Wolf Tongue
Page 17
It will rain, which is a day I love most, daddy. It will
pour and drip like a wound in the funny black sky. And I
will be in a badly repaired car in a field not quite the green
of the paint on at least one of the walls of the Durham
Family Practitioner Committee surgery in its handsome
building, daddy. And I think, daddy, that the car idling
on the sill of the soaking sike will be black too.
And I will hunch out of the driver seat, and
I will look at the rain and strangely enough be glad of the
rain. And this is what I learned, this is what my headwounds
and my heartstrips, and my little bookstrips were written on, pa,
da, daddy, père, this is what they told me in the red
wounds which are woven across me like very bad ribbons, daddy.
They were very reasonable, daddy, most personable,
no slyness involved, no letters unsigned posted in
Cambridge from the Headquarters of Insecure Fathers,
for that is what you are, daddy, after all, a father.
But believe me, the cheeky chappy behind you in the
miserable family photographs, you were never a father to me.
You were never a father and you were never a friend.
You saved my brother from drowning, daddy, you saved
your youngest son. O thank God, daddy. If you
can love a brother more than a brother, da, I love Paul.
Our Paul, da. But it is not enough to try and find a
redundant welder in the Durham Family Practitioner Committee
and after angry handshakes and solidarity exchanges
at the closure of another
worldwide great shipyard that I might in my poetic
unappreciated nightmare about you, daddy, ask for
flux to weld my utterly broken heart to yours in
some kind of common long lost at last agreement. I
cannot, daddy, I just cannot. The keys of my agelong
Olympia typewriter, my brilliant friend, which I carry with
me from here to there, all of those thousands of words
which I heaped against you one way or the other, for
hatred of you, or for lost love of you, and that you
never respected me for what I did.
And what they told me – and they did not know that they
had told me – in the Durham Family
Practitioner Committee, is that one day, daddy, one darkly liquid jewelled day,
I will stand
As the wind and western rain sweep from the Atlantic
into Strabane, I will bulge my shoulders, more used
to pushing open the off-licence door, bulge them
from the driver side window, all the time thinking of my beloved,
but let me tell you, daddy, what they told me, in between
the units leaflets, when I was reading them on the
badly-lit late bus going home, this is what they told me.
I would be getting out of the driver seat of the
poorly parked badly repaired car going home
in the sight of the bungalows, and they are always bungalows, daddy,
and the poorly repaired car is always black, da, it’s
always black in a black spud-filled field, and always
a black day, or another Bloody Sunday, or any other
bloody bad day or month or year you dare to mention. And I will
get out of the car and I will heave my boots
across the turf and beyond the spuds, daddy,
do you remember, daddy, that’s why we all left Ireland,
why we were always so envious of America, dadaddy, that’s
why we were always so Popish proud, and it was raining,
belting down,
you know the rain, da, the rain we love so much, the soft rain
and the hard rain, on the rivers and hills, when we went fishing,
and it swept our very love away. And every day when we woke
it was there
as we walked up it was right in our faces.
And what they told me, was that I
will be almost half out of the black car, the Austin
A40, knee deep, god help me already, in the stricken wastes
of Crossmaglen and ugly Strabane, in the permanent borders
of crossfire, bull-horn warnings, rain-dulled crackle of
walkie talkies barely heard from soaking ditches, and the cross-hairs
of my heart, for this terrain, and terrain is all it is, a word with
a bleakness to it all of its own, despite a false disguise of green,
there my heart will be, steady as a drum for Billy, cold
as the kneecapping street on the outskirts, bizarre
as the surreal paintings on gable ends of those horse-riding men
in grand plumage and cockades.
Rain sheets down Hollywood-style, bigger than it is in nature.
No use hunching against it now. Collar up and the clava on and
right hand in pocket to make sure as the white-painted and pebble-dashed
bungalows worm out before me in their cheap mediocrity.
Rain their priceless diadem.
What goes through my cross-hairs heart at this time, in the final trudge,
are the beatings and berations, the betrayals of one who expected to
be loved. But then the ultimate repayment with thanks after the beltings
and verbal child abuse, when I sped up myself through sport and poetry
to be a robust youth with knockdown ideas of his own. And here was the
bungie, no more than a byre with net curtain, sidelights, bad carriage
lights, and leaden crossed porch torch as depicted on miscellaneous
false Yuletide postcards – and white oblong chime bell, which I pressed.
At least it was not Beethoven’s Fifth and no dog barked: unusual.
