FESTINE LENTE FESTINE LENTE

Up the Green Road
under an arch of sunlight & leaves

I travel through Time & Space
mastering speed.

Balance still a little odd
as I try to...cycle faster...keep up with my Dad

who is forever far ahead
calling: “Come on, Donall – that’s the lad! ”

All that time I am
that eternal summer

always

struggling to learn

how to do

7 x Tables
(tie my shoe)
master bicycles.

Down the Green Road
under an arch of Time & Autumn

I cycle faster with the wind
behind me...calling to the man

who languishes forever
far behind me:

“Come on, Dad...”

“Take it easy, Donal lad! ”


Festine Lente is the Latin for Hurry Slowly!



The man who made me...the man I am.

THE LONG HELLO

I left
my memory
in a run-down hotel

all damp patches
peeling
plaster

who am I?
wish
I knew!

maybe I'm a salesman
travelling
in lady's underwear

naw...that don't seem right
I looked into the blur
that formed & unformed

before me
constructing in my mind's eye
a Hollywood smile

that's all stage set
nothing behind it
but...fakely real

she had an Art Deco heart
she wore on her sleeve
bit frayed 'round the edges

and a laugh
that lingered
like perfume

'Hi, Petal! '
her lopsided grin
was all femme fatale

she spoke
in Film Noir
I knew the lingo

'Remember me? '
she sighed softly
as if caressing herself

remembering
me
caressing her

sure wish I remembered it
in intimate detail
I'm a stickler for detail.

this broad was slim
but with curves
in all the right places

if ya get my drift
if ya know
what I mean

her laugh was all
lightness and lavender.
'Good...good! ' she cooed

'I see your ******* is
at least listening! '
I involuntary

covered my crotch
with both hands
as if I was naked

I wish she was
her curves flowed
like very runny honey

over the back of a spoon
trickling on to the tip
of a tongue

she was strictly
yum as in YUM!
then she went

all Cubist on me
as if she'd been badly drawn
by that Picasso dude

I felt like a 2-D drawing
as she approached me
in 3-D

my conscience found
its voice(down behind
the back of the couch)

it wheezed
and wheedled
like it was Peter Lore

'Ouch! ' I ouched.
'Ok...ok! '
I announced

in a too loud voice
'I believe I know...
....who done it! '

'It was...' I stammered
'It was...' I stuttered
"It was...'

'Cut it...Cutes! '
she snapped
like knicker elastic

'I guess we both know the score.'
she somehow contrived
allowed her dress to fall

to the floor
where it pooled at her feet
like a green silk puddle

'Hey has anybody told you
you look just like *** a chelli's
Birth(I burp) of Venus! '

'Cut the wise cracks Jack...
it was the drink
...done it! '

'You just had one
bottle of Baileys
too many! '

'But now...it's finished...
ya hear
...finished! '

she threw the bottle
over
her naked shoulder

I listened to her
in glorious
Technicolour hangover

she poured her body
all around me
like jelly in a mould

'Hung over sure...but
I think I got the cure! '
her kiss was like
the last page

of a **** good Who
...dun it!
finally falling

into place
I kissed her
lovely face

YOU WITH YOUR FRESH THOUGHTS CARE FOR...
(for Amandip)

The tree
undresses itself

shyly sheds its leaves

stands naked
in the setting sun

its golden clothes
about its feet.

She cries
for what she sees

as the death
of the tree.

I put her
on my knee.

Kiss her
sobbing head

whisper words
of comfort

into her tangle
of golden curls.

Later, from the table
the sellotape dispenser

appears to have gone
missing

leaving behind an emptiness
where it should have been.

I smile to see
each golden leaf

returned to
the lower branches of the tree

clumbisly sellotaped
back in place.

'Tree better now! '
she seriously tells me

as starlings
swoop & sweep

across a sky.

*

I guess this is my modern updat of Fr. Hopkins's SPRING AND FALL: TO A YOUNG CHILD which I have loved ever since I first encountered it as...a child. Little did I think then that I would live my own version of it years later with my little girl. I used to say this poem to her to make her go to sleep...she didn't understand the words but loved the tone and the fall of the words.

I guess(I am doing a lot of guessing!)    that I had in mind also....one of the first haiku I ever fell in love with....Moritake's beautiful little peice of real magic as the fallen flower floats back to the branch.

The poem is dedicated to Amandip because of her constant kindenesses and her smile which lights up even the darkest corner.

Spring and Fall: To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

*

Moritake's most famous poem:

    The falling flower
    I saw drift back to the branch
    was a butterfly

THE FOREVER FLOWER

she hands me a stalk
"The flower's dress
fell off!"

