Portrait of Anna Akhmatova after Natay Altman

(second draft)

She is folded into the paint,
Concertinaed across the canvas,
Dividing the solid hardwood floor
From the artist’s fancy – a garden
Of crystalline excrescences
Reaching to the light like blooms of broken glass.

The poet sits in a chair,
A golden shawl gathered about her,
Twirled around her arms and languidly dripping
From the edge of the cushioned seat like honey.
Fingers as light and delicate as swallow bones
Lie in her lap interrupting the flow of her Prussian blue
Dress that loosely sinks from her shoulders
And sweeps round her buttock, thigh,
Cascades over her sluicing knees and falls away
Mid-calf above sooty nylons and patent shoes,
Perched on the step like ravens.

Her gaze falls beyond the frame,
As though she were considering the interval
Between paintings
With just the tug of a smile.

Her clavicle
Slices through the desolation
Of her glacial chest, pointing to
A perfect sphere -
Not a shoulder -
But a moon
Sealing the night,
Around which we all revolve.



© GB 2008

Foxes

I heard them last night.

Drunk on lukewarm darkness
And the perfume of jasmine
They crashed through the garden,
Tumbling through the gap in the fence
(That you said you would mend)
And fell upon the irises
Tearing their leaves into strips.
They rolled, shrieking, through the campanulas
Reducing their white linen cloches to a muddy pulp
And snapped almost every raspberry cane.
They dug up the cherry tree,
Trampled all over the strawberry plants
Tore the fibre optic filaments from the bottlebrush
And fouled the petunias.

I chased them.

They scattered before the torchlight,
Sparks of ferrous oxide that disappeared
Between the cars with a sensuous slink.


© GB 2008

Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, 1915 after Natay Altman

The poet sits in a chair,
(a study in geometry)
slightly reclined, her back rigid,
one foot resting on a wooden step
the other hanging from where her right leg crosses
the left at the knee.
She is a lightning bolt draped in a Prussian blue dress
(its neckline plunging to a V across her flat chest)
and wrapped in a golden scarf wound around her arm,
bent at a right-angle.
In the background –
a cubist garden of multi-faceted crystalline excrescences
echoed by
her hooked nose,
sharp chin,
smooth cheekbones
and incisive clavicles.
Her flesh is coloured like alabaster,
framed by a straight fringe of black hair
tied back tightly.
An amalgamation of planes and angles,
yet the painting hinges on her left shoulder's
near-spherical appearance –
a moon around which we all revolve.

© GB 2008

Non-native Species

Ring-necked Parakeet
Psittacula krameri

A May morning,
Not yet five and only a hint of blue in the air –
A very pale watercolour wash.
They announce themselves with screeching cries;
Their purposeful flightpaths, emerald streaks.

They dart between birch and beech and disappear.
Experts at deception, only the hook of their ruby bills
Can unmask them between the leaves.
Fugitives, they live off scavenged fruit
And hunch in tree cavities and crevices overnight.
Perhaps a hundred of them riot in the treetops,
Attracting the authorities’ attention.

On looking up they will see vapour trails
That were once sure of their destinations; shakily cross,
Then stutter out of existence.


Chinese Mitten Crab
Eriocheir sinensis

Accidental stowaways,
Concealed in the murky ballast of ships.
Arthritic, they scuttle and scrabble
Over other creatures dredged from the ocean bed -
A mass of flesh and scales and shells and mud.

They sprawl, unable to get their footing,
Their freakish claws (matted with hair)
Waving uselessly in the timeless dark,
Agape, knocking and clattering
As they stretch above the putrefying sludge.

And suddenly, without warning, the pumps dump
Them into wan sunlight and cold water.
So they clamber along riverbanks and riverbeds, a continuous traffic
Heading upstream against the sometimes raging flow.


Scarlet Lily Beetle
Liliocerous lilii

Unmistakable. A bead of blood
That has collected and run
Like dew along the pinstriped
Leaves and rolled up against the heavy
Flower bud drowsing in the heat.

A solitary beetle looking so conspicuous -
Its glaring carapace the colour of drunken kisses
Against the starched white petals.

Its antennae tremble with devotion
As its mandibles lock into the leathery leaf -
A pilgrim enrapt.


© GB 2008

Untitled

Without warning
My tongue flopped like a dead fish
Being dropped into a bucket.
A staccato stutter;
My voice, ratcheted in my throat
And in an instant
You had looked away,
Then (thinking better of it)
Looked back with widening eyes,
Your lips almost quivering
With the word that I had just lost.


© GB 2008

Lost

Like Hammershøi’s wife –
Seen from behind,
Dressed in the same muted
Greys and browns of the room,
Looking out into the watery light -
I sit at the window
Pretending to read,
And wait for news of your drowning.



© GB 2008

Lost in the Supermarket

The shelves raced off to the horizon,
They arced upwards, craned over,
Unsteady on their little heels.
They closed the gap from behind,
Rattling and shuddering with anticipation,
Reaching for him.
Shedding toys like tears.


