Lucky Me

by Fred Simpson

  Exempt, absorbing blue,

  devoid of all but filtered light,

  the sky looked down

  impartially, and drew

  the faintest veil over night.

  It witnessed, without

  affect, and without the

  prerogative of right,

  a bird attached to fireworks

  take flight, explode,

  and then ignite.

  MOTHER AND CHILD

  Staring from an oscillating face,

  unprotected and pocked

  by the arrows of expanding time,

  the moon has no memory

  of birth. It was burst from the

  belly of a blasted earth, and held,

  umbilically,

  by a mother’s mysterious force.

  She of course is losing

  her grip, but imperceptibly,

  (her foetus won’t snap free):

  She’s tilted with pride

  and drugged by monotonous spin.

  It will take an infinite warp till

  she sees his face

  recede with the diminishing

  pull of the tide.

  THE TOSS

  If Death insisted that you choose

  between breathing out and breathing in

  harmonicas would argue that you couldn’t lose,

  flutes that you couldn’t win;

  but harps would say that you need no breath,

  would see no gain from either choice,

  for they have donned the shrouds of Death

  and stay suspended in its voice.

  ACT TWO

  The moon subsumes the sun,

  surreptitiously, like a phagocyte

  a mite, dimming day into night,

  using tentacle, not bite,

  choosing fear before fright -

  the moon subsumes the sun.

  Act Two, scene four, line 1.

  THE CORE

  Hawk sight and dog scent, plus

  the touch of Keller,

  might help us

  to travel chemical, to reach

  a bottom quark,

  or even dark

  matter for that matter.

  Throw in the blind

  for their hearing, (and,

  if he doesn’t mind,

  a raging chef), then my goodness

  we would soar

  high, or even bore

  like moles into the molten.

  SUBURBIA

  Unexpectedly the ice-stone

  sank, where the heart berths,

  tethered if you know your anatomy

  to a desolate suburb

  of flat and featureless terrain

  in the brain – without arched mountains

  as a backdrop, without caressing

  sycamore for shade – a pastel

  zone, a wither zone.

  And to dissolve the stone

  he sought the chaos of the centre,

  where crickets shrieked,

  where tree stems offered sweet

  latrines for dog and drunk,

  where rhythm beat the terror

  out of night, alone.

  FOUR

  Sevenths

  ALIENATION

  Safely placed on the moon

  I watched the earth spill

  yolk, as it split into two.

  Dust smoked, and cups

  of crust lost poise,

  while water tried to fall.

  I saw one continent break

  into bits, like chocolate,

  and another buck the way

  loose wire does when

  live. To be honest I could

  have given up and cried,

  because the rest of the sky

  took absolutely no notice.

  I had the option of staying

  on the moon, of making a

  permanent home there, but

  everyone had gone, everyone;

  so I reattached my wings

  and flew towards the sun.

  WISHING

  I look out from the living

  without the clarity of youth,

  towards history, arriving

  by light at light speed, late.

  Previous suns, spelling an

  elemental tale, feign

  nonchalance, and blink;

  too remote to influence

  the living, (driven by reliable

  light), to think. Instead they

  look in, towards silos of brutal

  waste, greed and ambition.

  I am past wishing and prefer

  apparition, the unsettling

  hologram, the gossamer

  sliver of pearl in gas lace.

  LINARIA

  At equinox

  when light and dark divide

  he fetches tools. Hand

  trowels, fowl droppings, collected

  seed; and turns

  the hibernating soil.

  His neck corrects

  for gravity with chalk

  on chalk, and weightless grains

  are lifted pinched

  between his father’s bones.

  In ancient

  brain his mother, thin

  in cotton, leads him past

  the angled fig. Past

  rock that clipped his toe.

  They fling dry seed

  and dip their biscuit halves in

  tea. Next thought she calls

  him round from play. They

  scan, indelibly, an oblong

  joy. His feet stick firm

  in dry dust, and

  he startles like wing.

  With thick saliva tasting of

  kiss, he stoops to rake

  then wet the modern earth.

  Nails and implements are washed

  clean, the dog is given a stick; and

  he waits for colour.

  LUCKY ME!

  I believe in luck!

  Shot – or not – by a ricochet.

  Squashed like a frog when a block

  collapses – or not.

