Nigel Spencer
AFTER--
IMAGES.
1. DELIVERY.
When you
phoned,
your
voice rattled
with
sleeping-pills
"No,"
you said,
"nothing's wrong...
(the polite cough like Death
scraping its shoes)
"with me."
===========================================
2. FLOURISH
The bewildered
bull --not
caring to
charge
the cape,
scarcely flinching
as the darts
and spears
sprouted
in him--
twitched
his ears,
soon to be
manhandled
ornaments.
Their assault so
listless and petulant,
he at last
obliged them--
knee by
bended
knee--as
though bored
to
death.
===========================================
CONAKRY, 4 JULY, 1985.
I II
-- ----
Lazing casually away At home, the colonel,
to second-choice still humiliated
trees for now, as Minister of
leave the littered on the pili-pili,
barely aware of victory cassette.
Kalashnikovs popping stopped (smoking
Maybe a stray bullet: spewed like
if not a rebel, ribboned guts)
then a pig to sell only the old
to Christians lunatic asylum
whose ancestors it's is intact,
been grazing anyway. smiling hazily
Remote-controlled chaos on the thousand
by the sniggering street-picnics
French who've splashed that last see him
posters of their alive grovelling
designer dictator and whining
in the coup in underpants
that still has and chains
not happened. on national T.V.
==========================================================
4. CONAKRY, 11 NOVEMBER, 1986.
Sun-squint
blind behind
the Hotel Kaloum
is a bleached
plaster slab
dusted red
FROM THE REPUBLIC OF GUINEA,
TO ALL HER MARTYRS
OF COLONIALISM
AND IMPERIALISM
but as
Mitterand's
glittering
Concordes
touch down
with his
canopy bed
and gilt
escritoire,
beach-sandalled
black soldiers
(having sanitized
the dictator's villa)
get new orders...
FROM THE REPUBLIC OF GUINEA,
TO ALL HER MARTYRS
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
and
white-wash
========================================
5. SHERBROOKE
In the next-
to-pro league,
the players
drew blood,
hoping to be
noticed.
The game was gone,
and when the
visiting captain
--a Japanese--
skated out,
the organ-player
taunted him with
Chinese ditties,
forgetting the
"Yamaha" printed
on his
own back.
6. PRAGUE, 1990
Our secretariat
reported a small,
greying man
about fifty
who'd been
badgering them
timidly,
persistently
for anything in
English: a
crash-course,
preferably. "You see,
"I used to teach
Marxism-Leninism...
so for God's
sake, hurry!"
===========================================
7. DEAD-END
The union
president
left by
the back,
climbed
into his
four-wheel
drive and
drove twenty-
five metres,
then parked,
climbed down
and (looking
first left,
then right)
sneaked
into the next
building
to
moon
lite.
8. TOAST
To all the
corporate
welfare bums,
drinking
at our
corporate
bumfare wells...
fare
well.
===========================================
9. BUSTED & READJUSTED
They nabbed
the wiry
little Lebanese
at customs,
with a suitcase
full of heads
freshly disin-
tered for
elite fetishes
in Liberia.
"Leave these
to us, sonny.
Just flog
the pirate
videos...
"We get the
free market…
You get
the flea-
market."
===========================================
10. MARKER
Enamel baked on
mummified teeth,
biscuit-coloured and
brittle the skin-
shards, like pottery
thrown too thin...
listing in sand,
hand unfurled,
(not pointing to
oasis or
treasure or
shrine)
just trailing
between
layers of
Eden, turned
to
Sahara.
=======================
11. EVE
Never expecting
tourists or
scientists to
consecrate her
million-year prints
in clay
she followed
the
Other
away.
Leaves and
grasses,
water and
meat
still
remained...
but no
longer
the
same.
She did
not know
what it was
till she
stopped to
look back
and name it
the single
time, the
only place,
while
the
Other waited
to
move
on.
=======================
12. ISLAND.
O.K., so the monkey-
man scares you,
And the Commie
bores you.
The professor
does too.
Yet here he is
washing up on
the dunes of your
.
thighs once more.
