Borderland

Abandonment

2010-09-27T08:56:00.004+02:00

Wandering alone in an abandoned Italian villa, past blind mirrors that no longer reflect anything, enormous wardrobes pouring out their guts, doors half closed (by who?)...

For JB, our favourite flower

2009-11-17T16:04:00.002+01:00

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-- William Wordsworth

Spam Poem

2009-08-14T10:09:00.001+02:00

Taken directly from my Spam Folder, a profound literary offering for the August Holiday:

Do you like my profile?
I know what you want!
Get a job that satisfies!
I know what you want!
Do you have the touch?
I know what you want!
Check out this site!
I know what you want!
Don’t pass this up.
I know what you want!
You have an invite.
I know what you want!
Do you like to have fun?
I know what you want!
Free groceries for a year?
I know what you want!
I’m interested in you.
I know what you want!
I live in your town.
I know what you want!

Free Aung San Suu Kyi
I know what you want.

Moving on

2008-11-17T14:42:00.003+01:00

JB's Birthday

2008-08-09T15:53:00.001+02:00

When I was very small and still trusting
Your hand was all-encompassing and contained mine.
You made infinity a warm blanket
And night a safe place to hide.
Your hand swept the night sky, cleaned it.
You named the stars as you named your daughters.
And now that I am grown, and you are gone,
My sisters in the sky still come each night,
And name you.

Shooting star

2008-08-07T11:19:00.002+02:00

Last night you fell from my firmament.
Krank und kaputt, you took a tumble.
I tried for silent months to hold you.
I stuck you up with force of will.
When that packed in I tried sellotape.
Superglue failed and so did all
The spiritual trappings and inner growth.
Pardon, forgiveness, understanding,
Yoga, rebirthing, meditation,
All failed utterly as cosmic glue.
You fell my dear, you fell directly
Through the handle of Orsa Maggiore
Resting on the horizon. That too failed
To hold your inconsistency.
Lubrified by your oiliness
You greased your way down through your own
Personal flipper and entered the zone
Marked “loser”. Just one momentary scoot
Of surprising yellow (sulphur my dear?)
Marked your definitive passing for good.
Your light has gone out, you’ve pressed disconnect,
You’ve taken the ultimate nosedive and I
Have no way of knowing if your brief performance,
Your spectacular, short and distinctly downward
Journey proceeds or if you’ll just
Disintegrate for lack of substance.
You taste so good, but melt in the mouth.
No nutritional value ever hit my cells.
Could it be you were never a star?
A meteor maybe? Spatial dust?
Little or nothing. Wasn't it just.

TENDER IS NOT THE NIGHT

2008-08-07T11:18:00.001+02:00

Tender is not the night. Indifferent rather.
What right have the stars to signify and make decree?
Never, not once, has a star warmed my face,
Lit my path or resolved my plight, my plea.
Not once has a star led seed to birth, to light,
Whenever did strife, did life, cause a star to weep?
Did ever my joy find and keep a sibling twinkle?
Don’t look for my soul on the unprimed canvas of night.
Cold and predictable, distant, elsewhere, other.
Autistic, insentient. No message, no portent, no meaning.
Overrated by poets and children and pedlars of dreams,
To them we are nothing, dust for an instant then gone.
Leave the stars to the night, turn your back on the sky.
With or without them we’re born, we live and we die

Affinities

2008-07-08T23:07:00.005+02:00

When someone was there first, and said it all...
I wrote the first poem this afternoon. Later I showed it to an acquaintance, a brilliant poet and scholar of Italian and English language poetry of all periods, and he immediately pulled out and read the second, superb poem (from his collection of over one thousand books), by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

SPRING

Hope springs eternal, mine lies dead.
Spring stabbed it through the heart, spring shot it in the head.
I spoke to hope, I begged it, I screamed at the wall,
I shot bullets of words, I watched them fall.

I watched as they ricocheted, I watched as they bounced,
Capsules of meaning never announced.
So fragile in your parts, so ineluctable the whole
Arrogant and absolute, you must take your toll.

Spring births eternal, it grips us by the throat
And mocks this bleeding cradle and blooms only to gloat.
Oh couldn’t you have waited, held your buds in pity’s grasp?
Left your seeds to sleep awhile and your bulbs in winter’s clasp?

