Outline of a brother.

sombre

I'm swinging from the monkey bars with my brother. We are calling out to our brother who has been missing for twenty six years. We beat our chests in frustration. He cannot hear us. My brother is in another part of the country and I don't know how he has come to live. He has a family now, children a wife and a Dog. I don't know how he came to terms with being shipped off swaddled.

He is Oliver Twist. I am Jim Graham. This isn't the poem you deserve. I'm working on that one. It will take another 15 years for me to find. By then I will be my own Father and you will be my third eye. You will meet our parents for the second time, for the first time, and love each other in contradictory terms.

Sweet Sandy

My hot mouth sucks your sticky sediment.
A cement of sugar, water, cream of tartar;
Phallus of sugarcane: salmon pink glow stick.
My saliva congeals to your skin, the next suck
meets with cold slobbers.
I crunch into the root of this sweet finger
again and again. My acidic tongue corrodes
sweet chemistry. I lick and delight in
this affair between mouth and minion.
This burner of molars, dentist’s pay cheque,
a child’s demand. Mother’s cunning dummy,
Great volcanic one: Sweetmeat, my saccharine love.



*The man who first invented Edinburgh Rock, was Alexander Ferguson, who became known as 'Sweetie Sandy'. (Edinburgh Rock has a close relative known as Blackpool rock.)

Memory Loss

Memory loss
Memory lose
Me m y l se
me o l s
m o e
s e
l o
o

What God is.

God might just prove everyone wrong about God - McGuire.

God is not a brutal man.
God has no master plan.
God doesn't have a personality disorder.
God is not the Judge of who is weak or stronger.
God does not need glasses.
God does not write books.
God does not argue.
God does not condemn with looks.
God is not a homeowner.
God is not an answer.
God does not try to understand.
God has no hands.
God is a fat cant of non-existence.

No-one can know God.
That's like conversing with a mountain,
that has a mouth, and can reply: Impossible!

Fanatic Theology, Evangelical Domination:
only demonstrate the power of argumentation
the strength of the vocal muscle,
and the need for reciprocal understanding.

God is only a fat count of mighty figures
Christ Almighty Collective Agreement!
Truly, the only God that exists
is the God that cannot be touched
interpreted thought or vocalised.

I know this becaue I have hands.
We know these things because we are not God.
(Islam Judaism Christanity are antithetical to God.
They are in direct - opposition.)

God is the structure of the Universe.
World Faith is viscious canabalistic infighting,
the symptom of a holisitic oxymoronic world view
based on the circular logic that:
If humans did not create the Universe
then Humans must have created the Universe!
But all we had done was 'Create' a Creator,
none other than a Another Human Being,
our Ideal! not the God of the Universe at all.

God is a gargantuan structure,
that sits in eternity, the
anonymous scaffolding of reality.


*Unfinished poetic and philosophical diatribe to clarify a self-taught concept of God. Ironically, the structure of this poem, is unsound.

500 wet tissues in this house alone.

Small is the heart that beats
through blood vessels,
but loud the voice
that calls above the riot

despite the fleeting fly of time
and resignation.

Be alive,
disrobed,

of tender night
in bed with another
flesh and soul.
Love is subtle fingers
grasping at the solidity
of the body

your breathing
beside me
and the windows
like open arms
showing the vast
sky of the future.

Love about all those couples.

WINDOWS IN THE WEST - Avril Paton

Love,

-You told of the boy who only understood language if it was sung to him, he didn't last long, and he never found love, no one ever sang to him, lived alone.

-And about the couple who treated each other like flowers and watered and fed each other and trimmed their hair and spoke in bright inspiring ways that are meant to make plants feel.

-the couple that smash glass for the sheer beauty of watching the shards bursting all over the place like a flash of light.

– the couple that play Bach Pavane Beethoven and gargle fresh cool water before they kiss.

– who pick flowers then lay them over the bed and lie on the bed and smell the pollen and become limber and lithe.

-the couple who try to speak while kissing, lost in tongues, always muffled, always open to interpretation, always passionate.

– or the couple who would drink hot chocolate naked and then fall asleep in each others arms.