  I forfeit hymn,

  outrage and despair. The

  elements are indifferent. They

  obey physics, not prayer; they

  jump to commands from a seething

  earth writhing – or resting – flailing

  their arms when it storms – combing

  their hair when it calms.

  I believe in luck!

  Caught in the gaze of a

  lion – or eaten up.

  MEETING

  A fitful dream (the type

  provoked by alcohol or meat)

  is like running in toffee.

  The most that one can

  hope for is to meet

  a kind ghost.

  Last week in such a dream

  (it could have been the heat)

  I met my mother.

  I knew it was my mother

  because the arms were hers

  and because she wore my feet.

  I tried, like any boy would, to

  touch her cheek and speak,

  but hand and tongue were wrapped

  in web, and weak. I tried

  once more to reach her face, but

  it was skewed, and turned into a sheet.

  RAT

  At my age even a rat, running

  snout low, has me sucking air.

  To glimpse wild, (the there … and gone)

  is a surprise, an unanticipated gift

  unsnapped … a story half-believed,

  uncomfortable, envied.

  Like a disappearing snake

  there is an impulse, always late,

  to corner and destroy

  the marvel, to own and out-manoeuver,

  to carve a triumph out of

  petty stone.

  But rats are safe with me!

  I have the time to stay on guard,

  to catch another instant

  of
uncertainty when fermions collide,

  (or is it bosons?

  or mesons?

  or even smaller ‘strings’?)

  I’ll have to wait and see.

  SWIMMING BACK

  I remember living,

  swimming.

  I would rise and surface, then

  re-submerge to strain warm

  2liquor through the frill

  that forms my gills;

  oblivious.

  Awareness was instinctual – before

  the smell of father-smoke woke

  love. I was older too, with

  dormant eyes, darting from

  the abstract of predatory mouths;

  while fear was strictly limited,

  (to dish-kiss for example),

  and immortality contained

  in global endometrium.

  Volcanoes would have blacked

  the sea (despite the sun being younger

  then) with basalt, while comets

  would have mesmerized the moon

  and drawn me into shallows.

  Fish? Foetus? Both perhaps, and

  swimming,

  twirling,

  unbothered,

  like innominate nebulae.

  2 Liquor, pronounced ‘lie-cor’, is the fluid surrounding a foetus in utero

  FIVE

  Sevenths

  GIRL SKIN

  It was late enough

  while exercising Alice

  to let her off the lead,

  and safe enough to have

  her sniff wolf urine

  as she pleased.

  I also sniffed, and I

  should have sniffed for

  crimson, for the emblem

  rose, but my nostrils,

  (sensing rebellion and seeking

  out blemish), settled for

  fresh-clipped grass.

  It could have been

  the season of late summer

  (when roses scorch) that stopped

  convention, but I believe it was school

  cricket, (towels at the pool),

  because nasal vibrissae like

  wolves, cherish a smell,

  (especially an itchy smell),

  that remembers girl skin.

  MOTHER’S DAY

  i’ll race you my mother

  said to the house

  and her polka-dot dress

  went flying and her feet

  took off i had never

  seen her run or take her

  shoes off in the sand

  nor had i seen the

  white behind her knees

  it was the last time

  that i was fat as i

  remember and the squeak

  of galloped dust still

  stings with gasp as

  happy as snow on her

  birthday she catches and

  hugs and kisses the salt

  from my eye

  HAPPY EASTER

  (for a friend in Zimbabwe)

  Your walnuts are falling crack

  onto our tin

  roof like bullets, shivering brains that also bounce

  soft on the turf for Alice to snack

  with her wolf jaw.

  She nibbles to find the right plane,

  the sagittal suture

  that gives like a vice-caught tooth;

  not shattering, not bursting, not

  leaving the root; but brute

  force nevertheless.

  And your roses are banking, John,

  on a frostless Easter

  and a hidden moon, especially the pink rose outside

  your outside room. With autumn all but gone

  it will have to stand

  idle and shoulder the wait for a happier bloom.

  For Alice though the season

  offers coat-oil and approved prey, cranial

  fuel in cerebral folds, shelled memory for

  her seven worn years

  till your walnuts are falling.

  3UMZINGWANE, RIVER REMEMBERED

  The river, vivid in remembering,

  separates a boulder

  from a blue, perched fisher - a

  kingfisher - sharpening its beak.

