Reading Virgil

Virgil Tracy is one of my heroes - rather like OUSA he is adaptable but slow, with a sensitive side that appeals to minorities. I am the lucky owner of a Virgil doll who lives in a box that says 'Try me - I say five phrases!'

Anyway, we have to do Virgil for AA309 this week and so in a celebration of post-modern receptionism, the best thing to do is declaim Virgil in two ways at once - hopefully this will be a good revision aid. Warning - it goes on too long and the main message is drowned out - but that could be said about a lot of things.

Wipers

It's Remembrance Day in Britain (but not in the rest of the world more or less) and here's a beer from Ypres celebrating how they used to throw cats out of belfries - no wonder really that war exists.

REMEMBRANCE DAY IN WHITEHALL

This is the funniest day of the year.

Old soldiers shall pass by like gentle sheep
While that old ram, the State, speaks
In staged silence.

I don't think it matters much
That most marching past will be agèd white men,
Or that we take red poppies as easy ciphers
For something too bloody for words,
Or that we say, 'Charlie died in the desert, you know!'
As if we can bask in the heat of his final sigh,
Or that we put it all back in a box for next year
Like the Proms and the Ashes and Miss World and Lent.

I'm honoured to be here,
Pressed up against Chelsea lads in waxed shooting coats
And blue-faced chavs half-sullen half-mad
And an army of toddlers shoved through to the front.

It'll be over by one
And the tarmac shall bear wet petals and the smack of old shoes,
And the crowd in Saint Stephen's Tavern
Will chew on a hotpot lunch
Served up by forgetful youths.

The Orange Time

Here we are in November - all the leaves are yellow and brown and orange, as is the lowering sun. These berries (swirled round like digital custard) are kind of orange too.

NOVEMBER SONG

She had a sweet dream
that made her laugh hard
in the orange time.
She stood by the stop
and held out her hand
lit by leaf-light and sun
in the orange time.
Her boss was half-cracked
and gave her the sack
but she wasn't surprised
in the orange time.
She came home and
cried and he
kissed her like mad
in the orange time.

In the cold hour of
dawn they went to
the sea, in the
orange time. Gulls
grabbed their bread and
they felt good and kind
in the orange time.
He hugged her hard
and she wept just a
bit, in the orange
time. A year of hard
knocks topped by the sack.
In the orange time.

He raced to a tree
and he climbed it
and yelled, in the
orange time. She
followed his path and
they shared a dead
bough, in the orange
time. The sun came
out strong and they
sang a mad song,
in the orange time.

It hurt when they jumped
down to earth with a bump,
in the orange time.
They got in the car
and home wasn't that far
off in the orange
time. But a drunk in
a truck meant they'd
run out of luck
in the orange time.
Now they rest in
a grave swamped
by leaves in the haze,
in the orange time.
And the Earth travels
on but for them it's all
gone and they just don't
belong in the orange time.

Waiting

Our poetry group was talking about waiting - not sure why. We definitely thought that waiting was something there was too much of. Here is a picture of some birds waiting for food, or could it be a bus? My effort was written after doing some ironing.

WAITING

Waiting is kneeling before what you want:

the hottest tears jut from your face,

a salty crust might form:

just wait.

Waiting might mean tearing your clothes:

you'll shiver like a monk's turtled loins,

eviscerated by cold;asexual in dark blue limbo

but the only choice is to wait.

Waiting will require greeting

those who do not understand

the famine: like an ox cooing at other oxen

on a simulated TV plain,you'll just shuffle along

nothing doing: simply wait.

Waiting - you'll need bloodlike steel,

a blade cutting through doubt

like an icecream through August mouths,

or an eel chomping through weed

not knowing if that carp child

is really there: just go and wait

for a bit, eschew agnostics,and wait.

Wait - why wait - this is just tin-town chit-chat.

