Olaf the apolitical optimist

'The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter'- Winston Churchilll

O Olaf, even when you weep
the tears laugh as they roll
down your Joke Face.
Olaf, come on!
Let's play at Singing
and blow up balloons in
Glasgow Chamber of Commerce,
because we cannot join Mensa,
Neither start nor stop revolutions.
And we refuse to educate ourselves
in economics because we have
shortbread attention spans.
O Olaf, despite everything,
even when you weep
the tears laugh as they roll
down your Joke Face.

The troubles of George Eliot

(Sketch of a Glasgow Grandfather, Kilmartin Place, Arden.)

I keep forgetting myself more and more. Just the other day I was looking for my glasses ages I spent, hunting through the house. Lo and behold, where did I discover them? Perched upon my brow. A common stupidity I suppose. The obvious is easy to forget. A busy mind cruelly absentminded. Even Margaret is finally going spare. She bites her tongue mind. Honestly, only this morning, I said wearily to the postman as I walked to the newsagent:'Is it Saturday or Sunday, Son?' He said:'It's Friday.'

I was mortified, a tad disorientated too strolling cringing at my absentminded. Seriously, I'm forgetting everything, imagine. God help when it's something serious. God forbid I should forget something vital that could lead to serious danger. I'm looking at trying out those brain train games. They are meant to work quite well I hear. Keep dotage at bay. Keep you alert. Keep you from losing it completely. I mean, I'm a grandfather, now.

Poem for the Moths.

You are fragile tracing paper thin.
Easily a berry between two long fingers.
You dart busying yourself searching
for bright heat or the light of purpose,
which only moths know and talk about
in moth think moth talk and moth love,
perhaps the pursuit of safety.

But why is the light so maddeningly important,
you hover there like late Buddhas,
in the air of time. Are you Trapped in
moth size, screaming toward the light?
'Clip my wings! Make me larger!
Don't want to be a moth anymore!'

What nonsense; mistaking lamp bulbs
for flower heads. You remind me
of a certain someone species, a certain civilised
manwomankind. They appear clumsy, fluttering
foolish but sincere in the heart of the matter
like you struggling into the small hours
but generally they turn the light off and go to Sleep.




*I realise the Moth muse is staid, over done, but I like the poem, its nonchalance; a lackadaisical muse upon a moths flicker, while smoking alone, one night, in the back garden of the close.

The forgotten Jesus

The Forgotten Jesus:

I keep making people fall asleep;
whenever I sit beside them for long enough
and say what needs to be said they slowly
but surely doze off into tranquil snooze.
I am left with eternity all around me
twiddling my thumbs, lonely for my Father,
who never calls; perhaps he too has passed out
on his Heavenly bed, dreaming of everyone
and everything, besides me.

Team Work at the Post Office (excerpt)

Terry: 'Awright Spacecadet! Ya fuckin' dandy boy, yee. How come yir in at yir work early the day? You here tae shirk work fir a bit longer?'

Colboy: 'Am no a spacecadet, a keep tellin yee, I'm a fully qualified Astronaut. And, a work like fuck in this place, we all day. A pull ma weight. So don't make oot am freeloadin or no breakin back in this joab.'

Terry: 'Aye, Son, lot a pish! just you get the heed doon, and stop fuckin' waffling.'

Colboy: 'It's the system, the organisation is fucked, we can't work within it, we canny cope, we just tolerate it, we shouldnay tolerate any of it, we are the system, and wir no that systematic, believe it or no. It has us tearing each other apart, when we should be dismantling the shite system.'

Terry: 'Ack! Yir all talk bumboy. Lot a pish! Just get on with yir work and shut it! You don't know your livin, Son.'

Colboy: 'Is that right, Dad?'

Joe: Is that terry and col havin a shouting match? HAHA! Terry, ya fuckin' inbred beast, shut the fuck up and get a wife! Stop being married tae the joab. Ya jobsworth Proddy.

Terry: 'Ha! You shut it, Joesy! Ya catholic cock. You catholics, all shaggin wee boys!'

Joe: 'Ha! And you proddies, all fucken memebers o yir ain family. Fuckin beasts. A tell you, beasts, man.

