DANIEL

Tags

Aging, brother, death, poem, poetry

DANIEL

as fate would have it
I am always
a few steps ahead of you
(nine to be exact)

in the vanguard, negotiating
the nature of
this shriveling distance

odds on, I am first
to dip more than my toes into
that
place of darkness

yes dive deep
when it comes
to total
immersion

as luck would have it,
you so much better
at depths and diving than I

RIDGE

Tags

dysfunction, Family, poem, poetry, psychological, War

RIDGE

there is
a demon
in every
family

and I don’t
mean like
dirt behind
the fridge

look in
the cupboard
you may
or may
not see
someone
left a
night-glo
plastic
skeleton

the demon
there
you whole life
but about
to desert
you

like all
in your
unit

each one’s
special, private
demon

refusing
to self-sacrifice
will
flee
the battle

when in the name
that all is
Holy to
the God of
Nations

the
highest
in the
hierarchy

National Lord
of Demons orders
you
die in
defence of
all your loved ones

attacking
the loved ones
who hold
that ridge

FISSURED

Tags

death, Einstein, Family, poem, poetry, space/time, speed of light, Universe, writing

FISSURED

fissured and fractured
and yet
not yet
the killer blow

escaping from
the abyss of
remembered family

the love
that cuts through skin
and yet which
no one believes

I wandered out to tell my tale
but saw the stars and got
distracted

so many up there
in the Heavens
each
with its story to tell

a long, long story that
we have no time for
as we hustle and bustle
our way to death
(those with the wealth still
dreaming of
soul replacement, and
of cosmic immortality)

truth be told
we are but dust, not as many as the stars but
many nevertheless
and like chalk
on a blackboard all we
thought, all we
were
ripe to get wiped from this existence

I think of Einstein’s formulae
that cracked space and time and the
heart of the atom

nothing about this life
moving close
to speed of light

yet still his ghostly fingers write
in all our imaginations

cyphers on a blackboard, speaking
back to the stars
as if we were still family

in language that they assuredly recognize
numbers they understand

MY GRANDMOTHER’S

Tags

childhood, Family, identity, poem, poetry, War

strangely, I never thought of my grandmother’s
as the place where my mother was
once a young girl

once, aged two, I tried to escape
my father and mother, see my gran
pedal in my little red car
all the way to her house
not such
a good idea
was found out

later I would spend much time there
my younger sister sitting quietly
under the dining room table
whilst I would sketch vistas
of war, scenes of massive battle
(no way of knowing which
side would win
that war, every encounter
so bloody, so pyrrhic

my grandmother thought I would be a draughtsman
could draw beautifully and precisely
to meet the high technical standard
attained by my father

somehow straight lines were
just not me

not much of the house do I remember
except the clock getting closer and closer
to the time to go home
my mother straight from her shorthand
and typing job (such a great, fast typist) to
take me
and Sharon home

away from this place steeped in the mystery
of family, and its intersection with history

down in
the cellar, my grandfather’s workshop
(where he would make
out of pray wheels and board, my prized
purple bogie-cart racer)

and up on the wall, mounted
the cylindrical shape of a Vickers machine gun
his weapon of choice
over there, in France,

when a
much younger man

A WORD

Tags

creative, Family, father, Language, poem, poetry, satire, writing

A WORD

there was
a thesaurus running
around in the kitchen

my Father bravely
took it upon himself
to kill it

my family so
rightly terrified
of the hideous
possibilities in
words

LIKE I DO

Tags

father, Oedipal, poem, poetry, psychoanalytical, psychological, satire

Dan (it rhymes
with “man”)

sleeps twenty
solid hours

wakes, farts,
makes a child

hammers his current horde
of kids for
making fundamental
mistakes in
reciting his philosophy

or in singing the
Dan-forever, heroic song

but
give credit
where credit is due

he does not wake up
twisted, broken, cursing
ready to kill
at a moment’s notice

struggling in the dreadful
tidal pull of the Oedipal

like I do
like I do

SIMILARLY

Tags

ageing, death, Ending, Family, loss, Philip Larkin, poem, poetry, This be the Verse

SIMILARLY

I watch the flowers bud
the fruit ripen, mature and die

it all seems linear, yet
I am told it is cycle

similarly, am told there is
childhood stuff we can’t escape

“this be the verse”
in his best copperplate
Mr Philip Larkin dictates
the horror of
life process

one thing about ageing:
one grows too slow too slow
to slide down the sharp sharp edge
from razor right
through to
continental shelf.

