by Ian Pindar
jackets shelter from the
rain sharing cigarettes
a statue without a hand points to
the sky and the green lawn that would
like to be
taller envies the ivy which
curls and peeps in
at the cute redhead with
the stammer selling
couscous in the café
to a cus-cus-cus-
tomer. Where rooftops grow
green moss there is height and an ancient
tree shedding orange matter over
everything.
The barber snips and trims and it
is quiet in
this street, but last night a
window was broken.
GODS OF THE NEAR FUTURE
Vesprajna
the consort of the god of water is sometimes shown pouring Him
into different-shaped vessels
but is usually depicted drinking alone or feeding her four-headed
cat who sits on the rooftops and stares at the moon.
Shakada
is often shown shopping or wandering through a shopping arcade
enhaloed in black flames of longing and dread.
Half her body is living human flesh but the rest is decayed and
swollen like dead livestock floating down the Ganges.
In her six hands she holds a cellphone, a cellphone, a cellphone, a
cellphone, a cellphone, a cellphone, and she talks all night
and all day.
Smä (or Enko)
is often depicted as a coil of wire or a magnetic field exerting
a force on others.
He is generally (but not invariably) EVIL and is associated with
leukaemia and other haematological neoplasms.
Psha
is represented in ancient paintings with his sacred animals the
mongoose and the cobra
(the mongoose hates the cobra and the cobra hates the
mongoose so they get into all kinds of madcap capers).
He is frequently depicted upright in an electric chair saying a
prayer while the hair on his head and legs is shaved
by four muscular sailors, or sitting alone on a rented sofa in a
Manhattan apartment quietly masturbating.
The ancient legends make much of his appetite for pornography
and every new moon offerings of old copies of Playboy are left
in his tomb, but in midsummer he departs for the Underworld
where his heart is divided into five pieces and consumed by
five unforgiving females.
The Denades
are the ruthless invisible forces of Capital, spirits of profit and
wealth and market domination.
They live abroad for tax purposes, but at summer solstice they
return to influence the economy,
symbolised by the appearance of cardboard cities under
freeways and lunatics ranting in public parks.
CODA
The God of Travel Flies First Class
The travel god travels home again, to eat and sleep
and fuck and found a future he has cursed,
flying over the heads of his children.
The first child coughs up curses, the second
nurses a bruise inside the shape of her father.
AFTER BIRTH
After birth.
After all this flesh
power of action
poem of the flesh: farewell!
Junkyard bones some corpses some
images of corpses some
old documentary
looking at corpses big corpses
little corpses corpses in the field
corpses in the street.
Can’t remember
words. Can’t walk
in the garden. Can’t smell
the roses. Can’t drink
a glass of water. Small
corpse on the water
floating
drifting
back to before
birth. Before all this
flesh, power of action,
poem of the flesh. Farewell!
BIG BUMPERTON ON THE SABBATH
after Johann Knopf (1866–1910)
‘We are not concerned,’ he said, ‘with long-winded creations, with long-term beings. Our creatures will not be heroes of romances in many volumes.’
BRUNO SCHULZ, THE STREET OF CROCODILES
Love laughs at locksmiths.
HARRY HOUDINI
I
In a Christian house
In a Christian town
Lived a Christian man
With a little dog
That greeted him every day after work.
If Big Bumperton
(For that was his name)
Seemed a happy man
Then it only seemed
For he was alone since his mother died.
& in love, it’s true,
He had little luck
For the girls he loved
Never did love him
& saw him as an object of pity.
Still he carried on
Hoping that the girl
Of his fevered dreams
Might one day appear
& love him & kiss him with her cherry-red lips.
But until that time
He would persevere,
For he had a shop
& his mongrel dog
To keep him company on winter nights.
Sitting by the fire
In his night attire
Bumperton was sure
That the Lord was there
Somewhere, glowing in the embers.
Gloomy solitude
With a mongrel dog
Sleeping on his lap,
So he spent his nights
& by day he was a locksmith.
& he had knowledge
Of every kind of lock,
Deadlock & padlock
& mortice & bolt,
But he lacked the key to a woman’s heart.
Now our time is up.
Put another coin
In the poet’s cap
& he’ll tell you all
About Big Bumperton on the Sabbath.
II
On that Sabbath day
Bumperton was out
On his bicycle
Riding through the town
Doffing his hat to all the lovely ladies
& he wobbled past
A poster on the wall
Of high-kicking chorus girls
With cherry-red lips
& endless layers of petticoats.
& he cycled on
Past a frozen lake
& a one-armed man
With a twisted mouth
Hurling pumpernickel across the sullen ice
(Which the geese ignored,
Having all flown south)
& a gaggle of girls
Skating on thin ice.
‘What if one fell through?’ he thought. ‘Would I help?’
& he cycled on
Up a winding path
& the path was steep
But he peddled fast
& arrived at the snowy summit of a hill
Where he could look down
On the little town
& the chimney smoke
Curling to the sky
& Big Bumperton saw that it was good.
So he cycled on
Past the ruined house
Where an ancient crone
Cursed her final days
Before she was cast down the witches’ tower.
Pausing by a sign
For another town
He took out his watch
& wrote down the time
In a pocket book, for he always liked to know
When he reached this point
In his weekly ride
On that holy day
When our Lord rested,
Before cycling home again for lunch.
& he pedalled on
Coming to a place
Where he hit a root
Hidden in the snow
& went flying over the handlebars.
III
Opening his eyes
After travelling
Far into his mind
For what seemed like days
(But was only a matter of minutes)
There in front of him,
Leaning over him,
In a milk-white dress
& with golden plaits
Was a girl with cherry-red lips.
