Joel tried his hand at acting,appeared as one of the gravediggers in Hamlet,an amateur production on the Isle of Man.Audience applause remained polite. Backstage, Albert, the other gravedigger,was reading Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents.
Clown School convenes at midnight sur la plage — a maverick constellation of old sea-dogs and post-humous grands personnages. Chateaubriand has on a red nose and does the rope trick to a tee. Degas draws his Dead Fox in the air but wobbles and the ears go askew. Cue a snicker from Corneille that triggers in the mind of Berlioz the need to leap up and instantly pom-pom his way through an entire rendition (plus chromatic modulations to accommodate the gulls) of Ouverture to Le Corsaire, an abrupt and sprightly fantasy he put together as a precursor to — nothing (which, coincidentally, is the kind of pre -cursor Clown School can really get behind).
We smashed china cups, saucers, sugar bowls, plates, teapots on slabs of paved-over lawn – ripped apart bodies of teabags, scattered their unholy remains amongst the splintered finery – out of plastic kettles, we sloshed hot water, drenched the mess in pretend, ritual sterilisation – and then we boogied, in the latest footwear, on our cemetery site – boozed up, music blaring from shiny, postmodern sound devices.
Would he be 60, this mantoe-punting the hook and eye latchsecuring the firm’s caravan door? Such a performanceto keep his balance, he went onto back-heel it instead when in two tickshe could have slipped it freeby reaching out, bending his knees. But this amiable man with familyhatchback and detached bungalowstarted kung fu-ing it until the hook dangledby one screw, the eye pinged offnowhere on the waste ground. No door now, just a board bangingin a squall has him lurchinginto the driving rain, grappling to pull the thing to,almost mashing his fingersin the jamb, effing away that soon it would be off its hingesfor any Tom, Dick or Harryto come waltzing through.
Lacing up gleaming skates, then off the rein At last, kids shuffling gouts of steam We elbowed into churned-up tracks and packed the train Of bodies bent and wobbling in the stream That watched in awe below the mirror ball As denims and drape jackets paid the price For slinging scuffed hired skates into the hall To join.
What have I done with my one life and all the time it takesUp the ladders of alcohol and down depression’s snakesI’ve met too many predators and bought too many fakesI had too many choices and made some bad mistakesUp the ladders of ecstasy and down delusion’s snakesWhy does a simple scene in life involve so many takesWhatever machinery’s in the mind it’s modern and it breaksUp the ladders of company and down the lonely snakesWhat does self-denial say except it’s no great shakesUp the ladders of fantasy till disillusion wakesSpring brings a resurrection yes but autumn falls in flakesDown the rivers of self-reproach to drown in sorrow’s lakesAnd when you finally finish in the grip of age’s achesThe graveyard is a ladder down and worms are hungry snakesWith their own thirst f.
1979 Break time. Out of the staff room window through The fug of pipes and cigarettes The landscape of industrial decline Has empty smokeless chimneys signal debts To history that never will be paid Except by demolition. Cleanliness Of plate glass far prefers the playing fields Whose straight white lines mean to impress. But as exhaust-filled smog rolls in, it seems The goalposts move. What do we hear? ‘She’s right, the country needs...’ What, modernise?
Wild garlic after sudden rainthat left as suddenly –each curlicue sunlit again –was part of all that kept her lonely: they’d noticed it, like everything,every spring. The firstyear alone, surely, you’d think,would be hardest, worst. It’s not, she said. I felt her shoulder.We walked back to our cars,hugged. She left. I glanced back overtheir million stars.
White-collar workers think what elseThey need, scanning the aisles and rowsOf powders, sprays and shower gels,Still looking fresh in office clothes, White shirts exuding cleanliness,Sleeves neatly folded at the wrist:Signs of a manager impress,Along with pager and the twist Of office keys on summer slacks,Crease perfect, colours black or blue.But wait… the shopping trolley lacksA purchase? Yes, what will they do For dinner, single, as they ploughThose aisles grimly determined?
the Blue Drawing Roomis above the Abbot’sSitting Room the blue fireplace isabove theAbbot’s fireplace (below that —fireplacesall the way down) the East Wing— missingin action the deerin the deer park— eaten antlers overthe GreatDoor a woman under-neath wheezingin chiffon dear lady (up since dawnropingthings off) do you knowcan you say thereal reason whythe fishsank? the mistressfled?what the King was doing forso manydays — half-in/half-out of thatwindow?
i.m. She bends back over the bush,pursed hand biting for curvatureamong the green, and rainsthree more to the tub at her feet. Then she finds a last one, hunches,lifts and rattles her find, is goneinside. A tractor’s been pacingthe field next door all morning,towards, back, towards, back.She went unnoticed, unnoticing. And we’ll have gooseberry tart –as tart as her love, its stout fruitas coarse and hard to sense, whenhidden and wasting in its thicket.