You're not stopped by Auschwitz wire

or the massed armies of evil

glaring across the living-room floor;

you're not a mouse held hostage

in a no-reprieve Midlands lab

or a cat wrapped up for good by flat-cheeked Egyptians.

You won't be damaged forever

if you pick up life like a juicy roast leg

- just leave the bone but remember

its job. Why not decorate your room

with cheerful suns of what is to come,

jump right now in the wide warm sea of your life

and swim to its furthest fun-filled depths?

You turnip: rooted in the muck of your mind

you're frazzled by patience: grow up!

What's that? that thing you're waiting to do

disgusts you. I can read it too:

no worries, yes, it's bad, and

I, I, I, I, I must dash.

Sinaia sense of security?

ALPINE HOTEL

You can safely sleep here...
all is made of wood...
those dog-barks are far off.

PS - it's not really the Alps, but Transylvania

Montgomery metro part 1

Montgomery (it's a famous junction in Brussels lorded over by a statue of Monty, the famous soldier guy - I've got a picture of the view of the Cinquantenaire 'Arc de Triomphe' arch through his legs but thought better of posting it) metro is a great place - lots of 1970s stuff, probably about to be ripped out - just like most of my brain. Anyway, this bit is near our old flat - this was on a hot night after a Wiener Schnitzel in a Croatian restaurant. I'm not sure why the walls are yellow - they smell OK, so maybe it's just part of the sun has migrated underground without telling us. Can you tell that haiku took about thirty seconds to write - that long I hear you say!

Sunset mode

So this is what the Panasonic Lumix something or other does in sunset mode. As you can see, basically you still need an interesting sunset and this one wasn't so I put a haiku over it. Haikus are something the O U says you should write every day. I can't think of anything I do every day.

Chin chiller

Here in OUSA Belgium we believe in taking it on the chin, even if makes you go a funny sepia shade.

This is actually with a new camera that does more, but I think has slightly grainier pictures than the old one.

Apologies for not updating this blog more often - I'm feeling a bit lazy and summery. It's all I can do to revise stuff like this - if you think this is bad, you should have read the first version.

TANGO

A hundredweight of bread

moves down a frosty hill

to Karl the baker

cheeping an old song

from exotic toothed birds.

Behind him, a clapped out bus

(not green, not red, but something between,

like the surface of eyes in a Javanese film)

wheezes like a dying cult

as schoolkids pick out loam

from finger-nails not yet grown.

The bread is nearer now.

In the crystal sight

of a winter's day

(not hot, not cold but fashionably indirect

coolly half-finished

like a carte de visite for a future dream)

ghost Greek Gods laugh silently

their chests as devastated as stars

glued to a red-grey sky.

The bus roars off

its petrochemical jerk makes trees dance along:

their arms scratching their swift-growing girths.

Colin sits on the saddened ground

as a wall of bread

(not high, not low, just large enough to slay)

stops his song.

Rain rain rain

Last night we went to an Indonesian restaurant - I got loads of photos of rain ('cos that was what was happening) but let's face it - everyone knows what rain looks like. So here (on the left) is the person who took me out for dinner to celebrate my recent birthday and various other things. The photo is a bit weird as it's actually a transfer on a shopping bag, so I shot the bag, as well as bagging the shot.

Here's a poem about rain - my poetry group gave it a mixed reaction, which is all for the best I reckon.

RAIN

If it were a person, it'd be working for the Planning Office, or maybe Woolworths just before closedown, whatever, each rain is different. It always make you sweat
as if Nature, promising you'll be buried in the bliss of summer, has said,
'Hey now - here are my real prizes you soldier - big grey sensible drops of water

- these are my real signature - isn't it time you had one of your own?'

It makes you pensive. You stuff yourself with passion - a really tiresome business

-and like a junior exec. swivelling on a plastic chair your brain
quickens and tries to shove the rain in its soul, tries to put out the images
of hot-headed lovers, or gloss-lipped devils, those little Kodak slides
that flicker in time to the rain, tap-dancing on the stones outside.