© GB 2008

Stampede

With our raging limbs
Entwined and enfolded,
We cling to each other.
Swooping and bowing,
Always close to the ground.
Thousands of sandals
Snapping the rhythm
Of our red-hot earth
Puffing between our toes.
For years, the hardly suppressed
Violence of our thoughts
Danced.

© GB 2008

Yours is the only love

Yours is the only love I’ve known;
The years we’ve shared have been so gay.
Please do not leave me on my own.

Such wild nights! Singing without tone -
Remember how we used to play?
Yours is the only love I’ve known.

And now that I am older - grown
Tired, wearied by our long days -
Please do not leave me on my own.

We used to dance all the way home
And you would skip and spin and sway.
Yours is the only love I’ve known.

More likely now to moan and groan,
My stiff joints creak, my hair’s gone grey;
Please do not leave me on my own.

And here I sit beside this stone
With nothing left to do, but pray:
“Yours is the only love I’ve known,
Please do not leave me on my own”.



© GB 2008

Pink Lady

Hanging from the tree,
her still stinging buttocks, flushed
with embarrassment.


© GB 2008

Parting (or, The Long Overdue Valediction)

She called it cowardice.

She was right, but I would not say so.

My eyes glittered with tears I would not spill for her
And my tongue sat like a toad in my throat and strangled every
Word.

I would not break my stride, though I limped with guilt.

“What we need is distance”.

I glanced back, raw with shame and saw
In her moody, sea-green eyes,
A glint, as of a sail being caught by the wind and
Snapping

Taut.


© GB 2008

The Language of Houses

He had been troubled by nightmares for years. So much so that he no longer cared that he wasn’t able to sleep for very long. Waking was always a relief to him. There was always, of course, the moment of bewilderment and panic when he first woke. Like a sinking man that has been buoyed on currents and breaks the surface of the water with what may be his final gasp for air.
He didn’t bother to look at the bedside clock – he knew it would be sometime between two and half-past three, it always was.
He lay still, recovering his breathing and concentrating on the sadness that accompanied his relief upon waking. The sadness that came from never remembering his dreams though they disturbed him so, as though he were resigned to the fact that there could never be an explanation.
He listened to the sounds of the house, bricks and mortar as restless as himself; that creaked and groaned and sometimes suspiciously popped. The building seemed to resonate with the stored memories and dreams of all those who had passed through it, including his own, as if these thoughts had leached into the floorboards and roof tiles. He wished that he were able to speak the language of houses and unravel his dreams - conversations that would fill these long, early hours when most people were asleep. He would much rather hear about the sedentary situation of a row of terraces than be one of those who were watching call-ins and reality programming on television - a kind of purgatory for the sleepless.
There would be clubbers gurning with eye-popping insistence, kerb-crawlers cruising along the fringes of parks, 24-hour-drinkers stumbling towards evasive taxis, murderers, muggers and rapists lurking around corners. Pariahs and predators all. He had no wish to encounter to these people. Less human to him than the houses in which they live.
To converse with another insomniac who took to wandering the streets with a determined and single-minded search for elusive sleep could be even worse than the rest. No, he would rather chat with tower blocks than have to endure that.
There was a time when he thought that he would be able to find a cure for the dreams and then sleep through the night. G.P.s and psychiatrists. He did not dispute their findings that he was depressed, nor did he disagree when they decided that he was bipolar. In fact, had they told him that he was an alien being with amnesia he would have accepted it in exchange for a few hours of dreamless sleep. Aropax and Lithium. The first was to keep him from despair and the other was to dampen his excitement.
The doctor, a very stern woman with a severe look in her eyes as though she were daring him to counter her, said, ‘Of course, the treatment is experimental, all of these kinds of treatments are. We simply do not know enough about the functioning of the human brain to be certain that this particular combination of drugs will work…’
They did work… in a way. He managed to get his eight hours of sleep every night and never felt distressed on waking. He became a creature of routines; he took his tablets and made his appointments with the psychiatrist, he went to work and then came home and went to sleep. He woke. He made shopping lists. He tidied his flat and found the places where things belonged and stored them there. He alphabetised his books and CDs, then rearranged them by genre and alphabetised them again. He counted the people he passed on the street: the number of men; the women; the number of women pushing buggies; carrying shopping bags; carrying green shopping bags; the number of men with their hands in their pockets; wearing coats; turning the next corner. He went to the doctor and then to the pharmacy with another prescription. He ate something, watched something on television, took his tablets, went to bed and slept without dreaming.
It was during one of his last sessions with the psychiatrist that he asked to be taken off the medication. He said that he felt empty and that perhaps that space was supposed to be filled with melancholy.
He said that he wanted to dream, despite his troubled sleep. The house sighed as he got up and turned on the light.


© GB 2007

11 February 1990

(Today, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Today was also the last day of initiation into high school.)

'I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.'

