Grandpa never went the way I followed,

Stayed at the great subcontinental jewel,

Married his artist cousin, and kept up his Greek.


The chosen ghosts, the great who stayed behind -

No wonder it feels odd, our yellow town,

Demands its homage, and revenges hurt.

Concede it that, and drink at least its health.

When it can’t yield, then I want to throw

A trenchcoat over melting gutter snow.

The judgement of Paris

(The first part and a half of the next one written ages ago. The rest recent.)

1

Oenone’s lyre is northern and stained;

And shunned by all others of Ida’s nymphs.

Picture eleven knots’ silent disdain!

If they could, those roots would be drinking Parnassus;

But moves are not done now. If Pan propositioned

Some Idan fair, she’d accept his slather and cling.

The reeds sink into bog, there is ever less peat

And the nymph-pines fear prices.


The human palette looks for wrongness. So

Midas could not flatter Apollo; what

Did that deserve? Harsh glory lies with taste

And makes strange bastards roll about with men.


I don’t walk in hills by choice, and in mountains

I don’t walk at all. Three hundred feet and rainfall

Is good enough for wishing-wells.

Bring me a well and that grating sound

That calls out agility! Then I shall run,

I shall skip, I will gall the Spanish goats.


He whom the Gods favour is wrong.


2

No one ever remembers to shoot the messenger now.

This is a shame, as the fault often lies with the messenger.

If he’s first on the scene, suspicions may not be misplaced;

And if he is not, he is late.


He was cold and he was male, he believed in reason’s sway;

His voice could play in barrios and echo night and day;

The kind I hate on sight, that makes my craw recoil

Because I see efficiency to ravage and despoil.


His tune made a triad of beauts want to dance

And me want to sort out the sheep from goats.

Stay boyo he said, there’s work to be done

I know you don’t know about hand’s turns

But, mate, you soon will. Take a look.

Plug your eye in, we need it in heaven.


He whom the Gods utilise is strong.


3

Statistically this one – just lovely is

N’t she, all the numbers are going

For her. The magazines like her?

The magazines are her! They worship

With votive speculation her each hair.


Enough, I thought, of you, crass errand boy.

For all that he’s been bribed elsewhere I know,

And that “statistically” does her no gloire.

Gloire she should have, gloire she could doubtless make.


Stick to the subject. Auburn was this queen,

Red, you would say, but that you meant no harm

And feared to touch too near a regal spleen.

Yes, what a look! But that’s what you expect.


I didn’t like listening to what she extended,

Power I’d drop or money I’d burn.

Remember how Juno’s pin-up Jason ended,

Medea then mast. Remember or learn.


Not that I’d question the cloudy king’s taste.


4

They’ll make her, number two, proffer abstract truth

The occultist wisdom, some rational sway.

She had to suborn me, but she did more

In tangibility’s way.


Baby, if you want wisdom, she sighed,

Think about what you have. Do reflect

On your plush Idan bower

Nymph Oenone’s dower

The grey homeland eyes that deflect

Any buffets and shadows. I cried.


God the other two cats didn’t relish my tears,

In each of my eyes a bust they rubbed,

They squeezed my hands, under a divine guise

That I might be squeezing theirs.


She just said think about her – and wasn’t it

Her lyre, that got you where you are?

What if the prince your brother deems her only

Workaday? She made you work as hard

As you now play; and while you lie beside her

That dart can never come. Come what may, think.


5

And so I thought, as number three twirled,

And gripped me and commenced my purification

At her domain’s first shrine – and I kept on thinking,

When she shed her last pretences and fell down

And spewed out tableaux – Helen, she, and I,

And Clytemnestra to be factored in,

And craned over my neck again and clutched

And felt that apple I kept always close,

And began to adminster –


I thought, and decided, and took the tongue

Coiled, from my throat, and gave it to Minerva,

Duessa.


I thought, and saw, and knew, and called for Oenone,

As for a mother. But leaning on the brawn

Of the neglected messenger, she went.


Oenone, now I’ve lost my tongue for you

Thank Heaven that I have your lyre’s use -

It’s a quiet span and lonely and still very long,

At Ida’s slope, sorting the goats from sheep.

A Lyric Born of Idleness

(I found this on an old CD
Of documents and accretions
And if you will forgive the slang
That invidious Windsorian twang
Then read and see how I spent all
Of five years that I coldly loved. -MD)

O muse! Mistress all-perfect, thou
Crimson, white-streaked transparent one
O vessel of the Coke that flows
From Parnassus (Ohio) speed my song.

Perhaps ‘twas too much piety to thee
O Cola-Queen, that robbed away my sleep
And left me rolling in the duvet blue-
With beigish stripes-upon the Sunday’s morn

Yet not in Sleep’s caress. Frustrated then,
I staggered early from the creased couch
Each aggravating fold crafted by me,
And stumbled down the scarlet corridor.

My feet, and not my head, compelled my trunk,
I found myself before a paint-white door,
And black and white that spread across the floor-
M’Dame’s grave Mail dwells on Tory drugs.

(My Telegraph preferred to laugh it off
Etonians will ever be Etonians.)
I turn sharp left, and, slipperless, regret
My progress on a bathroom’s dampened ground

Not yet restored from E Block’s aqueous fights.
A host of visions flow into my mind-
Forgotten face-wash turns to Dorney Lake
And Dorney Lake-no limits!-Oceania

Consumes the generosity of Henry.
From scaffold on the back of real Chapel
To where faux-Chapel basks beyond Keates Lane
Poseidon has no mercy! The waves roll!

Under the sea the swimmers might be said
To have the edge by training and practise
But Classicists I’d say have mental stores
From reading Horace in his second Ode

The one that tells of deer sinking down
Not so unlike large-satcheled F Block hordes;
Of seals barking, sleek, dappled, urbane
Like English masters on a favourite theme.

And think of all the flotsam drifting by,
From School Office cometh the Tardy Book
Itself, a grimoire with a gruesome tale
That hydrogen dioxide will leave pulp.

My rambling soul is rallied by my sole
Which slips upon a chilly, clinging puddle
Sending me on my face. It’s back to Earth,
And all that’s most relentless there entailed.

Optative verbs take Barbarossa on,
Vocabolario, Gaskell, and this tripe
I grind out when I’m putting off real work.
There’s reams and yards of it-indeed, a gig.

There halts my revelation: friends, adieu,
A better, Mailless world I wish on you.

The Silver Jubilee of the Reign of Silence

You sit before the untalkative screen

(So do I, but too talkative)

Byrhtnoth plucks an endless shaft

From his interminable shield

Somewhere in the glossary

I sit before my too talkative screen

And try to spur you to talk indeed

To make a day have happened

Instead of a temporal picnic

To prize a burnished degree

From a course where thought mires

Over wireless wires

The saucepan hangs and the dolphin enquires

How's Fife? How's life? God Save the Queen.

(Added in line with the addressee's preferences)

extempore

of course

loooove

desolate

boredboredbored