4.4 Reflections

Blonde-tousled dream-child,

You channel a giggling stream,

Swimming-bath chlorined;

Joy follows your fluttering, as

You pollinate smiles,

And heart-nectar overflows;

Perfectly unformed fruit,

You drip from the bough,

Smelling of sunshine;

Beyond rainbow’s edge,

With unicorns dancing,

Banishing bed-time once more

Tomato-stained metal lends 

Light-rays fresh meaning,

Ground khawví to kettle shouts:

Hasten your steaming!

Eggs, sausage and bacon

On plates white lie gleaming,

Bleak nightmares’ embraces,

Stuffed belly redeeming.

Do life’s adult quirks

All begin in like fashion –

As fern-frond-thick mud-pools

Of childhood’s rich passions

Embed, and then sprout forth 

Deep-seated reactions;

Hard-wiring dejection,

Instead of elation?

Some say that memory is house-like;

A massive mansion, stuffed full of rooms,

All of them packed to bursting with

Wonderful fragments,

Byzantine tapestries, even

Treasures of electrum.

And so, if you want to recall a particular

Image, idea, emotion, you just

Need to work out how to trail-track

The snail-moist mosaic tilings of

Evocation, from place

To mind-cracked place:

Prickly, fresh-mown grass’s nostrils,

Green live hay-sneeze, eyes tight scrunched;

Oily heating, mud galumphing; leafy

Scrunching, boot-pool splashed.

And, Oh, yes – Those one-time kisses,

Caresses; Bramble-wires that now but

Bloom again, unsought-for, careless –

Yet toting loaded thorns.

Ginned quinine-glowing tonic,

Teeth spearmint fluoride-flossed,

Marrow-mangled thigh-treasure,

Despoiled by bone-crazed dog,

Grande Cuvée Jeroboam flutes,

Carbonic-berry frothed,

Tears’ lachrymose secretions,

Ears cerumen-wax clogged.

Saliva glands starch-pulp enmeshed,

Buccal amylase infused,

Bacilli-laden finger-whorls,

Quick to poison gastric bristle,

Fanged iron-tasting flint-blade slice,

Blood anvil-red death-pooled,

Herbed Haggis-offal whisky tang,

Bagpiped by skirl of thistle.

Itched histamine-cursed pollen-germ,

Green-chopped by breezy-blades,

Gored petrichor of humus-soil,

Ex-tractor’d from mute ground,

Sharp ozone-scorch, rich compost funk,

Rainforest’s leaf-mulch glades:

Olfactory vibrations tweak,

To nose-receptors bound.

Molecular messages, sealed detonations,

Emotions commanded through forced inhalation:

Vexatious vibrations inspiring mentation;

Gyrating elated on swift-winged sensation –

Flirtation's palpations refusing deflation,

Orated quotations eluding stagnation,

Temptation's pulsations truncating salvation,

Cremation-flames licking forgotten oblations,

Cognition mutating, escaping ligation,

Starvation, privation, negation, damnation,

Dissolved and chelated by nasal creation –

Fogged memory-traces avoid liquidation,

Life-story's striations defying ablation,

Zapped startled awake in this whiffy causation;

Odiferous powder kegs – lacking translation!

A beautiful youth named Nathithu,

Was loved by a lithe nymph, delicious;

But the self-obsessed lad

Sat pool-gazing, so sad:

He’s now lily, she Ehu – how vicious!

If I found out,

Somehow, that

The whole world

Was about to end

With a bang, tomorrow,

I imagine, maybe,

I would dash outside,

And bash my thick skull

Real hard against the

Nearest red-brick wall;

Blood boiling at all the

Opportunities squandered,

Cwtshing not done, joy cast aside,

Excruciating embarrassments multiplied,

Idiots indulged, friends not made (or lost),

Loneliness endured, potential wasted,

Monstrous frustrating boulders hefted

Up monotonous mountains, even,

When I could have screamed

'Fuck off!' and run a million miles,

(Or held my ground and fought,

If I’d had the guts).

So here stand I, Exhibit A,

My heart weighed

Against a feathery truth:

I’ve suffered enough from

A lifetime of learning,

And now there’ll be

No more 'no mores'

(I think). It just goes to show –

Some things never change ...

Do they? 

You feel them scutter, x-ray shadowed in the walls,

Know they whisker-tune the leprous plaster;

All along the threadbare slats, they snuffle through

Rust-tincture; porridge-crust wax-scented night-prayers;

Everywhere, slime-infusing tight-wormed holes,

Where pink snouts pluck out, blind paws churn up,

Once superhero-klonk’d, now stain-streaked, comic-paper.

Too bestial for language though, their peculiar motions –

Corkscrew-sliced from hollowed nests that, mothball-clouded, nearby lie –

Loom upwards; random incursions always threatened,

As nigh-light stifles in breathing dark’s under-handed glove-velvet play.

From bed-time dusk, the walls seethe, no tiny mercies rendered, vengeful,

Bear down with hidden tongues, maggot-wiggly, acrid, wet and warm,

Mewling out to those oozing, shadow-melting brethren,

Insidious offspring, suckling at alkaline battery-holes,

Delved, corrosive, down to dismal cellar-burrows, deep below sick concrete kitchen                                                                                                                                          floor.

That fungus-fogged lair where foul Selador,

Berserk, unstoppable, fear-feeding King,

Slick, fur-beaked beauty, stalks – misbegotten

Tyrant – gristle-feasting, eyeball-slurping, rending wings;

From whose hot red rage, grown-ups’ critical absolution flies,

And in whose monstrous sin-sight, one child’s guilt-infused innocence dies.

Trite tears plop in sluggish river

Sluicing maybes to the ocean,

Where petrolled seagulls squawk, forever

Splattering emotion;

Yes, god's blood, I'm here and single –

Again – as if by curse divine!

Why do gall and passion mingle –

My love, with wormwood thine?

Lardy cherubs flail in heaven,

Showering barbs on flame-licked brothers;

But never will you be forgiven,

Slinging hooks to bed that other.

As poly-ethene clots the earth,

And sick crude oil-slicks blood the sea –

Your pork I curse, for all its worth,

Whose snout once nuzzled me!

Live liquid light illuminates

Dank dusky, duckweed-dappled depths,

Pale pond’s putrescence bathed in bright;

Meet metaphor for poetry

Containing secret meanings tight,

Enwrapped in language magical,

Deep speaks to hearts, grants second sight.

But where shines sun slants also shade:

Brash brassy babble quick begets

Misinformation’s murky night;

Untruth, mistrust, deceit crawl forth

With urgent demagogic might;

So hate-filled propaganda grows –

Sweet buds of true communion blights.

Attention tumbles, inconsequentially groaning,

Acceleration quietly quicker, neck-whip flipped

Into vast, void nothingness, unfathomable black

Where even night is not; No – blank, cold hole,

Intemperate temperature frozen, ultimately

Unchanging; in entropic exhalation, enshrouded,

Entombed; Clothed in cerements of suffering,

Moon’s star-skull death-mask screaming blue murder,

Where hemlock and cheap bourbon cannot

Efface you – nor excise the pain.

Oh bile-filled Dad – lay off your lies –

Why blight bright offspring with stale cares?

In desperation's mire Mum cries;

But is that reason angst to share?

Of course, your old folks too were mad:

The bawling you misunderstood;

Harsh treatment stopped you going bad:

To them it was sign of true love.

We’re cursed from birth; life’s just a glitch:

The only answer, death’s embrace;

So suffer, lonely; don’t get hitched,

Nor propagate the human race!