All of that gunfire in the choke of the city, just over there. Orange
city council lights psychedelically flashed with Black and Tan
electric blue sweeps. We rocked like that in the sixties when we
fled from the various dictators and authorities. You for example, daddy.
A lad, a snow-haired cheeky chappy lad with little turned up smile
came to the door with eager I’ll get it as he ran down the short hall
to the unsnecked chrome handle and yanked it in. Not more than seven,
just like the deadly sins, daddy, a wee white shirt, short pants and
Clark’s sandals, eyes
still drugged with the wonders of what he had been reading in his
pocket Aesop’s Fables. He wasn’t daft at all. You could see the
awesomely distasteful glow of the red bulb imitation coal effect
from the living-room fire, and he ushered me in up the hall
the little snow-haired lad with hand outstretched inviting
me in from outside the pebble glass wind resistant door
as I felt in my pocket and asked him in a voice only loud
enough for him to hear:
Is your daddy home?
Angel Showing Lead Shot Damage
Let’s dab a double finger half-pissed kiss on Muddy’s lips. O
she’s sixteen years old.
Tonight in the troubletorn heartland where heroes die and play,
in the knightly arenas of vainglory, demons’ candle dancing
and lancing of the moon’s throat will see us down
betrayed by feverfaith in love. Howl on, my pounding and delinquent soul
until her gunship
is taken up to tapers of the sunne.
Quenched ferocity, blanched faces turned indifferently
are all the twisted bee rave now.
My sleek torpedo will return, fins aflame
Yet into blood I’m forged, bile and vomit
stranded in the fingers’ stretch
where nurses cannot come
against demonic upheavals of villainous
dread night.
Here the poet will die, pickled and puce.
Dead man walking theme tune.
Number 13 tattooed on his neck.
Beast caged behind frail and fragile bars.
So when loose
it rips the very forest to an hilarity of shreds, bones
and burns
to join her scalding kisses
just a Canon automatic click away.
She is an angel sure, a privy perle
set rod-high
against all pestilence, needle and nag.
Rotten boroughs
of wine and gin
by the busload, look out!
In the land of wet brain and liver dysfunction,
subscriptions for coffin not necessary.
Messrs Demon and Sons see to everything.
And one last gargle before the screws
are twisted in.
Shreds Of Mercy/The Merest Shame
Shunned, ignored, cast off, slung in the bin,
sent from the bridge, pariah man, Mr Negative Endless,
fiercely fingered out by his ice queen and put on ice:
Gazer at photographs, kindler of memories hung on the wall.
But there’s no breathing hot reality here today!
You lean, arms out east west, on the powerful rivetted
spine of our Malevich Suprematist bridge, above
the raging salmon spawning greatest river, but
it is only a picture, and the sky is moonmilk blue.
Today it’s me with the twelve strings, the three
bars, me with the solo harmonica, unaccompanied
raw heart sax machine. Me with the loony frets.
No more us the boon fruits. Me Disney Dumbo big ear re-make.
Big ones, plopping pear drops splash on the silent pathways.
Always the salinations, cheek wiping, straight up
from the human salt beds. What matter this? Don’t ever leave me.
Harmless nightdressed Palladium utterance
it really seems. Yet it blows like thunder
crushing at least one fucked up skull.
When it pops out of my enzyme count I’ll sign for it,
if write I may and can. Don’t bank on it, as in bank.
My great hero Kazimir Malevich, how the moon the other night
was just like your Suprematist plate in 1917, when
you quietly stormed the waiting world
with your railway sidings. I wear a cap in honour of you.
Now I have my CAFE CUBANO – Tueste Oscuro, and
today, with the rosemary flowers so azure
beneath the borage heavens, I,
like you, and Sergei and Vladimir, hate
all of my replicant oppressors, double-breasted
faces, Otis lift tunes all of the way to the boardroom if you fancy.
And Kazimir, I think of your wonderful plate, wonderful
is not too great a word to use. Indeed, it is undervalued
these very salination days, these days of liver expansion.
And Sergei, and Vladimir, I think of your guns,
and what they can eventually do. I used to myself shoot one,
but never at myself, though I have always had reason.
Yes, bless, blessure, bliss and blood, worst and wine
are my saintly, thorny words. I am crowned by them!
Not wearing fur-fringed gloves upon her flinty fingers
which sometimes taxed my shifting planets, she
felt my collar, for I am a drunken criminal of overspent
love, and she threw me in the jail of my terrible life.
Always in the locker of my single-minded lit-stricken cuffs
reaching for the emerald glass cylinder
cork within aperture, and the demons rampant
in their crest cockiness hands down my throat.
Hysterical psychotic drain cleansers.