Spring is the cruellest time, it seeps through the cracks,
Insinuates and permeates, unstoppable its wax.
Promising and comforting, an enormous cosmic lie –
How dare you offer apple blossom and leave this child to die?

I live in dismal autumn, cold, damp, dull.
Watching and waiting for the last leaf to fall.
Bring me bleak midwinter and water like a stone,
Don’t torture me with hope, don’t paint with pain my home.

Turn down your colours spring, your scents are too loud,
Your beauty is agony, a suffocating shroud,
Stop the earth on its axis, have the sun put out its fire,
Off with spring’s head, for spring is a liar.

Your presence here should bless this child and ease its every breath,
A rattle in a baby’s bed should not be that of death.
Hope springs eternal, and spring must have its way –
For God’s sake just shut the door, just leave, just go away.

Bhuidhe, per un amico e la sua famiglia, con preghiere, 8 luglio 2008
Bhuidhe, for a friend and his family, with prayers, 8th July, 2008

SPRING

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
in the collection Second April, 1921

Tree

2008-06-09T13:22:00.004+02:00

“Of course,” said the man in the sober suit, “we’ll take care of the arrangements for the cemetery, tombstone, and so on. This is a this trying time.”
Jake’s daughter looked out of the window behind the man.
Jake looked at his daughter.
- No cemetery pet. I don’t want a cemetery. Don’t let them dump me in a cemetery.
Jake was still unused to the glorious technicolor of his thoughts since his heart had packed in. It had been years since he had been so wondrously free of pain. Years since he had been able to think clearly without his damn body getting in the way and clouding everything. Only two days had passed since his astonishing voyage into the light, bright, crystal snapping clarity of the blue winter sky. Such relief.
Jake’s daughter thought for a moment. Only two days since she’d last seen her dad. She still saw him on the hill, his white hair wrapped the wrong way round his head by the wind. She still saw him down at the river seeing if his daffodils were coming up.
“The cemetery?” she said, her voice unsure.
- Not the cemetery pet, it would drive me up the wall.
“I don’t think the cemetery is the place for us. What are the alternatives?” she asked the sober suit.
The suit was slightly taken aback.
“Well, if it doesn’t upset you madam, there is always the possibility of cremation. We can organise that. And we can organise for the urn to be buried in the Garden of Remembrance,” said the suit, a solution to this trickier-than-usual client in sight.
- Oh no, pet, not a bloody Garden of Remembrance!
“Thank you, I think we’ll take the urn home. And bury the ashes. Without the urn. Would you like it back to use again?”
The suit faltered.
“Without the urn? And the tombstone? I’m afraid it’s not easy to have a tombstone erected on private property.”
- I don’t want a tombstone pet. I’ll go as I came, with no tombstone. I don’t want one”.
“We won’t have a tombstone. We’ll have something else. We’ll have…”
Jake’s daughter cast about in her mind for the mark her father would want to leave. She saw him outside, on the hill, in the field, by the river. Not inside, but outside on his beloved land.
- Look out of the window pet, it’s there in front of you.
Jake’s daughter looked out of the window.
“We’ll have a tree,” she said. “A tree. We’ll plant my dad and the tree together and he’ll flower every spring.”
The suit didn’t speak. He coughed and made a few notes.
Jake looked at this daughter, in whom he was well-pleased. And he moved on, far away.
That night Jake’s daughter dreamed of her dad, smiling, in a field of daffodils. And she knew that he was well pleased.

by Moira Fraser

Lollipop Man

2008-06-09T10:48:00.001+02:00

Your sweetness is catching,

Honey drips from my skin.

My breath is icing sugar.

My lips have grown thin

From sucking your sugar.

Sugared almonds my eyes,

Candy floss heart,

My syrup never dries.

Crystals fall from my smile.

Caramel gaze,

Toffee apple laughter,

Demerara days.

My Life on a Wall

2007-06-20T20:01:00.000+02:00

What are you looking for?

I don’t know.
What am I looking for?

What are you looking at?

At nothing, at thirty years.

