Minutiae

Minutiae (The Poetry of the First Half of a Life) is a collection of fifty-six poems (first draft written in the Spring of 2010). The title trivialises the subject material which covers anything but trivial matters.The poems deal with the death of my mother, questions about mortality, relationships and matters of injustice and personal re-assessment.

Following are a few picks from the same.

Sleeper

“As you are now so I once was, as I am now so you shall be”

I know all my thoughts and secret loves

Will slumber with me

In a silence I shall make my own

Sleep forever, perchance to dream

The sands of time will cover me

What shall be found waiting there?

Blossom

A myriad brightly coloured deaths

Coat the curb with pink–white snow

Such beauty so transient it falls

In patterns to the soft winds blow

It reminds me of that summertime

When once the wind it caught your smile

Ran its fingers through your hair

Left behind my heart,

Like fallen cherry blossom.

I remember how I wept aloud

As if I could understand

This beauty almost too much to bear

The realisation so profound

And still I wonder what could be

As the architect he draws his bow

Will all that’s lost one day be found?

Is this all that we can ever know?

Time has passed and seasons waned

Since the raw emotion of those days

Are we but the actors, weak,

Of an omnipotent creator’s plays?

Once again nature stirs

Unlocking colour, light and life

In patterns to the soft winds blow

Reminding me of that summertime…..

Where Tandy Lives

Along life’s path illusions are lost, replaced by something at terrible cost

The hopes and dreams of youthful vigour give way to work and daily rigour

We don’t count our blessings one by one and moan and carp from dawn till dusk

Until if we’re not careful we become a withered, bitter, twisted husk.

How can we avoid this awful fate, whilst enjoying the food that’s on our plate?

Swilled down by life’s sweet wine distilled our shrink wrapped meat humanely killed?

I remember a time in a foreign land, the house of a happy hired hand

An African dwelling set in hills, no dish washer, microwave or expensive frills

Children ran to meet our car, packed with visitors from afar

As we arrived, my son he said, eyes wide bulging in his head

 “Daddy is this where Tandy lives” - I’m sure not meaning to disparage  

An extended family all crowded in - to something no bigger than a garage.

The God Imago

I am a devout Philistine I decide one day

Musing on Michael Angelo and his Sistine Chapel.

What was the man thinking?

I laugh at the absurdity of the anthropomorphic interpretation of God.

To Michael, God is a man on a cloud,

With the obligatory white beard and hair.

Blown by some wind divine

Stretching his hand to Adam

Both parties sweetly unashamed of Adam’s penis.

Where the fingers touch I picture God’s glowing like E.T’s

Perhaps were the scene to be moved a few seconds onwards

Adam would be reeling back with a mildly burned finger.

I laugh.

Then I wonder

What does God look like?

I try hard to imagine him but here encounter the first problem.

The “He” itself, being a gendered abstraction.

I wonder if God is of mixed sex, perhaps hermaphrodite with both sets of organs

Large pendulous breasts and a penis.

I reject that image also

Why should God look like any one of us at all?

In the end I imagine God to be pure energy

A pulsing, white-light-heat being

Or a “Force” of the Star Wars type

I stand back to admire my mental handy work and then the oddest thing of all strikes me:

It has been said; “If God did not exist man would have to invent him”

I’ve made the error of making God in my own image.

Schwere Arbeit

Time passes slowly in this place

All minutes are not of the same length and duration

The enjoyable ones invariably fly by more quickly

I stare at the clock as the hands start to distort

Slowly, Dali like, the clock starts to lose form

It slips down the wall leaving a snail like trail

Trial by time and torture by telephone

With its umbilical cord

Waiting to give birth to some new complaint

“I’ve been given your number to call when someone dies”

Machinery whirs, faintly humming an electronic ode to the passing day

I insulate myself like an electrical cable

Mustn’t make the mistake of listening to the

Interminable tap-tap-taping of the lesser spotted keyboard

Clicking like crickets in the long grass

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, one mating board calls to another

Marking out its territory on the desk with its fake wooden pattern

You don’t fool me!  No tree has grains that symmetrical

Grains that fall through the ether like

Sand falling through an egg timer

The egg a symbol of life, especially at this time of year

Pregnant with promise as

The trees outside celebrate in the sunshine

Spring arriving in a vivid burst of fragrant colour

That the dark little mushrooms here can see but not feel

Pudding Lane Routine

The boiled eggs rattle, agitatedly in the sauce pan

Banging their bald little heads against the sides in frustration as

The kettle, overworked morning friend, serenades with steam

Reminiscent of a train, the blackbird perching on the gate

The garden has been awake for hours now, but the household

Wiping sleepy crusts from tired eyes, is yet to fully stir

The recently departed toaster (given decent burial in council skip)

Is sorely missed, as bread under oven grill, forgotten, now begins to smoke

The fire alarm engages in shrill refrain to animate the zombie forms

Who dash into the kitchen, swift, to avert another “Pudding Lane”

Porridge is called, from substitutes bench, and scores a goal

With hungry adults, whilst magazine is wafted hard to dissipate disaster

It’s time for the checklist now, sandwiches packed, fruit dispensed

Anything healthy in evening to return (no doubt) from school.

The bikes stand ready, with tyres flat, that weren’t like that the night before

And furious pumping produces sweat, soiling showered body to inflate

Meanwhile the forgotten eggs are boiled hard and that’s tomorrow’s lunch prepared.

