Thursday, 19 December 2024

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Angel #AngelRisingPartEight

 

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Angel  #AngelRisingPartEight

 

 

She said her sacrifices never ceased

that it would come right, in the end, at least

and, if not, it wasn’t the end – oh, clever:

but, of course, she could not last forever.

Buttered words like these were not hers

in any case, just an ice queen’s borrowed furs.

Nor they a sister’s, a wife’s, a lover’s

and certainly not any sickly mother,

who was left behind, well provided for

but painted in, awaiting on dry floors

that never seem to come; contemplated

some cornered children’s hidden faces

punished until torn tears dug trenches,

left hanging outside white picket fences

pegged to lines. It takes time to fill moats

deep enough to launch and float a lifeboat

and some say water enough does not exist,

or that the effort is not worth the risk.

If an Angel came of stained-glass wings,

she’d crick her neck to hear her sing,

to console the needy and soothing bring

beneath night’s black cloak. You’d bury heads

in pillows soaked; pull over sheets in dread

in case her honeyed verbs batter ear drums

and your resolve dissolves to comfort crumbs:

Hearing slippering song, she comes, she comes.

 

I am awake, yet, last night, had such dreams,

I thought I was in Cymbeline.

 

Of tides that lap the shore

like dogs do lap at bowls

and in taking water, watch fall

more water drops than drink withal.

 

Or in theatres,

having seen plaster Shakespeares disappear

through high ceilings, above the Gods

where the end is just beginning

to consider sinning

and yet, he says, that ends only are this:

the lives you crushed after you had kissed,

gripped in your grubby hand;

squeezed until syrup slid down wrists

to congeal upon an ash cindered floor;

not as important as the journey to the doors

which fall forwards sequential in shape of iron keys

to form around the perfect slot,

you’ll twist and twist and twist,

but opening upon not a looping rope,

but torchlit tunnels made from telescopes.

 

If the end will come

and we can ascend,

we will await our time

upon these barren lunar rocks,

heave to,

settle here on sterile dust.

Watching for lifesigns

amongst spiky craters deep

to wake from sleep,

for when the moon will set

at the rise of sun.

 

Why did you come here, old friend,

after all these searching years?

 

Inside night’s half dark glass, I heard your laugh,

saw your full set, generous smile,

and how once, snow fell thick on Lemon Street,

penetrated cloth slippers, soaked your feet,

while you brought hot drinks to greet

those drivers stuck and slipping.

 

Recalled how long ago, I set out upon this voyage

to bring you home. But these visions of your song

reminds me how they’ve all gone,

all of them, how old fights become meaningless

in Satan’s borrowed wings’ half shadow.

I only can shake my puny, weathered fist,

and realize that the only risk

was to my already beaten reputation,

that I put a thief in my hollow mouth and cried,

‘you died, you died’ and you stayed dead.

 

Why take my bass guitar and wreathe yourself

in its deep timbre and sounds concentric

with plectrum pluck and song electric

flooding outwards while you sit within

until waves mesh, reverberate and bring

back what was sent?

 

But all my senses tell me this is false,

in our lifetimes you did not learn keys,

no majors, mixolydians or minors read,

yet here you sit and pleased to receive

that applause that should be, by rights, mine.

 

My instrument is placed in a wrong position

upon your knee,

hambone lamb-shanked fingers attack strings

and no harmony comes forth; feedback stings,

assaults my senses and confusion rings.

It seems in rhyme schemes,

distances between us only widen,

do not diminish,

but always grows further apart;

so, I did lack those black arts

in pact promised Faustus.

 

Even though I summon soft,

there exists not words enough

and Angels that do promise much, smile before they fall to dust.

 

‘Well, it seems to me, old friend, that such magic

can only bring you sorrow,

don’t think of the past, but of tomorrow.

 

‘Long ago I left you here to swallow

words that did not exist in my time;

had not been coined and spent

in some sort of miserable attempt

to fill hungry bellies; pay rent,

or fog your thinking minds with smoke,

spin gummy ghost webs, cast carbon cloaks.

 

‘What are they now? Austerity, Brexit, Covid,

from every double-dealing politician’s tongue

slipped glib the phrase ‘get Brexit done’,

and all other declaratives under the sun

spilled from banal, negligent, evil lungs,

too lacking in any wit to catalogue here.

