The sweet of IS and AM and SHE and ME

Moments I would blaze,

would claim my second mouth

the first and only arbiter of speech,

word made flesh, world made peony,

pink, honey-thick, packed with the sweet

of IS and AM and SHE and ME, enough

to hold back the swirling sour of MUST

and SHOULD and HIM and HE.

Moments I would carve in bas-relief,

choose between two alabasters,

both easy to work and slightly soluble:

calcite, yielding to the knife, (copper

coin etching only when I needed),

or gypsum, unaffected by hydrochloric acid

but so soft that a fingernail could scratch it.

Moments I would sculpt my vagina flowering

from the patriarch’s mural I’d been etched in

as historical accident or design, (it hardly

mattered which), when I would believe

the sweet of IS and AM and SHE and ME

enough to hold back the swirling sour of MUST

and SHOULD and HIM and HE.

Moments I would hymn my vagina

as my own secret, safe succour temple,

an intricate, crimson curling carving,

not mere artefact, nearer to calcium,

close to bone, not vulnerable, not prone,

not the site of intimate carnal savagery,

but home to IS and AM and SHE and ME.

Moments I would know

the swirling sour of MUST and SHOULD

of HIM and HE actually only applied to me.

Moments I would know

he had another sacred place where

word made flesh, world made peony,

pink, honey-thick, was packed with the sweet

of an IS not AM and a SHE not ME.

Moments I would cave,

temple looted, alabaster oracle muted,

acid thrown into the mouth of desire,

vagina purloined by brutal truth,

peony shrunk to dust.

Moments I would wonder

whether the sweet of IS and AM

and SHE and ME is ever enough

to hold back the swirling sour of MUST

and SHOULD and HIM and HE.

 The sweet of IS and AM and SHE and ME was first published by Basilinda in April, 2024 at https://basilinda.com/publications/poetry/MKRpj5J2e77T1cgX5lwh

The Dying of Baal

The Dying of Baal

In ancient Syria it was said

if the paid mourners did not wail

and play their flutes,

the fire snake of grief,

the demon Bhalak, would stir

and scorch the bereft

from the inside out.

I bury one hand in the dirt.

With the other I throw dust

over my head. I am barefoot.

I do not eat.  My bloodless hair

I pluck and tear: Syria is dead

and all the professional

mourners have fled.

Oh Syria! With the god of Storm

and Dew now thunder-mute

in Homs, Aleppo, Damascus and Palmyra,

without the rip of shirt and flesh,

un-memoried, the thousand silences,

thick and slow, stand on the banks

of the Orontes, a living mist,

wordless as the dead.

I thrust one hand into my chest.

With the other I scratch black scars

in a lost language of Body:

some, any, every, no.

The earth burns my feet.

My blistered tongue swells

with seared and serpent breath. 

The Dying of Baal was first published by Bird’s Thumb in 2018 at http://birdsthumb.org/vol5-3-oct18

Mortmain

Mortmain

                        ‘No es el amor quien muere,

 somos nostros mismos’  Cernuda

Here I am

shrouded in family.

Did Plath love her babies?

Did Stevens love his wife?

I know

Akhmatova loved her son,

watched for him every day outside the gaol

that long winter in St Petersburg which was

Leningrad by then,  

though in the end it was Tsvetayeva,

two babies down, now just the son,

her husband dead

and hungry,

all the lovers,

loose-leaf touch, long gone

who tied the filthy noose

around her neck

in that dingy shack

in that deep

black

wood.

I watch her swing,

Destiny,

a deciduous leaf in the wind,

a gorgeous vegetable forest frost

untainted

by the mortmain

of family.

I sometimes wonder whether Plath

even noticed the petrifying lump of coal

that was her Ted spouse.

Stalin made it necessary

to write a poem on a scrap

and read it and burn it

and pass it on,

like the word of God,

a tongue inserted into the

mouth of the living dead

for Ahkmatova and her friends

in the silver age

when Stalin was a family man.

He saved the man of clouds,

crossed out his name on the execution list,

condemning him to the despot’s wrinkled kiss.

Poor Pasternak of the Arab horse’s face

would have preferred I think

a longer phone call

or a scrap of paper, read and burnt

to watching his Osip rival’s end.

Did Anna and Marina ever forgive,

do you think, his

incoherent stammering?

Is it love that dies

or us?

Each poem a scrap

read and burnt,

burnt and read

on our coal tongues,

whispered through our blackened lips,

grit.

Grit and bite and

pass it on so that the living dead

know to breathe,

to spurn

the rope

and wait,

sewn up in white,

on the failure of a heart

in a lovely dacha,

in Komarovo

in the midnight light.

