Three poems from The Wash

The Wash

It will all come out in the wash, they say
in the great, grand wash of Time
with the spin cycle of our good Earth each day
and the soak and the suck of the tide
And every disruptive distraction
will disperse to much less than it seems
as everything currently consuming us
dissolves like yesterday's dreams


Okay as me

The sun on my face
the gentlest of breeze
a glass of refreshment
my fine lady to squeeze
The wash of the water
the wisps of high cloud
a good planet turning
a hill high and proud
The green and the gold
the sun bright and warm
the strangest of feelings
that it was good to be born
A purpose that beckons
A reason to be
A quiet realization
that I'm okay as me


Aileen’s song

Your universe is vast and wide
but part of hidden greatness
beside you and inside of you
of spaces you can’t access
That is where the secrets lie
of how you come to be here
the pointed process and the why
so far from you, but near
The masters and the servants
the creatures and their minds
offer only fleeting glimpses
of the truths you cannot find

One night in Leith

From my memoir book In Vivo

...I am now vividly remembering that it was late one winter night in a flat in Leith when I decided to rise from my bed to investigate the prolonged shouting that had been coming from the top floor balcony, just one flight of stairs above my own.

For about ten minutes a drunken male voice had been screaming many foul-mouthed variations on the theme of, 'let me in', while a muffled woman's voice had been reiterating, 'go away', in several foul-mouthed variations also. Then for a while the stairwell had gone silent, until I heard a loud metallic scraping and a heavy panting slowly ascending the stairs and past my door.

I looked out through the thin crack beside my letterbox flap to see an old and dishevelled man staggering slowly upwards, dragging a scaffolding pole behind him. It was a short linking section, maybe six feet long. I reckoned he was too drunk to notice me, so I opened my door as he reached the top floor and I leaned out sideways just enough to look up.

I could see him as he began hammering the pole against the first door of the top floor like a battering ram, and he was screaming again. 'Let me in! Let, (bang) me, (bang) in, (bang) you fucking (bang) fucker!' The final bang was followed by the crash of the pole falling onto the stone stairway.

The woman inside began screaming. The old guy lifted up the pole again and resumed his attack on the door.

I went back into my flat and headed for the phone, but someone must have beaten me to it because just as I picked up the handset I heard the police siren out on the street below.

The timing of what happened next was exquisite. With my door shut again and my face pressed to the letterbox I heard, and then saw, the two burly policemen running upwards, two steps at a time, but then pausing momentarily on my landing to gasp for breath and for one of them to wail, 'Why does it always have to be the top floor!' And just as they tackled the first step towards the top floor I caught a glimpse of the drunk old guy, walking quite swiftly downwards.

As the policemen approached him he blurted out, 'Thank Christ you're here lads, the buggers are going crazy!' 

And just as the policemen rushed on past him I heard the door of the flat directly above me open and the young lad who lived up there shouted out, 'What the fuck are you...?'

But the phrase was never finished as the first policeman must have charged into him, and from the heavy thud above my head it was pretty clear he had knocked the young lad to the floor.

Then the jumbled chaos of angry voices began: 'What the fuck are you doing?' 'Oh it's you again sonny is it?' 'What the fuck?' 'Stop struggling! You're under arrest.' 'Me? What the...' 'Shut up! Didn't you get enough of this last week eh?'

Then a scuffle, a few kicks, a punch. A wail. Then a bit of quiet. The jangle and click of handcuffs, I presumed, then I heard, 'You stupid fucking Keystone Cops! I wasn't doing anything. It was the old guy. I was just coming to see what it was all about!'

'Shut up!'

Some more scuffling. The sound of another door opening, then an elderly woman's voice asking, quite calmly, 'What are you arresting him for? It was my old man Jim that was kicking in my door. Where is he? Have you let him go?' 

I left my door and walked through my lounge to look out of the window, just in time to see the old guy - Jim I presumed - wandering down the path into the dark parkland across the road...

Mystery's song

We are the universe become aware, say some. All one consciousness, some claim. Each mind an island connected by a deep sea floor. Each individual an unknowing part of so much more. We are all one, each mother, father, daughter, son, back to the dawn of conscious minds and forward into the never ending stretch of time. Expand, contract, bang and crunch, the pulsating universe, the first free lunch. Birth and death mere illusory breathing, of the greater thing that is forever living. But… nobody has any knowledge really, science, church, mystic, seer. The questions always stay the same, and final answers never draw near. Details, structure, trickery, yes, but the ultimate anything is anyone’s guess. And even our guesses will be insufficient, in light of our senses so weakly deficient. Keep asking, keep questing, keep probing, go on, but you’ll simply add verses to mystery’s song.

