David W Allen   2002

A Walk at Dawn in San Francisco

After a Night of Writing

Do you remember records...

seventy-eight acetates,

forty-fives with A and B sides

or thirty-three and a third long plays

                      designed for slow dancing

when the upright press of belly and breast

simulated sex in the time before the pill ...?

Do you remember Bird and Coltrane

solos, obbligatoes and crescendos

lost in alleyways of youth or the lonely

back booths of deserted coffee shops ...?

Do you remember the subtle caress of

          surrounding air

turning prescient memory into a premise

          offered like a prayer

or that time of first blown lust in a darkened

          parking lot

or some other deserted spot where we were

          alone

or at least beyond the prying eyes of policing

          strangers ... ?

Do you remember  the junk man sailing his

          soul through bent space

to announce the second coming of language ...

all the while dancing barefoot on damp grass,

           sober yet light-headed.

in the dreaded final minutes of endings                                  and beginnings

that we confused with ecstasy and sinning ... ?

 ***

Let us tour forgotten rented rooms

and paint our memories the colours of Etruscan

          tombs.

Let us exit thought like a room filled with

          strangers

where, feeling out of place, we await a known

          face

that will punctuate the moment like a period

dead at the end of an infinite sentence.

Let us not repent and instead reverse direction,

walk down circular stairs and ignore stares

          from intrusive silent strangers

who, adding bounded corners and conscious    

         margins

to the corners of the day, question our

         conviction.

Let us fashion fattened lambs of errant speech, who, illmade and half formed, are then sent

          forth beyond their time

to be devoured by choirs of demented vegans

who eat the meat but then pretend the meal is          only metaphor.

Let us remember the perpetually thin young women

who genuflected to the status quo

of perfect tans, coral teeth and sharp pleats

that lifted and tucked all forms higher and higher

to the eternal push up heavens

of the holy wonder-bra double clasped

against the happenstance of fate

and the eternal properties of gravity.

Let us grow old within those visions of misery

and revisions of history thatexist

coequally and contemporaneously

with all the lost hope and recovered joy

symbolised by reappearing celestial newsboys

who blithely announce the second coming  of

               the morning edition.

***

Let us recall half forgotten poems by Ezra Pound

who rose to announce in hesitant voice, new yet old variations

on a life well livedbetween Sandusky, Ohio and Rome

Let us go and , Dylan-like live off alliteration

until the end

when, drugged out , drunk and pensioned off

beneath St. Vincent's cross,

we too are lost on the outskirts of Brooklyn

Let's walk half-deserted city streets at dawn,

saluting  another day,

outwitting the grave, bankruptcy and the need to shave

Let us pause and hear the bay bells toll for seagulls, prisoners and pensioners

abandoned all those years across the rolling fog bound bay

Let us finally understand that

the hesitant yes and no of all existence lies between and that our lives, like our poems

are never finished

Love song of an Ordinary Life

The most holy, once the most depraved

found Christ at Starbucks and was saved.

the rest confessed to deep inadequacy

when sincerity scratched at dormant memories

then turned and held the truth at bay

long enough to see the truth close up

or read tea-leaves drowned at the bottom of

      dirty tea cups

when tarot cards told them more than they

      wanted to know.

CAT     

Intriguing things,

and not just to look at;

what jungle secret lies

behind

that blinkless blind.

The owl-green eyes

of a cat?

The gently throbbing motor purr,

the rippling wind-stroked cornfield fur,

soft-throated caterpillar curl

of a cat:

do these disguise

a sphynx-like scorn

for human-kind and beasts not feline born?

Dogs that are taught to beg

would come to mind

and then's the playful torment then

of dizzy dying mice

Mouth cuddling of the sentenced wren,

or the biting dead of a rat.

The answer lies

somewhere between

a spitting red-mouth fiend

and a whiskered rub

against one's leg.                

DEATH OF A FROG

Frogs can squeal.

Did you know that?

Yes, squeal, squeak, squawl,

You choose the word.

The stark fact is the sound;

not the puffings of the portly fellow

living comfortably in Toad Hall,

nor the warbled love-strain

of one who would a-wooing go.