Mortmain was first published in Some Other Damn Rainbow -Unsanctioned Writing of the Middle East, ed. Hind Shoufani (Beirut) 2012

The vacillations of the scholar Wu Mi (㕦宓) 1894-1978

The vacillations of the scholar Wu Mi (㕦宓) 1894-1978

At ten I knew myself blind. I looked through tiny windows and

my fortress memory began to covet ochre and septic yellow sands.

At twelve I ventured into the chamber and dreamt in scarlet.

I added a hundred hesitant vermillion birds to floating golden lotus feet,

gathered bushels of soot-drenched fabrics, paper, horse-hair brushes,

an ink block, clouds of noodles and grandma’s pickles in jars,

arranging them in baskets along the inside walls of my den.

At seventeen I cut my braid, dipped it into night and painted my new name:

Wu Mi, a feeble sole certainty from which all manner of doubts and vacillations

spread as cobwebs across the eaves of my stone-clad remembering.

Wrapped in mind for sixty years, always more intimate than naked,

I peered and peered over the wall at love, one hair dropped

with each dawn’s regret, loosed for everything they do not accuse me of.

Wu Mi, the lover who loved in hollows and hard-mud voids, treading

shallow grey thresholds of an eternal innocence called tomorrow.

In death it is not that I come to understand what my life has been

(I have carried the dark as a torch, a palpitating doubt, the inner check,

chiming morality is to hesitate): in death it is that I cease to understand life.

I find that, as my red-sore sure accusers scale the walls, I admire them.

At seventy-six my eyes are stones, but I see them come at me as the sun.

Wu Mi was a philosopher who worked on Doubt. He was a Chinese Kierkegaard in a way. He was struggled against and killed during the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976)

The vacillations of the scholar Wu Mi (㕦宓) 1894-1978 was long listed for the UK National Poetry Competition in 2017.

Forest Bath

Forest bath[1]

Whether of bark or blood, word or water,

whether intended or arranged,

whether the sleek of your hand,

whether you take ‘just one sip’ from the flask,

whether almond blesses arsenic,

whether grace is all that is meant,

whether the poet paints with water on the path,

whether the conifer’s a miser and you soap your shirt in pine,

whether persimmon aroma longs for, longs for, longs for,

whether a pale paint line stops the bitter creeping,

whether a stall to the pretence of evergreen,

whether this slow congress of silent trees,

whether a sure one-hundred-year heartbeat of the mountain,

whether you  …  wait,

whether my mottle shoulder curves your polished back,

whether bark or blood, word or water: congress.

[1] Forest bathing in Mandarin is 森林浴 sēnlínyù

 Forest Bath was first published In An Anthology: a collection of poems by Will Harris and friends of the Chinese Write Now Festival 2022. It was long listed in the UK National Poetry Competition in 2017

Spirit cage, our personal Guantanamo

Spirit cage, our personal Guantanamo

The air between the bars keeps us in.

The ones we love accost us with their needs,

hold the cage keys,

gently swinging,

tinkle,

at their belts.

We chain ourselves with duty.

We endure for those we love,

wear orange and keep the head down low,

appearing to accept what history does.

Duty of care,

as if we choose

when this

just

IS.

We turn our hearts to loving

others

to be happy,

to survive,

believing selfishness

to be

the stabber

sin:

the sinister, sulky reverse

of succour,

our personal survival

last..

lost,

welded in

oblivion.

But,

I find,

I am not you,

I find we are not

we.

I find

that not

being able to do the things

I need to do for me,

not being able to love and be loved by the ones

I need,

myself and my twin in love,

and loving my family who I love

but who are not

you,

and who are not

me....

I find sitting cross-legged inside the cage

in the blazing heat and the midnight pinning, pining pen

ends

the will

to live,

the reverse of captive cannibal courage:

coeur.

Is this tawdry self-pity?

This is nothing at all reflexive or reflective

socially definable

economically advisable,

sensible or foolish,

bourgeois or trailer trash,

this is neither bright nor dim

this is nothing at all to do with

the light,

I would say.

.....

Is this trivial?

the dark blood weir,

sluice-gate

foundering

fate,

beyond government

structuring, morality,

not the pristine public snare

at all,

the personal Guantanamo?

Perhaps.

This is  

just

the ability to breathe and have a heartbeat

keeping me

alive.

It is, I find,

impossible to carry on for long

when one is,

when the heart is,

grid-locked into

stop.

Even the inconsiderate flesh

rejects,

the body wretch,

even the solitary spirit cage

ejects

such a soul

as it tries to cling

with hands

of blood and water

to the bars

that let it

go.

Spirit cage, our personal Guantanamo was first published in Some Other Damn Rainbow -Unsanctioned Writing of the Middle East, ed. Hind Shoufani (Beirut) 2012

My love

My love

My love is a suicide seed.
It can’t repeat,
has sterile fruit,
is no more than a tiny casket of dust, a residue of last year’s bloom.

