A Dusting of Angel

 

A Dusting of Angel

 

Of drifting paintbrushes bristle tipped

dipping and canvas dance lightest steps

slow, then quick, quick, quick,

and catch the drop before it drips.

Of water boatmen skipping meniscus

in skated imprint upon quicksilver mirrors

and scant quicksand land, land – ho,

and tacking across bay before it blows.

Of memory tracing, a dusting of Angel,

raindrop tangles twists my tongue,

shake sieved frosting and come, you come

where love dies old before love was young.

Grandad Patches’ Bedtime Fables: Whelk Come.

 

Grandad Patches’ Bedtime Fables: Whelk Come.

 

Many years ago, or so I have heard, my dears, there was a snail who lived with a whelk.

Now, your actual whelk is a sea-faring kind of chap. Tempest tossed from hither to thither until he puts his one good foot upon the rock and sticks. His shell is a thing of wonder like a spiral cerebrum that twists, turns and falls in thought like many a multi-colored helter skelter.

It is true when he tells you that the sea fills his nooks, his crannies.

His companion was a small brown snail called Barry Highland, who claimed some affinity with The Gower, The Mumbles or something that was dreary in Wales and mostly he would sit by Whelk’s rockpool and glower.

Barry probably would have liked to have shared a meal or slept in a bed in Whelk’s place, but salt disagreed with him and bought him out in rashes and boils – or so he had been told. Barry wasn’t going to test it out, believe me.

Well, you know, Barry didn’t want to get too salty in case it made him poorly – or even worse – dead. If you let me explain, my dears, I’ll tell you. He’d probably heard about salt and slugs and lettuce from Jones the Farm who lived near Pontypridd.

While Barry Highland was worrying about salt, his best mate Whelk would be  thinking inside his shell, upon his rock, his one good foot like a root, his mind a book and his sinews would sing with sea shanties he had heard, memorized, committed to paper…until Barry interrupted him.

“Hoy, Whelk!” Barry would holler. “Watcha cock! I’ve just come from Jones the Window. I’ve got some exciting news.” And he would slither as close to Whelk’s pool as he dared, waving his upper tentacles to attract attention, and glower with his eyes popped out on stalks, waiting for some response.

Mostly he got none, especially at high tide.

Getting huffy, Barry whipped out his mobile and snapped, “Yo, Siri, call Whelk.” He would place it on a flat rock and stare at the screen as the contraption did its dance, threw its shapes…and wait and wait and wait.

Finally, because Whelk had not appeared or answered, Barry gave up. “Well, anyway, I’m off on my travels, Whelk. Jones the Block has just come back from a magical place where the mountains are very, very high indeed. I must see them. Travel broadens the mind, don’t ya know? You should come.”

This provoked no response from Whelk at all.

“Huh. Some best mate you are, Whelk.” And with this final retort, Barry picked up his phone, and, because he was a snail, made for those sugar mountains very, very slowly indeed.

In truth, he often wondered what Whelk looked like.

Anyway, when he got to the mountains which were at the head of the valleys, Barry sat and looked at them for a bit. After looking at them for a bit more, he chowed down on some mountain shrubbery, took out his phone and snapped a few pictures.

There were a few other tourists, he noted, scowling in his glowery sort of way. They were blocking the scenery, taking photos, cropping at the mountain shrubbery, slapping each other on the back, that sort of thing. There was a general air of congratulations and smuggery.

“These mountains are somewhat high,” opined a Woodlouse to his Earwig companion.

“Very high indeed,” replied a nearby Cabbage, who had been growing there for some time, and had always wanted to travel when she retired.

“I pity the poor fools who don’t see these magnificent mounds,” a Cockroach chipped in. “Should we climb them do you think?”

But cabbages are somewhat challenged in the legs department, and, in any case, it was enough to sit in wonder amongst the foothills. “No, but we’ll do some selfies.”

Barry licked his lips. He was rather partial to humping a bit of cabbage, in truth. But he decided to respect the culture and resist the urge.

He looked up at the mountains instead. Jones the Tub had been right. They were well worth the trip up the A470. Not wanting to be left out, he took his phone, snapped a couple of selfies, then looked some more.

The mountains looked back.

After about five minutes, Barry thought he’d seen enough and started to puff his way back to Whelk’s pool, followed part way by some other insects and grubs. It took a while, maybe a month, because, as I’ve said before, Barry was a snail.

Still, eventually he found his way back to the pool and edged up to Whelk as close as he could without getting salty.

“Yo, dude,” he cried, in a state of high excitement, “Yippety yay! I’ve returned from my adventures. My mind is broadened. Have a look at my happy snaps.”

There was no answer from Whelk.

