The Pedlar of Hills

“I’m selling hills, name your price!

My hills are whole, fertile,

Full of the fat of dreams,

Brimming with falling stars

And animals dancing

Around flowered tombstones.”

“I have hills for everyone,

Just name your price!

Is it marvels you seek?

Legends are wrought in these hills;

Prodigious beasts are tamed,

Hunted, killed, befriended;

Unbelievable beauty abounds,

Summoned by your flights of fancy!”

“Name your price and take everything!

I have sold hills for generations,

And my father before me,

And his father before him.

Hills have always come to us,

For we have sold hills for aeons.”

“See the comely hill yonder?

Name your price, and it’s yours.

I’ve seen miracles happen there:

People rise up from their tomb

Galaxies collide and explode

Flying whales and singing baboons!

This wondrous hill has it all.”

“Name your price, friend,

And be merry on this hill.

If you can call something yours

In this godforsaken world

It will be this hill where everything

You can dream of happens.

It’s a hill like no other.”

I realised too late the hill was cursed

for as soon as I took possession

of the hill, it took possession of me.

I became the hill.

The pedlar grinned.

After the rain

His face white as chalk,

in the rubble

after the quake,

his black eyelashes

and bright red lips

as ready for nō

The debris blanketing 

his body, his chin

tucked in, he is asleep

if not at least 

taking some rest

after his ordeal 

A sudden grey cloud,

a frowned eyebrow

over his eyes,

sunshowers

drops of rain

splashdot his face

draw a constellation

– inverted black stars

on a pale white night –

His face serene somehow

accepting of

the pain and the rain

– not even a scowl –

in the lambent air

as if prismed with mirrors 

the skies aclear again

he slumbers on

He might wake up

– any minute now –

wipe the dust off his face

shirk the rubble off, smile

and start changing the world.

De/i/cides

poets can't be choosers

they say

I say

when the words line up

their throats exposed

like sacrificial lambs

beggars are gods

Fragment #31

     I’m the type of people                         You’re the type of people

for whom one person is enough          for whom the world will never be

Shells

Ambling along the lorn shoreline

Each footfall soul-crushing shells

Hushed husks of discarded loves

The stones

 
The stones came from somewhere.

One came from a ruined mill in Devon, which flowed and eroded downstream.
One came from a basalt flow in Surrey, carried away by the heavy rains during the Precambrian.
One came from the cleats of the shoe of a boy of sixteen who picked it up in Dumfries, who then took the train down to London to visit his aunt Millie, who then proceeded to run away, never to be seen again.
One came from beyond the sea, torn from the ground by the great swayings of the tectonic plates in an age men can only recall in the mind’s eye.
One came from deep underground, dug up during the major roadworks of ‘66, with unnoticed traces of blood on it.
One came from a larger silex which cracked open under the intensity of the witch bonfire that burnt there.
One came from a mother who laid it down, painted as it was then, by the riverside, for her daughter’s spirit to pick up on her way to distant shores where she could not then follow, and which paint had now been washed away.

There were other stones too.

When she picked them all up
one by one and by the handful
and packed them in her pockets
she didn’t know if it was the weight
of billions of years of history
of the stories they evoked
or that of her depression
but she loved each of the stones
for what they were and meant
solaced that their presence
would keep her under the surface
along with countless other stones
where she would come to rest
for millions upon millions of years.