Night walking

The old lady with the grey face and pink dressing gown looks older each evening, which I suppose she is, but why, I wonder, does she sit there with wide open curtains in a brightly-lit lounge, slumped before the television for all to see? The middle-aged lady with the jet black hair, alone on her sofa with a bottle of wine and one glass most nights, almost all nights, with curtains wide open and her solitude lit up for all to see. The inhabitants of number 29, with curtains drawn all of the time, day and night, rain and shine. Why are they never looking out, but forever shut in, for none to see? The dog, I understand. Big golden retriever with paws over the back of a soft chair forever watching everything there is to see. And out there, walking, walking, walking, there is always me. I walk as the darkness falls most evenings, and glance briefly in windows with curtains open and evening lives lit up to see. This evening, an old lady sleeping before a flickering screen. A grey-haired man supping beer. A young boy at a kitchen table, head sunk forward in the appearance of despair. A beautiful woman serenely sipping what looks like gin. Two men playing chess, and the big golden dog again at the window, looking suspiciously at me, as I walk, and walk, and wonder about what I see; and ask myself again, do they leave these views of their lives open for the entertainment of them, or of everyone else, including me?

Gulls calling

The gulls are calling, overhead. I feel as if they are laughing at me, but instead, they are just making their age-old dinosaur cry, and I wonder if even they know why. But when I hear gulls calling my spirits always lift, perhaps from some deep memory of sun and sea drift; but gulls keep reminding me of the reasons to be. Life, sun, air, and breathe. Listen to the gulls as they­ call, then they leave.

What, Why, Sigh

Each time I awake, I recall that I don’t know what I am, as a conscious awareness, presumed to arise from flesh and blood, from atoms, ions, and a molecular flood. A brain of pulsing pinkness then soon dead grey, before it burns or rots away? Is that me, or is there more, a spirit, soul, or secret we can’t see? What truly am I, and what are we? And when I decide to rise, heaving this body that lifts from my bed, did I really choose to do that or just unthinking chemistry inside my head? Am I a bouncing pinball, that molecular flippers play, or a creative dancer, truly choosing my way? Did things ever start, and will they ever end? How did life arise, and to where will it send? Knowledge is mere description, of an ultimate we don’t know. Not explanation, just here’s what came, and what comes, and how it may go. And so now, the glass moves, because I moved it. I moved it, to make it move, and observe how the light changes, reflected, diffracted, magnified and shrunk, all options explored, until I turn to drink beer and leave questions ignored. But why? Ah… there's the nub, to adapt a phrase, the essence of the ultimate question of life and light, and motive, intent, and freedom to shape the days. Freely? You think? Ach... Drink. Sigh... Stop asking why.

Naturally nasty

It’s hell out there, the lady said, while sitting by the window, looking at the natural world, which so many see as heaven, while she spoke of owl hunting mouse, and cat hunting bird, and fox tearing a vole apart, blood, guts, opened heart; while I thoughtfully sliced my breakfast sausage, and watched the animal grease glint on the knife. Heaven? Hell? Whatever it is, it is life. But some have such a rosy view of the reality playing on out there, in the meadows, the woods, the forests and the seas. Natural selection is cruel. Not deliberately cruel, just uncaring. What is good at surviving survives. What is good at reproducing reproduces. No care, no compassion, no morality, unless such things have been proven in the slowly burning evolutionary furnace of the past to assist survival and reproduction. As the spider traps and devours the fly, the bird eats the bug, the cat eats the bird. The flesh eats the flesh, as it will do in all life across the multitude of galaxies and their stars, if driven by natural selection, the remorseless driving force behind every living thing, everywhere...

Unless we are mistaken...

Immortal I

I am immortal, the me of today, having these hours of life, that can’t be taken away. This evening I’ll sleep, I may even die, but today I’m alive, until I drift into slumber, until other days, other lives, of indefinite number. So today I’m immortal, never to die, but to live and enjoy, beneath the infinite sky.

The rush to ruin

 

A frantic rush to fill each minute, can ruin each minute. Slow down. Take time. Reflect. Relax. Let the moment bring in what it will, while often still, and things can happen as desired, required, inspired.

The river

I came back to the river, and the river was still running. Different water, but still the same. It’s been here a long time, the river, but always changed, and I think my life, and all life, is also much the same. Thoughts stream. Ideas flow. People come. People go. Life swells, then ebbs in drought. The river is certain, and so is the doubt. There is a cat beside me, also looking at the water. Why is it looking? What are its thoughts? Are they part of the same stream, of conscious thinking, just like the bee, the buzzard, the fox? Are we all one, like the molecules of water, different identities but all the same thing? Why do I wonder, when I’ll never know? The deepest of thinking, will never certainty bring.

Sometimes

Sometimes the trick, is to stop in the moment, and realise that you are free of the past. It has gone. All of it. Assess only what the moment of now presents, and move on. The past sends reverberations, of course, especially if there are buried bodies, metaphorically, or even literally I suppose; but it nevertheless no longer exists. It has gone. Review the now, now…, now…, now… and move on.

Returning

The 737, tiny in the distance, massive with its load, rose high in the air on its carriage of wind. The stream of Vauxhalls, Fords, Dacias, trucks, vans, Audi’s… oh… a Porsche… thundered down the slick grey surface, a glittering snake of internal combustion and occasional quiet electricity. The Earth slowly turned in its furnace of bright sunlight. I held the wheel gently, while the flickering nerves in my skull made me contemplate these things. Made me? Or did I choose? Who knows? And the lady sat beside me, eyes closed. Asleep? Consciousness ebbed, gone... where? I am here again, and she is there.