Terry: 'Right, shut it, every body get the fucken heeds doon and do some work. Ya shower o reprobates.'

A Skittish Boy

(Me, aged roughly, 4 years old)

The Ancestors’ albums
All the photo albums of my family history
Are stored in the eves of the attic.
In the night the attic doors shudder in the wind,
And depending on the strength of the wind
Sometimes the rattling wakes you.

Queer memory
A hot summer tent, flap flailing in the breeze.
We climbed in and out, naked, blithe. Two boys uncovered.
Our clothes still inside. Our bodies without recoil.
Little luminous white skins not without a blemish.

In Art class,
We made Valentine cards
and marked our kisses with an X.
I never painted much always drawing
stick soldiers in battle scenes.
Later adding underground bunkers for safety,

now here I am
And I’m thinking,
(And the thinking screws it)
become a type writer,
a word dresser, an honesty monster.
Something straight along the line.

Chaffinch

Little bird
upon the branch
singing;
you have no
National Insurance
number and that
is beautiful.
You fly, live die
and cannot be arrested.

So many faces I can pull

So many faces I can pull,
like Mr Sad and Mr Cool.

On Sunday's young boy Halo
On Monday's old man gloom.

And on occasion Mr Angry
concedes that he loves Mr fool.

Cause we're all in this together,
all the faces I can pull.

But most of all I love Mr Big Laugh
And sincere, Mr Wink-if-it's-True.




*This is definitely one for the kids book.

Car Park Poem

car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car

Car parks,
as a space,
offer very little poetry.

Invalid Night

Twiddling in a barrel of darkness,
desperate to beat upon my chest
like the Orangutan.
My life is a single room,
and I must gather my head there.
Like an invalid.

I have seen slivers of
private night, my skull is
soggy putrid apple core;
and there are children that
have been mutilated by no love
and too much love.

And my head is rotten through,
with rats of affection
and disgusting compassions.
And minuscule patches of bursting
flowers pink and blue.

I nibble my thoughts
like the terrifying Eucharist.
Dumb to my seriousness.

All the invalids want
to shit from the sky
like seagulls.
But they will all die,
horizontally.
No cure for the inevitable.

In the hollow space of a graveyard,
atoms form circuses and carnivals.

The One that Missed the Boat.

I believe I'm the loneliest odd sock in the world. I have been residing for nearly ten years in this empty cupboard draw. I say reside, but such a word implies an amount of willingness on the subject to live in the accommodation, but I do not take residence here comfortably. I am utterly stranded.

My friend, nothing has moved in this draw, in this cupboard, or indeed, this very room, for over a decade. Neither sock nor pant share this derelict cabinet. Why this silence? Driven mad with asking, I tell you! I have called out for answer, sung wild chants to attract, but there is no other presence that has yet acknowledged.

What of the human feet? The humans themselves? Dare I even wonder where fate has taken us! I swear, I must tell you, at times, in contemplation I panic within my condition. My thoughts dart and riot against me, with the terror of my isolation. The weight of silence like a presence all the more. The other, remains always an acrophobic absence, which I need, no long! to reinhabit this space.

Has life loosed upon them death? Plague...war, genocide! Destitution.My friend, I must leave! I must venture alone. But I am only a sock, how am I too move? To get out of this drawer! Damn, damn, damn....ten thousands damns for human hands and feet. The hands to pick, the feet to wear! That's the way it is, was. Must I take this much longer!

Sister Karmelita Borg.

Sister Karmelita Borg sits in a Church.
She says nothing. I sit beside her,
equally silent.

She fingers her rosary beads,
in a rigid pinched gesture.
Her contemplation
far removed from the world,
mourning the merciless voice of God.

Like the memory of infinite childhoods
righteously scraped and deplored
against a religious sentence
quickly hushed into silence.

But all I hear is the faint echo
of her sharp whispers moving off
the vast cathedral walls.
A cathedral so indebted it can ill afford
the concrete imitatio of Christ.

Hymn

This is a sentimental poem.
A love poem without a lover,
an erotic poem without a bed.
A love poem that seeks the ideal
not of the perfect body but the ideal
of finally meeting someone of silence
interrupted by light affirmative confession.
Please do not forgive this sweet conceit
on my part, the soul is lonely for its lover.