Time to leave, the first departs and mounted, pedals furiously to escape

Kettle boiling again, more tea needed, put your trousers on! Where’s your shoes?

And tie and bag, we’ll be late for school! As angrily the telly’s killed to gain attention.

And the cat just watches, smiling to himself, imperious, with detached disdain.

Social Elephantitis

Here I sit all club footed, deformed of thought

The elephant man, stunted pigmy man

Angry repressed, unspoken agenda boy

Twisted tree trunk human

Frustrated misshaped pretzel-person 

Want to say what I think chip removed

Defused, limp, flaccid, unexploded

All emotion safely shrink-wrapped

Like sausages in a butchers window

Nodding in the right places android

Trained not to rock the boat cadet

Reverse crashing kamikaze suicide

Socially acceptable taboo swallower

Mustn’t say that acceptance non-doer

Mustn’t complain about

The supremely underdone vegetables

The un-cleaned restaurant carpet

The dropped knife covered in human hair

The blackened pizza there

The cremated shoe leather steak

The hard-cold hot-soft chocolate brownie

The extortionate bill

The surly waiters

The un-flushed toilets

The flat, pump machine cola

The tips that go to the company

Awful re-heated mediocrity

Utterly, totally, repressed

Social Elephantitis sufferer

Smorgasbord of chemicals eater

It’ll go away if I ignore it believer

Cowardly, timid underachiever

Victorian table leg coverer

Inward facing instigator

Embryo in incubator

Socially engineered shrink-wrapped person

Glutinous deformed personality

Genetically engineered tomato eater

Don’t smoke live longer person

Don’t drink live longer person

Cut calories live longer person

Don’t have sex live longer person

It just bloody well seems like it sufferer

Thoughtless C of E box ticker

Baby’s mouth dummy sucker

Hunch-backed agreement mediator

Craven hollow ingratiatory

Plastic rubbish in the streets

Mac Donald’s never rotting feast

Sweatshop Adidas on the feet

Everything from China going cheap

Crazy person getting irater

I blame it all on the creator

Washed up choking oily birds

Gorilla hand ashtray displays

Cutting down the Amazon

No fallback plan when it’s all gone

Man’s putrid arrogance

While I sit on the fence

Primordial dwarf, pusillanimous
Not wishing to cause offence

The Flight of the Cardinal Bird

Excitement at a false projection of the anima

Part1 The Bird takes Wing

An inexpressible joy fills my heart and lungs

As I fly to you like the Cardinal Bird

Scarce can I stop my excited flight

Whatever hour that love takes wing!

Trembling like a new born fawn

Spilling energy from besotted eyes

Come fly with the Cardinal Bird

Like a lark ascending to the skies!

Part 2 Hitting the glass

When reality stubbornly refuses to fall in line with projection

Filled with joy, the cardinal bird has seen his true love’s reflection

Seen her face with those little summer freckles on her nose

Like the sweet skin of a deliciously ripe banana!

Love fills his heart and he longs to soar into the sky

To proclaim at the top of his lungs this love, this longing!

It’s the same every time he sees his mate

He never tires of studying her

The little freckle on the back of her right arm

He thirstily drinks her every detail

Cool green eyes, like a jade rock-pool

Unable to bear her cathartic beauty a moment longer

He beats his wings and rides the length of the nearest sunbeam

Her sweet smell intoxicates his nostrils, floods his senses

Her smile triggers sparks of iridescent excitement

Flashing through his innards like a bolt of lightning

Leaving glowing patterns in his eyes as if he’d stared at the sun…..

All sense is lost, all rationality subsumed in the joy of the moment

He sings his song, a melody of love spun silk

He longs to clothe her in devotion

Sip sweet honey from her navel

Spend all eternity wrapped in her charms

But there’s always the pane of glass between them

He cannot reach her…..

Dance of the Wolf Spider

My love is like a wolf spider

Defending the thought flower of her

Gloves raised on short arms

An intricate mating opus in an exotic form

Dancing around antler and stamen

Speeding across her petals

My suspicious peripheral vision is alert

Many eyes scanning for a threat

I move at incredible speed

Surely she must notice light touches

Lovingly given by my many hands

Making colourful patterns on her skin

Molten Devotion

Once upon a time I liked cold frosty things

Watched, fascinated, childlike as my breath

Condensed on the frigid air of a winter’s morning

Or a windowpane so I could write my name

Moist characters of confirmation shouting “I’m alive!”

I know I exist when I can see I breathe.

I liked leaving my footprints on the hoar frost ground

Delighting in seeing where I’d been

Wintry tracks bearing silent witness

Joyous little confirmations testifying “I was there”

Once I wanted cold things

A distant woman with frost on her eyelids

Withholding her affirmation with cool, clear, undercurrent

Pointing out my imperfections

The heat calls to me now promising perspiration, inspiration

I want more than anything to swim where fire and water meet

To feel her hot breath upon my neck as she arches to my touch

To swim in liquid ice, melted in the volcano of my veins

Meeting her moment, utterly possessing it in molten devotion.

Skipping Stones

You’re too deep she said

Trying to get to know me

Was like skipping stones on a pond surface

So to get my attention she slapped my face

And kissed me hard until my lip bled

So she could say she’d drunk a little bit of me

I could only respond by saying

That to love someone who didn't love you back

Was easier, the safer option by far

She didn't skip any more stones after that

Mark Harris has asserted his right under

Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

To be identified as the author of this work.