Prod my tummy and measure my pulse,
pat me on the head and call me well.
As much a healer as anyone I know:
under you I release, with all doubt quelled.
Clean me; stitch me; set me right;
Your needlepricks sweet stings —
Bed rest by you is deep and strong,
With the healing warmth true rest brings.
Dosed by you, on you, sweet relief,
some chemical balance redressed;
steady my heart and brain fluctuations;
stroke me into deep, calming breaths.
I didn’t see it until
a really sunny afternoon:
too much food and too much wine,
I waddled through the gallery for relief.
No cosy pressure, no soothing sounds,
no comfort apart from space and light;
just release and ease and peace:
and room to be.
There was no one there but me.
My mind grew quiet (as my belly burbled),
and the thoughts that came were few and new:
why those colours, why that form,
why did that art draw me?
One room away from leaving (stomach settled),
and with a fresh respect for works: a final stage.
A soft-light room, low seats, and silence:
a central sculpture twice my height.
I looked; I sat and looked;
I walked.
I sat and looked again; I marvelled
at the fineness of the carve, the skill;
the limbs, the forms, the face;
I looked — and then I saw.
A summary of human pain,
of human hope and need —
of triumph, weariness, of loss —
of everything that may ever be.
The world in entirety caught:
the world in marble wrought;
I looked, I saw, I knew:
I looked again and understood.
A day of fragments, interrupted tasks,
a to-do list broken into bites and left scattered;
a wobbling cyclone around the desk, the house,
I find half-finished jobs. I forget;
I look for curry and soft bread, the aromas burn:
the day leaves me scungy and putrid with
the scents of tedious business, poor and irksome.
I want chili and cardamom to lift the stains.
While I work in a world of grey,
of pantyhose and short, cheap carpet,
I dream of planting strawberry crowns
so green and red it hurts.
I dream of scarlet syrup, waiting fruit,
sunset-crimson and deeply sweet;
in jars, in rows, on shelves, at home.
But sunlight is finite, office days long,
the commute finds me blanched and bleached.
So dreams of bottles of sailors’ delight
are dreams.
Until the desperate carpe diem
arrests my life: I work and
dream of strawberries.
Overhead, battle fierce and conflict biting
A swift silent contest of perpetual fighting
As the dust and the air carry minions of war:
Each breeze and feather bears a seed or a spore.
Silent and apparently still, the trees
Fight maliciously for the rights of their seeds,
A war millenia-wide, an unending fight,
Writ too slow and grand for human sight.
While blossoms and flowers flutter and flirt,
There’s a bloody war fought for claims to the dirt.
I wish for pumpkins I had planted
but did not, alas, alack;
count three months and wonder what
I was doing that far back;
to deprive the now me
of sweet and ready autumn globes?
Would it have been so much to ask
to push some seeds into the earth?
Would it have killed the me-gone-by
to have sparked the pumpkins’ birth?
I mutter and curse my former self,
but eventually forgive: after all,
my self ahead must soon address
the forthcoming rhubarb shortfall.
Today is a public holiday Chez Crayon.
If I,
despite brains and logic,
despite laughter, smugness,
joy and sense,
despite all these,
descend into a sticky mess
stuck, splayed and thrashing,
do not sneer.
If I,
despite swagger and love
still feel shame and warted over,
be kind.
Do not assume I am self-loathsome,
do not see me as broken;
do not regard a spark of doubt
as the coming rupture.
The schmutz has caught me, briefly,
and I have stumbled, but:
point me in the way of up,
I shake off the shards of web,
and I step free.
Let me not curse the guts that churn;
let me not curse my bones;
let me not grumble at fetidity
and bile.
Let me love the microbial sparks of life;
Let me love the creaks and aches;
Let me love it as neither weird
nor vile.
Let me love the surges of health,
Let me love the laughter,
Let me love the polyps that throb
and weep.
Let me not curse the pain that comes,
let me not curse the fear,
Let me not resent the tides of strength
and sleep.
Let me love my body and blood,
Let me love my breath;
Let me love the sweat and stink;
Let me love my flesh.
I steal the voices of those I read,
the ones I hear and sing to;
I appropriate their successful meter:
and their rhythm cling to.
I adopt their articulation quirks,
as though I’ll find the trick
to make my dull familiar rhymes
rich in thrills, in tingles thick.
Completely unintended plunder,
compulsive mimicry:
I hope my own voice soon grows loud
to beat this gimmickry.
An easy trick of early rhymes,
to adopt someone’s voice;
but recognition is the first step
in the nevermore choice.