After a lifetime, maybe rain gets bloated, kind of worn out, as if it wants
to go down to the coast, sit in a home and say, 'Well, it was all for nothing,
but maybe if I take a brief look back, like Kronos just before Tartarus,
or like that seal I saw in the zoo pausing before it jumped into the pool,
the smell of this life won't be as sour as I think.'

Amazing stuff, rain. Look how it thuds to the ground, rises up
again, softens all, almost vehemently, almost laboriously,
wistfully hinting at Eden and machine-guns
a hat of silver framing your hair.

An official commemoration

EQUALITY 2009

I uphold equality: although
it hasn't held up that much stuff for me.

I think back to applying for a gay marriage.
A dark desk in a Sixties town hall.
Files building up like mediaeval remains.
The grey people in charge were charming
and I think we - the rainbow couple -
fizzed back in the usual way.
Smiles and laughs and relief
and hands held under the table.

It started raining. Something in their
faces began to crack. A passing sense
of having stretched things too far.
A growing back of the old god power
of the grey race.

We shouldn't follow them if we can help it.
These pale skins, these pious types,
these family guys, these slave-drivers
may be temptingly attractive...

'If only I could be like him,'
you whispered to me on the way out.
I squeezed your hand and held out for the best.

Nights nights

It was a good Bank Holiday weekend as we went out three nights in a row: first night was to the centre of town (hint: don't sit at a table unofficially reserved for escorts, you'll get dirty looks and won't earn any money); second night was a birthday party in an underground cellar (hint: when people under 30 say, 'Would you like me to fetch you a Desperados?' don't take it personally); third night was a barbecue where we ended up playing with someone's Wii (hint: when people tell you to press the B button, don't say 'Why is it hidden on the back?').

This night-scene is our local park. It's built on an old cemetery and what they've done is used some of the old gravestones to make the paths. Click on the photo for the full spook effect.

Our poetry group had a session on night poetry. My effort is below (I did another more experimental poem that I'll have to come back to: anyway, this one owes a lot to a colleague code-word Oldtimer).

NIGHT TIME
The moon mops up. We step back inside
to rest our lives on the mattress upstairs.

We have left the shades outside
a necessary quietus...
since the tactics of light against dark
are studied and perfect.

Listen, how the lowered volume
of our house feels like a soft slide
into a succession of freedoms.

The moon breaks in without comment,
hushing the breaths from the cot.

Anniversary

It's two years to the day since my mother died of motor neurone disease. We got the news in a Total petrol station near the Chunnel. I went to the gents for a bit of peace, and found this had been carved into a pipe. Maybe it means 'Have a nice day' in Polish.









SWING
I never want to play on a swing again. I recall,
even as you uncovered my eyes,
took me to see what Daddy had made,
and set me on the heavy-chained seat,
clanking and floating over our spot of Earth:
I was unsure what could break my fall.

Later, as it rusted,
and we kids were too old to stand up cradled by you,
or just sit, our legs pushing out into a hurricane
born from the tug of gravity's wires
pulling us back from the summit of the ride,

You - hysterectomy-weakened - strode up the path,
wiped dew and sparrow-stars from the seat,
gathered your sun-stained skirts,and pushed
bed-softened toes off our runway
(that wound all kids must make on grass) as

you hung yourself to a quickening flight:
a swinging C of metal and green and flesh and cloud,
laughing and shining and above all entitled:
that was what you meant as you beamed at the neighbours just over the fence.

Too much trouble, to play on a swing again.
It's not fair - not just that your hands have done their job -
it's that lost moment at the top of the ride.

Optimism

From a US mailbox.

Plus, by request, a poem (about travel - an exercise in terza rima)

LANDING
Under a plastic, sweating white skin
Humans plant down like bowed little trees
Sealing their growth in dry air and din.

'I ought to try to move my old knees,'
says a woman from old Pakistan,
flying her hair in a man-made breeze.