– or the couple who sat face to face and looked into each others eyes without saying anything for an entire evening.

– or the couple who poured and poured and poured warm water over their bodies and took photos entitled Landscapes.

– or the couple who would each confess carnal hatred and sickest most darkest perversion, divorce then re-marry every night in their minds and make love to music it was claimed could wake up a Nation.

– or the couple who undressed each other then redressed then undressed until the pressure had burst and they fell into bed hot and ravenous for love for hot sweaty bestial love.

- or the billions who fall into bed mundanely , side by side, flatulence their only night time song, snoring and drooling their only resting poems, who woke up and knew it was all about compromise. They kissed sincerely but like franking a business letter.

- or the undercooked lovers of delusion, who knew each other only as parts of themselves, Siamese and definitely dependant, on the surety of another life, prison close in marriage, loving and wild for loving, but ultimately tied up together; in search of light houses or under ground tunnels.

The Perils of Obedience

(Milgram's experiment)


Eight out of ten people
will administer electric
shocks to the point of
fatally killing another
guinea pig human. But
when they walk the street
all they say is 'hello'
in gradients of gloom.

Dancing in hell.

On the frying pan
We pretend we are dancing
As we lift our burning feet together
Afraid to disclose the pain of our soles.

Umbilical cord

Mundane.

The telephone rings,
I don't answer.
It won't be
the voice of God.
Only another
breather trying
to articulate
important information
regarding practical reality.

I have not slept
peacefully
for days.
l have no affection
for battles.
I have been poisoned
by ennui. The hair
on my neck grows
like the hair of
a wolf but I'm a hermit
in winter not a wolf.

Those who exist above
the cities and their scaffolding,
live outside the entire game
of spectacular society.
How lucky these
types are like
single roses
on a plateau.
and maybe there are no easy answers.

Only a mountain track
where few dare to climb.

The phone persists,
and each airraid,
knives my sleep.
Exhuasted,
waiting only for
the mercy
of summer.
Slowly I wake
without ambition
lurch from my bed
pull the phone
from the plug.

Wooden chairs

God,
I've been sitting on this chair for ages.
Simple egg in a cup,
but chairs grow uncomfortable,
unbendable and suddenly
a large duvet with inviting
plump cushions would do.

Wooden chairs do not attend funerals,
but they should, they are stern watchers;
objective, stony men.

Stalwart sitting,
supporting us
laughably upon
their frames.

What does a chair want
with the luxury of
our grief?

To be opened up, read, and discarded.

A letter to myself.

Three pit bulls with razor wire barks scream at me, like starved prisoners, behind an iron fence frothing at the meat of me as I pass. I only want to deliver the post, get through without trial, or some yapper priming for my fingers, gnashing at my heels.

The owner of the dogs is a large building of a man, strong lean, with scar and muscle, a face haggard with rage and alcohol. 'Awright...' He sits with his dogs in his garden, looks at me smiles is content. 'Not bad, some weather we're having. Murder hiking up all these closes, in this heat. Somebody's definitely left the oven on!' I reply while eyeing the dogs and move on.

I strain into the sun walking through its heat into another close. On the second floor there sits in the middle of the stair a bucket kit for smoking hash. I move on up the stairs delivering then I walk back down; a group of five young approach the bucket, begin to stone their minds inhaling large potent lungfuls. I watch their pliable minds, play dough for the drug, sooner or later burning into dust.

Back into the heat, I shift my large post bag, stretch my arms up into the space of the sky, with its weight pulling me down, I close my eyes, moan in prayer to the sun. 'I fucking hate stairs: all 1467 of them.' I'm like a woman in distress carrying a filing cabinet on my back, but the job must be done. It's rational, insanely rational, to post the mail, juggling letters like an idiot clown in a circus prelude to hell.

Monkey’s every last one of us, burning in the sun, sagging in the brain department utterly happy splashing in the dregs of ourselves. I'm roasting. Somebody offers me a bottle of chilled water, and they are a miracle. A non-descript unasked gift of a moment. Thank you, Mrs Anonymous someone. I guzzle the chill down the desert of my camel throat. It is a snow ball of ice to me; I finish it off, rapidly.