 

‘What’s done’s done, cannot be undone, move on,

immigrants on their paper boats still come.

I can’t rest if you bring me back:

Those final years, I tried so hard to retrieve

a possession lost who made me grieve,

broken she was, beyond any repair,

as for whys, for wheres, for in the ends she didn’t care,

that tear in her fabric was always there,

‘let forever be’, she cried, ‘let it be forever’,

she always opened to close reveal

what it was that would not heal;

in my compulsive pursuit, I broke us too.

 

‘Oh, my dear, you’d some part in it, true,

but here I am, if just for a short while.

You grasp it correctly, my friend,

wise journeys lie not without but within:

why travel to find the sublime

if diamonds spark within the mind,

say casually in some bar, ‘I’ve seen that too’

because, in these plurals lies the fallacy.

Or chant: ‘I am a great man, rare, unique’?

You will be found, if that’s indeed the truth,

and your indelible imprint put to use.

Most will not listen, will never hear

that which they do not want or fear.

As for me? Having sung my waking song,

take my hand and let’s move along.’

 

In doing so, now drill and row

hard seeds beneath the snow;

Angel possessed of melting breath will thaw what we will sow.

 

This place, I know.

 

A dark path winding through thick trees ascending

purple mountainside, here’s a schoolboy wending

his meandering way.

Taking up this airy oxbow

while waters washed shrink slow,

sink deep within muddy floors

from rushed waterfalls without cause;

billow deciduous shedding and stiff pricking conifers

who score skies until they weep.

Beyond this rise,

rhododendroned corners deep

in twisted thickets creep

and border a five barred gate that creaks,

painfully shudders upon hinged bolts

when shouldered, reluctant to give up passage,

who knows all who hesitate are lost;

stranded sticklebacks who gasp and cough,

as imagination withers, bespiked by frost.

 

Some thousand interior stories loop and played

like celluloid, drama for his invisible crowd,

and any applause is not out loud,

but rattled gravels within this boyish cowl.

 

Why bring us here?

This place exhumes ancient fears,

it reeks, presumes a past perfect given voice, speaks

with obsolete breath unsweet,

vapours of mulch and peat decayed

beckons forward the lost who strayed,

scattered dot pixel pasts bleed onto a future page

that gnaws at its grey static edges.

 

‘I bring us to burn

what futures could there be:

what satisfaction can we get tonight?

Pinned moths upon green baize

and diamond nine balls, three by three

are cannonballs deployed at sea

from some unholed destroyer,

rolling upon backwash.

Let’s not force this unwilling gate,

or press our shoulders, flesh to iron,

there’s no point, we have laid these spooks to rest.

 

‘Just beyond his rise and around her corner lies

that old-framed lawn, expanding wide, an apron tied

to their house by strings,

where we might still see him ride,

cutting and trimming grasses down to size,

numerous unruly reeds that grow in clumps and defy

even his pump handled burnished flamethrower,

belching forth never enough flame to truly tame.

 

‘Yes, my friend,

they are beyond us now and far below,

we have put to sea, set sail, the distance grows

like space between planets,

and upon gorse moors, granite still stands tall,

even if they will never relinquish

sweet syrups crushed by fists,

or desist in pouring scorn into everything we valued,

like funneled oil clogging up arteries

to stopper the heart,

later retract, take it back,

as though such ideas were their own

and they had loved them all along.

We must set this gate upon its latch,

because the time has comes to purge our veins

see what has left and what remains.’

 

Wait. He remembers this tortoiseshell cat,

in ginger, white, black,

friendly in trust curled upon his lap, warm fur,

she would purr. And six kittens, unplanned

that, one day appeared from under his bunk bed

where she must have nested.

Later, carrying one of her litter with care,

to a small house built up there

upon what must have seemed a giant hill

to his small legs, and presented to his teacher

like a certificate: she ruffled his hair,

passed him hard ginger chocolates,

that delighted the lips and snagged the teeth

– still later yet, for a childish bet,

and at his friend’s bidding

he rode his bicycle down that same steep slope

because he had been forbidden.

It was not worth the beating,

and friends who urged him to do the same,

have long since flamed out,

lost to time, become shaping shadows.

 

Yet, his cat remains.

She enters this present undergrowth, hides;

upon her mouth, around her eyes

scars that were not so before,

some remembered accident, a small horror

that into this soft-stuffing body ploughed,

and she never again cried out loud,

but disappeared inside, somehow.

