Last arm pointing - New Tales from Ovid - and - Parallel Lines were intended as part of a large collection but were in the end published separately in pamphlet form. (JB)

 

 

 

 

POEMS FROM ‘THE LAST ARM POINTING’

 

Arm Tickling

 

For some reason I don’t understand

my mam takes me on the bus

to the hospital twice a week,

to have my left arm tickled.

I have to lie down on a big bed

and a pretty nurse with curly black hair

strokes my arm with a wire.

She starts in the middle of my hand,

then slowly moves the wire up to my shoulder

and back, and all the time I can hear

a bee buzzing behind her,

and my arm tickles all over at once.

When I giggle the nurse smiles.

But sometimes I cry, because

I want her to stop so I can go

to play in the toy-room.

Then she tells me to shush

and be a brave boy.

Once a doctor told my mam

he wanted me to wear a corset,

but she said ‘No’, and cried

all the way home, while I sang

‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree

With Anyone Else But Me’

over and over and over.

 

 

 

On First Seeing Olivier’s Richard III

 

I wondered how he’d do it

- how would he get that knotted mass

of cartilage and bone to hang

from his shoulder, dragging his spine

into a lazy S?  Which shoulder

would he choose?  Or would it be

one of those Mr Punch jobs,

dead centre and rising

like a mountain peak behind his ears?

 

Then there were the legs.

How would he get those elegant pins

- the ones he’d used in Hamlet

and Henry V - to twist and lope,

lose inches from the thighs?

And would both hands be the same size?

Or would one be shrunken and cramped,

inadequate to the holding of swords,

the balancing of crowns

or the wooing of maidens?

 

My schoolmates knew, of course,

as they showed me, aping my jagged

shape and halting gait

when the teachers drilled us into line

outside the Regal.

 

Olivier, in the end, chickened out,

stuffed a cushion up his tunic,

stuck putty on his face,

and kept the legs as neatly turned

as ever.

 

 

A Wasted Talent

 

 

At playing dead, he was simply

the best kid in town.

 

Stand him up against a wall

and on the command 'Fire!'

he'd spin to the ground

with a cry of defiance

worthy of cinema's finest.

 

Ambush him in Sherwood Forest

and arrows would pierce

his Norman armour

like pins through fag-paper,

and there he would fall,

clutching his shattered heart.

 

Lob a hand-grenade

and see his limbs spread

across an entire meadow.

 

Shell him, and he would vanish

in a ball of blue smoke.

 

Push him out of a 'plane

with a duff parachute

and hear the scream

as he hurtled earthwards.

 

He could even drown convincingly

if you held him under water

for long enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter Morning, Withernsea

 

Even before you're truly awake

something rare has taken hold.

See how the light stands solid,

enclosing the room

in a chaos of fern.

 

Feel the hands that have wound this

icy design about the house.

If you put an eye to the window,

they will be out there,

waiting to bind you too.

 

A penny warmed in the mouth

burns a precise disc

in the window glass.

Infinite white

bears silence

to the far distance.

 

In the frozen ocean,

the old men of the town,

like so many Ancient Mariners,

wait for a breeze

to release them.

 

 

 

Wind Of War

 

All night the wind screamed out its pain,

shaking the elms in the back field,

rattling the tin roofs of allotment sheds,

iron-clad warriors

crossing the face of the moon.

In the blacked-out house we lay entwined,

safe in our tent of flannel

bedsheets, woollen blankets,

hearing the wild sounds

as from the mountains of Titan,

seeing only the glow

of our own pale eyes,

feeling the touch of warm flesh,

the heat of close bodies,

faintly trembling.

 

In the morning all was still.

We could see to the far horizon,

ships of war riding the grey estuary.

Silently we climbed upon broken elms

strewn about the back field,

remembering the ends of days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

True Confessions

 

                   new tales from Ovid

 

 

1. My Husband Ate Our Son

 

Afterwards he said

it was the tastiest stew

I’d ever cooked for him.