That space four metres up and two out where
Now is
Nothing
Is where my firstborn
In the howling viscous dim
Saw the twilight.

That pink is what I chose for my girl.
That dip is where she kept her treasures,
A cupboard top.

That space there is where her small hand
Reached, pulled and spread out its fingers
Looking with its touch in the dark.

Where is the stain of where
My one rage broke the
Coffee cup, hurling it from
Four metres up and three along
Against the wall?

The peeling shreds of paper,
The adult room.
That space there is where
We stood side by side and looked,
Looked at our wallpapered adult room
We’re big now,
We’re adults.
We have authority.
We have wallpaper.

Is this what they call gestalt?
Looking for form and shape where it isn’t,
Not seeing what is now.
You cannot see the two together.

That empty space where I could now shoot
A thousand uninterrupted trajectories
Knife straight,
Was once a slalom body-known,
My legs and arms and hands and feet
Slipped neat
Around the furniture,
In the dark, no eyes, not looking
I could walk the length of our apartment
And never once slam a toe against a table leg.
(Where did it end?)

Those lines, those were not space.
Those were walls, limits, non-areas,
Non-existent nothing now gaping raw and sore.
What am I looking for?

For RMS on his birth

2007-05-04T18:55:00.000+02:00

Beat bright
little heart,
like Creole laughter
may the light
of dark eyes
lightly lit
be ever yours.

Beat quick,
little heart,
like the flick
of feet
bare and quick
on light-spun sands
in lands
you’ve yet to meet.

Beat strong,
little heart,
with the strength
of the wind-filled,
steady,
steely
Scottish sky.

The joy,
little boy,
the crystal peace of
sun-filled
Caribbean seas
be yours.

And yours,
little heart
the tender softness
of rain-soft
Scottish earth.

2006-11-17T09:46:00.000+01:00

Borderland....

Times

2006-11-17T09:41:00.000+01:00

Thank you for the time we stood at the end of the garden in the dark and you showed me the stars, bending down to my level to point out Mars and the Big Dipper. The universe was very big and I was very small and I felt safe.

Thank you for the times you let me come outside in the cold and dark and watch you chopping the wood for the fire like Little Red Riding Hood and the woodcutter. You were very big and I was very small and I felt safe.

Thank you for the times when I was sick and you crept in with comics and chocolate and laid them on my bedside table. I was ill and I felt better.

Thank you for the nights and the early mornings talking in hushed voices in the lamplight, only the faint rustle of straw and the low breathing of a sick animal getting better, breath making clouds of steam. It was cold and I felt warm.

Thank you for when I stole the tennis balls and you didn’t get angry. You sat down and told me why it was wrong. We put them back and you bought me crisps. I was wrong and you made everything right.

Thank you for Christmas, for the songs and the tree and the laughs and the capers, for the walk we took just us two along the river, arm in arm. You had on your best coat. There wasn’t any snow but you made it Christmas.

Thank you for all the times I was tired and lonely and lost and you talked and you listened and you knew, and you made me laugh till I cried. I thought it was dark and you made the sun come up.

Thank you for the evenings you spent building our little farm with pieces of wood and glue and your penknife. Thank you for the mirror that was a pond and the cowshed and the green grass. Thank you for jumping over the couch and throwing me in the bath with my clothes on and soaking us all with the hosepipe. Life could have been so dull, you made it magic.

Thank you for tying my shoelaces when I was too small to know how. Thank you for tying my shoelaces when I was too pregnant to bend down and do it myself. It seemed impossible and you made it easy.

Thank you for Sunday morning walks when I wasn’t tall enough to reach your waist. Thank you for crabs and nippers, the best game ever invented. You could have kept that time for yourself, you gave it to me.

Thank you for all the times Dad. Forever and ever and always.
Thank you.

Addio

2006-11-17T09:39:00.000+01:00

from an Irish song, supplied by Dario.

Of all the comrades ere I had, they're sorry for my going away,
and all the sweethearts ere I had , they wish me one more day to stay,
but since it falls unto my lot that I should go and you should not,
I'll gently rise and softly call, goodnight and joy be with you all.

