- Poetry
Poetry
Leaf
From the womb of the woman
and the heart of the man
a new tree grows
Through each fragile leaf
a narrow way opens
to other worlds:
a way like birth containing pain
and ecstasy
Drops of blood like light
pour through the darkness:
strange dew defeating time and space,
blotting out the stench
of decay:
turning the universe over
healing the curse of chaos
The tree survives flood and famine
dances to the music of eternity
Immensity
Something immense and lonely
Divides the earth between us this evening.
I have placed the photographs of you
In my inside jacket pocket
As every lover does perhaps,
A million miles and four nights out of touch.
I have cut up turf
At the back of my mother’s house
And have watched the way earth
Turns itself over like my restless sleep.
You understand double your years
My soul as it breaks surface
And I imagine the rich soil in your palms,
Would that it could be
Just the distance between us tonight.
Intercepted light
She watches shadows dip beneath the door,
swirling to the rhythm of the blades,
the push and pull of brown Bakelite whir.
Her fingers trace the swell of thigh to hip,
belly bump to ribs. Out in the dusty street
conversation splashes on to brick.
Next door the shower gurgles, as, within,
her heart maintains its sturdy, even thud,
reminding her that under her cloak of skin
she, too, pulses like intercepted light.
She too is rock and rolling out of sight.
Caroline Gilfillan
Cracks in Canvas
I thought I heard you crying.
Or the sky.
I thought gulls were cracks in canvas.
Or their cries.
I thought tears were hanging from your lashes.
Not from mine.
I thought I heard you screaming.
Or a jet.
I thought I caught seas jumping from a brush.
Or finches twisting in a net.
I thought I heard you dreaming.
Or the earth.
I thought I would catch you falling from your blushes,
Not in death.
I thought loaded knives of light were life,
Not beached anguish in the nightmare
Of this breath, this breadth
Of skin – this 'scape of sky and sea;
This falsity, these lies.
I thought I heard you dying.
And the sky.
I thought gulls were cracks in canvas.
Or your eyes
In strokes of noiseless gashes
Bloody from the vine.
I just thought I heard you crying,
Girl of my ashes.
Rupert Mallin
Art School
Chalk and charcoal net these images,
Hard edged or smeared with fingers:
A bottle wrapped by lines laid
Line over line to restrain
My interpretation of the real.
Yours is 'truth to materials.'
You pick up steel and see steel,
Not the stain of a black forest
In a sheet of tarnished aluminium.
Yours is 'truth to morals.'
You handle wood and see wood,
Not the pain of a breach–birth
In the handle of a hammer.
Yours is 'truth to money.'
You model clay and see clay,
Not murder's grey estuary
Or worms going down for air.
There is no denotative tool or bag of tricks
For reality has no measure but the quick
Of gestures marked upon a pane of light.
I scratch and scrape at the sun to escape
But in line upon line I am caged.
Rupert Mallin
Still Life
I am the black line beside each vein,
Leisurely, luxurious, deep as an ocean,
Thinner than cotton.
I hang from horizons
Behind breeze teased underwear,
Flat and fluttering upon the land.
Or curl up beside bones,
Orchestrating my growth to violins
Within the scaffolding.
I tighten the skin drum,
Lie thick in napkins,
Bleed all corners
Of simple symmetry. I am
Neither fillet nor feather,
Though I am that to which I cling.
Am a cavernous ghost
In a crevice, impossible to fill.
Emptiness is my fuel
In the cold ash of ovens,
In a duct not a tear,
Too small for forensic.
Am beneath all, invisible,
Until lifted from the soil,
Like stories, like holes.
I hog fridges and kilns,
Make a home of a scream
And am paint's illusion.
I am essential.
Rupert Mallin
Distant Funeral
Wind fills our sails on Camden Bay.
You slip away
while timbers crack against the deep.
I miss your final knocking at the door,
your sudden sleep.
Three thousand miles beyond the light
the misty warnings of the owl
fade into eagle’s flight:
you see it now.
Way beyond certainty
outside the rings of time
delivered, blue, in unconditioned air
made whole, you stand and stare,
dance on a pin,
unfold
while gravity retreats
you meet
the sting, the tumble
and the healing cold.