"Fix it!" she cries
I by sleight of hand
fix her flower but with a different colour

"It's a different colour!"
"The flower..." I tell her
". . .changed its dress!"

this flower
with its dress fallen off
I hold forever

*

This is my little Tilly from long long ago and that flower or non-flower by the time I got it...is the only treasure I could wish to have. It's just one of those tiny moments that get lost in the flux of time. At the time I didn't write so I was delighted when it just popped back into my mind. It's like an emotional Polaroid.

IN XANADU....IT'S...COMPLICATED.

"Life should not lived
in black and white...

...but, in colour!"
Coleridge thinks.

"Man should not believe in
'No-can-do"

but in 'Yes...
we can!'

Even a legless man can
dance the Can-Can

with the uppermost part
of his body and

dancing with imaginary
legs!"

Sammy( sometimes he )
displaces himself into

the  third person
decanting the fine wine of the mind.

"Naw...scrub that line
don't know where in hell I was

going with it.
Gawd! This laudanum is strong!"

And so, he sits, sips and pens
in a vision or a trance if you like

a dream of future-time
where people can be made

into paper replicas
of themselves.

The "picture-graph"
he calls it

for want
of a better word.

And now he pushes the boat out
pictures that can talk and walk

so that even the dead
will flicker for a second

back into the life
they had.

A world going to ***
and other such drugs.

Machines that can take your voice
and fling it over to...say...Japan

and back and forth
again.

The world shrunk to your hand
" a miracle of rare device."

Just think!
Think of it man!

Or to be Blake-an about it:
"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"I have a dream..." the poet proclaims
beginning to sound like a speechwriter

"...that one day man
may fly...sitting down in the sky!"

Oh I'm really getting going now!
Laughs at his mind's daring derring-do!

Gawd....this laudanum is strong!

And that one day facebook(sic)
will come to be.

"...things unfathomable to man!"
These the dark caverns of the mind.

Cute cat videos...selfies
whatever!

"Look here is a picture
of my dinner!"

Relationships: It's...
...complicated.

He crosses out "unfathomable"
writes "immeasurable" above it.

"...miracles of rare device..."
So good I've said it twice.

Such "...mingled measures..."
will life be really so?

Suddenly a 'ping" or some
such thing!

A message request from
Kubla ****** Khan.

Now one is being poked
by some bloke

an Alf
from Porlock it would appear.

Good Gawd is that really his
Profile Pic...he looks sick.

Claims to be a Jehovah's Witness
and can he come 'round and

have I found
Jesus?

Jaysus no! Delete...delete!

This facebook is
"...a savage place...

as e're beneath a waning moon
was haunted..."

Bit flowery that but
it will have to do.

Now **** it all to hell
where ****** was I?

And now...now...this very now
a poem put upon my timeline.

My timeline's mine!

Yet another poem by some
"woman wailing for her demon lover."

Is it my imagination or
are there more demon lovers around

than this time
last summer?

Humming some **** tune
by that Olivia Newton John.

An annoying earworm.

Ada Lovelace
wants to be my friend

even though she isn't
even born.

Oh get a life!

Do I 'heart' Byron"
"Wot...that ***!"

Describing her mindset as 'poetical
science."

Goes on and on
about an analytical machine

and how individual and society
relate to technology

as a collaborative
tool.

She makes me feel
a fool.

I deign to
decline.

This stately "pleasure dome"
device is not for me.

I delete my future
account and listen

to the dear  birds
( alas no albatross )

in my lime tree bower
as they twitter.

Make myself a cup of tea.
No sugar.

Constipation is
killing me.

Eat an egg out of a tea cup.
A fat slice of ham.

Gawd! This laudanum is strong!

I do not like things
"...flung up momently..."

"I close my eyes with
holy dread and cry

Beware! Beware!"

Have... God...
**** run out of laudanum!

And so set out
for Porlock

avoiding Alf
if I can.

NOLI TIMERE

to how small
he was
back then

the big barking dog
appears
a monster

a Grendel and
a Grendel's mother
put together

just as in
the telling
of the tale

his sister's voice
weaving a Beowulf
along the journey

every atom
of him
totally frightened

"Don't be afraid..."
she whispers to him
"Here...hold my hand!"

she stares the creature
straight in the eye
"Hello...Mr. Dog!"

and the creature shrinks
back into
someone's favourite pet

we walk on
into our future
without looking back

now here
at your death
I can still feel

your hand
in my hand
even

in a world
without you
I tremble

with
the loss
of you

and Death shrinks
before this great love
the tiniest of touches

"Don't be afraid..."
you whisper to me
"Here...hold my hand!"

IS THIS. . ?

Is this the face
that ate
a thousand chips?

Is this the fez
...that launched
a thousand quips?

Is this the vice
that launched
a thousand whips?

Is this the vine
that launched
a thousand sips?