One small spurt, an outcrop,
a long long
time ago

and then,
and now, nothing:
husk of musk, barren dirt.

Is this God’s way of making me come back to the source,

so that I will
pay
again?

My love was first published in Some Other Damn Rainbow -Unsanctioned Writing of the Middle East, ed. Hind Shoufani (Beirut) 2012

Life without rain

Life without rain

Parchment.
When I prostitute my fears like this
I take my payment for the raised hair
on the back of your arched neck,
for the rippling chicken skin,
for the way you look longer through the window

at the unstained sky,
in the dreamless repose
of the serial
rapist.

When I slake my thirst for recognition

I cannot see diversity.
We women are all one.
You are me and I am you,

Plucked,
naked,
torn and bruised.

When I talk of things that tear the belly

from the pig of existence
I plant the echo in the corner
of another woman’s mind

and clone the pain, the fright,

the bane, the doubt,
the yellow stench of inability.

Better parched, an arid mute,
Better break my typing fingers in the vice

clamped to the basement bench,
Better sew up my mouth with poultry twine,

swamp my dreams some other way,
and stop this clawing
at the ground.

Life without rain was first published in Some Other Damn Rainbow -Unsanctioned Writing of the Middle East, ed. Hind Shoufani (Beirut) 2012

So?

So?

So?

So, she starches your shirts,

turns your collars,

and

replenishes

all your

underwear

every

three

months.

Spick and span!

So?

Wouldn’t you rather she took you in her mouth and

pulled on you

like she is dragging the shirt off a fidgety child?

Don’t you still want her to

....

draw you out until

you release from the depths of your belly

the moan

that is the nearest you can come

to a pin-striped

cosmic om

.....

which while it lasts

threads every part of you

onto

the silk skein of the frothing web

that spreads out

to every last corner

of the

universe?

‘Well, yes

and

no’

you say...

You say

you would prefer

to have

...

both...

So?

So, you already know that,

as time succeeds

where you

don’t,

eventually

you’ll prefer the shirt.

So,

you tell me as a mark of pride

that she is very clean.

So?

So, explain to me why this one thing

will never change

will always stay the same,

explain to me

that feeling as you button up

your freshly laundered shirt,

break out new pants,

pull on your navy

matching

socks,

explain to me

how spick and span

and primped and cleaned,

she makes you feel

like

dirt?

So? was first published in Some Other Damn Rainbow -Unsanctioned Writing of the Middle East, ed. Hind Shoufani (Beirut) 2012

Art of the Heart

Art of the Heart

Hearing is the art of the heart,
temperance, a shadow in the forest.
A stirring.
Light through the leaves, the furtive kiss to shade,
gathers up the silences,
wraps, arranges tendril tone in time:
all things uttered without a throat.
Here the fish have wings, angels of the weed.
Flutters edge the riverbank, a whispering
caught like dew drenched dawn webs in the hedgerow,
this marshy site of sound,
heart of the ark of a covenant, suctioned, muddied in forevers,

out and out, reverberate
out and out, carry
gentle infinites, refract the cobwebbed strain.
Here hear this then how
wood flesh water earth noise reaches for a name.

Art of the Heart was published by the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2013: http://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/images/uploads/Wing_Did_I_Hear_That.pdf

Making like a tree

Making like a tree

I didn’t know she curled up

in the dog basket

under the table,

a spaniel croissant,

smelling of faster heartbeats

and dough, waiting,

pressing fingers into the tufts

between leathery-paw outcrops,

buttered ears and whisperings,

when he came

home.

She didn’t know I stood

in the yard making like a tree

tied to the clatter, bump, slam,

dropping like raindrops drop

onto my outstretched hands,

house-held, resenting

the latch-click thunder split,

after the slick light porch torching,

‘Come in now!’

Now we are still for all

the wrong reasons:

I creak when I grow,

this tree a river,

the sky an ocean I hurtle into

my xylem waters breaking over

unseen, unspoken, vascular

copings; She bakes to perfection

a sugary, smile-bedecked doll,

yoga stretching, muscled

for the practiced coil

farings.

If we speak at all of Syria

we ventriloquize surprise

at children shaping bodies

to the logic of fear,

along the ridges proffered

by the last elementary,

a stroking of dog’s ears

and making like trees

in the rain,

the vestigial wild, a nestling,

protect against commune.

We know it is necessary

to make a tramp

of the heart.

Making like a tree was first published by The Perspective Project in 2017: https://www.theperspectiveproject.co.uk/single-post/2017/11/26/Making-like-a-tree

Temptation

Temptation

My temptation is to tell you

that

I do not love you, Archangel,

to tell you

that

I am not

still

a volcano

hurling molten ash

up

into the orange skies.