TURN

Tags

creative, father, poem, poetry, son

TURN

Father sat
sunning himself

under
the full Moon tree

at which time
a bit of
self-same Sun

found its way
into his lap

but that
bit of Sun
was not
exactly
in his
image
was not
up to scratch

so he sat under the Moon tree
weighing up his options
(should he
create yet
another
dead galaxy?)

whilst the light
in his lap took
decided demonic turn.

NOT YET DAMAGED

Tags

abuse, damage, father, loss, poem, poetry, power

NOT YET DAMAGED

was born unto
you
a son

eyes brown
hair (then) fair

the whole
not yet damaged

beyond
repair

HOUSE A-BURNIN DOWN

Tags

death, Family, Fire, metafiction, postmodern, Prose, satire

HOUSE A-BURNIN DOWN

“Look out the sky turn a hell fire red Lord
Somebody’s house is burnin’ down down, down down
Look out the sky turn a hell fire red Lord
Somebody’s house is burnin’ down down, down down down…”. Jimi Hendrix, House Burning Down

The house is burning. It’s flames give me a warm, glowing, comforting feeling. Irrespective of the fact that the fire is consuming the evidence of my horrendous crimes (how many -cides can you fit into one Garside?), there seems to be something inevitable about this. That in some way it is a restoration of order, balance.

Except, this is not my house. In terms of our property and capital-based social system I do not even have a house if have is narrowly restricted to mean possession. This is our first family house. Or the first one after we emigrated. They said I could not do anything right, that I was terminally useless and stupid in all spheres of life. And he we are. They are all dead and did not die as peacefully or heroically as they had hoped for or anticipated. Dead, and the house is half way to being burnt down. By the time I finish this piece the half will become three quarters. Is this a case of geometric progression? Or is it that the house will never burn down: the latest application of the old Greek Achilles and the Tortoise philosophical paradox.

I loved, still love, how those Greeks could philosophize things out of existence. Plato with his forms, Aristotle with his teleology. And then solipsism and the logic of mirrors. Narcissus — him who died desperate to embrace his own image was a solipsist. Believer that you are God, that you are the Universe’s sole consciousness, that you are author and audience and they are all just characters who exist by your leave, your mercy, your “fatherly kindness”. I laugh at that phrase how I imagine the SS guards must have laughed at the new concentration camp inmates who somehow thought it was all a misunderstanding, or it was just a place specially selected for their “separate but equal” cultural development. Or how the serious devils laugh when they see the shock on the faces of the new arrivals. Who told them that this was a bit more mortal than inconsequential, that this was a bit more Sin than misdemeanor or even crime? Greatest comic pleasure is of course derived from the satirical mockery of the religious bigots and hypocrites who vision of Heaven and God was so narrow that by definition they absolutely had to end up here. Rumour has it, the management has been negotiating for a long time with the other management that they will release some of those saved souls on a temporary loan basis so that they — the great satirical writers who spiritually made the grade — can add their bit to the satirical torture of this special category of eternal internee.

See, I got distracted, went off at a tangent and all that is left of the house are just glowing embers. Scratch around there and see if you can find the solipsist. He must still be there, alive, unharmed, if he is true to his principles.

Perhaps not. Perhaps I am the solipsist. This I’m sure reads like a typical narcissistic revenge fantasy. And, of course it (note the syntax) did never happen. We left those old houses years ago — left the ghosts of memories there that they might be rich in Amityville possibilities. No one is dead, so you can put down the phone and tell the nice policewoman or man on the other end that you got a bit confused by the capacity to make category mistakes generated by postmodern literature.

They still live (maybe a bit like the alien infiltrators in that John Carpenter movie). Growing up with them there were certainly times when trapped and gaslit it seemed to me that they just had to be other than human. Can’t get rid of them. Nothing I can burn will do that for me.

Time to write.
Time to sleep.
Yep, sometimes I can get neither of those right.
Maybe if I dream there will be a burning house waiting for me.

solipsist
insist
exist
desist
missed
dismissed

Close the door when you leave.