Oh, he'll taste your
lush, veined leaves,
And he'll dive and drink in
all your warm pools,
And he'll celebrate you, proudly
smeared in all your juices,
Long after you've
buried him.
======================================================
13. THE SONG OF THE ONE-WOMAN MAN.
Of course, I want you, as
I've always wanted you…
They could have stuck
a mike in my face
When I was thirteen, and
I'd have answered the same:
I want a woman
to let me love her
As I know I can,
then start all over.
When I was twenty,
It was a dream.
When I was thirty,
Then forty it was great…
You know, something
to shoot for, waking up
Every day, wide-eyed,
like a fresh-landed
Alien in awe of the
beauty beside him,
Determined to do what
he was born for:
Learn ever-new ways
to love her…small,
Imperceptible touches,
not felt, yet sensed.
Hard to do, even try.
Only at fifty do I
Know it can really
be done, and I
Could do it, if
only you'd
let me.
========================================
15. TAKE HIM OUT AND SHOOT HIM.
Goddam marble-headed mutt--
Take him out and shoot him.
He's no good to anyone, least
Of all himself. He just
Doesn't know when
To let go. Fourteen years
Married --far longer than
He should have been--
Because he couldn't
Leave anything untried.
Then another seven,
Leading nowhere, and
He's spent his
Life chasing life,
Chasing love which
Doesn't want to be loved.
So go ahead, and
do us all a favour…
And just take him out
and shoot him.
16. Victoria Day.
Out of Toronto,
steel-grey and
seamless--closed
in, closed
out--we make
a slow, pained
run for it. The
bus station's
barely open, not
much choice: just
leave, please.
Midland, Penet-
anguishine, Georgian
Bay. Heard of them
once. Two women, one
man and a child, so
we go. Slow
and forbidding ride.
Midland grimly closed
up, closed down.
tourist information to
penitent pilgrims: "Closed
for Holiday" (Go
home, if you can.)
Revolving-door
deportees, we
circle the street
in holding-pattern.
(Bus out
in an hour),
and pay for
the right to
cancel ourselves.
In the café, we
pay to wait, play
Checkers with
the child,
using Smarties,
speak French…
doubly cursed as
the owner's
mother wipes the
table under our
noses. Can't be
chased out fast
enough for
them or us.
17. FLAPFOOT.
The motel-
owner still
shows the
bullet-riddled
door to
the room
where two
innocents
working
Christmas
got leaden
tribute
from small-
town cops
seeking glory;
"Peacock-boy"
led
the charge.
So as not to
beg pardon, he
was promoted.
Now the sad-sack
Peacock with
wet eyes
still roams
malls and
offices, preening
like a secret
man inside
the mascot,
gambling he'll
be recognized,
ostracized,
chastized, or
lionized.
18. DEDICATION
New loves,
old friendships…
the daily gestures
of renewal.
Spider's silk and goat's milk,
ephemeral,
yet
bullet-proof.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19. Learned and Unlearned:
(with respect to Collins, Jarrell and Reed).
Once we had naming of parts,
the birds and the bees
lecturing the chandeliers and
sliding to and fro, easing
into Spring before
launching into landscapes.
Young petals exploding over and
over, slow-motion speeding
into a frieze.
Frozen wet foetus
forever expelled
out of ball-turret and
into ground.
Up it rushed, enveloping them
with numberless names too
numbing to remember,
re-assembled in random
puzzles of bewilderment and
awe, not knowing
what they had learned
till after they needed it.
20. Imagine Us…
I imagine us, lying on our backs in the sun,
waves rippling almost to our feet,
wiggling our toes in the sand as it dries
with the glistening salt…
then we brush it off
as never having happened
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
all poems copyright ©
(2010): Nigel Spencer,
(2010): Nigel Spencer,
nigelGspencer@hotmail.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For years, I loved teaching war poetry as part of the 20th century ironic ethos, especially Wilfred Owen (at the heart of Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem", which in turn I rediscovered through Marie-Claire Blais' "Augustino and the Choir of Destruction"); Billy Collins, Henry Reed and Randall Jarrell. Elements of the last three have been reworked as part of the fresh vision inspired by them in the last poem (19).
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