“I wasn’t the only one,” he continued, unabashed. “I met all manner of persons, all kinds of cultures…there were earwigs, lice and a cabbage. You’re missing out, dude.”

Still no answer.

“Hoy, mate! What are you doing in there, anyway?”

But somewhere deep inside, the roaring of the oncoming seas had filled Whelk’s shell and it pounded through his ears, stung at his mind, whipped at his senses, lashed his body with a delicious cold – he wrote, he dreamt, he played.

Barry Highland’s mobile started to do whatever those things do – he stabbed at it and listened intently, his eyes nearly falling from his stalks.

“Wowsers! Near Merthyr Tydfill, you say?” He snapped his phone off in a state of high excitement, then turned to his best mate. “Get this, Whelk. That was Jones the Shrubber. There’s a very, very deep lake on the outskirts of Pencader. We must go. He who travels is rich indeed.”

But, as Whelk did not answer, Barry glowered, huffed and set off on his travels once more.

 

When he got there, after a month or two, he was irritated to see he was not alone, dear me no.

As usual, there were other tourists, lousing up the place, spoiling the view, dropping litter, getting drunk on whatever was in the muddy puddles…he bristled as he saw none other than Cabbage, Earwig and Cockroach themselves. How very dare they steal his unique idea? At least there was no sign of Woodlouse.

“Hoy, get out of the way,” shouted a large Parsnip, who had always wanted to travel, “I can’t see the lake.”

“You get out of the way,” retorted Barry. “This was my idea. I thought of it first.” And he dodged a visiting bus load of bed bugs who had just disembarked from Rhymney Valley.

“No you didn’t,” replied Woodlouse, who was there after all, it seemed, “Jones the Snot thought it up and phoned me. Now I need to take some selfies to prove I was here.”

“Bastard,” replied Barry Highland. “Your sort are always spoiling things for everybody.” And do you know what? He punched Woodlouse in the snout. Luckily, however, Snails are not renowned for being pugilists, and Woodlice have an armored shell, so the only thing damaged was a bit of pride.

Yes, I agree, dear, bastards is a rude word and we shouldn’t repeat it.

Anyway, that was by no means the end of it. Earwig decided it was his turn to become embroiled in the brouhaha: “I’ve always wanted to travel and by Jove, travel is what I’m going to do, you, you…snail, you.”

“Well, travel, then,“ replied Barry, angrily, shoving Earwig into the lake, then regretting it because earwigs can’t swim and just floated round and round waving his pincers in alarm, until a mocking heron fished him out and the lake watched on sardonically.

Barry Highland wasn’t waiting around to see what happened next. He stuck himself to the mudguard of a passing bicycle and was out of there faster than you could say ‘insecticide’.

When he got back to Whelk’s pool and sidled up as close as was expedient, he’d had time to think about his regrettable actions and, as there seemed to be no come back, regretted nothing.

“Wotcha, Whelk,” he shouted, and as usual there was no response.

But, because nature abhors a vacuum, his phone went off. “Hello?” he grunted, after whipping it out. It was Jones the Plop Plop. As he listened, Barry Highland’s mouth grew longer and longer until his jaw – or at least the snail version of a jaw – hit the deck.

“Shankers jankers, did you hear that, Whelk?” he screamed. “There’s a castle cross the channel atop a pearly promontory, where French druids were want to genuflect. We must travel there immediately. Travel completes us, you know?”

“Must we?” answered Whelk. “Why?”

Barry Highland dropped his phone. It skittered boyishly upon the crinkled rocks before dropping into Whelk’s pool with a splash and sinking with a sigh to the bottom. “Whelk,” he spluttered, “it’s you.”

“Of course it’s me, Snail, you silly billy. Now what have you been up to?”

“I’ve been travelling, of course. It’s the done thing once you’re retired. You know how people say we’ve always wanted to travel. See the sights.”

“Oh, Snail. If you follow the herd to see the sights, you’ll never understand it’s the sights that look into you, you foolish creature. Away with you to France, my friend. I’ve heard they eat snails there.”

Barry Highland drew himself up to his full height in indignation and anger at Whelk’s mocking tone. “How dare you speak to me like that, you smug slugabed,” he cried, “you never even come out of your shell.”

But Whelk did not hear him. He was already back beneath the welcoming ocean, feeling the salty water fill his shell and his mind with briny.

So, Barry Highland packed his bags once more and set off for France, determined to prove Whelk wrong. But do you know what? He never did come back to show those selfies. In fact, I don’t think, my dears, that anybody ever heard of him again. Outside of this story, of course.

A Tooth Extracted

 

A Tooth Extracted

 

Maybe O’Brien reached into my mouth;

to pull a tooth like plucking weeds

where flaccid gums had gone to seed

and thick the blood that comes to bleed

thistle purple gouts and crone’s disease.