No.

What I heard

and never would have found

but for that tearing dreadful peal:

was the voice of pain.

There he hung on a wire fence,

sqewered clean through the side.

A helpless sprawl,

undignified,

absurd,

like some fat lady in a fall

with bloated bloomers of striped yellow.

Pawed at by my puzzled cat

the frog stretched wide

in literal agony of suspence.

Most odd of all;

something to be wondered at;

as its eyes filmed over and the creature died

my heart could feel

the suffering of the crucified

Pawed at dearDEATH OF A FROG og

s can squl

Greg Billingsley     OCT   '9

True Company             

SNAILS

Wandering homewards, after Summer rain

I have often found snails

Fully rigged on their silver seas

leaving the ports of lamp-lit gardens

And I have stooped down

like some fastidious Jain

Again

  and again

     and again

        and again

To plant them back in the comfort of gardens

Safe from the anvils of moon-cracking thrushes

The churning wheels of brightly lit buses

 and the crunching heels of unthinking lovers -

Too busy fanning each other's ardour

and too busy smoothing each other's pain

To notice the shipwreck of chestnut armadas

Wandering homeless after Summer rain.

THE BEAUTIFUL ALPHABET

What were Tigers? said the Child

They were muscled furnaces, said the Mother

They burned through Darjeeling

They had tails like a daisy chain of bumble bees

They had paws like the columns of Solomon's temple

They had eyes like liquid daffodils

They were strong and gentle and arrogantly humble

And they weaved themselves through the web of the jungle.

And what were Elephants? said the Child

They were skin houses, said the Father,

They had lovely hosepipes that they waved at the Moon

They looked like your uncle in a rumpled room

They had ears that flapped like sails in the rain

They had tusks that curved like prows of flame

And Dolphins? said the Child

They were seaplanes, said the Mother

Slip-streamed by time

They were Aquanauts hunting the Golden Fleece

They were sailing harbingers of surf smiling peace

So, where have they gone? asked the Child

They have buried themselves in our imagination,

Said the Mother

And the alphabet is chrome and steel

BEN BRODIE    Apl  '97

Mean mining - City Life

Daily, underground,

like miners on their way to freedom,

we shuffle by in angry haste.

Though we are many,

we have one resounding purpose -

to strive at tork in work's great ethic.

Business must be done;

freedom won;

papers marked with words.

Energy must be spent

and face saved

in gearless action.

We are the grey-faced

failures in freedom,

civilised to nonsense.

The Teapot Man

Sits in the garden as the rain falls,

smiling at every wet daisy,

knowing the secrets of life.

A very clever man in his own field

there's not a field he doesn't know.

Laughs in the garden as the rain falls,

listening to the flowers talk,

counting the magic and mystery.

A mind that has no boundaries;

it can think beyond every known boundary.

Dies before men will accept him

and the knowledge that he has as an alien -

and the knowledge that's lost to the world.

† Continued _

The most

And the plains are empty

And the seas are fields

For the world had no need of irrelevant things

Gossamer condors with sun-scraping wings

So they put all the creatures in a chromium ark

And fired it into the star-crusted evening

And now, on some far -distant planet

The Tigers are burning

The Dolphins are flying with unbridled mirth

And the Elephants are waving their lovely hosepipes

At the sad and empty earth

Can we go there sometime, said the child

And learn the Beautiful Alphabet

Sometime, said the Mother with tearful sighs

Then they switched out the light in their daughter's eyes.

October 1996

RHINOCEROUS

Durer's engraved behemoth

Descendent of Triceratops

He lurched on the dust-filled plains

A quivering horn-capped mountain range.

A tank with sides of dimpled iron

Impregnable to prides of Lions

A fossil from another age

That rumbles down the printed page

- He's Rommel in a leather coat

Binoculars around his throat

He's Goering in an armoured car

He's Churchill with a fat cigar

And yet his fate seems signed and sealed

His horn is his Achilles' heel

And as he thunders, turns and brakes

The Chinese measure out his fate

Ingesting powdered Rhino horn

To keep their old libidos warm

And turn the Durer back to stone

By picking up a mobile phone.

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