 

And, on casting this creature aside, I now recall,

when he was still small,

they screamed: “She once was your favourite,

unfeeling, deplorable and wretched,”

and then yoked a child’s back to barley sack

until those brittles buckled, wracked, snapped,

then asked to consider whether he was fit

to be bedded in that barn,

we would soon come upon,

if we took this turn.

 

‘Leave it now and do not stay,

come away Geordie, come away:

While in solid state your memory is still sound,

my friend, we should, I think plunge instead

into these caverns bent of dense rhododendron

overlapping, forming canopies overhead,

where once shrouded, he hid.

These deep holes that border her aprons green,

form pockets where they searched unseen,

for this is where his music died.

See dog-eared scrapbook, bulging wide,

its spine struggling to even contain

those childish cuttings of faded newsprint.’

 

This is the cruelest cut of all:

They chopped him dead,

filled his opened treasure chest with lead,

if he fell, he bled, then gasps,

“I’m shot, I’m shot,”

more in surprise you would think,

with blinding lights inside his head

watching Dakota fade to black.

Any amount of candle lit vigils,

will never bring back

music that the world now lacks,

which can only be imagined.

He was robbed, my friend, robbed,

by an vicious, malicious, smiteful God

and his agent, a notoriety seeking moron

masked behind pistol-whipped face

asking for autographs holding that same pen

he could not write with, but yearned,

had not learned, in envy burned,

some no brained budget chained

bargain basement Holden Caulfield.

 

The first of many, it must be said,

who variously tread that self-same path

to fame; the nearest way, a mug’s game.

While hateful do those two demons in disdain

sneer as time before him fluxed and changed.

Oh, how they mocked, called him out,

rewrote timelines in their own image,

yet, at the end, now they do pretend

all along they did acclaim, in repentance or defense.

Yet I am now willing to concede you were indeed

John, my friend, in baptism plunging

through fire. Opened my eyes to new ideas,

and headstrong in pursuit of life, burned bright,

and all too soon took flight.

Whilst here I remain in this place,

play rhythms in your shadow on plodding bass.

 

‘Just so, here’s one: “Let me tell you ’bout the Manfreds,

the music they were putting down,

like a song of love is a sad, sad song,

but don’t ask me how I know

you sat at the window and watched the rain

and tomorrow you’ll probably love again.”

Look. Underneath this underbrush glows

those fires that heat their cauldron boiling,

around the circumference they’re toiling,

“hubbly, bubbly, hubble, bubble”,

your three witches and their bitches' brew,

will do and do and do.’

 

I can see them plain, those three self-same,

who delight in bedraggled hearts cross moors and plains,

witness them wither in foul rains,

in that place where Matthew did for Charlotte

that she may never come home again.

 

Ah, how many nights did he lift that phone?

Sat black out here on the rim, alone,

queried what time is love, what time returning,

cord twisting, receiver burning,

through the deluge, watch stumbling drunken sot:

him pushing pennies into slots,

they swallow them all, they eat the lot,

rain hammering down upon the box,

until he hears five orange pips.

Turn the decades, turn, they no longer stand,

instead, here’s a mobile in his hand:

and yet the result is much the same.

Who’s to blame? He cares not,

It is not the writer of the song at fault,

but those who misappropriate and misquote,

tunelessly screaming at the top of their lungs

‘Goodbye, American Pie’, ‘Sweet Caroline’,

or something equally asinine,

in some pitiful corner of some piss-poor bar,

sour beers on tap, to huddle and crow.

 

If you have lips, then speak. What are you,

so withered, so decayed, so bride stripped bare,

of wild eyes and undershrubbed hair?

Can you hear me? Have you no words

to curdle milk and sour cream,

or do you live deep in our screams?

 

Angel, Angel, I hear your call

of one so cruel, of one so small,

from life’s edge I summon you forth and watch me crawl.

 

The first of these with eyes that tease,

he remembers them and how long it took,

before the organs from their sockets flopped,

once in her eyes, he there did see,

in seeming old, how she was young,

such cruelty that sprang forth from tongues,

air given birth from modest lungs,

that had no age within to fully form,

even as on those sinful lips spawned scorn

scattered forth, like pale-green seed corn

which yet had fully to take mature root.