I march with my steel toe caps and think of Sisyphus. Carrying his rock like it was the meaning of the thing, or a punishment stubborn and convinced, like a man who has finally grasped something of his own dull recurring suffering. An idiot man sitting inside the workings of a clock, with which he is baffled by.

God. I'm delirious with this labyrinth of steps and stairs, and the turmoil of dark closes, the reek of damp dog hair. The presence of the day. I cannot wait to end this mountain. Only to begin again and again climbing this dragon.

The Old Boy

My Mum and Dad say I’m an angel,
who must always do his homework.
Clean the dirt from behind my ears.
Listen and never be afraid of honesty.

Once they took my brother and I
to a cliff near the site of the battle
of Bannockburn. We peered over the edge
and Mum said, ’don't go too near the edge.’

The folks says people are just people
at the best of the time and at the worst.
If they lie they think it is worth it.
I don’t think I like people anyway.

I'm sad when alone at night
when the house is frozen quiet,
and no one appears alive it's then
I think of them all alone in memory.

Dad says to never turn the music up
too loud because you can’t hear what
people are saying. But he says I can enjoy
the dress up box and achieve anything if I dare.

The Laughter Epidemic.

Laughter raised the roof off of a house while it rained. Everyone inside the house was soaking wet. Their champagne glasses refilled with rain water. They cared not. The fish tank became one with the living room. The water level raised steadily. Some women took the initiative and started handing out snorkles, and scuba gear, to those taking it all a little too seriously. Arm bands, and rubber rings, came out. A man started doing the doggy paddle in the shallow end. A row boat careered down the waterfall of the stair case, from the attic men dove into the down stairs bedroom. There was no a life gaurd to be seen. Neighbours came round to see what all the laughing was about. They cared not. They cared only for the the laughter, and the laughter inside of the house, for laughter is a house without a roof, alive with people soaked to the skin and happy to the bone.

Featured Poet McGuire Interviewed.

Tell us about your poems.

What: I am a playful poet but also a dark artificer. I write about everyday life, the hundreds of characters we meet, as well as psychiatric darkness. I write informal poetry, filled with flights of fancy, keen observations, philosophy — so anything that snags on my muse or strikes out to me in curiosity or unexpected coincidence. Erratic and temperamental, what I write is ignited with an almost nervous, kinetic energy, if my poems could jump or dance or be drank down in one gulp, they would.

Why do I write: because I once went into my mother’s underwear draw and discovered a letter at the bottom which revealed family secrets, real and true. This embodies my need to write and my long literary obsession with secrecy and honesty. I want to write what has been left unsaid, what has been hidden from sight; I want to find private letters beneath underwear smothered in private truth.

How do I write? Dare, I say, I take notes. I write rather slapdash and sporadically. That’s how I approach most of my writing. Write first, think later. I write in bursts of nervous energy, frenzied sessions of typing and diatribe, followed (perhaps days or weeks later) by precise reform and edit. I don’t like to butcher the poem with correction. As Sir Walter Scott reminds ‘many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity.’ I’m not saying I’m great or original simply that I like the unpolished feel of my poetry, down to earth, never seeking professionalism. I like my poetry like my prawns – raw.

-Read the whole interview please visit: One Night Stanzas

---


Many thanks to Claire Askew for considering me and putting me up on the site. It was a rare and unexpected bit of exposure. Despite my rather long winded and rambling replies, I feel I managed to convey my tiny human dignity and my little flicker of soul-poem. Thank you anyone who reads and anyone who takes the time to care.

Grazie tanto! ;)

If I had to have a Christmas tree.

If I had to have a Christmas tree,
it would be as compact and inviting
as a log fire.

Understated yet bright and nourishing,
like a piping hot roast dinner on a
bitter Sunday winter evening.

īnfāns

Death is lurking somewhere in the maternity ward.
The nurslings scan the room and find a shadow
on the ceiling above their droning incubators,
what could be a shadow of black smoke.

They giggle, grab out, cry or curiously frozen,
look out wide eyed, staring in question, above the light.
Caught in neutral moment, cooing, caaing, ommm aware.
Like an angel chorus fresh alive with space and time.

