NO PANE NO GAIN

Last week when I returned
I found my desk
covered in dust
family photos dispersed
other documents damaged:
(no prof should have an empty desk).
I had been away
and wondered if colleagues
had enacted a cremation
scattering my ashes
with a light but disorganising touch.

 

So four weeks is all it takes, I mused,
to incinerate the idea
of me, my work,
my modelling clay, my canvas.
Then through my jet-lag
I saw a pane was missing
from my window. Robbery
on the second floor?
But when I looked outside
I saw it dead and broken
on the ground.

 

So much for my paranoia,
but at my age when time
runs backwards towards dependency,
when the diminished locust in me
seeks its spent chrysalis
as a refuge,
anything is possible.

 

Well it’s not, actually –
and that’s the problem.

TIPPING POINT

Large cappuccino please.
Quatre dollars the barista replies:
this is Le Grand Café
on Clarence at Alliance Française.

 

When transferring coins from pocket
two slipped.  Bien attraper!!
the barista smiles. They do not
hit the floor nor are they in my hand. 

 

My custom is this: order morning coffee
then to the loo while it brews.
When I open my fly two coins fall
into the bowl, glint with a watery smile. 

 

Who knows where money has been
my mother said, urging me to wash my hands
before eating after touching coins –
and certain other things. 

 

Back in the café my coffee beckons,
Christmas decorations on the lights and wall –
goodwill in tinsel; the season of gifts –  
today I leave a two-coin tip. 

PROGNOSIS

It was his unsteadiness of gait
his slurred baby words
as though a drunken man
had taught him
that gave the game away.

 

Only two, and the scans
were far worse:
secondaries in his spine
liver and nodes

and then the sardonic pathology
that marked our entry
to the land of astrocytoma.

 

We visited foreign cultures
continents of chemo
surgical islands
archipelagos of different doses
and duration of radiation.
Stage 4 the doctor declared
so he'd be dead
within a year.

In such a perished
and abominable land
it’s only chance that sees him

still alive at nine.
But each time he gets a cold
it's my brain not his that melts
and the sun goes out
and I walk with a wobble
across a floor of fear
as he did seven years ago.

LIBERATION

Today I leave Afghanistan,
its grievous wounds, missiles,
shouted orders, charges,
deceits and betrayals, drones,
its impassive Buddhist monuments
with torn-off limbs and bullet-pocked faces,
poisonous and exhilarating poppies,
deserts and mined mountain places.

 

But not all bad and never dull.
Paradoxically I never felt imprisoned
by the captivity of war.
There's always a way
to soak with excitement
in another's flesh.

 

 

 

 

Usually we only show a third:
two-thirds of our selves are locked
in our personal Guantanamos
until war or crime or illness
changes the game and society's gates
are blasted open
and for one brief shining hour
we are truly free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SO LET US CULTIVATE THE GARDEN

Of all philosophers in Turkey
the Dervish was
by all accounts the best.
So, weary of their disputations
Pangloss and Candide sought him out:
“Reverend father, why so strange an animal
as man was made?”

 

“With what meddlest thou?”
the Dervish replied.
“What signifies it
whether there be evil
or there be good?
When his highness sends
a ship to Egypt,
does he trouble his head
whether the mice on board
are at their ease or not?”

“What then must we do?”
asked Pangloss. “I had hoped
to reason with you
about causes and effects,
the best of all possible worlds,
the origin of evil,
the nature of the soul,
of pre-established harmony.” 

Whereupon the Dervish said,
“Hold your tongue.”
and slammed the door
shut in their faces.



BEEF IS THE ANSWER

You may be wondering where lies truth:
the noise you hear upon your roof
is not hail, but a cattle hoof.

A cow has tried to cross the moon
but found out painfully and soon
that such attempts all lead to ruin. 

Mad cow – yes – a dread disease;
nothing to put the bull at ease
naught to strengthen failing knees. 

Yet in life’s existential puzzle
when Hunter red you choose to guzzle
and eat his flesh and gravy suzzle. 

Just gobble up and don’t feel down:
don’t let his footprint make you frown;
his methane’s hot, it has been shown.

But beef’s the answer, of that I’m sure:
to keep in place the global poor –
enhance the rich a little more.

THE PERMATEMP CUBE CAMP

 

 

'This is where I work,' he said,
waving an arm in a circle of sad
as though he’d just missed the bus.
'All these cubicles with their little pictures

and could-be contents
of my wife's handbag –
photos of kids and grandkids,
trinkets and confectionery,
lovers and Lotto tickets.

 

'I know a few workers by name,
but lots come from other countries
and only half drink coffee.
The young woman who sits here
had breast cancer
last year and two kids:
so we sent flowers
for her chemo.’ 

'And friends?' I asked,
'Friends?' he smiled, surprised.
'No: this is just the place
where each day
we all concentrate till five.’