  Flood wood, water smell

  fresh with oxygen, canvass

  shoes, and our own fire

  for the flames. That, and a

  stunned worm stopped wriggling,

  to catch small bream.

  Further up the bank beyond the

  willow is a cow bell, and a cow boy

  whipping, slipping in cow shit

  and cracked mud. We listen and

  search for a beetle that is tapping, tapping.

  But the river, resembling philosophy,

  reassembles myth and memory,

  wets synaptic furrows that imagine

  they are dry, and flushes

  old veins with pomegranate dye.

  3 The Umzingwane River in Zimbabwe

  FUN FEAR

  Searching for a thought

  to frame the terror-virgin

  giggle, the chill-thrill, the

  Poe poem, Edith’s Snake,

  or Granny’s cracking wart,

  I double back, reverse

  my metamorphosis and

  enter storm drains, Sunday

  city buildings, port

  bars, until, finally, I squirt

  into a sperm, and

  wriggle through her ostium

  more quickly than I ought.

  FUCHSIA

  Because of shade, (and our

  ineptitude), fuchsia have assumed ascendancy in

  the garden. Their leaves have a preference for tree-soft

  light and they thrive like fungus

  in damp-shelter.

  We have a host of coy

  varieties (close to twenty four or more)

  which dangle like bright shells

  at a festival. Everyone’s favourite is

  voodoo, and it is impressive,

  (being double red and magenta with arms

  that need support); but my

  personal preference (among fuchsia)

  is for varieties with subtle leaves.

  If there’d been less shade

  however, and less rain in our garden, we

  might have been more successful with rose

  bushes or agapanthus.

  But, to take the argument one step

  further, (and I might be disclosing

  more than is wise), let me

  confess that we would, if we could exhume

  our African sun, consider replacing the

  garden’s fuchsine splendor with poinsettia.

  Their petals you see (although

  they aren’t actually petals), flap like

  giant lips.

  Please don’t tell the fuchsia though, what we miss,

  that we hanker after lost piercings

  of scarlet blue, as they too can turn away their glance,

  and, as you know, they too would rather dance

  than kiss.

  FROM THE OLD SCHOOL

  We are seeds

  dispersed, borne

  on wind current and wave,

  ejected with pessimistic ease

  from long pods.

  We left parent

  trees dropping iris on

  the old school,

  as we floated and flew

  to new loam.

  We are grafted

  now, into composites,

  hybrids half-happy,

  uncomfortable in the wet

  island wind ; and

  We raise seeds

  ourselves now, in settled rhythm,

  sending up sap in the spring,

  hiding root-hunger

  and hurt in the soil.

  We are flowers

  as well, unfurling and spilling

  iris-blue, softening asphalt

  and fields, the way


  jacarandas do.

  SIX

  Sevenths

  COW

  Watch a cow

  eat. She bends perpetually

  over mud-green

  grass, but spurns, like

  cooked carrot, unpalatable dock.

  Watch for long

  enough, and she will

  move/chew/move - without

  ever looking up – without

  ever taking stock.

  Watch for longer

  still, and you will notice

  her herd turn toy, turn

  alloy, turn boy milk; turn

  hands off the clock.

  CRACK ~~~~~~~ CRACK

  The earth is splitting like a fig

  fat in autumn after gust-storm,

  and fissures like fig

  down to raw-pink flesh.

  4Wax-eyes are too heavy

  to fly

  and humans too splintered

  to flee

  filling black.

  Even the atom unhinges

  and prepares to attack:

  Crack ~~~~~~ Crack

  4 Small fruit-eating birds in Australasia

  BLAKE’S WORM

  The dark rose is eaten out

  and 5’The invisible worm’ turns

  on autumn cabbage leaves,

  pulling and pushing like Quasimodo,

  masticating, methodically devouring,

  leaving a picked sole

  frame, and a little spittle from

  his pitiless, never-kissed mouth.

  5 ‘The invisible worm’ is a quote from William Blake’s poem

  ‘The Sick Rose’.

  INTERFACE

  Listen to the yellow

  Owl, yellow after

  Waking, eager to be

  Eating, mating,

  Waiting for the dark

  To see.

  Listen to the cello,