Then, a live one comes in, a Mother of Sunday,
serenely calm in sleeping gown. Warm with affection,
She lifts one baby, her baby, a boy, swaddled in white.
Mother and Son walk into a corridor of nightingales,
make their way, a pair in pact, to the family room.

Parable of the fence

One crowd was putting up the fence
While the other was busy tearing it down.

Very little was achieved.
This went on for quite some time.

Concrete Irrationality

(A mental written collage, for Tristan Tzara, whoever he was.)

:)
:(

Sexual perversions disguised as poems
as you read, a hand slips under your skirt.

8000 attitudes later
and still this boy here!

1500 sexualities in this head alone.
All wearing identical smiles!
Pretending they don't notice each other,
pretending to be shy as they undress
for the 4800th time.

There are many Grey Chair people
who do nothing except let other people sit on them.

The boy who was a thief of consciousness
Stole someone's memories and took over their life,
and regretted it because it reminded him of his own mind.

The Great Dictator
who told all of his friends he hated them
while stripping them naked and flaying them
destroying their personalities, scoping out their souls
As they stopped to sip red wine and eat
delicately cook swordfish.

Several thousand light bulbs later,
And the light is still not any lighter.

Chrysanthemums picked fresh from the earth
deep fried and then dipped in olive oil,
Sprinkled with pepper and salt - Delicious!

A heart rolls out of the left trouser leg
quickly stood upon,
Shell smashed soul yoked all over the floor.

Take off your first clothes, then your second,
then your third, then your forth, then the bones you bare,
then the heart, then the second and third heart, all off:
Welcome to the House of Subgenius!

A Surrealist must avoid weightlessness:
words are arm bands, rubber rings, life guards.

Did you hear about the boy
who got nutrition from language
only if it was sung to him?
He died young of anorexia.

My Philosophy so far: the principle of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, stupidity uncertainty and cynicism and the rejection of the laws of beauty and social organisation. DADA IS GOD! DADA IS EASY! DADA IS ALGEBRA! DADA HAS TEN BILLION TANGIBLE SOULS! DADA SLEEPS FOR ETERNITY WITH EYES OPEN! DADA EXPLODES! DADA IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD! DADA IS HISTORY! DADA IS UNCONTROLABLE! DADA IS POURING ALL OVER YOU NOW - IT’S MYSTERIOUS CONTROL! DADA IS THE END OF NONSENSE AND THE BEGINNING OF NONSENSE! DADA IS NO POET OR POEM! DADA IS WIEGHTLESS ARTLESS DIATRIBE! DADA IS CATHARTIC VOMIT! DADA IS A PLAYGROUND! DADA MAKES SERIOUS CLOWN OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE AND DEAD TIME!

Alex Millsom

(Too many years ago. 1980/1996)

'There is nothing more appalling than being alive and having to die.' - McGuire.

Damn! The memory of Alex, 16 Years Old: DEAD!
Smashed over an L.A. highway lying there like
an open wound for every one to see and remember
their own childhood. All the cars that passed and
all the passengers that looked, would never know
that Alex would be on a life support machine
for one week before it was finally switched off.
No, they still do not know that and nor should they.
Nor do they know that Alex's parents where Scottish
and that on the day he lay dying on that road
the woman who came to comfort him in his pain
was Scottish and the last voice he heard was Scottish.

Keiran's first death:

(Dedicated to Maw McGuire, Oatlands, Glasgow, 1901/1990.)

Keiran cried for one day without stopping. Someone had passed away in the family. A distant Grandmother had died in his family. Keiran was eight years old. This was his first death. His father had woke him and told him early this morning:

'Maw died in her sleep last night...' The words were spoken solemly but without urgency as if all along it had been expected. These words held a silence that spread over the entire day. He knew death meant something irretrievable.

Keiran wept in his bed, wept over his breakfast, wept walking through the park, wept in the supermarket aisles, wept in the car, wept on the couch, he wept in the bathroom, he wept at the dinner table, he wept in his bedroom and finally he wept in his sleep.

The next day he did not cry a single, solitary tear, he had thought out death.