I seek him still more than ever.
Nothing catches on the nets of my love yet.
I seek him still more than ever.
His body and my body in answer
to each other. I seek him anonymous lover
as yet untouched, unknown.
I seek him and he seeks me
but we know not each other.

Foolish Paradise

This is a wee surrealist sojourn. I enjoy writing in such a fashion, it's like a great big comforting yawn or stretch: leisurely strokes for a leisurely imagination. It seems to describe a kind of child-utopia, utterly impractical unreasonable and full of naive delight.

The Bananas on the Banana tree explode
like fire works bursting upon branches
they blow out bright colours!
The colour of Yes is an exceptionally
bright colour indeed like the colour of paradise.

The Apples and Oranges walk down the road in Autumn,
their rolling is walking and they walk far in form,
the leaves fall from the trees leaf hands waving
as they fall to ground they rest gust around,
fiddle with themselves eventually leave.

In Art galleries the paint pours from the painting
onto the ground and the people walk over the paint
and it sticks to the souls of their shoes
and the shoe paints their smile-print over the ground,
no body is concerned because that's just the way
these people are slack breezy walking about
with large glasses of orange juice chinking
with large ice cubes...no one complains
the sun lasts for days and the nights cool
with breeze keeps them content.

In summer cars hover leaves talk,
birds sing and bears laugh
water tickles and every body has a body
which does wonderful things
and occasionally if you stop to listen
you will hear nothing which is perfect
the sound peace of calm air.

until a banana explodes upon the tree
and the birds adorn bowler hats
and flocks imitate clouds
jokes abound
musicians stir the dream
lost is found.

A glass of orange juice.

A glass of orange juice lights up the kitchen.
The juice is spilling over the brim.
Olaf picks it up, and it dribbles over
his knuckles, and through his fingers, spilling
onto the carpet.

'You're getting juice all over the place, Olaf!
You'll! ruin the carpet!
A passerby shouts from the back lane
through the open kitchen door.
'Why must you fill your glass so full!'

Olaf turns and winks at the passerby.
'Don't worry, my friend, carpets can be replaced,
but life must be drunk rapidly with affirmation,
even if there must, on occasion, be horrible spillages.'

Olaf, with precise intent, drunk the juice
in three large swift pure orange gulps
some of which pour down his cheeks and chin
then wipes the juice from his joke mouth
with his white shirt sleeve, before he exclaims:
'You see, I have just answered a question!'

The passerby looks at Olaf curiously,
and then with a jolt
they burst into easy laughter.

Pancakes

'Yir a wee puke'
That's whit ma Granny
used to say tae me.
'Yir a wee puke'

And, ah think whit she meant was,
ah was a wee bit soft in the heed,
a wee bit sensitive and dependent,
a mammies boy like, daft wae it tae.

'Yir mammy and daddy,
see only the Angel's Halo
above your heed, Boy.'

She didn't mean it nasty.
Maybe she was a bit jealous.
Bit she meant it in a way
that was just a wee observation.

'That boy, he's as saft
as a Caramel Sundae.'
Ma gran used to make
pancakes every Saturday.
A large tray of them.

And ah wid watch her make
the mix up, wae eggs
and flour and sugar.

She'd spoon some mix oot
pouring it ontae the hot pan,
in a wee circle it wid form,
and it wid cook.

Then she wid flip it over
and it would be golden broon.
And she'd make about thirty
pancakes, fir the whole family
to eat wae thur tea and coffee.

And ah wid just stand beside her,
and watch the pancakes being made.
And ah wid smell them like a wee prayer.
The sweet baked smell clung tae my nostrils.

And ah loved that,
watching her make the pancakes,
wee circular pancakes,
wee, saft halos
that we all ate.

Death in Venice

'Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.' - François de la Rochefoucauld

There is a certain
someone boy
plastered to my mind.
A certain
someone boy
whose lips I cannot find.

The boy has placid blue lagoon eyes,
(this boy actually exists)
eye wide to stare obvious and neutral.

Chiseled chin camomile skin
fixed adonis stare
self portrait alive with looks,
shy catching eyes, calm smile;
some intuitive air filling
the space between us
an awareness
of each other in passing.

The Political Opinion of Musculus