Remember how once they had made love

on some sultry affectionate afternoon,

afterwards, how she wept, she swooned

with sobs torn and wrenched from her breast,

how she implored, how she begged,

“never leave me”, with tears that showered

lay listening to his chest for hours on hours.

 

Deeper yet, a face he did forget,

or at least he thought it had not haunted him

and yet, he now suspects it isn’t so.

How he did turn his back in love he lacked,

then side to side the mirror cracked,

in charms that come upon them. What chance?

They were young, newborn to romance

and looked for others with whom to dance,

no blame is here, soft fade, my dear,

he chides you not and sees it clear.

 

Here’s one that balefully would stare,

if indeed she’d eyes that had not rotted there,

fallen into that noxious cauldron, cooked,

to leave bone nose that’s fish-hooked,

vile in its aspect. In her hands, scissors sharp,

ground and ground upon whetting stones,

who yielded sparks, who issued moans

where once winsome digits plucked at harp.

She will take that bloody tool and lacerate,

into briefcase bundle hate,

put poisons onto his plate

then walk away. Until some day

she feels the need to unburden, writes to say,

some such excuse, he knows not what,

away, away, away.

 

Angel, of course, it must be you

arrived at last, how high you flew,

shimmered into view, too many words spilt, of milky hue.

 

How high she climbed,

manifest, made flesh from misplaced time,

that many a night and oft

as he tossed, she blossomed,

painted leaves upon his barren trees

and while all was lost he once believed,

she brought forth verse in new birth,

to make fertile his infertile earth.

Like a colossus she does bestride,

cried, “hit me” then bust, he will from behind her skirts

creep, and, like all other petty men, peep.

Now let him stroke, one last time,

that flushed cheek,

please this be the last,

he will let her forever pass.

 

Will she now to him speak?

Or to her crimson lips a finger press

and, in silence, there let it rest?

 

‘He sees her too.

She comes to him, not you.

Feels like Banquo himself - lesser, yet greater,

how, in death, he would not continue to hate her,

knowing how his line will not stretch out

until the crack of doom,

feel her, even now, fill up his empty room.

He will never get kings, nor be none,

and she wears a face you did not describe

in words set down,

or an aspect written upon these sheets,

therefore it is him, not you, she greets.

Her gaze is cool, like waters quench,

fill his soul’s empty lake

and his boy’s body drench.

Her hair’s cropped short, a laddish fringe

of black locks writing question marks there,

right modest in attire, mutters words of care

that draws him to plunge her cool deep bay,

where she will listen to what he must say.’

 

My friend, it is we who are betrayed:

she brings not water but with fire scorches,

flaming like a thousand torches,

in lighthouse false to wrack Cornish ships,

from headlands hard, from jagged cliffs,

to dash us both upon the rocks,

nothing but a siren she, with voices alluring

offering up sailor’s charms, spells reassuring,

yet bind ourselves hard to mast, fill ears with wax,

what we cannot defend, we will attack;

while we cannot depend on our antique sight,

hold hard, take flight.

 

I am awake, yet, last night, had such dreams,

I thought I was in Cymbeline.

 

And now, my Iago, once more gone,

having vaulted those same guard rails

that should protect all seamen who set sail,

and whilst we cannot bring him back

from the dead, he rests here, in our heads,

no resurrections, no rolling of stones,

when all is said and done,

a tomb becomes a tomb.

 

And some may say, it is foolish to try

to reach heavenwards, outwit that which owns the sky,

all who die, must die.

To those who would contest we say but this,

confound us with your sophistry,

bring forth your maps from prehistory,

in the attempt, there lies the charm,

to reawaken sick minds from harm,

it lies not within our grasp or gift

to name who must die, who must live,

but it lies within our grasp to forgive.

 

‘Even though you summoned soft,

there were indeed no words enough,

and boys that did promise much, wept then fell to dust.’

 

What voice is here?

Whose words now greet

with such power

it knocks us off our feet?

For now I think the coronas of the sun,

do from the centre outward slip,

to bode the ending of eclipse.

 

Now let’s part these final fronds

in remembrance fond

within cavern depths of forest green,

closing ever over and warm within

from flickering heart’s hearth,

hushed light coalesces from shadows dim

into solid shapes and beckoning.

 

‘Cast spells that can’t be broken,

for I am here, and I have spoken,

away with passive voice, away with pluraled third person.’