Instructions for Use

2006-11-12T19:38:00.000+01:00

The Reivers, thieves, light of hand, heavy of deed.
The Reiver, thief of moments, hands you her haul.
Take lightly, or don't take at all.

North Berwick Beach, for J.

2006-11-12T19:31:00.000+01:00

In the crystal sunlight
Sea spray laughter sprays the air
Eyes squinting in the salt drop rain.

Cloudless flightful dance of
Fleeting sand-tossed feet wind-filled,
The northern pale blue lights your face.

Skipping splashing breaking
Cold glass tops of sea-left pools:
The impudence of innocence.

Ancient sandbuilt ripples
Endless change - old, still and same,
My adult step where once the child

Ran free in careless air.
Remembered steps, my child’s speed
Breaks blithely through the sands of time.

The Rainbow Tower

2006-11-09T16:51:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time there was an Angry Princess.

She was so angry that she would ride around on her big, black horse with the flowing mane for hours on end trampling crops underfoot, breaking gates and fences and generally upsetting people.

The problem with princesses is that only a king can order them to stop.

One day while she was out pitilessly destroying someone’s rose garden, she happened across a Handsome Prince on a gleaming white charger.

“Well hello,” said the Handsome Prince to the Angry Princess. “You look like a bit of all right to me. Fancy a shag?”

So cheeky and impudent was the Handsome Prince, with his forthright eyes and his great big smile, that the Angry Princess was completely taken aback. Her black horse stopped, his right fore hoof poised above a prize bloom. Never before had the Angry Princess checked him and hopped out of the saddle in this manner. What on earth was going on?

The Angry Princess stood amidst the pulped and smashed roses and with her hands on her hips surveyed the Handsome Prince for a whole minute.

“All right,” she said, “let’s see what you can do.”

The Handsome Prince showed her what he could so and she was so rapt that she immediately kidnapped him and locked him up in a high tower, on the fourth floor, at the corner. This did not please the Handsome Prince. He admired the apartment, he appreciated the Angry Princess’s enjoyment but he did not like being locked up. To cheer himself up he put two rainbow coloured windmills in a window box. And watched the Angry Princess gallop off.

The people around named the tower the Rainbow Tower.

Word of the incarcerated Handsome Prince reached the King. The King did not approve. He called the Angry Princess to him immediately. She swept in, fully aware that she was particularly attractive when she swept anywhere, hoping thus to soften any blow the elderly King was about to inflict on her.

“Now listen, my dear,” said the old King. “I have had news of a Handsome Prince locked up in a Rainbow Tower and I have reason to believe that this has something to do with you. Am I right?”

The Angry Princess did not answer but looked redly at the floor.

“My dear, what is the point to this useless deprivation of freedom to an individual? I would have you know that I have signed the Declaration of Human Rights and I am a fully paid-up member of Amnesty International. I cannot condone this sort of behaviour.”

The Angry Princess looked sad.

“But I like him,” she objected, “and if I don’t keep him locked up he’ll run away and I will have nothing to do all day but destroy carrots and hedges.”

The King sighed. “Aye, there’s the rub.”

“The what?” asked the Angry Princess.

“The rub, my dear. The problem, the obstacle. It’s from Hamlet, you really should read more you know.”

“I shall endeavour to,” answered the Angry Princess dutifully.

“Now let me try to explain something to you,” said the King a little more kindly. “You see my dear, there are two kinds of Handsome Prince: the pebbles and the boomerangs. If you take a pebble and throw it, it will not return. You will be able to admire it in your hand for a moment, you will be able to admire it flash through the air for a moment, and then all you will have are these two memories and the fact that there are plenty more pebbles out there.
A boomerang on the other hand does something different.
If you throw a boomerang it will thank you for releasing it into the air it needs, for giving it the joy of flight, for letting it lash its colours in one great, wide graceful arc in the crystal fragility of sky and time. And so joyful will it be that when the movement dies it will not descend alone like a pebble but will turn back to search your hand, and beg you to launch it again.
Am I making myself clear?”

“Entirely,” said the Angry Princess.

With her black and tireless horse she galloped to the Rainbow Tower. She took a tiny golden key from a ribbon around her neck and opened the door.

The Handsome Prince, a little tired, a little sad, looked up from his computer with ADSL connection. The Angry Princess held out the key.

