Climbing Mounts

featured in the poetry forum April 22, 2016  :: 3 comments

In memory of Joan O’Leary

Life is running around in small shoes,

is seated with groups of the elderly,
the retired, the pre-op, the post-op
and I see that door with Push and obey.

Over the child screams and laughter
a penury of happiness is sidelined
and I feel myself pallbearing as
sibling sounds fill my emptiness.

For Joan is that popular Sherpa,
a mist tampering with my heart;
I have assembled her future with
shavings from her workshop floor.

I am helplessly drawn to taste
the fruit of her stories, am held by
the enveloping of a conveyor
of her summits and peaks.

Meanwhile the shy are out-there,
the out-theres more quiet,
the tone deaf are pleasing ears,
new safe hills are being climbed and

I am a well tended field of roosters
awaiting her hands, an unloved
belly swollen Kenyan child
who has just fallen in love.

editors note:

From summits of remembrance we bring our dead to life. – mh clay

Myopic Moments

February 7, 2015  :: 0 comments

When I picked you up that day
it was no different to any bad news day,
or any good news day. Speed thumbs
were exercising the birth of texting,
that was new, as was the news we would
inherit in a few hours and dilute to taste.
You were my boy now and I tied
your oversized coat and topped
your new small head with an ill-fitting cap.
I avoided eyeing that new space between
your neck and collar, there was a lifetime’s history
living in there these last few months.
Mr. O’Sullivan hurried out of sight
around the top corner, the new kids
at the end of the park criss-crossed on feet
and cycled the road and paths,
you puffed on your inhaler and barely negotiated
the mere eight paces to my car;
earlier I had strategically reversed it into our driveway
for the first time in seventeen years.
You fell into the passenger seat like a punch drunk
and uselessly puffed again.
I wanted to cry and wondered
if there were times when I was your boy
that you wanted to cry.
It was a journey of avoidance
for the two of us as we swapped
volumes of clichés and placebo bon mots.
It was to be our last.
The fear of death was lodging
in your tired and fighting blue eyes;
there were two reasons now why you couldn’t speak.
The clinic steps ushered in a few more puffs,
as did the sixteen risers and I thought of sixteen
more reasons why you should evict this intruder.
Behind the curtain you bent life’s honour
in your beg for an extension;
six weeks he gave you.
Six months after infusing your resilience.
Through the glass partition I saw you
plop into the bed of plants,
your two empty and un-facilitating
lungs begging retirement.
I wanted to scoop you up
and keep you forever,
but you asked me to leave you be.
The resilience.
You were always a final whistle man,
steadfast and determined,
brave and heroic and searching for that
chin to punch, that tackle to make.
All robbed now.
You never did have time for cowards,
like me,
not until today
when you let a hero drive you home.

Placeta De Montcada

February 7, 2015  :: 0 comments

a temporary stage, black-draped
tall-for-their-age children
gaggles of walking tours
giggling pink little sisters
a resident beggar
his wife, a begging too
map after map after map
a beaut of a comb-over
tapas to the left
Basque band music
over-eager umbrella sellers
so many held hands
small-for-their-age children
outperformed fashion clowns
an Englishman vomiting
lovers, losers and loners
two men and a mixing desk
tapas behind
everybody’s favourite baby
the odd sad face
rainbows of peeping bra straps
scooters snapping at heels
logo-clad department vans
a beard
high heels, low heels, flats
a Dutch number plate
tapas to the right
mostly digital shutters
siesta closed shutters
clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop
tiny spoons reducing ice-creams
no bad language
a holiday-dancing daughter
pot bellies, flat bellies, baby bellies
shitloads of following suitcases
tapas in front
a wheeled chair, in blue
high pitched and voice-broken laughter
litter-free surfaces
bottles and bottles of water
incomplete families
no dogs
bum after bum after beautiful bum
tasty smells
and not an invoice to be seen

Blunt Rules

featured in the poetry forum February 7, 2015  :: 0 comments

There is nothing difficult,
Just difficulties
That bed themselves in
Daily, sometimes hourly.
Thrice, one hour
When she put her boot
Into his amnesty
With the force
Of a brass tongue
And begged Hammurabi
For a fat sentence.

So he wears her love
Like a Friesian landscape,
Kiss soft
Statement strong
And blind-eyes
The words he sloppily jirbles
Like distasteful beans,
Leashes song words
Midstream;
For radio is his saviour,
His highway to reality.

editors note:

Windows down, volume up, foot to the floor; dial your difficulties to your favorite station. (Two more mad missives from Gene on his page; about a vacation and a victory – check’em out!) – mh

Letter to self

featured in the poetry forum August 9, 2014  :: 0 comments

‘The life we live is rarely the life we were given.’ Oscar Wilde

Denial perched on my heart,
I didn’t know this, couldn’t have.
It arrived days when inside
my little frame and head
my dictionary had only
white pages and when pain
had nudged me on to
a tangent of self sabotage.
Those lumps of anguish encased
in childhood blindness grew into
mountains of inabilities and rejection,
steering my mother adult to dole out
the oozing jealousies and torments
to a clean new generation.
I never witnessed the brand new
small frame and head torments,
the construction of new tangents, yours.
Today in this word of no heartbeats
I have reassembled my broken heart
and wake to the freedom that is peace,
to the pain that is remorse,
the aftermath of cruelty and rejection
and live in the hope and relief
that when you wake today
it will all be gone.
Forgive me please.

