TSEliot

The richness of pickings do thus derange -
The richness of pickings doth derange -

La figlia che piange

A girl deranged in an empty parking lot
In front of her father in the car
Across the dark parking lot
Then she gets the call from her auntie
And prayers to God to save her
Hot air blowing through her damp forehead

The possibility of death dawns upon her
Dragging herself to her end, the death, this way
While having a tantrum and pushing the button

And her voice and her words, those fluent words in her native tongue
Hangs in the air
Inflections from a cheap drama
Of a mind so confused and mired
That of the crazed mother -
If the daughter became a visitation of his mother
How the past begets the future and the future

The girl is eventually becalmed and led back home
The doors of the car closed and driven off
But on the edge she sits
Perhaps with dangling legs and a lollipop in her mouth
Perhaps with fingers digging into the cement
And nails crushing against the congealed sand and grit

"And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose."

The Dog

What what what can I say....All the people I see of so many races
Mixture of races, mongrels all
What what what can I say.....Liars cheats heroes and vampires all

The faces, the faces they surround me, engulf me
The arch of the eyebrow, the funny protuberance of an eyeball
The snub nose, or one so peculiarly curved and defined
As to have been moulded by a sculptor in a moment of madness
And stuck on to this smooth surface of skin
Which is the strange Mediterranean or Indian or African or Jewish or East European or
British face I see before me...
The olive skin which covers so many gradations of being
And textures
pebbly to knobbly to jagged to marble smooth (if you are that lucky teenager)
Baby skins and the walrus-like wrinkled, folded, coarsened and prickly skin
Of a drunkard hopefully on the not-so-slippery slope of
Rehabilitation -

What what what can you say......what words do you have left
The funny walk, the stumpy ankles, the fashion we idolise
Of cut off ankle lengths and hip swinging minis over black leggings
Delineating the bulging, knobbly protuberances of limbs.

And each being so exuding of a need.....
Craving of things, of succour, of destinations
Humanity not to be denied
Like the muling cry of a new born babe

Then I see the clear eyes of a young pup or a dog or a bitch
The wagging tail
The glossy coat
And somehow, its a miracle, the world is a miracle

and a smile will save all - may be.

To Sevki K and Polly R - Again

The smudging, you see, of life,
The messiness of old age and infirmity,
These are things that will not touch you.

Trite words will not touch you and false sentiments neither
But...........................................................................................
A leg stretched out, feet pointed,
An arm raised with hands and wrists curved gracefully
Up into an arch,
....................................................................................................

You lived a life I do not know, have no glimpse of.
Do I wish I did? Is that it?

More than a year since you both passed away
And we passed on to other tragedies, problems....................

If we have the ability to help and we choose not to,
That's a problem - for us.

But if we have no ability to help
So we have no choice,
Then surely, that's not our problem.

The question is,
Is it owed of us?
Do we have the ability?
And who should decide these questions?

There are bright stars in our firmaments, people we love
For no reason than that they are beautiful people -
This fact cannot be denied.

If such people force us to trot out
Banalities and cliches
False sympathies -
Surely we cannot be blamed for this?

In the end we knew how to love,
Though beautiful we were not.

In the end, privilege brought us Princess Di
And the same took her away.

Life is not a headline.

Hasankeyf - a place I will, in the run of most statistics, never visit. It doesn't take much to go there - except a mountain of inertia and fear. But how haunting that name....

Diana Athill - "This isness business - what smartypants called it that? - is, to me, too obvious to be chic........It is the obviousness-the obviousness of the quiet throbbing of life in every object-which has filled for me the silence that should have been left by non-belief, and which makes me question whether I did in fact, stop believing......My senses tell me, not that 'God exists', but that 'it is'." (from 'Instead of a Letter')

Ian Brown - "Set my baby free" (from 'Golden Greats')

What do the above three have in common. Only one thing for me - Honesty. It is honestly where I am now. And it is where life has been lived to the bone.

But you must understand, sometimes with our very thin skins, skin-deep is as close to the bone as we can sometimes get. Sometimes, there is no less love there, you know.

People, people, lovely people,
All sorts, all lines, all colours,
Again Diana has already spoken -
Sometime beauty is reason enough for life....
And for those of us who do not have this
Beauty
How can we justify?
(But you smile...)
Sometimes life is itself a justification,
The isness of all is the reason
And there will be time, some sort of time.

Some sort of reconciliation -
And a beauty
You will see.

Seven Ages of Humankind

You know when somebody's lived beyond seventy, they can't complain if they die cause they've had their chance at living, their chance in Life. This is from a non-socialist, non-egalitarian, apolitical and purely spiritual point of view.
But you'd be surprised how many of us can be judged by this. Because we get our chances, from the moment go, and like the Greats before us, like Gandhi and Mandela and Abraham, we could have chosen one path over another & spent our time and energy on this rather than on that. But we often feel that we have no choice - in our day to day lives. What does that mean, I'm not sure. There are moments of breakthrough in each of our lives I'm sure, but often we strive to reach somewhere and we measure our success in life by how close we got. Perhaps its a matter of having the right resolve, conviction and understanding. But sometimes its difficult to see the wood for the trees, and sometimes you think its not that at all. Some are chosen, others are not.
In any event, with each decade of age you get your chances - for many of us. Sometimes its worth recognising that fact.

To Sevki K and Polly R

You know how it is,
Suddenly there is a death,
Two deaths,
And life goes on.
Silly questions an' all.

I wanted to say something somewhere
Post something on some blog
So you would know -
I'm touched too.

Two people who were so loved,
Who touched so MANY people's lives
Who were SO special.
They touched me too,
I loved them too.

Its like the Princess Di syndrome all over again.

But forget all that -
One thing they both had in common I think -
They loved their lives, their moment in time,
They thought life was special and the lives they came across
Were special.

I tend to be in the opposite camp. Rather,
nobody's that special, life ain't nothing special.

But why then would I wish to say Something.
Why would I wish to be heard.

I'm sure God will forgive all in his infinite wisdom - someday.

In the meanwhile,
These two were just amazing stars
And they do make the world a very special place
To know.

May you both enjoy the peace you have both so fully earned.

My pain will be His
It will be a promise between us
My only gift, all that I possess
To Him I will give -
All my shame and all my sin
My fear and my hate
That black canker eating away
What no human eye ever saw.

They will see the smiles
They will notice the calm
They will talk of the plenty
But they will not know of the shadow,
A secret that hangs
Between Him and me.

Shadow dark and drear
Desperate and murderous
Seeking only to mutilate
Only to annihilate.

She is shrieking and kicking
Crying to be let out,
She is gagged and laced
With a seaman's rope.

Digging in deeper and deeper
Into her own flesh
She tears and cuts away
At her own flesh....and bone.

And all they ever will see
Is a sweet-smiling
Glass-eyed, pink-cheeked dolly.

When out of gratitude
She opened her mouth
-to give her heartfelt thanks,
All that would come out
Was her bloodied thumping
Heart.

- written in summer 1992 -