DOG’S BREAKFAST

Tags

poem, poetry

DOG’S BREAKFAST

I dilly-dally
over my
dog’s
breakfast

as always,
make a meal of it,
(my mind
seemingly hard-
wired to
continually
blow a fuse)

my Father
with his much electrical skill
and seventh Dan
in being a parent

gives me
the standard tutorial:
how superior he is to
me
in every
Universe and
every Dimension

easy then
to see

jump to
prognosis
by way
of diagnosis

why my
worldly and
spiritual achievements
should not amount
to a heap of
beans (cheap
tin of baked, or the
designer red kidney)

not without trying
however

for as it
has always been my father’s dictum
(contra that green
Star Wars idiot)
try,
try,
try
but you
will not succeed

CEMETERY

Tags

death, eternal return, father, Humanity, love, Nietzsche, philosophical, poem, poetry, power, Technology

CEMETERY

wobbling all
over the tiny roads

I leant to cycle
in the cemetery
the one up
at the top
of our
cul-de-sac road

later in life
was to go
full Kawasaki

but here was enough
just to
find my balance, know
that my Dad’s
steadying hand
had released the seat

even so
rapt in this focus, on
my technological arc

was not unable to notice
the host of graves (including
my grandfather’s) and
almost at
each point of the compass
the four
small chapels

so much stone
enough to turn
regular into
philosopher with
each sweetly marked spot little
conundrum of consciousness

later
under Libra, very sign of measure,
a native of October would
blitz my
belief system

spin his sense-shattering yarn
on power and the soul

Ah,
I get it now

things binary
be unavoidable
I pedal to
negotiate them
(look Dad! No hands!
and on
only two wheels)

must to my chagrin
my sister doing much better

and still
beloved, treasured as
it is
as seminal experience

the memory
still haunts me, still

battling to
find my feet, to steer, to
thread my
consummate way
through to
the very endgame

LOOP

Tags

childhood, death, father, loss, love, poem, poetry

LOOP

let’s loop
the loop

thread
the needle

talk about you
dandling me in your arms
before I could walk, talk
think
before I knew
who
you were, what
was my name

not here yet, no
Damian to live and learn
and demonize

still out
of the picture, yet
in so
many pictures

still so much to
take on board, to get to know,
so much of the wiring yet
unconnected

but smell and feel
there I found you, knew you
began to exult in you
(did you
know how intense that was?)

but sweetness, innocence
cannot last forever, a turn would be made
these turns
always happen
(you can
bet your life on it)
everything gets tempered,
detaches, hardens

finding the light not
quite that Sun bright
and having
to negotiate darkness

but always that
dream of a return

WORD FROM MY FATHER

Tags

Difference, division, father, Humanity, love, poem, poetry, reconciliation, redemption, Unity

WORD FROM MY FATHER

before this is over
let us have
tales of courage, tales
of hope and
tales of redemption

I see so many
basic mistakes
lost opportunities,

and yet, as a species,
we are still here
talking to each other across
divides that seemed
they could last forever

learning
what is precious

before
it is too late

it is
almost too late

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