I could see he enjoyed it

by the way he scraped the dish

then looked around for more.

Bits of flesh hung from his beard

and he had that look,

so I knew what to expect.

Always the same once he’d eaten

his fill; he’d give me that leary glare,

eyes small like a snake

staring from under a rock.

Then he’d pull out his great thing

and shove it into me

right there at the table.

 

But not that day.

He seemed to know something

was wrong. He said,

where’s that boy of ours?

And I told him.

My sister, screeching, tongueless, 

tried to stop me.

But revenge was too sweet.

He’s right there I said,

right inside you,

and I began to scream

with laughter.

 

 

 

 

He would have killed us both

if he’d caught us.

But we were too swift.

It was as if we could fly.

 

Now he’s completely off his head.

Most of the time he thinks

he’s a hawk, we’re a couple

of sparrows. He curls his hands

into claws and chases us

about the garden.

My sister flaps her arms

and swoops around

in panic.

I keep out of his way

until he exhausts himself.

Then I sing my song.

 

 

 

2. Whatever He Touched Turned to Gold

 

With luck like that

you’d think he’d have the wit

not to antagonise the gods.

Not him. Every day another scheme

to make money. Every day

some new adornment to our house.

I told him the roll wouldn’t last.

He just laughed and slipped

another ruby on my dress.

Our daughter went to school

in silk and diamonds.

No good will come of that

I said. What harm, he said.

If you’ve got it, show it.

And he went on making money.

 

 

 

 

Then one day he sold the lot,

businesses, houses, goods,

took off into the hills.

Left us, without a word,

in the clothes we wore,

bailiffs at the gate.

 

Next I heard he was in a fight

between a traveller and a goatherd

over who played the hottest  tune.

His luck ran out, picked the wrong man;

the traveller beat him silly.

Now he wanders the town in rags,

a woolly hat  pulled down over his ears,

hoping we won’t see what an ass he is.

 

 

3. Enough to Drive a Woman to Drink

 

A romance made in heaven it was said.

He, a scuba-diving tough guy -

the type that wrestles bulls,

bungee-jumps into volcanoes.

Me, the virginal daughter of the King of Crete.

 

Problem was my half-brother,

produce of my mother’s indiscretion

with a passing stud,

whose antics with the visiting girls

were scandalous to say the least.

 

A brief and bloody fight ensured

the beast would rape no more

among the eighteen-thirty girls

seeking sun and wine and sex

on Crete.

 

But now my hero tired of love,

dumped this princess on the honeymoon,

took off with another,

the very image of his mother.

 

The sky’s the only thing attracts me now

as through a haze of wine I gaze

at a crown of stars,

my destined place in heaven

the wise old barman says.

 

 

 

4. Just Another Object of Desire

 

Just because my naked image floats

on glossy pages, you might believe

you’re free to wander over me,

that I’m an object of desire,

a piece of stone made flesh

by your cold artistry.

You might wish that in return

I’ll accept your exploration

as a sign of true affection.

Such illusions may possess you

but I am not the thing you see,

your creation rendered free.

I am the stone I always was,

figure of perfect womanhood,

a female rock to break your heart.

 

 

5. Vengeance is Mine, Saith the Lord

 

Am I to blame if now my one,

constant, overpowering desire

is to gorge myself

on raw flesh?

Can I help it if my body-hair

is  thick, matted

with the congealed remains

of impromptu feasts?

It was, after all, a harmless jape,

a simple prank to deflate

a self-important jackanapes

strutting around our town

every bit like some

Lord of the Universe.

Am I to blame if  He

couldn’t take a joke?

 

 

6. Woman in Tree Escape

 

It’s hard to credit that a man

could pursue a woman

with such single-minded dedication

that finally,

out of sheer desperation

at the thought of his intentions,

she’d climb into a laurel

and stay there so long

it became impossible to tell

which was tree,

which was woman.

 

But who knows what a man will do

when struck by Cupid’s arrow?