My temptation is to claim,

that

I am

now

dormant, quiet,

obedient

....

to the dulcet lime-infused

harmonies

of steady etiquette

and muffins by the fire,

with stoked up in-laws,

strapped down desires,

and an appreciation

of rolling greens,

clipped hedges,

village fetes

and the principles of social preservation,

the harnessing of human potential

to the good

of an imagined, scripted bourgeois

.....

security.

Archangel,

my temptation is to tell you that

the delicate rose of tranquillity

and a future clothed in comfort

and polite considerations

.....

moves me,

is the glacial silvered zenith

to which I do aspire.

....

My temptation is to tell you

that

I am not

a spitting, blazing, cracked

Vesuvius,

that

I am not

raining down my fury,

my fire,

my pure black and crimson

fulminating

cataclysmic

desire

on

an entire civilization,

like

the incandescent fiery and wholly destructive

ever-unfolding flower

that

I am.

My temptation is to tell you this, Archangel,

solely

so that, over porcelain cups of Lapsang tea

and finger foods with tiny useless napkins

and silver

edge-less knives,

I can sit with you

folded in your crimson wings

and

......

erupt.

‘Temptation’ is the poem used by Mark Hamilton Gruchy in his film which won the Near Nazareth Festival Competition in 2016. :  https://vimeo.com/144136085

Bloomberg Ballet in the Russian Airport

Bloomberg Ballet in the Russian Airport

Pungent haggard stocks await the bell.

Emotions low?

What will spike the graph today?

Thinly traded Fear in Kyrgyzstan,

Suspicions arid in the Pamir hills or

Uzbek Securities?

Listened to, but for the moment,

yield unknown? 

Savvy investors know, or think they know,

the Sorrow frost hollow

has no currency in the Turkmen fire

pits because, if they don’t know,

no-one knows.

Nothing sells without a price.

The Turkmen ballet dancer

is leaving Domodedovo

now that Muscovites have

the remaindered brutish Guilt

of Dostoyevsky,

but not the Grace. 

She bids higher than her mother,

her moving average

Sentiment over Survival.

Smoke regales her pert Resignation

in the smoking cube, ‘I have to keep

moving.’  Thin, elegant

cigarettes and dancing feet

indicate she’s open to offers

and, with Fertility stock rising

since the tax year end,

she’ll likely reap more, though,

in such emerging markets, she is quizzical

– an eyebrow arabesque, ‘Blue chip Love? 

This IPO is not yet launched!

This I cannot trade!’  

Spindles spiral down the chart of Feeling

Foolish risk. The screens are black. 

The veins shine red, blue, yellow, green,

night rainbows in the dark Indifference

of cash emotions. Keep trading!

Tick, tick, tick, keep the tabs aglow!

The market opens to a sudden

dip in Bangladesh. They’ve been awake

for hours and clothing soaked and sunken

homes and children, yes, the children,

cause a rush on Grief.  Buy, buy, buy! 

Let’s cling to it like a raft

in this opportune flood of Losing! 

The knock-ons, add-ons, benefits:

Disease and Hunger and Distress,

Destitution receivables, a frisson

in futures as Devastation in a peony

pink sari fills the crystal sheet,

raises the ask, so forecasts jitter

and then begin to soar

for Misery and Hopelessness,

which have been bearish

for almost a hundred days

but now positively leap the chart. 

We’d almost forgotten

the Dispossessed in Ingushetia,

had thought returns too poor

for our interest, but a shadow

on the glass, there, a flicker about the eyes

of the pink girl clinging to the tree

as she pleads for rescue

from the news helicopter

reminds us of the look we saw

on that bleary woman

stooped praying by the Winter tanks,

honour-stripped and desperate back then. 

We watch Oppression and Misfortune,

Have them designed by foreign brands,

graph-line emotions running out and low,

drained and dwarfed, the everywhere

locked behind the screen, not receivable,

no profit there or here.

By coffee time we are shedding

stocks of Pain and Injury,

barrel bombs producing puzzles

of babies’ body parts, the banks

of Fear tuned in to forecast that

the emotional stock-market

is taking a dive again.

Exports of Frustration and Anxiety

unexpectedly decline,

though phones are ringing in

with Agonies in Georgia,

trenchant tear-stained Fruitlessness

 in Egypt and Ukraine.

There’s nothing left to sell in Libya,

and Israel and Palestine

have patents pending seemingly

eternally on Pain and Gain,

Psychological Torment and Despair.

Through a glass starkly into the dark

heart of media exploitation reserves,

the banks of Fear topple shares

of Death ash energies until

the Turkmen ballet dancer’s flight

is called and as the early moon

swings high, she waves farewell,

and still we cry, ‘Sell, sell, sell

before the clanging of the bell!’

Bloomberg Ballet in the Russian Airport was first published in 2021 by ASPZ Lines in Shanghai.