'Look Will, I'm not in tune with this plan,'
says a suit. Clouds smile out a gap:
It's land, scarred like a tramp with a tan.

'Seatbelts on with the usual crap,'
thinks a steward who coughs at the mike,
and turns off our fictional map.

We bump and shake and fret but quite like
how Earth pushes at us like a spike.

Arcades, Benjamin, surrealism etc.

Remember my posts the other day about surrealism

http://mikeinbrussels.blogspot.com/2009/04/twist-of-malice.html and http://mikeinbrussels.blogspot.com/2009/04/narcissism.html?

Well, for those interested (hello no-one! - haven't I seen you nowhere before?) the University of Essex (always good to plug Essex) has a good resource (as I think you're supposed to call it) which also publishes a journal. A good article (bit esoteric at times for me though) here http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/publications/papers/journal1/index.htm talks about arcades, rather like the ones in Bologna. This is a self-consciously militant view on Walter Benjamin (he's a kind of Marxist rabbit) and arcades http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/waltbenj/yarcades.html and it also has a great pink background. Brussels supposedly has the first covered arcades in the world - so take that Parisians!

Less ponce-ily (or maybe not), arcades like the one on the right in Bologna, particularly when captured on photo (or even better in painting or in writing) can be kind of passages into dreams and other subconsciousnesses - more so perhaps than the kind of arches or arcades you'd find in a cathedral or bank (or even the arched window in Play School). I wrote a very bad poem indeed about arcades, but I like the arcade concept: arches soaring upwards yet being closed in, just like consciousness is rooted in subconsciousness and topped off by our extinction, and constantly reflected in the shopping windows of our life's journey. They protect you from the rain too. Gosh!

Narcissism

As a kind of brief follow-up to the excursion into surrealism - went to this exhibition about shop windows http://www.fondationpourlarchitecture.be/docs/pdf/2008/boutique_presse_en.pdf and included in it was a brief bit about surrealism's interest in reflections, and all that. So here's a Narcissus. Not for sale as it has been dead-headed.

A Twist of Malice

........and Happy Easter too!



A Twist of Malice is the title of a collection of poems by grey-haired (one assumes) women. You can find a proper review here http://www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/issues/02/text/boden_julie_review.htm (scroll down). I read it through in one sitting last night. Top marks for accessibility and entertainment value, although the effect of loads of poems with basically a similar array of messages (leading on from the various sections the poets have to work in) and props (contemporary British life zzzzzzz) is a bit numbing. It's the kind of stuff you could read on the train, but you're unlikely to remember it for the rest of your days. I counteracted the effect of all that reality and short-term pyrotechnics by reading some surrealist love poetry - http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/098710.html - more to my taste, although the celebratory tone of the surrealist stuff is arguably just as dubious and gendered as the tone of the more cynical grey hens. Best really just to go and eat a cake.

It shouldn't be here!

This is a forget-me-not that really is not supposed to be in our garden, but I like it.

Spookily enough, our poetry group was delving into the past today. There was a great poem about the remains of a Tudor banquet, another one about the ghost of Jacqueline du Pré and I came up with this poem about borders.

ON FIRST CROSSING THE IRON CURTAIN

One eighties morning, we and our coachload
went through the few metres of road and,
feeling young and tanked up on Weissbier,
decided to wave to the guard, just before
she boarded the coach, and looked at
our faces and passes and lives.

Having processed that look, now, some
thirty years later, much closer to
that town next door called death, the place
where we'll be picked up by the thing
we're trying to fence out and fleece,
our bounded humanity,

I want to set off along a line, stroll
along the cheeks and the eyes and
the tomato-rouged lips of Frau Whatever,
all of a sudden smiling and then
darkening as the alsations barked.

Memories: strange-toned streetlamps
beside a moving walkway, where
distance is hard to judge and
we half-panic as we turn the bend.