In With The Stasi
Gnashed fervour licks down like fire
as the diazapam takes over and I lurch worse than drunk
down the locked ward. Barred windows, bedlam,
and all that mashed potato. I am mashed
also, stale holocaust bread without milk.
The autumn leaf which blows its tiny way
through the wonderful universe
before streams sweep it into nowhere.
No milk, just water with the dosage, urine. No wine.
But that is the curse of the Demon who shall always
be known as The One With the Mouth filled
with Rustling, Restless and Relentless Blades.
The wine comes complete with salt! Drink
at your own expense, but lap that brine. Suck
the Dead Sea dry and imagine it best burgundy.
In the hospital, locked and barred in the Harding Ward,
up the redbrown carpet into the first floor mental asylum,
away from the ground floor ward of patients under section,
with a blue carpet, with a phone, as in telephone, booth
working, first charge 20p, 10p not enough, 10p to
the red telephone company and 10p to the new trust,
which frankly seemed minimal, even the most heroic
twig of my family’s tree died for want of mashed spuds
in Cork on the blanket on a prison bedbunk, it’s all
on the gravy train of pills down the dry throat
and the mashed taties a comforting white collar.
I was not there to hold his hand when he died for
freedom and he was not in bedroom 4 to hold mine
when very funny vermilion lines slide viper-like
up the wall escaping the ant-gangs gathering to
plan a throat-choke raid on me at 4.50am.
Knocked up at 7 for the showers, the brain-dumbing
first knock-out of the day, the tick-off from Mr Starched
White Coat with Himmler clipboard, then the shit-brown
bran after a look at the slumped pink cardies to see
if death had come upon them yet. We tumble to
The Trough and exchange our troubles. And when we,
except Tony, dying from self-imposed malnutrition
and not from any kind of certifiable brain disease,
and who was from a village sacked by the shock troops
of this present Government, and not even on a proper
glucose drip, sitting on his bed in Bedroom Four, and
when we, not to repeat to even test your listening boredom,
sank back pill-brained and detoxing into bed, I
knew why in 1994 the windows were still iron-barred.
No corpses to be found on the York stone flags please
or it would have meant deducted funds on April Fools Day.
Pasolini Demon Memo
The Jesus Christ Almighty is a barely stripling bare-chested biker.
Bolting Pharisee jailers shaking shackles and chains, knuckled
love and hate in Galilee blue, ace of clubs across his tanned blades.
He rides into town on a Vincent Black Shadow and moves his feet around.
My territory, his territory.
But we won’t fight it out. We won’t do a Hemingway.
We’ll exchange bike parts, accelerating road stories
and little-known facts about best oil and chrome polish.
In our eyes we can both see it: no curses or cures, both
on a dustbowl highway leading to the cleansing of temples
and the unstrapping of my Goliath gargle gargantuan addiction.
He had telling things to say and I had mine. Townsfolk
arced ar
ound in an awe of wariness and dread, planning
all mock trials ahead.
He had a cross to go to
and I have mine.
O yes, let’s kick some Makem Pharisee
scruffs from the thrash-hot main drag
handing in all badges and spreading allegiance to nobody.
Together let’s beat the smotherers of justice.
Fill her up, load her up, ready to run.
Your blood’s fluxed with serious innocence and grace,
but my tongue tells me I need something stronger.
Ferocity?
Try me my provoked and peppery friend.
Meanwhile, until the thunder rolls
and the street becomes a bloodbath,
come inside and lean against the bar.
Red wine for you, gin for me,
as the menfolk shrink away.
Later we’ll listen to the eternal music of plovers.
You’ll meet Pearl and her unremitting ceaseless silence.
I’ll tie one on, ready for a vomit seizure
alone in the treeline.
Expecting an overcooked cauliflower brain
convulsion, a horizontal twitch dance in the locoweed.
Addicted to alcohol, poet away with the prairie fairies,
the monkeys and the demon mixer.
Ignore me and the medics arriving
stuffing the bottle down a gopher hole.
Stick around.
You’ll make sheriff one day.
Nil By Mouth: The Tongue Poem
Demons, big-hatted and hard-hatted, far as gutter-toppled
squint-eye with grapple-lost spectacles can see, custard brain
head slanty on kerbside perch, vomit ready for a roller ride
into the X-rated, dog arse emptying unlit street, mongrel eyeing
the demon conveyors from here to eternity, bottle after bottle,
twisted cork to twisted head and unscrewed, screwed-up life,
over the slag heap of stonegrey aggregate from the moony saltpan
beds where the stones will surely lie upon my swollen liver,