Persuasion is no antidote

to this infection, nor reason.

There is no vaccine to kill such fever.

This man is bent on my destruction

in the name of love. So here I’ll stay,

the breeze mingling my hair with the leaves,

the river grumbling around my feet

(something about a son-in-law, grandchildren)

until he tires of gnawing at my bark.

 

 

7. A Stalker Laments

 

Why do you never answer, pretty boy,

pretty boy,

why do you never answer to my calls?

My calls

are meant to tell you that I love you.

I love you

as I hold your perfect body in my dreams.

 

 

In my dreams

our bodies tumble till I come with a thunderclap,

a thunderclap

to rock the Halls of Hell. But nought from you.

Nought from you

but silence, or a sneer at my devotion.

My devotion

need not be a singular attraction.

Attraction

can be mutual if you let it.

Let it

draw you from your mirror, pretty boy.

Pretty boy

we could be lovers, should be, must be,

must be

lovers, or I’ll die of grief without you.

Without you

I’m a shadow, a fantasy, an echo,

an echo

that will never leave your mind.

 

 

Natural Philosophy

 

                        with apologies to Judith Weir

 

1.  Swimming

 

One day while walking

in the mountains

Confucius saw a monk swept away

by an angry river.

 

“Are you drowning?”

asked the sage.

“No” replied the monk,

“I’m going with the flow”

 

and disappeared down the gorge

and over the falls

singing.

 

Or so Confucius said.

 

 

2.  Singing

 

So rich a voice

needs no reward –

how can you pay perfection?

 

Yet how dull

our city streets would be

if the poor took to

singing indoors.

 

 

3.  Riding

 

How we love our horses!

How carefully we pare their hooves,

comb and braid their hair.

What clever tasks we set them

- hauling, carrying, racing.

 

 

How much happier they must be

than running unshod over frost

pursued by the wind –

 

as the trees rejoice

to carry our words.

 

 

4. Flying

 

If a fish can learn

to fly, filling the horizon

with the spread of its wings

 

how much easier for a butterfly

to generate a hurricane

 

 

A Letter to Philip Larkin

 

Just a line or two to say hello,

I’m home again.

Too many years of life ‘down South’ can throw

you out of kilter with this world – resign

you to acceptance of self-interest,

a disregard for family and friends.

So here I am, back where I began

on the edge of nowhere, not quite depressed

but feeling low, ready to make amends

for years of silence, making out in London.

 

There’s not much new about arriving here -

the same wide sky

blurring to a distant, watery smear

over a grey, slow-drifting estuary.

There’s the bridge, of course, unmissable, a skeletal arch

of steel: ‘Bridge for the Living’ you called it, lying.

But no more smell of fish, no ships up streets.

While I was skipping round the world in search

of life, you watched this city’s dying,

the trawlers gone, the docks filled in. It waits

 

now for some fresh beginning, resurrection,

a change of luck,

anything to stop the creeping dereliction

of a city without purpose. Coming back

to this reminds me why I left. And yet

you stayed, caught in this unpoetic place

and found it tolerant of verse. Perhaps

I could have found the same, become a poet,

no mere versifier, learned to express

some feeling for my roots among the back-to-backs.

 

Maybe I chose the wrong pub to frequent –

drank in the Tiger

instead of the Duke, in the lounge where you spent

your lunchtimes. Would I have seemed too young, too eager

to interest you in my schemes? Such are the might-have-beens

that make us what we’re not. Too late now.

You’re gone and all I can do is follow your trail

around the city streets and village greens,

the churches and the cemeteries, and wonder how

my life would be if we’d shared a jar of ale.

 

Best not to think of that – what might have been.

We are what we are.

You said yourself there’s no escape. Dream

as we may of flying off to some place far

from present tensions. So here I am, back

where I began, on the edge of nowhere,

ready to rejoin the world I left behind,

seeing through your verse the poetry in this bleak

terrain. Perhaps this time I’ll leave aware

of what I missed, instead of flying blind.