A Life Raft of Books

This year I made myself a life raft.

I built it from books:

Added touches of glamour

                             and largesse,

Using, sparingly, expensive bricks of

                            fat new paperbacks,

Still with the tangible thrill of fresh,

                                           ink and print.

My mainstay was the sexy enigmatic chic,

                                   of bohemian second-handers,

All bent corners and creased spines

                           from a previous, perhaps dubious, life.

Of course I needed the practical, uniform,

                                           files of e-books,

Proportioned as lightly as wardrobes,

                                  with hidden worlds.

I took my raft to sea

Or perhaps it took me.

Through familiar scenes of:

                          Tokyo subways,

And elegant cups of tea.

To the foreign vastness of Ivy,

                                 League intellects,

In the empty states of the New World.

Allegories of our souless consumerism,

                                          in fantasy lands,

Where war and terror still link hands.

Hot African countries I've never seen,

       Full of sun and foods and family dreams.

Of course, as an aside, all the women,

                           Found meaning through men.

So I've travelled through seas no stormier

                                               than any other.

Learnt new language, new skills and rediscovered.

Next year I think I'll make myself a life raft.

I'll build it from books. 

The Crows on the Road

Splayed and splat like mud flung fast from a tractor's wheels,

One matted wing grasping outward,

The only discernable sign.

I drive cautiously through the sordid scatterage,

Not wanting to feel the sickening, soft bump through my wheel.

The abandoned crime scene dressed as a hit and run,

On an implausible victim,

An immediate giveaway.

Murdered scavengers shot at the scene and moved,

Laid like a warning to all; don't take what you can't afford.  

My Fit Lemur

A little obscure but I was inspired by a picture of a man in the rubble in a small town, Namie, within the nuclear exclusion zone in Japan. In the foreground is a coffee shop sign: My Fit Lema. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2013/mar/11/fukushima-abandoned-towns-in-pictures#/?picture=405181746&index=5

My Fit Lemur

We're two years in,

And still no Spring.

The Matsuri resurrected,

New P.Ms elected.

While cast aside,

I did not die,

But in the shadows reside:

Me and my fit lemur;

A social stigma,

That marks me out,

As contaminated.

This time no allies,

But our own side.

Were we decieved,

Or did we fail to believe?

There is no leak.

Even as the hydrogen exploded,

As our futures corroded,

That dice was loaded.

With two years gone,

The world's moved on.

But as the ghost towns sit,

Making the country sick,

On radiation and the bitter row,

Over what to do now.

Remember: my lemur and I,

We did not die. 

The Owl with the Broken Wing

He knocked once and came on in,

The owl with the broken wing.

It had been a while since he'd been,

We exchanged tales of what we'd seen.

As he settled down in the brown armchair,

Removed his glasses with a weary air,

I brought him tea and a custard cream,

But he was gazing ahead as if in a dream.

I sat opposite on the blue setee,

And asked softly what the problem might be.

Oh it was nothing save a few odd words,

Struck him as strange this old, broken bird.

He'd met a man at the Gatekeeper's Inn,

Who numbered in hundreds his kith and kin,

But told my kindly listening friend,

He'd achieved nothing at all, in the end.

The tawny fowl gave a large sigh,

Said he'd accepted long ago we all must die,

But his sadness was the man's unreadiness,

That he hadn't been shown what mattered less.

He had achieved it all and I told him so,

Said my clever old owl as he prepared to go.

Thank you for listening he said as he made to depart,

It is true that a good friend will lighten your heart.

The Day We Knew Keith Died.

We follow the path like a brown tide line,

Etched in the shape of the last wave.

Still trees turned from brilliant bronze,

To a broken brown at the backward turn,

Of the autumn clock.

Lifeless like a patchwork tableux.

Stuck where we're supposed to be,

Man, woman and dog.

The quiescent railway track hems us in,

Under Sylvia's jar, encassed,

In the glass of a paperweight.

Inevitably with your frozen scene,

We are connected.

Condensed Earth contracts to leave us,

Breathless at how life could have turned,

On an Aussie's word.  

Language Learning

Language Learning:

It is painfully slow but,

gradually, glorious.

These shapes are all new.

Super-imposed over them;

Allusion.

Me: Scratching out the meaning,

Black lines I can penetrate,

Like an equation.

Vague essence with too many

Full stops.

Time travel for the writer.

Watching the invention of,

The light bulb moment.

Creating, recreating,

Old words.

I linger to watch the day;

Misty clouds kissing Stour trees,

Dewy eyed lens for,

Fanciful wakers of the,

Equal night.

I want to create this view,

With my new black pen scratches.

Casting illusion,

From dancing whisps of smoke that,

Fade out.

It's all I can conjure to,

Seduce the English text with,

Signs for Tree, night, day,

Symbols for now and fire.

Baby steps. 

Foreigner

Foreigner

When Grandma sold a painting she said she knew who she really was. It was dark when Aki landed in Japan. Leaving the airport by train left her feeling claustrophobic from all the hours of recycled air. The first step from the platform was like a reviving for slap. Her face stung with cold and even late in the evening she was assaulted by the sheer business of Nagoya station. A dazed jet-lag forced her mind into autopilot as she dragged her suitcase towards the central area and from there followed the english signs to the Marriott. She couldn't read the signs otherwise and when the bright-faced receptionist greeted her in Japanese she managed only a polite greeting before asking him if he spoke English. Her American accent surprised him and, she was sure she was just paranoid from tiredness, offended him too. He lost his smile for only a moment before switching to a neutral east cost accent. She smiled.

“Where did you go to school?” She asked. He told her quickly as he tapped in her passport details. The only other information he gave her was regarding her room. When she sat on the large bed her mind began racing. The Japanese word for foreigner better translated as alien and she felt it. It only surprised her in its familiarity. With the angle of her eyes and her strange name she had always been different at home but at least that was expected. Her smile and her all American upbringing challenged people's assumptions much more positively than this way around. She looked the same here but there her sympathies ended. Her Grandmother had done all she could to bring up her son as American. A challenge to a post-Pearl Harbour immigrant. Or perhaps not. She wouldn't have had a chance if she'd gone any other way. Aki's grandmother had never returned to her country, had given up all but a few ties. She kept one Kimono and wore it only on special family occasions celebrated within the home. She drank green tea in her art studio but coffee in any other location, including her own home. And she called Aki by the fond term chan. That was all.

Aki woke in the middle of the night to loud rattling sounds. The mirror catching the light from the undrawn curtains shook and the light fitting swung from side to side. Her heart was beating heavily and she managed half a breath before the shaking doubled in intensity. As she forced herself to accept the panic in the situation the movement stopped. The stillness was hard to perceive as her body shook from the double shock of being woken and experiencing her first earthquake. The world was abruptly not at all what Aki had always believed it to be. She felt the loss of her grandmother so completely that it was suddenly raw once again. She curled up this time under the covers and cried to herself until exhaustion reclaimed her.