I journey on the margin way,
rock–sitting, brave
to watch the seventh wave decay
and read
your letters from the grave.
Tim Lenton
Poet's comment: I had been visiting my uncle, Frank Lenton, for some time. He was 95, bedbound and very weak but not in great pain physically. But he could not understand, as a Christian, why God should want him to be a burden to his wife and an embarrassment to himself. I meant to visit him in the week before leaving for a holiday in Canada and New England, but somehow there wasn't time. I was shattered to hear just after leaving Camden, Maine, that he had died, and I would miss the funeral. Images in the poem reflect what we were doing in Maine as well as his life.
Inarticularity
Inarticularity
The cat’s got my tongue
I gave it to her
It was giving me gip
Didn’t need it no more
Wrenched it plain out
With an oven glove and skewer
The hollow feels warm
Like some exotic liqueur
I’m feeling so peaceful,
A skinny–girl Buddha
The thoughts have closed down
Each breath is a prayer
Inarticularity 2
Words had failed me for too long. When they did come out they
were frayed and worn, run down and faded. I met a woman in a park
once, and she told me that this was the 2nd day in 6 years that
she’d spoken. She said it was okay at first, got harder in the
middle — then people just forgot about her, which was what she
wanted, I guess. She was a broken woman, trying to mind her
tongue, and instead she got to hold it for a while. She still
looked a little crazy to me, but what did I know, shiksa from the
suburbs that I am.
And down the line a little, now I get it. And even though the
squeaking wheel gets all the grease, it doesn’t matter — like I
need more grease. So I let all of them fly, and off they landed,
to cause earth tremors in Guatemala.
In the beginning, my rib cage strained with the weight of all the
things unsaid, but soon, and amazingly, speaking stopped being
something I didn’t do and silence became something I did. I could
hear the softness of my internal hum and that was enough. Maybe
I’ll return to words, like the lady in the park. But maybe I’ll
learn a new language and I’ll live as free as my tongue.
Lisa D'Onofrio
Poet's comment: Two poems inspired by Bronwen's piece, Broken. The first is more traditional, a black look at being silenced, with the narrator paradoxically taking control by giving up with communication. The second is an extension of the theme, using a similiar style to Basketcases 1 and 2. Bronwen's piece made me think about 'scratching' i.e. scratching the surface, which led to records and being recorded, which led to voice.
Basketcase 2
it started with sharp pencils and I got no joy from that/ so then
I tried a needle but that was no good, pin pricks/ and didn’t go
deep enough dots not lines I needed lines/ so then went on to
compass but I couldn’t drag it across,
you see, it could only dig and I didn’t want to dig I wanted/ to
cut across, in
long fluid lines, I wanted to create lines, etch them in, cross
hatch them/ and make them flow, I wanted to see the blood bubble
out I wanted the line of grey to turn red and then finally white/
rosered rosewhite mirror mirror the shoe never fit/ I wanted to
raise my shirt and press myself on a white white wall and print
myself on it, red white, reddy rust against/ white, I wanted to
print myself, / The wall absorbing and repelling the lines stark
and fresh/ I wanted to leave an impression/
sessions lasted five minutes or less, they were intense a burst
of activity in an otherwise dull and protracted and tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow life a flurry
an action a swift and easy slash a release and all the while I
imagined my body against the cool surface of the wall, if I
pressed hard enough I would become the cool surface of the wall
hidden behind the wardrobe, become the wall flat and simple and
undemanding
Lisa D'Onofrio
Poet's comment: This piece began with me wanting to continue the themes brought up by Basketcase 1. I completed the words while Bronwen worked on the piece, and this process seemed to work for us. Previously we had discussed some ideas. I was thinking about skin and the way bodies hold memories, and I kept returning to the the phrase 'written on the body'.
This is a sequel to Basketcase 1
u figure
i
grew her
to fat, so she filled the room
when i walked away. her curves her hollows
became me, forever and before we had
met, i had always been the
jam in her
bun
with each
lip–smacking and the letting fly of
lumps she weighted me, we left each other
waiting, and no one under
stands there was less
of her to
love
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