Between forefinger and thumb in distaste,

dispassionate holds it to my swollen face,

and with toneless voice I heard him state,

‘imagine my boot grinding skull and pate

forever - this certainly has been your fate’.

Could well have been some other spook,

or maybe it  was you who left me shook

and reaching for my fluoxetine.

What teeth I have left shape silent screams,

while tinkling with wretched ivory keys,

toss off crushed velvet songs on satin seas

of truth flies somewhere on the breeze,

anxious remembrance I troubled leave,

and find lost hours to sometime grieve,

wind back through youth that you did thieve.

We’ll unlace the boot that stamps the face

and leather straplines with old fingers trace.

A Cloven Tree

 

A Cloven Tree

 

Time grows in ripening apples

falls far far away from a cleft tree,

rots in ruts, bedded in clotted ground

by perspiring muddy oxbow lake,

where slow those worms sleep 

burrowed not deep enough within,

beneath that spreading parent leaf.

Cloven in two by one pure blue

lightning bolt that swift struck like snake

venom brings forth gnarled twisted face,

carved leathery on a thick peeling bark,

drawn in screams upon a dreaming dark.

Time comes in ripening apples,

and a cloven tree will fruit and shed

a basketful before it’s dead.

Boy, Interrupted (Part 1)

 

Boy, Interrupted (Part 1)

 

Vikings at Eagles surging on a boy’s world,

see they’ll shear your curls, tell those growing girls

how my teacher smelt of cough drops, 

wrinkled prunes, cockleshell heroes, aniseed rocks,

what taught was nothing much learnt and not a lot,

she's wielding the shears your mother lent her,

puts you on her tight sweatered knee, tells stories,

of magic kingdoms, magic nails, magic rings,

there’s, after all, something magic in everything.

Hermes, we’re all balanced on top of the world

and, hey, 'look at me, Ma, look at me',

but that stuttering pistol’s shaking in his grip,

while Filipina are flooring warm wet water trips.

Kid in carriage, his glaciered face out the window

swelling in smug grin on the stopping train

between here and here, ahead cut clean off the cuff

she's pounding the other way and only stems remain,

bleeding sap upon her Côte Sauvage’s ball traps.

No longer in need of watering, sometime sane,

toting misfired pistols aimed at miswired brains,

screaming at white chalk black boards in boredom:

here’s to pretty shells planted in neat rows,

here’s to Mary and her garden green grows,

here’s to jagged pack ice in blood soft snow,

here’s to stoned hopscotch born still unborn,

here’s to boy interrupted and here's daggers drawn.

Footsteps in the Dust

 

Footsteps in the Dust

 

And so as we must inevitably fall to rust,

pacify and soothe all that once was lust,

minds turn on TV, turn off books,

turn to leaving footprints in the dust.

 

For everything there was a season,

what we once dropped becomes strong reason,

white wooly haired flocks are legion,

our shepherd guides mobs to far regions.

 

We scythe through ripe wheat in waves,

gather green shoots from horizons’ graves,

exit theatres after act three of five act plays,

to fall from the edge of all the world’s stage.

 

Whose footsteps trample in clumsy horde

those places to keep us from our Lord

saved and put by all these twilight times,

think nothing of motive and less of rhymes.

 

Yet a watching wraith who cannot find

peace save for in his lover’s dancing mind,

knows all we leave behind becomes us,

just shallow footprints in shadow dust.

Saddle Bags and Coolie Hats

 

Saddle Bags and Coolie Hats

 

He’s back and you’re the clothes horsey horsey,

here’s his pole and a line running at angles of high hat

with a touch of traditional coolie in red

and hard-working legs akimbo on that old marital bed

or saddled with saddlebags at least,

rubbing floured bread in plenty of soured yeast,

a disappointment in risen dough and not much baguette,

but take a role, any role, sou sou west of drole,

cued off course and left of down stage centre,

spread butter Marmite and she does repent her

haste them to the airplane steps bestrewn with blooms,

a cool aloha and lei and she’s seen some better days

he might be thinking, looks her up and down and drinking,

licks complimentary matchstick open pink cocktail umbrella,

lacks guts or doesn’t have the heart to tell her

we’re widening our horizons by closing them off,

you’re sucking straws and I’m clutching cloth,

and glad with the diversion of that persistent moth

who hurls herself at candles, cannons off naked lights,

falls finally into your saddle bags, a crisp amongst the litter

of books hawking things living longer, living fitter,

tangerine liver, tubes of lubricant, anti-aging cream,

hot gossip, hot topics, and endless conversational streams

of absent friends and whence does it lie, this lost dream?

While she says to me, am I not beautiful,

you did not tell me so, not today, so puts foot on the gas,

and won’t wave in remembrance while driving past.