We were all in it an opera in a church my youngest brother going into the Ark in the mask of a blue tit Raven Boy twirling to a clarinet Dove Girl with ballet shoes and a bunch of green leaves and Mrs Noah who did not want to go dragged up the gangplank waving a goblet shouting I will stay with my gossips.
(after Tracey Herd) most, is not the goal, the finish-line, but the start, (do any of us know where we are heading), the assortment of people, the runners I mean, stretching, going for last minute pees, doing their weird warm-up routines, and the straggle of loved ones congregating in Holyrood Park. I barely remember the first five miles down Edinburgh’s deep streets, I remember hitting the coast, the exposure at Portobello beach, the surprise of space, the sudden release of the sea’s shore.
Deny it how you will, there are timesWhen, sitting in the car outside the supermarketYou consider suicide A moment before, you’re scrutinisingThe legs of a young mum and the way the breeze playsGames with her skirt A child at her foot –She has a swing to her that hasn’t diminishedStill has a move or two Then rain spits on the windscreenTaps on the roof like a tut-tutting busybody who knowsWhat you’re thinking A warming light goes out, you reachFor a cigarette in the grey stupor of your driver’s seatYou’re under water Or drowning in something just as coldInhaling, you see it for what it is, a descent, an immersionYou’re heavy as a Victorian diving-suit Going down.
We listen to the news on late night TVlike poets waiting for that one perfectadjective wham from the fountainreleased by the front hoof of Pegasus. Instead we get a word which means hurricanebut also warriors out of control crash of a waterfall in burning forestthe music of what happenswhen you open up a hoard of unclaimed body parts,and a world walloping about like a flooded carburettor.
It’s trying to snow but the window’s open wide. My teacher has her hair in a towel and everyone’s a blur because she’s lost a contact lens. Hello Kate! How are you? Class was cancelled so she’s had a nice long shower and now a friend comes in saying Someone asked today have I thought about botox? I said ‘What’s wrong with looking my age? I wear my soul on my face’, but she made me think, you know? Surely there must be an easier way to tie shoelaces. Pole Dance 2 are waiting on the stairs againas I go down to the treadmill.
was drawn-out but fun there was a bonfire with those small sausages on sticks we all whooped it up on homebrew afterwards — not much some- body’s dead uncle with a space for a face onto which we projected our various longings and fears hung about for a time — a clutch of haiku (bad) came of that and one stab (thank God, only one) at an elegy then nothing — for a bit then a wren blew in who an expert swore had sung an entire saga in the original Norse (they ran tests but it died) finally bull -dozers brought.
Odd to think about it now, more than two decades since a bag of blood failed to connect with a tube and spilt over the chair, the floor and you. Not knowing what to do we watched it spread until the practical nurse produced saline to remove the stain and make it better, no harm done. Just then the young doctor, Priya popped her smiling face round the door wanting to share the doughnuts she’d bought to celebrate passing her exams. Everyone laughed and enjoyed the fat, the sugar, and the oozing sticky jam. Those days there was always a party in Haematology, always someone who’d passed another exam.
We’d wear our best to the factory bench to catchsome of the luminescence in their folds, painted nailsand teeth with the stuff Mrs Curie had kept phialsof in her pockets like tubes of mints. Became knownas the ghost girls for the soft, green light we emitted.Looking back we guessed the men with dollars in their eyes,must have brushed away rumours of the paint’s darker side,as they watched us bring to a point the tips of bristles with our lips,to more accurately form numbers on the dials.Claimed we were wanton women with a disease too shamefulto name, when ulcers bubbled up, jaws eaten to the white of bone.Our dangerous selves, developing like photographs in the isolationward at night, condemned to rest glowing under lead lids, when theyshould still have been radiant with life.
Jack would play the organ At the local Odeon Until the talkies came. Could Gwyneth love him the same As when in matinees Crisply shadowed rays Of Hollywood had been On the smoke and on a screen Like linen on the bed Where nothing at all was said, And they moved in a black and white night Of flickerings from streetlight? Oh, how she’d loved that magic, And him there making music!