 

There are places in my memory

packed tight with your smile

that comfort, like thick woolen jumpers,

loose fit, hand knit in multi–coloured skeins,

placed under grey-green Christmas trees,

wrapped in swollen roomy taped packages

which threaten to burst

and spill any contents that they nurse.

 

You could pull these over knees,

tugged with fingers at the sleeves

once hot water had executed in careless pursuit,

a shrink wrapped second suit,

clinging tight to pale young skin,

still unblemished and paper thin,

upon the rug at your footstool

sit together to unravel and unmuddle wool.

 

Somewhere deep in Cymbeline

bedded in a dark room, taps drip,

and calling pipes creak as time slips.

 

Paths border greens in tessellation

where roses grow at the edge of creation,

see sallow white cat, yellow eyed,

of wild disposition scratch

at life’s lifted latch,

dig at dirt where damsons and plums birth

to drop pulpy stones into the earth.

 

A wicker screen in corrugations,

divides one choice from the next,

your studio that seems to span two halves

of home, bridges across the mind by arch;

forbidden to look beyond, let alone enter,

but did not Pandora herself

open the box that was sent her?

Upon pushing through, something stirred.

Those things displayed, I did not disturb

but looked and touched in wonder,

skies did not open, no thunder heard,

no lightning there did strike me dead,

I bring this confession to you instead,

and you now smile and stroke my head,

call me home and make good speed

on warm breeze of cinnamon and aniseed.

 

‘You have chicken pox, it strikes the young,

a mild fever, so put this under your tongue,

now come. It will not last long,

you were gifted a body that’s strong,

thoughts too deep for one so young,

a forehead forever creased by frowns.

After we have rolled the pastry,

sprinkled baked apples with clove,

speak stories of adventure, of love,

read books I give you under Mediterranean sun,

we will retire to a cottage, cherry cloaked,

sit out time and mend what’s broke.

Ah, such a long way you’ve come,

from the bottom looking up with fury in your eyes,

I tell you now that Angels cannot rise,

but, of course, we always knew that,

because we are wise,

and realized once you had set out

that this is but a fool’s enterprise.

The truth is, nobody listens

or hears that which they do not want to hear,

call out far, call out near,

set every thought down from every lexicon,

rhyme the words, write the songs,

they will turn backs and move along,

however you might sugar coat the pill,

you must convince them first they are ill,

and those who see can make a choice,

to ride them bare backed, hunt trophies, wear fur,

or shoot words from pistols with silencers.

Now kiss me. You can never leave,

and whilst you have permission to grieve,

It lies not in your power to forgive,

but to pass the baton on to those who live.

 

So it goes.

 

And you, my Angel, should know

that she stays me here at her threshold,

a guardian after the fact,

maybe she gives what we did lack,

I let you go and won’t look back.

 

Picture how you were bedded in summer clover,

looking up from under my shoulders

at heavens high, as we did deep within us sing.

 

Neither of us had wings back then,

but strong spells,

vows and swollen promises,

neither would be the first to break.

And yet, in expediency,

I watched you shrug and take

another lover, and here we fall,

our own last best hope,

because love’s rope

that passed between us both was not enough;

it strained, it broke.

 

From earthly skies together drop,

both of us can never stop,

from heels to heads,

from heads to heels,

the universe about us reels,

until all that remains are spinning splinters,

a decade of summers that bloomed as winters,

yet perhaps in some way,

two still can bring two hands together, pray,

and are just waiting for that day.

 

Well.

 

It could not last forever and did not so,

so people in indolence like slugs grew

enthralled by image, bewitched by flesh,

disposed to anoint themselves pronouns fresh,

cancel each other, pronounce their own death

by smokescreen, screaming until their last breath:

‘the horror, the horror’ - but knew not why.

Even if they had dispensed wings to fly,

they were so low and as far from the sky

as is possible to be. Immune to shock,

grazing on pastures black, this circling flock

consumed thistles growing on granite rocks,

wild, irradiated food, they knew not what.

Good shepherds took aim, fired warning shots,

but Christmas soon comes to fatten the lot.

While blonde bombshell sent itself on its way,

texting more franticly but with less to say,

about fleeting crises now held at bay

by band aids, lad babies, and those who stay

original thought; that which surprises,

and many doubting that Angel will rise.





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