john muckle

4 poems

At the Top of the Hill

The evening’s star rises each time higher,A rat’s tail slides under the floorboardsAs I glance into the dusty window of a shut up shop:Fallen planks, exposed wiring, emptiness.Everything moves on, this is the result Of holding on to those last indelible postersFor yesterday’s Chinese state circus;I have posted my memories in a low letterbox.

A pleasure to say goodbye, so hard to depart,Pushing away from the dust-choked shoreOut onto the dark, slippery lake of surfacesOnto the sliding planes of no true horizon –But the mind lingers over things of the past:Some people will live with them foreverAlthough women are more likely to move onAnd hold fast to their firmer judgements.

Who actually owns this fine circular buildingPlanted in the fork at the top of the hill?His name is well-known to all of you, I imagine,And his tenants live above the empty shops.Litter blowing over the night pavements,Doors open, a crack of light is showingAs feet patter away in search of a night bus, God-knows-where to the end of the route.

Envelopes are scattered on the rough floor,Hopeful invitations to get a large pizza sent in,Bills never to be opened nor paid in full –Amongst them my sweeter memories, True or false, rubbed as smooth as pebbles,A number of songs to the same sad tune.The frost here is at the hands of human messengersWho will never reply nor click on send.

My ambition, to survive and to multiply, Like a large rat gnawing through rotten wiring.A young Romanian will grease my tail, And as we gorge we will make happy noises.The world will not be stopped, all passes byOn its way to where it is going, breaking freeOr falling back amongst the rubbish bags As your friends ride by to the beat of their arts.

(after Tu Fu)

Blue Square

Let the smoke drift up to the blue skyOn bank holiday Monday, Eastertime.Feathers falling through a glass of milkO Daddy’s little boy, my roly-poly, How I’d like to have called you Roy.

French kisses, grammar, one two threeThe leaves a silver agony, it seemsNought forming nought, equation’s dreamGrime of a clean ceiling, a mirror,Found artifacts from the daily dig.

Thumbprints on the door, and vinegarTo clean them with, a sheaf of songsWill lull me to my rest beneath sodOn plotted ground intending crimes bought.It doesn’t pay to try so very hard.

Territories carved up between the alleged A pink sparkly bag of incense sticksSurmounted by an icon, his chin in hand,A white globe lantern dirtily lit up,A candle for my hand, coffee, and pillows.

Twinkles for a tuning fork, I file a pageMy ink’s as plentiful as North Sea gasSteering for deep waters, away from the rageThat clicks my synapses like rusty pointsRiding high on a list of tacks, disjoints.

The Fairy Castle

I spotted it peeking out from behindA clump of bulging black binlinersBeside the blank wall of the garden shop,Next to a door, an alley – either oneOf which could be the way it was carried downBy the parent of a child who no longer wanted it.Too grown up? Or … what. SuspiciousHere in Harringay, the home of child murdersAnd complacent social services. I took it home,I couldn’t resist it. So much like – exactly like – A larger one I hallucinated under the hall coatsWith a prince and princess waltzing out of itBefore I fled past to my parents’ room.That’s why I wanted it. And why I took it home.I took the dead batteries out, wondered whatIt did. Lit up? Glittered? Played a tune?But I haven’t replaced its four dead cells – yet.Just set it up on the hall bookcaseBeside the square mirror, a place I daily passWhere I can easily glance at it.

The rabbit was rattling around insideAs I overturned the castle and shook it.Two loose pieces – a rabbit and a laden tea-tray,And a slot in her little paws to hold it,A fairytale castle with nine glittering blue minaretsAnd pink pennants facing every which way,A clear plastic fountain at the top of stepsA half-open silver door where the rabbit standsTray in paws, to welcome visitors. None as yet.

Not much of a toy, perhaps. How could you evenPlay with it? Just cheap moulded coloured tat,A mass-produced dream within my empty pocket.But to me, it’s as if it has squeezed its wayOut of my own head rather than Walt Disney’s wallet.And it sits here in all its beautiful, discarded Fragility and hope, its pennants every which way.The clock will strike, tea will be served,And any furthermores - will be Welsh rarebit.

THE FRIENDS WHO TRIED TO EMPTY THE SEA

There were two friends, fishermen on the shoresof a great lake somewhere, a lake they believed to be an ocean, an ocean teeming with edible fishand some that were inedible, which they sometimes forgot to throw back. I can’t remember how they came up with the idea of emptying the ocean, or why they’d want to do so, but somehow this ideaappealed to them, it took hold of them, as the spirit of competition does, in this case an apparentlyfutile contest that nevertheless had spin-offsin the shape of a bigger hut and more comely wivesfor the best fisherman, and for the runner-up all the fish he could eat, and more, until the shoresof that lake stank of rotting fish, and more fishesspawned and swam around, dodging their nets,and the two friends developed superior methodsof fishing: dredgers, dynamite, magnetic hooks that were not friendly to small fry; and one sad daythere weren’t any fish left in the lake, ocean, sea.And on the seventh day the friends rested, like God, the fruits of their destruction spread around them.

On the eighth day the comeliest wife of the winnerwanted to know, if you please, what was for dinner.Not fish again, she hoped. But there was nothing left to eat of on those shores except for the neighbours.So they ate the wives first, and then the children minced up and patted into fish-shapes by the good-lookingwife of the winner, and then the fisherman himselffor being such a good-for-nothing character who, it was opined, had had such a silly idea. It was only fairhe should face its consequences, the dirty sinner.Of course more fish soon sprang up again in the seaand the two friends who’d tried to empty it wereno more now than a vague memory for the wife of one who had even eaten up her own children and now swam out on the lake in search of dissolutionin the great element of which she had been borne.A mermaid, she swam out and sank to the bottomwhere a fish-king greeted her, his only daughtercome back to him at last, just in time for supper.

This is the story of the friends who tried to empty the sea;a story washed up on my shores, made up by nobody,no challenge to the status quo or to ordinary morality.But the friends were friends once, and in the beginningtheir scheme had seemed a bit of a lark, in good fun.And this is the kind of tale it’s best not to tell to anyoneunless you want a reputation as one of the spoilsportsof poetry, a sourpuss pretending to have all the answersrather than just a man in difficulty, like the others.Are fish to be envied, are wives necessarily monsters?Wouldn’t it be nice to swim to the bottom of the oceaninto that dark, cool place where Poseiden holds courtto a circle of fish-heads with stickleback spears; I thinkand think, but the truth of the matter is no way closer.Sailing By comes on the radio; I wake on the sofa.I run a hot bath; and I scrub my back with a loofahto remove the dead skin and prevent spots from forming. I emerge like a snake, all shiny: a brand new man-thing.

blart