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Emporium

Page 3

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,

 

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