We impis carried our defeat around our ankles,
shuffling along corridors with bottle-top bracelets jiggling our arrival.
Made to parade before prefects, our trouser legs tucked into socks -
so simply disowned from the right to progress from junior-school shorts.
Carrying shields hastily fashioned from cardboard and tape,
that offered us no protection from the drenching roar of the toilet flush
or the chortles and sneers that met our every arrival and departure.
We stumbled over doormats and across doorways,
drunk with embarrassment and blinded by shame,
always averting our war-painted faces for fear of another
pointless task being set with the gravity of the truly mundane –
Push this coin along the ground with your nose.
Stand with your lips pressed against that tree.
Count the number of bricks in that wall.
Trim the rugby field with these scissors.
And so we did.


© GB 2007

haiku

The countryside sighs -
Mist swallows the road
That runs into the city.


© GB 2007

Comic Moment #1

I remember this scene from a film,
Black and white.
Was it Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy?
I don't think it was Laurel and Hardy.
The familiarity is nagging.
And here it is,
Replayed,
In full colour,
In 3-D,
As the man in the short coat
Wheels his arms
And falls backwards,
Pivoting on his left heel
Like the needle on a speedometer
Picking up pace,
Reaching the tipping point
And surrendering to
Gravity.
His hands splay,
Bracing him for impact
And the crowd catches its breath
Each one bracing themselves
For the inevitable,
Now slow-motion
Collapse.
His feet are now airborne
And for a moment
He is suspended
Parallel to the ground,
A magician's trick,
That goes wrong
As he thuds against
Concrete.
His wide eyes,
And creased brow,
Slowly give way
To the tug of a smile
And the crowd chuckles
To see the banana peel
Stuck to his shoe.


© GB 2007

Barrage Theorem

As you can see from the map,
Here are the schools, mosques,
Churches, markets, shopping centres -
All tagged for future development.
Our documents indicate that
Prime real estate can also be found
In the suburbs where homes
Have conveniently been deconstructed
Into their raw materials.
Indications are, that although the cities
Have been punched full of holes,
They can be landscaped
By an abundant and cheap workforce
To a style that is to your liking.
We have listened to the concerns of some locals
And found them entirely without basis.
Although we don't have anyone that speaks
Native on our staff we are assured that
The majority feel the same way we do
And are understood to say:
Why rebuild when you can start again?


© GB 2007

They will say,

"He was quiet,
A bit of a loner.
He kept himself to himself.
We never had any trouble with him.
A devoted son.
A good neighbour".

Then,
From behind picket fences
Bared like rows of white teeth,
And curtains secured with jerks and
Veiled with nets,
Their uncertainties will grow.
From their deckchairs splayed on lawns
Restrained by clipped spruce hedges,
And from magnolia stained rooms
With titanic televisions
That mumble through the night,
Someone will be bound to say:
"He was a bit of an odd fish".

And then teacups will clatter into saucers,
As they recount, around
Mouthfuls of custard creams
(In tabloid detail)
How I painted the door,
Red.



© GB 2007

African Shower

The sky is the colour of bruised fruit,
Like pears, dropped,
Too too many times.
It bellows.
A beast from some childhood nightmare
That has escaped from under the bed,
Wounded.
Now everywhere and nowhere at once.
At once
The rain hungrily falls upon the window,
Clawing its way through the air,
Shredding the acacia and the slick black street,
Tearing up the world beyond the windowpane
To a frantic and irregular
Beat.
I hear it scrabbling,
Scratching through the leaves with
The static hiss of untuned T.V.s –
That post-apocalypse sound.

Now I look out of other windows
At the lint-grey sky
And drizzle as fine as breath
That clings
To everything like disease.

My roots remember the rain,
And rejoice.



© GB 2007

Atlas Comes Clean

(Apologies to William Carlos Williams)

This is just to say
That I dropped the sky
And left the sun
Lying in the snow.
Forgive me,
It was so very
Heavy
And no-one seemed to notice
Until everything started to
Melt.


© GB 2007

thanks to Augustinclair for the line "The sun lying in the snow"
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/augustinclair/

The Gingerbread House: A Survivor’s Tale

Here are the remains
Of my hungering roof,
Propped on nibbling biscuits.
Here is where the path fastens itself
To my door’s embrace.
And here, between pancake
Thrusts and darting sugar,
The curious forest peeps.

Everything was fine
Before they came -
Causing the cakes to howl
With cascades of crumbs,
And the lollipops to throw
Themselves from the sills
And shatter like bone.
Then the ice-cream cones
Sprang into the road
With heart-burning screams -
Never to be seen again.

Children, clothed in loss,
Their pockets shining
Like hollow moons
As their hands flew out;
Their fingers flowing over
Everything like a flood.
Their furious cheeks locked
Onto every part of me
And their eyes danced to
The flavour of my windowpanes.

And all the while,
Behind my weeping gingerbread walls,
The tasting cage nodded on its hook
And the cauldron stooped
To put another log on the fire.


© GB 2007