editors note:

With no past comes no forgiveness (nor guilt). Thanks, Gene! – mh

Circumnavigating

June 21, 2014  :: 0 comments

Kazumi familiarises herself
with words with new meanings
too big for her little mind to reason,
– nano-sieverts – caesium – irreversible –
asks honest questions about
unfamiliar shaped vegetables
and queer fish with familiar names.
Since Fumio lost himself to suicide
her sickening mother dresses
Inari with luck-bringers,
frequently pulls her family back the
102 years to his birth year;
hides the emotions they daily discuss,
leaks tears for his wasteland.
Her grandfather visits upturned boats
in dreams where he trawls though
memories of catches and colleagues lost,
loses himself to small-boy memories
played in child-friendly fields.
On Monday he will lose himself
to another unwelcomed anaesthetic.
Meanwhile the masters strategically
seat themselves in the furniture of denial,
where decency is an unused noun
begging to be honestly served.
They sing press-conference tautologies
and blanket each other in minimize,
their verbal guns loaded with excuses.

Stuffing Hanks

featured in the poetry forum June 21, 2014  :: 0 comments

One day I will cry forever.
Not like a terrace loser,
or a baby-faced softy,
you know, a terminal cry.
I will stoke my engine with
nights-without-sleep and invasions,
childhood floggings and hidden wounds,
attacks and black-suited fiends.
I won’t forget to douse the unexpected
with rivers of anal blood and
floods of small-boy tears.
I will hold up all of those walls
I’ve fallen off and hidden behind
with screaming wrongs
and decorate my sky
with pointing children’s fingers.
A cortege of forbidden questions
will at last assemble
and trod with notice
to a brand new place of old
where every squeezed-open
pair of perfect ears
will finally embrace
my slowest form of death.
And they will no longer speak of the
odd-little-boy who grew to be
that strange-kind-of-fella,
always the loner decorating corners,
the weirdo and the dark horse
and I will meet the dark father
dressed in dresses from the dark box,
the groomer of my un-lived life;
I will wear my coat of fury and
beat and stomp and slap and bite down hard,
return the pent-up painful years of screams,
accuse and insult and verbally stab deep.
I will hand back shame,
stuff hanks of guilt deep into his larynx;
I will pleasure for my first time.
That same day a man will
fall into the carefully-planned
death of a family and each season
his only friend who understood him
will refuse to yield the buried
pictures of childhood he’d sown.

editors note:

Some abuse for the abuser from a crying child triumphant. – mh

Orchestrating

February 9, 2013  :: 0 comments

They would make the music of self-praises
of artists, money men and university people
they knew would surely approve of them.
They would wear starched-smiling faces
dilute themselves to taste and silently
transmit the begging of urgent approval.
They would allow greatness to blanket them
urgently permit superiority to skip the queue
measure up and dress them head to toe.
They would stain the future of the innocents
slip in minefields and feed ambushes
destroy futures, cripple possibilities.
All of this while wisdom shaped as a brother
made the music of sawing and hammering
built a calm future, created vision.
All of this while their rejection slipped into
each downward push, each nail on the head
the only visible pain the blackening of a nail.
All of this while love played the redundant card
acceptance was a loner who played off-side
and tolerance was an engineering phrase.
All of this while he stained over accidents
dealt with the expected unexpected
frequently returned to his former self.

Bonelocked
For Pasha

February 9, 2013  :: 0 comments

No one has seen the walls
that hover around you,
shields that only land
occasionally in polluted
fields of adulthood,
birthed by deaf ears and
confused and troubled as
your country’s barriers.
Your birth year blew
you a second violation,
nuclear,
a shock to torture your
family now summoned to
live a querulous-free life.

Is there a poet of gratitude
lurking in your twisted frame
burying volumes of antiquity;
those beasts that
bite you after binding.
Is there an Olympian caged
within, breaking ribbon after
ribbon. A podium tenant
riding heroic cantatas.
A screamer without an
audience. Are your trips
as grey as a funeral
procession or as pleasing
as a lap of honour.

In Search of Life

featured in the poetry forum February 9, 2013  :: 0 comments

I searched for seeds I cannot
See in the largest pods I know
And in the hunger of this frustration
I eat again this lesson.

Ground damp and fertile I pause
Before I sow; up or flat I ask.
Being wise I take a second
And put them to bed together.

He up, she lying on her side
Each week I visit, dusting
Tidying, drooling as I go.
I tell them stories they don’t like

Of tarts and desserts and splits.
Of pies and sandwiches. Of funny
Slippery tales. I wait.
One sunny morning I cast a jealous

Eye towards my neighbour’s patch
And slowly permit myself a peep.
I weep to see the growing harvest
Wink and point my way.

I shout my first annoyance.
And dip and dig to chastise,
To find they’ve all left home.
A yellow note is posted on their bed

In writing all grown up,
‘Look wisely you silly man’,
And there they were all waving
From all neighbour’s fields.

editors note:

A gardener’s life can be a “seedy” existence, a lot of work to make salad days for the neighbors. – mh