 

Poems of love

chainwriting poems these days

lighting them off from

the smoulders of the last

like cigarettes

                        not even

blank-paging them but

firing them bukowski-style

the man would probably say

“as long as they come

bursting keep them burning”

downing poems

like glasses of whisky

for when passably drunk

time gets lost but still

flaking metaphors

with the fingertips 

rolling them up in paper

expertly adding a bit of spit

to hold it up together

keep the hunger sharp

I say

         like a murmuration

of starlings splitting into

chaos because a kestrel

decided to feed

but then in the midst of dark

comes the spite of love

almost invited

                        slings and arrows

                        songs and marrow

unhooking its barbs

caught in the heart

and it’s bloody painful

you know

                so we hope to drown

in booze, smoke and solitude

but we know it’s not enough

it never is

                until we plead

love please leave me be

leave me alone now

you’ve taken enough from me

I have nothing left

not even the dignity

to cry soberly over my drinks

love you know

I never learn

you know I’m an idiot

with far too big a heart

not to be swindled

like a tourist

                    I never learn

always fall flat on my back

winded and despondent

saying never again

but then I forget and then

I think a bit of love can’t hurt

turns out it does

even the tiniest fraction

and nothing, nothing

abates the pain

                         believe me I’ve tried

meds, whisky, cigs

only the poems cool the fire

only they provide

                            a measure of quietude

Shimmers

The heap fluttered under the softest breeze

autumn leaves yet too heavy to fly off

a shapely pillow for a dead lover

The heap the colour of sunlit prisms

everchanging, reminding of summer,

blanket sprawled on the grass on a field day

The heap seemed to laugh, or breathe in, and out,

stilllifeness bursting out of the canvas

unrequited bouquet smashed, then bundled,

The heap a myriad dead butterflies

once a lover’s most precious sentiment

now snubbed, and wilfully left to the crows.

called home

today i’ve lost

something called home

i didn’t lose my way

i just couldn’t get in

couldn’t bring myself to

frozen on the doorstep

guts gripped in a fist

lungs cast in concrete

there was more at stake than just pushing the door open and step in

before today

i felt right, there,

and safe

life throbbed at the fingertips

i felt i could bloom

and sleep

and be myself

for the first time in many lives

i had never known

a loftier home

vast luminous rooms

vaster than galaxies

brimming with starlight

each with a melody

woven into its fabric

walls pulsing radiance

of all the homes i had known the only one built out of solid soul

but today i am not alone

there are other visitors

guests to this home

uninvited by me

grim indistinct figures

but i understand them also

it’s a good home

well worth returning to

if i could, i would go back

in time and dwell there again

but these sombre meteors hurtle right through me as if i weren’t corporeal

they bring shadows

that colonise light

tentacle space to them

rip time off the walls

obfuscate the soul

in a mantle of flies

i no longer feel safe

i am no longer welcome

sleep evades me there

sadness claws me back in

trust manhandled in every room

and flies by the millions

today i’ve lost this place

i once called home

as i fall back through space

remembrances larsen

clamour through and die again

as i pass by, hollowed out

atom after atom

dispersing one into aloneness

the darkness around

once again so familiar

that home had so brightly lit

that my entire visible universe was known and charted and i could acknowledge it

and slowly, so very slowly

sounds muffle eardrums pressured

heartbeats gain intensity

fill in every moment

between the seconds

become the seconds

bloat until all matter

blend through them

sealing the loss

deep inside

once and

for all

so today i’ve lost

the world called home

so many yearn for

so many die for

it’s sad

it’s a shame

it’s gut-wrenching

you name it

for i have stopped trying

i would have stayed there forever

given the chance

but it’ll be nice to see

the stars from earth again

each galaxy like houses in winter

when one can see through the lit windows and see worlds there happening

fleetingly from the pavement

once again spectator

smiling at happenstance

riant silhouettes

stark in their happiness

it’ll be nice

not to have to bear life’s hurdles

it’ll be nice

to be left alone

not to be slighted

it’ll be nice

it’ll be nice

to find nice things, again

so as not to lose one’s footing

it’ll be nice

the way back is long

longer than i’ve ever walked

but it’ll be nice

after today

but today i’m inconsolable

as i’ve lost

someone called home

Fragment #21

 

"Let's swap roles,

You wait, and I don't come back."

"Let's swap characters,

You ponder, and I squander time."

"Let's swap lives,

You die inside, and I wield the knife."

* The first couplet is by Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet, apart from the comma I've added after "wait".