NOTIFICATION

They are buried in shallow graves,

friends past. 

The ground is soft: 

indentations and ridges

mark contours of their faces.

On the Somme

where death of friends

was today’s – and tomorrow’s –

steady business,

many bodies were lost.

Relatives of officers killed

received a telegram;

kin of the dead of other ranks

got Army Form B104-82 –

in the mail – “within six weeks”.

The last post, the eulogy,

are over in an hour,

memories queue to be catalogued,

grief observed. But eventually –

no ‘lest’ about it – we do forget.

INVENTORY

(This is a Mayan necklace)

Check in the yellow pages of my teeth

to find the dentist  

who capped each with gold,

built ceramic replicas.

These Mayan jewels 

are bought from smiling men

in gowns, with drills –  with yachts. 

Then my eyes – hooded drooping lids,

camera obscura

because of cataracts,

retinal derelictions, 

waving seaweed floaters.  

I see through glasses

darkly.

Don’t ask to view me naked –

redundant skin folds, wrinkles,

scars of battle with obesity. 

X-rays inside my knees

reveal eroded cartilage – 

I take 5,000 steps a day –

not necessarily on the spot. 

Remarkably, against the odds

I do move forward.

Reflection

Frouzins – November 2017

Days are shorter,

summer’s voice is softer.

Green chlorophylls return

to their brown towns of branch, cities of trunk,

leaving the pigments of red and gold

to occupy their now vacated

summer holiday accommodations.

I circumnavigate the lake

wishing for myself its calm acceptance –

unruffled surface waters –

in contrast to my many nightmares –

of destiny, of school examinations,

of conflicted family of origin,

of the distant cosmos.

Autumn: medium of quiet messages,

but the dark mantras of winter

overpower its liturgy.

True, pines keep their needles but our tragedy,

our shame – we of the genus deciduous –

is we shed our leaves, hibernate,

then one morning we do not wake.

NEVER

She never did come good,

no permanent move

from shadow into light,

no herb, medication or prayer

liberated her for long,

instead, chlorpromazine's spasms –

'twisties' we called them –

drove our family mad.

She’s dead

but the smoke of madness

drifts from her pyre,

slides under our door

obscures the window,

and hides the moon.

The White Room

My room has white walls.

Manacled with drips and catheters,

at night I conclude

I must be a prisoner

facing my last dawn,

the fatal shot up the cannula.

What have I done?

I’ve had the temerity to get sick

that’s what.

Something’s wrong

with my gut. 

I need ten days of antibiotics

through a vein.

I am captive in a single room.

Hour after hour the walls get to me,

screening silent episodes of my life.

I wait and wait for meals,

meds and obs.

Then there’s the TV –

it could be our family’s first.

“Hello childhood,”

it smiles, sparing me no pain,

“Remember me?” 

Tour de Parasol

Un parasol qui s'envole sur un coup de vent

Tawny brolly

slips the surly bonds of earth

cartwheel-dances

from the roadside

into the fray

of the peloton.

It’s alien: shocking.

Mechanical army of wheels

speeds past,

relentless, whirring,

rider-soldiers shouting

to avoid its lethal thrust.

What causes such rebellion?

Too many summers

shading families on  holiday

have turned its head.

Sunstroke with a gust of wind

releases it for freedom, folly.

The Account

Ninety unaccounted for In CNN’s 

latest pile of human waste

excreted by a liberating war.

  

Is it not spurious – the number

even in this digital age where everything

measured, conflated –

individual suffering, lost mothers,

children, separated heads and hearts

homogenised, weighed?

“Hmm, yes, looks like 90,”

the CNN man says to his crew.

“Get some footage; no details;

no legs or feet.  Definitely not.

Don’t want to upset Nike:

they sponsor this slot.”