“This is yours now,” she said. “But I just want to know, what sort of Handsome Prince are you?”

“Ah, the King has been telling you about Pebbles and Boomerangs, has he?” he asked. “Great story, works every time.”

“It’s not a story,” said the Angry Princess with a look very much like that she wore prior to riding through someone’s chicken coop. “It’s The Truth. So what are you, then? A pebble or a boomerang?”

“Now that would be telling,” said the Handsome Prince with an impudent smile. “You see that would be like reading the last page of a story first. I like stories very much. I particularly enjoy the beginnings of stories – in fact I’ve made a blog about them – and I very, very much enjoy the middles of stories, but I don’t particularly care for the ends of stories. So why don’t we leave the end till the end?”

“That,” said the no-longer-Angry Princess carefully removing her knickers, “is an excellent idea. Care for a blowjob?”

For E.

2006-11-01T16:31:00.000+01:00

Young tree, sapling strong,
Strong shaft of green growth.
Shaded glade, light laid
On a velvet, tender, tranquil
Length.
Slight stream
Rapid dance of changeful
Chance
Of water
Newness.

No Title

2006-10-31T16:13:00.000+01:00

My love comes dressed in white
Lost light, dark down.
When comes the darkness and the dawn
Cannot be found
But night
My love comes dressed in white.

My love has wandered in the desert
Known the burning of relentless sand.
My love has wandered barefoot
Known the sullen sunken northern sun.
My proud-plumed phoenix love comes dressed in white
And blinds with the rainbow array of his knowing.

I have seen the darkness down.
I have seen the eyes of emptiness,
Shoulders falling, dripping slowly.
Steps slow, gaze turned to another place.

There are no answers there my love.

My love has seen the desert.
In his bowed neck I have seen the desert.
My love comes dressed in white
And slowly we pace the distance between
Three days ago and now.
Along this road words meet in
The small air between us
Regard each other
Circle, smell and measure each other.
My eyes alight, alight, on your wrist, your shoulder,
Your neck
No longer desert-bent but intent
On the small newness newborn before you.

My white love, lantern-like
Dark down. Light found.

Borderland

2006-10-31T15:08:00.000+01:00

I was born of the Borderland.

The Borderland is a place which is not entirely one thing or another. It stands in a place topographically denominated Scotland, but isn’t entirely happy with this definition. It likes tartan but doesn’t entirely like the kilt. It likes the Scots tongue, but has its own variant.
Ask a Borderer “where are you from?” and they’ll tell you, “I’m from the Borders”.
Ask a Borderer “are you Scottish?” and they’ll tell you, “sort of, I’m a Borderer.”

I was born in a place which has many names: the UK, Great Britain, Scotland. But when you’re a Borderer you stand on a thin line which isn’t really any of these places. You aren’t really from there. Where are you from?

From here.

I was born of a man from a family stable and fixed in their unstable and uncertain border identity for centuries, and a woman born with vagabond feet. A year before my birth those vagabond feet were on the other side of the world. For many months they moved around the globe until they were stopped in their tracks by a Borderer. My Scottish Presbyterian mother with the vagabond feet gave birth to me in a hospital in Edinburgh and sang Jewish songs by an East European to keep the pain at bay.

I have inherited the borderland and the vagabond feet which now stay put, itching, in a place a few miles from an international border in a language which is not mine.

Speak your language, a friend asked me. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

What language do you speak?

I don’t know.

I speak a border language between Scots and English, not entirely one thing or another. I speak English too, but it’s never the same. It’s never at the heart of things. I operate every day in a European language which is not mine and to which I am a guest. My children , the creatures I carried in me, speak that language. They don’t know my border half-and-half language. Sometimes I speak too much.

Hud yer wheest lass, and lend yer lug tae whit ithers hae tae say.

I get things wrong here. I struggle and I make mistakes. I go to where I came from and the language has moved on without me. I stand on the border of modern and obsolete language. I don’t speak anyone’s language anymore, my language got lost somewhere.

Never quite in the thick of things. Never quite one thing or another. Never quite just right. Always poised on the edge, almost, nearly, just about.

This is life in the Borderland. A privilege.