‘Fair queen of my heart,’
Sighed Big Bumperton.
‘What was that?’ she said.
‘Please don’t try to move,
You might have broken something in the fall.’
& with expert hands
She inspected him
For suspected breaks
In his arms & legs,
But Big Bumperton bore his pain within.
Then she sat him up
Lying in her lap
& she stroked his brow
& he bit his lip,
Fearing she might disappear if he spoke.
Gretchen was her name
& within a year
She became his wife
& he sold his dog
To the one-armed man, never shedding a tear.
Gretchen swept the house
& she filled the pot
With good things to eat
& he swelled with pride
That she had consented to be his bride.
IV
On the Sabbath day
Bumperton was out
On his bicycle
& he cycled deep
Into a forest where the birds around him sang cheep-cheep.
& anon a bird
Flew out of a tree
Making merry noise
Joyful melody
& each pleasant note became a word:
Sometime were we blessed,
Angels heavenly,
But our Master fell
For his wicked pride
& we fell with him for our offence.
But our trespass small,
God was merciful
& out of all pain
Set us here to sing
& to serve Him again, after His pleasing.
Down upon his knees
Fell Big Bumperton
& the bird said this
To him in that place,
Even as Big Bumperton trembled there:
Now have twelve months passed
That you have been wed,
But you still have not
Taken your delight
In the marriage bed, though it be your right.
In the second year
You shall see the place
That you so desire
Come to be usurped
& you shall enter the land of Bedlam.
Holy lightning struck
In his mortal brain
& the hills around
Cried aloud in pain
& holy storm clouds gathered, bringing rain.
V
Voices in the dark
Pleading to be free.
One of them is low,
One of them is shrill –
Big Bumperton is talking to himself
‘Hungry will I be
& cold showers take –
Holy punishment!
Punishment divine!
Spare me no humiliation!
O Lord, forgive them all,
These your ministers,
Of your purpose high
Ignorant entire.
I am punished for their disbelief.
Wisely did you send
Her into my bed
That my senses rent,
For without her sin
I would not have known innocence divine!
Divine innocence!
& I’ll keep thy laws
Hallow thy Sabbath
Walk in the spirit
& make a new Heaven & a new Earth!’
VI
Big Bumperton is charged with electricity
Like a landscape
An abstraction
A magnified pupil.
After the electroshocks
He no longer understands locks
Or answers to his name or remembers
His late wife.
‘Gentlemen, by means of this X-ray you can see
The patient has swallowed his front-door key
& a small pocket knife
With which he did the wicked deed.’
O Big Bumperton! Let others hurl insults – ‘Madman!’ ‘Murderer!’ –
While you ascend on your invisible bicycle
Ever closer to the cherry-red lips of your star,
A bright smiling star like a chorus girl.
ASHES
are bodies in disguise
mixing sighs and
tears in a lost garden.
An air of importance
permeates these
cosmonauts of
compost,
which the pomp of sky and stars
ignores.
Foolish men
inhabit their bodies like
metaphors.
DEATH OF A SENATOR
From whorehouse to hospital morgue
They carried his bier
And questions were asked in the Senate
Of an old bawd.
They carried his bier
Talking of plans for a statue
Of an old bawd
Following his coffin.
Talking of plans for a statue
On the Statehouse lawn
Following his coffin
From funeral to family plot.
On the Statehouse lawn
His widow was led
From funeral to family plot
To waltz with a mystery man.
His widow was led
From palm lounge to dance floor
To waltz with a mystery man
Suffused with exotic suspense.
From palm lounge to dance floor
From war zone to uninhabited citadel
Suffused with exotic suspense
Watched by the patient sniper.
From war zone to uninhabited citadel
Her son ran in terror
Watched by the patient sniper
Surrounded by drifting sands.
Her son ran in terror
From whorehouse to hospital morgue
Surrounded by drifting sands
And questions were asked in the Senate.
BIRDS
i.m. Anna Politkovskaya (1958–2006)
Your name is a – bird in my hand.
TSVETAEVA
They are shooting birds in Russia
to prevent the spread of
infection. The State Hygiene
Agency’s instructions are
to shoot birds
in population centres
and in their nesting places.
‘The shooting of birds is
pointless,’ said one expert.
‘Birds are very mobile
and there are so many
you can never exterminate
them all even if you give
every idiot a gun.’
ILLUSTRATED EVENINGS
Evenings were longer then, a winter chill
turned in the headlamps of returning care.
Street lighting and a confounding moon make pale
the carried and reluctant carrier.
Words sink like stones in the air.
So the weather drops another degree.
Pestered by their bodies, woken from dreams,
impatient invalids stoke the fire.
Something like this illustrated evenings ign
ore.
Difficult breathing, the worry of drums
and that season’s native mystery.
PARASITE
… it did not want to love yet wanted to live on love.
THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
They breed on the branches of trees,
colonise the land, seek safety in numbers
and keep moist by drinking sugary soft drinks.
Vulnerable to the vagaries of the global economy,
they come upon white shores, ignorant of the inhabitants,
utter brief words, build bridges and sing of ages past.
Their children are small and brown well into adulthood,
when they are bought and sold, dropped from great heights
into enemy territory to become
bleached bones and souvenirs, perhaps
a television documentary, if they are lucky.
The unlucky are soon forgotten.
. . .
After a decade of treading water
he recalls his optimistic youth,
broods on abandoned loves, lost friends, dead-end jobs …
A line of boulders at the front door cannot be shifted.
He must find a new home, dashes out on to the moors,
follows predators and slams doors.
At midnight he sings the blues.
He is continually searching for her on long journeys.
She haunts him everywhere and communicates by shrill,
